Girls’ Games V – the time of self fullfillment

The age group 18-30 (or until the woman gets a baby - might be earlier, later, or not at all) are to me best defined by ‘a lot of time’. And not just anytime, but time to mostly fulfill herself. You leave school and either educate yourself, work or… just hang out, waiting for things to happen.

I would say that twenty years ago everyone was more anxious to get the two first alternatives done as fast and as right as possible, while young people today seem to take it a little more easy – carreer ambivalence? Higher economic security?

A short home made analysis is that they were raised to know that they are the best thing ever in the entire world, and they often have gotten about everything they asked for. This I suspect because I’m into that parenting model myself right now, and I expect the result to be the same. (Must work on that, I promise)

I went to France, studied, worked parallel, was out every night doing everything not to have to be home. I wanted to pass the lines for the clubs, and be at the right parties, mostly to so that everyone else knew I could. It was again a strict hierarchy to climb, but this time I had a better self confidence and the surroundings were not at all taunting - more ignoring or arrogant. It was easier to find a community of people to have fun with no matter what the rest of the club crowd did. This I guess, is pretty much the same to many girls, I mean women, today.

After a few years I met my boyfriend and spent a lot of time with him, not going out that much anymore. I loved playing video games all night with him, and the best vacation activity was to visit arcades in any city we visited, trying out what they had to offer. I would never hade done this myself of course (he would), but I found it a fun common time spent. If he hadn’t introduced me to ALL games so that I could choose and find what really suited me, I’m not sure I would ever have played anything. I would never have suggested to play games with a girl friend, but we often did in larger mixed groups, more as a social thing. Tactile joysticks improved the social value of many games and Sea Bass and Samba de Amigo were all great party tricks (there were no children on place yet).

Parappa the rapper was a favourite, much because I beat my boyfriend at the first attempt. You're supposed to hit the button in the right order in rythm with fun music to get the naively illustrated animals sing fun songs. Can it be any better!!!


House of the dead I guess was my favourite arcade game - the guns felt fair (easy to handle) and that the game requires true cooperation. Most research on gender and games support that girls love to play war and killing games as long as the killing is leading to something, that it is relevant. Long shooting scenes themselves are considered boring.

Tekken is maybe my favourite game all time as it really doesn’t require any preknowledge to jump in, anyone can play and win, and the carachters are so well developed that I look for them in the next version, find them wonderfully updated and improved, as well as there are new exciting ones to try out. It's impressive to be able to hook me through great characteristic fighting moves built into different profiles.


Odd world was so lovey we called our awaited first baby Abe (It turned out to be a girl and we changed it to Lily). The cutest stranger ever who meets other friends, says hi and asks them to follow him, and a very very empathic and visual story.



Writing this is a huge risk - a risk to get mocked by anyone who play games. Especially guys tend to run a conversation around games that girls just find important or fun. None of my fave games are politically right to a gamer. You should like more obscure games, unique, special, difficult. I've always known this risk and for a long time I didn't dare to talk about games at all, although I've spent hundreds of hours on them. We appreciate different things in some aspects.

The last years of my self fulfillment time web pages, cd-rom and e-learning had found their ways as well as Prada, Gucci and luxiuos travels, but as a student I didn’t have money to shop for and this could not be an interest. We didn’t watch TV, never listened to the radio, mostly listened to music when going out and had no choices when it came to news or connections. I didn’t have a mobile phone, and the Internet was just invented, so I have to check the stats, my youngest colleagues and friends to make a picture of their media use today.

Next post the nostalgy is over... only the present and the future left. To be continued

Previous posts on Girls' Games

1980-1984
Kids 2010
Teens 2010
1984-1994