Casual Games, or as I like to call them, Time Wasters

Initially I was going to discuss casual, serious and harcore games, three different categories (different from genres) of games.  As I started to write about casual games, I realized I had a lot more to say about this category than I first thought, so I will have to explore serious and hardcore games further later, and will only touch briefly on them here.  Casual games are defined as fast and easy games targeted to mass audiences.  Currently, females dominate this market making up 74% of purchasers and users of casual games.  According to Wikipedia, Pac-Man was the first casual game in 1980.  From my own personal perspective however, I don't recall hearing the coined term 'casual game' until the last few years or so.  I also find it interesting that the demographics consist of so many women today, when, if casual games truly existed 30 years ago, I know the makeup in that time period was not predominantly women.

I recall a time during the early 2000s and perhaps even the late 90s when I was introduced to flash games and a particular website called Shockwave.  My brother was living out of state at the time and he showed me an acronym game that we could play together in a chat room.  Acrophobia it was called.  You entered a virtual game room with multiple players and as an acronym and timer was flashed on the screen, you were tasked with entering clever words of your own creation to satisfy the acronym.  Other players would then vote on the best acronyms invented.  Even writing about it now, it seems quite silly.  However, it satisfied my extremely competitive spirit and allowed me to chat with my brother in a fun setting.  Casual games have evolved since Pac Man to a different beast.  Although I would consider Shockwave games to be casual games, I know that even when I played them, they did not cater to as large of an audience as they do now.  Out of curiosity, and as research for this blog post, I recently attempted to visit the Shockwave website.  I was greeted by a motherfunny NickMom logo and the website design/color is ENTIRELY different from the Shockwave I remembered.  Further digging on Wikipedia confirmed my suspicions about the demographics difference in time periods (the Shockwave crowd in 2000 was comprised of equal gender mix and today the Shockwave crowd is well over 50% female and aimed at moms in particular) . The acquisition by Viacom in 2006 changed the image.  My google searches failed to turn up any of the 'retro' 2000 website design images to show examples, but if my memory serves me correctly, the site had an IGN or Gamespot type feel - black, blue or grey colors, more of a stereotypical tech/gamer website than a bright, colorful mom website. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockwave_(game_portal)

So when, how and why did casual games change?  Without hard evidence research that I can direct you towards, I will give you one of my guesses: social media.  Since I joined Facebook in 2009, which incidentally started as a job requirement, I have played dozens and dozens of casual games.  I think Farmville was the first 'time waster' I started playing as I affectionately call casual games (well, it is a love-hate relationship).  My [female] babysitter introduced me to the game and we would spend thirty minute or so increments tending to our farms, planting things and chatting with each other via Facebook.  These games have a very cooperative communication environment allowing friends to help each other out by 'gifting' needed items, etc. 

Speaking from my own perspective as a busy mom of two boys, the other appeal of casual games is the time investment, or lack thereof, in comparison to more hardcore games.  We moms are busy multi-taskers.  We don't have the luxury of sitting down to immerse ourselves in some fantasy 'World of Warcraft' for two hours while our kids starve, husbands look lost and the house burns down..  Ok, seriously though, I could start dinner, throw a load of laundry in, check on kid's homework, all while leaving my laptop open and immersed in an easy casual game world, periodically checking on my progress or responding to a chat.  Again, uses and gratifications theory is obviously present.  Another launchpad for casual games?  The birth of the app.  

In the age of Smartphones and Tablets we have seen the rise of a new form of software, the 'app', a mini version of games, entertainment, utilities, insert-something-that-will-make-your-life-easier-here.  Pocket-size, portable, easy to load up and easy to shut down.  While there are likely some in depth games available in the Apple or Android store for your Ipad or Google Tablet, the proliferation of casual games in this market is undeniable.  Moneymakers too..developers offer hundreds of thousands of short, addictive games for free but you are subjected to advertising or flooded with offers for 'in-app' purchases, temptations to buy items to help your game progress.  I find it ironic that while I might justify playing a casual game takes less of my time than playing a 'hardcore' game, such as an RPG on a console, that might take me an hour just to get from save point to save point, or fifteen minutes to go through an intense battle filled with cinematic cut scenes, etc. , I am starting to add more and more casual games to my Ipad.  This results in more and more time wasted, so that juggling between four or five casual games, I spend as much time as I would on one hardcore game.  Briefly, what is a hardcore game?

