Gender Essentialism in Games

I am deeply troubled by the Jenkins article "From Barbie..." from a gender perspective because of the seeming obviousness with which Jenkins treats boy and girl gamers. Jenkins' entire analysis of the reason the Girl Games failed but nonetheless influenced modern approaches to the female demographic is deeply infected with the specter of sexual essentialism.

When he maps out the differences between the modes of interaction and interests of boy and girl gamers, he is only reinforcing the societal conception that there are essential characteristics of the personalities of each gender. I do not believe that this is a productive way of analyzing the discrepancy between the numbers of male and female gamers. In fact, analyses such as his are part of the very reason, in my opinion, why there still is such a discrepancy. In my experience the divisions that Jenkins borrows from Laurel are vague over-generalizations of what games have been traditionally targeted towards each gender, NOT what each gender wants to do.

With the current generation of games in mind, it is especially important to consider the individual relation to the game as something transcendent of gender/race/class boundaries because, as we have been told over and over again by some of the theorists we have read, games fundamentally reconceive our subjectivity in gamic terms. Hence, there is no reason to simply assume that gender etc. enters into this newly mediated relationship in the same way it does in our outside lives.

Perhaps what would be more productive than simply trying to make games that boys or girls might like would be the creation of some sort of Bogostian persuasive game that challenges gender roles through a gamic structural paradigm free of any gender bias or intent.