Why Do "Girl Games" Matter? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
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- Опубликовано: 19 окт 2015
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What's the deal with Pink Games??
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Many of us have a special place in our hearts for games from the late '80s and early '90s. This era brought us classics like Tetris, Super Mario Bros, and The Legend of Zelda. But perhaps the biggest thing to happen in this time concerned a very different type of game. For the first time, developers decided to explicitly market to girls. This was known as the Pink Games boom. But where did Pink Games come from? And how did they impact the world of games for the better?
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ASSET LINKS:
0:51 "No Girls Allowed" article on Polygon
www.polygon.com/features/2013/...
1:48 What Does it Mean to be a Gamer?
www.bigfishgames.com/blog/what...
1:48 What is a Gamer?
gamersdecrypted.com/what-is-a-...
1:49 What is a Gamer? How do you define it?
www.giantbomb.com/forums/gener...
2:27 Update of my Nintendo DS Lite (pink!)
• Video
2:33 Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer - with Noodlerella (Nintendo 3DS)
• Animal Crossing: Happy...
3:25 The Awfulness and the Importance of the Dress-Up Game
killscreendaily.com/articles/a...
4:31 Girly Video games: Rewriting a History of Pink
www.theguardian.com/technology...
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MUSIC:
"Oh Damn!" by CJVSO
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"Digital Sonar" by Brink
"Mindphuck" by Known To Be Lethal
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"After Hours"
"Lakes" by Chooga
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"Beautiful Days" by Extan
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"Good Way Song" by Electronic Rescue
"Alice y Bob" by Javier Rubio and Parsec
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"Sleet" by Kubbi
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"Toaster" by Kubbi
/ toaster
"Patriotic Songs of America" by New York Military Band and the American Quartet
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"Lets Go Back To The Rock" by Outsider
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"Run" by Outsider
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"Fame" by Statue of Diveo
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"Freedom Weekends" by Statue of Diveo
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When I was ten I wrote a letter (with my hand) to Nintendo asking for a GameGirl. They replied that GameBoy was for everyone.
+Phoebe Gavin That....is....wow.
+PBS Game/Show that........ is.......... not that bad
+Phoebe Gavin don't worry we have beemo now!
+Phoebe Gavin Well, they aren't lying to you. Girls aren't prohibited from owning a GameBoy.
provehitocobalt When male becomes the default for everything pertaining to the human race, you've got to wonder if all of that's giving the male gender an overinflated ego about their importance, like they are the universe and women are just satellites existing in it.
For young kids these pink games had a large effect because of parents! Parents had little idea of what games were or what kids liked so often picked up the things most clearly marketed to their kids demographic. Thus I got nintendogs (a fluffy puppy game) for christmas rather than zelda (a fantasy game harder to explain to and less intuitively appealing to parents). I think this role of parents in itself is interesting
+basilcake Same for me growing up. I often got these games (along with "girlier" toys) as gifts from family members who didn't know me well enough haha. I think clueless parents are demographic themselves in a way.
+basilcake I didn't get *any* games as a kid aside from the occasional Educational game like Carmen Sandiago. My family had a "no batteries" policy for holiday/birthday presents, so the only electronic things I got as a kid were a motorized Erector set from my grandparents and a Kiddo's-First-Electronics-Thingy that taught me about electricity and resistors, etc. I didn't own a console until my late teens, and yet I still strongly identify as a female gamer - I played computer games at school and video games with my friends after school until I was old enough to make my own purchases.
That's actually something he should have put into his video (slight critique), without that "gender based" promotion, most games wouldn't have been sold, because... Parents.
I think there is generally more to it when talking about things that are economically relevant, as are games. There are normally more side factors than just the negative.
+basilcake And now the 80s gamers are all grown up and having kids. And they remember this lesson when buying for their kids.
Can't wait for people to dislike this because of the title
+Aveline De Grandpré Yeah, It's like bloody clockwork isn't it?
+Aveline De Grandpré Can you explain?
32lizOtuseM More often then not, when a popular show, esp if they talk about video games regularly, begin talking about female issues that video will get a much larger percentage of downvotes, regardless of the content.
Evidently a lot of male gamers have a negative knee jerk reaction to the mere mention of female issues in video games.
+glukolover As a female gamer, I personally dislike videos like this when there is an obvious agenda behind them, no matter what way they lean.
+Aveline De Grandpré Yet look at the like to dislike ratio. Currently it's at 151 like to 16 dislike. So you're wrong.
If girls like playing 'pink games' why should we stop making them? As a little girl my sister and I used to play a barbie mermaid game on an old gameboy and we loved it a lot. If not for that game I probably wouldn't have played any video games at all at that age.
Thats the problem when people do not understand the free market. Industries will only produce things that will be sold.
It's not bad, it let's evolve the technology and there is always a slight change, even in the CoD franchise. Assassins Creed is one of the best examples for that. AC engine and technology an form of story telling has changed so often over time, even if the story is becoming boring. New Boats, new ways of climbing, new Items, etc changed in that franchise.
He has a slight problem with "forcing" new games to comfort his point of view. This not only suppresses artistic freedom, it also influences the games industry negatively... Including Anita.
I think people have to learn that the Games industry is finally strong enough to stand on its own feet, and that the past decisions only helped the game industry to become that huge!
If you want to change a industry, do not enforce "rules" or "guidelines", create own games or become part o the industry to change it.
I have no idea if my thoughts will agree or disagree with you, but I am going to just keep typing until I hit a conclusion.
"girly games" should not be written off as worthless, But it is undeniable that, male or female, they are not popular. When was the last time you heard a girl above the age of 7 say "I want the new Barbie game"? Research shows that females will play more puzzle games, hidden object games, and match-3 games, and I don't remember Bejewled or Criminal Case being targeted at females.
calling them "girly games" can be problematic. Just like females will play first-person shooters or other stereotypically male games, males will play dress-up games or games targeted at females. Why in the same video do you congratulate Target for de-gendering their store, but then condone the term "girly games"? Should we start calling CoD and Battle Field "boy games" now?
+Emily DeShong He condone's the term 'girly games' because in their era, that is precisely what they were. Its less a precise term and more of an old cultural one and that was the clear marketing target of this games, young girls.
