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Uneasy Relationship Between Gender and Gaming
1up.com has a well thought out look at the Uneasy Relationship between Gender and Gaming. No girl power, no PSP lickers. From the article: "Leisure and entertainment have evolved alongside humans. Even in more primitive times, life couldn't be all about clubbing saber-toothed tigers. And while men and women usually enjoy the same forms of entertainment, it doesn't mean they always enjoy the same kinds of entertainment."
I don't think it will be too many more years before the game companies relize that about half the world is being alienated by there games and start making unisexual games.
I mean DOA beach Vollyball.... heh who was that made for I wonder.
I googled for "girls lick PSP", but none of those links seem to be what you were referring to.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
I think that games should be catered equally to men and women. For example, Tecmo's "Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball" featured topless male players right out of the box! Why did it have to take a group of concerned volunteers to develop a patch that made the game fair?
The games industry is trapped in a vicious circle, these days games cost a fortune to make and a single flop can wipe out a development company. So instead of experimenting and innovating with new ideas that could potentially flop developers/publishers stick to tried and tested franchises which means the female market goes completely untapped.
Nintendo seem to be having the most success at breaking away from this problem, particularly with games like Nintendogs which has apparently been a big hit with many female gamers in Japan.
BTW, exactly when did male gamers stop being "awkward, snorting nerds"?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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And while men and women usually enjoy the same forms of entertainment
No they don't. Men and women on average enjoy different movies, different books, different music, and enjoy these things in different quantities. Men and women enjoy different physical activities and different hobbies. It's hard to think of forms of entertainment that don't differentiate by sex.
Most of the reason we see lots of stupid articles about "getting more girls into gaming" is that gamers don't have much experience with women and what they are like. So they listen to the most male-like of women, radical feminist lesbians, because that's the type of male-style thinking they can relate to. Hence the often fervent belief by nerds in absolute equality despite all reality to the contrary.
I wouldn't call any of it romance, but Payne and Mona Sax had a relationship of sorts, they cooperate and rescue each other, she's anything but helpless and you never see one little hint of a jiggle or cleavage from a model that's very realistic (assuming a fit woman).
Oh, and every Metroid game ever made.
My personal hit list for what makes a game enjoyable:
Co-op mode - chances are, I won't get as much screen time to perfect my 12-step awesome combo moves, so playing competative just leads to me getting my ass kicked every time we play. That gets boring fast. Besides which, I'm probably in a relationship WITH you, and am playing the game to do something WITH you not AGAINST you.
Support for casual players - I have lots of responsibilities outside of a game, sometimes I need to drop everything at a moments notice. Making me work for an hour before I can find a save point means I will have to keep replaying bits I've already done because I didn't make it to the save point before having to stop last time. This gets boring pretty soon.
Alternate forms of advancement is good, e.g. crafting options. Sometimes I want to play a support class and be valued.
If I do decide the play a tank of somekind, how about an avatar that doesn't look like a covergirl from Dragon magazine from the middle of the chainmail bikini era. I may not know much about real combat, but even I know a thong isn't going to protect me - unless there is some kind of 'distract' bonus to dodge AC.
I like to see my character progress in some way that I perceive as meaningful. It probably doesn't mean a bigger gun. I liked the progresion in Civ II (size of territory, fitting out of the throne room), I like getting new skills in WoW or Diablo II. Not dying in Doom didn't really do it for me.
Let me play my own way. I like to explore worlds in WindWaker or WoW. I sneak around stealthed just to see what's around the next corner, I may not engage everything I see in combat. Give me alternate ways of resolving a situation which may not require slaying everything in my path. Have the game remember how I solved my problems and respond to that - the bad guy is still alive, he's dead and his allies hate me, whatever.
I'm rambling a bit now, but hopefully there are a few valid points there.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
How is this gender-specific?
Being a parent, I have little time to perfect combo moves or wander around levelling. Wanting to spend some time with my wife (and my daughter, when she starts gaming) means cooperative gaming and support classes.
When I put a female avatar on a character, and she looks like a chainmail-bikini centerfold, my wife gives me funny looks. My four-year-old daughter just laughs and spends twenty minutes yelling, "Look, she forgot her PANTS! She has no PANTS! She's in her PANTIES!"
Not that I don't like chasing baddies around with a chainsaw in Doom, but as I get older, the games I buy need to reflect my changing circumstances. We're not all 14-year olds living with our parents, you know.
No Longer a Menace to Society.
Alexandria Morrigan born 2/22/01 l. 20.5in wt. 7 lbs. 5 oz.
Gender is a grammatical term, not biological.
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There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It may not be gender specific to females, but they are the prime issues I experience as a female gamer detract from my ability to play a game to it's fullest extent that my husband doesn't experience in the same way.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
That would be you missing almost every point he just made.
The structure of Max Payne 2 doesn't center around relationships, and Metroid doesn't meet any of the qualifications other than the non-marginalized female lead. No romance, no emotional relationships, no cooperation.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
And I'm merely suggesting that it may be less that you're a gamer grrl and more that you have a life. Or, at the very least, that there are gamer guys that are interested in the same things you are in a game, although for different reasons.
