‘Remember Not to Die’: Girls Playing Video Games

Abstract

Eight year old Erica instructs other girls how to play a particular game. ‘Remember not to die’, she says, ‘all you have to do, is not die — how easy is that?’ Notice how she uses the passive construction — she instructs her fellow players not to remember to kill but to remember to avoid being killed, ‘not to die’, the most basic aspect of game play. In this chapter, I explore what I see as the implications of the complex positioning of femininity in video game play for young girls.