With that in mind, the AAA industry and cultural analysts/pundits do sort of call games like CoD and Battlefield 'boy games' just not in the way that they should only ever be played by boys, but again that that they are targeted at boys. (well, more precisely teen boys and adult men).
Ultimately, marketers pretty much created the term and framed this discussion back when these games were made, and it has stuck. I'd say its capitalism's fault.
zeldagirl892 But that is my point. Society says boys like shooting things and fighting and being violent, but it is widely regarded as wrong to say those are "boy games", and I would agree with that. So why is it okay to call dress-up games or games based around fashion or shopping "girl games"? The reason it seems you are giving me is "it is okay because the game industry says so".
Warp Scanner It makes sense that referring to them as 'girl games' in a historical way i guess. I still don't agree it should be used, to describe a whole genre of games, but that makes some sense.
relo999 You obviously aren't understanding what I am saying. Never have I dealt an absolute, in fact my whole thought process depends on me not thinking in absolutes. You also completely skipped over my main point. I will say it one more time, and then I am done with you.
I get that more males will play first-person shooters and more females will play puzzle, match-3s, and hidden object games. That is not where my argument is. My issue is we should not label games as objectively male or female. I don't understand how that is an absolute. I am saying that there are plenty of males who will play hidden object games and plenty of females that will play CoD. That is quite literally the exact opposite of an absolute.
relo999 okay apparently you dont know what an absolute is. saying people from other genders will use products marketed to another will still use the product is NOT an absolute. As for things being gendered, that is an opinion that it doesn't seem either of us will budge on. I just hear too many stories of kids being bullied because they enjoy things that are supposedly for the opposite gender.
Not labeling a game for a specific gender is not an absolute either. It is an opinion where I think labeling things "for boys" and "for girls" and lead to a child feeling confused when they like something the is supposed to be for the other gender. Really the only things you can sell objectively gendered are tampons and condoms, and even then I know girls who carry around condoms with them.
I think the biggest problem with pink games is that everyone, boys AND girls, is afraid to be seen playing them. I played Style Boutique and its sequel for way too many hours and when I walk around with my 3DS, I always bump into a number of people with Super Style Boutique registered to their handheld. But I have never had a conversation with anyone about pink games that didn't evolve into "but I love Zelda, too!", as if that would cancel out the girly-ness. (I do it, too.)
Btw, I never saw Animal Crossing as a pink game, but now that you mention it (2:33), it does concern itself with home and (furniture) shopping. So I guess The Sims would also be a pink game, or influenced by them at least, because you can customize your characters (2:35)?
I guess a lot of casual games nowadays are influenced by pink games, while AAA games tend to shy away from pink tropes.
The girliest games I play are otome games. I'm normally not such a girly girl in real life, and I know otome games present the player with unrealistic expectations of men; but so do dating sims aimed at guys, such as Huniepop (which I love). It's a form of escapism, I suppose.
"Nintendo created a pink GameBoy" *shows a DS*
True.....
In my experience as a child, the reason I as a girl didn't like "girly" games growing up was that I felt like they often had a lot less effort put into them.
Take dress up games, for example. OK, you design your character. Then what? Character design isn't a game mechanic in and of itself. I wasn't interested in playing that. The games were straight up no fun.
Girl games consisted mainly of shovelware, while games marketed to boys were triple A titles. (For reference, I grew up in the early-mid 2000s)
Ikr. Girl games have almost zero gameplay. Most of them are.
And if they had any gameplay it's repetitive af
my sister hates those kind of girly games, she's more into guns and blood, to be honest, she taught me how to play league of legends, i mean, wtf?
+Flaysoft Unless these girls are 3 I don't think these "pink games" are actually appealing to a lot of girls.
For most girls I know I mostly hear them about Zelda and Final Fantasy.
At this point, it's less of feminine and more of girly. As in little girls. The target demographic for the pink games were little girls because back then, games were for kids/teens and not as much for older people.
As a female, I see some of these games as sexist. They build on gender rolls. But that is why we should keep them! Not only does it show that girls are gamers, but it shows what not to do.
Personally I am grateful for pink games. Though they were extremely sexist, if my parents didn't see that crappy barbie game sitting on the shelf of a toy isle one winter I probably wouldn't be a part of the gaming community today.
Can I just say that I legitamitly love dress-up games. Not like, "I liked them as a kid" like, I have a pinterest board so I can find my favourites again and I check websites for them regularly. I mostly keep this secret from other people because it feels embarrassing, but I also think thats a bit messed up and it shouldn't be.
+flishlish It's okay, I play them sometimes, too... mostly if i'm watching something boring on TV and don't feel like playing CoD, Fallout or Dragon Age right at that time instead. It's mostly just to relax/chill...
+flishlish I feel you. I kind of get the same way about horse games. I'm really interested in horses and I want to play a decent breeding/riding game, but there are so many bad ones that I feel like my game preferences are a bigger secret than my kinks.
As someone who played two dress up games seriously, I'm also embarrassed actually.
Dress up games are basically me expressing myself because I couldn't do that in real life. I would love to express myself through fashion irl but unfortunately, I'm broke and had low self esteem. Dress up games are my creative outlet and the way of self expression.
Instead of calling games that pander to femininity "girly" we changed the language to only call games that pander to masculinity "real games". And I think that's important to note.
I played Super Princess Peach for the DS when I was a kid... and I didn't (and I don't) see it as a "Pink" or "girly" game. It's complex, not so easy as you might expect and it's a solid 2D platformer. It's like saying that Kirby's epic yarn is a girly game... Not in the same level as a girl-focused game like, say, Barbie videogames or New Style Boutique (in this one, by the way, the game treats you specifically as a girl, at least in the demo. It seems strange, doesn't it?)
+Xero 125 I agree. The only thing to distinguish SPP as a game for girls is the fact that it stars a female protagonist. Isn't that thinking a little... backwards? Especially since many games with male protagonists are expected to be thought of as gender neutral.
I was surprised to see Nintendogs labeled as a pink game as well. At the time it was popular, I recall both boys and girls playing it with enthusiasm.
+Xero 125 I dont agree with your premise. Not all "girly games" were easy and simple. Have you ever played the Nancy Drew games for the computer? They had a ton of story in them, and were really tough. Sometimes if you clicked on something you weren't suppose to Nancy Drew died and you had to start from your last save point.
