GIRLS
AND COMPUTER GAMES
Angela
Thomas and Valerie Walkerdine
University
of Western Sydney
ABSTRACT
Computer and video games have been lauded as an ideal way in for children's acquisition to the skills of computer literacy. Additionally, children’s gaming culture, according to Rushkoff (1997), is a mixed playing ground of interrelated connections between the real, the digital, the physical and the magical, equipping children with the skills of survival in a fast capitalist world.
Yet research by Cassell and Jenkins (1998) suggests a wide differential between girls’ and boys’ game-playing practices, and they argue that much of the gaming culture serves to both alienate girls and to reaffirm dominant and patriarchal conceptions of gender roles. They warn, ‘given the link between early use of technology and later facility with technology, parents and educators also need to be concerned about the lack of computer games appealing to girls’ (Cassell and Jenkins, 1998, p.10).
This
paper aims to examine the discursive and social game-playing practices of
girls.
It uses empirical data collected over 10 months, including video
tapes of children playing games, and interviews with children and their
parents. The data discussed does
indicate a significant difference in girls’ game-playing practices to boys in
certain contexts, and we raise a number of questions and issues related to both
feminine identities and the consequences of social prescriptions for
femininity.
BACKGROUND
There
appears to be a significant dearth of academic research into young girls and
video games. Cassell and Jenkins (1998 op cit) make a number of points which
prove useful in relation to our data.
The
central philosophy of their text is clear and is encapsulated by the following
words:
The relationship between
boys’ comparatively higher interest in computer games and their comparatively
larger representation in high-power computer jobs is not accidental. Computer and video games provide an easy lead-in
to computer literacy…and so those children who aren’t playing them at young
ages may end up disadvantaged in later years.
(Cassell and
Jenkins, 1998, p.11)
The
concern that girls will be significantly disadvantaged if they are not also
included in the computer gaming culture, a culture which is currently ‘an alien
culture’ (1998, p.13) for girls and one which makes them unlikely to become
involved, is the basic tenet of their text.
Cassell
and Jenkins explore different tactical approaches for bridging what they term
‘the digital gender gap’ (1998, p.3).
Such approaches are discussed by a range of contributors to the text,
including both game designers and academic feminists (not necessarily mutually
exclusive). Game designers express the
desire to tap into the potential wealth of the ‘girl market’, and describe the
ways in which they have conducted market research with girls to find out what
appeals to girls. Feminists concerned
with girls’ interest in computers explain the different needs of girls and how
games might be designed to attract more girl users. The authors suggest that
girls don’t play games for reasons such as lack of access, a dislike of
violence, the lack of female protagonists in games, or because of a dislike of
computers.
Girls may not simply
avoid computers but actually experience stress when using them, even in
education settings. (Cassell and Jenkins, 1998, p.11)
As
a consequence, much attention is given to the discussion about girl’s needs and
desires and how they can be translated into new (or old) game designs. The key themes of the various contributors
in this volume revolve around how gaming companies might design ‘gender
friendly’ games: games which are suitable for girls, which do not reinforce
traditional stereotypes of female characters, games which have more character
centred plots, and games which use bright and colourful graphics. The question
being answered is, how can we construct girl’s spaces for playing games?
Girls’ Desires
Cassell
and Jenkins concentrate on presenting a range of views related to the
difference in girls’ tastes and preferences in computer games, and in the
diversity of girls’ cultural interests.
They argue that girls seek a different type of complexity in games than
boys; while boys favour complex action elements, girls enjoy a complexity of
character relations. This is echoed by
Laurel, one of the feminist software designers, who states:
The industry typically
has believed that girls don’t like computer games… but they’re not
understanding the play pattern here… The one huge thing that the game industry
has missed is the tremendous attraction for girls of complex characters and
narratives and materials for narrative construction… it’s not only that the
characters are lame in most boys’ games, it’s that they’re so lame you can’t
even make up a story about them. You
can’t even do projection on it. (Laurel, 1998, p.122)
What girls desire in games is also addressed by researchers Brunner, Bennet and Honey (1998). These researchers claim that the majority of games allow boys to play out their masculine fantasies of being the hero, wielding the sword, and vanquishing the dragon. The typical genre of computer games include such elements as scoring points, conquering evil, dominating and asserting power, and winning. These elements are all highly attractive to boys. Brunner, Bennet and Honey outline the traditional gaming play paradigm as one which privileges: ‘victory over justice, competition over collaboration, speed over flexibility, transcendence over empathy, control over communication and force over facilitation’ (Brunner, Bennet and Honey, 1998, pp.81-82).
Brunner, Bennet and Honey suggest that such a traditional play paradigm is very limiting for girls, particularly in terms of playing out fantasies of femininity. They state that girls need games which will allow them ‘to rehearse and express the ambiguities and contradictions of femininity’ (1998, p.87). In elaborating upon what this might mean, they claim,
We believe that one function of role-playing games could be
to help provide an imaginary space allowing girls to fool around with the
notions of femininity that make sense to them, and offer rich, complex stories
that raise questions about the consequences of the social prescriptions for
femininity. (Brunner, Bennet and Honey, 1998, p.83)
These
researchers emphasise the need for a shift in traditional play paradigms to
achieve such ends, and suggest the inclusion of such elements as choices from
multiple personae, choices of varying play strategies with respectively varying
consequences, humour, adventure and romance, persuasion, puzzles and obstacles
to overcome, design of the digital space, mysteries with complex plots and the
inclusion of different forms of writing or communication within the game. A shift in paradigm such as these
researchers emphasise would, as they argue, ‘make for a complex narrative of
multiple voices, which lends itself beautifully to interactive storytelling’
(Brunner, Bennet and Honey, 1998, p.85).
