Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat

1) "[...] designers and critics alike have continued to find it difficult to avoid essentializing gender as designers seek to identify what types of games girls want to play and reformers seek to promote the kinds of games they think girls should be playing. Often, both sides have lost track of the fact that gender is a continuum rather than a set of binary oppositions: one is never going to design games that adequately reflect the tastes, interests, and needs of all girls. At the 2006 workshop, Cornelia Brunner offered a provocative way out of this essentialist trap, suggesting that we replace male-female with the butch-femme continuum that has repeatedly surfaced in queer theory and politics. Brunner's suggestion may ultimately lead to replacing one set of promblematic distinctions with another, but it does highlight the fact that gender identity is complex, contradictory, fluid, and socially constructed. Designing games as if the category of girl is biological and ahistorical is bound to get us into trouble."

2) "Gender is a fundamental aspect of identity, one which people wish to assert and protect by emphasizing difference. Discussions about gender and computer games have tended to focus on preferences in game play and content. This chapter aims to open up this discussion by examining how players use game play and game design to construct their own identities, including their gender identities. The primary goal is to show that the ways in which young people make sense of games, the ways in which they interpret them, and the way they make their own games is related to how they construct a sense of their self in a social and cultural context. This is important for two reasons. First, it highlights the role games have in processes of socialization---how they are used by young people to establish relations with others. Second, it indicates how games become meaningful. The meaning of a game is not contained within the game itself. The social context in which games are played, interpreted, and produced strongly shapes how players make sense of the games. Context refers to the characteristics of the social situation in which people find themselves at any one time; this situation, however, is always framed by broad trends and relationships, which can be referred to in terms of culture or society."

3) "Why are boy games even necessary? They are violent. They chase an increasingly narrow demographic. They require a lot of energy, time, and skill to learn how to play and offer a limited range of emotions. They copy one another and hog shelf space, limiting new types of player experiences. While they are enjoyed by millions of players around the globe and rival Hollywood for revenue and media attention, their narrow range of offerings attracts a smaller audience than possible."