Girls Creating Games: Challenging Existing Assumptions about Game Content

The findings suggest that that when given the opportunity, girls design games that challenge the current thematic trends in the gaming industry and the most prominent theme was the way they expressed and worked through fears and social issues in their stories.

Abstract

In a reinforcing cycle, few females create games and fewer girls than boys play games. In this paper, we increase our understanding of what girls like about games and gaming by describing the content of 45 games that were designed and programmed by middle school girls. The findings suggest that that when given the opportunity, girls design games that challenge the current thematic trends in the gaming industry. The most prominent theme was the way they expressed and worked through fears and social issues in their stories. Most used bright, vivid colors, and their stories took place in real world settings and involved moral decisions. Few used violent feedback. Girls also used the games as spaces to play with gender role stereotypes by challenging authority figures and using humor. We discuss the implications of these findings for the debate on whether games should be gender-specific or gender-neutral.