This, they claim, would make for very attractive playing for girls,
allowing them the freedom to explore a multitude of feminine storylines.
Gender Neutral Games?
One
most significant issue raised by Cassell and Jenkins is whether or not
targeting girls as a separate ‘market’ might actually be detrimental by
resulting in the reinforcement of the disparity between girls and boys, and a
resultant move to the creation of games which only serve to reinforce
differences. As they note, ‘feminism
has historically been committed to transforming rather than simply responding
to existing gender roles’ (1998, p.18).
They applaud attempts to create a more inclusive computer culture where
traditional stereotypes are transformed to foster a fusion of masculine and
feminine identities. This fusion would,
they assert, offer more options and choices for girls. Yet as they report and as commented upon in
the same volume by the contributors from gaming companies, while sometimes
agreeing in theory, companies still market to very specific stereotypes of
either ‘male’ or ‘female’, creating ‘boy games’ and ‘girl games’.
Furthermore,
the creation of and design for a ‘girl’s games’ market has as its underlying
assumption that computer games are in fact, naturally boys games. This gives rise to the question of whether
girls should be encouraged to beat the boys at their own game, or whether or
not new spaces for girls-only would be preferable. As Cassell and Jenkins
argue, ‘boys’ tastes constitute the unmarked option in the world’ (1998, p.35)
and so by playing ‘boy’s games’, girls are simply exercising their ability to
be flexible in the roles they take up in their play. Yet the authors are concerned that this will yet result in girls
missing out and propose that the most attractive solution would be to open up a
more gender-neutral playing space, in which both boys and girls can explore
multifaceted elements of their play and identities as boys and girls.
Cassell
and Jenkins pose a most significant question with respect to where they see a
gap in understanding, stating that researchers need to find out ‘…in
what contexts girls play with computers differently than boys do, and in what
contexts their play styles are similar’ (1998, p.27). Understanding this might be the means of leading
the way to new gaming territory which privileges neither gender, allowing boys
and girls to participate with equal pleasure and success. This question is also one which we are
attempting to answer in our current research, and which will be the focus of
the remainder of this paper.
A
study of children’s game-playing practices is currently being undertaken by the
University of Western Sydney. It has
involved studying two groups of children, twenty four children in each, from
contrasting socio-economic backgrounds. Half of the children were girls, and
half boys. Each group participated in
an after school computer club, and were children who regularly attended an
after school care centre. The clubs ran
for three nights per week over a period of eight to ten weeks, and children
were allocated to a group to ensure they attended at least one night per week
over the club’s duration. We used
Playstation and Nintendo consoles, and selected a range of twenty most popular
games, all G or G-8+ rated. Most games
were what we hoped would appeal to all children, boys and girls, though we
deliberately selected some games that were designed for each gender, such as
‘Barbie Goes Riding’ for the girls and ‘Final Fantasy 7’ for the boys. Although such games were specifically
designed for a separate female/male market, we were interested in how each sex
would respond to all games.
Children played mostly in pairs, sometimes by themselves and sometimes in larger groups of four. The children were deliberately mixed and changed on a regular basis, so that they would play with a preferred partner or friend, a person they didn’t know so well, a person of the opposite sex, and in a range of group sizes. Children took turns being the ‘spotlight’ group being videotaped – while one group was videotaped, the other groups would be playing games at the far end of the room. Two researchers were involved in the collection of the data (a female researcher and a male researcher), and during the club one would videotape whilst the other monitored the remaining game-players.
The children were video-taped using a split screen video-mixing technique, so that both the children’s actions and responses to the screen and to each other, and the action on the game screen could be simultaneously viewed and analysed. In addition to participating in the club, children all completed surveys about their interests, and a one week diary detailing their daily activities. Interviews were later conducted with each of the children and participating parents. Transcripts of both the game playing and interviews were combined with the child surveys and diaries as well as the researchers’ field notes, in an attempt to begin to understand the data.
An alien culture?
Far from gaming being an alienating culture for girls, girls were highly enthusiastic and excited to be a part of the club. Some girls even said that it made them feel special and important to belong to the club. Despite initial researcher concerns that it might be difficult to find enough girls interested, in both clubs the number of girls interested in joining equaled the boys.
Additionally, when examining the issue of girl’s access to games outside of any club or schooling context, without exception all girls had some form of access to games and included gaming as one of their regular activities among many. What was of particular note in terms of difference was that girls tended to have significantly less access to console type games than boys (such as Nintendo 64 and Playstation). A majority of the girls played PC games at home rather than console games, though many girls also had their own gameboys (a handheld console). It seems that with the advent of more PC-based games, girls suddenly have access in ways in which were not available to them before.
Parents also expressed a preference toward PC games for their daughters over console games. Many parents even expressed an abhorrence toward console games, describing them in highly negative terms. This abhorrence was almost without exception related to narratives about boys’ obsessive and addictive play on console games, something which was clearly understood as unhealthy, causing extreme lack of social skills and certainly something they did not want to see in their daughters!