+MsNinjani The fact that he's considering games like that geared towards girls is actually kind of funny. and indicative of some level of cultural bias. it;s not even the female protagonist that's the deciding factor either. Games like nintendogs involve caring for things, and SPP focuses on emotion as a key mechanic.
By extension games that focus on emotions or caring for things or even shopping and caring for yourself are feminine. whereas games that center around violence and many other things like skill and execution are seen as masculine. The gender of the protagonist isn't relevant, and I doubt anyone would argue that games like Metroid or Tomb Raider are feminine despite having female protagonists.
Going a bit further expressing emotions is feminine, but killing something is masculine. anything and everything that has to do with direct violence in games is not considered a game geared towards girl, almost regardless of context.
+MsNinjani It's considered a pink game for two reasons: Focused heavily on a female protagonist that is very girly (not a normal trend, even today), and you use hyper inflated versions of the emotional spectrum, mostly ones attached to the stereotypes of female mood swings and PMS.
Seriously, how many games can you think of with a female protagonist that is unquestionably girly? The most popular female protags are almost univerally tomboys(Samus, Jade from BG&E), even if they're well endowed (like Lara Croft), the rest are overtly sexualized like Bloodrayne, Nariko, etc.
Oh, forgot mentioning: SPP is entirely a dildo joke xD
I actually really love this topic, because as a kid I played "pink games" as well as the mainstream games.
I loved the Barbie dress up games, animal and pet games, and dollhouse/life simulators. What I find interesting is that a lot of the mechanics I experienced first in Pink Games I saw later in mainstream, AAA games. For instance, horse related games were a huge Pink Game thing. Look at horse mechanics in games like Shadow of the Colossus, Legend of Zelda, and Red Dead Redemption. One of the most popular aspects of Fable 2 was the dog companion, which reminded me of an old Barbie Pet Rescue game.
Look at how many RPGs involve fashion and house decorating mechanics. Skyrim has thousands of house mods and the Hearthstone DLC added adoption and building your own settlement. It's literally Elder Scrolls meets The Sims. Some of the biggest and most popular mods for RPGs involve creating characters who have to eat, drink, sleep, heal, and take realistic damage. I can't help but notice how similar many of the mods are to The Sims series or any life sim that's often called a "casual game" or "for girls".
All those survival, apocalyptic games on Steam? Extreme life sim. Those romance options? Dating sim. The people who will use weaker armor because they like the way it looks? Dangerous dress up game.
So I actually work as a QA Analyst for a very pink game called City Girl Life.
I think the coolest things about the game are that through it's existence it has gotten less and less "pink" with it's content, but the original UI design and old content is extremely pink. And example is how the original career track were cooking, artist, fashion designer, etc. But since I've been on the project we've added a detective career.
It'd be very easy to say that this is because the game was originally developed by Disney, but is now maintained by RockYou.
Some times the pink-ness is subverted in some cool ways too. We recently ran a mission in which one of the male characters was trying to point out the gender bias of the Super Maria Sisters and Legend of Zebulon franchises (fictional games that exist in the City Girl "universe")
Gender roles are complicated.
My belief is that we create gender roles to help specialize and assign tasks in a society and to establish social hierarchies. In this sense, any gender role is an artifice (especially when you consider how similar women and men are in comparison with other species), but how gender is expressed in our culture defines what roles we inhabit (probably helps with mate selection too because animals do what we do too). Toys were one of the defining ways to establish gender in the 20th century. The gender stereotype between boys and girls, guns and dolls, and even pink and blue were ways to define the "modern" social role. However, the problem today isn't the dichotomy between masculine roles and feminine roles; it's the disestablishment of feminine ideas in general. Today, girls and women are pressured to do the "man's" work, but boys and men aren't pressured to do the "woman's" work.
Video-games today reflect this. The traditional "boys" game (aliens, guns, and magic) has begun to close the gender gap (I'm assuming 35-45% of gamers have always been women), which is necessary to fund a billion dollar project. But for every Animal Crossing, a contemporary "pink" game enjoyed by men and women, there is a Destiny, a Fallout, a Call of Duty, or any number of games where the conflict is centered around something like aliens, guns, and magic. Even this video shows how little our culture cares about feminine ideas because although a Barbie game may be dismissed, thrown away as garbage, and viewed as culturally insignificant, it has just as much cultural merit as a Superman game (Just as a case study, in case you read this far, imagine the perfect Superman game, now imagine the perfect Barbie game, which would you rather play?). Video-game design centers around dominance, and even powerful, feminine game characters are inherently masculine (I'm looking at you Samus).
tl;dr Gender roles are complicated
Heh, so next time someone say's "Man, I could just play a game of character creation." I'll say "Well, there's a series of games like that from the 90's...."
as a girl I didn't realize that I actually write off these games a lot. I considered them embarrassing true and not at all to my taste since I grew up with Mario and Zelda and Spyro. not that I didn't play any dress up games in fact as a 26 year old I still do. but more of a character creator rather than the dress up game maybe that's what I've always been doing. ignoring historical significance because we did something embarrassing shouldn't make it something that's automatically ignored or we pretend it never existed in the first place. It still has significance to the future. if you watch the show Xena now it doesn't have it in their singing moments but without shows like that we wouldn't have supernatural or Game of Thrones or even the flash. it's like when we cringe at outfits we wore in the previous decade and can't believe we wore them at all.
+Canemikat what do you mean we wouldnt have all those shows without xena? how is xena responsible?
I had a blast with a Hamtaro game, it belonged to my little cousin, but the game was actually quite a lot of fun. I completed it 99%. I think it was called Hamtaro Heartbreak. That would be considered a girly game, wouldn't it? I mean, I loved my exploding aliens just as much as the next guy, but people seem to dismiss girly games as awfully bad, or sexist. That game was pretty fun, and that's all it had to be.
+David Del Pozo Filíu But why would that be a girly game then?
But that's just non violent. I don't see why boys can't enjoy that.
I think it's pretty damn mean to claim it's not for boys for that reason.
PauLtus B Have you played it? I think it's a game that clearly targets girls as their main demographic. That's why it can be called a girly game. I didn't say that non-violent games are not for boys! When did I say that? I'be played dozens of non-violent games, if I said this game is considered a girly game, and I didn't point out any of the other non-violent games I've played, it's because this one is targeted to girls.
