Growing up, I was lucky enough to be exposed to a myriad of games. Some of my favorites included Super Mario, Yoshi’s Island, Kirby, Pokémon, and Animal Crossing. In fact, the first game I ever got on my Nintendo DS was Animal Crossing and it became the game I enjoyed the most. Although all these games were extremely popular at the time, I sometimes received criticism for playing Animal Crossing as it was “a girl’s game.” Being a young kid in elementary school, I never really understood what was so girly about Animal Crossing. Was it because of the cute animal? Or was it because Animal Crossing just wasn’t as exciting of a game?

What makes a game girly or manly? Who is it that determines what games should a person play? These ideas are explored in Shira Chess’ book Ready Player Two. In the book, Chess splits the gaming community into two categories: Player one and Player two. Chess describes Player one to be a person who in bodies the mythical norm, “… white, cis-, heterosexual, young, abled, and middle-class male” (Chess 6). She therefore describes Player Two to be the total opposite of Player One or a person who is deemed “different” by societal standards. Chess categorizes females into this category of Player Two and cites an interview with the author Sheri Graner Ray where she talks about the problem of the videogame industry. “We have a problem where the game industry does not see women as a market. They see women as a genre” (Chess 39). This view not only has created a closed environment for women but has also created a stereotype when it comes to “female” games.

When you think of female games, what games come to mind? For most people, games like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood or Animal Crossing come to mind. I think this stereotype or, as Chess puts it, “designed identity” is incorrect. Chess describes this designed identity as “a hybrid outcome of industry conventions, textual constructs, and audience placements in the design and structure of video games” (Chess 5). The industry convention of associating the label of casual gaming with a female audience has been cited throughout the history of games. In fact, the first serious attempt to market games towards female audiences fell into this association. In the mid-1980s, Nintendo introduced the Nintendo Knitting Machine that allowed players to knit via the Nintendo Entertainment system. Although it was an attempt to sell games to a female audience, I would say it wasn’t a good attempt nor would I classify the knitting machine as a game. Chess describes how the home is seen as less of a place for leisure and relaxation and more of like a workplace to women as they’re usually responsible for house chores. For me I like to play video games for fun and relaxation and I would say the knitting machine was more like work for women rather than a game.

Since the gaming industry is forever evolving and changing I hope to see less gender disparity among gaming. Sure, demographic wise females are more interested in casual games such as Animal Crossing but there are also a huge population of females that play other games that are seen as more masculine such as Dead by Daylight or The World Of Warcraft. At the same time, there are many non-females who enjoy playing games like Animal Crossing. Although change can’t happen overnight, I do like the direction the gaming industry has been moving towards: gender inclusivity in gaming.

Work Cited:

Chess, S. (2017). Ready player two: Women gamers and designed identity. University of Minnesota Press.

This week focused in on player two, but not the player two in the obvious sense, like the Luigi to player one’s Mario. This “Player Two” refers to the women of the gaming world, or the demographic that has been shadowed by gaming being marketed to mainly men and boys for many years. While in the 80’s and 90’s advertising was pointed towards boys, girls got “pink games” to satisfy their gaming tastes, with games like “Barbie” for the NES. “Pink Video Games” have been a thing for as long as I can remember, and were always given to my sister to play while I played “Smash Bros” or “Sonic Heroes”. It never occurred to me back then that games like this were purely designed to capture a certain (neglected) audience, but looking back, the crappy “Mary Kate and Ashley” tie-in games never seemed to have a lot of effort put in. As my sister abandoned games made for girls, I would pick them up to see what they were all about. A classic staple of “pink” games was the dress up mode or minigame. It seemed to be in almost every girl game, along with some having a subplot about wooing boys or fawning over crushes. I wondered, even back then, why these mechanics kept popping up in those games, as every other game I played was completely varied and they all had something that made them stand out between all the rest. “Pink” video games melded together in my mind, to this day I can’t remember the names of some of the games my sister played (which subsequently led to me playing them).  As time goes on, games have started to appeal to wider audiences, but the stereotypes of “girl gamers” have never gone away. With women being harassed in online spaces such as online multiplayer games, being told to leave because “this game isn’t for them” is downright abhorrent, but the “stigma” was set by the market years ago. However, modern game developers have begun to develop games directed towards females, made by females, and coded by females that can be enjoyed by everyone, leaving no one behind. Females having a place in one of the fastest growing industries has been a long time coming, and we saw a very enjoyable game this week with a female protagonist, “Life is Strange”. It seems this game has a story based on the high school life of a teenage girl, yet makes this story inviting and engaging to all audiences, straying away from the “pink” game label and making a compelling mechanic and story for males and females. It is important to remember your audience when creating a game, but pandering to an audience is certainly not the way to do it. Games like “Life is Strange” pave the way towards a better and more inclusive future, where the audience of a game isn’t judged by outsiders or ridiculed by the broader community for its differences. Games should bring us together, after all, and not make us butt heads.

