The 'Girl Games' of the '90s Were Fun and Feminist

Love her or hate her, you can't deny that Barbie has always been a game changer, and not just because she was the first doll with a waistline. In the mid-1990s, she changed games literally--computer games, that is. Women played a pivotal role in the development of arcade and early console-based video games. In the PC gaming industry, on the other hand, they were outnumbered and outranked by men, who almost always balked at the prospect of games for girls. As time passed, though, more and more research confirmed that girls were playing computer games, such as Myst and The Oregon Trail; they simply lacked games expressly created for them.