For this study task we looked into an example of new media and researched some of the issues surrounding it.
I looked into gaming and why it is that girl gamers are ignored or considered to not exist. My two main references for this research was a book entitled 'Beyond Barbie & Mortal Combat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming' and an article on JSTOR called 'Gamer Girls Rising'.
About 38% of video game players and 42% of online game players are female. About 70% of casual gamers are women.
In "Getting Girls into the Game" Tracey Fullerton and her co authors point out that "computer labs in schools or clubhouses are often dominated by boys who tend to elbow out girls and take control of equipment." And Carrie Heeter and Brian Winn, in "Gender Identity, Play Style and the Design of Games for Classroom Learning," report:
When boys play games (or use computers), when there are fewer machines than people, girls step aside. It is difficult to determine whether it is the girls' 'stepping aside' front heir opportunity… or the boys 'crowding out' the girls… Nonetheless, this chemistry seems to exist between males and females pervasively when it comes to using gaming machines.
In her essay "Becoming a Player" T.L. Taylor notes,
The population that does play games is frequently seen as an anomaly rather than a prime informant for understanding how play works. Researchers, and people in the gaming industry, often talk about trying to capture that demographic of non playing 'Vogue Readers' to the exclusion of looking at the group that actually seems to be succeeding in inhabiting game culture now.
From "Body, Space and Gendered Gaming Experiences: A Cultural Geography of Homes, Cyber Cafes and Dormitories" Holin Lin
The layout of some cyber cafes serve as gender barriers: girls must pass through a room of pool tables to access the back spaces that are reserved for computers. Most girls are not willing to subject themselves to the scrutiny of and comments made by the pool players, and therefore only enter when accompanied by male friends.
Lin also points out: Women's fear and perceptions of risk are deeply routed in their bodies, and avoiding dangerous places is a common practice for managing the fear of male violence. In contrast, no threat of physical harm exists for players wearing either female or male avatar bodies.
In relation to dormitories Lin says: Gender culture plays a crucial role in shaping gaming dynamics in Taiwanese college dormitories. Being mindful of the needs of others is considered an important feminine virtue, whereas competitiveness and aggressiveness are considered male values. As members of a small minority, female gamers must be more sensitive to their roommates' reactions. Instead of inviting roommates to join them, they play alone and try to cause as little disturbance as possible. Many decide it is better to quit playing than to face further peer pressure.
In "Maps of Digital Desires", Nick Yee explores perceptions of female players in Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, noting barriers in the virtual world:
Men are allowed relatively free access to online games, but a woman's presence in an online game is seen as legitimate only if it occurs via a relationship with a man. Other male players use a female player's relationship with a man as a means to legitimate her actual biological sex, to know whether a player claiming to be female is indeed a woman in real life... These stories imply that physical and social barriers to entry for woman become misinterpreted as a lack of desire to play video games.
"What games Made by Girls can Tell Us" notes that girls express a dislike for games where female characters are sexualised or portrayed as victims and not heroes.
We want to be Heroes. What we don't want is to be hyper sexualised, because that's not a comfortable feeling. We do not hyper sexualise the male characters in any way, shape or form…
Girls cannot be pigeonholed into any one game. Girls are not a genre; they are a market that's just as broad and diverse as any market anywhere. There is no silver bullet. There is no one game you can make for all girls or all women, and to think so is silly and naive.
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