Barbie vs. Bratz

I find it absolutely hilarious that the makers of Barbie are suing the makers of Bratz. Apparently it is all about when the Bratz designer did what, but it brings to my mind some sort of surreal showdown where the doll with the shortest skirt and the tightest clothes wins. Barbie has been losing out to Bratz in the toy market for some time. I am certain it is due to the clear need for little girls to have dolls that look like they should be out clubbing. I mean what other doll will give them the close link to Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears.

Don’t Blame Feminism for Bad Parenting

Alice Walker’s daughter, Rebecca Walker, has written a memoir and an article for the Daily Mail about what it is like to be the daughter of this famous feminist. The article is a diatribe against feminism instead of what it should be, a work about poor parenting. Rebecca Walker blames all of her mother’s ill parenting on feminism and that isn’t where it belongs.

I can understand how terrible it must have been for Rebecca Walker to grow up as the daughter of Alice. I am close to Rebecca’s age and I also grew up in California with a divorced mother, so I can relate, to some extent, to where she is coming from.

However, she makes a huge mistake laying the fault of her childhood at the feet of feminism. It is understandable that Alice Walker couched her decisions within a feminist framework, it is her life’s work, it is her devotion, it is how she sees the world. There is no other way for Alice Walker, world famous feminist, to explain things to her daughter, she was enrobed in feminism. The problem is that Rebecca Walker is blaming feminism for her mother’s faults. Narcissism is not the fault of feminism. Poor parenting skills are not feminism’s legacy. My guess is that as the eighth child of share croppers, Alice Walker did not get the kind of parenting that she wanted as a child. She probably gave her daughter a better childhood than she had, but that would seem poor indeed compared to other parents of the 1970s.

I have found that most people feel that there were major flaws in their childhoods. These flaws have a dramatic range, but they are felt by each one of us. Most parents try to correct those flaws that they felt most dramatically for their children. So it makes sense that Rebecca Walker would create a traditional family structure for her son. Most children of divorce feel that the divorce was the seminal event in their lives and they work to create a more traditional family structure than they had.

This is still not feminism’s legacy. The legacy of divorce may be a result of the work that feminists did to help women see that they could leave dangerous or soul-sucking marriages, but if Rebecca Walker had spoken to people whose parents stayed together for the sake of the children only to fight constantly and tear each other to pieces in front of that child, she might think that divorce is not as bad as she thought.

Feminism gave women the ability to have more choices than they had ever had before. This means that they had the ability to be crappy moms as well, but there were also feminist who were wonderful mothers. To blame feminism in such a public way for bad parenting is irresponsible and short-sighted.

And to blame feminism for the choices women make to advance their careers before they consider motherhood is ridiculous. The only thing that feminism can be blamed for on that score is that women have the ability to have high-powered careers and can even make that choice. Things were not better when women were forced into marriages and motherhood to stave off impoverishment that would result from being a single woman in a world where all the jobs were for men.

Women who decide to start their families early and enter the work force later are no better off than women who chose the other route. They have the same amount of limited choices and their career options become far less appealing the longer women stay at home.

Feminism may not be perfect, but it has dramatically advanced the choices and options available to women. Feminism is not at the root of a distraught childhood and should not be held responsible. Mothers always make choices that their children would rather they didn’t. We are not perfect people. But our poor choices are each of our responsibilities and not the fault of a social movement.

The Institution of Education

My children’s school is closing. I was really disappointed to hear this news, since it is the only school in my city that actually really fits my kids. I just moved them to this school this year and it has come as a real shock to have it go away.

This got me thinking about education as an institution. And what I hope my children gain from their elementary education.

The reality is that we don’t really teach kids all that much stuff during the first six years they are in school. They learn how to read and write. They need to understand what they read and synthesize the information. Math is important for them to know as a concept and they need to be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide. They also need to have a basic understanding of science, geography, and history.

There is a lot of socialization that happens the first years at school and in many ways school is a way for children to learn how to function within an institutional setting. They learn to follow rules and basically stay within the box of whichever school system they are in.