Can someone who has played it explain it a little bit better?
David Del Pozo Filíu So I can perfectly well see why a more cutesy game would be more appealing to girls. But I don't think it should be called a girly game for that matter.
PauLtus B Why not? If it's more appealing to, and it's targeted to girls, why not call it girly? Is there something wrong with that word?
The other side of this is that "blue games" (games made explicitly for boys) have often been just as condescending and stereotyping of their intended audience. It's this kind of misguided marketing that we have to thank for Earthbound's abysmal "gross" marketing campaign, and the recent Disney acquisition of Marvel as something to strengthen their "boys" audience (princesses, you see, are for girls, and superheros are for boys).
Man, I hope we can shake THIS legacy soon. Gendered marketing is responsible for so many current ills.
+Jacob Driscoll Thanks for sharing that POV, I hadn't thought of it that way....
I played a barbie game in elementary school, and it honestly wasn't that different from a lot of other PC games marketed to first graders. I didn't care that I was a boy; we had the game, I enjoyed it, and I played it. the real reason I don't play most of these so called "pink games" is because I want to spend time and money on other stuff, otherwise they aren't actually bad games most of the time. the way they are so strictly gendered is a bad thing though. for example, I know more female Zelda players then male Zelda players, and also see the same pattern online. so Legand of Zelda seems to appeal to women more often than men, but it's not branded a pink game because it's recognized as a game men also enjoy. this whole sperate spheres things we see with Deus Ex being made specifically for male gamers, for example, while other games are specifically made for female gamers is redundant. they could honestly sell more games if they managed to market to a gender neutral market the way zelda did.
opportunity cost. that's the reason I don't play most pink games.
Pink Games totally matter as it can help girls get into more gaming. I loved the Sims, played Sims 1, 2, 3, played a bit of 4 but didn't enjoy it. From playing the Sims I could get into RPG series like Saints Row, Fallout, Borderlands and Mass Effect (which is my favourite game), and puzzle games like Portal 1 & 2 and episodical games like The Walking Dead, I even played GTA III when I was 8 years old, and was so excited to play GTA V, I even love Assassins Creed because of the history behind it. I think that yeah, earlier pink games undermine females as just people who enjoy the colour pink and play dress up games. Hell I'm 20 and I still love dress up games and such. So they're so important to help other females who enjoy gaming but don't know where to go.
I loved Super Princess Peach as a kid. I remember seeing the commercial for the game as a kid and absolutely loved it. It was hillariously awesome. a Military bootcamp with a bunch of little girls in princess outfits moving around the field.
But I think people hate on Super Princess Peach, not because its "pink", but rather its "girly". Its about emotions, its about a princess who looks and acts like a stereotypical disney princess. And people seem to equate that as bad.
One can be "girly" and still be badass. You can wear a dress and kick ass. Pink isn't a non awesome color. Look at Gambit from the X-men comics. He's got a full on pink torso and yet he was LOVED by 90s boys.
From what I've seen, most "pink games" were shovelware: low-quality, low-budget games marketed in a way so ignorant parents buy them for their kids.
Also, I don't think it's fair to classify Nintendogs as a pink game. Nintendogs was gender neutral, it didn't advertise exclusively to women, in fact the commercial actually showed a boy talking to his TV talking about how he's a hit with the girls now that he has a Nintendogs game, not unlike Axe commercials. Fun fact: I had a male friend back in high school who collected the different versions of Nintendogs.
I'm so glad you took the time to talk about Super Princess Peach because that was one of my favorite games as a kid. It flipped the way I thought about an already established character, and used one of the best mechanics for a DS game I've ever seen. I remember being made fun of, too, for playing a "girly" game. When I let my friends play it for a bit though, it didn't matter that it pandered to girls in some way, what mattered is that we were having fun.
It's so difficult to talk about works like these that come from sexist mindsets because there are people who really love them. My non "traditional gamer" girlfriend absolutely loves those dress-up games and on top of her just getting enjoyment out of them, it makes it easier for us to talk about gaming when I can relate making and gearing a character in an MMO to her making a character in a flash game. Personally I'm always a fan of not discouraging the creation of games like that, but instead encouraging games like Mirrors Edge or Transistor that feature female protagonists and gameplay that might appeal more to women that don't enjoy a lot of mass market games while still being made for everyone to enjoy.
+Ryan Arnold Mirrors Edge was one of those games that had me both conceptually and mechanically hooked. I love surviving and trying to win the game without killing anyone. It was a truly amazing game and gave me the same rush as a lot of the Metal Gear titles. :D
***** I know, right? It seems like they're already putting too much of an emphasis on her outfits in the promo stuff. I hope they're putting the same amount of effort into the rest of the game. :/ It's EA... crap.
***** Most of the promo material seems to be just snaps of the main character in a plethora of bitchin' outfits. I haven't seen much in the way of environment or mechanics (old or new) advertised. It's a nitpick, but her outfit wasn't why anyone loved the first game. It's like they went, "Oh, girls are playing it. Let's play up her clothing! Girls like clothes, right?", neglecting the fact that they already have the female audience without pandering to pretty Polly dress-up tendencies.
I'll still play it, but I wish I knew what *game* I am going to be purchasing, not what outfits I'll be wearing. lol That's all. It's a small complaint, but I hope it's not indicative of more pandering to come. I'd hate to get the game and find that it's being... 'overmarketed' to me and my demographic (despite that we already loved the game without it), if you get what I'm saying.
As for the catch up gaming, I hear ya; I'm still trying to get through everything I bought during the last Steam holiday sale... lol Damn you, Steam!!!
Was seriously not expecting my face to pop up on this video haha
Excellent video as usual c:
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I remember a cousin of mine being obsessed with this game-collectible website called Neopets. I'm not sure what happened to it, but in retrospect, I realize that such "girly game" was likely one of the first web-based social games I heard about. (which is not to say it was _the_ first. It was just for me)
+Arturo Gutierrez Yeah, that game was pretty big in the late 90s. I played it myself mostly every day.
+Arturo Gutierrez i played that game myself, didnt seem very girly to me. at least not at the time.
Firaro It was pretty much just a kids game/website
neopets is still going strong. and it's not really all that girly. it can actually be a lot of fun when you get into it.
