As I mention in my video above, I am not a heavy video game player and so I was a bit lost coming into this assignment. Though I began researching and came across an article called ‘Online games, Gender and feminism’ which talked about this idea of “pink” games (Jenson & Castell, 2014). This idea of pink games stems from game companies trying to get more girls to play games by using pink packaging as a way to attract girls to want to play video games. And though you may have thought we would have moved past this as a society, this “pinkwashing” technique is still used today to market video games at girls.
Pink games also are usually based on derivative female stereotypes that really have no right to be defined as games for girls in this day and age. Cassell and Jenkins point out that “the market research which supports the growth of the girls’ game movement has located fairly stereotypical conceptions of female taste”(1998, p. 19). Suggesting that it’s no accident that girls want products to come in pink or purple packaging because this desire has been manufactured by the toy industry for years.
This is just some of the background research that I have already started to collect for my project which will help me create informed blog posts on this topic.
With my project also having three blog posts (as seen in my schedule below) I have plenty of opportunities to gain feedback in time to incorporate it into my next post if needed.
Resources:
Game Cultures 