Wednesday 24 October 2007

Girls and gaming

I have been looking at reviews on the website www.grrlgamer.com and have found the reviews made by girls are very similar to one that would be made by a boy. If i didn't know better then it would not be possible to tell who had written the review. www.grrlgamer.com is a website used by girl gamers that are interested in games that boys would 'usually' be interested in. For example I read a review written about halo 2 and the female perspective is very similar too mine, I found that the writer, Didi Cardoso, was very detailed in explaining the game but also went in to some interesting aspects that I if i was reviewing the game would not have talked about. She wrote of the PC version of Halo 2 and wrote about different things that she had tried, for example attempting to plug an xbox controller in to the PC and finding it did not work. She also writes about the online Halo 2 and how this is one of the most crucial parts to the PC Halo 2. She is correct in saying this because it is a massively popular part to the Halo games.
One thing i did notice about the www.grrlgamer.com site is that it is quite clearly a girls site, there are pictures of animated female 'heroes' around the site and a definite use of the colour pink.

I then moved on to reading some 'editorials' and found some very interesting views. For example after reading the article of "what guys want in games" I believe the female writers to be very strong in their views of "what guys want in games". Their views of what men want are entirely wrong in my opinion, the woman writing this particular post Megan Parker wrote that "Storylines are honestly not what guys seek in games" which is entirely wrong. Speaking to my fellow student i have found that nearly every one of us disagrees with that statement. From reading this and other articles i have only found the female writers to be sterotypical of men. Megan Parker suggests that all men look for in games is guns and violence ""Blowing crap up" is usually the best way to go, but sometimes you can go with "blow crap up and save the princess". It's just enough information for them to realize that they should not blow the princess up." She suggests that men want to just blow stuff up and that we are also not intellegent enough to properly read or understand storylines, she believes that men think storylines gets in the way of "blowing crap up". The female writers believe they are aloud to suggest what men want and become sterotypical but we cannnot suggest that all women want in a game is for example "shopping and make-up", obviously I would not write this in a review but it is effectively what thwey have written about "us", men.

Clearly females do not know their real place, perhaps they should stop writing reviews on men and get back in the kitchen!

No comments: