The complex relationship between women and video games has received extensive academic, corporate, and social attention. While composing close to half of the population at large, female gamers have traditionally represented a distinct minority of total gamers. Advocates for increasing the number of female gamers stress the problems attending disenfranchisement of females from one of the fastest-growing cultural realms as well as the largely untapped nature of the female gamer market. Efforts to include greater female participation in the medium have addressed the problems of gendered advertising, social stereotyping, and the dearth of female video game creators (coders, developers, producers, etc.). Debate has also been provoked regarding whether the proper course of the industry should be to create female-targeted games in parallel with male-targeted games or whether gender-neutral games should be the ultimate goal. After decades of gender disparity among players, the gap between number of male and female gamers is today closing.
Socially, the term "girl gamer" has also received attention both from advocates who largely use it as a reappropriated term as well as from those that argue against its use by characterizing it as a counterproductive or offensive term. Stereotypes and generalities about the "girl gamer" as a figure of the gaming scene have become common within the video game culture.
Read more about Women And Video Games: Women in The Games Industry, Female Gamers As A Demographic, "Girl Gamers"
Famous quotes containing the words video games, women, video and/or games:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“We might all place ourselves in one of two ranks—the women who do something, and the women who do nothing; the first being of course the only creditable place to occupy.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)