For example:
It makes them too inactive…Kids become obsessed …they start
playing these games with kids on the other side of the world. We have friends
in Orange whose son spent literally hours and hours on end playing Doom with
other kids in the States … (Father MBe)
Its not healthy for kids to be stuck indoors all day…My friend’s boy D is really unsociable because he spends all his time indoors playing games…They can exacerbate a kid’s introversion … I think [boys like him] who base their whole lives around them.. don’t get much out of life.. it’s a substitute for something more real (Mother JJ)
I worry quite a bit about Nintendos and playstations and purposely have avoided getting them. I have more concern for my son than my daughter, because at only 3 he play acts with guns.. I think games reinforce some primal violent urges that are not conducive to living in our society… games are not a healthy release for boy’s urges, they’re better kicking a football.. also if you think about it socially, what are they giving up by spending all their time on a game? (Mother AL)
One
father even went so far as to point out a particular case of a girl who was
successful and highly involved in playing computer games, and spoke of this in
scathing terms, almost reassuring the researcher that he would never allow his
daughter to turn out like this!
Well, I’ve got some friends without naming them and I go there and one of their kids is like, she’s almost a genius right, they’ve sent her to a really high school and she’s a book worm, she’s got no social skills at all. She doesn’t go out with friends, she doesn’t do anything outside, whenever you go to her house she’s either reading a book or playing games on the computer and that’s all she ever does and I think that’s a bit bad because you can’t have a conversation with the girl. (Father TK)
Although
most parents approved of their daughters playing games on their PC or gameboy
(or in some cases their consoles), a handful of parents were quite anti-games
in any form, stating that they wanted their daughters to only use educational
software or to use the internet as a search tool for projects.
We don’t want our daughter to sit and play in front of the computer, we try and encourage the fact that the computer is there for use as a tool rather than use as a game. (Father NW)
The computer is just there as one activity among many activities. They must have their training in computer skills.. they must grow up with computers and with all the facilities that the computer provides, but this must be balanced with.. cultural facilities such as reading good books, music, theatre, concerts… (Father FHJ)
All
parents expressed the need for their daughters to have a balance of activities
in their lives, and were of the view that computer games and/or the computer
were a necessary but small part of the rich and diversified range of activities
in which their daughters were involved. In general, parents appeared to express
the desire for their daughters to become well rounded people, with social
skills, sporting skills, musicianship and so forth. Perhaps this is considered
less important for boys, who, as parents of boys might feel, have to
concentrate on processing intellect and rationality.
Given
the parental attitudes reported here, it is not surprising that few girls had
consoles for game playing, nevertheless, the irony is that most game designers
now design their games for a multi-platform audience. That is, the game ‘Toy Story’ for example is available on both
Playstation and PC, ‘Pokemon’ games are available on Nintendo and Gameboy, and
so girls in our club had played some of the games we had available for the
Nintendo or Playstation, but they had played them on their PC or gameboy.
One of the most popular games with girls (and indeed the boys) was the Pokemon game. The designers and marketers of pokemon have clearly hit the jackpot as far as the children’s market goes – even die-hard parents managed to get enthused about this phenomenon! Many of the girls watched the pokemon TV program, most had the swap and playing cards (which in fact they housed in special photo albums), some had sets of figurines (kept in little cloth bags), many had the special edition pokemon gameboy, and most had seen the pokemon movie. Apparently there are hundreds of types of pokemon, all with complex power and skill attributes, and all could use their powers to evolve into a more sophisticated form of pokemon. Many of the girls knew these character specifications and attributes by heart and in addition to the more traditional ‘girlish’ activity of playing ‘dolls’ would also play ‘pokemon’ with their figurines or cards.
One
of the other points raised by Cassell and Jenkins (1998) above was that girls
experienced high anxiety when
playing games and would often avoid computers altogether, even in educational
settings. We found this simply not to
be the case at all. In terms of
anxiety, girls did in fact state very clearly that certain parts of some games
made them highly anxious, but far from being a negative factor, this anxiety
heightened the emotional experience of the gameplaying for them. Girls stated
that they had experienced anxiety during game playing, and that instances of
this occurred when they knew they had only a little time left, they anticipated
a difficult part of the game coming up, or when they were being chased in the
game. The anxiety was a pleasurable
part of the overall experience. In the
video data this is strongly noticeable, with girls exaggerating their anxiety
by swinging their legs, bouncing up and down, emitting little screams and other
sound effects, and laughing considerably.
When posed with the question ‘Who is better at video or computer games, boys or girls?’, no girls fell into the ‘one or the other’ dichotomy. The most common responses were that it depends on the person and how much experience they have had with a particular game whether or not they are good at that game. One girl mentioned that she thought boys showed off and sometimes thought they were better, and another girl laughed, threw her arm up in the air in a victory style salute and said ‘Girl power! Girls Rule!’, before qualifying her response to match the general consensus that ‘it depends’.
An alien culture? No, not in this case. Girls had the same levels of enthusiasm and interest in playing games at the club, they had equal access (though markedly different in source to boys), they had at least equal knowledge about specific popular games than boys, and equal skill at playing specific popular games. They clearly viewed themselves as a part of the gaming culture, and were all more than comfortable in front of the screen.
