understanding gendered space in gaming. .

when people think about videogaming and videogames people often think of it as a male dominated activity. I believe this to be true in both eastern and western culture. This is because people labeled videogames as a male activity  This is quite a dangerous thought as due to the result of this thought many female gamers and game producers have to suffer discrimination and insult because they are 'invading' a male activity .

The such view point can be seen from this article: http://kotaku.com/sexism/ In this article the author talks about why according to Gabrielle Toledano, Electronic Arts' chief talent officer, says that Sexism is a cop out. This I think provides interesting viewpoint from the head of gaming industry in the reason why she thinks there aren't enough women in gaming industry. According to her she believes that this is because there aren't enough women because "... they believe sexism will limit them..." This of cause is quite different from what women themselves believe as seen in the websites such as onereasonwhy which says that women do not have say in the game making because they are discriminated in the work and their ideas would not be heard. In fact in onereasonwhy there are full of stories that points against the argument made by Gabrielle. I wounder why people like Gabrielle can not see the reason why there are not many women in the game industry. This in turn shows that games have strong masculinity that seems to have little space for women.

I think it is because of how the sexism re-enforces the stereotypes that people- including gamers themselves. In the article written by Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter, they tried to explain why gamers tend to be represented by male despite the fact that there are  quite a lot of female audiences. They say this tend to happen because most people tend associate gaming with male activity. This is quite similar to how some activities  like shopping and sewing are associated with female activity  This can be seen by this quote " This recurring discourse suggests that the consumption practices associated with computer gaming are solitary and male."  As such the videogames tend to be marked towards males and there has been lack of good games marked towards females. This means that due to this assumption females were not seen as a part of gaming community. This allows many gaming cooperation to target solely on men. Especially teenage and/or men in early 20's. Due to this large assumption made by people that videogaming industry is male activity and believe that women do not like videogaming, women tend to have very minimal voice in creation of gaming. This in turn has a negative effect of discriminating women in gaming society- whether as a gamer or creator of the game. This sort of understanding has been called gendered  spaces by Jo
Bryce and Jason Butter. " We appropriate them, move between them, and define the relationships between them."

Understanding the gendered space in gaming is quite important because I believe that it is main reason why their are conflicts between male and female gamers and why there are so few females represented correctly in gamming society. Due to people's thought about what and who shall play the game, those people who thought as not part of gendered spaces in gaming society tend to be ignored and not represented because they are not part of the bulk of the gamming society. I think understanding the gendered spaces in gaming is the key to see why there are so little female representation in games and gaming society.
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