« ToorCon, SpaceshipOne Launch, and the Long Tail Effect of Media Retail | Main | Reading Vernor Vinge »
October 13, 2004
Kathy's Favorite Video Games
There was an interesting article on women video game designers today. Rather, the article mostly talks about the lack of female game designers and programmers, and puts forth the question of why there are not more of them.
According to the article, women do not like the games available because the games are all graphically violent, with the exception of The Sims. This could not be further from the truth. I have been playing games since the Atari 2600 came out, when I was in elementary school. I was really good at platform games like Jungle Hunt, Keystone Kapers, Kangaroo, and Centipede. A bit later, I got an Apple IIgs and played games like Bard's Tale, Castle Wolfenstein, and Zany Golf. My cousin Lily had a TRS 80 and a Commodore 64, on which we would play games when we were at their house. Video gaming was pretty much a way of life for me.
So far, none of those games are particularly graphic or violent. I didn't play much in high school because of other extracurricular activities, but I started up again in college with SimCity, and Civilization II. In fact, I once spent an entire summer playing Civ II. Then, of course, I had to play all of the other Sid Meier games since then, and now I own a PlayStation 2, GameCube, XBox, and DreamCast. Yeah, I have all the major gaming consoles, as well as a GameBoy, of course. Still, the most violent games I have played so far are WarCraft III and Halo.
The truth is, I'm just not into violent, bloody games like Grand Theft Auto and Postal. But, that doesn't mean there's no games left to play. Au contraire. My all time favorite games tend to be in the strategy and role-playing genre, of which there are plenty to go through. In fact, I do not have enough time to play all the games out there in those genres, to my regret. The Suikoden series are my all-time favorite RPGs, and StarCraft and WarCraft III are my favorite strategy games. I think there are plenty of guys out there who would agree with me that they'd rather play the RPGs and strategy games than the shooters. Last year, I spent six months playing Star Wars Galaxies. My online character was a female Twi'lek. It was sort of amusing when some of my guy friends speculated that I was probably only part of a small percentage of female players. I guess this was true because there were a couple of online players who asked me if I was female in real life. Of course, I didn't tell them. Sometimes, it's fun to be someone else. That's why most people who role-play do so, right?
Posted by Kathy at October 13, 2004 10:21 PM