Travis (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} kyuuketsukirui) wrote,@ 2009-07-04 07:11:00 |
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Video games
This is a really interesting article: That's Not a Real Game: Videogames, Gender, and the Popular Imagination. (Though it is long and white text on black background, so my vision is swimming a bit.)
Not really the point of the article, but made me think about my relationship to video games growing up. I have been a fan of video games ever since I can remember. First it was arcade games (played mostly at Shakey's or other pizza parlors), but then my dad bought me an old Atari 2600 at a garage sale when I was seven. I got an NES in high school, and started subscribing to Nintendo Power, then Electronic Gaming Monthly and others (I think at one time I was subscribing to three or four mags and bought a couple others in the store whenever I could). I've played just about every sort of game over the years and at one time had a collection of video game systems that included every major system and a lot of minor ones. Now I only have a Wii, a DS, and a PS2 (oh, and an SNES in a drawer). The games I play most often are Peggle and Mahjong and stuff on the PC, because I just don't have the time to devote to gaming like I used to. But I still think of myself as a gamer and it's still one of my favorite hobbies.
I can see now how they're marketed to guys (with things like Barbie and virtual babyfactory or whatever as special girl games), but I never really thought of them as a boys' thing growing up. No one ever told me that I shouldn't be interested in them, and I played video games a lot with Erin a lot. (I can also remember times when I thought I was playing video games "with" other girl friends, but looking back, I can see I was just playing them at their houses (on systems that belonged to their brothers) and not actually interacting with the friends themselves. But at the time, I did not have the necessary social skills to perceive that difference.) Looking back now, in high school, the friends I really connected with over video games were guys, but at the time, I never made the connection that gaming was considered a guy thing.
This is a really interesting article: That's Not a Real Game: Videogames, Gender, and the Popular Imagination. (Though it is long and white text on black background, so my vision is swimming a bit.)
Not really the point of the article, but made me think about my relationship to video games growing up. I have been a fan of video games ever since I can remember. First it was arcade games (played mostly at Shakey's or other pizza parlors), but then my dad bought me an old Atari 2600 at a garage sale when I was seven. I got an NES in high school, and started subscribing to Nintendo Power, then Electronic Gaming Monthly and others (I think at one time I was subscribing to three or four mags and bought a couple others in the store whenever I could). I've played just about every sort of game over the years and at one time had a collection of video game systems that included every major system and a lot of minor ones. Now I only have a Wii, a DS, and a PS2 (oh, and an SNES in a drawer). The games I play most often are Peggle and Mahjong and stuff on the PC, because I just don't have the time to devote to gaming like I used to. But I still think of myself as a gamer and it's still one of my favorite hobbies.
I can see now how they're marketed to guys (with things like Barbie and virtual babyfactory or whatever as special girl games), but I never really thought of them as a boys' thing growing up. No one ever told me that I shouldn't be interested in them, and I played video games a lot with Erin a lot. (I can also remember times when I thought I was playing video games "with" other girl friends, but looking back, I can see I was just playing them at their houses (on systems that belonged to their brothers) and not actually interacting with the friends themselves. But at the time, I did not have the necessary social skills to perceive that difference.) Looking back now, in high school, the friends I really connected with over video games were guys, but at the time, I never made the connection that gaming was considered a guy thing.
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