Well, I think I am more comfortable defining the term 'hardcore gamer' rather than taking a hack at a 'hardcore game'.  I think the lines have become a bit blurred today in defining if a game itself is hardcore.  Does the time spent on a game define one as hardcore?  The time spent on mastering skills of a game?  For example, the Mario franchise.  I think any 'casual gamer' could pick up any copy of any Mario Brothers and play for thirty minutes or less and pick up easily on controls and game play.  Then comes the question of how far you actually advanced towards the end goal, etc.  30 minutes of Mario time for novice players is only going to get you through a few levels in a game that typically consists of 8 'worlds' give or take, each with multiple levels, loads of secrets to find, mini games, and various facets to the game play.  So, one would argue that Mario falls into 'hardcore'.  I would define a hardcore gamer though, as somebody who follows the industry, knows the names of developers, has played lots of various titles, multiple genres, multiple consoles, and/or owns a GameStop card/has a subscription to any gaming magazine. http://www.hardcoregamer.com/  I define myself as a hardcore gamer, but depending on current circumstances, i.e. everyday life, I guess I am a 'retro' hardcore gamer..because I can't play what I consider hardcore games anymore.  Super Mario Brothers Wii is not hardcore to me anymore, it is just a fun stress reliever for me to play with my kids..we've already beaten the game so I blow off steam by playing a level or two once in awhile.  

Having given my definition of hardcore gamer first, I can define what I consider hardcore games.  Any game that has enough substance to it to warrant a FAQ or game guide from Prima or other publisher is not casual.  This is where Mario blurs the lines, because to beat any Mario, you need to spend considerable time on the levels and the guides can get you all the coins, hidden items, whatever..I play Mario casually though, something I can't do with any of the Final Fantasy series, even though I have also played most of them to completion.  For the most part, each installment in the Final Fantasy series is its own separate world with different languages, creatures, character, etc.  There are similarities that go across all of them to ease you into each new venture.  Thinking back on this game play and trying to explain to a non-gamer what materia or explaining grid maps for leveling up skills and the categories of skills, the need to have dark magic, light magic, warriors and summons..it's like you could have an entire college course dedicated to teaching someone about the world of Final Fantasy..not that that would have any educational value or progression towards any life goal or anything.  Complicated missions, myriad controls, inventory menus, cinematic cut scenes, etc. are several elements in hardcore games.  MMORPGs are hardcore games and if you know the acronym, you are either a media expert or a hardcore gamer.

In conclusion, I feel like I have already talked too much without even mentioning 'serious games', games for educational use or even military use.  In studying the history of video games, especially looking across the development of the current trend of casual games, what can we say about the theory of technological determinism?  Did the media shape us into the busy, crazy, instant gratification society we are today?  Or does cultural determinism prevail?  That is, has the media changed by the influence of the people and created our current version of casual games to fit who our society is?  I would like to think that we influence the media and that it is created to fit our needs, advertising efforts shift to focus on where people spend their time and what is most effective.  However, I can't help but think of the pink/blue issue, and the role that media has played in undoubtedly shaping our popular opinions about how we view everyday life in general.  It is impossible to grow up without the influence of the world's media pressing in on every aspect of your life.  Unless you are born on a remote island with no wi-fi..but how likely is that to happen?

