Gaming and gender

As I was reading about gaming and gender I was somewhat stumped because I don’t really know much about gaming other than the online communities for the game Call of Duty and World of Warcraft and I only know about these game s because my brother and my nephews play them. I come from the Ms Pacman and Donkey Kong days, but I sure did love playing Galaga and Centipede. My experience with any other games other than board games and arcade is minimal. We do however as a family play the wii. And when we shop for games to play on the wii they are usually for the girls in the family like zumba or wii dance mainly because we are the majority in the home. As I was reading I was somewhat shocked by the comment by the female power gamer in Korea about how she didn’t care about the sexualizing of women in the games because they are not meant for children. I think that way of thinking can perpetuate further objectification of females, as if that weren’t already an issue in the online community already.

I hadn’t really thought of gaming for girls probably because they are created by males for males and because I made the decision on which games would be purchased and I choose family friendly games. I also have always monitored the usage of the computer and the time spent on it. Recently I have begun to use both my phone and computer for games but the games that I am playing are pretty gender neutral but addictive.