However in consideration of a broader children’s culture, we posed a number of question to the girls about issues related to their favourite leisure pursuits and activities and their favourite heroes and role models, in order to obtain a sense of what was really important to girls. We wanted to gain an insight into where the gaming culture fitted within the lives, activities and dreams of young girls. Interestingly, analysis of both the diary and interview data revealed a significant difference in the emphasis and priority that games have in these girls lives in comparison to that of the boys. It must be stated at this stage that at the time of writing this paper only half of the total interviews have been conducted, so the following data is drawn from only half of the children.
When talking about their most favourite leisure activities, only 25% of the girls mentioned playing games as one of their favourite activities, which was one of the opening questions of the interviews. Although they all enjoyed playing games, it was not a high priority on the scale of popular leisure activities. The activities commonly mentioned were art/drawing (75%), music related activities (such as choir, band) (75%), sporting activities (50%), dancing (50%), playing with friends (50%), watching TV (50%), reading (25%) and writing stories (25%). The two most popular TV programs were Charmed and Sabrina, two shows about witches, and the most popular books were Suzanne Rowlings’ Harry Potter books, (Harry Potter and his friends attend a witches and wizardry school), Roald Dahl, and Paul Jennings.
When discussing playing with their friends, all girls mentioned some form of imaginative play as a high frequency activity in which they engaged. This included replaying an episode from their favourite TV show, Charmed, or innovating on the Charmed genre to invent their own episodes. Also popular with several girls was a game they called ‘the bossy queen’, an innovation from the section in Alice in Wonderland where the red queen appears. Playing dressups, playing with barbies, playing with mum’s make-up and playing ‘doctors’ were also mentioned.
For
girls then, computer games were only a minor part of their lives. This contrasts highly with the boys, who all
without exception nominated computer games as one of their most favourite
activities, and in whose diaries a higher proportion of time is allocated to
the playing of games. Girls spend more
time engaged in imaginative play and a whole range of other sporting and
leisure pursuits. Is this damaging to
girls or preventing them in some way from entering into the world of science
and technology? Is this reflective of a
discourse on femininity that sees girls as being multi-skilled?
As far as the
parents were concerned, particularly two very strongly opinioned fathers, the
time that boys allegedly spend playing games is obsessive and unhealthy. Parents also felt that it was necessary to
provide a whole range of activities for their daughters to pursue, so evenings
and early mornings would be spent taking their girls to swimming lessons,
netball lessons, dancing lessons, children’s theatre club, ceramics classes,
instrument lessons, choir lessons.
Walkerdine (1998) termed this the ‘full
diary syndrome’ and noted that this particularly occurs in middle class
families. The girls interviewed to date
are mostly middle class in background and so indeed have such a wide range of
pursuits that computer games only feature minimally in the overall scope of
their lives. Yet the boys are also from
the same middle class backgrounds, so this begs the question, why is it that
only the girls are singled out for the full diary syndrome?
Surprisingly, none of the girls had any specific regulations about the playing of games. Parents commented that for their girls, regulation simply wasn’t an issue, as the girls were involved in such a range and balance of activities that game-playing never became ‘out of hand’. Many parents were quick to offer anecdotes about their neighbour’s son, or a nephew, who was totally obsessed with games and consequently had no social skills or abilities other than playing games. The only proviso any parents made about their girl’s game-playing (or TV watching, or other leisure activity) was that homework always came first. Interestingly, 50% of the girls came from families where the practice of watching television was highly regulated. In some cases, TVs were covered over, or shut away in a cupboard. Some families only watched television on weekends, and never during the week. Other parents allowed their girls to pre-select one hour of viewing per day, video record it, and watch it at a later time. Two girls said they never watched TV at all. Since all these girls attended after school care, it was common that both parents in the family worked and the girls would not arrive home until after 6pm from school. The routines after school in most instances were highly regulated – home, dinner, homework, a little play or reading time, then bed.
Girls explicitly named a range of figures that they held up as heroes or role models. These included famous real females such as Alyssa Milano, Shannon Doherty and Holly Marie Combs (each of the three witch sisters from the TV program, Charmed ), Sarah-Michelle Gellar (from the TV program Buffy about a girl who slays vampires), and Brittney Spears (pop singer), as well as the female character Penny from the novel ‘Inspector Gadget’. Interestingly, some girls named male characters as their idols, such as Matthew Perry (from the TV show Friends), Clint Eastwood, James Bond, and Kenny Gee (trumpeter). Other girls mentioned real people they knew (e.g. my mum’s friend who is good at computer graphics) and one girl said the character ‘Ash’ from the pokemon game.
This tends to match the
trend observed with the girls’ choice of game characters. As well as strong beautiful assertive clever
successful women, a range of males who were skilled as actors, sports heroes or
music were also mentioned. The crossing
over from a rigid gender mould to a more flexible or fluid conceptualisation of
what it could mean to be a successful female in the real world seems to be a
given with these girls.
Despite our hopes and expectations that girls who saw themselves as a part of the gaming culture would be able to showcase their keen intellect and skills when game-playing, this was rarely the case. With great disappointment (which is discussed later in the paper), the observations, field notes and video data all pointed to traditional female stereotypes and a ‘lacking’ of something that the boys did have but the girls did not. With frustration, Angela Thomas, who collected the data, felt that the girls were not delivering ‘good or valid’ data and oft-times preferred watching the boys at play in preference to the girls. Many girls even irritated her to the point that she would rotate groups and work with other groups! Why?
