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Years ago, when our family "game machine" was a clunky little gadget from Radio Shack and the best games were of the Pac Man generation, I watched my son become addicted to games. He still is, and he's passed the torch to the next generation, his 12 year-old daughter.
I used to worry about this granddaughter of mine: a girly-girl who could tell you how every Pokemon evolved and knew the names of every Mario character and which games they were hard to beat at. She owns two Game Boys, a Nintendo DS, a Game Cube, and now a Wii. She gets a new game and within a couple of weeks, has moved through every level and has achieved some designation like "master level" with the game.
Lately, I've realized I don't need to worry about my gangly, long-legged, 12 year-old gamer girl. There are a lot more girls like her. She's part of a growing worldwide community of girls who like games. I predict that it won't be long before she leaves Club Penguin behind and moves to some of the girl gamer sites for conversation and community.
There are plenty of girl gamer sites. Thanks to .51 and the article Hitting The Gaming Motherlode: Cerise Magazine, I discovered there's even a magaizine just for girl gamers. According to .51,
According to the Cerise Magazine archive, there are at least 16 issues for you to read, so get busy! While I couldn’t find anything on my game of choice, EVE Online, there’s plenty about WoW, Final Fantasy and D&D, which are now pretty much the classics.
I starting looking around, based on some of what .51 suggested and found Girls Don't Game. Girls Don't Game is written by five women about video games. There's a blogroll of similar blogs and a forum.
Girl Gamers is a live journal community for "girls who love to game." It has 5000 members and posts this in its community guidelines:
Age is not an entitlement.Being older does not make you right, so please refrain from being rude to people younger than you.
I realize that I'm a lot older than my granddaughter, but I have noticed in my rather pathetic attempts to keep up with her in a game that she has skills that didn't exist in my generation. For example, she looks at a screen and not only sees and controls her character, she also tracks all the peripheral information on the screen such as strength levels, scores, powers and tools, and things I can't even take in while concentrating on trying to manipulate my character. She could work as an air traffic controller and see every item on the screen without even thinking about it. So, this old girl won't be making any rude remarks to the younger gamer girls.
Gamer Girls Unite is another community site for female gamers. They say,
The main goal of Gamer Girls Unite is to meet new friends who are as game crazy as we are to share our thoughts and opinions about our favourite hobby: gaming.
The Girl Gamer is a single author blog about games and equipment and shows attitude, baby.
At Games Radar, they talk about the "girl" gamer talk. In The Top 7... Girl gamer stereotypes they say,
For Norris’ sake, we all know that girls play games. They play “hardcore” games, "casual" games, strategy games, adventure games, fighting games, mind games, games games games all the time every day. Can we stop with the “girl gamer” nonsense?
Of course not, at least, not until we overanalyze every last stereotype you're subjected to. If you're lucky enough to be one of these "normals" we keep hearing about - you know, people who just enjoy playing games - be glad that you can't be lumped into a rigid category like those below.
The Secret Life of Girl Gamers features interviews, a monthly podcast and regular blog articles about gaming. This blog, shared by three female writers, recently reported in a podcast from GenCon2008 in GenCon 2008 - Interview #1 - Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone".
I'm heartened by the number of resouces and community for girls who like to play video games. Now, when my granddaughter wants to talk about Smash Bros while the other girls around her want to talk about the latest fashion in jeans, I know that there is a community where she will feel at home and that she will find it soon.
A related post on Web Teacher: SXSWi: Keynote: Jane McGonigal.
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Virginia