With the closing of my children’s school I have been thinking about the institutions that I have to choose from and I don’t like my choices. I live in Texas, so the schools that have religion as their institutional basis are the main component of the options for private schools. We have no religious practice that fits within the existing structure and I feel that having my children educated in a system that is working on their own religious agenda is not acceptable to me. My children started in the public school system and they both ended their experience much worse off then they were in the beginning, so that is not really an option.

I am wondering what people think about the way their children are socialized as part of an educational institution. I think that most parents want our children to fit into society. In many ways the public school system is a way that parents can help their children to transitional easily through the system. With a grounding in the public school system children can understand the working of many college systems.

Once a parent chooses to take their children out of the public school system, or a religious school system, both of which work to help students understand the rules and structures of mainstream society parents are really left to their own designs, and that is freeing and scary at the same time.

I have had to realize that my children do not fit into the normal structures. It was difficult to come to that understanding, but now that I do it is my job as their parent to find the institution that best serves my children. I have learned that finding the ideal or perfect school for my kids is not a reasonable goal, but I need them to be academically challenged and emotionally supported, so they can get what they need out of the institution to which they belong.

I now see that what I want for my children is to see themselves as citizens of the world. I want them to feel comfortable with technology and I don’t want my daughter to decide that math and science are not cool for girls. I don’t really want them to be part of any institution. I want them to have a setting to explore where they can feel like they have a safe base from which to operate and teachers who will push their intellect.

I don’t know what I will get, however. Now that I know what I want I will have to sit patiently and see what happens. But I think that it is important to understand how the institution of education shapes the lives it touches.

Conference Land

I have had a bit of a break from blogging here because I have had the amazing ability to speak at and attend several conferences in Austin these past few weeks.

I was really privileged to be the keynote speaker at the 15th Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women's and Gender Studies Conference at UT. I spoke about the ways that the video game industry create barriers to entry for women and girls and the ways that the video game industry is perceived by academia as being a male centered domain affects the quality of research done on games. Although I do see some real progress being made with the introduction of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii system.

I also attended the Gender and Technology Conference at UT and the Texas Girls Collaborative Project Kick-Off Conference. Both of these events were wonderful and they reminded me of why I do this work. The Texas Girls Collaborative Project was created to help universities, instructors, and organizations that work to help girls succeed in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) come together and create even more successful programs. It has long been a problem that we are losing too many girls from these areas and I am happy to be a part of such a necessary project.

I Feel Like Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams, the second US president and there are letters from her to John while he was away at the Constitutional Congress asking him to "remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation."

Of course, he and the rest of the men did forget the women. I am sure they wondered what the fuss was about when they came back home and told their wives who had fought for independence as well.

That is what I feel like when I write about the video game industry. I keep shouting that they shouldn't forget the women and when they do they wonder what all my shouting is about.

It's frustrating.

Academics and Games

There is a problem in the academic study of video games. The girls are invisible. For some reason many of the researchers who study video games are completely comfortable taking the game industry's party line for granted - girls don't really play games. The industry is totally comfortable with the idea that girls play casual games, or even the DS, but when it comes to what the game industry considers the "hard core" games, the girls and women just are not visible. And it doesn't seem to matter how hard women work to become visible, the industry just works that much harder to make them go away.

The new book, Grand Theft Childhood is one example of how invisible girls and women are and how damaging that is. This is a good book that does not demonize the game industry and take out the woes of the world on this new technology. However, it is an entire book on games where the interviews were only done with boys. So to rephrase....they only talked to boys...no girls. They did some surveys for the statistical part of the study and found that 30% of the girls play GTA, but they did not go back to include girls.

The researchers just listened to the games industry party line about how girls don't play "hard core games" and they just never considered them.

What this means is that when people read this book...a book whose title implies it covers both genders because they use childhood, not boys...they are only reading about boys experiences.

People in the games industry are reading this book, other researchers are reading this book. Decisions will be made because of this book...where the girls are absolutely silent.

This is just one example of how the absence of girls...the silencing of girls...has a negative impact on not just what we play, but how others see what we play.