The funny thing about fashion simulators is that that game design aspect went on to be used heavily in tons of games today and is an aspect that (in my opinion) is heavily sought after in games, regardless of gender. I don't really know if they directly influenced the element of character customization in today's games, but I think that would be interesting if they did.
Pink games were my entry point into the gaming world. My most vivid memories are of playing Detective Barbie and the Mystery of the Carnival Caper (which to me at the time was an amazing game). Now, videogames are both my hobby and my academic discourse. Without those "pink games", it might have been difficult for me to enter the world of gaming, as during the 1990s it was so gendered. These games aren't just a subgenre that can be pushed to the side, but a very real way in which a now large portion of videogame consumers entered the market.
************this video was in my suggestion bar! in 2018!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so thankful to have found you PBS Game/Show! New Sub here!
I downloaded an emulator for Style Boutique the other day, that's a dress up game framed in a buisness / tycoon style game progression. You spend your time dressing up your clients whilst managing your shop funds and purchasing stock. I get a similar thrill out of games like Roller Coaster Tycoon, Minecraft, The Sims etc Creativity and the illusion of productivity are central to my experience playing those. I wonder how pink they are.
I used to love the game "Barbie the explorer" for PS1 when I was a kid and it wasn't a dressing game, it was an adventure game and it wasn't bad.. Even my brother used to play it with me. It was a little hard cause you got to find a way to avoid the multiple glitchs it have.
Also crash bandicut, crash team racing, bomberman and other old games weren't really exclusive as I saw them. They were appealing and colorfull.. I feel that games haven't get notably inclusive in these years. We have more war games each year and games like GTA gets new releases. I don't say they are bad. It's each creators vision and creativity and I'm ok with it. it's just an observation. Actually I don't play as much as when I was a kid but I still play sometimes Alice madness, Fire emblem, lol, and others.
Nice video.. it made me remember my childhood and how I used to make my father buy me so many pink games that I thought I would like but ended up playing the ones my brother get instead hahaha
btw sorry for my english
this video reminds me of "Otome" game genre in japan or dating sim games for a female audience.
Growing up i alway had to watch my brother play games. Watch him play hours of metal gear solid and sonic, etc. my family never said I couldn't play, i just assumed those games for only boys. When i finally got my own system, all my games were pink games. Mostly mary kate and ashley or barbie games. Looking back i realize my family never upfront told me i could play none pink games and I don't know if they would have cared what games i played. I just went based off of the stereotypes i saw in the stores and tv. I assumed that I was suppose to stick to the pink games, until the day i got introduced to my first not pink game. It was my natural reaction to the social pressure that was influencing me.
I find it difficult and frustrating when I want to buy girly games at a store like Harvest Moon, or Nintendogs, because I find myself time and again come up with some excuse to the vendor to make up for the fact that I'm buying a pink game. I consider myself a gamer and I want other people to see me as a gamer but when I buy and play girly games I feel like I'm reinforcing the stereotype that I'm a girl so I must only play pink games.
What about *HuniePop*?
+Paradox Acres LOL
I don't think that the pink 3D is a pandering to girls. They have a full range of colors and cases and the pink is just one of them. Since the turn of the century pink has been female coded but when offered as one option of a rainbow of colors that could appeal to anyone you can't really call it pandering.
My first pink game was the sims.
I agree. I think the sims is considerably targeting girl gamers but simcitys target is more gender neutral.
+HeirOfGlee I bought Sims for myself and my sister played it soooo much.
Sims is a pink game because it appeals to the more social-interaction oriented and nurturing nature of females.
+Pine Straker Ms. Pac Man is a bit of an oddity as it was essentially an outside company's expansion pack for Pac Man called Crazy Otto, which was presented to the cabinet distributors (Midway) as a stand-alone game. Midway then substituted Pac-Man assets and made it into the Ms. Pac Man we know.
So funny enough Namco didn't really have any sort of hand in its development or marketing beyond laying down the foundation Crazy Otto built off.
+HeirOfGlee Yeah I'm wondering which games get to be included in the history of pink games. Are there play mechanics more associated with pink games which we can use to round in games? Because then if we say breeding game mechanics are typical of pink games then we can throw Pokemon into the history even though it wasn't marketing specifically at women.
What do you think?
(And I think games can totally be part of several histories).
My first was that Angelica game on the PC. I LOVED that game.
so this actually is the crux of my thesis! which, admittedly, focuses more on "purple games" - games like Chop Suey or the Rockett series. to my understanding, from books like From Barbie to Mortal Kombat and its sequels, purple games were designed AFTER games like Barbie Fashion Designer, and were designed to be games for girls, but without pandering. unlike pink games, they came around because 90s parents were concerned that boys' exposure to PC and console games would familiarize them with computers and by extension, the STEM fields.
they gave we girl gamers whose parents didn't approve of us playing Sonic or Mortal Kombat an interesting loophole - they're disallowed by nature of being games, sure, but they're also pink and have Barbie or girls in them, so I guess it's okay?? they taught us that there was at least some space for us to play, in ways we wanted. I love the idea of dress-up games as a gateway to avatar customization - I'd never thought of it that way.
and now I guess I have to make a video about this too because I have Many Thoughts but thank you very much for this perspective!
I loved playing barbie games when I was little. But I also loved playing pokemon and fighting games. Of course I don't play Barbie games anymore,obviously. But I still play online dress up games for time to time.
Do kids talk to their parents? I'm a girl, well, I'm a woman now. I asked for Zelda/Pokémon/TMNT/Lego and that's what I got.
Half of games may be purchased by or for females but "gamers" aren't nearly 50% by actual play time. If you asked my wife if she is a gamer she would probably say she is, but she'll spend half an hour playing a game and then lament that it's boring and hard.
What is wrong with having a gendered toy section? Boys and girls happen to, in general, like different things. If girls want to play with trucks or play CoD go ahead, but why is it so awful to market certain things to different genders?
The marketers actually have conditioned you to think that. Some girls despise Barbie. They do it to sell more toys, make more money. It also promotes unhealthy stereotypes about people. Boys have to be stoic, Girls have to be housewives, etc.
