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10 Gateway Games
The title of 1up.com's feature is Top-Ten Girlfriend Friendly games, but the titles they suggest are generally intended to get a non-gamer interested in the gaming passtime. From the article: "...it is possible to bring non-gaming significant others over to the dark side, through a number of games designed to grab those who couldn't care less how many frags you got in Counter-Strike last week."
IMHO if it weren't for sentimental reasons games like Centipide and Ms Pac-Man wouldn't be on that list. Personally I'm not too fond of Tetris (Dr Mario) either, but Centipede?
That game almost killed the mobile phone gaming market. Too boring to even play on the toilet!
No Pikiman or Pikiman 2? My girlfriend who HATES games with a passion(or maybe just hates me playing rather then spending time with her) loved both of these games so much I actually had to give them to her little sister to get them out of the house and away from her.
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
I thought a non-competitive, abstract game like Marble Madness would be a nice introduction for my wife. So I fired up the NES and let her try. She got through several levels, eventually, and suppertime was nearing. So I went to the store to get some food, and when I returned she was angrily swearing at the screen and shaking her dainty fist at the NES itself. She glared at me, tossed the controller down, and said "Never ask me to play a videogame again."
Oh well. At least she lets me go fishing in Animal Crossing with our son.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
My wife likes playing games like the ones on orisinal
What she doesn't like is me playing endless hours of FPS on my own. So to spend time together we play team deathmatch games.
Good enough for me.
Sample this!
Karaoke Revolution
:).
Not that I'm partial or anything
P.S. I agree with the sentiment that the article, while trying to be inclusive, comes off a bit like a bunch of sexist men who are trying to be inclusive. Most of the female gamers I know are Everquest players, Counterstrike addicts, Katamari Damacy lovers, die-hard Ninja Gaiden fans, Sims players, Castlevania afficianadoes... Basically players with tastes as varied as any others, who like good games and maybe not so into the grossly overt sexualization thing. While there are some things you can do to make a female audience walk away, the only thing you can do to really attract them is to make a great game.
The ______ Agenda
It was curious that there were no COOPERATIVE games on there. My wife really enjoys playing the cooperative action/RPG games with me. Baldur's Gate:Dark Alliance and the like have eaten MANY hours of our time.
While that genre of games is pretty saturated, it provides a good scenario where I can help her learn the game and pick up the slack with killing the enemies until she gets the hang of it.
Rather than just giving her the controller, try plugging in controller 2.
http://www.tomandemily.com
And SSX3. My girlfriend (never a gamer at 27 years old) was hooked. Then Soul Caliber 2 (dont challenge her if shes playing as ivy). Shes not as hardcore as me, but she does obsess over whatever game she is currently playing. Right now its the buffy sequel. She calls me up, "how do i get past this one part". No hi or nothing. Ive created a monster.
she didnt know hardcore gaming till gt4 came out though... heh heh.
"Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
The space below is reserved for all vain /.ers who actually have girlfriends even though they spend their days frantically searching the site for the opportunity to show off:
... mine likes Mariokart double dash: She *knows* the blue sparks.
While the article is sexist, you can just think of it as, "games for non-gamers", but still, no Monkey Ball? I'm not really a huge video game fan, I like toying with them a bit, but I quickly lose interest. However, when I have a couple of friends over, there is nothing quite like some monkey ball and "pre-gaming" before we go out. It has no learning curve, fun as hell, and it can be put down wherever without having to worry about your "progress".
Monstar L
with gratuitous panty shots
The Eye Toy for the Playstation 2 has been what I have seen grab the interest of more non-gamers than anything else. I have seen many people that wouldn't touch a game controller waving their hands and moving around having a blast with the Eye Toy mini games.
My wife only plays one on the article list - Bejeweled. Her favorites are the Hoyles series, mostly the Card and Board games.
Replace "girlfriend" with "grandma" and they might have something.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
My wife is not really into video games. (Except Tetris with a passion, and webboggle.) But she loves to watch me play RE4. So much so that we only play it together. She makes popcorn and watches it like a movie, I blast away shambling villagefolk.
It's actually one of the more watchable games that I've come across. It's a pretty decent horror movie. Actually given the length its more like a horror series in one package.
Previously she watched me play through Grim Fandango (after I knew all the puzzles of course, otherwise it'd be boring as hell while I do the throw the inventory at the puzzle and wander around trying to figure things out). That game is hands down the best game/movie I've seen.
