Girls stroke Games
June 15th, 2006 by DougA culmination of the last few weeks of articles on the web about Girl Gamers or Female Gamers or whatever the fuck they want to be called. An excellent article, and one which any person wishing to write about GGs should read lies here. Richard displays pretty much the same attitude as myself on this subject, in a sensible way. A breif quote follows:
‘If you absolutely have to put a picture of a regular female gamer, a thumbnail or something is perfectly acceptable. In no circumstances may you begin with anything other than a physical description, moving onto the actual ‘gaming’ part only as time permits - in much the same way that no write-up of Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendell ever goes without a discussion of his latest hair-style, or the pertness of his ass.’
Truely ground breaking truths. Sadly the web has fallen short of following this mans rules at many a turn, and hence we are showered with other articles, each less useful and well written than the last. Muse if you will upon these:
“Confessions of a Girl Gamer” seems to be a popular topic on the web. Several web pages style themselves with this title, a few are examined hereafter. Take the following example. Although this is written (allegedly) by an actual female, do not let your guard down. Although this does seem to want to break down a few of the barriers, through the expression of her love for the E.T game. It is nice to know that there is something that all gamers can talk about, old games that were just great to play, dispite being total shit.
The web though, cannot all be full of such intellectual writings, or in fact writing at all. The next stage in the devolution of late comes in the form of the badly style website, ThumbBandits. Having taken a name I’m sure I have heard before (some TV show?) they assault us multimedially with this, their ‘Podcast‘. Do make sure you take the time to check this out. If you survive, pat yourself on the back.
Shockingly, the government has jumped on recent public awareness of this subject, and put in its own two cents. The following short piece speaks breifly about the heroic measures our overlords are putting in place to make everyone safer. Or have I confused something there… ‘A massive £8.4 million campaign to encourage girls into IT careers has been unveiled by the Department For Education And Skills. The initiative is designed to counteract the severe shortage of women in the games and IT industries and the money will be used by the sector skills council for the industry, e-skills UK, to establish computer clubs across England targeted specifically at 10 to 14-year-olds.’ I’m not sure how people will feel about letting barely teenage women into their industry. Only time will tell.
We must not forget also that websites desperate to cash in on the fact that women can be hot. Websites such as Joystick Junkies. You will need to check this post. I must refer you to the UKResistance post which brought this to my attention.