www.forbes.com: While men are the more visible participants in the gaming industry, the vast majority of players on the choice-based storytelling platform Episode are female. “It’s a chicken-and-egg situation,” said Cass Phillipps, who has the intriguing title of Director of Story at Episode.
5 comments:
The gaming industry is so interesting. When you look at phone app games compared to console the gender contrast is so strange. I’ve always played video games, online and phone, since I was very young. However, I love storytelling games. It’s obvious from this article, but women look for more storyline/choice providing video games. In some ways, the idea of choice within a video game is like an audience interactive performance. At theatrical performances like Sleep No More, a person get’s to choose which actors to follow and what scenes to watch. In a phone game like Episode, a person gets to pick their outfit, they get to choose which characters to pursue or date or break up with. The idea of choice while playing a game is very appealing. I also appreciated the discussion on “Chick Literature” and how it is actually feminist. There were a lot of interesting things to be learned about in this article.
While I don’t often play video games, I have several friends who are very active gamers and recently we have been talking a lot about sexism in the video game industry. I really like how these games seem to be combating that. In particular, the bigger gaming companies often don’t do a good job of portraying or catering to women, but these smaller indie games are where that progress is happening. I think these smaller companies show that women are larger consumers of gaming than people think. At the end, Cass Phillips mentions working on making more non binary characters, and I greatly appreciate that because I think non binary characters are overall grossly underrepresented, but especially in video games. But I also see the non binary issue as just one part of the fact that many video game characters are hyper masculine or hyper feminine. Overall there needs to be a wider variation in how games depict gender.
I come from a gaming family and have played video games since I got my first Nintendo DS in 5th grade. My parents used to play games like Dungeons and Dragons or Magic, which are very decision based, and taught me how to play them as well. Once I started playing video games, I was always drawn to these decision based games. I think app games that require decision making like this will appeal to the largest platform of users, always. Making decisions and having the game respond to your choices makes the game feel infinitely more personal. Designing a character and truly creating your own journey feels very empowering in games. However, I agree that character design options in some games is very exclusive, as there are only 2 gender options most of the time, and the clothing and look of those genders are very stereotypical. I can never really get my character to look and feel like me, and I hope these games strive to work on this. However, for the most part, these games are way more personal and really connect the player to the storyline.
Its very encouraging to see this sort of progressive action taking place in the gaming industry, as it used to be largely dominated by men and made products largely marketed and tailored for men. Female game designers really have a chance to turn the industry on its head, as is explored in the article, so the more female game designers the better. We need them to bring a new voice to the gaming industry, which has always struggled with female representation and diversity. I think that the gaming industry can lead by example, and if women break into the field fully, it will set a precedent for all sorts of other entertainment and media design fields as well. We need to start making art and entertainment that is made by everyone, for everyone, and this article shows a great example of why.
I find myself extremely torn when it comes to the gaming industry. On one hand, it can be one of the most innovative and creative fields when it comes to implementing new technology and bringing together talented artists of all walks to create a beautiful and enthralling game design. However, the culture of the gaming industry can foster an extremely sexist and exclusionary environment for both female players and female designers at the same time. I found it surprising that most of the players of the app Episode were female-- although it is more of an interactive storytelling mode, this is not often the narrative the media presents concerning gaming. I think it's incredibly important, as the creators of this app prove, to have more women in charge of creating and designing apps and video games to being to host a more female-friendly gaming environment.
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