So, Her Interactive started with a game called McKenzie & Co., an early PC simulator. The marketing was almost definitely aimed at boys. Developers seemed to be making games solely for audiences of boys. HI was originally a division of ALG, formed to address what Flanagan saw as a gap in the market. HI was founded by Patricia Flanagan, Vice President of American Laser Games, Inc (ALG), in 1995. It all started, sort of, with Her Interactive. Girls’ games were almost all available on CD-rom, based on the idea that girls did not own the consoles that were available in the late 90s. Game developers realized they were missing out on a share of the market, so they went pink and purple (those are the only colors girl children see, you know). “The idea behind the ‘girls’ game’ movement is the idea that girls, no less than boys, need computers at an early age is they are going to be adequately prepared to get ‘good jobs for good wages.’ Characteristically, the girls’ game movement has involved the transposition of traditional feminine play cultures into the digital realm” ( Cassel, Jenkins). The girl game movement was a briefly lived golden era of pink-wrapped PC games made for, and marketed to, young girls. Once there was a whole movement that wished those same things. I do wish that game companies made a bit more room for me, perhaps didn’t advertise their phone games with supermodels in revealing “armor.” I wish that I wasn’t asked to prove myself as a gamer every time I picked up a controller.
Ok, that’s a lie, there’s not much that would make me stop gaming. It’s almost enough to make me stop gaming. He was commenting on the constant negativity, abuse, and neglect that woman-identified gamers face daily. “Being a woman who likes gaming must be like being a worm who likes fishing,” a dude friend of mine remarked recently.
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