No, I'm not talking about game quality this time. This is an attempt to look at a broader stroke in the gaming world. In particular, maybe we should call games something else. Certainly this type of idea has a red flag around it but it's silly to ignore any idea simply by reading a tag line. So, before laughing yourself out of your chair and moving you may want to look at this piece on our gaming nomenclature.

Past the section dealing with women in the video game industry (that's really what the author is talking about- why women in games keeps getting used is completely unclear) he starts to talk about what possibly keeps women out, or in at a minimum, of the field. I certainly wouldn't complain if more women started gaming, but there definitely is a cultural stigma attached not only to gaming itself but what types of people play games. Games can be educational without being labeled as an educational game. It is true and some people will never be convinced of that, but that predisposition gets the better of people a little too often.

A recent university program also seems to be suffering from this predisposition. Any time there's a 100%-0% gender ratio it is an indicator of something. No women applying could be the result of the university being a male-only college or it could be that women have no interesting in game programming. The former choice, unlikely as it is, is still possible as no explicit reference is made to the program.

In this case if the problem is that women have no interest in game programming then that is their choice. If lack of interest in gaming is driving that decision then that means the women who could apply simply lack initiative in trying to change the gaming field. There are women who are seasoned game programmers. Maybe this is a well kept secret. Maybe the game programming job market stinks. I don't know, but these and many other factors must be considered.

The MMOG (not the massively single-player, online single player games, or massively offline games mind you) is offered in the first linked article as the primary example of this anti-gaming stigma. It is argued that these are not true games because they are not necessarily linear and they have no defined ending. I understand the point trying to be made here. A lot of women do play online games. I would also argue, based on percentage, that online games are not the games women most often play. Sims and DDR games must also be looked at before making that conclusion.

Aside from that, the logic used to determine that online games not really being games is utter nonsense. Anybody who has played a real role playing game understands that there is no set story. Dungeons and dragons players have almost total control over what happens in their universe. This greatly depends on the mannerisms of their dungeon masters, but you get the point. Certainly the male-female ratio of D&D players is very high, so you cannot say that women are attracted to playing non-linear games. The same thing can be said for games with no defined ending. Many games besides online games have no ending. Galaga, PacMan, and Tetris all have no ending. Many FPS's, such as Unreal Tournament and Quake III, have no ending (they also have no substance, but that's hardly the point).

So maybe we need to go over what defines a game to understand this problem. The English Dictionary defines games as "an activity engaged in for diversion or amusement." The word itself was based off of a German derivative around, and most likely before, the 12th century. You don't need to know the origin, but it is interesting information... or just good trivia knowledge. Any piece of computer software that lets you get away from the outside world and enjoy yourself quite readily fits into our definition of what a game is. If you disagree feel free to petition Webster.

The problem cannot be the definition, though, so bickering about that will not get us anywhere. Many people misuse words in our culture. Two great examples of this is using the word anxious instead of eager and using nauseous instead of nauseated. Stigma is the problem. Gaming is loosely associated with a counter-culture. The most avid gamers people typically believe are the anti-social geeks in school nobody talks to. I've been down that road. Some games are like that. In my area finding a normally sociable person at a Magic convention is a major challenge. Not that they aren't nice people, but a lot of them don't interact with many people.

It is this type of thinking that makes some people not want to play games. Women are one group for certain, but because gaming is generally negatively stereotyped let's not stereotype at all. Gaming has a stigma attached to it and this should be worked on. I game heavily, yet I am also able to interact with people I bump into when out and about. Exception or not, calling games something else is a silly approach to solving the problem. Do we really want to propagate the idiocy of the PC movement? Calling a fat person horizontally-challenged does not solve anything. Paraphrasing George Carlin, changing the name of a condition does not change the condition.

(Quick sidebar: what's the official dollar figure that should be attached to an important question? In the past week I have seen or heard references to questions valuing $100,000, $64,000, $32,000, $25,000, $1000, $64, $50 and $32. Is there some table that explains when to use which dollar amount? There must be some reason why all these different values are used or these numbers are made up on the fly. Whatever the case we should hold a referendum on which dollar amount should be used or we should just drop the reference altogether)

To me whether changing the name of something modifies how society generally reacts to it is immaterial and superficial. If you want to call games interactive entertainment or even electronic entertainment software modules go right ahead. Changing the substance of games themselves will be much more effective in attracting more people into the gaming culture. Look at the recently produced Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. The game is complete garbage but it is packaged with the Goldeneye name (from the highly popular and successful N64 game). People still saw through the monumental garbage and it did not sell very well.

This leads into another discussion about the types of games many companies continue to churn out. I don't want to get into the meat of it here, but lately it seems the games with the biggest production budgets are all sequels to successful franchises. Sims, Gran Turismo, Halo, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Grand Theft Auto, Prince of Persia, and Doom have all been recently re-engineered and released with a sequel and most of the sequels have sold remarkably well. The gaming industry needs to look at itself to see why attracting a larger percentage of the population (and not just more in volume as the population as a whole is increasing as well) will lead to a more diversified development and consumer environment.

Given the current state of the gaming industry it is easy to see why people in various demographics are not attuned to gaming. Many gaming companies, especially the larger ones, stick to a tried and true formula for what games to make. Sometimes those games are originally made in-house. Sometimes smaller companies make them and the larger companies consume them. Sometimes a game is so successful it transforms a small company into a major player. However the gaming industry is struggling to come up with a wide variety of games that can capture the attention of women (not to mention other people who are generally turned off by games).

So, until the gaming industry changes and starts to make more universally appealing games the stigma will remain. And to be honest right now that's just fine with this gamer... or should I be called something else?