CULTURE | Video games for girls don’t seem to exist. Or do they?

You’d think video games for girls would be a thing. Women are queens on the marketing chessboard. Everyone wants to capture them. They’re the number one consumers in North America and few companies would dare ignore the power of their wallets.

The gaming industry is one of the few with the balls to do it.

Video games are rarely, if ever, marketed to women and girls.

At the E3 Expo that took place in May 2005, Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) said that video games need to widen their appeal. “We need a cultural shift so that young girls and women feel that playing games is not a testosterone-monopolized hobby reserved for their boyfriends and husbands,” he said. Of course, are the game makers themselves ready to step up and do their part? It seems unlikely.

I spoke to three industry insiders — Hannah Guy, a freelance writer, gaming enthusiast, and contributing editor to the gaming section of Access magazine, V___, an Electronic Arts software engineer [name redacted because after this piece was published, this unfortunate individual was chastised by their employer for participating], and Matt Levitan, Director of Marketing for Sony PlayStation. All three agree that even if women are excluded from gaming’s so-called target demographic, plenty of the games themselves are girl-friendly.

“It’s true that gaming is a largely male-biased area,” says Guy. “Sometimes it’s sickening.”

“You go to video game conferences and they still have trampy little girls in mini skirts, paid to be there, hitting on all the boys … [At a recent conference on game marketing] they barely looked at me at all. They just assume that women aren’t interested in video games … [The whole industry is] horrifyingly male dominated. It makes me sad, just because I do love playing video games.”

V___ wouldn’t go that far, but admits that EA Sports has “made a conscious, in fact outright, decision to market only to men.” They also say EA staffers are repeatedly told that their image is about “guys being guys.”

So if you’re not a guy, that may turn you off like a mouldy jock-strap.

Luckily, Levitan says things are changing. “We’re trying to market our games based on genre, not sex,” he said, adding that Sony’s current goal is to target all potential gamers.

So what’s a girl to do?

Start by ignoring out-dated marketing, as well as what you hear on the news. The notion that new games are all about violence, sports, and cars is a major misconception. “Sure, some are violent for the sake of being violent,” Guy says, “but those are bad games. There are games that are violent, but fun too, like House of the Dead. You get to kill zombies. What’s not fun about that?”

V___ agrees. “I think if a girl can be convinced to pick up a game and try it for a while, chances are, if it’s worth playing, she’ll find it appealing for many of the same reasons guys do.”

Levitan says sports games aren’t necessarily the place to start, though.

They’re not popular with women. Guy confirmed this from her position as a player: “I’m crap at sports games … but Doom 3 is an awesome game … My secret guilty pleasure is games based on movies and TV shows. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. The Alias game is pretty fun.” [Read about the fantasy TV trend in 2005, here.]

So ladies, instead of resenting guys for spending more time with their consoles than they do with you, get in on the action. And guys, you know that two player setting? Use it.

The girl factor (in which we gauge the so-called “girl-friendliness” of a few famous games)

Ranked from 1 (no self-respecting woman-identifying individual would be caught dead playing it) to 10 (you’ll wanna make babies with it).

The Sims [8]: Lets you create and manage people — a very female endeavour. Think matriarch.

Grand Theft Auto [3]: The freedom to carjack, have sex with prostitutes, and burn people alive isn’t a selling point.

Tetris [6]: Mindless, addictive, and asexual. It’s great for procrastinating, but not engaging enough.

Dance Dance Revolution [7]: Engages the whole body (exercise!) and gives you the feeling that you’re multi-tasking — a very girly goal.

Fable [5]: You’ve got free will to be good or evil, gay or straight. The only thing you can’t be is a woman.

Tiger Woods Golf [4]: You can manipulate the female player’s appearance, but they result is more boobalicious than realistic.

What about “gender neutral” games?

Matt Levitan, picks the games he thinks have the potential to become a girl’s best friend.

Lumines: A puzzle game for PSP. If you like Tetris, you’ll like this. Levitan calls it “a game that will take over your life.” It has no defined ending and appeals to a wide variety of people.

Fly 3, Honour Among Thieves: Set to come out this fall, 2005, this game lets you fly planes, and test out different genres through mini-games within the game, all in a fun, cartoony atmosphere.

Jak X Combat Racing: Set for release in November, this game will likely appeal to couples because it works well in two-player mode and isn’t concerned with the physics of racing in a real world environment.

Hot Shots Golf: This game is very cartoony and easier to play than Tiger Woods Golf. It lends itself well to the two-player setting and you need only three buttons to master swing, power, and contact.

2018: This piece on video games for girls was published in Dose on June 27, 2005. Clip below.

As mentioned, one of the people I interviewed got in some serious hot water with their employer after-the-fact, so I’ve redacted their name. I felt really bad about this and should have anticipated it. Big companies like EA can be so shitty to their employees.

Even so, since that person gave a very interesting, detailed interview, for the website, I’ve created a standalone piece with that content, which can be read here.

Box for King’s Quest V (KQ5), 1990.

It’s also worth noting that gaming culture has become even more toxic to women in the 13 years since this piece was published.

Gamergate was and is a nightmare, and people like me, who grew up playing and loving role-playing games like Sierra’s King’s Quest no longer feel at all safe or welcome in the gaming universe.

Hannah Guy is someone I also interviewed for a piece on romance novels, which you can read here. I don’t remember much about her or how we found her. She must have been a friend of one of the Dose editors at the time.

Published in Dose, June 27, 2005.