Greg Costikyan, award-winning game designer and author who is reponsible for classics like Toon and Paranoia, has started a blog on game design theory. It's fabulous.
But to get back to the criticism: Games are flashy, degraded, violent little entertainments for adolescent boys. Right?
Hardly. Go to the Interactive Digital Software Association site, and download their demographic information. Most gamers are over 18. PC gamers skew even older than console gamers. The average age of gamers increases year by year. I'll talk about why in another essay, perhaps. And almost 50% of games are bought by women.
That doesn't mean that 50% of the people playing games at this very instant are women, of course; some female purchasers are doubtless buying games for the men (or boys) in their lives. But women do play games–more than half of the people playing on sites like Pogo.com or Uproar are female, for instance. Something like 30% of the players of massively multiplayer games are women. And virtually all of the players of Pern MUSHes are female.
Games aren't just for teenage boys any more.
