Video game culture is a form of new media culture that has been influenced by video games.[1] It is stated that 800 millions of people from all over the world are regular players of video games[2], so it is a common place to see people holding video game players in their hands no matter they are at work, at home, in restaurant or even on transportation. The video game culture is getting close to us. In this day and age, the kind of video game players is numerous, such as PlayStation Portable (PSP), Nintendo DS (NDS),Wii, Gameboy, etc. In June 2006, Nintendo released the Nintendo DS Lite, which is a slimmer and lighter version of the Nintendo DS, and it starts to attract many female players. Cooking Mama is a game of NDS, which is popular among female players. [3] On the other hand, PSP is a popular video game player among male and the most famous game that male like to play is Winning Eleven. This paper would focus on analysis the different features between these two games and state out why female like Cooking Mama but not Winning Eleven, and why male like Winning Eleven than Cooking Mama. It would finally find out the gender issues between these two games.
To begin with, Cooking Mama is a game that is tasked with cooking several dishes by using the Nintendo DS's touch screen. The players need to follow the on-screen instructions of the cooking character, Cooking Mama, and perform various tasks such as chopping vegetables or mixing ingredients in order to finish a delicious dish.[4] On the other hand, Winning Eleven is game that is tasked with controlling the football players in participating in the football competitions. The players need to select the football team and think of the policy to win the match.
In Cooking Mama, the main character, Cooking Mama, is a woman, the player does the task by cooking various meal. From this image, it is noticed that woman is already symbolized to the belief that cooking is the responsibility of a woman. According to the functionalist perspective in sociology, men and women act different roles. Women take expressive role. They are supposed to provide warmth and emotional support to the children and show love and understanding to the husband. In contrast, men take the instrumental role, and they are task-oriented. They need to work and earn money for the family. In Cooking Mama, Mama already indicates that woman‘s place is at home. While in Winning Eleven, the football characters are more outgoing. The football players are the jobs of the athletics. Participating in the competition is the responsibilities of the football players.
Besides, in biological points of view, latest research reveals that the female brain operates significantly differently to the male brain. Richard J. Haier and colleagues at the universities of New Mexico and California (Irvine) found, using brain mapping, that men have more than six times the amount of grey matter related to general intelligence than women. Gray matter is used for information processing.[5] Female focus more on using right- brain, while male focus on left-brain more. As a result, female is more emotional, caring, artistic and creative while male is more logical, aggressive, good in analysis.
In Cooking Mama, the player needs to prepare food dishes according to Mama’s orders. From this, it implicated that why Cooking Mama is so popular among girls. As mentioned in the biological difference between male and female, female is less logical and they need more caring, cooking mama gives them instruction to do the tasks, so the girls player can think less and just follow the order without any complicated analysis. In the game, food dishes are made in steps. Each step is a sort of cooking mini-game where the players only need to perform tasks like cutting, mixing, kneading, chopping, etc. When the player chooses the specific food to make, a timer would appear the player would have a limited amount of time to perform whatever task Mama tells you to do. For example, in making a pizza, there are instructions like “Add the ingredients”, “ Mix it ”, “Knead the dough”, “Let the dough rise”, etc.
Next, the player would also receive a feedback from cooking Mama, the girl’s player would treat it as a support. Girls like others to care of her. When the girls fail the task, they are still no need to worry. For example, if the player makes a serious fault or time expires leading that it does not have a successful meal finally, although the screen would appear the image of an angry Mama with flames, it still comes along with the caption "Don't worry, Mama will fix it!". From this, the girl players could immediately be relaxed and they seemed that Mama would protect them and would help her to fix all the problems. Or “Go, go, you can do it.” This shows the caring and encouragement to the girls, so they could play it without any concerns.
Furthermore, when the dish is finished, Mama would give out scores and give the player a grade from 0 to 100. Mama would also give the players one of three medals for the efforts of the process. If the score is above 60, a bronze would be given, if above 80, it would be silver and at 100, gold would be. At the same time, the comments like “Very Well Done” or “Terrific! Even better than Mama” would be given, these praises act a supporting mean to the girls and could enhance their confidence.
On the other hands, in Winning Eleven, the player could form the football team themselves according to the football players’ abilities. The player needs to control the football players in competing with another team in order to win the game. This shows that why boys prefer to play this game than the girls, since Winning Eleven is a game which is more skills oriented and player needs to keep on thinking and have an in-depth analysis. Besides, the boys are more aggressive, in the games, the result of win or lose is very significant. Since if the player wins the game, they could earn some money and these could help them to buy the team suits, balls or even some better football players. If the player could have better equipments or better football players, their probability to win is higher and he could have chance to enter the semifinal or even final competition. From this game, the players could gain the satisfactory of winning. The process of winning a competition and entering the final is the aim of the players. Usually, the male are logical, and they prefer to have a clear mind in working, this game could let them to achieve the aim and they could just work hard to fight for it. Besides, playing football is more physical. Due to the biological differences between male and woman, the body size of male is bigger, taller and stronger than woman. Hence, male is more muscular and physically fit, so they have privilege in doing physical activities like playing soccer. In the game, the characters are all boys, but even do not have a female football player. This shows the gender is stereotyped. It gives out the message that boys are the dominant in playing football. Hence, when playing the football games, the players would think that they are participating in a football match so logically, more boys would participate in playing this game than girls. What is more, in Cooking Mama, the tasks are simple tasks and each only needs a few minutes to finish. The tasks are only focuses on cooking. However, in Winning Eleven, in order to play the game better, the players must know more background information of the football teams in the world. The game is more focused on research based. If the player does not know the background of the football teams, they would not know the abilities of that team and it is difficult to substitute the players. This game also has high tendency of continuity, as it is match by match. The football match is an international issue, and sights of boys are always wider and organized, so that is why Winning Eleven is popular among boys.
