So who did it?
As a kid, during the process of sitting down and wasting a few hours in front of a computer playing online games, I shared the same thought process as most online gamers. I felt like every other person on the internet hiding behind a username would indefinitely be male. I’ve never stopped to think about where all these conceptions have come about from until recently. The truth is society conditioned me to match video gaming specifically to the male gender. Upon the issue of video games being played by females, articles written by Tracey Lien and Amanda Marcotte attempt to explain surrounding issues such as what society perceives about female gamers and why this negative outlook has come about.
Tracey Lien’s lengthy article immediately starts off by pointing fingers towards strategic marketing. Her point is that ever since the beginning of games, nothing was gender specific. Rather to her, society slowly harbored a male preconception for the default gamer as video games developed. (Lien 2013) Society now slaps on a nearly gender specific label when they directly cater towards just one specific gender. In history it was never always that way. She states: "There is often truth to stereotypes. But whatever truth there may be, the stereotype does not show the long and complicated path taken to formulate it, spread it and have it come back to shape societal views.” (Lien 2013) Once marketing firms saw that the slight majority of gamers tended to be male, they have created a meta for directing the sales of video games to fit towards a male preconception of women. Ever since then, marketing has followed along this meta, and hasn’t tried to branch out of this preconception of women to better sell a product. Lien’s main point is that society does the female gamer no justice by relaying a preconceived partially sexist image of them in hopes of better product sales.
In Marcotte’s article she lays out numerous statistics which defy our modern conceptions of female gamers. Society puts it out that female gamers tend to be a strict very small minority demographically. (Marcotte 2015) However in all actuality, they aren’t very far off from the half line of all gamers. She states that girl gamers do exist, they just don’t want to be known of, or directly judged based upon gender. Girl gamers in modern day context hold a particular mindset in which they will automatically be associated with poor performance due solely to their gender. (Marcotte 2015) Marcotte shares that statistically a vast portion of girl gamers fall under this mindset, stating: “just 7% of girls share a gaming handle when meeting new friends.” (Marcotte 2015) In reference to how societal views shifted towards girls not having to do anything with video games, Marcotte also directs this view at the ways games and marketing have developed. She would be quick to agree upon the thoughts and facts asserted in Lien’s article on female exclusion.
Both authors make the point that female gamers are somewhat mistreated. Society today harbors a negative preconception of women in association to video games. Lien’s article stated the basis in which this stereotype was formulated, spread, and put into stone with our societal views. In agreement with Lien’s informant piece, Marcotte throws out further analysis of society’s skewed misconceptions of female gamers. In short, as games have developed and time progressed, we as a society has stuck to keeping a misconception of female gamers. Although these problematic preconceptions weren’t always around, it is up to date a problem that victimizes women.
�S�I��