This week, there was a lot of discussion on Female Games and what that means. We read from Shira Chess’ “Ready Player Two” where in the Playing With Identity Chapter, it defined what a Female Game really consists of. It was said that games that are “low risk,” and more forgiving are more appealing to the female audience. Games like FarmVille and Words with Friends were called out specifically as being Female games since they are more social games.

What I want to focus more on however is what was mentioned on page 39 of the book. “We have a problem where the game industry does not see women as a market. They see women as a genre.” By viewing women as a genre, this makes any game that is released for women, the same typical social game that is defined as a “Female Game.” For men however, they are viewed as a market. Games are built to target a market but there are plenty of games that have the ability to target that specific market. When women are viewed as a genre, the games released for women typically fall under the “women genre” of video games. This limits the different variety of games that would be released for women as well as it groups all women into the same target audience. For the market place for men, there are more child appropriate games like “Cars” for younger boys and more mature games like “Grand Theft Auto” for older men. However, for female games, they all fall under the same category. The are all social, low risk, low consequence games.

I want to relate this to the ever so popular game “Animal Crossing: New Horizons.” This game falls perfectly under the guidelines for a female game. It’s social, no chance for failure, low risk and the worst that can happen to you would be an attack from a wild tarantula that forces you to Re-spawn. People who play this game varies from kids, to women of all ages, to men as well. This game seems to fall under the Female Category but who it exactly targets is hard to tell. Since these female game target such a large pool of people, you can never really tell who its real target audience is. However for a game like “Grand Theft Auto” you can tell immediately it is for a more mature male audience. Speaking of audience, why is it that when Men play a “female game” like Animal Crossing, they are not questioned about it but when a female plays a typical male targeted game, they are told that they don’t belong?

Starting in the 1980s, video games have been heavily marketed towards and associated with men. This gender shift eventually brought about what is typically known as the “girl games movement” where game developers and companies began making games targeted more towards women and girls with themes of dress up, make-up, shopping, and other hobbies that were deemed more feminine. In her novel, Ready Player Two, Shira Chess goes into detail on these types of games and what it means to play them and others as a female player. Chess specifically focuses on the idea of mania in girl games in her chapter “Playing with Time”, writing that timed games with levels designed to have quick play times often have the word “mania” in them, such as Cooking Mania or Shopmania. This notion of relating mania to feminine games comes from the stereotype that femininity is extreme and irrational; Chess explains that “[b]y tapping into this notion of “crazy” within the designed identities of Player Two, thee is an implication that the play is guided by and toward hysteria. For hundreds of years hysteria was primarily defined via femininity…” (86). Many of these games targeted towards females use words like “mania” or “fever” because the idea of hysteria is associated with women, not men. Games targeted towards men don’t usually feature such hysterical language.

In her chapter, “Playing with Emotions”, Chess adds on to this idea by explaining that “the designed identity of Player Two is inextricably linked to an anticipation of women’s emotional state, which often seems to bounce between the unstable (the manic) and the nurturing (the necessitated emotional)” (92). Here, Chess brings up the point that feminine games try to show female emotions as either irrational or caring, depending on the context. Chess goes on to explain how emotional labor, such as careers of waitressing, nursing, or care giving, also factor into Player Two’s identity and is used in emotional play to describe how women play video games (95-96). Thus, games developed with these types of emotions and emotional labors in mind are marketed towards women because there is an assumption on how they will play these games. This assumption, among a long list of others, can easily be used to explain why there are “masculine” games and “feminine” games, instead of all games being marketed towards everyone as a whole, regardless of gender.

I love how, for the most part, this class hasn’t really gotten affected by all the recent events with moving everything online. We spent this week on Shira Chess’s “Ready Player Two” ;the book was outlining the so-called player two that exists in modern gaming culture and the origins of the label, and we connected those ideas to the game “Life is Strange”. 

