Genderless Gaming

It isn't new to say that gaming is generally a male dominated hobby and industry. It isn't new to say that more and more girls are becoming interested in gaming. It isn't new to say that some will gladly sit down and play a game of Gears of War 2 while others will poke at their dogs in Nintendogs. And it isn't new to say that some of us get stuck in the middle.

I've been a gamer ever since I was 2 1/2 years old. My parents owned a NES when I was born and one day after seeing someone play it, I tried out Super Mario Bros. With them seeing me enjoying it and with my uncle also being a gamer and living next door, they got me a Genesis and I use to spend my days playing Sonic. (I was pretty damn good for only being three.) As I got older, my gaming interest only grew.

I had a wide variety of handhelds and systems over my life time and can remember spending a few summers at my uncles house sitting at his computer and playing WarCraft II all day long. To me, being a gamer mean nothing. I liked games, my cousins liked games, and my uncles like games. It was just an enjoyable hobby until I started to mingle with a wider community. Then I began to find myself out of place.

Other girls looked at me like I had two heads and a tail because I would sit down with a GameBoy Color over a Barbie doll. While they all became googly-eyed over some pretty boy singers that they'd never met and started whoring themselves out in the 5th grade, I had my GameCube and PS2. I was an "outcast" in their eyes because I wasn't a typical girl. Then most guys mocked me because I was a girl; after all, girls aren't gamers. That was of course until I kicked their asses in a few rounds of Soul Calibur II; then I gained their respect.

Then when I first started posting here, I was getting noticed just because I was girl; not because of the games I liked or the quality of my posts. It took me quite awhile to get people's minds to shift from, "Oh she's a chick! Hot damn!" to "Oh wow! That was an intelligent comment".

All of this brings me to how things are now: separating yourself by gender causes a huge mess. I won't lie, being a minority does suck. I deal with sexism in some form or way almost daily on XBox Live or even just walking about my local game stores. As you just read above, it's not easy to get your foot in the door and be taken seriously, but I always use to ask myself why until I discovered my answer: girl gamer communities.

I don't mind the idea of having communities for specific things; if you feel the need to have a support group, then by all means do it but after some experience with a few of these communities, I realized that they were harming the view of female gamers more than they were helping. Perhaps it is just me, but I don't think the best way to try to include yourself into a group is to separate yourself. If guys don't walk around saying, "Hey, I'm a guy gamer" then why do we need to say, "Hey, I'm a girl gamer"? Is it really necessary? I will admit that I will typically correct someone on the forums if I am called a guy (call it hypocritical if you wish) but the point I try to make when doing so isn't to separate myself; it's to just toss out the idea that regardless of gender, we can all be the same.

It always rubs me the wrong way to see threads asking if any girl (or heaven forbid, gurl gamers- learn to spell) gamers exist here. I never really understood why we would need to draw ourselves out. Just because my chest is natural and not made from Cheeto-generated fat doesn't make me better or worse. At our core, are we really different from our male counterparts? The answer should be no but unfortunately, I see a lot of women saying yes. I suppose it is seen as being a mile stone for the minority when someone like the Frag Dolls wins a tournament but I see it as a step back since the vibe I get from it is that the only purpose they wanted to win was to brag that chicks could do it; not because they liked the game which is what gaming should be about.

I see all these female-only gaming sites or clans; I've even been invited to join one or two. (Naturally I laughed my ass off.) They all want to be taken seriously but aren't because of what they are. In doing some research on a few of the sites, I recall reading one site telling their readers not to go to places like IGN or GameSpot for gaming news just because they weren't designed for girls. I remember reading that, having my mind explode, picking the pieces up, gluing my brain together, and then staring at my screen with a blank look. I suppose IGN's Babe Section turned them off from the site, but it's still a good hub of entertainment news. And I always thought the GameSpot's color scheme and layout was universal for any gender. How can you expect to be taken seriously if you're telling readers not to go to popular news sites just because it isn't designed specifically for females?

Which leads me onto my amazing fight with that one feminist gaming site. (I have long forgotten their name.) The issue that I had with the site and that the site had with me, was the fact that I "criticized" their lack of knowledge and suggested that they double check facts before publishing something on their site. They were doing a 'girl only' Game of the Year nomination in order to show that 'girls know games'. The thing was...In their Game of the Year nominations, they had mislabeled same games by genre as well as had games from a few years ago on the list. It was ridiculous and embarrassing which is why most girls aren't seen as actual gamers. I had commented on it and suggested that they fix the few errors in order to make themselves look better. Needless to say, after about two posts on their forums I was banned.

Why you ask? Not because I was violent in my original post. (You all know how I am with arguments. I use real reasoning.) The reason why I was banned seemed to be because I disagreed with the concept of 'girls are right because we're girls and we need to stick together to overcome boys!' That concept should have died back in Kindergarten...

This then brings me to marketing. As more and more girls start gaming, developers feel the need to market them. You'll see commercials on TV showing women playing sparkled covered DS or playing games with cute animals or pink princesses. Marketing wise, women are being singled out and they are trying to drag more in but in the wrong away, or at least that's how I see it. Remember how I started gaming? I just played Mario. How did some other girls who I know game and are like me start gaming? The same way I did. We didn't have pink, frilly games shoved down our throats instead, games caught our interest because of our taste. So maybe that's the way things should be marketed; look beyond the gender and market the taste.

It is true men and women typically (yes, I say typically because I'd take a gory horror film over some over the top romance any day) have different tastes. I believe some entertainment study said that women prefer films with romance and emotion so why not include that in commercials for games? Let's take a commercial for Gears of War 2 and have it focus on the idea of Dom being dedicate to finding his wife. While some feminists might throw a fit over the idea of a 'woman being weak', most women might be very moved by it, especially since they do tend to like committed relationships.

Though we are starting to see more and more universal gaming commercials that aren't really aimed at any particular gender. Take a look at the Mirror's Edge commercial, it focuses on showing the concept of the game's smooth looking movements and its style. Left 4 Dead focus on pulling in the good ol' zombie love. Perhaps I'll start to see more of what I want: people being interested in a game for what it really is over it being all girlyfied.

Needless to say, I do feel that part of the reason why it is difficult for females to be taken seriously isn't because of their skills with a game. (Sometimes I'm better than my guy friends, other times they are better than me.) I think that the main reason why we're giving such a hard time is because we make it hard. Sure, naturally guys will be attracted to a female gamer because she is engaging in a hobby he likes (but wouldn't anyone like anyone if they had a similar taste as you?). I feel that the best way to get included into the mix is to not separate oneself but, instead, to just prove that we're one in the same.

After all, I'd like to think that I've earned respect for what I've done and for what I've said; not because of my gender.