To answer this we must first discuss what the boys were doing that was so exciting to Angela. Boys would totally immerse themselves in a game, they would engage imaginatively with the characters, their talk around the game would include amusing embellishments on the game action and they would persevere with the technicalities of a game until they had successfully mastered, completed and achieved their goals. It was a pleasure for Angela to watch young boys engage cleverly and imaginatively with the games. They would frequently discuss detailed strategies for mastering sections of a game, describe the technicalities of particular moves, invent amusing narratives around the characters, and get excited over the action of the game. To boys, games were skills to be mastered, challenges to be conquered. Angela saw this as valid, intellectual and educational and considered the skills these boys were developing in such play as significantly beneficial.
In stark contrast, almost without exception, girls seemed to use games simply as a medium or vehicle for social interaction. Although girls enjoyed game playing as an experience equally to boys, and were quite adept at playing the games, their enjoyment appeared to derive from the social nature of the playing. The excitement and intensity for the girls seemed to revolve around the overall embodied and physical experience, rather than from the focused attention to a particular game, character, or screen event. The girls were quite ambivalent about gaining any mastery over the technical skills required of them in the game, and would play (albeit with a good degree of skill) with much less intensity and involvement in the game.
Girls’ talk around the game would include discussions about the characters and graphics, discussions about their friends, discussions about what happened at school that day, and discussions about a TV program they watched the night before. The gameplaying was almost incidental or secondary to the social interaction occurring. It was certainly not poor playing, but nor was it intense and involved playing. On some occasions the game was barely even noticeable as featuring in the group experience. In one instance for example, a group of three girls were playing a game together. They deliberately chose a one player game, and while each girl would have her turn at the controls, the other two girls would sit and watch, whilst chatting about all manner of other topics, and, most interestingly, doing their French knitting! The game was not the focus of attention, it simply represented another form of entertainment which could be undertaken within a social context.
There
were girls in the clubs who were highly articulate and intelligent, yet this
was not translated into their game playing.
Angela was hoping that the girls would showcase their keen intellect and
superiority (or at least equal!) to the
boys. In fact the opposite occurred,
the games seemed to detract from any understanding an observer could glean of
their intellect, rather they tended more to reveal their ‘girlishness’ aspects
of femininity. Boys certainly cared
more about games and were able to showcase their imagination, intellect and
skill.
Also, a number of girls would engage in squabbling over games - over which game they were going to play, over whose turn it was with the controller, or over how many minutes more their partner had been playing than them. They couldn’t get on with actually playing the game because of the bickering. Angela tried to understand what this meant and let it carry on a number of times in an attempt to analyse what was happening. In some instances it seemed that one girl wanted to prove herself and her abilities or her power over the other girl. In some instances it was because the girls were engaging in quite underhand competitive play. They would sometimes ridicule their partner when their partner was losing. In one incident one girl continually switched off the game every time she was losing! Another girl even used strategic planning ahead to force her partner to fail, by telling her partner she must do action ‘x’, when she knew full well that such an action would cause her friend’s character to die!
Angela admitted
that the source of her irritation with these particular incidents stemmed from
her own past, playing games with her family.
Watching the girls bickering reminded her perhaps a little too closely
of her own actions when playing board games such as scrabble with her mother. Accustomed to winning at games, losing was
so devastating that to avoid failure she once ‘accidentally on purpose’ tipped
over the scrabble board, sending all of the letters flying onto the floor after
her mother had just made an amazing triple word score!
Another
behaviour common with the girls was related to their awareness of the gaze, whether it be the video-camera, the
researchers, their friends, or the boys in the club.
Some girls were very aware of the camera, and engaged in both explicit and covert actions which demonstrated this. Younger girls had a tendency to be more overt by waving to the camera, smiling at it, jumping up and getting out of the camera’s line of vision to cough. These actions were not just present at the beginning of the filming sessions, but often occurred throughout filming, at unexpected moments. For example, the girls would be deeply involved in playing, so much so that one girl would say or do something with quite a bit of emotion (such as using an expletive, thumping the table top in exasperation). Immediately either the same girl or their partner would make mention or reminder of the camera, as if it were wrong and concerning not only to behave in such a manner, but to have it caught on film.
Older girls would occasionally wave and make faces at the camera, but were more likely to whisper to each other when they did not want something caught on tape. They were also more concerned with their appearance on filming days. One girl in particular brought in eye shadow on her filming days. The female researcher accidentally caught her applying the eye shadow immediately prior to the filming, and throughout the filming she played with the eyeshadow container, and applied some of it to her leg! She was very conscious of the camera and the ‘gaze’.
Although not so noticeable during the club, but much more apparent when watching back the video data, many girls would frequently turn their head to look at the researcher doing the filming. This was not consciously encouraged by the researcher, but it seemed that some girls were anxious to seek the researchers’ approval, or to make a point of obtaining acknowledgement when she had just maneuvered through a difficult section of the game. This raises the question, was the girl trying hard because she wanted acknowledgement and approval, and would she have played in the same way if she had not been being filmed? Or did the success in the game come first, and was she conditioned to expecting praise whenever she gained success?
