Wait, You Play Video Games?
How has the marketing of video games impacted the public perception of gaming as a boys-only club? A gameHER takes us through history to understand how female gamers have been ignored and excluded from the public conversation, but how that’s changing now.
NOTE: This blog contains advertising images and videos that may not be suitable for young readers.
By Catherine Negron
There is something entrancing about an arcade. The seemingly boring outside belies the frantic and sometimes disorienting atmosphere of the inside. It almost pulses with its own kinetic energy. The dim lights of the ceiling cast deep shadows around the room. The bright lights of the arcade cabinets cut through that looming darkness, their frenetic colors flashing brightly. Groups roam the cramped aisles, feet scuffing against the well-worn carpet. Eyes flashing in the colorful lights as they move from machine to machine, tokens gleaming in their hands. The sound of each machine, each yell of triumph, groan of defeat, laughter, curses, join together into a cacophony of sound. A symphony of life that fills each darkened corner with its music. They join the chorus of chiptunes that stick in our heads, following us long into the night.
When I was a little kid, my mom never let me go into arcades. I know, right? What an egregious error. To deny a child access to a kingdom of flashing lights and energetic sounds. A place to spend all your hard-earned allowance in one go trying to beat Battletoads or to be crowned the best among all your friends and defend your high score every Saturday. I’d watch all the kids walk in and out of the neighborhood arcade and I would desperately wish to go. Anytime we passed by the one in the mall I would turn to her, hands clasped in a silent plea. She would always shake her head and pull me away. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I ever got to walk into one and by then arcades weren’t as popular as they were in the mid 90s.
My mom wasn’t without her reasons. Most of the time I would ask when we were already running an errand or late to an event. I found out later that one of the main reasons she never allowed me to go was because arcades were for boys. It seems like a silly reason now. After all, my mom knew and fueled my love for video games. But arcades seemed like they were places only for boys. To think that I wasn’t allowed in the hallowed halls of video game paradise was unfathomable. And they are not the only place that made video games seem like a boys-only club.
Advertisements for video games tended to cater heavily toward the average male gamer. Just look at this commercial for Tomb Raider from 1996:
Or even this ad for Fear Effect 2: Double Helix (2001), featuring the two main characters in bikinis, one posed suggestively on top of the other:
An ad for Fear Effect 2: Double Helix (2001), denied publication from American game magazines.
The above ad was denied publication in American game magazines according to an article by IGN in January of 2001. The reason? The use of the word “climax” in reference to the game’s multiple endings.
Both of these games were heavily marketed with their target audience predominantly being male. Why is that exactly?
Well to answer that question we need to go back in time to about the mid 70s to early 80s. At that time, most games were played and enjoyed by everyone. This is in part because during that time period most marketers didn’t know how to advertise for video games. After all, the game industry was new, so new in fact that many weren’t even sure that it would last. It also didn’t help that any market research forms sent out weren’t being returned on time or at all. So marketers did their best and developers made games they thought would be fun. That all changed when 1983 rolled around. The video game industry went through a recession in America. “Recession” is a nice way of saying it. What this really meant was that company after company closed their doors and many developers suddenly found themselves out of work. For two years things looked very grim for the game industry.
That is until Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1985.
You see the NES — or Famicom — was originally released in 1983 in Japan and was considered a slow success at launch. It had some hardware flaws, a bad chip that would end up crashing games, that caused Nintendo to end up recalling the systems. But by the end of 1984, the Famicom was beloved by all and Nintendo was looking to release in the west.
This was huge because not only did the console sell, it sold so well that there was a rebirth of the game industry. Everyone wanted to make games again and people wanted to play them. Nintendo strictly marketed their console and games for kids. They were almost aggressive in their market research. Making sure that any research sent out was returned. Thanks to that, people knew who was playing, what type of game was popular, what was not, etc. What they found was that mostly boys were playing video games.
In 2013, Tracey Lien wrote an article for Polygon called No Girls Allowed. In her article she found that marketers go where the money is. In this case the money was in making sure that every boy, teenage or otherwise, saw their ads of the latest must-have. They didn’t focus on the girls that did play because, well, there just wasn’t a need for it. So as the 80s ended and the 90s began, ads began to crop up featuring boys playing all the latest console and PC games.
What’s interesting is Lien finds that when DOOM was released in 1993, going on to become the start of the male-dominated FPS genre, another game was also released that proved to be highly popular among female players. That game was Myst. It was popular among both genders, topping the charts after its release for adventure puzzle games, but its main players were female. It wasn’t the only game to boast favorable among both male and female gamers. Tim Schafer’s adventure games and Sim City were both very popular, though the latter was found to be more popular among female players.
Of course, not all games were as popular with female gamers. I think in part it’s because when we see an ad like the one for Fear Effect or that bizarre one for Tomb Raider what we’re seeing is what someone created that didn’t have us in mind. I’m sure plenty of us can count how many times someone has questioned whether we actually play games, spoken with surprise that we actually like a certain genre or play well.
Games were, and in some cases still are, considered for men only. Majority of the population that play video games are male and the ads reflect that. But market research, as of 2019, has found that women now make up 46% of the gaming population. I know, I was surprised as well. The researchers detailed what games were popular among both male and female gamers with social games on mobile and PC topping the charts for female players. So games like Words with Friends, and Candy Crush for mobile and The Sims, and Overwatch for PC have a large female fan base.
So why does the game industry seemingly discount that 46%? I think that it goes back to what I said earlier: They really didn’t see a need to make games more viable for us. And so we were ignored, relegated to those darkened corners of the arcade. Games carried that “Boys Only Club” membership card. And it got passed down from person to person, becoming this stereotype that persisted for years until it became a myth. So much so that when women, especially women in the media or game industry, pointed out the sexism in games and their experiences with harassment, they became targets. It almost became a taboo to discuss the inherent disparity between male and female gamers.
But things have started to change in the last few years. Games have started to become more inclusive, featuring female protagonists that aren’t just two-sided cardboard cutout or props, with games that have enriching and engaging stories. There has been an advent of including LGBT+ and more people of color in games and real discussions and thoughts on topics like depression or PTSD. That’s not to say we have never discussed those before in games, but in the past when they were included it felt either heavy handed or like an afterthought. More and more independent developers and major developers are making games that are popular across the board for everyone.
It’s a slow process but one that I am hopeful about. Some of the ways that we can help are that we can support female gamers and developers. We can find ways to openly and honestly talk about the issues that still plague the industry. We must support each other, if not for us now, then for the next generation of female gamers that are ready to take the world by storm.
About the Author:
Photo of Catherine Negron, courtesy of the author
Catherine can be found traipsing through the demon infested wastes of Earth. “It ain’t much,” she says loading her shotgun, “but it’s honest work.” She can also be found on Twitter, @Big_Barda, if you want to come say hello.
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