When it comes to Video Games,
the most stereotypical image possible is that of a boy, armed with headphones
and a gaming chair, in front of a screen with a controller in his hand.
There was a time when masterpieces like Doom, Resident Evil and Halo were associated with the average thirty-year-old male, violent and fast-paced games that could be enjoyed almost exclusively by one very specific category.
Categoria where the female
gender seemed to be excluded almost a priori, because “video games are not
things for girls.” A phrase that I myself have heard many times, from parents
with their noses in the air and gangs of teenagers, members of tightly
closed-number guilds, in World of Warcraft and real-time strategy games.
Then something changed. Or perhaps
it simply emerged from the oceans thanks to waves of socio-cultural
unlockings, finally free from chains and a good deal of prejudice.
Because the truth is that women
have always appreciated, loved and
played video games, it’s just that this had never been such a
statistically significant fact as it is today, and this makes one think, putting, or rather rethinking,
a world already oriented toward change at a dizzying pace.
Sono the data speaking: in Italy,
women currently make up 42% of video gamers, according to studies and
research by I.D.E.A., the Italian
Interactive Digital Entertainment Association, people with an average age that is
around thirty: it is significant that they make up almost half of
the population in our country.
Ma not only that: if it is true that the
preferred genres of the female audience emerging from this research, namely
puzzle games and party games, are always very popular, I think it is also
worth partially dispelling this myth. First- and third-person action and
role-playing games, with fantasy or cyberpunk roots, to give some examples, have
been genres heavily played in recent years by women: videogames like Deus Ex and soulslike games of the caliber of Elden
Ring have attracted masses of female players who have explored every corner and
pixel, not to mention the undergrowth of fangames, mods and communities made up of
female gamers who have become famous online and who daily offer
gameplay streams.
Are times changing? And the
second question that springs to mind is: where were they before?
I answer with a smile: they have
always been there, we just didn’t want to see them.
It may seem polemical, but in
reality it is a fact, also supported by an overall view that
extends its gaze, our gaze, back in time: let’s think of the
images of Pong and its arcade cabinet
of the time that have come down to us.
Let's talk about 1972, so more than fifty years ago.