I really appreciated your point about "Pink Games" influence in modern games and character creation. I never thought of it like that, but my SO tells me that the first thing she thought of when customizing her Fallout: New Vegas character was a pink game she played as a kid. I guess my point is that Pink games are many girl's and women's introduction to games and they also shape how those players interact with features in the more recent games they play as adults. Great video! I also never thought about how when I pick the more aesthetically pleasing armor in Skyrim, I am basically playing a feature similar to a "pink" dress up game. I'll never look at it the same way again!
+8jb65 Yep or even something like Dark Souls where matching your outfit gives you a stat boost. Totally a pink game mechanic -jj
Lol he said gameboy but showed a DS
I refer to the DS as a GameBoy.
+David Robert The Nintendo fanclub considers all hand-held Nintendo devices to be gameboys. It's like all facial tissues being Kleenex.
We talk about "pink games" and "boy games" but I wonder sometimes if this distinction between games is actually not as clean cut as we would like to think and may all be a matter of how the game is marketed. Thought experiment: if certain "boy games" were marketed differently would they have been considered "pink" in the public eye?
For example, Pokemon and Kingdom Hearts are both games with large female fanbases and on initial inspection of their aesthetics, they don't seem to fit cleanly into the archetypical game marketed as "only for boys." Had Pokemon or Kingdom Hearts been marketed as "pink games" would public opinion have considered them as being "pink?"
I agree, pink games should not be forgotten, but in many cases they were not given any depth or attention to detail there boy counterparts were. this leaves them as empty under developed messes that in many cases just encouraged false stereotypes.
They have there place and should not be forgotten, but they should also not be praised as quality or complete works. instead they should be a reminder and a fuel to MAKE more complete gender neutral or female games.
But I personally found most of them boring. Except for mystery and search games. where you would solve a puzzle or find items to progress a story.
most of the time they were short and the ending unsatisfying, but the exploration and getting to the end was actually fun.
Myst did a lot of that, though it is not thought of as a Pink game. And games like the OLD Might and Magic games or black and white also straddle the line with there themes and feel. Not as true with the newer Might and magics where you control a given hero.
Being able to grow a cutsy faerie tale army was kinda girly but not to the exclusion of being able to be a viable army. Maybe I just enjoy watching faeries bash undead.
+Tristra Gyopsie lol I too love my Heroes of Might and Magic. There is something very satisfying about the Rampart army. Yes, I want to tear my enemies asunder with unicorns. Who wouldn't?
I work at Target and I can very definitely tell you that the toys section is still divided by gender. First couple aisles are infant/toddler toys, next 5 aisles are all girls dolls and easy bake stuff, next 7 are all LEGO, Nerf and action figures. Very VERY segmented.
People bash on Super Princess Peach for weaponized emotions, but come on, is it really all that sexist when it's portrayed in such an awesome way? It's like saying Punch-Out Wii and G Gundam are totally racist. I mean Tequila Gundam for example looks way awesome for something that otherwise seems so racist.
The Rockett computer games were a super big part of my childhood and almost no one has heard of them. They were this amazing branching story and world exploration game (I admit, mostly played out through cut scenes) that really made me think about the importance of choice and interacting with other people. I also loved a lot of the Barbie computer games from the 90s including the one where you could design and print out your own barbie clothes. That was sick!
Pink games were the first games I ever played and I love them. Just as some are nostalgic for pokemon, mario, and zelda, I'm nostalgic for my pink games. Too bad this is the only place I've ever been encouraged to talk about them :/
Hey, I'm a guy and I loved the Pink 3DS D:
Also I do think that there is no problem making "pink games" along side "guy games" as long as they are marketed equally. They are people who enjoy playing different varities of games. My GF who plays Dragon's Dogma and the Final Fantasy series also enjoys Disney Magical World and TsumTsum. As long as someone enjoys these games, there is no reason to stop making them.
Also , as a note Target still DOES divide their toys isle by gender. The only thing they changed was the paper on the back of the isle is now a light brown instead of Blue/Pink, and isles no longer are labeled "boy/girl toys". Their is still the regular lego isle and the "girls Lego" isle. There is still the regular nerf and the "girl brand" nerf guns. There are still all the action figures in one set of isles and the dress up dolls in another set of isles.
peaches "emotions" where just thematic names for powers (she doesn't get sad you activate sadness)
and i would argue character creation has it's origins in D&D character sheets as the mechanic originated in RPGs (you also usually have little control over what outfits you wear at the start) for games like APB you might have a case although character customization was already very much a thing at that point
noting against pink games, i made some epic songs in 'lego friends' and my pony won all the races and beauty awards
I loved this video! I was a huge Barbie game girl player. As for what is a girly game, is measured by masculinity. If a game has significant character development or detailed storyline is considered "girly" since it focuses on relationships. For example, COD and Battlefield is marketed to high masculine people and Dragon Age and Mass Effect is marketed to non-masculine people (or girls). As a female gamer, I like the representation and the overall selection I have now.
I have a big problem with bunching the Peach game together with all those Barbie atrocities.
The Peach game is not a pink game, it's an actual game, it just happens to have a female protagonist and traits more centered around femininity. It's not about shopping and playing dressup.
Another issue I take is with branding the fashion games as "character customization", mainly because doing so is wrong.
Character customization happens as part of a fictional narrative wherein you have some meaning behind why you have a char look a certain way and where there's goals to achieve. These games however just have the superficial hollow aspect of changing your appearance without any of the meaning behind why you'd even want to in the first place, which is the actual important bit.
I remember very clearly that I had a Hamtaro game and also a game based on Angelica from Rugrats as a kid. (admittedly the latter was because the game itself was terrible but 6 year old me didn't know that) Those were probably two of the first games to actually challenge me in a way that made me want to come back. I played Pokemon of course too as a kid but I never found that it challenged me. It kept me playing even when I didn't think I wanted to anymore
"They are simultaneously inclusive and exclusionary" Like absolutely everything that is created for a specific demographic. Humankind is not composed of clones, every group, be it based on gender, hobby, occupation, age, or anything else will always have media that both is exclusionary (to establish, develop, and differentiate group identity) and inclusive (by giving opportunity to participate in larger society to groups otherwise separate, be it on their own accord or not).
The whole sexism debate always gets me to one question: What happens if a person actively fighting sexism finds out their daughter genuinely likes the color pink?
You have a really weird mental image of "a person actively fighting sexism." I'm pretty sure liking the color pink isn't increasing the wage gap or whatever.
wait, nintendogz was for girls? ...uh, cya later then.
