Keeping Ms. Pac-Man Out of the Club: Pacmania, Video Game Magazines, and the Gendered Guardrails of Digital Worlds in the Early 1980s

This article reveals a gendered backlash to the increased participation of female gamers during Pacmania in the United States in the early 1980s. As Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man gained immense national recognition, gaming magazines, newsletters, and newspaper articles recognized the female gamers who contributed to tournaments and gaming culture. However, some male gamers mocked “cute” games, coded to female gamers, that supposedly undermined the stature attached to “serious” games. Present throughout gaming media but epitomized in the gaming magazine VIDIOT , this set of male gamers mocked female gamers and cute games that somehow undeservedly encroached upon their digital domain. This antiPacmania backlash was an early historical moment in which male gamers and corporate institutions installed gendered guardrails to preserve video games as an exclusive realm that marginalized females. This moment was an early case study of the gendered ideals that shaped the next decades’ male-focused advertising and even Gamergate.