I'm really, really, really sorry to make another topic in the same sort of ballpark that's been going around of late, but I've been chatting with a couple of people on this topic, and decided maybe asking the title question on a gaming site wasn't a bad way of getting a feel.
See, I've been gaming for about 30 years now. My first console was a hand-me-down Odyssey II when I was about four or five. I graduated to more modern consoles not long after that. I understand that by the general forum standards, I'm oooooooold.
But here's the thing. Back in the 80s, almost every kid I knew had a gaming console, mostly the NES. There were a couple of Sega fans, but there was this sort of ubiquity that was going on, where just everyone had one. Even us poor kids. Granted, I say "poor" in a white, middle-class region and not an inner city project, but still. They were advertised everywhere and it wasn't just the boys who owned them. I could chalk this up to sample bias or confirmation bias, but I've still got old VHS tapes and comics and magazines where girls were featured in the ads for video games. Quite simply, even just a few years after the big NA crash, they were a hot ticket. Not a hot ticket for a specific gender, just a hot ticket. That's not to say that they were never marketed to boys, just that they weren't so exclusively marketed to boys.
I was less a gamer during the late 90s, playing mostly multiplayer games with friends when we got together, but I had a 35 hour a week job and school and extracurricular, and I mostly ditched the console and computer games. By the time I was a big media consumer again, the whole "girls in games" thing seemed to be cemented, but I recall thinking of it as basically a joke people said. I guess not, maybe, but like, I didn't particularly know why it would be a thing. But I guess it was a thing. It's just weird to me because it's suddenly treated like a new deal that there are girls playing games.
I've been speaking with a few people, a couple from here, all roughly my age. They all sort of remember the same thing to one extent or another, and some of them are girls who don't remember it being an issue that they were playing video games. It seems like something change, so I'm going to presume that's true and ask: what changed?
I can think of a few reasons, but they're guesses at best and I'd rather not contaminate the answer pool as it were.
For the record, I'm not trying to bust anyone's chops or get on a soapbox. I am just trying to suss out the whens and whys and whatnots of the situation. If I have somehow offended anyone with anything in this post, please take a deep breath and remember that this isn't my intent, and try and be civil. This isn't a polemic, it's a conversation. At least, that's the intent. I hope it worked out that way.
See, I've been gaming for about 30 years now. My first console was a hand-me-down Odyssey II when I was about four or five. I graduated to more modern consoles not long after that. I understand that by the general forum standards, I'm oooooooold.
But here's the thing. Back in the 80s, almost every kid I knew had a gaming console, mostly the NES. There were a couple of Sega fans, but there was this sort of ubiquity that was going on, where just everyone had one. Even us poor kids. Granted, I say "poor" in a white, middle-class region and not an inner city project, but still. They were advertised everywhere and it wasn't just the boys who owned them. I could chalk this up to sample bias or confirmation bias, but I've still got old VHS tapes and comics and magazines where girls were featured in the ads for video games. Quite simply, even just a few years after the big NA crash, they were a hot ticket. Not a hot ticket for a specific gender, just a hot ticket. That's not to say that they were never marketed to boys, just that they weren't so exclusively marketed to boys.
I was less a gamer during the late 90s, playing mostly multiplayer games with friends when we got together, but I had a 35 hour a week job and school and extracurricular, and I mostly ditched the console and computer games. By the time I was a big media consumer again, the whole "girls in games" thing seemed to be cemented, but I recall thinking of it as basically a joke people said. I guess not, maybe, but like, I didn't particularly know why it would be a thing. But I guess it was a thing. It's just weird to me because it's suddenly treated like a new deal that there are girls playing games.
I've been speaking with a few people, a couple from here, all roughly my age. They all sort of remember the same thing to one extent or another, and some of them are girls who don't remember it being an issue that they were playing video games. It seems like something change, so I'm going to presume that's true and ask: what changed?
I can think of a few reasons, but they're guesses at best and I'd rather not contaminate the answer pool as it were.
For the record, I'm not trying to bust anyone's chops or get on a soapbox. I am just trying to suss out the whens and whys and whatnots of the situation. If I have somehow offended anyone with anything in this post, please take a deep breath and remember that this isn't my intent, and try and be civil. This isn't a polemic, it's a conversation. At least, that's the intent. I hope it worked out that way.