I came to drink GamerGate supporter tears and wait for my Sushi delivery. And the fishy rolls are almost here.
I think the biggest genre that can be considered "Pink Games" now a days are the hidden item games, there are a ton of them and are pretty popular.
I love how Pokemon is a bit of both. Get through the first three gyms or so, and you can devote your time to contests, breeding, decorating your base, and more. You can do girly things like pet your Pokemon, and you can do boyish things like battling.
One of the things that frustrated me about a lot of these sorts of games is that you couldn't "beat" them. The game doesn't end when you win, but when you get bored. The game stops when you've accumulated so much stuff to make your house prettier that it all becomes meaningless. We don't get to be heroes. We don't get to defeat the villain. We just wallow in our own materialism until we get bored. I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions to this, and I agree that we should preserve these games. However I hope that games marketed at girls in the future don't make these same mistakes.
The Secret Path games were so great when I was a kid. They focused on girls from very diverse backgrounds and you could uncover memories and stories that were important to each character. 10 year old me learned a lot about different cultures from those games. Also, shout out to my girl Rocket. Rocket's New School was pretty cool, too.
Two things:
I have memories of playing a few of the barbie games, as I had a younger sister who would get stuck and need help. The Gameboy game was HARD. The C64 had a mostly dress up game that got a boring. I did like the face it had voices in it. I would call them bad games though, not because they were aimed at girls, but more likely because they were rushed licences games.
The 50% of gamer being women thing is interesting, but more so if you break up the data into game types. There were games where the audience was roughly 50/50, but apparently RPG are 80 guys and 20 girls FPSs are similar, where as hidden clue games are the opposite. My mother and wife would be classified as " hard core" gamers due to how much time they play games, (which might be more than me), but the games they play are mostly candy crush or similar on their phones. I, on the other hand like my Skyrim and other RPGs. I'm not saying that candy crutch isn't a game, because then you'd have to say tetris isn't a game.
When it is said that "50% of all gamers are women, therefore this triple A title has to be more inclusive," is missing the point. No amount of changes or targeting towards women will make the women that just want to play candy crush play them, because they want to play candy crush. That's not to say that I am against having diverse characters in games, having a diverse range of characters keeps things interesting. It is a bit misleading to use that stat as a reason when closer inspection of the data doesn't support it.
Where does the term "Pink Games" comes from? I don't think I've read it anywhere except for one section in a website like Doll Divine and Rinmaru, and it was about games being themed the color pink, not about "girly" games.
my first game was a "Girl game" it was a dressing game for linux in year 1998, and the only character I remember was Ranma 1/2. :D
Let's not forget that the Rock Band vocals system was pretty much ripped from Harmonix's previous game Karaoke Revolution (which you could call a Pink Game.) Let's also not forget the role that Dance Dance Revolution and Just Dance have played/are playing in the rhythm game genre as well.
1:04 So, due to the crash of 1983(though the period was a little longer), videogames started to be categorised under TOYS?! SO THAT'S HOW IT HAPPENED!!! Parents all over the world think of games as toys even today.
Child of Light was a fun game that probably fits into the pink game category. It's about a girl who gets sucked into a fairy kingdom and has to save it from evil.
It has a really nice watercolour artstyle and soundtrack that you'd probably never see in a game marketed towards guys.
My wife calls all those deep character creators "Pretty Polly Dress-Me-Up". I don't argue. I love designing my Shepard in Mass Effect, or customising each and every soldier in XCOM (so many hours, so many dead PCs).
I'm not really sure what to say about this. I normally get pretty heated when people start talking about gender issues because so many of them use logic that is completely broken. You actually made some sense here, I think my brain just needs some time to process it all.
A pink 3DS is not a problem in itself, there are guys who would love a pink 3DS. The problem is how it's presented. The pink 3DS gets bundled with Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, Style Boutique etc. It's the combination of colour and typically female-targeted games that causes issues. It'd be awesome to see it bundled with games like Street Fighter, Super Smash Bros, Zelda or Fire Emblem, but I doubt we'll see that anytime soon.
Here's why everyone groans when they hear "pink games": They assume whoever made it made it for the sole sake of making a cheap game and making it look like some little girl might accidentally think it looks like fun, otherwise known as shovelware. None of the games you mentioned, aside from most barbie games, can be considered shovelware. They're closer to my little pony friendship is magic, intended for girls but appealing to more than just gender stereotypes so they're enjoyable by people of either gender. I doubt even the most extreme of Bronies would deny that my little pony was made for girls."
Well, if I had to consider games that seem more girly, I'd say Hamtaro's Ham-Ham Games and Super Princess Peach are my absolute favorite games that lean in that direction. Ham-Ham Games was actually quite fun and I loved replaying it over and over to get the flags and talk to all of the hamsters as a kid. And then there was Super Princess Peach, which did seem slightly girly I guess but it definitely seemed to fit into the Mario genre quite well. It was difficult in its own ways.
One other one had to do with some Bratz games for the Gamecube. While I don't like the Bratz nowadays, I really liked those games as a kid.
i remember from my childhood one game i liked was a 2d platformer that was specifically marketed towards girls. but really it played like a 2d platformer made for males, just with more pink and other things marketing it as feminine. it has been so long i forgot the name of the game.
personally i didnt really grow up with this idea of gendered games really, we had neopets, CTR racing as well as other games and me (male) and my sisters played. later i added halo and again me and my sisters played. recently me and my sister preordered halo 5.
this whole idea of gendered games and girls not being gamers is something new to me, i am learning from you and feminists like you who rebel against the idea. interestingly you have taught me about a societal norm that i didnt know about before interacting with you, then telling me that societal norm is stupid.
i do play games more intensely than my sisters and female friends, but i also play games more intensely than my male friends usually. this gender line that you tell me is ridiculous, i never knew existed before you told me it was ridiculous.
anyway back on topic, from my perspective i dont see boy games, i see games played by both boys and girls and then i see girl games, which are generally low quality games marketed at stereotypical little girls.
This also skews development teams to make every game super macho and ignore nuanced game mechanics that would seem "feminine". It makes no sense why you can't pick up trash in fallout 4's build mode. And why can I somehow magically make advanced gun turrets but I can only make a gross broken toilet? Making friendships and co-operating or changing aesthetics are not female activities, they are human activities that can be totally captivating in games!
