Week Three: Video Games

Although I have two brothers, my gaming experience up until this point has been pretty limited. My favorite game to this day is Tetris, but I remember playing Crash Bandicoot with my brothers on Playstation and taking it very seriously. However, my boyfriend is an avid gamer, committed not only to playing video games, but to analyzing and evaluating them. I must admit, dating him has been a little like going to nerd camp. This assignment to reflect on gender, gaming and education could not have come at a better time.

As a girl who admittedly does not have the patience or determination to get into a game with an extended storyline, I am drawn to games that offer more short-term entertainment--Tetris, Guitar Hero or racing games like Mario Kart. My boyfriend has put some serious thought into finding games that will appeal to me, especially after I expressed my dislike for fighting and shooting games in general. One game he had me try was Pokemon Snap, which is a variation on a shooting game that makes it non-violent. The premise is you are going on a "safari" of sorts, looking for Pokemon creatures to take pictures of. There are several criteria for good pictures, and points awarded for the best pictures. In fact, my boyfriend argues that the regular Pokemon games are a great example of games that appeal to both gender--for boys, it's a fighting/strategy game, for girls, it's a game about collecting cute creatures.

Of course, a game whose sole premise is "collecting cute things" doesn't entirely appeal to me either. Through my experiences babysitting, I've been exposed to several games that are marketed directly to girls. I have to tell you that in general, they totally suck. One is a DS game called Nintendogs whose entire premise is petting and bathing animated puppies. Another is a game that mostly involves choosing a preteen girl character and "buying" clothes for her to wear. Most of the "girl" games I've experienced tends to involve the collection and maintenance of "cute" things, with no real goal or challenge.

The articles for this week seemed to explore two possibilities for incorporating gaming into an educational setting. The first is to use games as a text to look at through a feminist lens. Because both most game developers and most game players are male, how does this affect the construction of video games? In the articles I read for this week (both of which feature the voices of female gamers), many video games alienate female players, either through their stereotyping of female characters, hypersexuality or because the type of game doesn't appeal to female players. Asking students to critically look at the construction of these games, then using the feminist lens to brainstorm ideas for improved games, seems to be a worthy assignment for adolescents. Below are two possible responses, the first from the "game girl advance" site and the second from my boyfriend's blog at Gametrailers.com:

Set up some rules and let the players play with both the gamespace and the genderspace, however they wish. Don't push girls away from games like Tomb Raider just because you're afraid boys won't like to identify with Lara. Don't insert gratuitous sex - or for that matter, violence. Make it *mean* something. Don't bind gender with too many built-in characteristics, but let girls be girls in your game. Allow a lot of different types of female characters, not just thin, pretty, busty ones.

As girls make a more and more powerful influence on the gaming market, will we see fewer damsels in distress and more female protagonists - with autonomy? I sure hope so. I think it's fruitless to try and convince people to boycott games that uphold gender norms, but I think it may be more reasonable to think that gamers as a culture may identify increasingly with flawed protagonists, skinny men, plain women, androgynous people, LGBT characters, and people on general transgressing from the norm instead of supporting it.

The second possiblility for incorporating video games in the classroom came from the second two articles, which suggested playing video games as part of classroom activities as a learning tool. The Labyrinth game described uses an internet-based puzzle game as homework to reinforce math and literacy skills taught at the middle school level. I won't address the issue of technology access here (though it is a concern) but I thought about motivation and engagement as the primary goal of using video games in the classroom. My question would be, aside from the "fun" factor, do video games increase learning and understanding of skills and concepts in ways that traditional pedagogy (worksheets, etc.) do not? To me, both of these possiblilities for using video games in the classroom should only be considered if they can offer a learning experience currently lacking in schools.