Was bored, discuss about games and girls.

[Nion]

So I was doing my online coursework, and of course it had to be about this:

For Michele Dickey's article "Girl gamers: The controversy of Girl Gamers and the Relevance of Female-Oriented Game Design for Instruction Design", I would like for you to think about your gaming experience in answering the following questions:
What is "female" according to game design?
What is the controversy of girl games?
Lastly if you were to design a gender neutral game, what would it be? (Think about the various elements that you would consider gender neutral and how would you integrate them into a game.)


Ok, first of all, let me introduce myself. I'm Nion, life-long videogame enthusiast, I have been actively involved in the entertainment industry for over 20 years working with videogames and other pop/cultural entertainment. I've been a staff writer/editor at a game website, an interpretor/translator of game info from Japan to America and Vice Versa, and other countries as I speak French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and of course English. I have a game design degree and have been involved in videogame development. Let me tell you all something:

The game industry did not at all, I repeat at all have a specific gender target when creating the first game systems ever. It just so happened, that boys, or shall I say males were mostly interested in this new invention.

That said, to me, what this Author's definition of "female" in game design points to a dress up game or a Barbie doll game, which is for young girls. Who are like basically age 3-10. possibly up to 12 tops but not further because really: How many of you females played with dolls past the beginning of middle school? I think very few of you did.

The controversy Michele Dickey creates is the fact that female games that are cutesy and adorkable. True, but that stops at young girls as a target audience. Videogames are for everyone. If anything, the only "problem" I see is that there are not enough female characters wielding swords and kicking butt, but let's face it, the game industry developers are still heavily dominated by males, and unfortunately like other people have mentioned above me in some select few games, women are objectified in the game like GTA and Duke Nukem, etc.

If some people made a cooking game or something, it would have to be done very well with a touch of magic or in-game mechanism that will make the unreproducable in real life, which is the reason why we play videogames: to do things that are not possible in real life. It seems to me that this controversy is only giving women a bad rep, almost like saying hey, women cannot handle gore and magic and swords which is not true. If it were true, you may as well tell all women to go back to the kitchen, which obviously would enrage many females.

But the truth is, there are many female gamers with different tastes and preferences. There are girls who love playing Halo, or any shooter games, both on and offline. I know this, have dated some and have many as friends as I am an avid gamer myself. There's everything from Diablo III, to Tera, Final Fantasy, Texas Holdem poker, katamari damacy, Farmville on facebook... the list goes on. There is definitely a videogame out there for all females that isn't cutesy and adorkable, garunteed.

The point is, there is a huge female player base for videogames AND it's still growing, it's almost an insult and an understatement for the Author to say that games need to cater to women more and are completely male-based is very ignorant and shows that she does not know what she is talking about when it comes to videogames.

You will see mature ratings, but you will not see labels like: For male only. Or For female only. Videogames are for everyone.

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What do you all think?