Are there modern pink games? Like in this century? I would say that the Sims games are the closest to the definition of pink games, but then again they are marketed towards everyone, so I don't know.
I'm not sure who was the original target audience in Japan, but for what I've read, _Neko Atsume_ could perhaps be thought as a modern pink game in the case of the western market.
+MOTat18 No point in gendering art nowadays.
Nintendo put a lot of work into advertising Style Savvy: Trendsetters, which is about as pink as you can get. Most so-called pink games are too awful and low-budget to catch the attention of the gaming community, due to a lot of them being tie-ins, but they definitely still exist..
+MOTat18 "Are there modern pink games? Like in this century?"
Yes, Barbie-Anything. They're mostly for the Wii, though they show up on some consoles and computers. My niece loves Barbie Horse Adventures, though that game is several years old.
The smarter route is to insert "girlie" elements into a mainstream game, to get a larger female audience for your game. Things like home decoration (or even having a home to go to), building a family, various costumes for the player and companions to wear, or social interaction with the communities you're supposedly saving during your adventures. This can appeal to players, regardless of gender, while expanding your market and adding gameplay to the game. Chocobo breeding in FF, or the family building in Fable are examples of this.
I loved that Barbie game on the NES. Played it with my sisters in the afternoons after watching Sailor Moon.
I'm wondering what gets included in the history of pink games. It's easy to include the games that are "clearly" marketed to women but what about other criteria?
• Is Pokemon a pink game? Pokemon X/Y had breeding/pet sim mechanics that are associated with "being pink," so does it get to be part of the history?
• Are The Sims a pink game? Many women I know who don't play videogames mention "oh but I loved The Sims." If the demographic of a game is made up of more women than usual despite not being marketed specifically to women then can it be pink?
• Or what about Triforce Heroes for the 3DS--if we tell ourselves that at least some of those Links are girls then can it be a pink game too? (Same question goes for the upcoming Zelda on WiiU). Does a game get to be pink if the women playing them engage with it "in a pink way"? (And would ppl of other genders be able to engage in a game "in a pink way". I don't know specifically what I mean by "in a pink way" but am wondering what agency players have in defining whether a game fits the history).
Just saw Inside Out.
Cutting it a little short with your comparison.
Every girl I knew used to have nintendog, Its actually the only reason I wanted a ds back then. When i was like 7-8
During the 80s and 90s the games that my girlfriends liked was the Zelda series and Final Fantasy series. I think of those games as girl games or gender neutral, depending on the specific game.
"Pink games" shouldn't be marketed only to girls the same way combat games shouldn't be marketed only to boys. It's a personality preference, not one based on gender.
Dress up games should have male models to dress like shooters have female soldiers.
Marketing these games as "girl games" is excluding male gamers who enjoy "pink games."
I'm a 23 year old woman and, to be honest, I LOVE the so called "pink games". Maybe it's because I'm really into character customization. That doesn't mean I don't sometimes play "boy games".
I would say that the game "child of light" is a girlie or pink game. it follows a young girl's maturation, focuses on story and advanced literary narrative like the example given, and more focused on the beauty of the landscape over the violence of the rpg.
This, however, does not make the game exclusive. It is delightful to see what should be a pink game successfully sold as just a game.
The first time I experienced playing with a gamer girl was in COD MW3...months after its original release. After that i noticed almost every server had a gamer girl. It looks like the gender barrier is already gone in India
it is a little difficult to get your point.
was it dont forget about pink games because they are part of history?
I want to create my own Magical Girl RUclips cartoon someday.
4:32 "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
I love your idea that "fashion" games are like early versions of avatar creation. I've always seen them as something similar to avatar creation in the Sims. However, this line of reasoning does seem to imply that these games should only be considered legitimate if someone who isn't a girl (or interested in fashion) can relate to them. And using emotions as a weapon in Super Princess Peach may be a really interesting mechanic, but the game still relies on the "women are emotional" trope. In both cases I think you're right to point out that these games aren't given the legitimacy they deserve, but both arguments seem to slightly miss the mark.
Asking whether a bunch of games that aren't AAA first person shooters are pink games seems a bit weird since the problems of pink games is more about the marketing & presentation rather than the gameplay & mechanics.
I agree with a lot of this video, Pink games are definitely a part of gaming's history, and while it's important to see the problems with them (being marketed towards girls specifically & enforcing female stereotypes), it's just as important to see when their mechanics or design is done well (the use of Peach's emotions as a gameplay mechanic in Super Princess Peach was innovative, even if it was sexist). As a woman going into game design (I'm a student studying Video Game Design), I hadn't thought about it that way. I might have to go pick myself up a copy of some games that I avoided due to their "pink" nature just to see if, past the sexist overtones and ridiculous assumptions about women, they're actually decent games.
Something springs to mind; I desperately wanted transformers for my birthday, but since I played with "girltoys" (I didn't have much else duh) nobody but my parents would give me such boystuff. I can play with both! I could play the sims *and* Baldur's Gate or Diablo or whatever. Why does (or did) my wanting to play with "girlgames" make me unsuitable for "boygames"? >_
Anyone know what that barbie game near the beginning is called? Cuz I remember playing that as a kid. It was pretty fun.
Beauty and the beast just a girl's game? When most of the game is spent as the asskicking beast? Even saying Beauty and the Beast is a movie just for girls is pretty flawed, that movie kicked some ass.
I think that these games should be just as received as others. that being said, these games, like all old school games, are building blocks that should be honored and remembered. they should be shown as a stepping stone in gaming history, and shouldn't be downgraded, despite gender role conflicts...
While I agree with most of what you say in this video I'm always suspicious of these types of videos as they have the tone of someone trying to push an agenda.
Don't mean to perpetuate that stereotype that all women care about are clothes but jfc at 5:40, that dress looks horrendous
+sigh824 LOL... no worries, I think the female brain is more than capable of caring about clothes, makeup, AND non-"pink" games.
I think pink games of 2015 encompass most of the indie game franchise; it's taking mechanics that were considered specifically feminine and making them into more universal and neutral in recent games.
Great video, Jamin. Just want to say I thought Super Princess Peach was a legit platformer. I'll concede that the emotion mechanic can be considered sexist, but I liked how you pointed out that it was innovative in its own unique way. It was!