Just for fun, I will leave you with a list of my current (I tend to be finicky and change ideas quickly with this category, as is the nature of these type of games) favorite casual games:

1. World of Goo, Ipad

2. Animal Crossing, DS

3. Scribblenauts, DS

4. Cooking Mama, DS

5. Kumo Lumo, Ipad

6. any Mario title on DS - I play these casually, except the Mario and Luigi RPG 

7. Angry Birds, Ipad

8. Fruit Pop, Ipad

9. 100 Floors, Ipad

10. Contre Jour, Ipad

  

   

  

  

What a Girl Wants

This is a follow up of sorts to my previous post, Feminist Issues.  I was reading a chapter about video games in my Communications text book, Media Now, yesterday.  I was so perturbed by this excerpt:

"One of the enduring challenges to video game designers has been to develop games that appeal to females.  In the early days, games attracted a largely male audience.  An exception was 'Centipede', an arcade game from the early 1980s that was the first one to be popular among female players.  Some attributed that to the female-friendly pastel colors, but the fact that it was designed by Dona Bailey, the only female programmer at Atari at the time, may have had something to do with it."  -- Media Now Seventh Edition, Straubhaar, Larose, Davenport page 396

The above passage spurred me to write this follow up.  Analyzing this passage bit by bit, the first assumption made is that video game designers are 'challenged' to develop games for females.  So, this means that females don't like the video games that are available now?  Where do they get this information?  I have seen this assumption written many times before, that the majority of video game players are males.  Since I am a female and I have loved many genres of video games for many years, I can't identify with this statement at all.  I also tend to spend a lot of time looking up information online for videos and reading forums.  It is not always obvious what an online user's gender is.  I also have read many women hide their gender online for fear of harassment.  NY Times article about the disturbing trend of online harassment:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/us/sexual-harassment-in-online-gaming-stirs-anger.html

 I will say that among personal friends I have known, there are just as many female game players as male, although of the ones I know, females do tend to stay more quiet about their video game play.  We have plenty of reason to not advertise our interests, it does seem to be a man's world as portrayed and fed to us by the media.  This website was started by a group of female gamers, targeted by online bullying who now publish their attackers words and have bonded together.  I may have mentioned once that I read in a Game Informer magazine editorial that 'girl gamers are rare as unicorns'..a sentiment shared by this author, but are we really that rare or just in hiding?  http://kotaku.com/5782957/im-an-anonymous-woman-gamer

According to the Entertainment Software Association's 2012 survey on the Computer and Video Game Industry, 47% of females are gamers. http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp  The survey was conducted from '2000 nationally representative households'.  My Statistics class taught me to question every survey ever conducted and published and since the population of the US is 3M, I question the 'representativeness' of 2000 households.  Regardless of the true number of female gamers, we do exist, in probably much larger numbers than we have been told all our lives.  Is this cultivation theory?  Media tells us games are for boys, we see boys playing games and games marketed to boys, and we as girls assume this is the 'world' view?

Moving on to the next part of the passage, and this one really burns me up: 'female-friendly pastel colors'..what the..?!  Seriously, who decided that pastels are female-friendly?  Now, I love color, all kinds of color, including pastels.  I don't really remember Centipede being pastel, nor that fun of a game.  It was okay.  The first Mario Brothers was much more fun to me.  It was mostly primary colors if I remember correctly.  I think assuming a girl is attracted to a game, or any product for that matter based on 'pastel colors' is absurd. I wear clothes in every color and do select products to buy based on color..but never pink.  I have nothing against pink, it just isn't my first choice.  I find the idea that we are born with a color predisposition hilarious. Most people don't realize that baby girl and boy color preferences were dictated by..who else..the media and retailers..in the 1940s.  At one point in time, pink was actually associated with boys!  Read the story here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start-Wearing-Pink.html?c=y&page=1  I will buy clothing and housewares, color coordinated for its purpose, as will my husband.  Regarding my video game purchases however, I turn to Game Informer or IGN for reviews, as well as researching within my own favored genres.  I also would not choose a game specifically just because it was designed by a female game designer.  I play games for entertainment and don't particularly care who created it.

