Female Gamers: Case Study
June 1st, 2008 Posted in Games, Japan, Personal
Please don’t mistake this post. This is not a poignant look at female gamers. This is not a look at the state of gaming today and a comparison between the genders. This is not a look at the recent increase in the amount of ladies laying the games. And it is not a look at online gaming, language, sexual predation, abuse, or any other such thing. It is merely a look at the case of one female who virtually did a complete turnaround with regard to games- my wife, Mihoko.
It may be useful if you believe you are in a long-term relationship and your partner is somewhat anti- or uninterested in games. It may simply be a documentation of my experience with my wife. But don’t look at this post as a roadmap for converting your partner. Take it as proof that it is possible, yet take it with a modicum of caution. That said, let’s take a look.
When I met Mihoko in 2004, she was a pretty classy girl (in my opinion). She was a Trainer at the most popular (and some would argue the most expensive) department store in Tokyo– Shinjuku Isetan. She had to wear the clothes that she sold, and would often be wearing well over $1000 worth of clothes at any given time. She was (and still is) a bit of a brand lover, and has quite the knowledge of fashion and its fickleness. Then she met me. A smelly, dirty, shameless Australian man. Poor girl.
I drank a lot, ate a lot, swore a lot, went out a lot, did some disreputable things at times, and some extremely enjoyable things at other times, and was generally a bloke. And I was a pretty big fan of video games (and obviously still am).
At first she thought it was cute. I was reading gaming blogs on a daily basis, getting my game on fairly regularly, and frequenting video game arcades on our dates (after doing the usual date thing, of course), but never for too long, and in most cases simply to get some Puri-kura– Japanese print club stickers. Fun and games. I often talked about video games, but never saturated our conversation with it, more of a light drizzle, really.
She was somewhat open to gaming- she had a Playstation 2 (as did the rest of Japan), but the only games she had were Casino games and Monster Farm… Not to say she didn’t have other games at any other point — she did have experience with Jumping Flash, which was pretty cool, because I never played it back in the day… Anyway, she played the odd game, but she wasn’t a gamer, and she certainly wouldn’t tell people she was one (although she delighted in telling her friends, who enjoyed a titter at my expense… sigh).
So what did I do, as a respectful a loving partner? I bought her a DS not long after it was released in Japan. At first, I’m not really sure what she thought of that as a present. She has said that it was a cool present because it wasn’t something she would buy for herself, so I guess that’s a good thing. Anyway, she didn’t really play it much when she got it, because I didn’t know what she would like! I think I got Nintendogs for her… Can’t quite recall…
Anyway… Not long later, I bought her.. a PSP. Hehe… By this time, she played her DS on and off on the train, as she had long train rides to work every day (her company moved her to Ibaraki prefecture for a little while — a 2-hour commute!), so it was bought for her at the right time. I think I got her a Rockman title (which she soon got addicted to). Soon, she was playing her DS or PSP on most days, due to her commutation needs… Later, she was even playing the games at home on the couch.
This is all well and good, a hell of a lot of girls are playing DS’ses these days, so it’s no big news. Furthermore, at this time, she still wasn’t interested in game consoles. She just didn’t have the time to sit down and lay, although sometimes she watched. I guess I was lucky, because she never complained if I played.
To interject for a second, though, I am strange (few would disagree). I wouldn’t class myself as either casual or hardcore gamer– I fall somewhere in between, in the grey area. And back in these days, I rarely sat down and played, myself, but i enjoyed watching my housemates, both of whom were awesome nerds, like myself. (Hats off to you, boys, if you’re reading.)
Occasionally, my housemates would have people over for game nights. They would play, and we would be out drinking or karaoke-ing. We’d get home, play a couple of rounds, and then people would be off home. Occasionally we joined in on the Halo 2 games, or Wario on Gamecube, but little else.
Then one of my housemates moved back to Oz, and Mihoko moved in. With her there, and most of our consoles gone (the housemate that left owned all the machines… sigh), I didn’t know what to do! I still drank, but Mihoko would kick me out of bed for snoring (as I am wont to do when drunk), or I’d get in trouble for staying up too late. So I started drinking and going out less often. I needed something to do.
Cue Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3, all purchased around release day. I got back into gaming, Mihoko started watching more, although our tastes are rather different– I love horror and really intense kind of games, she doesn’t. She got REALLY into Wii Sports (and is the Tennis Queen), and later into Virtua Tennis and Table Tennis (yep, she likes the Tennis games).
Then we moved to Australia, and I got Halo 3. This was the end of the old Mihoko, and the beginning of the new one. We played through Halo 3 co-op twice (we had to do legendary), then we learned that two people could play online from the one machine. Since that time, I have ceased playing Halo 3 (I get bored of games after a little while), while Mihoko was playing it daily until recently (she played several hours of Halo 3 every day for at least 6 months), when she got Virtua Tennis on PS3. Now she plays the ass outta that (in fact, she’s playing it now).
She’s not into talking over the microphone– her English level isn’t up to ‘obnoxious teenager’ standard yet, so she doesn’t quite understand. Besides, she’s in it for the fun, anyway. But she does add friends, which pisses me off, because she uses my account, and I don’t know any of these people (personally, I’m not so big on the social gaming scene, I might get there one day, just don’t know how to crack into it- maybe Home will do it for me?).
And that’s where we are at now. She regularly asks me to invite friends over for Halo (although my friends aren’t really gamers). We try to play a bit of SingStar about twice a month. And we often have a tug-of-war for time with both the computer and the games systems. This especially sucks when something good is on TV, because I like to use the puty while I watch.
So there you go. It was a long process, and involved expensive presents that she didn’t know she wanted (I also bought her an iPod), exposure to a lot of cool nerds (not to say being a nerd is a bad thing), and a fair amount of co-operative gaming, but in the end, she plays autonomously far more than I do– which in a way is a bad thing. Be careful what you wish for, it may cause problems!
Bu in reality, life is far better now that we both play games, and we both live to play games. It makes it a lot easier to argue why I need to allow for video games in our budget. 
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