Player two was described as anything that didn’t fit the “usual” average gamer stereotype (white, nerdy kid who doesn’t know how to socialize that well). That original identity was made back in the 1980’s where the game market started to pander towards a male demographic, this is where the divide and the idea of player two started to form. Player two generally was aimed towards women when the concept was being made, but the traits of player two were not exclusively for women. Like games that were not generally an accepted game within gaming culture being treated as fake games/gamers. We talked about the Nintendo knitting machine being a pioneer where the usual formula for games was changing but this was more for the player two demographic. Even though this was a good move to start the development of other game genres which would eventually lead to a large selection of non hardcore games in the present day. This also further reinforced the identities of people who fall into player one or two. Some of the traits of player two type games included: thematic congruence, social, time positive, low risk, creative expression, lush aesthetics, non sexualized characters, avatar choice, low violence, and low harassment potential. From this criteria you can clearly see how the idea of player two is trying to separate certain groups and create a divide with men and women. The present day version of this is the hardcore gamers vs the casual gamer. We have reached a point too where if you look at all of game culture as a whole we have a caste system dividing people and creating elitism where there shouldn’t be. For example how mobile gamers are at the bottom of the barrel in terms of ranking, then console gamers are in the middle and PC gamers are on top in this hierarchy.  

The game we played was “Life is Strange” and this sorta of fit the formula that Chess showed with the idea of player two. In terms of low risk the game gives the player the ability to fix mistakes with time travel, but only to a certain degree. This game is more focused on the main character Max’s relationship with other people, so that can fit in with the idea where it’s less about violence and more about emotions. The whole idea of the player two identity is really dumb in my opinion why do we have to generalize people based off what they like to do with their free time. 

This past week was our first week of Discord class. Our main discussion topic this week was based on Chess’ Ready Player Two as well as an introduction into the game Life is Strange. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to participate as much this week as I had to buy the book again. The primary purpose of the book seems to be discussing the role of “Player Two” and how that role is treated in the gaming community. From our class discussion, “Player Two” is predominantly described as those who do not fit the stereotypical gamer, although it primarily focuses on women. It is the people who do not fit the marketed identity of your average gamer. The rest of the Chapter transitioned to identifying how game designers market their games and what characteristics are common in more inclusive games.

Personally, I found the chart at the end of Chapter 1 to be a bit interesting. The purpose of the chart is to identify whether a game was made to be inclusive for women or not. It displays a variety of traits and commonalities between multiple games and tally them up to create a score of sorts. While I understand the purpose and the parallels it is drawing, I feel that some of the traits are pretty vague and opinionated. This leads to varying perceptions of what the final score should be. In my personal opinion, I feel that Grand Theft Auto, which received a zero in all categories, should fit for a few of the categories like collaborative/social and creative expression. I’d even argue that it’s fairly low in harassment as well since you can play the entire game solo or play online in passive mode which prevents other players from being able to interact with you at all. Also, I generally viewed the game as fairly casual when it comes to time commitment. My friends and I only really got on to mess around and goof around. I never really felt that the game was time-demanding with a sense of mastery and skill. Rather, it was more of a social time waster to hop on and blow some stuff up with some friends. Conversely, my friends and I used to play a lot of Clash of Clans back in high school. The chart identifies the game as low risk and low harassment, yet as you upgraded your base higher, the game became progressively more competitive. You needed a lot of gold and elixir to continue upgrading and building your armies, meanwhile your base is always at risk of being attacked by other players. If a player successfully raids your base, they took over half of your resources, meaning you would lose your only means of progressing in the game. We also saw a common theme where people would intentionally lose trophies, effectively deranking themselves, in order to be able to attack weaker, lower leveled players. In Clash’s case, I feel it was a bit more competitive than the way the it had been evaluated in the text.

The Entire concept that Chess talks about with putting games into the categories of “player one” and “player two” games is a foreign one to me. I had always put games into categories on whether they were “hardcore” or “casual,” two admittedly loaded terms.

The game I found myself thinking about most in regard to Player One/Player Two is League of Legends. The game has managed to capture an audience broader than any other competitive multiplayer game, with a significant gap between it and number 2 (which is currently, at least for the PC market, CS:GO). Therefore, one must conclude that Riot has done a good job with bringing in the more casual players (again, not trying to use “casual” in a demeaning manner). It’s easier to run on low-end PC’s and Laptops than most other, the game has a welcoming and colorful visual style, and admittedly good marketing. It has a bunch of different characters who all fulfill their own roles. All the while, however, Riot promotes their esports scene in an attempt to get people to keep playing and try to improve.

