Social and emotional content? What a load of rubbish, my sister plays Pac man and Solitaire and Tetris.

quote: I agree with this for the most part, except that a couple of things must done before that natural evolution will occur.

First, the advertising departments have to stop making sexist, stupid, and embarrasing adds. Honestly, just open up to a random page in your favorite gaming mag, and chances are you'll find an add with scantily clad women and male targeted statements.

Look at it this way, as guys, would we want to buy a game if it was advertised as being all fluffy and pink and feminen? No, it would drive you away. I'm not saying we need to target ads to females, I'm just saying that we shouldn't make adds that will drive them away.

Also, the gaming press needs to change somewhat. I've noticed that most of the magazines are almost exclusivly targeted towards males. I don't think it's nearly as big a deal, but still..

In any case, I do agree that there isn't some sort of magic solution that will suddenly make women play games.

----------------------------------------
"Before criticizing someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
Then, when you do criticize them, you will be a mile away and have their shoes." -- Deep Thoughts

Edited by - The Senshi on September 4, 2000 1:23:36 PM

How is any of that different from Hollywood at all? I mean, I see what you're talking about with the press, but the industry is exactly the same. If you consider this to be a problem, then it certainly isn't limited to games as some people imply. Sex sells; often more easily to men.

What bothers me is this. The belief that girls don't play games and that something can be done to change this is an extension of the very social stigma that dictates women should noty play games. But they do, so we male developers are just sitting here imagining a problem based on our ignorant assumptions of the situation.



======
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
-Socrates

"Question everything. Especially Landfish."
-Matt

Edited by - Landfish on September 4, 2000 2:05:02 PM

eeeeyikes. I take a short labor Day vacation and come back to find this..... cool!! After reading through the many replies, I think I have my answers And - who was it? - ahh, Landfish: thanks for the heads up about many women gamers, but I knew that and wasn''t trying to say that there is a shortage of them. And after reading all the responses, both girls and guys alike, I''ve come to agree with a lot of good points.

First, Paul and Landfish make the best arguments. I agree that more women game developers will definetly lead to more women gamers as games become more appealing to them. I''ve also realized that peer pressure has a lot to do with less women playing games. I''d give a lot of credit to any girl going against her peers to play games while they''re all out shopping every hour or doing the "in" thing while she''s off playing cause she likes it, not what they think. (I sure hope that came out right....)

To prove my point, there are still a lot of guys in my area that look upon kids like me who love playing games and using computers a lot as nerds, not cool socialites. I get caught reading one cool mag like MaximumPC or NextGen and I''m done for

Also, thanks to Moth and Sunandshadow for there replies, I''m sure they''ve done this before I accept your views on the women-as-sex-figures idealism. It is true that this could be a major turnoff for most girls (geewhiz, now what does THAT imply? sorry.....sorry...) and I''m sure some medium could be found, but if it went too far, then we might just have a girl-type game and guy-type game and few inbetween. I think that would be bad, cause then you might see the physical split between the two gamer types, so a definite medium would be best I think.

Anyways, to sum up my shpeel (yeah, I know... i spelled it wrong), I just wanted to see if I could understand what females would like in games so that when I design games, I can help bring in more female gamers, cause if anyone thinks its always gonna be a male dominated market, they''re just as wrong as they were back in the mid 1900''s.

(BTW: no disclaimer included - you are free to rip me apart and throw me to the sharks if you so wish. GAAAA what have i done!?!?!)

==============================
\\// live long and prosper; \||/ die short and rot.
==============================

quote: Original post by The Senshi
Look at it this way, as guys, would we want to buy a game if it was advertised as being all fluffy and pink and feminine?

Not even a woman would buy a game advertised as fluffy, pink and feminine. Look at the many barbie-game failures.
The problem remains that Computer Games are a fundamentally geeky activity with very little connection to real life. Somehow, for a lot of women, that seems to put them off, they have better things to do with their time, like phoning their friends.
I think if you look at the demographics of people playing a lot of computer games, you''ll see they are mostly [with exceptions] single people, or people who are just not very active socially. This may change for multiplayer games, at least a little bit, but then I know that my girlfriend hates "family games" even more than a normal computer game.
Lets face it, in their eyes, playing computer games just isn''t very cool! "Hey everyone, my boyfriend beat DiabloII last night!"






Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

I think that we are all different, males and females. So instead of targeting ''women'' as such, we target those who prefer social interaction. Personally, I have been campaigning for NPC''s to interact with for a great deal of time. This seems to be an area where I have seen women protesting for my case too. It is not a sex issue, it is a brain wiring issue. I do not really like FPS, they test twitch, my twitch is good, but I prefer to attempt more abstract things like puzzles (or [cryptic] crosswords at that )

Why don''t games just get classed as: ''fast paced twitch splat'', ''click-n-kill'', ''puzzle'', ''strategy'', ''sim'', educational, and ''adventure''. These may be mixed, but they do not reference sex, just play preference. I am sure I have missed genre''s but it serves as an example. Let each person decide what suits them and let girls and guys alike play together. BTW. A lot of girls would woop most peoples ar$es at Quake <insert number here>, so don''t go saying that girls don''t play games.

Concequently though, it seems that the majority of computer illiterate are female (from personal experience). I had to teach my mum, g/f and sister to use the computer. I am younger than two of those, and I learned a lot quicker. Maybe it is just the interest factor, that they were more interested in other things... Who knows, but that was the past (when computers were rare), in this age, most people use computers. So maybe times having changed means a shift in the trend towards games

Nuff said...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft
"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy"
IOL (The list formerly known as NPCAI) - A GDNet production
Our Doc - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche