It’s a source of personal embarassment that I, with a son who is a recognized expert on video games, never play the things.
He’s asked me about it, and I’ve explained that I find the games uninteresting, kind of stupid (alien characters are lame-o) and nauseatingly sexist, all those throbbing boobs, dinky outfits and quivering thighs. He’s rationalized this as bad marketing on the game companies’ part, citing numerous examples of RPGs and other types of games that don’t include barely-dressed, anatomically impossible female characters, but never get publicized to people like me.
An online CNN.com article cites some interesting statistics that offer another explanation: there are damned few women in the gaming industry.
Female programmers are grotesquely under-represented in gaming: while a whopping 10% of software engineers in total are women (woo-hoo), only 4% of video game developers are women.
Peter has explained further that video game companies are hesitant to get into unproven markets because the cost to launch a game is equivalent to the production costs of a movie. So, the old formulas of sex and violence, being “tried and true”, continue to be regurgitated, for a predominantly male audience.
As a counterpoint, though, the CNN.com article cites some hard facts about the Sims, a non-violent RPG that has generated “more than $1 billion in sales since it launched in 2000.” That makes it “the best-selling PC game of all time, and about 55 percent of the buyers were women”, according to the company that produced it, California-based Electronic Arts Inc. (EA)
I’ve thought about this a lot, and I have a tip for them: the old violence formula would work as well in a video game for women as it does in games for men. The companies just have to refactor the same games, but with different characters.
For example, I’d love to see a road rage game in which tailgating white male truck drivers, ages, oh, 20-45, get hideously mutilated (death would be too easy) by a little, chubby woman in a sedan.
I’d like to see same chubby female character kick some other type of ass, too: maybe a smug, petite soccer Mom in an SUV who gets her kicks from cutting off other drivers.
While the soccer Mom character spits “Get outta my way, you fat pig”, little dumpy chick in the sedan would get Towanda* points for running the b* off the road and immolating her, to a chorus of ear-piercing screams.
We could have a host of other villanous characters that women could relate to, like a sadistic boss, a snotty neighbor, a lecherous uncle, a nasty shit of a co-worker. I could go on and on and on.
EA would like to get more women into the industry, and sponsors a scholarship program for female high school students to attend computer camp at USC.
Too bad EA is only interested in recruiting high schoolers. I could make them a fortune with “Women of a Certain Age on a Rampage”, I really could.
*The female hero of Evelyn’s imagination in Fanny Flagg’s novel “Fried Green Tomatoes”.