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At first glance, the categorization of computer games by target gender seems perfectly appropriate. The briefest glance at Quake and the Barbie Fashion Designer yields a striking contrast between the two. Indeed, the games classified as "boy" games are focused on combat, death, and victory, suggesting that their purpose is a test of skill against the computer or human opponents. The "girl" games are markedly different. The classic example, the aforementioned Barbie Fashion Designer, seems more like an accessory to a physical Barbie doll than a standalone program in its own right. The challenge is artistic, not combative. There is no objective measure of success here, instead the user's own aesthetic sense is the key. This almost seems like an interesting sort of technological construction kit, bridging the digital/physical gap-except for the disappointing lack of freedom within the software. Pamela A Ivinski notes that the "structured interactivity" of the Barbie Fashion Designer severely limits the possible fashions to be created by providing templates for "miniskirts and wedding dresses" but not clothes needed to create "Barbie Auto Mechanic or Barbie Police Officer" (qtd in Cassel, Jenkins.) The other "girl" games have similarly nonconfrontational themes; for example, Purple Moon markets their programs not as "computer games" but "friendship experiences for girls." Two of the Lego Group's software products which also clearly reflect this split are "Lego Racer" and "Lego Friends." The former is a racing game in which you design your own car (though disappointingly it fails to take factors such as wind resistance into account for your design) and the latter is a virtual town in which the user interacts with a number of virtual girls as they talk on the phone, dance, make music, and so forth. There are elements of construction in both of these programs (in Lego Friends, you can build music and dances for the virtual girls to perform) but the objectives are clearly different. Lego Racers focuses, obviously, on competition while Lego Friends creates the same kind of "friendship experience" which Purple Moon strives for. The dichotomy here is striking-boys are to be interested in competition and girls are to be interested in their interactions with other girls. (It seems somewhat worrisome that girls are expected to have their "friendship experiences" with a computer instead of with other real people.)

Interestingly, these two categories are not quite sufficient, as there are a number of computer games which generally fall under the same umbrella of logical challenge as chess or a crossword puzzle. Two good examples of this are "Myst" and "The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis." Myst is striking for its lack of instructions. Practically the only instructions provided were how to install and run the game. After that, the user was on his or her own-free to explore the worlds that the game provides. Though there is an end or "win" to the game, it is achieved through a careful exploration of the game's universe, which requires a great deal of time and careful analysis. The Zoombinis are not quite so cryptic, at least at the lower levels, but at each level the user is thrust into a situation where he or she must assist the Zoombinis in making their way past some obstacle, which always involves solving some whimsical logical puzzle. It is interesting to note that in the preceding few sentences, I was compelled to use the awkward phrasing "he or she" because it is very difficult to say that either game is targeted at either gender. These games are neither based on competition nor based on social interaction. Instead, they simply present a challenge to the user and provide positive feedback-being able to enter a new world in Myst or being able to help the Zoombinis journey further-and in both cases provides a fresh, new challenge to follow the last. SimCity also falls under this category, though in SimCity's case the logical challenges are not explicit; instead the player works within the model of the city to determine the most effective strategy for building the "best" city-by whatever standard they decide upon. These games were presented as "gender-neutral" games, which seems to be largely in comparison to the styles evident in the "boy" and "girl" games.

Yet we should not be so quick to accept this trichotomy of the gender bias of computer games, for there are a number of examples of blurred lines between them. For example, Cassel and Jenkins describe groups of female Quake players who call themselves "Crack Whores" or "Game Grrls." These players resent the very trichotomy detailed above and have undertaken to beat the boys at their "own" game of Quake, rejecting the limits on female accomplishment that are implied by the exclusion of girls from competitive, violent computer games. These players are very aggressive and fiercely competitive-not quite the expected audience for "Lego Friends." Other games clearly targeted for girls also blur this boundary, such as Mattel's "Race & Ride" and "Super Sports," both based on Barbie but clearly competitive in nature, the "Super Sports" game promising "extreme racing and fun sports action." It is intriguing that Mattel is using the popularity of their Barbie dolls to leverage this sort of software explicitly for girls (though these games are still placed alongside the "Digital Makeover" on Barbie's "Software for Girls" website.) The "neutral" games might also be included here, as the grouping is defined by not fitting the gender stereotypes.

The presence of these stereotypes-and these exceptions-points to an interesting difference in the ways that software is being developed for girls. The substantial quantity of stereotypical girls' programs being developed, which focus mainly on "traditional" girls' pursuits such as social activities, seems to have stemmed from the success of the Barbie Fashion Designer, which broke the perceived gender barrier preventing girls from using the computer by leveraging an existing part of girls' culture. Other companies have followed this reactionary path, including Girl Games, whose Heather Kelley says that "If new representations of gender, including new software designs, emerge, we're going to be responding… We're not trying to change the world from a small company of seven women" (qtd by Cassell, Jenkins.) No doubt Kelley and others in such companies feel the pressure of simply trying to break down that gender barrier at all. Yet it is also interesting that Mattel is using its considerable power in girls' culture to promote girls' games focused on adventure and competition. Mattel is even selling a "Barbie PC," which is decaled with flowers to fit the Barbie style, which comes complete with everything from the Barbie Fashion Designer to "Super Sports" to "Detective Barbie" and "Barbie Totally Tatoos."

With this emerging variety both of notions of computer games and the hazy gender roles which they embody, we should perhaps not be too comfortable with our notions of "girl" and "boy" games. The Barbie sports games are an interesting indication that the types of games are beginning to overlap between genders. This does not mean that games are or should be marketed in a unisex manner, but rather that the division between the objective of girls' games and boys' games is no longer so clear as we might think at first glance.

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