Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat – New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming Hardcover – Import, 4 November 2008

Great writing on an Important topic

Bought this when writing a paper on how masculinity is represented in videogames, and this volume is absolutely vital reading around the subject of gender and videogames.Whereas the former volume (From Barbie to Mortal Kombat - published about 10 years earlier) made a good case of stating that 'pink games don't work' (essentially), this volume goes further in debunking the association of certain behaviours with gender (e.g. women like caring and sharing and social gameplay, men like conquest etc.) and also suggests new paths for future research. There are some very good studies in this volume, from a variety of cultures (something that needs to be done more in this field - many sweeping observations can be made on narrow cultural observations) that provide some solid evidence for discussion.Critically, this volume starts to really introduce the role of society and social pressures, gender roles, gender expectations and how this affects gameplay behaviours and activities.If you're interested in gender and videogames, you simply cannot pass by this book. You will be missing the best collection of material on the subject.

Excellent

The book documents the attempts to make women play wargames that have now been going on for about twenty years. Almost all, however, have ended in failure. Reading the author's desperate atemps to show that this is not so and that women play the games just as men do, one can only wonder whether Freud, in claiming that what drives women is pennis envy, did not have right on this side.