A good portion of the Wing Commander games are good too, but the space battles get repetitive for the view unless they are a player as well.
She also likes watching parts of Splinter Cell, but the sneaking around is less fun to watch.
It's slightly at a tangent to the discussion here, but I remember an incident last year regarding women and gaming which really made me laugh at the time.
I moved away from where the parents live about 6 years ago, after my student days came to a close and I got a job at the other end of the country. I'd never been much of a gamer before then. I mean, I guess I've been playing games on and off since I was about 10, but computers and games were never my "main" hobby, until a couple of years ago. Therefore, gaming was never actually something I'd particularly talked to my parents about. Sure, I'd done the usual tech-support-over-the-phone-and-at-holidays thing that most slashdotters seem to get roped into, but that was usually just with stuff like printing documents in Word.
Then one evening last year, around September or so, I get a phone call from my mother. She wants to pick my brains over a puzzle. This isn't particularly unusual; she's called me before when stuck on a crossword or something. Anyway, she describes this puzzle to me; it's basically a number-puzzle, based around finding a combination on a keypad from a series of clues. As I listen to the description, I get this weird sense of deja vu. I cut her off half-way through the description and say "The answer's 8631" (or whatever the answer really was; I can't remember now). There's a pause and she says "oh, you're right. How did you know that?" "You're playing a computer game, aren't you?", I say. "More specifically, you're playing Silent Hill 3." Cue an embarrassed pause and a very quiet "erm... yes". (For those who know the game, it was the "hard" difficulty puzzle to find the combination on the hospital door).
To be honest, this was a real shock to me. I guess I'd always shared a lot of the preconceptions demonstrated in this article; that if women played games, it was likely to be "simple" games, like Tetris, played for relatively short periods. Big-budget, high-profile survival horror games would not have been my pick for a "Gateway" game. To be honest, I find the idea of "Gateway" games a bit naff and artificial anyway. Either people like playing games or they don't.
Anyway, it turned out that my mother had already played Silent Hill 2, after being loaned it by a friend and fellow horror-movie buff at work. To tell you the truth, knowing her general level of IT literacy, I was pretty amazed she'd even managed to install and run a PC game. It did, however, get me thinking. Perhaps people outside the normal "gamer" demographic (which I probably just about fall into), are more likely to play a game if it's connected to other interests. My mother is a huge horror movie buff, so the Silent Hill games would have an obvious appeal that something "simple" like Tetris probably wouldn't. Moreover, the extremely realistic graphical style of the games helps to break down the barrier between games and movies. I'm pretty sure the original Silent Hill wouldn't have had the same effect; to somebody who isn't aware of or interested in the context for that generation of games, all that matters is that it doesn't "look" real.
Over-react much?
Hands down, Final Fantasy. It's what got me into games. You don't need reflexes, there's menus. They ease you into playing pretty well. And the stories are great. FFX and X-2 would probably be best for a fledgling female gamer - pretty, and there's a love story.
Before the calls of sexism come, I don't care who the girl is, all girls like romance. Even when they say they don't. They only say that to see if you'll be romantic anyways. (Yes, girls are sneaky.)
-Male gamers create an enviornment hostile to female gamers, both actively and passively. Examples: telling women that they wont like Doom 3 but they will certainly like DDR (AHEM!); Asking a women who's gaming if she actually likes games (of course she does you dope, she's playing one now!)
-Game creators and especially marketers create disincentives for women to play through sexist or oversexualized portrayals of females. Examples: Hijacking Lara Croft's image from female Indy to Drips-With-Sex-Balloon-Boobs; Bloodrayne; too many to list.
-Women in positions of influence tell young women not to game because it is "not a girl thing to do." I still see (younger and older) mothers tell their daughters not to game (in whatever form) and to play with Barbie. And at the risk of getting shot, I tell them off every time.
To be honest I'm getting sick of the way women are treated and portrayed by the gaming community. From a social standpoint, I want to see games exoand into a major culture-spanning entertainment, and that can't happen without the other half of the species; from a business standpoint, the game industry is ignoring signifigant potential sales on the games they make by being sexist; and from an equality standpoint, what we as gamers and game industry professionals are doing to women is morally objectionable.
Drew Nolosco
Chief Game Designer
Riot Media, Inc.