Of Prostitutes and Photography

I read a really nice article about prostitutes today and I don’t say that often. I was drawn into a story in the LA Times about a woman who took photos of prostitutes in Las Vegas.

Jonnie Anderson went to Yale to get a Master’s in photography only to return to Las Vegas where she embarked on a project to take photos of prostitutes where they could feel beautiful. She and her roommate would give these women makeovers and they would get to chose clothes Jonnie provided so that they could have their photograph taken, which Jonnie has turned in to a book.

What I loved about this article was the absolute respect Jonnie has for the prostitutes and the respect of the author of the article for these women as well. There was no biting commentary on the lives these women live, no analysis, just a desire to document these women in a way that would not degrade them.

It is often easy to deride choices others make or have thrust upon them , without truly understanding their lives or perspectives. I appreciate the work both Jonnie and the journalist have done.

Awesome Comic

I just love this comic by VG Cats. The reality is that too many of the games geared toward girls and women highlight the girlier side of life. Since I do most of the cooking, I really have a hard time understanding the facination with Cooking Mama. It would be like my husband wanting Laundry Man for his relaxation time when that is something he does too much of in real life.

Miss Bimbo...Again

I realize that this game probably doesn't deserve as much press as it's getting, but I have heard the argument that Miss Bimbo is not that bad because if shooting games don't make the players killers, then how can playing Miss Bimbo make girls think less of their bodies. And I must refute it.

Well, just for the record, that is a ludicrous argument. If we were handing out guns to children and then showing them all the great ways they would feel if they would just go out and kill someone already, then we would probably have a direct correlation. However, when girls are inundated with images and messages about how their bodies suck and how no grown woman with any sense likes her body. Then they are given a game that allows the characters to take diet pills and get plastic surgery and then be judged on their bodies, well that is a direct correlation and that in deed does lead to the players feeling bad about their bodies.

It is all about how things are portrayed across various forms of media. We are generally told that killing is bad. It's against the law, even. However we are told across all forms of media that big boobs are good and fat is ugly, well then it doesn't take much to draw the obvious conclusions.

Leeches. Yuck!

As if Miss Bimbo wasn't enough of a sign of the coming apocalypse brought to us by unrealistic standards of things that humans should do to their body, I just read an article on the BBC website about Demi Moore and leeches. The blood sucking kind. She says that she had some leech treatments at a woman's house in Austria and it was great.

Now I try not to take any medical or health advice from celebrities who seem to live away from my world, but I just have trouble wrapping my head around the idea of leeches. No matter how delusional the person using the leeches may be.

Miss Bimbo

The Miss Bimbo game has been all over the blogosphere, and I can’t help but jump into the fray. This game is a virtual world where players get a virtual bimbo and they can get her plastic surgery and control her eating so that she looks like a perfect bimbo and wins the Mss Bimbo contest.

There is a lot of discussion about whether this game is bad or just funny. The game is targeted toward 9 to 16 year-old girls.

When I first heard about this game I was convinced it was a fake site created to piss off all of the women of the world. The reality that it is a real site with 200,000 players makes me very, very sad. Have we come so far from the days of Reviving Ophelia?

I don't think this game is ironic or clever, I think this game is bad for girls. Nine-year olds might be sophisticated in some ways, but numerous studies have shown that girls are directly affected by discussions of diets and body types. That is why The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty exists.

The media affects the way that girls feel about their bodies:

· 9% of 9 year old have vomited to lose weight

· 81% of 10 year old are afraid of being fat

· 53% of 13 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies

· 78% of 18 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies

· The #1 wish of girls 11-17 years old is to lose weight

Source: Body Wars: Making Peace with Women’s Bodies,
by Margo Maine, Ph.D., Gürze Books, 2000

As if we didn’t have enough problems with stereotypes and body image now girls can actually cut bits off of their characters.

I just wish that people paid more attention to the fact that what their child sees effects their views of themselves.

I would like to see this game die a slow death.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is Worth Your While

Are you looking forward to the release of Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm? Well, neither am I.