So, which category does it fall under? You could argue player one since it is a competitive game with a large skill gap, but then player two because it does a good job at inclusion and bringing in new players. This raises the question to me of whether a game can be meant for both “Player One” and “Player Two.” It’s a commonly accepted marketing strategy to find a specific target audience for your game. If you find yourself trying to bridge the gap between two completely different demographics, often you’ll find neither demographic feeling just right, and end up having no audience. But League of Legends seems to have tapped into something rather unique there in that it appeals, at least to some extent, to both demographics. One can easily argue, as I would, that the game appeals moreso to the more casual side of things (especially when put in comparison to other similar games such as Starcraft II and Dota 2) but the point still stands that it has attracted. If we were to use the 10 different categories that are outlined by Chess (which are, to refresh peoples memories, Thematic, Collaborative, Time positive, Low risk, creative expression, lush aesthetics, nonsexualized, avatar selection, low violence and low harassment), I would firmly put League of Legends into Low Risk (if you lose a game you just play another), Time Positive (matches are incredibly short for multiplayer games), Collaborative (5v5), and Lush aesthetics. There is also a possibility you can put it into low violence, as it is all cartoon graphics and there is very little blood, with no gore to be seen.

Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros (particularly the newer entries, as Melee tends to be incredibly unforgiving to beginners) is another game that has done this successfully.

If a game were to hypothetically fall into both Player One and Two categories at the same time, then what would that mean for it? Is it possible, even?

In our first week of “distance learning”, we focused a lot on women in video games. We specifically read Ready Player Two, by Shira Chess. Throughout this piece and lecture discussions, we talked about the role of assumptions when it comes to games and certain audiences. For this blog post, I will base my points off of the chapter titled, “Playing with Identity”.

One of the main points that Chess gets to in her work is that video game creators tend to make assumptions about certain demographics while they create games. As she puts it, “I am less interested in who actually plays a game and more interested in the assumptions that were made about a specific demographic when that game was being designed and advertised” (location 791 Kindle). Here, we can establish that video game creators can be biased and even show forms of prejudice when they are creating their work. This is true because certain groups of people are targeted with certain aspects that could correlate to them. In other words, video game creators are not open about games reaching a wide range of audience types, instead, they make assumptions about what a target audience might find appealing, and then carry on with their processes. Chess is trying to prove that it is immoral for game creators to assume what a certain group of people might like. She thinks that this puts a criteria towards who someone should be. What I mean by this is the fact that categorization makes people believe that they should be interested in certain things, mainly because others see it as normal for them to do so. This is a drawback when it comes to creating games because people should not have to compare themselves to others in order to confirm that who they are is acceptable. Just because something/some act is deemed as normal for a certain group of people, does not mean that every member of that group abides by that position.

Another point that Chess brings about in this chapter relates to my first analysis. Chess believes that game creators look at their audiences and then draw inferences about the types of games they would like. To quote it, she says, “the video game industry is increasingly trying to appeal to women and that there are specific game types and styles assumed to be the ideal design for that audience” (location 803 Kindle). Not to be confused, Chess is gratified about women being targeted by the game industry. She believes that this is a sign of progress, since most games are only targeted towards men and boys. However, she does not agree with the approach that the game creators are taking in order to gain their acceptance from women. Assuming something out of a group makes people feel limited with their choices. It makes them feel that they have a certain set of guidelines that they need to follow in order to satisfy their membership in a group. That being said, allowing the players to make choices in the game world about who they want to be is the best approach.

Overall, Ready Player Two is definitely one of my favorite works that we have read in this course thus far. I think that Chess does a superb job describing the flaws that video game creators bring about when they make assumptions about their audiences. Although there might not be too much room for improvement here, a simple way to avoid future backlash is by creating games that do not have a lot at stake when it comes to decision making, and more importantly, allowing the players themselves to be the ones making choices about how they are going to portray themselves in the game.

-Andy Kissoon

Ah, high school. A gathering place of unique personalities, backgrounds, and abilities. Like a miniature world of its own, there exists a special system in which this very creation follows: a hierarchical structure dominated by academic wealth.

It is the core of every educational belief that a correlation exists between a student’s grades and their personalities. More specifically, a student with exceptional grades must have a wonderful personality and a student with lesser grades must be inferior or be on some level of delinquent status. In sharing this thought, adults of the system often neglect the character and stories that make the student.

Various simulation game plays like Life is Strange demonstrates this. Besides the game’s well known mechanics for character development and use of time control, several delicate issues were brought to question. For one, as the player watched the cut scene of the game, he/she senses the symbolism of the storm taking hold in Max’s dream. Followed by a quick demonstration of Max’s sudden ability to rewind time one normal day, the player is able to empathize with the nostalgia of high school life. He/she can discern the characteristics and feelings of represented characters, giving the game a sense of realism.