My girlfriend lovesSuper Monkey Ball Deluxe! We had a party a few weeks back and most of the women gravitated to the basement to play that game on xbox. Fine by the guys, the fridge with the beer was upstairs.
If you don't have the game, rent it, buy it, download it, whatever it. It's a blast.
Trolling is a art,
Firstly, it is, of course, hilariously sexist garbage.
Secondly, you don't want to introduce your s.o. to Animal Crossing if you ever want to get near your Gamecube again.
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One thing you to which you have to give women credit is that they are not easily swayed by video images and the "kill! kill! kill!" mentality. Most, but not all, women tend to like a game that gives them their money's worth. That means a lot of depth with a simple concept, usually.
Although I disagree with Centipede and Suikoden, I think I can sum up with a brief history of games that accidentally or on purpose were of general interest to women:
1) Pong. It's just not fun anymore, though.
2) Breakout, Super Breakout, Arkanoid, and all those other block busting games (many currently released). Very little actual violence.
3) Pac Man/Ms Pac Man. The first one was a hit with women because it was the first game with a personality and a lot of soft colors. The second one was just an all around better game and it had Pac Man in drag!
4) Dig Dug/Mr. Do! I'm not sure why. I saw more women playing Mr. Do! than Dig Dug back in the day. Dig Dug should replace Centipede on the list IMHO.
5) Galaga and Moon Cresta. Colorful and varied was the key here, I think.
6) The Legend of Zelda. Only the first one had the simplicity and depth ratio right.
7) The Adventures of Lolo. The graphics were particularly hard on the eyes, but the trilogy of Lolo was some of the hardest ever. The key to this puzzle game was in failure--it gave you a clue as to what went wrong.
8) Puzzle games. Bust-a-move/Puzzle Bobble, Tetris, and even Lolo counts. The appeal is a simple concept/difficult play combination and the "pick up game" quality.
9) Solitaire. After all, PC solitaire is the most popular PC game. I suggest Solitaire Antics Ultimate and Hardwood Solitaire (PC and Xbox Arcade).
10) Pitfall/Jungle Hunt/Safari Hunt. Something about vine-swinging. I don't know why, except they're all about survival in a jungle.
11) Megatouch/touchscreen games. These are popular with the ladies.
12) Multi-game arcade cabinets. Probably the smartest move if you have to sate your Soul Calibur urge while on a date.
I should end my list by saying it is not scientific in the slightest. My qualifications to these observations is playing Pong when it was first released.
I'm a girl gamer, and one of the biggest draws for me is having a female avatar. I'll play GTA and Zelda and other games that have only male avatars, and enjoy them, but there's something special knowing that your character is also a woman and she's kicking some ass. That's why I love the Buffy games and No One Lives Forever...
Also, not one adventure game listed on that page? From King's Quest to Loom to Myst, those were the first games that drew me. Since they're all story-oriented and tend to have no violence, surely those would be a hit with most non-gamer women.
ALL WOMEN ARE THE SAME.
Well, they are.
When one is making an effort to attract another demographic, in this case women, one tends to be a little "sexist". You cannot make 50,000,000 products that are appealing to 50,000,000 women. You must make one product that would be appealing to some expected percentage based on some generalization that "most women, because of 'X', will enjoy this game".
And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that no, not ALL women are the same, but a very large majority of them are. Women in general have not given sufficient feedback to be fully included in a number of areas (esp. gaming). It is a known fact that chicas tend to avoid the hard sciences and mathematics. Is it because big, bad men wont let them in? Or are there broader reasons (for instance, lack of interest in subjects that aren't perceived as "emotionally relevant")?
As such, these trends do not indicate a "defect" in females, but another feature of innate behavior or perhaps an artifact that results from the differences between men and women as they are being raised as children. There are big differences between men and women and it is obvious, that so far, most game companies have done little to encourage women to play. Now that they are, you claim they are sexist fucks for finally making an attempt to be inclusive and you bemoan the site's statistics because they don't include your tastes as favorites in the list. That's the problem with polling, the odd man (or woman) out is always the odd man out. If you have more escoteric tastes that do not follow the trends of your peers, it will appear that you are being left out. But this is not the case.
My wife's the same way. One big (HUGE) key for her is that she be able to pick up the controller and go. Hack and slashers are fine, but if (as in Return of the King, which you can play coop) you start getting into combos like Square-Triangle-L2-Triangle, you lost her at Triangle.