However, if you are looking for a game to play I highly recommend Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It is the best game that I have played in a long time. (Other than Rock Band, of course!) This is a puzzle mystery where you follow Professor Layton and his young sidekick to a strange village in order to help a family find their inheritance that was hidden by the crazy Baron before he died.

There are many reasons this game is fun. So I thought I would list them out:

The puzzles are varied and you can skip them.

This means that you are not stuck on one type of puzzle that you would never ever be able to solve without the help of a cheat before you can advance. There are so many different types of puzzles that if you hate one kind you can mostly just skip it and still win the game, yeah!

The puzzles make sense.

Most games that I have played have puzzles integrated into the story that make no sense to me. Why do I want to have a falcon catch a ring or feed a monkey a banana? Maybe I just think the monkey should be able to walk a few feet and get its own banana. In Professor Layton the puzzles are either to help someone out with a problem they have or they are puzzles that villagers ask you to solve that they have created.

The characters are developed and interesting.

You don’t get to know all the back story on Professor Layton and Luke, his sidekick, but you get to know enough that you care. I wanted to help all the people in the game solve their problems. The writing was key, which is why game writers deserve more credit.

It takes less than 10 hours to solve.

Unlike some games that take forever to solve and seem to think that repetition of the same puzzles over and over again is the way to my heart, Professor Layton is solvable in less than ten hours. If you are like me and you like to look around and see the sights it can take thirteen, but that can be fun too.

It is for the Nintendo DS.

If you don’t have one, you should. The Nintendo Dual Screen (DS) is the best portable game system out there. It is good on planes, trains, in cars, and sitting in the living room. The technology is awesome and easy to navigate. No taking forever for the load screen, no having to turn on the game system and the TV and wait for the whole thing to boot. You just open it up and go.

So there you have it. So go buy it already.

What A Wonderful World

I was really happy to see the article in the Guardian about the old people's home in Berlin. It is the first in Europe to cater exclusively to gay and lesbian old folks. There are plans to build a nursing home for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender elders in Massachusetts.

What I really liked about the article, besides the topic, was the way it was written. There was no stigma attached to being gay from the author’s perspective, just that elders who are gay or lesbian might want a place to live where they don't have to explain anything. It was written with a sweetness that lets me know that with all of the crap and discrimination and violence that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people may experience. Progress is being made. And I like progress.

In an Unlikely Place - An Interesting Commentary on Hillary Clinton

As I was trolling The Guardian I noticed that the Fashion section has Agony Aunt and I love advice columnists, so I turned my wandering eye in her direction. I was completely surprised to find a really interesting commentary about Hillary Clinton made on the basis of her clothes. It isn't superficial and trite, it is thoughtful and complex. Give it a read!

Penny Arcade

I used to read Penny Arcade. I liked that the comic was about games and it was generally funny. Then they posted a strip that made me realize that I was not their audience. I went a year or so without reading it, and then I decided to give it another try. I love webcomics and I know that a few bad posts don’t make a theme, so I decided to start reading again. A few weeks into this new adventure and they decided to post this.

When judging wet t-shirt contests and beer bongs is celebrated in a comic with an image of a woman in a wet t-shirt I am yet again, informed ever-so-gently by the creators that this is not a club for girls, so again I will remove Penny Arcade from my list of must-reads. I don’t think I will go back again.

This is just the way of the game industry in miniature. Many women who game will read the strip because they are used to looking past the sexist crap. The men usually don’t even notice. It is the women like me who they miss and they figure they are doing just fine without expanding their base, why are we needed. I think that blindly insulting a group of people to set clear “boys-only” barriers is short sighted.

Unless you make a product that only one sex can use, like after shave, it is short-sighted for a company or an industry to intentionally insult a possible market segment. This was discovered by the makers of TVs when they realized that women have an equal, if not dominant voice in the decisions on household purchases.

With the dominance of women in the casual games space I think it is ludicrous for the games industry in general to continue to assume that their audience is all male. And with their strong ties to the games industry I am putting Penny Arcade in the same boat.

Great Technology Resources

These are great sites for anyone interested in women and gaming. The sites are grouped together by type. Send me a link if you have a site that I should add.

