Got Girls? Gaming’s Demographic Expands
“You were beat by a girl!” It’s a schoolyard line we’ve all heard, primarily uttered to ridicule both the guys who lost and the girls who won. With the growing popularity of gaming amongst women, that playground taunt has taken on a new meaning, adopted by the self-professed gamer girls and spoken with pride. Don’t expect these video game vixens to go easy on you just because you have mesmerizing man-junk; they play to win. And sure, guy gamers are overly eager to hurl vicious, misogynistic insults thanks to the anonymity of the internet, but that doesn’t change the fact that girl gamers are here to stay (and pwn).
I am proud to be a part of what I thought was an elite group: a girl gamer. Yes, I like to play Halo 3, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed. I’ve played against men of all ages online. And, guess what? I can hold my own. So when James Scalpello, director of THQ Wireless, says that, “When girls play console games, they have to have gone through a whole other list of things they could have done before sitting down with them… Guys get home, have dinner, and play a computer game. It’s much higher up the list of priorities. To put it bluntly, girls have got better things to do” (thanks to Kotaku for the quote!), I was, naturally, shocked.