More on “girly” games
A while back, I had some harsh words for Ubisofts “Imagine” -series of games, and the recent appearance of the above free magazine has graciously given me an opportunity to explain my position on this issue. I don’t know how well “Imagine” has fared, so whether I was right or not is not the issue.
While the rest of the world doesn’t care, most of the gamer community that does seems to harbor some ill-will against “girly” games and related items as they promote stereotypes. I consider myself a feminist (post-feminist or butler-ist to be exact) and I do think that in order to have a fair society we need to – as far as possible – judge people by their merits and not their gender, ethnicity or whatever other involuntary attribute they might have. This would maximize freedom for each individual and would thus benefit society as a whole without really costing anything. I do not think that the best way to achieve this is to force individuals away from a stereotype, however – that isn’t really much better than forcing them into the stereotype to begin with.
What I am saying is that we need publications like Girl Gamer and games like Imagine since they create a new market for people who are happy with a “girly” lifestyle. Sure, I don’t like it personally and it seems like a lot of female gamers today agree with me, but it’s neither for them nor me.
If anything, I would like to see a little more gender-neutral example as I’m sure there are boys who would be interested in – or benefit from – playing grooming, parenting and cooking.