Gamer Girlz

“Some argue that the core assumptions of the girl games movement involve a ‘commodification of gender’ which will necessarily work against any attempts to transform or rethink gender assumptions which American culture.” (Cassell and Jenkin, 1)

This sentence resonates with me the most from the Cassel and Jenkins article and the recent criticism of the female gaming clan, the FragDolls. The FragDolls are a Ubisoft sponsored female gaming clan that exist under the glossy goal to “represent their [Ubisoft] video games and promote the presence of women in the gaming industry.” The clan has come under fire for being no more then a more active version of a booth babe, and for tailoring their image to the “hot” female gamer stereotype. Ubisoft is also criticized for exploiting the sexuality of the female clan members to promote their video games and thus undermine the objective to promote the presence of women in the gaming industry. In defense of the FragDolls, the image of a young, attractive female has long been exploited by the advertising industry to attract consumers to a product. I’m arguing that the FragDolls are no more an exploitation of female sexuality for selling Ubisoft games then Maria Sharapova is for selling Nike sports attire. Since the formation of the Major Gaming League in 2002, video gaming has become a sport and the gamers athletes. Gamers dedicate their time to perfecting their strategy and technique, they retire young, and the superstars are the heroes for their younger fans and a source of admirations for the rest, in a commercial sense they are perfect platforms for pushing gaming products. The FragDolls get more attention then other clans because of their gender, but their sponsorship and identification with products should not strike such a tender note with feminist critics, underneath it all they are female athletes who are kicking ass on the same platform as male gamers. “We can too, as good as you, and in heels”.

“We female gamers tend to make things worse on ourselves either by flaunting our girl gamer status, or by demanding the industry cater to us and in the long run, all we need to do as my one of my fellow writers would say, is shut the froag up and just play games. “ (gamer blog)

I feel that female gamers struggle with a sense of identity as a female, in fright of conforming to a female stereotype, they feel that the best way to become part of the gaming community is through assimilation of the male gamer ideology and mimicry.

“On the outside, you attempt to conform to an order which is alien to you. Exiled from yourself, you fuse with everything that you encounter. You mime whatever comes near you. You become whatever you touch. In your hunger to find yourself, you move indefinitely far from yourself, from me. Assuming one model after another, one master after another, changing your face, form, and language according to the power that dominates you. Sundered. By letting yourself be abused, you become an impassive travesty.” (Irigaray, "When Our Lips Speak Together," trans. Carolyn Burke,)

The struggle of female identification in a male dominated medium is a long one. In the quote above Irigaray talks of female writing, the struggle for identification within a male dominated language and to create a feminine text without falling into the plots and themes of “silly lady novels” (Elliot, 1856). Even though female gamers now comprise 38% of video game market (ESA 2008), the female gamer and game development community still struggle with the same lack of identification that Irigaray and George Eliot faced in the 18th and 19th centuries: parading in pink isn’t acceptable, but mimicry and assimilation seem to be a cop-out. As a female gamer how do you retain your gender identity without falling into the pits of gender classification? As a female game developer how do create a feminine game within a dominant ideology which is not your own without acting within and reinforcing an identifying stereotype?