No women allowed?

A friend of mine posted a link to this article earlier, and boy does it make me want to kill something. (Though, according to some people quoted in that post, I’d rather be playing with babies and gossiping with the neighbours.)

It really comes as no surprise that gender bias is still alive and well in the nerd world, but there’s really no excuse for it. I cringe at the idea that some guys think all we female gamers are good for are acting as healers or filling an empty raid slot.

All of this reminds me of yet another discussion I read on a message board where a guy was asking how to make a D&D game that appealed to women. (He was bringing in not one, but TWO girls and wanted to make sure they didn’t get scared away.) A lot of the advice given was essentially that he should dumb it down and that the encounter mechanics would be too confusing for us poor little ladies to comprehend. Yeah, screw you people.

It’s true that a lot of women who do game tend to utilize more casual systems such as the DS and the Wii. I suppose both could be seen as a little less intimidating, but I also think it could be considered the “gateway drug” of gaming were the other systems made a little more gender neutral. There’s no denying that the 360 and PS3 marketing is targeted towards men as are the games available. I’m not suggesting that either the system or the games should be dumbed down, but it would be nice to see a wider array of non-boobified titles available that aren’t things like “Cooking Can Be Fun!” or “Super Animal Fun Time”. (Don’t Google those, I made them up.)

I know I’m in the minority of women who favour the 360 as their gaming system of choice. I’m also not one to be bothered or intimidated by bouncing, bosom-laden fantasy chicks romping across the game screen. (I was the one that picked out the pinup calendar in our computer room that my husband gets blamed for.) However, I can see how these sorts of games might count as a pretty big deterrent to other women.

A large part of the problem (as has been pointed out numerous times across the interweb) is not only caused by men, but by other women. As I noted in an earlier blog post, some girls think that other girls that game are aberrations. They have been given the mindset that games are not for them. It’s a lot like the idea that power-tools are for men and we women-folk are too petite and helpless to do so much as change a light bulb. Better stick to baking.

We have not evolved as much over the decades as we would like to think.

Unfortunately, there’s no one all-encompassing fix for this. Marketing needs to change and perceptions need to change; neither of these tasks can be accomplished easily. If game companies want to invite women to the table they need to do some more strategizing. If men want women to game, they need to be a little more inviting and less patronizing. If women want to game, they need to jump in there, flip everyone the bird, and show them how it’s done. Trust me guys, we can kick your ass.