Game Makers Study How Tetris Hooks Women – WSJ 1994

This morning I read “No Girls Allowed: Unraveling the story behind the stereotype of video games being for boys” by Tracey Lien, Dec. 02, 2013

In the article, Lien discusses a brief history of how games were not, then were made for boys/men over time. I thought it was funny, then, when an hour ago I found this charm of an article in the WSF from 1994, discussing how Tetris was effectively an unintended women-game. The author highlights that creator Alexey Pajitnov admitted, “when I designed the game, I did not have women in mind.” The gendering is just about nauseating.

Jim Carlton, “Game Makers Study How Tetris Hooks Women,” WSJ pg. B1, May 10, 1994
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Wall Street Journal (1889-1996)

(apologies for the pink highlights)

Some gold:

“Why are so many grown women hooked on Tetris, the geometric video game? … What about Tetris lures women in a way that no other video game does? Nintendo figures that women account for 40% of the 27 million world-wide buyers of Game Boy, a hand-held video game player that comes bundled with Tetris; that’s double the percentage of women buying its other machines.”

“Hillary Rodham Clinton reportedly is an avid filcher of daughter Chelsea’s Game Boy. A Clinton press aide wouldn’t confirm or deny that the first lady has a Tetris passion but notes that ‘I’ve seen her kind of pull it out of a bag on a plane and start playing.'”

“Women crave order, adds Gini Graham Scott, an Oakland, Calif., sociologist who was also commissioned by Nintendo. ‘It’s the woman who handles the decor,’ she says, ‘It’s usually the guy who messes things up.’ … Tetris may be particularly good at releasing female endorphins, she says, because it satisfies a woman’s craving for order in a way that other video games don’t, and ‘when that [endorphin rush] happens, you want to repeat that good feeling again.'”

“There’s also the hunter-gatherer theory. ‘Men were the hunters- they focused on killing for survival; women were the gatherers- they see the whole picture,’ Dr. Scott says. Tetris, she suggests, is a big-picture game that appeals to women’s ‘holistic’ way of seeing things.”

“Some warn that Tetris addiction among women may bring the same kind of social harm that alarmists have warned could affect children. In a report for Nintendo, Dr. Mackoff, the psychologist, wrote that Game Boy play can result in ‘driven, pleasureless participation that excludes socializing and other creative forms of relaxation.'”