I was originally going to use a photo of myself from when I was 15-years old and playing videogames at my friend's house. It then occurred to me that I looked like an emaciated sweatshop child who'd been dropped as a baby. So here's a picture of a cute blonde girl trying to clap her hands during some maths game.
I remember the best way to pique my interest as a child was to show me people having fun while they were doing something.
I started writing in primary school because I saw that my friends were having so much fun writing their own little novellas; I took up the violin because the virtuosos I saw on television always looked like they were having a lot of fun while playing, and it’s the same reason why I started playing videogames. One day I saw my older brother playing with our Famicom, he looked like he was having fun, so I wanted to have a go, too. And as I kept playing, the more he kept handing down games to me that he’d exhausted, and the more my friends would start lending me the games that they had enormous amounts of fun playing. So I got to play the games that they loved – the games that were special to them.
Years on from when I played my first game, wrote my first story, and played my first hideously squeaky note on the violin, my interest in anything can still be piqued in the same way. Show me that something is fun and enjoyable and I might just give it a go. And so it came as a surprise to me when IGN AU published this article a few days ago, detailing ways in which a gamer can get his lady friend interested in videogames.
No, scrap that. I wasn’t surprised. I was appalled. I felt like I was reading a guide from the 1940s on how to welcome women into the workforce, and by the end of it I was expecting a dot point suggesting: “Girls like to maintain their appearance, so make sure you encourage your lady to have breaks while she’s gaming so that she can moisturise her hands – she wouldn’t appreciate having her thumbs callused by the D-Pad!” Thankfully, such a dot point did not exist, but the ones that did exist were pretty darn patronising.
I like to think that girls have taste and a brain. I like to think that they can be moved by a story that is told well, engaged by gameplay that is mesmerising, laugh at humour within a game that is well constructed and executed, and become attached to vast virtual worlds that intrigue and offer the possibilities of adventure and exploration. And I like to think that any girl – or any person for that matter – can become interested in videogames if they are introduced to a good one.
So maybe if we want to get girls involved, we should show them something fun. Maybe we should start off by sharing the games that we love; the kind of games that stimulate our minds and take our imagination to places we’d normally struggle to dream up. Maybe, instead of coming up with a list of ten ways to patronise women and make them feel as though they’re incapable of understanding the kind of gaming that doesn’t require waggling, we should just show them how much fun we have playing great games, and then give them a go. They might appreciate it. I know I did.
Further down, in a picture that got cut out when I photographed this page, there’s a guy wearing an old-man-beret-ish-type hat. He looks like a tosser. I think this is worthy of note.