In viewing the visual elements of these two games, it is noticed that why there is difference in popularity of gender between these two games. In Cooking Mama, the character of Cooking Mama is a cartoon and looks very cute. The background is always very fantastic, just like in a dreamland, this fits that the girls always like imagination and dreaming. All visual images are very colorful, using the color pink, yellow and light blue and these colors are very girlish as well. . The atmosphere is very happy and harmony. When the players finish the task in an excellent score, they could have bonus gifts, which are some beautiful clothes for Mama to change with, the new kitchen equipments or the new background of the kitchen. These bonus gifts are very suitable to the female‘s character. Girls always like to go shopping and buy new clothes. They like to be beautiful and like to decorate the environment just like their dreams. The new background provides the fresh and new thing for the players, which girls like keep on changing and having new things. The kitchen just likes a home of the Mama, since the concept of family and home is more obvious to a girl, so the girl player enjoy decorating the kitchen into a wonderful place. This shows that why more girls like to play Cooking Mama. In contrast, in Winning Eleven, the football characters are more realistic, it does not contain any funny visual elements. The image is just like that the character is in a real football court. The action of the football player is like the real situation, showing the skill that in the real world, the football player could really do so, but not a computer technique one. The name of football teams and the players are all real and they exist in the real society. From this, it matches the character of the boys that they like realistic and practical, not like the girls just like enjoying the fantastic world.
Besides, the popularity of the Cooking Mama shows the new change of video game culture. In the past, there are fewer games designed specifically for woman to play with, but from Cooking Mama, it is obviously a game designed for woman. It shows the equality between male and female becomes important in the video game world. The producers now would not just focus on the male markets. According to the Surveys of Entertainment Software Association of 2005, the gender distribution of gamers is reaching equilibrium; it shows that 57% of gamers are male and 43% female.[6] It indicates that there is a high developing room for the expansion of the female market.
In addition, it could see that both Cooking Mama and Winning Eleven have the characteristic of global features. In Cooking Mama, the dishes are included Italian pizza, Western T-bones steak, Japanese sushi, the Chinese vegetable meat buns etc. Although the games are designed in Japan, these kinds of food are from different countries. It shows that it covers with international features. On the other hand, in Winning Eleven, the football teams are included the national team from different continents. For example, LA Galaxy in the America, Manchester United in England, etc. These show that the target of both games not only aims at Japan, but also the international world. The games imported to U.S.A, Korea, England, Hong Kong, etc. When talking about the globalization, the status between male and female becomes more equal in these countries. From this, it could be noticed that the existence of Cooking Mama shows how the global video world also focuses on the female markets.
In conclusion, Winning Eleven and Cooking Mama are two obvious games that contain the different feature that are designed for a particular gender to play. The functionalist perspective shows that male is task-oriented, so boys like playing Winning Eleven. While female are family-oriented, so they better stay at home to cook, that is why Cooking Mama is a woman. It is conducive to see the innovation of the game type such as Cooking Mama, it is a good opening of the female markets in the video game culture. This game shows that the equity between male and female is more important in the global society nowadays. It is a good development to let the world become fairer between male and female. As a consequence, the players could have more range of games to select with and having more choices could enhance the creativity and innovation of the video games. Hence, the video game culture could be spread widely and exist continuously.
Bibliography:
Books:
Berger, A. A. (2002). Video games: A popular culture phenomenon. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
Carr, D. (2006). Computer games: Text, narrative and play. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Horton, P. B., & Hunt, C. L. (1980). Sociology (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Poole, S. (2000). Trigger happy :The inner life of videogames. London: Fourth Estate,p.1-47.
Richard J Haier, E Jung and others. (2004).Structural Brain Variation and General Intelligence,p. 425–433.
Websites:
http://www.theesa.com/files/2005EssentialFacts.pdf (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
http://www.1up.com/(Retrieved on 20/10/07)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy (Retrieved on 10/10/07)
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/gamerrevolution.html (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture (Retrieved on 12/12/07)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_Mama_2:_Dinner_with_Friends (Retrieved on 12/12/07)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture (Retrieved on 12/12)
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/gamerrevolution.html (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
[3] http://www.1up.com/ (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_Mama_2:_Dinner_with_Friends (Retrieved on 12/12/07)
[5] Richard J Haier, E Jung and others. (2004).Structural Brain Variation and General Intelligence,p. 425–433.
[6] http://www.theesa.com/files/2005EssentialFacts.pdf (Retrieved on 20/10/07)
