The gaming industry’s influence over popular culture continues to grow. No longer restricted to the format of a gaming console, video game systems can now play DVDs, upload mp3 files and are capable of an astonishing level of computer graphic realism. There are games available for play in all sorts of categories, ranging from traditional subjects like sports and racing games to newly charted territory like interactive dancing and graphic street gang sagas. Manufacturers are also heavily invested in portable gaming systems, such as Sony’s recent release of PSP, which aside from gaming, also acts an mp3 player and digital camera. Yet the gaming industry is still missing an element in their quest for complete domination of electronic entertainment. It has not only evaded the demographics of video games but also is poorly understood by the rest of the world. As a matter of fact, only two figures in America (Lifetime Television and Oprah Winfrey) have seemed to master the art of attracting them … them being the complicated being known as women.
Women are so foreign to video games that gaming companies don’t even actively market to them. When your image can convince money hungry corporations such as Microsoft and Sony to not even try to earn your dollar, that’s speaking to the enigma that women present to the gaming industry. While some progress has been made in the market of girls ages six and under with dance themed video games, it pales in comparison to the father-like presence that video games have in a male’s life.
For a typical male, nothing draws in comparison to a video game’s ability to reach out to specific interests.
If you’re a jock and were born in the ’80s, odds are you played Tecmo Bowl and RBI baseball until the face of your thumbs turned into a solid maroon colored bunion or until you became so frustrated with Bo Jackson’s godlike simulated athletic ability that you grabbed your controller and threw a fastball against the nearest wall, whichever came first. Odds are you are now so enamored in the John Madden football and Tiger Woods golf franchises that upon the yearly release of each model, you turn into an electronic hobbit and refuse to leave your house for weeks.
If you are more into elements of story and role-playing, you probably think of Zelda as a brother who travels a lot. You were likely more concerned about rupees than the actual dollar and perhaps you thought of the Mario brothers as virtual Uncles who mastered the profession of plumbing, evading lava, eating mushrooms, jumping on the heads of sadistic reptiles and befriending a creature that is half human, a quarter reptile and a quarter mushroom named Toad. You were so obsessed with getting to the next level that you often ignored meals and upon failing were introduced to the world of profanity laced verbal tirades. Most likely, you have now moved to the world of Grant Theft Auto and the Tom Clancy series, where murder is at the push of a gangsta-ass button and saving the world is commonplace.
Unfortunately for the gaming industry, women are forced to deal with adolescence through socially interacting with the world, which is also why woman are usually more mature than men at an earlier age. They literally had nothing for electronic entertainment except the board game Mall Madness. If men ever find themselves wondering why women would rather go to the mall and buy clothes they don’t need than watch you play video games you don’t need to be playing, the root of the situation lies in Mall Madness and its themes of female over-consumerism. And that’s fine because men know the damages done to them by video games and they accept it. Men know in theory it is clear that video games don’t do anything to better a person. You sit and stare at a TV screen. Outside of the video game, you accomplish nothing. If anything, they make you even more socially creepy than you were before you started playing.
There are signs of hope. On a regional note, my girlfriend recently shot a 66 at TPC-Sawgrass on Tiger Woods Golf 2005, an event that in terms of starting a national movement could compare to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat.
Also, video games are now frequently being adapted into films and movies, reaching women all over the world.
My advice to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo is to design a game that is based around Richard Gere charming woman and beating up the same actors who beat their wives in Lifetime original movies. Take the video game and adapt it into a book, which can then be hocked by Oprah Winfrey’s show. Finally, take the project to the silver screen and an entirely unattainable demographic is now possible.
Rick is a junior majoring in Radio/TV/film. If he were Mario, he would tell Luigi to back off and take the Princess to the terrace for a romantic night of binge drinking. He can be reached at [email protected]
