Trigger Happy
depressingly adolescent, sexist
According to some American statistics, in fact, the perceived “gap” has already vanished. In 1999 in the United States, nearly 43 percent of gamers were female. Nearly half of online gamers are female. This in particular suggests that the social aspect of online gaming appeals particularly to women users. Nolan Bushnell suggested to me that “the ‘game’ for women is in fact the chat rooms. As a percentage of connected people women dominate the conversation of the Internet.” That might miss the bigger picture of videogame usage among women, but it does tally with the online statistics.
Yet it still seems as though many women are dissatisfied with the available games. “Despite the growing numbers of female gamers, the gaming
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39 Nintendo’s British advertisement for the greatest videogame ever made, Zelda 64, ran on television during Christmas 1998. Its slogan was: “Are you going to get the girl, or play like one?” In a just world, the agency “creatives” who came up with this moronism would be forced to play Tekken all day with my sister, and suffer a comprehensive thrashing every time.