So..what do I not like about video games?  Well, I am not too fond of overly violent games, war games and first person shooter type games.  I played Duke Nukem and Doom back in the day.  They got really boring and repetitious after awhile.  I found Civilization somewhat stimulating but did not like Command and Conquer.  To this day, I don't really like the strategy genre.  I have no interest in Call of Duty or Halo.  I bought the Metal Gear Solid series for my boyfriend in high school when it first came out and while I enjoyed watching the movies and him play the game, I did not like playing myself.  I was more into the really involved story games, RPGs, to be exact.  They allowed me to escape into this fantasy world, almost like watching a movie, but interacting with it.  Indeed, my favorite game of all time, Final Fantasy VII was made into a movie.  There were really good books I read as a child, that I was sad to reach the end of and a good video game was like that for me.  With the RPG however, there are typically so many sub plots and side stories, you can spend many hours playing such a game.

I can't speak for all women out there, but I am tired of the media/video game industry spitting out assumptions about who women are and what we want in terms of video games (fyi, for me I never played Barbie Designer nor never would!).  If you want to market games to us..why don't you ask us?  Why don't you employ more of us as game designers?  Why don't you stop perpetuating violence and stereotypes of females in your games that continue to degrade us?

A final thought -- as a busy full time Mom and currently, full time Computer Science student, I don't have nearly the spare free time I once did.  I can't become involved in RPGs too much because I don't have an hour or two to sit down and play.  Casual games are very appealing to me for this reason, I can take a ten minute break, and de-stress on my Ipad with a myriad of countless choices.  This trend is growing dramatically with women as found by the aforementioned ESA survey above.  Next post I will talk about Casual and Serious Games.  I leave you with some of my favorite games:

1. Final Fantasy VII
2. Final Fantasy X
3. Final Fantasy IV (DS)
4. Super Mario Brothers All Stars, especially 3..ok just about anything with 'Super Mario' in it
5. Lunar Silver Star Story
6. Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2
7. Might and Magic Mandate of Heaven? (PC)
8. Sonic the Hedgehog
9. Parasite Eve
10. Legend of Zelda..I like just about all of them I played..starting with the original NES gold case

   

Feminist Issues

So, I mentioned before that I don't consider myself a feminist.  I believe that is because I have grown up thinking it is kind of a dirty word, a radical woman that burns her bras.  When I was little I wanted the husband, the kids and the white picket fence when I grew up.  Today, I am happily married with two beautiful children and my views are fairly conservative.  I like to cook dinner every night, I like to pack lunch for my husband every day and I like the door to be held open for me.  A feminist doesn't do these things, right?

 I do believe in equal rights and that women should not be subjected to sexualized stereotypes in film, video and media in general.  Recently, I watched an enlightening and informational set of videos about female stereotypes in film.  I was really surprised by the Bechdel Test which I had not heard of before. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8JuizIXw8&list=SPF509B2D59CC7037F&index=3&feature=plpp_video

 Check out the videos of top ten stereotypes of women in films here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBBDFEC9F5893C4AF&feature=plcp

The blogger, Anita Sarkeesian, is in the process of making a set of videos exploring the over used stereotypes of women in video games.  After announcing her plans to create this series and asking for fundraising help, she was bombarded by (presumably) the male video gamers of the world.  They threatened her, harassed her, hacked into her Wikipedia page, and did all kinds of terrible, hateful things.  I was really shocked by this antisocial behavior and it made me very curious about the whole issue.  Is this social learning or cultivation theory?  There is no doubt that the media and the video game developer's world is male dominated with over 80% of the creative and developmental career roles being filled by males:
http://gamesindustryskills.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/igda_developerdemographics_oct05.pdf

This male dominated field has given us such video game heroines as: Lara Croft, Bayonetta, insert-name-of-any-female-character-from-a-fighting-franchise-here.  I have played video games for years not giving too much thought to the fact that the women must be busty, barely clothed, in need of rescuing, brainless, or fill some sort of male fantasy role.  I question if the bashing the video game boys tried to pull on Anita is social learning or cultivation because..I believe our world view is truly stereotypical.  Women are still behind men in earnings and social status.  We have made great strides, but we are still considered to fulfill only certain roles.  And we teach our children when they are kids, what roles men and women should fill.  I love Legos - but this video is hilarious and really, right on the money!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmRxGLn0Bk&feature=BFa&list=SPF509B2D59CC7037F

