Nintendo Game Girl
Growing up, my first experience with video games included a humongous, device with a black and white screen. There was slot where you can put a game cartridge in the back, and in order to power the device on, you needed four AA batteries. This gaming device was called the “Game Boy”. The Game Boy revolutionized the gaming industry, as people were able to take their entertainment on the road without the need of a television screen. This device was every gamer’s dream and every parents’ nightmare kids would play this for hours on end.
As a child, I did not question why exactly the gaming device was called a Game Boy and not a Game Girl. When I was growing up, gaming was a stereotype that came along with boys. Boys played with action figures and games, while girls played with dolls, wore make-up and cooked. All of my friends who had a Game Boy were all coincidentally boys. But over the years, I did manage to meet one girl who had a Game Boy. She was the daughter of one of my mother’s friends. One day, I overheard my mother’s friend talking to my mother about games and if I had a Game Boy. My mother reluctantly said yes, as she knew that I was glued to the screen all day. My mother’s friend continued to mention that she had just bought one for her daughter as well. Her daughter seemed to be enjoying playing the games that the boys were all playing but one thing stood out to her. This was of course, the name Game Boy.
As we move forward into an age where people are able to make money strictly by posting videos of themselves playing videos, there are many possibilities. One of them including the existence of female gamers. In an article on the Guardian, Meg Jayanth writes,
A study published on Wednesday by the Internet Advertising Bureau reveals that 52% of the gaming audience is made up of women. That’s right — the majority of people playing games are women.
So why exactly don’t we see them? Just like the concept of “chick flicks” where the main target is usually female, these video game corporations make the average male the main target in marketing their products. But despite these statistics, some break through the norm and become profession gamers online. They often stream themselves playing while also recording their faces at the same time. But as I looked at the top 10 most subscribed female gamers on Twitch, I did find a common theme to most of them.
Like we see in Hollywood, women are often objectified and are forced to use their bodies for the sake of male entertainment. Female gamers are very attractive and often wear very revealing clothing showing cleavage.
I happened to look at the comment section of these female gamers’ channels and it was filled with sexist and misogynistic responses. But over the years of watching these videos and being exposed to the comment sections, I was not entirely bothered. In the article “Glitch Racism” by Lisa Nakamura, talks about the existence of these people who post sexist/racist comments on these videos for their own pleasure. Nakamura claims that the Internet has what she calls “Tourettes Syndrome” as people say things without fulling thinking of the consequences of them. She continues by saying that these people are allowed to post these hurtful comments because they are in the protection of the being behind the computer screen. This not only hurts the content receiver’s feelings but also themselves as they start to lose the reality of which these comments can actually hurt somebody. She states,
To call Internet racism “trolling” is to minimize it as an act that is not really about racism, but fundamentally about something far more benign; its not really about anything.
In these comment sections, instead of “she looks beautiful” or “she’s amazing” we see so many of the “oh how I wish I could have sex with her” or “she has amazing tits”. Instead of being a sexist and misogynistic comment, it has been reduced to look like a compliment.
So why don’t we see more female gamers? Well perhaps the answer of that question can be found straight from the comment section.
