Gender roles today appear to be clearly defined. Boys like to play action and fighting games (33%) while girls like to play platform games ( 48%) . These roles seemed pretty clear, but today this "line" is beginning to become hazy.
Actually this "line" has always been hazy. Remember Mario Brothers? Well both boys and girls liked to play. It combined the action (beating bad guys) with thinking (how do I rescue the princess or which path to take).
Girls are beginning to play action games like Tomb Raider. Games today now have female leads, or a female character that can be selected. This allows the girls to be involved in the action and fighting games. These games are also incorporating quests along with the fighting. Game makers are now combining action/fighting with platform to today's standards. (Tomb Raider is really different from Mario)
Now boys still prefer the action and fighting games over the platform (17%), but when they do play platform games the addition of the playable female character, boys are thinking about which character: male/ female to be. Research has shown that when boys are giving the choice to choose between a male and female character, they will choose the female character the majority of the time. This enables them to experience a greater range of emotional complexity.
Ok having a playable female character in action/fighting games, but the fact that boys choose to be female characters leads to the gender line being hazy. Guys can be girls, girls can be guys and that's ok. This is a positive sign of greater gender flexibility. Hopefully the gender line will no longer exist someday. That gender roles will no longer exist and be stereotypical.
Posted by Rachel Howard at April 5, 2004 05:23 PMYou pick out some good statistics from Fromme... I noticed that girls like puzzle games more than boys, but that girls are more likely to use their computers to write, and less likely to use their computers to program (although the total number of kids who program with computers is pretty small to begin with...).
You've raised a lot of good issues... I'm going to fire off a few questions, some of which may be covered in the literature you've already cited, but some of which won't be.
Do you have stats on how many girls play action games, and how that compares to the recent past?
I'm just wondering... you say "hopefully the gender line will no longer exist" someday. That's a certain ideological perspective, one that assumes that differences between the genders are not natural, that they are instead created by society; when society changes, gender will become meaningless. If that's so, are you aware of any efforts to encourage boys to use computers to write, or encouraging the development of thinking/puzzle/word games to be more attractive to boys? Are the creators of Tomb Raiders deliberately setting out to settle the score and right the past wrongs of gender imbalances?
You raise some weighty issues -- good job. I don't have the answers to all of my questions, but if you have any thoughts in reply, I'll be happy to keep the conversation going.
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at April 5, 2004 10:28 PM