{"id":2271,"date":"2008-11-12T15:01:27","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T20:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoreti.ca\/?p=2271"},"modified":"2008-11-12T15:01:27","modified_gmt":"2008-11-12T20:01:27","slug":"esac-girl-gamers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=2271","title":{"rendered":"ESAC: Girl Gamers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cover of ESA 2008 Fast FactsThe Edmonton Journal has a story today titled “It took a while, but Ms. Pacman has her audience: Girl gamers take up controllers” by David Wylie for the Canwest News Service (A10, November 12, 2008.) The story reports that a Entertainment Software Association of Canada<\/a> study “found that half of Canadian gamers are women”. (The study isn’t available on the ESA Canada web site, which, for that matter, doesn’t have any press releases after 2007. Time for an update, Eh!) The story also reports that the Entertainment Software Association<\/a> (of the USA?) 2008 Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry (PDF)<\/a> puts the percentage of female game players at 40%. The Edmonton Journal story has some cute quotes from the woman they interviewed for the story:<\/p>\n

“I think womean and gaming are a perfect match,” she (McIndoe) says. “It is incredibly social.” … “There is always something to talk about. And the ladies love to talk.”<\/p>\n

“Things really took off once I met my husband; we didn’t have a lot of money, so we would stay up and play video games together. To be honest, it was him working the congroller and me shouting instructions — truly th beginning of a happy marriage.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story goes on to make the usual points about how games are marketed to me, how there are female-focused tournaments like Fight like a Girl<\/a> (think Halo 3 for charity), and how there are all-girl clans. <\/p>\n

I’m not sure I trust the ESA or ESAC facts, but I suspect there is a trend towards more women playing games, especially social games. What would computer game culture look like if it was dominated by older women? How would they design games?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Edmonton Journal has a story today titled “It took a while, but Ms. Pacman has her audience: Girl gamers take up controllers” by David Wylie for the Canwest News Service (A10, November 12, 2008.) The story reports that a Entertainment Software Association of Canada study “found that half of Canadian gamers are women”. (The … Continue reading ESAC: Girl Gamers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}