Investigations of a Dog

Via Grand Text Auto I found an interesting article in Fibreculture about gendered space in computer games and virtual worlds. I definitely agree with the authors that game designers tend to cater for a very narrow range of gameplay styles which conform to a particular masculine stereotype. Anything which encourages more diverse experiences through different gameplay and different concepts of space is very welcome. On the other hand I was a bit disappointed that the article seems to reinforce gender stereotypes more than questioning them. Although the authors claim not to be calling for more “pink” games but to be encouraging an “androgynous mind”, they still seem to be assuming that violence and competition are male concerns which are of no interest to women. For example they refer to FPS as “distinctly masculine”. Defining games as “male” or “female” is part of the problem, not part of the solution. It’s frustrating that the authors recognise this and try hard to avoid stereotyping women and feminine games (occasionally failing, as when they say that in Second Life “fashion is a prevalent form of player productivity, dominated by female players”), but easily fall into the trap of stereotyping men and masculine games.

Also they seem to have got the links between gender, spatial reasoning, and FPS the wrong way round. The cognitive research they cite to support the argument that FPS favours males isn’t quite as recent as the research I mentioned here which shows that playing FPS increases spatial reasoning skills and that girls don’t benefit from this as much as they could because they’re put off by the idea that FPS is just for boys. This perfectly illustrates the problems caused by stereotyping games as masculine or feminine.