She LOVES the Diablo series, at least on the PC, and has a decided weakness for the Civ family of games (even relatively crappy ones like Pharoh). She doesn't play from the strategy, "kill your enemies" standpoint, but she really enjoys building the civilization. I think she's actually completed one game in untold hours of play, and never plays at any level above "super-wuss."
It's also important that you can have sessions that last a couple of hours. She gets lost in those 80 hour RPGs. Cutscenes are not your friend.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
it should be here since the original link starts with #5.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I saw an interesting side of this when working at EB.
As far as EB sales, I can't deny that the Sims and Animal Crossing did very well with women. But many of the the women that actually walked into our store (and it was admittedly rare for one to walk in save Christmas and Valentine's Day) tended to like - surprise - fighting games. Not sure why they liked fighting games, but it definitely goes at odds with the traditional viewpoint that games that sell to women are non-violent and don't advertise big bouncy breasts.
Among PC owners, adventures games did very well. I remember having several female customers that we would see every few months who would come in and lament the decline of the genre, poke around the shelves, pick up a few of those subpar European adventure games, put them down and then sadly leave. Longest Journey would whet their appetite once, but it raised the bar for them and there was little more to offer.
Then there were the few women who were excited about games only because their man's enthusiasm was so infectious. Those were the most fun, because it was always weird to have one of those few come in and excitedly put preorder money down on Def Jam Vendetta or something like that.
It was surprising to me how many males came in wanting, so desperately, to find a game that their girlfriend would play. I wonder about this; why we work so hard to get the women who (kind of) love us to love our games. I've lost count of the number of times I've called my wife into the living room to try to get her to play. Maybe it's a form of validation?
It seems there are some pretty fundamental misunderstandings going on, looking at the comments so far in this thread. The answer to the question "what sort of games do girls like" is quite simply "good games".
Honestly, all this talk about "simple" games, "real" games and so on is just patronising and untrue. Two of the most commonly cited "popular with females games" are complex and menu driven (The Sims and Final Fantasy X). By and large, with variations for individual taste and genre preferences, female gaming preferences are basically along the same lines as male. A good game in any genre will be recognised as such by players of either gender. Final Fantasy X, Resident Evil 4, Half-Life 2, Halo 2 and The Sims are good games; their appeal is fairly universal, although there are always a few fanboys (and it's almost always boys), who define themselves as "real gamers" and consider it somehow obscene to profess a liking for those games.
Indeed, if there's one big difference between male and female gaming habits, this is where it lies. By and large (and yes, I'm going to stereotype here, even though I don't like doing so), girls are brought up in an environment in which it's less acceptable for them to play games. They're less likely to have spent their childhoods talking about them with friends and they'll generally come to them later in life. For this reason, I've generally found women games less likely to be involved in, or impressed by, the willy-waving that characterises so much of the "male" gaming discussion. There's a trend among male gamers, particularly noticable here on slashdot, to attempt to accumulate Kudos by professing deliberately archaic tastes ("What, you like Final Fantasy X? Disgusting. They've not made a good installment since 2, when everything was in text and you controlled the game by throwing rocks at the screen!") or claiming to be a "real gamer" ("I only play Nintendo games because only Nintendo make REAL GAMES for REAL GAMERS").
By and large, if you exclude the small but unfortunately noisy demographic that think like this, male and female gaming tastes are the same. The same considerations of gameplay, graphics, sound and story all come into force, with the specific balance varying between individuals
If they'd done a list of only current games, I think Nintendo would have come out on top in terms of consoles. Probobly the best system to get any new gamer, male or female, would be a GBA. In my opinion, it has a better game library than the Game Cube or any other console.
A lot of guys make fun of Nintendo for being "kiddy", but they aren't really childish. It's just that they lack the uber-macho posturing stuff you see in a lot of other consoles/games. Some guys are put off by that, but obviously girls are not. In fact, most of the people saying "Nint3nd0 iz k1dd3" are probobly pimply teenagers, not men.
IMHO, while girls can like blowing away people in GTA as much as any guy, they're not as swayed by the macho feel of those games so much as by the gameplay.
I want my libertarian socialism, dammit. I doubt I'll see it though.
How do those two go together? One of them is a theory about how things whould be better of if the government (and everyone else) where less invovled, the other is a system that by necessity forces government into your life.