Organizations
These sites sole purpose is to increase the number of women who work in the game industry and help the game industry better understand women gamers.

Women in Games
http://womeningames.com/

Women in Games International
http://www.womeningamesinternational.org/

For Women and Girls Who Play
These sites have articles, game reviews and information about scholarships for girls in gaming and game development.

Women Gamers
http://www.womengamers.com/

Gaming Angels
http://www.gamingangels.com/

Killer Betties
http://www.killerbetties.com/

Competitive Women
These sites feature women who are professional video game players. PMS Clan is a supportive network for women who compete in video game tournaments and The Frag Dolls is a group supported and run by a game company (Ubisoft). The Frag Dolls only compete on Ubisoft games. All of these women compete in First Person Shooter games and they are some of the best players in the world. Both groups also compete in some tournaments where the women work together as a team. The women in both of these organizations are extremely accessible and are happy to answer questions and support girls who have an interest in what they do.

PMS Clan
http://www.pmsclan.com/index.php

Frag Dolls
http://www.fragdolls.com/

Game Sites
These are sites where girls can play games for free.

Girls Inc.
https://www.girlsinc-online.org/members/Welcome.html

Pop Cap Games
http://www.popcap.com/

Shockwave Games
http://www.shockwave.com/home.jsp

Sites Supportive of Girls in the Sciences

Engineer Girl
http://www.engineergirl.org/?referrer=Google&gclid=CMC_tpmv4JECFR3JOAodvCchgg

Girls Inc.
https://www.girlsinc-online.org/members/Welcome.html

Girls Go Tech by the Girl Scouts
http://www.girlsgotech.org/girls_go_tech.html

Sally Ride Science
http://www.sallyridescience.com/

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

Every year as part of Engineering Week in the US various universities sponsor a Girls Engineering Day. This is an amazing way to introduce the many aspects of engineering to young girls. I have been to the event at the University of Texas for the past two years and it rocks!

Girls get to see presentations involving cool stuff like liquid nitrogen and work on experiments that can go awry. Boys can attend as well, but this is all part of an effort to bring up the numbers of girls involved in the sciences.

The ages range for these events, but at UT girls can attend who are in 1^st through 8^th grade. I think it is crucial that girls are given the exposure to both the science of engineering and the university campus at such a young age. As has been repeatedly studied, many girls lose interest in the sciences in middle school and I think that it is key to expose them to how fun science and college can be at an early age.

The university also has retention programs in place to help women who choose to study engineering stick to their choice and not get overwhelmed when it feels like they are the only women in a class of 200.

I spoke with Tricia Berry, the Director of the Women in Engineering Program at UT and a chemical engineer herself and she told me about the PALS program at UT where a freshman woman is teamed up with another woman in her major who is a sophomore to senior level. Ms. Berry also told me about a networking reception the university held for women in engineering. The women who attended were floored that there were so many women actually in their major. When sitting in a lecture hall of 200 it is difficult to pick out the other 10 or 20 women there and it’s great for their egos to see that they are part of a much larger group.

I like the idea of introducing girls to the idea of engineering and then supporting them when they make the decision to pursue that field as a career. Since engineering is about solving problems it seems to me that the more diverse a workforce that is in place to solve any given problem the better.

A Heroic Woman

I truly enjoy stories of women who have done heroic deeds. The stories the media tell imbue our lives so much and I would much rather hear about women who parachuted into occupied France during WWII than some celebrity gossip.

Pearl Cornioley died on February 23^rd and her obituary is in the Telegraph. The amazing story about her life is well written and focuses on her bravery. The article ends with a telling of how the British government tried to correct their prejudice and awarded her the appropriate governmental awards later in life. I hope you enjoy the read.

How Journalism Goes Bad

So there is this article in my local paper about how a woman who survived hellacious breast cancer has now lost the weight she gained as a result of having her thyroid removed due to the cancer.

