Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 253)

Trigger Happy
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depressingly adolescent, sexist advertising)
39
—from
any posited “innate” preferences. Now that many more
women are involved in the videogame design process
worldwide, we may see in the near future that this fact,
allied with better marketing, will erase it completely.
According to some American statistics, in fact, the
perceived “gap” has already vanished. In 1999 in the
United States, nearly 43 percent of gamers were female.
Nearly half of online gamers are female. This in
particular suggests that the social aspect of online
gaming appeals particularly to women users. Nolan
Bushnell suggested to me that “the ‘game’ for women
is in fact the chat rooms. As a percentage of connected
people women dominate the conversation of the
Internet.” That might miss the bigger picture of
videogame usage among women, but it does tally with
the online statistics.
Yet it still seems as though many women are
dissatisfied with the available games. “Despite the
growing numbers of female gamers, the gaming
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39 Nintendo’s British advertisement for the greatest videogame ever made,
Zelda 64, ran on television during Christmas 1998. Its slogan was: “Are you
going to get the girl, or play like one?” In a just world, the agency
“creatives” who came up with this moronism would be forced to play
Tekken all day with my sister, and suffer a comprehensive thrashing every
time.