The director of the Women's Game Conference says that games fail to attract as many women as men not because of the
games themselves (as "there is such diversity in design"), but because there's "an exclusionary system in place that
uses advertising and magazines to create an environment that is hostile to many women." (Exhibit A: midlife Lara
Croft.)
Suzanne Freyjadis-Chuberka claims that having a few female readers of (or even women staff on) specialist mags only
proves that the most persistent females have nothing else to read (or that they "buy into the lad culture when they
write about themselves.") Of course,
a rebuttal from the major game mags was posted the day after, but a quick
look at the pubs involved would seem to confirm the conference director's outlook on the ads, if not her final analysis
on media as a whole. (Exhibit B: Bloodrayne.)
The issue of women in
games—and how to get more to play them—is not a new topic in the media by any means, but can anyone recall a game
marketing campaign that was geared mainly towards women in the recent past (and not "primarily built on male
fantasies")?
