Quake Girls to Desperate Housewives discusses the complications that girls face when trying to participate in the gaming world. Although they claim that the gap between sexes access to online sources is almost closed, this hardly means that women are equivalent to men when it comes to gaming. When looking at the fields that correspond with gaming, game design, in particular, there is a large division between those that are men and women in the industry. In fact, the number of girls in computer science actually has decreased in the last 10 years. Which in my opinion only makes matters worse. If men are successfully creating games for other men why would they diversify and try to accommodate for a woman trying to join the gaming world? But the conclusion that this article came too which I think was a smart answer to this dilemma was that we are never going to be able to design a game that can adequately fulfill the needs of all girls. Having that said, this article mentions games that were created to intrigue girls with bright colors and female avatars. For example the Barbie game, I was one of the elementary (and maybe even middle school :)) girls who enjoyed spending time playing the Barbie game online picking out clothes, doing makeup, and changing hairstyles. But clearly, the game Barbie wasn’t a fix to the large disparity between boys and girls playing games.

The Locker Room Utopia describes the discriminatory environment of games that defer women from playing. The settings of these games portray themselves as gendered territory, that is anything but welcoming to a woman. Some of the women who did enjoy playing online games described their experiences and claimed they were treated differently after expressing they were female. The males in the game acted as if they women were incompetent and began to ignore their suggestions and begin trying to protect them. God forbid Additionally, the avatars that represent women in video games can come across as very offensive. Female avatars commonly have large busts, and skimpy clothing, not exactly what women hope to be seen as.

Lastly, in chapter 10, Lara, we learn the insight of creating one of the first powerful female avatars. Hesitant at first that Tomb Raider wouldn’t sell in America because it didn’t have the typical standards of a hero being male and Ameican, the creators decided to take the risk. I respect the designer’s decision to step outside the box and challenge the norm of video games.