G.I.R.L. Power?
Winter 2009 Issue
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Bead Sprite Magnets
Interviews
- Industry Interview: Karen Clark, Project Manager at Bioware
- Industry Interview: Britney Brimhall, Himalaya Studios
Articles
- A Gaming Con for Tucson
Author: Robyn Fleming
- This Is Our World Too: Preventing Real Victims of Virtual Rape
Author: Casey Fiesler
- G.I.R.L. Power?
Author: Amy M Hopper
- Killing Grannies, Slaughtering Monsters and Leveling the F*** Up
Author: Oliver Saenz
- I Am a Gamer
Author: Kialio
Robyn reports on Tucson's first ever gaming convention, RinCon '08.
Casey reports on the ways in which virtual sexual assault can impact on gamers.
Amy investigates Sony Entertainment Online's new "G.I.R.L." scholarship program.
Oliver examines the ways in which games apply different moral and ethical philosophies.
Kialio discusses why the behavior of self-identified "gamers" had made her reluctant to embrace the label.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
Odds 'n Ends
This year, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) announced a new program entitled G.I.R.L., or “Gamers In Real Life”. The purpose of G.I.R.L is, to quote the website itself, ‘to positively impact the way females are depicted in video games and create and influence content to be appealing to women’, and ‘to encourage the gaming industry to positively promote women throughout all facets of games, game production and into game management’.
G.I.R.L. is still new and limited in scope and size, as is typical for burgeoning programs of its type. Currently, the program is predominantly a scholarship and internship opportunity developed in tandem with The Arts Institute. Winners of the scholarship are awarded $10,000 towards attaining a degree in the gaming industry, and an paid ten week internship with SOE. With this opportunity comes access to a blog on the SOE site with the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of readers and the ability to interact with some of the bigger game developers in the world. However, the scope of G.I.R.L. is severely limited because of the requirements placed upon it. The scholarship is only available to students enrolled in The Arts Institute, and the award is only applicable at that institution. In addition, winners need to live near both The Arts Institute (in order to attend) and near an SOE Studio.
Very few women gamers are students at The Arts Institute and have access to an SOE studio, and thus very few have the opportunity to attain the scholarship in the first place. It seems like G.I.R.L. doesn’t have a lot to offer the majority of female gamers, especially since the scholarship is strictly focused on the area of game development. SOE hasn’t engaged female gamers as an entity – as they might with other interest groups – in regards to G.I.R.L. yet, and if there are plans to do so, they haven’t been announced. At first glance, G.I.R.L. seems small; a token effort that doesn’t address the problem.
However, that isn’t the case. This program represents a very important step in the gaming industry. SOE is a large corporation and is part of the larger Sony electronics family. As a company, SOE is the major producer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG). SOE games may not have the popularity or player base of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, for instance, but they do have over half a dozen MMOGs out in the market with several more in the works. SOE’s EverQuest defined and shaped the MMOG world, making it what it is and creating the strong market for the genre that exists today. Speaking of EverQuest as an SOE game, it is over a decade old with 15 expansions and is still attracting new players, a feature you will not find with most games of any type out on the market.
SOE, by creating G.I.R.L., has acknowledged the proverbial elephant in the room. As a major company, and part of a major international corporate family that is doing revolutionary things within the gaming industry, Sony Online Entertainment has recognized that the gaming industry has a major problem: sexism. While sexism in the industry, both in terms of the creators of games and the consumers of games, has long been obvious, this formal acknowledgment of it as a problem within the industry is groundbreaking. This is especially true because, in creating G.I.R.L., SOE has not only acknowledged the problem, but taken steps to rectify it. G.I.R.L. represents what has the potential to be the beginnings of change in a very gendered industry.
Still, SOE’s decision to create G.I.R.L. isn’t purely philanthropic; the Pew Internet Project, an internet research project, just released a national study of 1102 teens aged between 12 and 17, which showed that 94% of all females within that age group play video games. This population represents a relatively untapped market in an industry that has long held that males are the only viable demographic. G.I.R.L., by reaching out to young female gamers, means bigger profits and more market control for SOE.
Despite knowing this, I’m still incredibly hopeful about the initiative, and I think you should be too. By responding positively to G.I.R.L., we can demonstrate to SOE that we are paying attention to them, that we are interested in change, and that we want to help them make it. This program may not reduce the hyper-sexualization of female characters or the gender stereotyping of those characters in the immediate future, but it is an important early step. I can envision a future MMOG where character selection starts out with a degendered/desexualized body wherein players can pick and size features such as breasts, hips, and muscle sizes, as well as the gender identity of their character (male, female, transgendered), and where characters can pick the types of clothing they wear so that the same outfit on a male is not automatically pants and on a female not automatically a skirt. The real question is, can SOE envision it too? I’m just beginning to think that maybe, maybe they can.
