I'm an avid gamer. It's kind of my thing. After a long day at work or school, it's great to come home and play a first person shooter or MMORPG. What's unusual about my gaming is that I am a 41 year old mom who generally plays with my teenagers and their friends. I don't do this because I am trying to bud into their friendships or lives, it is because it is something we have been doing together as a family for about 12 years now and we enjoy the time together.
It all started when I worked at a computer store as the Office Manager there and they started an after hours LAN gaming center where people would come in and play Counter Strike:Condition Zero (CZ). I really had no interest, but the guys there insisted that I try it out. I really enjoyed the adrenaline rush it gave me and the conversations with friends while playing. Being new to that type of thing really messed with me in the beginning and believe it or not all that movement gave me motion sickness, but after awhile that subsided and it was just a lot of fun!
What started then has stayed with me over the past 12 years and I have continued to play CZ and even have my own clan that I started a couple of years ago. I have made many friends online playing this game and others (Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Killing Floor, Guild Wars, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Runescape, SilkRoad, etc...) Just a few days ago I received the new Call of Duty: Black Ops that was just released. We have been playing it for days during my spare time as a family and we love it. What I don't like about it and most of these other first person shooters is that these games are bias. Why do I say that? It's simple, the people that make these games either assume that only men play them or don't care about the women who play, because all the characters are ONLY MALE.
At least when I play one of the MMORPGs, I can select a female character to play, but when I switch back over to play a first person shooter I have to play as a MALE or not at all. What's wrong with this picture. A 2009 study showed that 60% of gamers are male and the other 40% are female (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2009.pdf). Do those 40% not matter? Apparently not, since there was an online petition (http://www.PetitionOnline.com/l33tgrls/petition.html) started many years ago (around 2004) to add female skins to the game Counter Strike, which now has 969 signatures, mine being one of them. Do you think that they have added any female characters to the game? No, they have not! This as well as the newly released COD:Black Ops are one of the many reasons that I say there is a definite bias in the gaming industry, especially when it comes to first person shooters.
While I will still continue playing these games because I enjoy playing them and it is something I do with my online friends and family, I can most certainly assure you that I don't condone this bias. I feel that as more and more women play these games that they should stand up and be heard. That the makers of these video games and others should really consider adding at least one female character to these games, so that the women who play don't have to always choose to play a male character. Isn't this world already male dominated enough when it comes to the workforce and pay. Do we, as women, have to sit here and allow the video game industry to also force us to play as male characters because they refuse to put female characters into these games? I know that there are a large majority of men out there that would say stop whining and don't play if you don't like it. Well that's because they aren't all having to run around as female characters because there aren't any male characters to choose. They don't know what it is like to have the proverbial shoe on the other foot.
I sincerely hope that the makers of these video games and others will take a serious look at the bias they are generating in the development of their games. If they do, I hope they will see what they are doing is wrong and start making a difference by changing this bias and adding female characters to their games. Until then I will just have to make do with what they have given me, another male character, in what seems to be a male dominated world. However, I will continue to speak freely about this bias, in the hopes that others will join me and force the game industry to take a hard look at their bias towards creating female characters in their games.
