Now that E3 ‘09 is over, and the dust has settled, we as gaming enthusiasts are finally able to sit back and evaluate every piece of information that was a announced during  the major press conferences.  Some will say this year’s E3 was the year of social networking,  others will say it was the year of home theatre entertainment, and even more will day that it was the year of motion control.  I however, think that E3 ‘09 was the year for sexism.

In the eyes of a game maker or developer, females make up 50% of this world, and even this many years later are still viewed as an un tapped market.   So, how do you entice this percentage into gaming?  Nintendo and EA seem to think they have the answer, and they named it ‘Tween Games’ .  Games designed for girls in the hopes to hook them into gaming, presumably, for life.  These games range anywhere from picking out outfits, teasing hair, and taking care of pets.  Since obviously in Nintendo and EA’s eyes, that’s all we as girls do with our spare time;  shop, make ourselves pretty for the opposite sex, and prepare for motherhood.

What baffles me the most about the conference Nintendo gave, is that the person to announce these vapid and mind numbing games is none other than Cammie Dunnaway.  Say what you will about this woman as a representative of gamers, but let’s be honest, she is what every girl should aspire to be.  Smart, successful and fearless.  (after all, a lesser woman would have turn tail and ran after last year’s E3 reviews of her)  And yet she’s the one pushing young female minds in the wrong direction.

I think back to the days when I was a young gamer.  Was this the kind of game that I would have spent as many hours on like I did with any typical Mario game? I was 12 in 1992, and by every definition I can find that means I was in my prime ‘Tween’ years. The SNES was in full swing, and I was spending every extra moment playing whatever I could get my hands on.  Maybe I simply grew into gaming at the perfect moment.   Perhaps most of the games in the early 90’s were less gender exclusive as they seem to be today.  Of course Nintendo is still very successful at making games for everyone, but more and more there is an undeniable push to divide  gender simply because they are trying SO hard to include young females into their sales demographic.

17 years later, I know that I am the exception to the female gamer rule.  I enjoy just about every genre of video game on the market today.  I engage in online matches of Call of Duty, and I build houses in The Sims, I’ll rid Sera of Locusts and I’ll even clean a few tables off in Diner Dash.  I am all over the map.  I understand that not every girl is going to want to shoot a gun or will enjoy the blood and guts that a lot of games provide.  But I also know that if the only games made specifically for girls and are all about picking the perfect outfit, then the girls will have no other choice than to buy it be to included into the gaming world.  After all, it was made for them, right?  If you make it, they will buy.

I may not be a game developer, or the person that crunches the numbers over at EA or Nintendo, but I do know that there has to be a solution that will make everyone happy.  A solution that plays on the strengths of what it really means to be female.  In fact, Nintendo unveiled a game that I feel fits this mold perfectly.  Women’s Murder Club, a DS game based on the popular James Patterson series  is the perfect gateway into gaming which uses your mind in a more constructive way, as you follow more desirable female characters.  Believe it or not, we’re much, MUCH smarter and hungry for intelligent content than we are given credit for in the gamer sphere.

Female gamers are partly to blame as well.  We have to stop thinking about ourselves as special.  We’re not.  More girls play games than ever before, and the more we make it sound as though we are the minority, then we will be treated as one.  And in this case, being a rarity is not helpful to our cause, it seems to be hurting us more and more every year.

Tags: E3, Girl Gamers