The second half of “Complete Freedom of Movement” by Henry Jenkins focused more on “girl play”, it’s difference to “boy play”, and that for video games we should combine the two together. Personally I feel this has already happened, which I will go into later, despite the fact that I think defining girl and boy space in and of itself is the issue.

Girl play according to Henry Jenkins is “a space of secrets and romance, a space of one’s own in a world that offers you far too little room to explore.” He claims that most literature that feature girl space focused on heroines that learned to “temper her impulsiveness and to accept family and domestic obligations”. There were two different places that “Girl play” tended to take place in “Secret Gardens” and “Town Play”.Although both are completely different spheres, they have many similarities, that of the hidden and secrets. The “Secret Garden” of course is in and of itself hidden and secret, while “Town play” is more of knowing peoples secrets/making people have secrets and keeping them hidden or hiding in order to get them much like “Harriet the Spy”. The use in video games then becomes one of discovery, discovery of the hidden, of secrets that have been buried and one of emotional discovery in contrast to “boy play” which is all about adventure in the wild. Both of these forms of play do share a common link though, exploration of the unknown, it’s just girl play seems to do it in more intimate settings whereas boy play tends to do so without caution in the wild.

This brings me to my point of is any of it really necessary. Both boys and girls share such similar play styles that they not only can be merged they can be do away with individual styles altogether. I would think the original reason to have different styles of play was always this silly notion that somehow women were weaker, that they needed to be at home and protected from the wild things out there, while the men were the strong ones and would have to go out and protect their women, as if these women didn’t even have enough status to be considered humans, but mere property. Women and men are equal. We may think in different ways, but in truth everyone thinks in different ways. It’s not about what sex you are, it’s purely about individuality. Sadly some people still don’t see it. In answer to the question “So, why do you write these strong female characters?” Joss Whedon simply states “Because you’re still asking me that question.” I find it odd that the writer of “Complete Freedom of Movement” insist that we need to open up more space for girls to play in, when in fact we just need to stop putting restrictions on our children based off their gender.

Since the time that this piece has been written I feel that games have gotten to be a lot more open to both male and female players. Take, for example, the Tomb Raider reboot. It offers a lot of little discovery in exploring the local environments and finding the history of the area you are in while at the same time adding action and adventure. This feels like it completely marries the two play spaces while also telling a decent narrative as well. Many other games have huge open worlds with which to interact with and within these open worlds theres many small quests and big quests that you can accomplish, not all of which ends up with a used weapon. So for the most part I feel we have opened up the spaces for play, but there are still issues with the play that needs to be fixed before calling it perfectly equal, as previously mentioned using women as properties or as prizes for the end of the game. Eventually though video games will be equal play spaces for anyone to play in.