Interesting discussion! There’s a few points of contention I have from my own experiences, but I think there are some points that nail it.
The main point I would disagree with, in general, it this:
“Games grow up with boys from that point forward.”
The “games not growing up with me” resonated with me, but not because I’m a girl and there aren’t the mass mainstream AAA titles of specifically ultra feminine games in the same way there are ultra masculine ones (either way ends up like crass marketing to me) - but because games seemed like they had infinitely more potential than they seem to have in the current moment. Absolutely technology and graphical fidelity has come on in leaps and bounds; to the point of being unrecognisable, but other aspects just…haven’t kept pace. The ambition of early games is sorely checked by the bloat of the industry and the risk aversion of publishers.
I don’t think mainstream gaming really did grow up with the boys, in general (always exceptions, ofc). They could play things that looked more mature, but were still basically catering to very simplistic adolescent masculine hero fantasies. The games you mention as feminine? (Presumably because they have female protagonists?) Gone Home and Life is Strange? Or the Sims? (Presumably because it just isn’t blood and gutsy?) My male video gaming friends in their 30s and 40s play these games. They can appreciate the sophisticated storytelling; hell, I think they yearn for it. In the Sims (as well as football manager) they appreciate the free-form sandbox play style that allows them to create their own stories.
Which is not to say we don’t all enjoy killing zombies together in Left4Dead and robbing banks together in Payday (both very silly and very fun; which isn’t a bad thing) just that…they’re old enough to appreciate the parts that appeal to them without going “oh, no tits and explosions? these games must be for girls. and I’m too uncomfortable in my own sexuality to like them, then.”
Games haven’t grown up in general, really. They’re still catering to an idea of a core safe demographic of angry young men. I think generally, when we’re saying more games should be “female friendly” we might as well come out and admit what we really mean is more games “for adults.” Which is “not specifically designed and marketed for angry boy teenagers” but just broadly for people who…aren’t that.
“The social hierarchy of the gaming community, and the narrow, deforming spaces it offers to the women who do persevere.”
Absolutely. There’s a lot of toxic nastiness out there, though it can depend on the community surrounding which game (perhaps surprisingly, Eve-Online, a game usually cited for it’s harshness,I found to be very friendly) and there are some key concepts that contribute to the whole “can’t win” thing…
There’s a saying with MMOs which is - MMORPG = Many Men Online Role Playing as Girls. The term refers to the fact that many men play with female avatars, but there’s a truism under the joke which is - men just do not expect to see women playing. Therefore you will be assumed to be a man; your identity automatically marginalised and written out. If you respond to this by asserting your identity however calmly, “no, actually, I’m not a guy,” then you’re making A Big Deal out of your gender for attention - probably to extort goods or services from sad lonely men.
The other extreme (I say ‘extreme’ but both are pretty common) that comes from men not expecting to see women playing is being treated as some strange exotic animal rather than 50% of the population and immediately given unwanted attention, be it over-friendly attempts to get personal information, or the more hostile “tits or STFU”.
So I think there’s definitely a sense of not being able to win when fighting for a space, there. (again, only in a general sense. I have “won” by finding like-minded and mature people that I choose to associate with, but that doesn’t mean those people are the general rule).
“But it’s not like girls grow out of games, exactly… It’s that can get away with it."
Yeah. This is completely true. It’s like a double-stigma. Unlike books or movies, despite how lucrative the gaming industry is, there is still the idea that games are for children and a waste of time and that spending free time playing them is “sad.” It’s excusable, and somewhat indulged, for there to be “men children” who want to still play games and geek out, but women doing it get a much higher raised eyebrow. (I guess as there’s so much pressure for adult women to either get on with the childraising before the ol’clock stops ticking or build a successful career to stick it to the man and burst through the glass ceiling; neither of which seems to leave much room for slacking off playing video games, so the expectation is you shouldn’t and won’t)
It’s gradually becoming more accepted for women to cut loose in a similar way to men (such as ladette culture, binge drinking, casual sex) but the parity there is still relatively recent.
There’s an article I read recently about a film called Trainwreck staring Amy Schumer (http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/07/21/trainwreck-and-the-new-coming-of-age) which addresses the Peter Pan complex:
“things got weird with the Baby Boomers, the generation that brought us the Peter Pan Complex. All of a sudden extended youth became all the rage. My generation, Generation X, took it to the next level, bringing toys and cartoons with us into adulthood. If the Boomers stayed 18 forever, we stayed 15. And the Millennials seem to have an almost complete allergy to growing up, possibly caused in part by the Great Recession, which saw grown adults unable to leave home after college graduation.”
and the author argues that women, too, should have films that are Coming of Age stories (like the one in question) - because it’s part of a general shared human experience; you have this slacking off, sowing your wild oats stage, but then growing up comes to us all. But what irked some people about the film was not acknowledging that the slacking off (or partying hard) stage is only part of a general shared human experience for women until very recently.
Not that I’m saying that gaming is automatically indicative of immaturity - I don’t feel that it is (despite the ‘core demographic’ that mainstream gaming caters to) which is why I used the word stigma - I’m just talking about societal expectations.
“Games about everything.”
Yep.
This is absolutely the solution, and a solution I think we’re already working towards.
Not to specifically market to an idea of women and girls and what they like (this usually comes across as utterly hamfisted; reducing the entirety of female experience into a concentrated beam of sparkly pink glitter) and not to concentrate specifically on an idea of angry young men wanting ultra-violent simplistic machismo (which doesn’t give men much credit, either) but to have All The Things. Creatively, cast the net as wide as possible. (not saying any one game should try and appeal to everyone at all, just in general more variety and scope in the topics and themes which gaming can approach. Pushing the boundaries is how you expand and improve as a creative medium; which has the double pro of reducing some of the stigma that gaming has as a hobby).
Which is also not saying we can’t have sparkly pink or ultra-violence, they’re included in All The Things. It’s not about taking away, it’s about adding.
And there are some already diverse games; largely taking place in indie games (or bigger publishers willing to take a punt on an interesting concept), but yes, as your sister points out with, “I don’t see commercials for those, though,” - they tend to be less visible.