Anita received her funding and actually a lot more publicity because of all the harassment although it was unfortunate.  I would hate to think any of these men sitting at their laptops would actually act on any of the terrible threats they posted to her, but it makes you wonder about the social learning theory.  I hope that game developers take notice.  I hope that women will become more equitably employed in media and the video game industry one day.  I believe we can create video games that are well thought out, fun to play, with deep, involved female characters that are proportionately endowed and not so scandalously dressed.  I leave you with a few of my favorite video game heroines (I am not saying these games are not sexist, as some of them most certainly are!):

1. Aerith from Final Fantasy VII
2. Luna from Lunar Silver Star Story
3. Zelda/Sheik from Legend of Zelda
4. Aya Brea from Parasite Eve 1
5. Jill Valentine from Resident Evil 1
6. Yuna from Final Fantasy X
7. Princess Peach from Super Princess Peach and Super Mario Brothers 2
8. Alice in Wonderland from some Laserdisc game I can't find the title of..
9. BlackRose in dot hack
10. Nina from Breath of Fire III

 

Mom Plays Terraria

I stay in touch with my brother who lives a few hours away.  Facebook, email, texting and online video games makes it a lot easier to say hi once in awhile.  About a year ago, I was pondering a purchase of a PC game..most of my games in the last ten years have been various console or handhelds, but it was just something I wanted to do.  I had heard a lot about this 'Minecraft'.  So I called up my little brother and asked him what he thought.  He said it was pretty cool..but he recommended 'Terarria', thought I would like it and suggested I check it out.

I downloaded the Steam Server, paid $1.99 or some relatively cheap amount, as the game was on a special at the time and downloaded my copy of Terraria.  I instantly became hooked on the game.  Daytime hours were reserved for my online class study and homework but I found myself getting distracted and wanting to play my game.  My kids became aware of the game and me playing it when they would get home from school.  We started a little routine, come home, finish homework, then watch mom play Terraria until dinner time.  

I can't even tell you why we were so obsessed with the game.  My husband certainly didn't understand it.  The game was all about exploration.  It was played from a multi player server and you had the option of joining 'rooms' or hosting a server yourself.  I typically played alone, but occasionally joined my brother, who has much more free time than I do, so he was always several levels ahead and giving me items, armor, etc. to take back to my little world.  There is no end point or battle to this game per se.  You have a character you control around a world with different 'biomes' to explore all with their own unique monsters and materials.  You kill monsters, gather materials, learn to craft wood, and many levels of ores leading up to rare ores.  There are higher level boss battles and new areas to explore but you aren't saving a princess or anything.

My kids wanted me to download the game for them.  This presented a problem since it now cost $9.99 approximately and with two kids..I wanted to figure out how to let them play my game.  Ultimately, I rigged it up so they could play but the results were somewhat disastrous.  I loved playing this game, but I reached a point, after I beat some hard bosses and leveled up my armor to a certain extent, where there were still some really rare items to seek and new things to find, but reality and my duties overcame the time I had to play games.  So now, the kids played exclusively.  They watched videos..long videos on Youtube showing them how to defeat bosses and how to find rare items.  My seven year old wanted to craft weapons at home, pretend of course..but he knew all the weapon names.  They talked about zombies and the Hallow and..it all got to be a bit much.  I found out they were downloading mods..my nine year old figured that one out.  This allowed them to have every item, ore, and anything they wanted in the game.  I asked my son that the fun part of the game was the work you put into getting something..if you could have it all at the beginning, why would you even play?  Then one day, I guess I found out.  

I have caught my kids with their laptops and Ipads in the bathroom.

