Girls and Gaming

    This week on the Ramble, we’re going to take a look at females in the video game world; from gamers, to characters, to the women behind the games. A certain “hard-core gamer,” acted as a guest speaker and detailed her journey throughout school, with video games (her name is Kelly Bergstrom). Being a hard-core video gamer myself, I rather lapped up every word that she spoke about, with a generous portion of the presentation I found to be inaccurate, biased and/or dismissive.

    The speaker did highlight a certain daily blog site, known as “Fat, Ugly, Or Slutty,” in which crude and harmful comments are thrown at female gamers, and then posted on the blog. This is a somewhat eye-opening forum of debate in regards to attitudes towards female gamers, with each being a negative post (usually sexual in nature). While the blog is effective in portraying the inherent sexism in our online gaming communities, after the second page or, each post becomes redundant; there are only so many ways one can read text that merely says at its core, “I want you to perform sexual favours for me” (now I realise this is not a common statement, colloquialism or other, I simply wanted to point out what is said). This blog was also highlighted in an article by female gamer Elisa Melendez, who is an advocate for female gamers’ rights and is a member of the Frag Doll Cadettes, an all-female gamer group/clan (the article speaks about roughly the same concepts and problems that the speaker spoke about). The speaker is also an advocate for these same rights, though I am not sure if she is a member of this group as well. Regardless, her presentation I found, among others, to be lacking highly.

    To begin, she was sure to define a “casual,” and “hard-core,” gamer, in order for the attendees to further grasp her terminology and ideology. While this was correct in a general sense, her description and example of a hard-core versus casual GAMES were incorrect; she stated first person shooters to be hard-core games, even though the majority of them (especially the popular ones) are indeed casual games, such as the Call of Duty series. Her justification was that hard-core games are “inherently difficult,” and that, “they require a lot of time to master and perfect.” Is that so? Well then I guess then that myself being able to complete Golden Axe on the Sega Genesis when I was five years old, which requires just three buttons, and uses only two for 99% of the time, makes it a casual game? Absolutely not. The definition given is not apt, as many pick-up-and-play games are indeed hard-core, and they do not require years of mastering. Furthermore, while many of her assertions and points were indeed apt, they were all stated with a MAJOR slant on post the sixth generation, and from a dual-platform perspective.

    The speaker completely dismissed console and games of the past, as well the examples she gave were only conducive to the Nintendo Wii, and the Microsoft Xbox 360; Sega, arguably the second biggest console hardware manufacturer ever, wasn’t even hinted at, let alone mentioned. While that is more a pet peeve from my perspective due to being a Sega-centric gamer, I still find it unacceptable to dismiss any of Sony’s consoles or brands. While the session was not inherently bad, there were many flaws and inconsistencies that could have been corrected. Still, it was good to hear a female’s perspective on video games, as we males are dominant in the medium from all aspects.