How Women’s Magazines Cover Video Games

Editor’s note: Rachel had a great idea: How do women’s magazines cover gaming? I’m surprised that they actually do cover gaming. She shares her results with us. Here’s a challenge: Can any of you find anything meaningful about gaming in a women’s magazine or website? -Jason

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While searching for LittleBigPlanet screenshots recently, I was surprised to see a link from Marie Claire magazine. I don’t read women’s magazines much; most of the articles are variations on “How to Please Your Man,” and eventually they get redundant. So learning that Marie Claire covered LittleBigPlanet at E3 2008 grabbed my interest.

Unfortunately, the article’s title was a turnoff, “Five Video Games to Play with Your Boyfriend,” and didn’t quite have the facts right, erroneously calling the games characters “sandbag people.” Still, I plugged “video games” into the Marie Claire site’s search engine to see what would happen. The first hit featured the ungodly picture to the right in an article teased as “Women Turn the Ultimate Go-Nowhere Pastime — Video Games — into a Career.”

Although Marie Claire didn’t exactly blow me away with their video-game coverage, it was thought-provoking. How do women’s publications — and especially their websites — cover video games? In an attempt to answer this question, I searched for “video games” in the search engines on the sites of well-known women’s magazines.

Here goes!

 

Cosmopolitan

I didn’t find much here. The first article was from an advice column, “He’s Dating His Video Games instead of Me!” The next was a blog authored by “Joe Hottie.” Mr. Hottie explains “Mario Syndrome,” or how video games have taught guys to enjoy the chase and that women want to be rescued. He says, “Not all of those lessons are true. We learn later on in life that sometimes the object of our affection doesn’t want to be rescued. But the chase is still fun.” That kind of makes the “plot” of Super Mario sound a lot like the Disney Princess franchise.

InStyle

This is one women’s magazine that I actually do read (I’m a sucker for looking at clothes I can’t afford), so I can safely say its content is almost exclusively driven by fashion and celebrity. Searching their site, I learned that Lauren Bosworth, Lauren Conrad, and Stephanie Pratt (all of The Hills) attended Ubisoft’s and Maxim’s Assassins Creed 2 launch party. When I played the original Assassin’s Creed my roommate recognized the game from E!’s coverage of the launch parties. Red carpet-style releases for video games baffle me; I can’t see how an E! coverage of Assassins Creed could possibly impact sales of the game.

Glamour

At first glance Glamour’s video-game coverage was just what I expected it would be: pieces on Wii Fit and The Biggest Loser game. But then I clicked on a blog by Ryan Dodge that asked women to answer the question “Do you play video games?’ in the comments. Over the course of 17 comments, Glamour’s users listed games ranging from Centipede in the arcade to Guitar Hero. Reading this solidified my belief that women’s magazines may have an untapped goldmine in video-game coverage. Clearly an audience exists for it, and with the rise of the casual-games market, more women play video games than ever before.

Seventeen

Initially Seventeen treated me to the typical “My Boyfriend Won’t Stop Playing Video Games!” approach. Then it got more interesting. Apparently Cole and Dylan Sprouse, from the Disney Channel’s The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, did community service by teaching senior citizens how to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Comments ranged from “Awwwweee there sooo sweet♥” to “I dont exactly see how teaching seniors how to play video games is ‘giving back.’ I guarantee you at least one strained their back or hip or SOMETHING. And I doubt the seniors wanted to play video games, they probably have more sophisticated tastes then that.”

Right. Seventeen does seem to actually cover games, though rarely, and then only when celebrities are in them. This means the games they covered were really bad (Celebrity Sports Showdown, anyone?) But I was glad to see Seventeen acknowledge that some of its readers are gamers (even if they assume they only play crap).  

Allure

I found more coverage of Wii Fit and The Biggest Loser game. I did, however, learn about a PC game that allows you to virtually create your own perfume. Apparently creating a scent you can’t ever smell is compelling.

Lucky

Lucky is a magazine about shopping, so I assumed that it would at least have a few buyers’ guides on their site. To my surprise, the site didn’t have one buyers’ guide. Instead it treated me to this news item, “If you’re looking to adopt a new hobby, consider the newest trend: fashion video games. One based on Project Runway is set to debut in March.” Fashion games are a trend? I guess maybe they are on the DS. Maybe.

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So how did the women’s magazines do? None of them surprised me with their video-game coverage. Naturally, most the articles had to do with weight-loss games or weaning your man off the console. Still, I found moments here and there that made me wonder if women’s magazines aren’t passing up a great opportunity — and a chance to gain new readers — by taking video games a little more seriously.