Today, more males are into gaming compared to females despite more females starting to make it a non gender biased hobby. I find that as girls grow older, their interest in gaming phases slowly and this is something I still haven't known the answer to. During our tutorial we were placed into groups and we were asked to come up with a game idea and discuss what types of participatory media cultures it would promote. To help increase the female audience in the gaming world, my group came up with a Lion King themed game which we called The Lion Queen. The concept of the game was different to that of the movie. The main audience that The Lion Queen will target is the younger generation as it will be a fun action, advanture and educational game and will use the console. The game will focus on the lioness being responsible for rescuing the lion that has been captured by poachers. The lioness will need to establish good relations with the other animals in the jungle. This game will help young females feel the need to take part as they are the protagonists in the game. It will also educate young people on how wild animals operate. Reconfiguration will be used in this game in which the gamers will be making 'strategic choices about alternative paths and in the case of adventure games, alternative actions.' (Raessens 20120, p380). These strategic choices will help gamers establish their own choices on how they should move around in completing their tasks. it is also important as it can be see to help the gamer use their character to form aliances which are an important aspect successfuly completing this game. This is important as reconfiguration helps let the gamer take control of their character and to help encounter their demands or benefits (Raessens 20120, p381).
Reference:
Reference:
Raessens,
J. 2005, ‘Computer games as participatory media culture’, Handbook of
Computer Game Studies, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp.
380, 381
Hi Chichi,
ReplyDeleteInteresting blog post! I like how you started off by saying that gaming is a part of everyone's childhood whether they are female or male- this i agree with. I also agree with you that as we get older, for some reason females are less interested in video games. These two points are an interesting concept, however I would have liked to see this idea expanded more consistently throughout your blog. For example, you could have discussed why females are playing video games less as they get older, and how it relates back to participatory media in a globalised world. Furthermore, I liked how you explained the concept of "the Lion Queen". While I adore the Lion King film, I see your point in creating a game where it is the female that should take the leading role. If females were the leading role then the way we engage with the character would be relatively different, and in a globalised world we will not be perceived as the 'damsel in distress'. Ultimately, I thought your idea for the game was relevant to the blog topic and the choice of image really represented the first part of your blog. If anything, I would also recommend that you link your two ideas to make it more coherent! However thank you for a great read :)
Hi there,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this blog. I thought it was interesting that you mentioned that many females have blurred the lines of gender specificity when it comes to video games. This is not something that I had really dwelled on much, and could be an interesting point to discuss and delve into further. Perhaps to further your blog, you could have gone into more detail as to why it tends to be a more male dominated hobby. In doing so, you could have discussed the gender stereotypes evident in today's media wherein males are more typically involved in war/combat scenarios, and women are more typically depicted as the homemakers, or shoppers.
Nonetheless, thanks for the post.
Julia
Hey Chichi!
ReplyDeleteI Agree with you that as girls get older, their interests in gaming seem to decrease (this was certainly the case for me). I also think this is an interesting concept to have introduced. Do you think that this could be due to a shift in the way we interpret messages as we mature? Perhaps it could be related to Halls Encoding/Decoding model, whereby the females may tend to move towards an negotiated or oppositional view at an earlier age to males. Maybe having a more factual based game such as your Lion Queen idea would delay this shift. It sounds like a cool game concept to me, great idea!
Hey Chichi,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the idea of the Lion Queen game concept that you and your tutorial group came up with, the idea that you need to basically be a detective to get around the jungle and befriend everyone seems like something that is really intriguing to me, even as a 21 year old male.
I'm not trying to be sexist in any way at all, but I don't think that the idea for gaming to remain a giant part of a growing woman's life is to chuck a female as the main character, seeing as there are already heaps of games where the female is a very strong protagonist.
In fact, three of my favourite games have leading ladies, Tomb Raider, Portal and Mirror's Edge.
Julia made the point that men are interested in the battle type games like Halo or Call of Duty, which is true, because extensive research has been put into what gets us kicking, but I feel that is somewhat lacking in the female demographic.
I'd propose, while a game like the Lion Queen seems fantastic to me and I would definitely play it, women don't need more strong female protagonists as a draw point to play a game, all we need to do is find out what themes you're interested in, be it war, puzzle or a game where you can just pick up and play!
Hey!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you to an extent about girls growing out of games, but a lot of my closest female friends still really enjoy playing the old Nintendo 64 party games like Mario Kart and Mario Party. I feel that female gamers prefer to play the old games that link back to their fun childhood times rather than the new generation of games. I really liked your Lion Queen concept, but I think that simply casting a female as the protagonist won't make much of a difference to the demographic who do play games. Remember many females already exist in main roles such as Samus Aran in Metroid and Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. But still a really interesting blog post.
Hi Chichi,
ReplyDeleteInteresting blog. I absolutely agree when you mentioned that gaming is a part of everyone's childhood whether they are female or male. I also agree with you that as we get older, most females do tend to lack in their interest in video games, this is evident for me personally and a few of my friends although I am sure this isn’t accurate for all females. When you mentioned Snake and Tetris and former phone games that are probably seen as ancient now, I realised how technology in the gaming world has so rapidly advanced. As a child Snake was at one stage a harmless addiction and I remember being so good at the game. There are a few spelling errors here and there that I picked up on reading but overall good effort. Happy blogging