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Playing computer games is assumed to be an important gateway to computer skills. Although it is commonly assumed that men play more than women, 45% of the gamers in 2004 were women, according to Entertainment Software Association (ESA). Recruiting women as gamers has however been an important strategy to decrease the digital ‘gender gap’. We wish to take a look at some of the gender values a computer game can offer its female audience.

The games industry’s awareness of girls and women as important market segments is to a large extent economically driven. Apart from the ‘women need to change’-strategy, which simply invites women to play traditional computer games as they are, we now see two dominant strategies among game designers to include women as gamers. One strategy is to design games specially targeted at girls and women, a strategy basically built on ‘giving girls what they say they want’(Cassell and Jenkins 1998). Relations building, conflict resolving and non-violent activities are often found to be in line with ‘typical girls’ interests’, in contrast to ‘typical boys’ interests’, which are easily translated into violence and competition in computer games (Gansmo, Nordli and Sørensen 2004). This type of games has been highly successful, as we see from The Sims (Maxis 2000), and online ‘getaways’ such as There (There 2003). However, the pitfall of this approach is to reproduce stereotypical understandings of gender.