3 Generations: How gaming has crossed the divide

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May 14th 2009 at 14:55 by Ana Kronschnabl

GIRL GAMING MONTH: I have played games since I can remember – as a youngster I played card games with my family, then chess at school and later I played table-top RPG games and even ventured into live RPGs for my sins! Evidently, I really like playing games but there was something about these forms of gameplay that didn't translate into the video game realm for me.

Other than the odd PC/console game – Sim City, Street Fighter etc – that held my attention for a while, I wasn't wooed by computer games, they were not a big part of my life. The need to learn complicated control mechanisms, the décor – grey stone walls, were uninteresting to me and unappealing. If I played them at all, I generally played with large groups of friends.

If it hasn't become obvious by now it is worth stating that I am a woman. I have known very few women who like playing computer games – until now. My mother, when computer games entered her life or her classroom (she taught art and computer studies) and this was rare, dismissed them completely – what possible purpose could they serve in her life? She had serious things to do; a house to run, food to cook, the list was endless...

Moving forward to last Christmas when I visited; my mother is now a devout exponent of both the Wii and the DS! Not only did she explain her exercise regime in full detail she also taught my six year old how to ski on the Wii Fit.

For my daughter, computer games are part of her everyday life. She moves between painting a butterfly that comes to life on Cbeebies to trialling the latest Soul Caliber on PS3. Although she has been ten-pin bowling only once before, at her father's birthday party, during a mini-league tournament on the Wii Sports, she held her own against a room full of adults and was only kept from the top spot by bed-time! She is an intuitive game-player and games now allow her to play intuitively. She is currently mashing it up on Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 for PS3.

The above examples are intended to illustrate just how much things have changed for me personally over the last year. But what has brought about such a dramatic shift in the women in my family's engagement with computer games?

I think our ability to engage is down to two things, which I will outline in a moment. Before hand though, I would like to outline the overarching paradigm shift that has brought about one of the biggest demographic shifts to hit the industry since... well, ever, and that is that they had to!

The audience for all games pre The Sims or Nintendogs was basically boys, not even old boys – young boys! This reflected the industry, both in terms of its make-up – not many women work in it – and the necessity of the market. Computer games are becoming increasingly expensive to make, some AAA titles now cost ten of millions to make and if the computer games industry was to grow it had to increase the revenue available per game, and more importantly for this article, per console.

So, to return to my mother. What was it that persuaded her, despite herself, to buy a Wii (other than her husband)? The answer is amazingly simple; it became useful... it became her way of exercising, in the same way that the DS became her way of exercising her brain. In many ways, the games she plays are no different from many of the games previously available, however, they have persuaded her that they are. How different really is the strategy needed to win in Dawn of War to the exercises recommended in Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training games?

The other important change is the control mechanisms that are currently being used, particularly with the Wii but it applies to the DS as well, which are simple and intuitive. We no longer have to prove our worthiness to join the game gang by learning how to sight the target, cast a spell and jump through fiery hoops all at once. In fact, my six year old is able to spin around in a circle like a Dervish as she bowls and still score a strike; it's not bowling as per The Big Lebowski, but it is her style and it works for her.

So, for a plethora of reasons, the female gamer has arrived. From my point of view, this can only be a good thing. The fact that women have engaged so readily with games, despite there still being a lack of games for women and a dearth of realistic female lead characters in most major titles, is testament to the fact that women love playing games.

Maybe now the industry has proof of this we will see even more of a change, with female designers, artists and programmers infiltrating the industry and designing games from a female perspective? Certainly, computer games have infiltrated women's lives and if my daughter, my mother and myself are anything to go by, they are here to stay.