I decided to play Super Smash Bros by Nintendo. I played a typical brawl as the character Princess Peach. Super Smash Bros is a platform fighter with characters from the Nintendo Universe. This is a brawl, fighting style game that would stereotypically be one marketed and tailored for a male audience. There is a level of “violence” to the game with the fighting aspect and so it was interesting to now play this game with an intentional lens of being a feminist. My first notice was that this game is called Super Smash “Bros”. “Bro” in this case being a term traditionally short for brother. Even in the title of the game, there may feel as if there is a high barrier for women to participate in the game. From the start it feels like a “boys” game with the name and violent aspect. This is a good example where women could have a large impact in the gaming industry. The perspective and consideration of women gamers could have made the name of the game more inclusive to all gamers. While the game may have not meant to only apply to “bros” or a male audience, it may unintentionally do that to women gamers searching for new games to play. While nintendo may not have meant to, by appealing to a more singular audience, they are missing other opportunities for innovation as the book says. Princess Peach and other female characters in the Nintendo universe could potentially have been designed with more intentionality to be inclusive of women gamers. However, it was interesting and a good balance where Princess Peach was just as strong as other characters in the game. She was at no disadvantage which is encouraging.
I think the game overall fails to intertwine strong feminist theories. The biggest for me being the title of the game itself. I would imagine most novice gamers that don’t know the game, would think that the game really was for a specific male audience. And if you were not part of this intended audience, then the game was not for you or would not be fun. Overall, including more feminists in the design and iteration of super smash bros could make the game more inclusive and truly grow their audience by 2 fold. With half the number of gamers being women, there could potentially be a large untapped market for them to access. With the size and vastness of the Nintendo multiverse, there are likely many opportunities to bring in abilities or characters that can support the inclusion of women in games. There are lots of opportunities for this game to grow and tapping into this could greatly improve their game and widen their user base. Super smash bros is a pretty well known, famous game and so something that disrupts it could make a huge impact in the gaming community and have great ripple effects to other games. This could help to rethink the narrative of masculine games occupying the central position in the gaming industry.
Discussion Question: What other games may implicitly be turning women gamers away?
