Rosalind Wiseman is an internationally recognized author and educator on children, teens, parenting, education and social justice. Her work aims to help parents, educators and young people successfully navigate the social challenges of young adulthood.
Rosalind Wiseman
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Digital Disappointment: Unimpressive New Releases for Girl Gamers
Screenshot from my new favorite: "The Daring Game for Girls".
This fall, a slew of new video games targeting girls will be released and it’s a good idea to be aware of them—whether or not the girls in your life want to buy them. Over the summer Tracey John reviewed the highlights in Wired magazine with a story entitled Ridiculous Life Lessons from New Girl Games.
From the title, you may infer that Ms. John hated all the games—but that’s not true. For example, she loved, as I do, the Daring Game for Girls, which actually teaches girls interesting facts and skills while being fun—just like its complementary book, the Daring Book for Girls. But there are a few others, like my personal non-favorite Clique: Diss and Make Up, that blatantly reinforce the message that all girls want to do is shop, stress about prom, and plot the downfall of other girls. So here are my suggestions for deciding when a game is a good purchase and when it be should be shown to the girls in your life as an example of how stupid people think they are.
A Good Game:
- Teaches your daughter to think through a problem larger than herself and how she looks
- Bonds the characters/players together with her by solving mysteries or trying to make the world a better place
- Presents male andor minority characters that aren’t reduced to stereotypes
- Explores substantive, interesting subject areas but does it in a creative way
A Bad Game:
- Bonds the characters/players by seeking revenge against another girl for stealing a boyfriend or wearing “her” signature jeans
- Has the end objective of gaining social status and/or has players compete by trading gossip
- Teaches tweens to act like obnoxious, superficial 15-year-olds
- Includes boy characters who are only presented as saviors, stupid jocks, or asexual nerds, etc.
- Seeks advice from boy characters—because she can’t make a decision on her own
- Reduces the minority characters to stereotypes. Like the black girl character is “feisty” and “mouthy”, and the Asian girl is into martial arts and meditating (while wearing a choker around her neck, a cutoff shirt, and platform heels), while the main character is white and everything revolves around her
I have to admit, after looking at Clique: Diss and Make Up, Charm Girls Club: My Fashion Mall, My Boyfriend and My Perfect Prom, I keep thinking about how I might round up a few thousand 12-year-old girls to campaign against the companies that make this crap and hopefully shame them into stopping. But in the meantime, you can sit down with the girls you know and use this as an opportunity to educate them. And even if she’s a girly girl who loves shopping and nail polish, she needs to know what kind of messages are demeaning to her and why.
2 Responses to “Digital Disappointment: Unimpressive New Releases for Girl Gamers”
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August 21st, 2010 at 1:24 pm
In my opinion, almost all games marketed toward girls are ridiculous. Why can’t a girl play the same games as a boy? As a kid, the only game I can recall ever buying marketed toward girls was “Barbie: Secret Agent” for my Gameboy Advance when I was 6 or 7. The difference between that game and these games is that “Barbie: Secret Agent” isn’t stereotyping girls. In “Barbie: Secret Agent” you single-handedly take down an organization of jewel thieves across the entire world. Nothing to do with fashion or makeup or anything like that (except for the fact that you can change your outfit, which is a very small part of the game). Between the ages of 9 and my current age, 13, I’ve been playing game consoles which attach to a TV (Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Gamecube), and a Nintendo DS. I play a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, and first person shooter games, like 007 Goldeneye. I don’t consider video games to be a “boy thing.” Why do these companies even create games such as “The Clique” or “My Boyfriend?” They’re making girl gamers look stupid.
April 13th, 2010 at 6:29 am
As a female gamer, I find it quite ridiculous that there are even games aimed at a female market at all. As a child, tween and teenager, I only had the same options available to me as any boy… things like super mario, pokemon or the final fantasy series struck my fancy. All of which are adventure games with an equal mix of male and female characters of different races, economic backgrounds, etc. in which there is no goal to get a boyfriend or buy the ‘it’ clothes, but simply to save the world from whatever evil is meant to be out there. To me, they encouraged friendship (as the characters work as a team) and also encouraged me to make friends with both genders, simply because they were people. If pixels on a screen could do it, why couldn’t I in the real world? they also encouraged a moral of sticking up for the underdog and not tolerating bullying from others, something that I carried through in my life as a young adult. Games aimed specifically at girls are almost always sexist. They encourage the stereotype that women are only interested in cooking, raising kids and shopping or gossip. There are plenty of videogames that both male and female audiences would play with a female protagonist that were exactly the same as other adventure games… and nobody cared.
In short, if your daughter wants to play a videogame, I’d recommend you pick up something gender neutral like pokemon, final fantasy or a super mario game. They’re not excessively violent, they don’t encourage gender stereotypes and they instill a belief that women are as capable as men to achieve a more noble goal than simply what they’re going to wear to look good for the boys.