Dear GameStop: Please Enter the 21st Century

If you’ve been paying attention to the world of video game news anytime within the last week, you might have already seen the black smoke billowing out of this delicious tidbit of corporate insensitivity – in most GameStop stores (including my local one in the South Hills Village mall, in the Pittsburgh area), they’ve erected these beautiful lighthouses of hope for lost and wandering girl gamers everywhere: little kiosks telling girls the perfect games to get, so their little brother won’t have all the fun!

The thing is, we’ve been so exposed in the Gameboy Advance era to games meant specifically for 10-year-old girls that most of these horse adventures and make-up simulators aren’t necessarily a big deal. The clincher, though, got quite a few corners of the Internet completely up in arms – would you believe me if I mentioned that they shelved Cooking Mama up there?

Even better, under the tagline, “I’ll show the boys what the girls can do!”

Now, call me paranoid from years of being taught that a woman’s place isn’t in the kitchen, but isn’t Cooking Mama about cooking? What kind of a horrible message is GameStop implying by putting Cooking Mama exclusively in their “GAMES FOR GIRLS!” section? For cripes sake, every girl DS-owner I know actually hates playing Cooking Mama – and the only people I know who really enjoyed it were working, adult males (CoffeeMan loved it. He has posters of Cooking Mama and everything).

And furthermore, what 10-year-old girl (or, the age that I’d assume would be really into into Bratz, Disney princesses, and My Little Pony) would rather be playing a non-game about cooking? That’s more like, to the 10-year-old girl’s mind, playing a game about federal tax reform.

Let’s make one thing clear, though – I’m not a woman, but I’m a guy gamer who finds the general schism between the gaming genders to be rather unsettling. I grew up during the original console wars between Nintendo, Sega and a reluctant and meek Microsoft, and this sudden turn of attitudes reminds me far too much of when girls and boys were completely segregated demographics. Not again, GameStop.

Please, stop this while you still can.

What’re your thoughts on the issue? Leave us a comment, and let us know. Deplorable oversight, or brilliant publicity stunt?