Sometimes, it’s possible to overthink something. As is the case when pounding down the enormous infonugget that is Tiff’s blog on Destructoid as she talks about the phenomenon of media-inflated girl gamers and the inevitable backlash of “me, too!”.

While I’m personally all sorts of enthused about the fact that thirty-eight percent of the gaming population is currently female, as Tiff asserts with support, I’m inclined to disagree with her about the whole Munn / Chobot / Webb phenomenon. Especially her assertion that said phenomenon is part of a movement designed to “establish a visual narrative for gaming women that heightens gender alienation while simultaneously muffling the significance of the woman gamer’s voice.”

Oh come ON. The problem with this assertion is that you’ve ALREADY NEGATED IT. Thirty-eight percent of the gaming market is female. You’re on record with that. You’ve already got it PROVEN via secondary sources. You linked to it. If THIRTY EIGHT PERCENT of an ENTIRE MARKET can have its significance “muffled” by a handful of hot chicks playing supermodel with their Wiimotes, then there’s something seriously wrong here.

You make up almost half the market. There hasn’t BEEN a gaming market for much more than thirty years. Which means it can’t be much longer if rates continue until you ARE half the market. Marketing types may love to use hot chicks to hawk products but I guarantee you this: I have a bachelor’s in marketing. If thirty-eight percent of the market is pissed off at a market approach, we will drop it like a HOT ROCK. Sixty-two percent may be great market share but not so great that we’ll risk alienating the rest.

You–and through you, your marketplace influence–are the eight hundred pound elephant in the room.

ACT. LIKE. IT.

Do us all a friggin’ favor and stop whine-yammering on your blog about how you’re not getting enough attention in the proper way and start demanding it. Get organized. Seriously–some substantial chunks of the guy gaming market likes the thought of girl gamers who won’t look at them funny when their pickup line is “Hey, what’s your gamertag?”

We’re sick unto death of our girlfriends and our girl friends and our sisters and our mothers looking at us like we’re lunatics because we’ve got gamertags at the ripe old age of thirty-three, which is the average age of a gamer now, apparently. If you think your position is somehow so precarious that it can be rendered moot and useless by Olivia Freaking Munn then get out there and DO something about it. Olivia Munn is not some kind of superpowered monstrousity. Olivia Munn is A CHICK. Just like you are. Yeah, she’s on TV, but so what?

It’s JUST G4. Surely you can counter the influence of Some Chick On G4. Surely THIRTY-EIGHT PERCENT OF THE MARKETPLACE can render Olivia Munn’s “significance” muffled.

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Categories: Video games //