Trigger Happy
“Game Grrlz” movement in America that proves that women can frag37 with the best of them.
What we can infer so far is just that these Japanese women simply have different aesthetic tastes: their preferred videogames are in general more quirky or brain-taxing than the straight-ahead genre preferences (driving, fighting, dungeon games) of the men. But notice also that, apart from abstract puzzle games such as Tetris and IQ, all those nominated by women feature good characters: Crash, Mario, Parappa the singing dog, or personable imaginary beasts. These women’s preferred games are also notable for having relatively simple initial skill-set requirements: Tetris, especially, can be picked up in a matter of seconds. But of course, simple controls and rules do not preclude rich and complex gameplay, regardless of the player’s gender.
Now, Tekken 3 and Gran Turismo are wonderful games in their own right, and plenty of women like them. One cannot denigrate their visceral fascination just because it seems to appeal, in general, more to
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37In multiplayer first-person shoot-’em-ups such as Quake III or Half- Life: Team Fortress, a player does not “kill” an opponent but “frags” him. The term derives from the Vietnam war practice of mutinous soldiers “accidentally” killing their superior officers with fragmentation grenades.
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