On a number of occasions the researchers asked girls and boys to play together in order to examine any differences in playing style in this circumstance. This resulted in a number of interesting incidents. The most common phenomenon, even though the children were aged 8 – 11, was that of flirting! Although the transcripts of the talk don’t reveal this, it was clear through other subtleties such as the eye contact, the tone of voice, the facial and body expressions. On one occasion we had a group of 2 girls and 2 boys playing a 4-player game called Mario Smash. The object of this game is to fight each other and score points over each other for good attacks, and one person comes out as the winner at the end. On this day, one of the girls and one of the boys were making eyes at each other, and then they proceeded to team up their characters and fight against the other two. The girl did exceptionally well and ended up winning several rounds, yet what appeared to be happening here was not so much a desire for her to win personally, but to ensure that the other two players did not beat the boy she liked!
Words from the girls
In the interviews we asked the girls a number of questions related to their views about games, the characters in games, what they enjoyed most about games, and what they would like to see more of in games. We wanted to understand how girls identified with characters which were primarily masculine or animal characters, and we were most interested in whether or not the girls could identify particular gaming elements that they enjoyed.
When
listing what makes a game enjoyable and worth playing, the range of comments
from girls included the following: they’re hard, difficult and have challenging
bits in them; they become increasingly difficult along the way; they have
multiple worlds and multiple levels; they have characters that grow stronger as
you increase in the game there are puzzles to solve; they let you explore, they
have maps and also secret levels or parts to discover; they’re fun; and they
get you scared.
An
ideal game would be one which was multi-leveled with multiple worlds, it would
let you design your own character and/or have a mix of characters from which to
choose, it would let you go on adventures, build things, and have good
graphics. These reflect some of the
findings discussed earlier by Laurel (1998) about what elements girls favour in
games. It seems that more games in
recent times have included such elements, perhaps due to the efforts of game
designers such as Laurel.
Girls were very specific about the characters they liked best and why. These included: Mario : because he was cute and small; Kirby, because it was cute and had special powers; Yoshi, because it was fast, cute, brave, had nice colours, and had special skills; Smallest Kong (a girl Kong), because she was small, fast, skilled and had long pigtails; Pikachu, because he was cute and could ‘do the lightning bolt’; Tommy, because he had good moves and he was an adventurer; and Donkey Kong, Tiger and Jeltion, all selected because the respective girls loved animals.
This seemed to reflect a belief that to be successful, girls needed to be both cute and clever. Brains and beauty (note also that this beauty did not need to be traditional feminine beauty, the male characters were cute also) combined were what girls were looking for in their characters. When questioned further about the character they would choose to be, and whether gender made any difference in the girl’s choices, the common response from all the girls was that gender did not matter so much. In the words of two girls:
I prefer to be Yoshi than the Princess – Yoshi is fast,
brave, exciting and cute. The princess
is not cute (ugh!) she has big googly eyes and acts scared.
I would go for the greater person and the one with the most powers and the one who is smarter than the other.
It
appears that the girls were well adapted to playing masculine characters, so
much so that it was not really an issue, and not seen as anything
untoward. The common criteria for
selection of characters were skill and appearance. To belong successfully in this world, you had to have the
combination of power and physical attractiveness.
Although the video data suggested that girls enjoyed playing games with their friends and saw game-playing as a social activity, the interview data contradicted this. Most girls stated that they preferred playing games by themselves so that they could challenge themselves, playing at their own level. To play with a partner who was not skilled raised quite a conundrum with some girls, because they didn’t like to win all the time and upset their partner. To play with a partner who was better than them was also no fun, because, as one girl commented:
With somebody who is good at it you don’t enjoy it as much
because you don’t really have to figure it out.
Clearly girls DO enjoy the challenge of mastering a game, but do so in private practice. When playing with partners the purpose of playing shifts from mastery of the skills to enjoying the experience as a social activity.
Most parents didn’t support the scenario of video nasties turning their kids into violent monsters. Nevertheless, the fear of addiction, obsession and unhealthy play was mentioned by most parents, and one mother commented that if there was even the slightest chance a particular type of game could make her daughter violent, then that was enough for her to ban that game. Several mothers were also concerned about their daughter’s weight, and specifically mentioned their anxiety about the time in front of the computer being inactive and unhealthy and a cause of weight problems.
Games are pretty mindless things and I worry that the kids will get hooked and spend days on end without sleeping… If the kids are not getting any exercise, they’re gaining weight and its not healthy, it’s a lifestyle they won’t change.. I love it when they’re out and doing things (Mother GB)
Interestingly,
none of the fathers mentioned health, weight or inactivity as a concern, it was
only mothers who raised this issue.
Angela felt quite hurt when these weight comments were made repeatedly
by different mothers because she happens to be large herself, and she felt like
she was being a poor role model for these girls, a woman which these mothers
were particularly trying to guard their daughters from becoming. When comparing these comments to the girls’
selection of characters, who (as noted above) all had to be both beautiful and
clever, the female researcher began to question her own sense of femininity. She clearly did not fit into the girls
perceptions of what it means to be a successful woman, so she began to worry
that her presence in the club was reinforcing negative stereotypes of
overweight computer nerds, and far from ‘switching girls on’ to computers, she
feared she would be turning them off!!