I started to write about how cranky I was that the newspaper chose to focus on her weight loss, but then I realized that this woman is probably happy to have her body to focus on in a way that she has control. I can only imagine that after having the cancer run riot over her body she would be glad to have a way to get her body to work with her ideas instead of against them. I mean who the hell am I to say how she should want to view her body given the almost hysterical cultural focus on outward appearance and fear of being labeled fat even if she did survive a horrible ordeal.

My problem is with the media and that this article could have been spun lots of ways, but since we have this crazed focus on weight, this was the focus of the article. Not her ability to reinterpret and view her body as in some way good or benign. This article is then not about the strength of this woman to fight for her life, win and then reinvent herself. It is about how wonderful it is that she now fits into standard beauty norms.

I see this kind of focus as dangerous. Women have other, more important issues to be discussing. These small details redirect our conversations in ways that could be more useful.

Interestingly enough as I went to post this I found that the headline in the paper “Breast Cancer Survivor Shares the Secrets of Making Weight Loss Stick” is different than the on-line version “Weight-loss tips from a true survivor: Donna Nelson beat cancer, got fit and is now featured in a new book from Weight Watchers.”

Ever Changing Gender Roles

Ok, so Rosie Boycott, who started a feminist magazine in the UK in the 1970’s, wrote an article in the Daily Mail about how terribly treated men are now that feminism has taken hold and how much nicer things were before women got all uppity and went and got jobs. Seriously.

I think that her point is that we need to have a larger societal shift to go with the progress that women have made, but instead of making that clear she seems to hearken back to yesteryear when men knew who they were because they were the wage earners.

What she blatantly ignores is that women have always worked outside the home. Women have worked in factories and at newspapers and as teachers for many years now. What has changed is not just an expectation that the man, the father might want to have an equal responsibility in taking care of the home and the children, but also a desire by the men to have an equal responsibility.

She refers to a recent survey that says that men are unhappy because they feel they have to live by women’s rules, but she never references the survey, so we don’t know if it is a survey done on 4 men outside a pub who were drunk or what the other findings were.

I agree that we need to have a societal shift that accommodates the way families are now structured, but I have no illusions that men or women were happier when the men were just in charge of going to work and the women were home. There is definitely more negotiation now, but I think it is all for the good.

I am also more optimistic about the future than Ms. Boycott. I think that this may be a rough patch and require more negotiation between men and women in marriages, but I also know that our children are growing up with women in a wide variety of roles and while men may not have an equal share of household responsibility, they have more than before. Our children will be better able to negotiate these roles, because for them they won’t be new.

I do think it is important to pay attention to how societal changes affect those of us living in the society. However, I think that the answer has more to do with all of us advocating for changes like national child care, or health care that will help everyone adjust rather than just giving up on the progress because it has become too difficult for some, or not. I still can’t find the study.

I'm Depressed

I am starting to get a migraine as I read the latest wage survey. According to surveys by Dice.com, a career placement site for technology professionals, and Computerworld the wage gap is growing between men and women in the technology sector. This means that women are making even less than men at the same job than last year. I could spit nails.

According to Dice.com the gap widened from 9.7% in 2006 to 11.9% in 2007. The wage gap varies depending on the type of job, but at every level the wage gap is still significant, according to this survey. Computerworld found similar gaps with the gap narrowing significantly in upper management, but not disappearing.

The fact that in 2007, almost 100 years after we were granted the right to vote, after all the work women have done to highlight this gap as a problem, the fact that a gap exists let alone grows, makes me very angry. No matter who you are you should be paid the same for the same job. It is not simply unfair, it is unreasonable.

It Really Is In the Details

When game makers are creating a game the designers want the game to have a certain feel, the artists give it a certain look, and the writers think about the story. What most of these people are looking at is the big picture. They are thinking about things like, how can the player navigate through the game and have fun. They think about the overall feel and tone they give the game. Sometimes the details are ignored.

This is often where the trouble starts. The producer doesn’t have the time to look at all the little nit-picky bits of the game, the designer is thinking about how to translate their idea to reality and then we end up with something weird, like the morphing of Judy Nails into a bar brawling slut with a boob job. Or sometimes we end up with things so small, so minute that to the eye of many gamers they would wonder what I was on about.

