by Alice Atkinson-Bonasio

Created on: October 13, 2008

The main question I will explore here is whether videogames are gender-exclusive, meaning that females cannot gain pleasure from what is essentially a male-dominated environment/activity. I will analyze some examples of games and characters that have been successful in appealing to both genders and explore the reasons why it is difficult to find empowering female representations within videogames. I will argue, however, that although it may be true that men and women may derive different pleasures from playing videogames, this should not be a reason to condone the propagation of gender stereotypes.

Since the enormous success of Barbie Fashion Designer, which sold over 500,000 copies over two months in 1996 (Cassell and Jenkins 1999;46) many companies have tried to cash in on this extremely lucrative girls' market, with varying degrees of success. Games such as Purple Moon's Rockett titles have been criticized for claiming to offer girls access to technology while simply reinforcing tired old stereotypes (Adams 1999). Games such as Rockett's New School and Barbie Fashion Designer seem to offer a desperately narrow array of experiences, implying that girl's interests do not (and in a sense cannot) go beyond popularity, clothes, romance and make-up. These "Friendship Adventures" are what the "average girl" wants' according to Purple Moon founder Brenda Laurel (cited in Einsenberg, 1998), but Angela McRobbie (1991, cited in Cassell and Jenkins 1999;26) in her critique of female-targeted magazines observed that while male-centered magazines differentiated boys according to hobbies, sports, professional ambitions, and so on, girl magazines assumed that all girls were interested in romance, make-up, cooking, and fashion. Such games would then seem to be sending girls the same message that the publications examined by McRobbie twenty years ago did: That they should stick to "girly" things and leave the rest to the boys.

According to this logic, in the games world Boys get to drive Formula race cars, fly F-15s, build cities, battle dragons, conquer the galaxy, save the universe and Girls get to become queen of the prom?' (Adams. 1998). Would it not then seem reasonable to argue that the intelligent, gutsy, witty and athletic Lara Croft would constitute a better feminine role model than the popularity-obsessed Rockett and her shallow would-be friends? Some critics such as Schleiner (2000) argue that Lara is created by and for the male gaze' (cited in Kennedy 2002) but

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