Although there were more concerns and negative comments raised by parents in interviews specifically about game-playing on game consoles, a majority of parents had some very positive comments about the benefits of having a computer and allowing their daughters access to it. Fathers in particular lauded the playing of games as an ideal way in for their daughters to become computer literate.
Games give a goal, they aren’t passive, they’re activities with a purpose. (Father MP)
Computer skills essential so important for exposure at an early age. (Father CD)
Nintendo was probably the best toy I’ve ever bought them - good value for money, entertaining….games take months to master. It keeps the kids alert, it’s interactive, better than passive TV watching. (Father EB)
Games can be the most wonderful form of education. (Father FHJ)
In
summary then, parents were most enthusiastic about their daughters playing on
the computer as they saw it as a means towards the development of computer
literacy, an essential life skill. They
particularly promoted the use of games they considered of educational benefit,
and preferred their daughters to be playing on the computer in an interactive
game situation rather than sitting passively in front of the television. They promoted a range of other leisure
pursuits and consequently found that girls spending what they would consider an
unhealthy amount of time playing computer games simply was not an issue. Their key concern related to girls becoming
addicted or obsessed with games, like many boys they either knew or had heard
of, did. Most parents preferred and
valued PC games and related software over console games.
DISCUSSION
In
examining this data further three key issues seem to arise.
The
first issue is that of the difficulties
presented for girls when engaged in a medium which has traditionally been
marked as masculine. The girls in our
study were certainly able to feel a sense of belonging to the gaming culture,
and were quite content to take on male character roles when playing games. Adopting different on-screen roles posed no
threat to girls. Perhaps this can be
attributed to girls learning from an early age that they are a subject of what
Haraway (2000) terms ‘fractured identities’.
Haraway argues that there is nothing about being female that naturally
binds women. Instead, Haraway proposes
that women adopt a ‘network ideological image, suggesting a profusion of spaces
and identities and a permeability of boundaries’ (2000, p. 298). She suggests that women are discovering new
couplings, new coalitions and new dispersion of self. As she states, ‘the task is to survive in the diaspora’ (2000,
p.298). Is this what girls are doing
when they are playing computer games and adopting masculine character
roles? If so, then this is powerful,
positive and should be praised indeed, as so done by Plant,
It may have been women’s
fluid character which has deprived her of a sense of unified advantage in the
past, but in a future that is feminised into networks, paralleled processing
and associated connections, it is her power. (Plant, 2000, p. 331)
Yet
despite girls being so enthused and finding pleasure when playing games, and
being able to adopt male character roles in their playing, their playing style seem so markedly different from
boys, that the researchers still feel
that something is missing. Girls do not
engage intellectually when playing games as far as our observations note. Games, despite their entertainment value,
seem to offer boys an avenue for intellectual development, but not girls. Yet as Plant reminds us,
Women… have always found
ways of circumventing the dominant systems of communication which have
marginalised their own speech. And
while men gazed out, looking for the truth, and reflecting on himself, women
have never depended on what appears before them.. On the contrary, they have persisted in communicating with each
other and their environment in ways which the patriarch has been unable to
comprehend… (Plant, cited by Squires, 2000,
p.368)
Perhaps
we should celebrate the ways in which girls are playing games rather than being
disappointed by them? Girls cannot play
the games in the same way that the boys do.
It seems difficult for them to cross over and ‘perform masculinity’ or
to conform to the traditional game-playing paradigms. Maybe it is simply not
feasible, not ‘OK’ for girls to play games with the same intensity and passion
as the boys because it is too threatening or it is devalued by parents or peers. Sinclair remarks that as a girl you need to
‘roll up your sleeves and learn how to play with (and without) the boys’
(Sinclair, 1996). The conundrum seems to be one of values. If girls are spending considerable time and
energy using computers for purposes of research and education, does it matter
that she not enjoy the technicalities of games? If she plays games with the motivation of being social rather
mastery of skills, does she miss out on something vital? And what of her private game-playing? If she plays intently to master skills in
private, but only plays for social reasons in public, what confusion or
ambiguities does this cause to her sense of identity and femininity?
One
of the reasons that Angela was so disappointed in the video data was not only
because it was frustrating for her as a researcher hoping to collect exciting
data, but for her as a woman. She could
not see much of herself in the images of femininity that the girls projected in
the club. Having had perhaps a
non-traditional background for a female, she was always strong in mathematics
and science, and now has found a niche in computer literacy and
technology. What she saw in these girls
was what she considered a lot of peripheral playing at the outer edges of
thought, but none of the girls delved deeper into games. The games were incidental to their enjoyment
of the experience, and as a result their playing was at a shallow level.
When
watching these girls Angela just wanted to urge them on (even shake them!) to
reach deeper and be like herself! The
only images of herself that she observed were the negative characteristics of
herself that she felt should be suppressed, such as the bickering and competing
in unpleasant ways. The positive
elements of herself related to the depth of thought and intellect that she
believes is what motivates her, excites her, and fulfills her, arousing her
both emotionally and intellectually.
But with these girls, playing did not reach any intellectual depth.
Angela devalued this because she saw it as shallow when not accompanied by any
real mastery or success.
