Being a gamer all my life, I have met many others who do share my interest of playing video games. These others have covered all aspects, nationalities, beliefs, ethnicities, cultures, orientation and even gender. It's a no brainer that there are girls and women who do enjoy and play video games as much us guys do.

There are many other people who have been playing video games, work in the industry and spent time more than I did in video games, long enough that they should know girl gamers exist, right? Generation by generation, game companies have done many things to "try to get girls into gaming" by selling pink and violet systems, and that's pretty much like someone trying to get his significant other into wrestling or football (be it soccer, american football or rugby), if they're into it from the start, they're into it, there's no way around it.

See, when Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo say something like "We are trying to bring more female gamers with our line of pink/violet of systems" I think to myself "wow, they really don't get it do they?" I mean seriously, How many women drive pink cars on the road? they never sat down and thought MAYBE it's about the software and not the hardware for a minute?

I mean sure some tastes differ when it comes to TV shows and movies, but it's not like women are more attracted to TV shows that use pink filters on the camera.

I know I have stated the obvious so much in this article, but how obtuse do video game companies have to be in order for them to think floral colored systems are a good idea? I understand that it appeals mostly to girls below a certain age range (being a brother to a kid sister who owned and broke both a pink DS fat and a pink DS lite), but how many girls started with a big gray Brutalistic NES and still got a kick out of it?

Many of you might be saying "this is old news" but companies are still at it, anyone seen the Hannah Montana PSP bundle? they're saying that's suppose to market to tweens, are they kidding me?

Things like this are very common in many pop cultures, many times people think it's unusual to have women interested in activities that are majorly  followed by a male demographic, you see articles of "top 10 sexiest female racing drivers" and "top 10 sexiest geeky girls", I mean seriously, we aren't in the 1820s anymore, things like this aren't exactly unusual anymore.

In order to ridicule these companies who thought this is a great idea, I made a survey asking many girl gamers in the region of the United Arab Emirates (and some girls from abroad were nice enough contribute), many at first though I was objectifying women with stereotypes, once they read through the lines, they understood what I'm after.

I made this survey in order to show game companies (if they ever bother reading this) that it doesn't take much to see what fans would like to see in games, whether they were guys or girls. Seeing many of the contributors would like to keep their identity anonymous, I will use Initials in order to point out what the videogame sorority has to say about this.

In the survey, I asked a series of questions covering the contributors' interests in videogames in general, seeing what they were into, what games do they enjoy, what attracts them to certain games and what drove them off of some.

Anime and Japanese pop culture is universally popular in the UAE, many of the contributers (in fact 89% percent of them) enjoy Role Playing games. "RPG, Adventure, Fighting; I just find them a lot more fun.", says D.G., she continues to add with, "Something with a story or something addicting.".

S.T adds "RPGs, they're more about strategy than action, and they're usually accompanied with story lines and character development that keep it interesting.". One however broke the mold, Z.A enjoys Car racing games with no reason more that she loves them.

Pinpointing the genre gave us a good idea what these ladies enjoy, but to go into much more detail, we understand what series they're into, many of them said Final Fantasy was one of their all time favorite series, with some calling out Wild ARMs and Kingdom Hearts.

Some went further pointing out other games, one girl with the nickname "Bajilla" (Arabic for fava bean), "Castlevania, i've been playing it ever since i was five. and i was always interested in vampires and vampire stories. And also final fantasy spinoffs, (tactics, tactics advance, A2, crystal chronicles..) because they usually have interesting stories, and awesome artwork.".

One more was very broad in her videogame tastes, "Zelda, Mario, Metal Gear Solid, Smash Brothers, Cooking Mama, Animal Crossing, Halo... That's from the top of my mind. No reason other than that those games always do well as they go along. I forgot to mention Monkey Island, always loved it and still do." says S.L.

Going further with systems, many show loyalty to both Nintendo and Sony, only a few of the contributers mentioned the 360. As for handhelds, many tied between the PSP and the DS, though many have prefered the DS for it's portability and selection of games. "DS.

Unlike the PSP it is small enough to fit into my purse, so I can take it more places.", says A.F.. As the survey kept going we had a question whether or not system colors matter, most of them said it didn't matter, saying that they prefer the "initial color, but many said the preferred black, with a few voting white and silver, let's see the pattern here.... no pink! we also asked "Did a color of a system made you repurchase the system or make you want to buy a new system?", 90.9% were in favor of "No, I'm happy with whatever color I have", while the 9.1% of the votes were in favor of "I wait for the color of choice".

When we asked what attracts them to a specific game, the answer comes with several reasons, as it would with male gamers. Most of them though preferred an interesting story, aesthetics played another part of it as they also look for artwork (again anime and manga being popular forms of entertainment here).

We also asked what drives them away from games, we did however get a larger variety of answers, some said they hated blood, gore and violence, others hated a bad story while a more popular answer was "if the game was frustrating" or "repetitive"

We concluded our survey with one last question, "What do you think of pink, violet or other floral color systems and why?", it was no surprise that the answers were mostly negative, but the surprising thing was how against the pink systems they were (well most of them), many of them considered it was too "stereotypical" with one comment saying "who ever buys those pink systems, buy them for their popularity and plays them for one time of their life time, they're not playing them for the games, they're just a popular item".

As companies should see they should spend less time and money developing a floral color and start paying more attention to the games they're making and releasing. Releasing "grey's anatomy" or "desperate housewives" games aren't the solution either,  make games that interest a specific demographic that isn't segregated by gender, people will come, people will play.