Dare to Play!

I went to a gaming convension in Seattle over the weekend to see the newest, coolest things. The convension did not disappoint! Crammed on to the exhibtion floor were card games, minatures games, a variety of gorgeous console and PC games, and gaming merchandise. Of course, there were a few pirates and ninjas milling around too. I went to listen to a few speakers - one of them was Women in Gaming.

Women in Gaming - for some reason there's still a notion that women who play games are the EXCEPTION, rather than the norm. The thought amuses me a little - are girls who play games special then? Not really, but the industry seems to think so. Are female gamers really that different from male gamers? Again, I don't think so - females just have differnt play-styles. They may be drawn to differnt types of content, but I think that everyone just wants a good game to play. As most Nancy Drew players know - there's nothing odd about girls playing video games. We can do anything the boys do, and we do it BETTER!

In the discussion, the speakers mentioned Barbie and Nancy Drew in the same breath as games specificlly made for girls. A few things went through my mind...
- They said NANCY DREW!!! Gamers know who we are and they're talking about our games! WOW!!! (followed by more internal excitement!!!)
- We used to be called the 'unBarbie' of video games - they must be mentioning us to demonstrate the spectrum of the games available to girls.
- Yay to the Nancy Drew fans who helped spread the word about the games and made us a best-seller!