In a magazine article I published in 1998, I had observed that most video games either excluded woman altogether – or cast them in passive roles, such as a princess to be rescued.
This might not have bothered me so much – and I may have never been published – if I had been able to ride to the candy store on my bike when I was a kid.
Let me explain. I was intensely envious of my brother, who could always to ride to the candy store any time he wanted. He would come home with crinkly brown paper bags teeming with penny candy. It was treasure beyond reckoning.
I begged my father to let me do the same. He said no. When I asked him why, he told me it was because I was a girl. “Girls are more vulnerable than boys,” he said. “Especially young girls.”
No amount of begging would persuade him. I was ten. And even as I got older, my father never deviated from the opinion that girls should never go anywhere alone; that it was unsafe.
Fast forward to the mid-eighties when Zelda was released for the NES. A Christmas gift, Zelda was like nothing I had ever seen. It was not just an arcade game; it was a vast, open landscape that I could freely explore.
It may not have had a candy store, but it had castles and lakes and houses that you could go inside, and even break pots if you wanted.
Similar games followed. They were not just twitch games. They were worlds. I spent hours exploring them. As a teenager, I had found a kind of virtual, substitute freedom in those vast, open spaces. Besides that, the games were great fun.
And yet, the games were almost exclusively a male pastime, and their developers made no effort to cater to girls. The few exceptions had condescending titles like, “Pretty Princess Barbie Unicorn Jubilee.”
Girls could play the grown-up games if they wanted to – although this often meant assuming the identity of a burly, machine gun brandishing mega-man. I had never questioned this.
Until I played Super Mario Brothers 2.
Here, for the first time, I could play as a girl character – the one who I remembered as the waiting, grateful, and demure princess from the original Mario.
Only she had, incredibly, changed.
This one had apparently dyed her hair Goth black, bravely left the castle, and decided to fight; she even had a power: she could levitate. Her signature pink dress did not hinder her as she floated with graceful ease over rivers and delivered devastating blows to Birdo.
I was stunned. Princess Peach with black hair rocked!
I knew now that the virtual freedom I had found in games had been limited. It was as if I had been almost able to ride to the candy store – but I could only go if I was dressed as my brother. The new Peach had changed that.
Princess Peach really had been in captivity – not just by Bowser, but by game creators that had made her a stationary and passive object.
I could never view video games the same way after that, and later complained to everyone who would listen that in most games, women were tragically either missing or misrepresented.
I had seen what was possible, but no one seemed as bothered as I was, and that bothered me even more. I finally sat down at my computer to vent. I sent it to a Canadian magazine called Herizons, and received a letter from the editor. She was interested; I was euphoric.
After further research and publication, I received a paycheck and a copy of the magazine. On the cover the editor had changed the title to,“Video Games for Girls: A Joystick of One\’s Own.” Beaming with pride, I filed it away, careful not to bend the crisp edges.
It has been fourteen years since then. The barriers of my childhood have all fallen away, and I can go wherever I want. Slowly, too, the games have changed. Not only do girls appear in games now; they create them.
I still play the games for fun. My current character in the latest Elder Scrolls game is a girl, a cat-like creature called a Khajiit.
The visuals are breath-taking: vast, snow-capped mountains, translucent green waterfalls, cities with cobbled streets – an entire world to explore.
But sometimes I still think about the candy store and the bike ride; and suddenly I am ten again, the sun on my shoulders, the wind in my hair; pedaling, coasting, gliding through my dream of perfect freedom. Rising. Cresting a hill.
Soaring.