Girls Got (Video) Game

March 27, 2005 — -- It's old news that women have come a long way in just about every pursuit -- from the workplace to the athletic field to the government.

Now, women are making their presence felt in one of the last bastions of male dominance -- the video arcade.

Until recently, the video-game industry was seen as strictly a boys' club. But that's all changing. Video games have ballooned into a multibillion-dollar pastime for females of all ages.

Jenna Chalmers, a video game designer at software company Electronic Arts, says the video-game industry was not marketing its products to women based on stereotypes.

"I think it's easy to kind of stereotype that women don't want to shoot or that women don't want to do sports or that women don't want fast-paced action," Chalmers said. "I don't think that's true. I think that was part of the reason the industry wasn't speaking to women before."

The Game That Sparked a Revolution

Many female gamers are saying the same thing: They like video games for the same reason boys do.

"I find myself playing mostly survival horror games. I love the scare," said one girl gamer.

Another said she likes the competitive element: "I like gaming. I like beating my boyfriend."

But many video-game experts say one game helped change the industry virtually overnight. It's called The Sims.

Lisa Pellow is a 44-year-old suburban housewife, mother of four and a self-proclaimed "Simsaholic."

Sims is one part fantasy, one part reality. The gamer gets to choose a family and control their virtual lives. In Pellow's Sims world, her family is expecting its third child.

Sales of the game have taken off, earning $3 billion last year alone, and experts say half of all Sims players are women.

"My kids sometimes get mad because they want to get on the computer and finish their homework or a lot of nights dinner isn't ready," Pellow said.

Pellow's daughter says she's even found her mother asleep at the computer in the middle of the night, having fallen asleep while playing The Sims.

More Games Designed by Women

To serve this growing market, women are being called on to create the games that women play.

Electronic Arts, one of the country's leading software companies, is hiring more women as designers. Chalmers says it's about time the industry caught up with the women's market.

"There's a lot of misconceptions about what women like," she said. "Women gamers are often very intelligent people. They like a challenge, they like strategy, they like a game that has a lot of thinking. There are studies coming out now about women's brains being more hard-wired. I don't know why anyone would think we wouldn't be good at that."