The
second issue is that of the character of
games and the assumptions and expectations about femininity the designers
have made. Although many games do adopt
the traditional playing paradigm discussed earlier by Brunner, Bennet and Honey
(1998), there seem to be many games on the market now that do cater more for
‘children’ rather than the binary either ‘girls’ or ‘boys’. Girls enjoyed a wide range of the games
which we had to offer in the club.
Interestingly, the ‘Barbie’ game, a game specifically targeted for
girls, was one of the first games many of the girls chose to try, yet it was
also one of the first to be rejected as dull and boring. Although many games did portray women in
stereotyped roles (i.e. the princess to be rescued, the witch or annoying
sister) the girls enjoyed playing the male protagonist doing the
conquering. Being a male hero
conquering the evil witch to save a poor princess was much more appealing to girls
than being Barbie riding a horse! Girls
liked to be challenged, and some of the games targeted particularly for girls
seem to be awfully condescending.
Again, Cassell and Jenkins’ (1998) question raises its head – should we
encourage girls to play like boys, or should we call for game designers to
cater more for girls’ needs?
This leads us to the final issue for discussion, that of girls’ preferences in games. Girls clearly have a different playing pattern to boys, and have spoken out about what elements in games they prefer. They want more of a narrative in their games, they want more characterisation, they want more choices and more variation in their games. Some of the most popular games for girls in fact were those which had related television programs or movies (such as Pokemon, Rugrats etc.), in which narratives were fleshed out for them already. In most current games, characters are only defined by their actions and appearance. Boys appear to be satisfied in defining the characters by their actions, and are able to innovate narratives about the plot for themselves, a characteristic considerably valued by the researchers. Yet girls seem to need more to become intellectually involved in the game. Their imaginative role-playing, an activity in which they are intellectually involved and which is considered highly valuable by the researchers, suggests a need for strong characterisation and narrative to ‘switch the girls on’. If games could provide girls with the opportunity to develop strong narratives and decent characterisation perhaps then we would see girls engaging intellectually with the games.
Perhaps Davies (1993), though talking about girls finding their feminine identities through fiction stories, best explains the need for girls to engage in strong characterisation and narrative, when she states:
In imaginatively bringing the characters to life they bring the detail, the thread, the emotions of their own experience to bear on the words on the page and so make the characters live. The text then seems real, the … storylines are the storylines of life – the way life is. The battle between the characters in the stories and the characters reading the story are impossible to unthread from each other. (Davies, 1993, p.174)
If girls could relate more to the characters and storylines of games, no doubt they would be more able to engage at a deeper and more intense level, a depth which seems to be lacking in their engagement with most current games. The question is, do their other activities suffice in giving them this deeper intellectual stimulation, or should we be looking to making games more stimulating for girls? Is it necessary to make a fuss over game design to cater for girls’ intellectual needs, or is it enough that these needs are met elsewhere, including that of PC-based educational software? The other question is, even if games were designed with a completely new game-play paradigm, containing all of the elements that we would expect and hope girls to embrace at an imaginative and intellectual level, would they actually do so? Or, given the findings to date in this study, would they revert to playing them in traditional gendered ways in public (when with friends and in educational contexts) and only play them at a deeper level in private? If so, what have we achieved? Particularly when girls are subjects of the ‘full diary syndrome’ and have so little free time in which they choose to play games in private. Perhaps boys’ apparent obsession and prioritisation of games as a major part of their lives is not such an abhorrent phenomenon if it leads them down the path of high-paying technologically-based careers. Girls are so busy fulfilling the expectations of being the good girl, good at everything, that they have little time to become an expert at anything.
CONCLUSION
Although
the girls in our study do feel that they do belong to the gaming culture, and
are clearly developing skills of computer literacy, the fact remains that they
do not appear to be engaging intellectually with computer games, but using them
as a source for social interaction.
That girls value and participate in social interaction is crucial as a
means for their empowerment in an age of networking and communication. Girls’ inability or lack of desire to engage
in computer games (particularly in social contexts) at an intellectual level
may ultimately disadvantage them in the work place of a fast capitalist
society. If girls cannot ‘play like the
boys’, will this demean their future opportunities in life? Does the prescriptive world view of
femininity and traditional game-playing paradigm which is most commonly
reflected in children’s computer games limit girls’ future opportunities?
If playing computer games alone could change this, our concerns would be minimal, since all the girls in our study were enthusiastically involved in playing games, and even confessed to playing competitively and intently in their private spaces. We have pinpointed what we see as the central differential between girls and boys game playing: the style of girls play, particularly in public spaces. What would it take for girls to come out of the closet and play games in public like they report they do in private? When will they think that it is OK for them to perform their intense playing in all contexts? Or are these concerns becoming redundant as society changes and values shift to emphasise networking, communication and socialisation? Maybe, just maybe, girls’ abilities to adopt multi-faceted roles and identities will actually act to their advantage and offer them more opportunities in the future than boys, who conform to a highly limited view of masculinity from their early years.
Brunner, C., Bennett, D. and Honey, M. 1998, ‘Girl Games and Technological Desire’. In: Cassell, J. and
Jenkins, H. 1998, From Barbie to Mortal
Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts.
Cassell, J. and Jenkins, H.
1998, ‘Chess for Girls? Feminism and Computer Games’. In: Cassell, J. and
Jenkins, H. 1998, From Barbie to Mortal
Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts.