Girls In Gamestop, Part 2,454,786

[bloodyrosemccoy]

AMELIA: I would like to purchase this fine product! *hands cashier tiny Wii*

CASHIER: Now, this is not a real Wii. You realize it is simply a tin to hold gift cards and is in fact $2.99, which is slightly less than even a used Wii costs.

AMELIA: Yes. I am aware of this. Perhaps its size, price, and the way it says “gift card tin” on the package were clues.

CASHIER: Very well. I will ring you up.

I am very glad he didn't ask me what it was for.


Also, dear video game companies: It’s nice that you’re trying to expand your audience to include girls, but I’m beginning to wonder if games like “Imagine You’re a Babysitter” or “Imagine You’re A Fashion Designer” are the right answer to the complaints that there are not enough video games with female protagonists. Just, you know, for the record.

Comments

[beccastareyes]

Oh, my.

[bean-bunny.livejournal.com]

The best is when my elementary kids hop up to me and tell me that they loooooove their new pink DS and Hannah Montana game that they got for their birthday!

I seriously want to call their parents and be like, "Get this child some New Super Mario Brothers."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I'd take it away and tell 'em they can't have it back until they can correctly name all seven Koopa Kids and complete the sentence "Thank you, Mario, but ..."

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

There was Wendy, Roy, Bowser Jr, Ludwig, and I can't remember the others.

And its "Thank You Mario, but our princess is in another castle."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Not bad! (Iggy, Morton Jr., Lemmy, Ludwig, Roy, Wendy O., and Larry.)

Bowser Jr. came later, and that little fuck is DEAD TO ME. I was so happy when the Koopa Kids came back in the Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga.

[10cents.livejournal.com]

Well, that would be kind of tricky to do, since it's actually TWO sentences: "Thank you Mario!" & "But our princess is in another castle!". :P

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Pff. A minor quibble. My inner autocorrect feature knows what it SHOULD be.

[renshai.livejournal.com]

I went in to EB to buy a copy of Assassin's Creed (also, Ghostbusters), and was asked if I was looking for Cooking Mama.

I was like, No. No I am not.

[kittikattie.livejournal.com]

I hate those games so much. Yes I know Target Market Blah Blah Blah casual gamer blah blah GIVE THEM ANIMAL CROSSING. Hell, even Cooking mama has some skill involved.

[flutterbychild.livejournal.com]

Give them Mario, dammit!

[beccastareyes]

I spent far too much of my last vacation playing Rune Factory (A cross between fantasy adventure and farming sim -- you wouldn't think growing vegetables and going into caves to tame (or just kill) monsters would be so fun.)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I love that game so much. I need to go dust off my copy and get back to figuring out how to woo one of the girls in the village. (I'd kinda rather go for some of the boys, but, hey, a fantasy farming-and-monster-fighting protagonist has to take what he can get. At least if I beat the main plot first I can end up married to the retired general, which is pretty cool.)

[beccastareyes]

Sadly, that game was in my DS when I apparently lost it in the airport, so now I need a new copy. (I was also up to 10 with some of the girls, and was working on my house upgrade. Dang it.)

It's a really interesting game since the farming and social stuff does tie in with the plot pretty well -- plus, it's kind of nice to not play a wandering adventurer in a fantasy game. (I'm only on the second cave, though.)

I'd also like it better if my character's sexual orientation wasn't set to 'straight', but I have the same complaint with Harvest Moon. (Heck, they can even make a male/female main character sprite option that only changes the pronouns and sprite, and lets you chase after the young men and the young women. I would so play that.)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I joke that I'm so addicted to my Sims games because they're the only ones I own that aren't firmly locked into heteronormative cultural assumptions. Which is one of those "funny because it's true, then kinda sad" things.

[shriekingsnape.livejournal.com]

the "imagine" series makes me want to vomit. for serious. it only screams, "Gender them while they're young!"

Give me lego star wars any day. now THAT'S a video game.

But I agree. Someone needs to make a kick ass video game with a female protagonist (who isn't Barbie and doesn't have the majority of her pixels dedicated to cleavage). I'll settle for a detective game. I like mysteries.

[pandoras-closet.livejournal.com]

Lego Star Wars is awesome, but the camera is, pardon my french, royally fucked.

[neintales.livejournal.com]

I was trying to think of a video game that I felt qualified as "Kickass Female Protagonists!" and all I could come up with were "Well the old Neverwinter Nights* games had useful female chars that sometimes even had cool lines!" and "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" which I spent waaay too much time playing as a youngster. (Also "Where in Time is..." and "Where in the USA is..."

Which of course makes it sad as hell that those are all I can think of despite my years of being submerged in PC games.

*I think this is part of why I go for my RPG's and MMORPG's so much. Sure they tend to still go for the chainmail bikini look for females, but at least I can MAKE THEM BADASS and RP THEM AS BADASS and ignore that a little.... of course then I have to deal with the guys who decide that all female players/players of female characters want to do is cyber, which is creepy as all fuck, but so far rare when it comes to my two main addictions of WoW and City of Heroes/Villains.

[flutterbychild.livejournal.com]

A "Harriet the Spy" game would be cool. I always liked that book.

[marsdejahthoris.livejournal.com]

... Dude. SAMUS ARAN. Fully clothed. (Usually.) Single-handedly saves solar systems. Shocked the entire galaxy when her gender was revealed at the end of the first game.

I'll take the cheesecake rewards for 100% completion, seeing as they come with the fact that this woman is DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS to an entire criminal race.

[shadesofmauve]

I shudder to think about the type of life which makes babysitting qualify as escapism. Perhaps it's the same sort of drive that makes people play war games?

[placetohide.livejournal.com]

If you had heard the things customers in game stores tend to say/assume, you'd understand why the cashier clarified for you. . . :[

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

You have a point. And yeah, this guy gets props for hearing me. The really frustrating conversations are the ones where I say something like, "I am looking for a PC version of MYST: Revelation, as I have played the first three games" and they say, "What kind of computer do you have, and are you aware that this game is a sequel?" That happens distressingly often.

[chairman-wow.livejournal.com]

You know, I always prepare myself for it, but no-one's ever actually been an idiot at me in game stores. Maybe the ones here just have particularly cool employees (on account of it being a university town, perhaps). I mean, they always do the 'are you sure your computer can run this' thing, but that's store policy, I'd think.

Why would anyone want to imagine being a baby-sitter, anyway? I can sort of see fashion designer, at least that's somewhat creative. Mostly those games are just terrible, though.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, some employees are cool, and some of it is a perfectly understandable assumption that The Customer Is Always Dumb, but yes, you seem to just have remarkably cool employees. It's the kind of people who don't believe you when you say you're already aware of how a wireless mouse works.

how a wireless mouse works...

[shadesofmauve]

Magic, right?

*hides*

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Those video games remind me of the board game I hauled out of the closet of a friend's grandmother once, after Thanksgiving dinner, because we were desperately bored and needed something to do.

It was obviously a spinoff of another board game, as it was sparkly pink and had the name CAREERS in big "We already trademarked this logo" letters and then splashed in cursive beneath it "For girls!"

You wandered around the board trying out various careers and trying to get your happiness/life/whatever points up sufficiently. You could be a teacher, a mother, a fashion designer, or a "pet doctor." I distinctly remember that the mother track had a square where you had to back up a few squares because you burned the cookies.

It was just appalling enough that it wasn't even much fun to mock it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

...

...

WHUT.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Mmhmm.

What made it worse was the bright-eyed encouraging way it talked so "progressively" about how girls could have careers now! Lots of fun careers for girls! Just look at how hip and modern and with-it it was!