One day, my nine year old comes racing out of his room, while I was on the couch doing online school work, with tears in his eyes, and he runs into my room to avoid me.  I get up to see what the ruckus is about.  "What's going on?" I demand.  He is laying on my bed with his face buried in the covers and finally looks up with red eyes and says "I got banned."  "What?!" I say.  He proceeds to tell me sheepishly about getting blocked from a particular server he had been playing on with some other players.  Now, both of my kids were aware that they are forbidden from playing in multi player settings online with anyone.  It was my fault as a parent for not realizing they could and they had figured out how to do it.  The sad thing is, my first thought was that he was using my username on the server so it was actually ME that got kicked out of a server.  I shook my senses straight, ran to his laptop, and tried to check all the chat I could find.  I asked him what did he talk about while he was playing Terraria.  Believe it or not, my kids are both pretty innocent and despite my son's intelligence his written communication and typing skills are not that great.  I mean, didn't these people know they were playing with a kid..?  Anyway, that day was the end of Terraria for good in the house.  Despite the crying, pleading, begging and nonsense, I pulled the plug on the game since I didn't know how to control the online playing.

I have never been all that comfortable with the MMORPGs for several reasons I can think of.  The time, commitment and dependability of others on you to play their game is daunting to me.  There are crazy people out there on the Internet and I prefer to view as an anonymous bystander, not a named participant.  I don't want my kids participating in them right now either, it seems to hard to police chat since they are so independent when it comes to their technologies.  I loved the premise of the Lego Universe if they had used NPC instead of making it an MMORPG - that, and there was no way I was going to pay a monthly subscription fee.  They are a fascinating subject to study however, from the social pyschological research perspective to the development of virtual economies and cultures.  Check out more details on that here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_game

There are certainly negative aspects as well.  Video game addiction is real, apparently.  I may have joked over the years about this myself, but I don't exhibit the symptoms talked about here: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/video-game-addiction-no-fun  

I do use video games as an escape, but, if I have homework, chores, or something else that needs to be done, I can shut the game off.  After getting rid of Terraria, my kids found their way to Minecraft.  They used some sort of free version on the Ipad and they were hooked! One day after a verbal fight between the two brothers, my older son came to me and said that his brother said he wanted to put a bomb next to his bed to destroy him.  Now, I know this was a reference to their Minecraft game, but again, I felt like I failed as a parent in the guidance of my children to participate in positive and enriching activities to stimulate their little, impressionable minds.  I felt like his speech was a direct result of social learning theory, even if I didn't necessarily think his behavior would go that far.  I pulled the plug on Minecraft, and my younger son, 7, who also is in love with Legos literally thought his world was ending.  He made comments like "There is nothing else I want to do ever again because I can't play Minecraft."  Terrible sob stories were a part of our daily household conversations for the better part of a month.  After realizing how addicted he was to the game, or whatever kind of hold it had on him, I felt better for removing him from it.  The psychological impacts of these games is far-reaching.  References to the games are still heard in our family conversations when we are out and about and something reminds my son.  The other night, a beautiful, very large, full moon was on the horizon and both of my kids said simultaneously "It's a blood moon!" As a Gamer Mom, I know what these things mean, but I hope to have more intellectual influence on them at some point.  After all, I feel like it was me playing Terraria that started this whole mess in the first place. 

Gamer Girl

     I love video games.  I have been playing for as long as I can remember.  Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? helped me with my geography more than any book I can think of.  Pong was a bit boring, but it occupied time during Summer at my grandparent's house on their big, wooden, console TV.  The ultimate for me and my brother came on his birthday in 1989.  He got a NES and we were hooked.  I was upset that it was him that got the system and not me, but I soon became the 'power player'.  The Super Mario franchise is still one of my all time favorites and today I play with my kids.

Over the years we played many games on many systems.  I played Ecco the Dolphin, Sonic the Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat on a friend's Sega.  Mortal Kombat was one of the first games I can remember making me a tad uncomfortable.  It was extremely gory, especially if you knew how to do the special moves called 'Fatalities'.  I don't recall my feelings on this gratuitous violence at the time, but I know as a parent now, I don't want my children exposed to it.  I also remember thinking how illogical it was to have a female fighting ninja style with swords and similar paraphernalia wearing skintight, cleavage bearing, barely there clothing and super high heels.