I was at a game showcase where games in development were shown so that the developers could get feedback. I went over to play a game that looked like fun, if not similar to older games like Army Men. It was where the player is a toy navigating a teenager’s room. There were lots of objects strewn around the room to give the player the feeling that they were immersed in a true teenage space, things like dirty socks and pizza slices. I was happily navigating the world and playing the game when my character walked past an adult magazine lying on the floor. This sent an immediate signal to me that this game was not intended for me. I had lots of things on the floor of my room as a teenager, but a magazine with a topless woman on the cover was not one of them. It brought me out of the world enough that I paused from play.

Since the creator of the game was sitting next to me I was excited to have the opportunity to ask why he had placed the magazine there. He told me that he wanted to make the game edgy. I asked him if he realized instead of edgy he was signaling that this game was created for boys and men with this one detail. He was truly surprised that such a simple thing would have a big impact.

The thing is, it really does. It is the subtle cues that we read when we walk into a restaurant or store to decide if that is a place we are supposed to be. A strip club may be open to women as customers, but there is a pretty high barrier to entry for a woman to go in. This can be the same for games. The game designer could have put a gun magazine or a skater magazine in, which would also be edgy, but not send a gendered signal. The odds are good that a woman or girl who would want to play that type of game would also be the type of person who plays FPS games or skates.

Gamers are always looking for cues from a game. That is the only way to find the hidden ammo or the good gear. It also keeps us from getting killed. Because a gamer has to pay so much attention to the world, the small subtle cues that women and girls don’t belong are felt even more than in some other context. Skateboarding magazines are full of cues that the readership is male, but those can be skipped past for the cool articles. When I am immersed in a world, the subtle messages are inescapable.

Yet again, it’s one of the many things I like about Rock Band. When playing a solo quick play I don’t know who my band mates will be and I am usually supplied with an equal slit between men and women. I particularly like one of the characters who shows up to play the drums in a hot pink skull and cross bones mini with a big bouffant.

The game industry needs to do a better job of looking at the details of a game. I really dislike being immersed in game play only to run across a cue that I don’t belong. Those cues are often subtle but they can have a huge impact.

The Numbers Are In

Kotaku has the 2007 console numbers up and, not surprisingly, the winner is Nintendo. The Nintendo DS sold the most, followed by the Wii. Proof positive that when a game company decides to target an audience larger than 18 to 30 year-old guys with limited social skills everyone wins.

Why the Wii Wins

As I was shopping in my local Best Buy store I noticed a demo station for the Wii and I stopped to take a look. I smiled as I watched a demo directed at both children and families and amazingly enough, both boys and girls. The demo starts with a mother sitting down with the Wii remote and writing a note to someone using the Wii’s internet mode, then the daughter comes in and the mother and daughter start to play a game, they are eventually joined by the father and son and all four family members are playing the Wii. The demo shows the entire family having fun playing the Wii. It also shows a group of girls playing games on the Wii and a girl and a boy playing the Wii together. Here is where the success of the Wii lies. While the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 were getting attention from the game industry insiders that they had faster, better, sleeker game play, Nintendo was quietly doing what would guarantee huge sales. They were making the Wii look like fun for EVERYONE! Not just the hard core gamer who the majority of the industry blindly insists are the REAL gamers.

When the Wii was first discussed within the video game industry Nintendo was considered a bit foolish for not implementing the dramatic upgrades that were being implemented by Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s Playstation 3 as Next Generation machines. The trouble with thinking only about the technology is that both Sony and Microsoft forgot that the market could be much broader than the gamers who play the shooters and are driven by technology. They forgot that video games didn’t just need to be better looking and have more bells and whistles, they should also be fun.

When Nintendo designed the Wii they remembered the people who just want the games to be fun, maybe even dorky, but always fun. This was played out by the massive sales numbers for the Wii since its release. And this past Christmas, it was almost magical if one appeared on the shelves, they were flying out the door so fast.

Personally, I wanted a Wii for the same reasons I wanted an Atari 2600 when I was a kid. It looked like a really fun game console that I could play with my family. And it is.