- Early video games, like Pong, were totally unisex.
- Am I a boy dot or a girl dot?
- You're just a dot.
- Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
- In fact, the game was marketed
to the entire family.
- What about Pac-Man?
He was a boy.
- True, but the game was so popular with women,
that when it came time for a sequel,
the developers gave it a female main character, Ms. Pac-Man.
- Ah yeah, I'm spooky.
- Not Mrs, Ms.
She was a modern '80's career woman.
- I have an MBA in eating ghosts.
Wakka, wakka, wakka, wakka, wakka, wakka.
- (screams) She's so confident!
- And not only was much of the audience female,
many of the developers were too.
Among the stars of early game design
were Atari's Carol Shaw,
Centipede creator Donna Bailey,
and Roberta Williams,
an adventure game pioneer
and company co-founder
whose King's Quest series was a massive hit
among gamers of all stripes.
- Cool, it seems like everything's great.
Can I play my game now?
- Nope, because all of that changed
thanks to the video game crash of 1983.
Greedy publishers started flooding the market
with shoddy games like I Want My Mommy,
Lost Luggage, and E.T. for the Atari 2600,
which has been called one of the worst games of all time.
- Yuck, I'll play anything,
and even I know that's a turd.
- Most adults stopped playing games entirely,
and the video game market cratered.
(techno explosion)
So, when it came time to market the original
Nintendo Entertainment System,
Nintendo devised a plan.
Instead of selling it in the electronics section,
they sold it in the toy aisle.
But by then, the toy aisle was completely
separated into pink and blue, boy and girl.
Nintendo had to choose a side.
They went with boy.
And then they marketed to those boys relentlessly.
- What's it like to play
the Nintendo Entertainment System?
(upbeat '80's rock music)
Now you're playing with power.
- Other brands soon followed suit.
- Introducing games from Sega.
Let the break begin from the boys.
- And kept marketing to them as they grew up.
- It's not the size of your howitzer,
it's what you do with it.
- I got this pulling a 360 stalefish.
- I know you like that,
I know you love that.
- It's all about the control.
(upbeat hip hop music)
- You are so totally whipped.
- Come and play with me.
- And after decades of this kind of advertising,
- What's up, bitch?
- we now think of video games
as being the exclusive domain of the male sex.
- OK, those ads are weird,
but boys just like video games more than girls do.
- Sorry, Jake, that's a straight up myth.
More adult women play video games
than teenage boys do.
- Sweet!
- That's just counting stupid phone games.
- Uh, so, games are games, Jake.
All that means is that mainstream consoles
like PS4 and Xbox One are refusing to serve
a huge untapped market.
- Untapped market.
- We're talking millions of women
who would love to play more games,
but are being pushed away from the hobby
by weird old-fashioned marketing
that publishers are sticking with
seemingly out of shear force of habit.
- Force of habit.
- Ah, who's doing that?
Why are you hurting me, Megan?
- Because I'm mad at you.
I like games.
I've always liked them.
It's just sometimes I feel like they don't love me back.
And you act like I'm not supposed to play them or something
just because you listen to all these stupid ads.
- Jake, video games are the greatest new art form
of the century.
They can do anything.
Saying they're for just one gender is ridiculous.
- Yeah, it's like saying movies are just for girls,
or books are just for dads.
It's stupid.
- When we think about video games
in such a limited way,
it makes the games worse,
it loses the industry money,
and it's really mean to your sister.
(Jake screaming)
- Just wait, he'll burn out in about three minutes.
- Yeah, I've seen this before.
Hey, I'm Adam from College Humor.
If you liked that clip, make sure to check out
my new show "Adam Ruins Everything"
Tuesdays at 10 pm on Tru TV.
It's gonna ruin your Tuesday,
but trust me, the rest of your week will be fine.