Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Are Women Good Gamers?

Gone were the days where guys dominate the gaming world, where we think that computer geeks were composed of men with thick glasses and pocket protectors. Nowadays, women would pass time shacked in their house playing computer games.




There is one avid game player, Torrie Dorrell, who reveals that she loves to play EverQuest 2 online where she is right now an officer in a specific guild. And that her husband hates it that she spends so much time on this activity.




Entertainment Software Association even mentions that thirty eight percent of the gaming population is composed of females who plays with computer games for almost seven a half hours per week. And this makes the husbands and the boyfriends resent it as they only come second to their partner's priority list.




The good thing here is that Dorrell has transformed her passion for computer games into a lucrative career. In fact, she is now the senior vice president of global sales and marketing for Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).




Though there is an increasing number in women engaging in gaming, there is still not much women out there developing games. And due to this reason, Dorrell as well as her associates have formed GIRLS, Gamers in Real Life, which is a scholarship programs that aims to entice more and more women to engage in a career in creation and development of games.




It is pretty obvious that when you go to any gaming convention, there are more men in attendance than women who develop games as mentioned by Courtney Simmons, the public relations director for SOE that strongly pushes for the GIRL program at its San Diego head office.




Simmons has spoken in an invitation-only program in a San Francisco bar where she, together with her associates, launched a program in partnership with the Art Institutes that would allow women to enroll and study in the institute under a $10,000 scholarship plus a paid internship at one of the SOE's development studios.




Although Dorrell, Simmons and others are now promoting GIRL, this is not the first time that this issue has been tackled.




There has been studies that have been conducted previously that indicates that women are more often than not to play portable games such as Nintendo DS and they would be likely to play The Sims where fifty five percent who play this game are females. But even though this is the case, there is only twelve percent in the gaming industry who are women and because of this, the gaming industry is not able to cater to all of its consumers.




It is Simmons' vision that more and more women would create games that women would like to play.




But there are more than sixty percent of women who are studying game design programs at the Art Institutes that believe that because there is dominance of male in the gaming industry, it is hard for women to engage in designing games but eventually, it is hoped that more and more women would enroll in such classes and continue on in transforming this into a game designing career.


Lance Thorington's articles have been posted on several places online including web sites, blogs, ezines and email lists. For more information on women gaming visit http://www.womeningamesinternational.org/

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Article Source: www.articlesnatch.com

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