Erin Hamilton Guest Contributor	Erin Hamilton is a contributor to the-lowdown.net.

The Girl Gamer's Manifesto

I'm sitting in a room full of boys. I'm drinking a Pepsi, if I remember correctly. I'm 14 years old and I have a gray controller in my hand. My hair is pulled back and my coat is thrown off. My brow furrows as a match of Tekken 2 commences. Tekken 2 is obviously the second in a series of fighting games in which two players try to defeat each other with preprogrammed moves. Tekken 2 happens to be one of my favorite games. Now, on this particular occasion, one of my opponents remarked rather crudely, "Geez, you should be reading teenybopper mags instead of playing games. You're a girl!" Yes, I was 14 years old, and no, I did not read Teen Magazine. In fact, I told that same boy, "Look, you give me a good girly game, and I'll leave your precious games alone." I still haven't left his precious games alone.

Obviously, my passion for video games has been seen as an abnormal thing. In fact, it's almost taboo for a girl to say to another girl, "I'm a gamer." Gamer guys, however, start grinning like idiots when you can hold your own against them in Quake III or Unreal Tournament. Why, then, don't more girls play them? A recent study shows that 75 to 80 percent of sales generated by the game industry are attributed to males (Nzegwu). The game industry giant Mattel recently started making video games that dealt with their hottest item, the Barbie doll. On one hand, this introduces little girls to the wonders of video games. On the other hand, it furthers the stereotype that all females should look, act, and think a certain way. For younger girls perhaps this sort of stuff is all right, but for those of us who are old enough to think for ourselves, there aren't enough decent games around to keep us going.

According to ABCnews.com and a survey conducted by Children Now, "Altogether, 54 percent of the female characters were depicted as fighting or being violent, while many also exhibited stereotypical female behavior and characteristics." Women aren't going to enjoy a game they can't relate to. This issue has sparked a prominent debate among game producers and designers today. The sides are divided right down the middle. Some believe that girl gamers want "girls-only or girl-directed media," while others, such as Sega, want to explore "the possibility of expanding or broadening the existing game market to include both male and female consumer interests" (Nzegwu).

Maybe when playing video games, girls want something besides what they're bombarded with from every other form of media? Maybe we don't want the slender Barbie character so much as the muscularly thin Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark. "Gender-neutral games are the way to go," says an article in Wired.com's online magazine (Brown). I emphatically agree. Do other women feel the same? "I don't believe women need special games, they just need good ones," reasoned Amy Ng. What we want is a game like Final Fantasy X, which is the first game in that series to feature a strong female character--Yuna, around whom the story centers. We want strong female villains, too, such as Fortune from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. One woman writing for MIT's alumni newsletter blamed the lack of games with feminine tastes in mind on the lack of female programmers and designers and argued that "until [that problem is addressed], games for girls will most likely remain represented by fare such as Barbie Fashion Designer" (Yap).

What male programmers seem to have difficulty understanding, I think, is exactly what a female wants to see in a game. To do that, you have to brave a peek into history, at the feminist movement. Women have always wanted power and equality. Women wanted to wear pants, so they pressed hard enough and now wear pants. We got the right to vote. We have, for the most part, equal opportunity in the workplace. Now, what are we supposed to do about that side of us that likes skirts and cooking? Generally speaking, programmers and developers have a hard time juxtaposing femininity and feminism in a good video game. An example of what not to do can be found in the game Tomb Raider. While this game features a gun-toting, no-nonsense female lead, many women frown upon her significantly over-the-top physical attributes. Obviously, that game couldn't manage to get the best of both worlds.

Something else developers tend to overlook is the fact that a woman's mind differs greatly from a man's. Whereas men generally enjoy the explosive action of a game, women tend to focus more on what is actually happening to the characters. One site's observation is that women respond more to "interpersonal relationships (not necessarily romance, though that's included, but also friends, family, and well-known enemies) than to combat, and are more concerned with character development than most male gamers I've known" (Women in Gaming). This is why females tend to like role-playing video games like the Final Fantasy series as opposed to first-person shooter games such as Unreal Tournament. That isn't to say girls don't enjoy those types of games, too, but according to a survey report, "Fewer than 2 percent of console game players are female" (Brown).

I happen to think that number could and should be much higher. In fact, I agree that "girls don't play games, because girls don't make games" (Yap). Several days ago, I was discussing this with a friend of mine who seemed to think I would do well in the game industry. I was pitching an idea for a video game and he thought it was brilliant. Oddly enough, the game I described features a female lead character with normal proportions and a normal life. The fact that he was excited about the concept made me wonder what my female friends would say, so I e-mailed a friend of mine and asked her what she thought. I received a response that was nearly as enthusiastic as the one from my male friend. What does that tell you? It is possible to have the best of both worlds and still make everyone happy. The wonderful thing is that there are already video games on the market that consistently make everyone happy.

Final Fantasy X, SquareSoft's most recent addition to its series of best-selling games, speaks well to both worlds with its aforementioned central female figure and attention to excitement and action. Typically, role-playing games feature the tough-guy hero and the weak female sorceress who can't do anything but heal. Final Fantasy X, however, breaks that mold. While the male characters still dominate in battle, the female character Yuna is the driving attitude and force behind the actions of the other characters. For example, at one point in the game, Yuna resolves to go after the villain. The main male character doesn't have to go along with it, but her conviction convinces him. This type of character development and plot are what typical girl gamers look for in a game.

Unfortunately, since the market for female gamers is pathetically small, marketing companies aren't going to want games for that demographic. Instead they will be focusing more on bringing young girls and preteens in with the Barbie games and the games with proper female leads. What game companies don't realize is that they "should stop worrying about how to attract more female players and focus on designing games with great characters, involving story lines and gameplay that's challenging yet logical" (Ng). Females can take care of drawing our own kind in to the world of games, but the industry must first give us more games that we won't be ashamed to tell our girlfriends we play. A healthy boost in that direction has been made with such powerful games as Final Fantasy X, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, and Warcraft III.

When I played Warcraft III for the first time, I was awed by the graphics and sound, not to mention the expansive worlds and characters. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes the cutesy girly games can be a good escape from reality, but when female characters with chests the size of cantaloupes are presented, we click the power off.

What we want is not what the industry wants to produce. The bombardment of sports games and fighting games with little to no point aside from winning has caused women to generally turn their noses up at video games. Essentially, however, all it takes for a girl to enjoy the game she's playing is the basic storytelling elements. Trust me, we'll be purring like kittens if we can just get a good game. It will be then that the lines between male gamers and female gamers will drop. As Ng so nicely puts it, "Oh, by the way, don't call me a girl gamer--just call me a gamer."

Works Cited:

Brown, Janelle. "Girl Gamers: Sugar, Spice, Everything Profitable."

Iannaconi, Jennifer. "Do Women Game Differently Than Men?"

Ng, Amy. "What it Takes to Entice the Female Gamer."

Nzegwu, Uzoamaka. "Gender and Computer/Video Games." May 15, 2000.

Reuters. "Not a Pretty Picture."

Yap, Tammy. "What's So Great About Computer Games?"