reality bytes, 8 myths about videogames debunked Options

[Alisha]

http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolutio...pact/myths.html
i found this part particularly interesting
4. Almost no girls play computer games.

Historically, the video game market has been predominantly male. However, the percentage of women playing games has steadily increased over the past decade. Women now slightly outnumber men playing Web-based games. Spurred by the belief that games were an important gateway into other kinds of digital literacy, efforts were made in the mid-90s to build games that appealed to girls. More recent games such as The Sims were huge crossover successes that attracted many women who had never played games before. Given the historic imbalance in the game market (and among people working inside the game industry), the presence of sexist stereotyping in games is hardly surprising. Yet it's also important to note that female game characters are often portrayed as powerful and independent. In his book Killing Monsters, Gerard Jones argues that young girls often build upon these representations of strong women warriors as a means of building up their self confidence in confronting challenges in their everyday lives

discuss

[hamstar]

my girlfriend spends significant more time than I do playing video games.
...and she's just plain better than me at them too.

I don't think that it wasn't good stories or interesting play that kept girls away for so long, I think it's that noone ever made a real effort to tap the demographic.
I think because it was an older assumption that girls don't deal with technology, that was a mans job...strangely enough we are still trying to break this stereotype.