Note: This was published in the Metior (Murdoch University's student magazine) earlier this year. The focus was on women's issues and Tim and I based our articles views on women and gaming, Tim's article, on how women are portrayed in video games can be found on this blog as well (somewhere). Just put this up here for fun enjoy!
Games and those who play them no longer lurk in the shadows cast by their ugly beige monitors. Gaming has gone main-stream and you would be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't played some form of game (yes even Minesweeper counts). In fact due to the birth of multiple types of consoles, hand held and even 3D gaming platforms the old stereotype of the basement dwelling, hygienically challenged hardcore gamer has started to fade. In its stead are everyday people, young professionals, couples over 50, whole families and of course university students. For these 'casual' gamers and weekend Wii warriors with their extra sturdy screens(10 percent of all damaged TV's in Australia are caused by Wii remotes) gaming is light, affordable entertainment that has none of the stigma it used to have.
However, this stigma still exists in some facets of gaming life, in particular gaming hobbyists and female gamers. Not that the stigma surrounding 'hardcore' gamers is particularly viscous; it certainly wouldn't be near any level such as the stigma surrounding race or sexuality. Still for this lone female gamer these existing preconceptions about female gamers and just gaming in general breaks my 2D pixelated heart.
For me my gaming addiction started at the very young age of eight years old. It was 1998 and gaming was becoming widespread enough for games to appear on small town country shelves, games with basic characters and large pixels from small time developers who would then go on to become industry giants such as Electronic Arts. I was raised on PC games, first generation RTS and FPS such as Age of Empire and Doom. I learned the valuable skills of micromanaging my minions and honing hair-trigger reflexes in dark 2D corridors which would help me later on as games began to evolve into more complex experiences and with steeper learning curves.
By the time I was an awkward teens in the 00's I had found companionship with other people with game addictions, all guys, but that was never much of a drawback. As a very rare specimen in the world of LAN parties and online matches I was both respected and feared because of my gender. Being the only girl in a room full of guys huddled over computers I never felt singled out for being a girl, sure I might have been expected to die a little more than normal and subjected to the sometimes over the top gamer tags (lots of your mama jokes), but the guys were generally accommodating, not just for the chance to pwn more noobs , but for my ability to make their LAN parties less of a sausage fest.
Never in these LAN parties did I ever meet another female comrade, though there were plenty of gamer girlfriends who picked up gaming knowledge by pure osmosis, but never someone who had the same love of games as me and my mates had. Often my girlfriends would look at me in a mix of confusion and horror, for them games were strictly played by guys and any girls who called themselves gamers were flirting dangerously with the being called a tom boy or butch. This idea that in order to play games with boys you had to become one of them originates partly from the trouble women had to go to get accepted into male dominated areas such as careers in business or science. Whilst I'm not saying that women trying to make it in the gaming industry have it easy, in fact women are still woefully outnumbered in game design and the industry overall (women make up just 20 percent of the industry and just 3 percent are programmers) as a gamer I never had the problems that are typically associated with women living in a male dominated community.
At present, the era of gaming as a boys only club is fast fading with the rise of casual games significantly increasing the amount of women willing to pick up a mouse or a controller and see what all the fuss is about. Approximately 52 percent of casual gamers are girl gamers and 4 out of 10 online gamers are girls (not including the guys who say they're girls). Outside the casual market and in the more dedicated users (e.g people with gaming addictions) women make up about 38 percent of gamers across a broad spectrum of games, not just The Sims , but also games like Starcraft, Crysis and Call of Duty.
With the sales of Smartphone's on the rise, gaming has become accessible in a whole new way with applications such as Angry Birds going viral amongst Android and Apple users, many of them women. This is the future of gaming, games on your phone, the ability to play online wherever you are and the increasing awareness of gaming companies for the need to reduce the stereotypes associated with women who play games. With girl gamers such as the Frag Dolls (the first group of girl gamers to win a pro circuit tournament) girl gamers no longer hide in the shadows of their male counterparts, instead they're kicking arse and taking names , a trend that's sure to continue in the future of gaming. 
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