When I started college, I bought my first desktop computer for myself.  I loved Might and Magic for the PC and my boyfriend was pretty involved with EverQuest.  EverQuest was the first MMORPG that I had heard of.  Over time, I observed and heard of many things involving these MMORPGs: broken marriages, finance problems, game addiction, and more.  Players would form intense relationships with people they had never seen.  My cousin sold virtual items for real money on Ebay.  One of my all time favorite RPG came into my life at this time: Final Fantasy VII and the start of my obsession with the Final Fantasy franchise.  Aerith was my heroine.  She was appropriately dressed and became the revered mother/martyr of the game. Tifa was inappropriately dressed but seemed to be able to handle herself..Yuffie was useless.  I think this is where I really see the uses and gratifications theory exemplified in my video game consumption.  I actively sought, mostly fantasy escape, in my virtual worlds.  My game play provided me with this escape and so I continued to seek this type of media.  

  I spent hours playing FFVII and started to become more involved in 'gamer culture'.  I had a discount card at Game Stop, subscribed to Game Informer, looked for 'FAQs' on the internet to make sure I got EVERY single item I needed to complete my RPGs 100%.  I remember reading an article in Game Informer back in early 2000 that said 'girl gamers are as rare as unicorns'.  I found this amusing, as I knew more about many video game titles than the staff at Game Stop, who would joke with me when I came in if I wanted a job there.  I labeled myself as an anomaly.

A woman on the cover of Game Informer - properly clothed for battle!

Becoming a Mom meant a lot of changes in my view of the world.  Suddenly, everything was dangerous.  I spent my last trimester of my first pregnancy at home while my husband worked.  I played Final Fantasy X for hours, cried at the end and pre-ordered Final Fantasy X-2.  I also started a small side business on Ebay and realized the profitability of certain coveted game titles I held.  I stayed up to date on 'gamer literature' and would purchase games then turn around and sell them later for a profit.  My most profitable games included Electroplankton for DS, the Lunar series for Playstation, and my original Final Fantasy VII game.  I did not have the same time after baby was born to play my games, so I sold them.  I shunned horror which had fascinated me most of my life.  Parasite Eve, Resident Evil and Silent Hill suddenly became too scary for me to play or be associated with.  So as my needs changed, the uses and gratifications theory was still observable in my behavior, as the gratification I sought changed the use of the video games.

Today, I have two energetic boys, 7 and 9, at home who both love video games.  Probably three or four years ago, I was still the 'power player' in terms of getting past a difficult stage and my kids would turn to me for help in Super Mario Brothers Wii to 'beat a boss'.  Nowadays, my oldest has surpassed me in some cases.  We are both extremely competitive and I don't by any means 'take it easy' on him if we are playing a co-op game.  I have even less time for games now than I did before.  My Communications class has also opened my eyes to some feminist issues that were apparent in my games but perhaps not analyzed by me to such an extent.  I don't want my boys to demoralize women by thinking the over sexualized views of them present in many video games are appropriate.  I have to closely monitor what games are allowed in the house.  I can't say I consider myself a feminist; I am very conservative in my views of certain things.  I am a girl, and I love playing video games.  I do think it is unfortunate the lack of decent role models for women in games but I will say that men can be sexualized in video games as well.  Nobody likes the pale, pasty, thin superhero..give us bronzed, ripped and shirtless, right?  That being said, it is my responsibility as a Mom to educate my boys about the harm any sexist stereotypes can do in our current video game culture.  I found this blog online and I can't wait to watch all her videos - they have not been published yet so I am following her blog and Facebook:  

http://www.feministfrequency.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8I0Wy58adM&list=UU7Edgk9RxP7Fm7vjQ1d-cDA&index=1&feature=plcp