Live in your world, play in ours

Another day, another round of newsletters and spam emails. I delete yet another round of Circuit City sale alerts and Victoria's Secret 2-for-1 offers, skipping right to the Playstation 2 newsletter brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Sony Playstation Underground.

This is good, because I have over 50 PS2 games currently in my possession and I practically worship the console.

Let's see what we've got here...

What's this? Tiger Woods '09? Blah. Mercenaries 2? Meh, not interested. Madden '09? You wish. Yakuza 2? I hope it's better than the first one they released here, might get around to playing that some day. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed? I'm interested to see how that one works out because, you know, I've always wanted to force choke some....

Wait, hold the phone.









Double-u teeee effffff. Thanks, Playstation Underground (with whom I've had a membership for nearly 10 years), for assuming that I'm either a) male, or b) not at all interested in "mainstream" games because I have a vagina so you have to point out several "female-friendly" titles for me. Because I must automatically love social simulators and colorful, Disney-infused RPGs if I have boobs.

Nevermind that my pre-orders now include Too Human, Silent Hill 5, Infinite Undiscovery, Rise of the Argonauts.....WAIT those are all on Xbox 360. Purely coincidence, I swear.

This is obnoxious because I have never played nor liked the Sims or Harvest Moon. I have played Kingdom Hearts II, but so have many of my male friends. Many women play social simulators and whatnot, but not all women and the audience is certainly not free of men. By labeling these as "Games For Her", Sony has just told many woman and men that they don't play the games that were made for their gender.

Sony, you've made me a little miffed with your sexist advertising in the past, but I still think that the PS2 is a brilliant console and was an amazing offering in its time. Good graphics, backwards compatibility, CD and DVD support...

Thanks Sony, for devoting a tiny part of your newsletter to remind me that I am the "other", that your customer base doesn't include me and that you certainly don't try to include me in your normal advertising (in fact, Sony has regularly offended plenty of people with its advertising) so you relegate me to a section at the bottom of your newsletters trying to give suggestions for the "fairer sex" in the way of gaming titles.

Sony, I also have a few suggestions for you...