This is especially true when the idea of a school shooting may occur. Back to the game, Max witnesses honor student Nathan pull a gun out from his bag, she quickly rewinds time to pull the fire alarm off in time. She proceeds to exit the bathroom and leave the building but is faced with the security guard who questions her presence with a demeaning tone. She attempts to pass off that she wasn’t feeling well and her excuse was instantly dismissed by the guard who had already judged her to be guilty of a crime. His response was (I found to be) dismissively rude, as he seemingly assumed that “all high school females liked to use the ‘period’ excuse” and that he knows “what’s really going on” (yes a**hole, do tell).

Max panics further but is saved by a counselor who assures that it is not the guard’s duty to question her at this time. However, the counselor shows concern for your behavior and asks if anything was wrong. Now the player has two options, either to report Nathan or to keep quiet. Both choices yields an unsatisfying result; if you reported you are not believed, if you lie you are also not believed (on top of being judged and told off in a dismissive tone).

The irony here is apparent. Despite the school’s promotion for acceptance and safety, in no sense does the player nor the character feel protected. Mental health of the student is incessantly disregarded as a result of these same adults who “understand the thoughts of teenage youth”. They maintain the illusion that everything is fine, and any abnormalities are brushed off, never actually solving problems. Only students themselves know, which is increasingly frustrating for those who have no power or academic standing.

Now consider if Max were the one to pull out a gun, and she was reported by Nathan, would the counselor not have immediately called the police on her? And is the developers’ intention to represent the male and female characteristics with the way they are? This is certainly a worthy game to play and find out.

Nostalgia is not something immediately understandable to the vast majority of people, but it is something many experience in their day to day life—whether consciously or unconsciously—when it comes to the media they interact with. In deciding things such as which t.v. show or movie to watch, which book to read, or which game to play, nostalgia tends to play a big part. I think the most common manifestation of this concept that I’ve personally witnessed is the idea that, more often than not, people will gravitate toward things that are similar to what they were interested in/impacted by as kids. This is undoubtedly true about the games people buy. In chapter 38 of How to Play Video Games, Shovel Knight: Nostalgia, John Vanderhoef writes, “Because of its intimate connection with our cultural experience, media have historically been linked to strong feelings of nostalgia. This is particularly true for gaming communities, whose adult members started playing games early in life and now associate particular eras of gaming with the pleasures of childhood.” (Vanderheof, 317) The book further discusses how nostalgia influences perception, too. Many of us grew up with just one device for playing games (ie. PlayStation, PC, Xbox, Nintendo….) In most instances, that device will hold an important place to us years down the line and even be a contributing factor to what kinds of systems we buy later in life. While I’ve had multiple different consoles/handheld game devices over the years, the first one I had as a kid was the PlayStation I played nearly every day with my twin brother. Today, it’s still something the both of us use the most often and talk about when spending time together. The only difference is we’ve broadened our taste in games beyond just Tekken and Dance-Dance Revolution—and it’s the PS4 instead of the PS2 with its limited graphical potential, wired controllers and tiny box-shaped t.v. 

The point of this is to say that the things we had as kids influence us as teens/adults whether it’s obvious or not. Those whose first system was the Nintendo (64, Game Boy, DS….) or those who played on PC are probably still gravitating toward those things as adults, too. It’s more or less inevitable. It’s what they’re used to, what inspired them, what took their breath away when they defeated that final boss and watched the credits roll through tears. Interacting with these kinds of things today takes us back to a different, possibly less overwhelming time. This isn’t to say that people’s interests don’t change, but there’s something exciting and even tranquil about delving into things from back in the day with improved technology and further personal life experience. This applies to genres, too. People who were JRPG fans as kids probably still are today, and the impact is probably much more personal than it would be if that hadn’t been the case. Then there’s third-person action adventure, platformers, puzzle games, and so forth. Most if not everybody holds a certain gaming system, gaming genre or particular series/title close to them for reasons which transcend the present moment in which they’re playing them. They spark the joy or intensity of playing those games/systems as kids in ways only they truly understand. Gaming itself, then, is something of a nostalgic practice for a lot of us. Wanting to dive into different universes/play as different kinds of people isn’t a brand new thing for those who’ve held controllers in their hands—trembling with anticipation—thousands of times. Nostalgia is present in gaming to degrees which go beyond what those who don’t play them typically understand. It’s influential, transcendent, and broad in its reach around the world when it comes to interactive media.

Works Cited

Huntmann, Nina B. and Payne, Matthew Thomas. How to Play Video Games. New York, NY, New York University Press, 2019.