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Recruit More Women Developers, Attract Women Gamers?
Thanks to MSNBC for its fresh look at the problems of integrating the needs and tastes of the female into the male-dominated videogame industry. It's suggested by Microsoft's Laura Fryer: "Half of the population isn't having input into what's being created... And the one thing that I learned is that people make games they like to play. Having a diverse opinion helps games." Sheri Graner Ray of Sony also points out: "The purpose of recruiting women is not so they can make games about pink fluffy kitties... You can't say that women like this or Japanese gamers want this." Thus, it's argued: "The solution to this dearth of female fandom... lies in recruiting more women coders, artists and level designers, the type of positions that can shape a title's story, look and gameplay."
I'd say in general, if you're a woman game developer, you probably have similar tastes to other women game developers rather than all women.
On the other hand, focusing on women (maybe near naked) with oversized parts of the anatomy does turn women off. Developers are supposed to concentrate on the character of the female avatar (strength of will, determination, I am woman hear me raaawwrrr), but instead choose to appeal to the traditional male demographic because they're the only consistent game buyers.
Lastly, this topic was talked about at GDC2004. They didn't seem to get anywhere though.
(Off topic... I'd tried to read the article at msnbc but it looks like they stop
But one serious problem is that to be able to hire female game-designers, there needs to actually be some of those available. Before women can start taking a big role in design, artwork, story and coding for games, women need to start getting an education and experiences that makes them qualified for those kinds of jobs.
Sure, there are some exceptions, but not very many. I've *been* on the employer side of the table, trying to hire more mixed. We put in ads explicitly requesting women and minorities to apply. Inspite of this less than 10% of the applications we got where from women, and to add insult to injury, the average qualification of those few women who *did* apply was abysmal. Not "sligthly lower than average of the males", but more like the best qualified of the females would still be in the last quartile of the men. Hiring unqualified workers won't help produce quality anything.
As a teenager I remember a few years back when everyone was ubcessed with The Sims-yes, even the girls, and the hot ones too. I can only recall of two fems I know that were into computer games. The games were The Sims, DiabloII, The Final Fantasy Series, Starcraft, Everquest. One thing I notice about all of these games that they have in common is that they have some kind of distict heroine that is user-selectable or within the game. However, this does not apply as much with (for example) the Tomb Raider series, which features the lovely Lara Croft with her...gigantic bosoms-something not appealing to most females in a videogame. The ladies seem to like more adventerous or life-like fantasy games and less gory shoot-em-up games.
Even without many women contributing to the development of the games I named above, they(and I'm sure many others) are still a sucess among females.
This does make me curious as to how other types of games that appeal more to men would turn out if more women helped in the development of them.
In a time where it seems like developers are out of game ideas, this may be just what the gaming world needs-more women to spice up the way guys and gals game from now on.
Interestingly, because "guy" genres on the PC are so prevalent now, I've lost the urge to upgrade my PC and am now almost entirely a console gamer (minus the odd adventure game). I'm even considering a switch to Mac now that I'm not so dependent on Windows for gaming.
I'm obviously not saying that every girl gamer is like me, but I think you'll find a lot of similarities among us. When you have mostly guys developing a game, the game will inevitably have a mostly male point of view (unless the game is specifically geared toward girls). It's just human nature. That is why I think it'll be good for studios trying to attract female gamers to hire female developers (FPS developers needn't bother). However, that would also be tough because since there are fewer girl gamers, there are fewer girls who want to become game developers. I've taken a few game design courses during my stint at USC, but the guys in the classes are generally more into gaming than the girls.
But there are still good female developers who are doing their fair bit out there. Check out Jane Jensen's (creator of the Gabriel Knight series) newest venture called Booby Trap. It's a point-and-click mystery adventure that's being sneaked into the casual puzzle-gaming scene.
You would have thought that by now game developers would have figured this one out.
.....but it won't happen! Women hate geeks and their games because geeks are clueless!
A certain demographic of young women spend their waking hours endlessly entertained with shopping for clothes (to attract boys), putting on makeup (to attract boys), watching endless images of boys on music video, and talking about all three things above... including how to get lots of boys and everyone else to fall hopelessly in love with them.
Jeez... if the geeks of the world were paying enough attention, they'd have a slew of girlfriends by now and enough common sense to develop a suitable game for women!
READY.
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I had a truly freaky experience a few weeks ago, regarding women and gaming. Neither of my parents are really "into" computers, although since I left home four years ago, they've always had a relatively recent PC around the house, for web-browsing, word processing etc. I normally get phone calls from my mother, whose technological incompetence is normally only matched by that of particularly luddite sea-urchins, about once a month, asking how to attach a document to an e-mail, or something of that ilk.
Therefore, my latest computing-related call from her came as something of a shock. "Do you know if Silent Hill 4 is coming out for computer? I was reading a website, and they only mention it being for Playstation, and we don't have one of those." When I recover from my shock, I find out that she's played through Silent Hill 2 and 3 (on the recommendation of a colleague at work) and basically thinks they're the best things since sliced bread. This is a woman who regards Space Invaders as "too complex", and she's telling me that she's just played through two recent, sophisticated Survival Horror games, but "your Dad doesn't like them, I think he's scared".
After this conversation, I went out and picked up the games (the PS2 versions of both are dirt-cheap now). I can see the attraction; they're well plotted, the production values are near to movie quality and the puzzles, on the top difficulty setting, are more demanding than anything I've seen in any other recent game. However, this is a long way from the "Tetris, The Sims, Mary Kate & Ashley, Anything Nintendo" stereotype of female gaming.
On a more relevant note, I suspect that having more women involved in games development would be a good thing. My experience is that mixed-gender offices will always be more creative (if not always more productive), than single-sex environments.