But, not particularly wanting to get into gaming issues with you and your husband, I'll drop it now.
No Longer a Menace to Society.
Alexandria Morrigan born 2/22/01 l. 20.5in wt. 7 lbs. 5 oz.
I mean really man, Mona's only wearing a towel at one point. That's pretty gratuitous. There's even a suggestive drawing of her in the shower. Mona's a guy gamer's fantasy of a girl if I ever saw one. Very comic-book like, not like she was in the first Max Payne.
Meh. Frankly I think the reason we have such a gender gap in gaming is because when games started out, they were seen as the domain of guys and geeks only. Most of the girls I know that don't play games don't not for the content in the games (after all, they watch the same action movies as the rest of us), but the mere concept of grabbing a conroller and playing a game is beyond them. It's not the content, it's society.
I can't help but get the feeling this article was to rile up readers and not provide any positive insight. After reading this, I thought in regards to female gamers, how can this not even mention The Sims, Civ, Pogo, Yahoo Games, or some of the MMOs that have a wide audience? Could have sworn games have made improvements.
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Dress making companies can't figure out why more guys don't wear dresses. Defended Joe block in his suit stated that dress companies dont go far enough, and alienate 1/2 of the market. Sexism at its worst!
Web sites and gamer magazines do these stories for there mostly male readers.
The real fact is some girls like games and some dont. Many like game and dont know they are a gamer, Look at who is playing most of the java games on the web. Hard core gaming girls(or woman) are harder to find, but they like what guy gamers like. I known woman that like CS others that like The Sims to some that like Leasure Suit Larry.
My wife is a gamer play many game love the FF series and has a bad WOW habbit. My 6 year old daugher loves her GameBoy and gamming is just a normal thing for her.
What about for homosexuals? There aren't enough RPGs, RTSs, FPS games for homosexuals. Why is it just about women?
Phantasy Star IV for the Genesis likewise starred a tough female named Alys.
... Strike 1. See, she was never the main character... And then she dies about 1/3 of the way thorugh the game... A sign of weakness, maybe?
Few adventures star middle-aged balding men with love handles and average jobs (although it's not unheard of: Dragon Warrior IV starred a rotund merchant, Taloon, whose wife handed him lunch every day on his way to work
Stiiiiiike two. Talloon is a pretty minor character in Dragon Warrior 4. He DOES have a few games of his own, however.
IT wasn't a bad article, on the whole, but... Wow, man, play the damn games you reference.
There are many reasons why women arn't targeted by games manufacturers
Women arn't stupid enough to keep buying the same game. Women know that bigger numbers doesn't mean better gameplay.
Women arn't interested in scoring points, or winning in the same, obsessive way men are. In their eyes they've already won, by not playing the game in the first place.
Women have hightened color perception and perceive virtual worlds differently to men, in that they often get motion sickness from playing FPS. Being sick isn't fun.
Women know that virtually blowing somebody on the other side of the planet is not real human interaction. If you want to interact they would rather use a phone. In the eyes of many women - talking to the 13 year old that just whooped your ass is sad.
So what would women play? Sims was a classic female mind friendly game. Building relationships with no agenda makes a lot of sense to women. Nearly all the women I know love puzzle games, especially quick pick-ups like solitare, mine sweeper and tetris. However, deep stratergy like Chess, don't seem to stick (I guess its because you are actively competing in chess). I know a lot of women who love card games in the real world, but shy away from their online equivalent - because women play the people not the game.
You won't get women playing games until there is an all women programming house. People write games for fun, so you write games that are fun to you. Until women are actively programming games in large numbers, I don't think we'll see a gender shift - and to be honest I don't think that we'll ever see it happen - hardcore gaming just isn't a female thing to do.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
The BBC have also picked up on the 'women in games' issue recently: more coverage on Wonderland and the Guardian Gamesblog. Nice to see us girl gamers being written about, again...
"Frag the weak, hurdle the dead, and assassinate those cursed snipers."
You don't get it, your issues have nothing to do with you being female. They are more about your relationship with your husband. He gets in more playing time than you do, there are plenty of relationships where this works in reverse, (ie talk to some married women in WoW, I've run into a few that play more than their hubbies).
Most of the things you've stated are mentioned by males as well, who are more into the social aspect of mmo's and gaming.
bit of romance (talk/implied). all of the others. it was an RPG though.
3.5 of 5?
how exactly would a non-RPG portray romance?
there was this game review i saw...it's an FPS about a couple's child who gets kidnapped/goes missing. the mother jumps on to the father's back and they go on a (murderous) rampage instead of leaving it to the authorities. it's supposed to be fun, not gory. (even had that move where the bad guys bounce in the air with consecutive shotgun shots). they weren't human btw. kinda wookie looking. and it wasn't initially for PCs.
so it's
"...a non-RPG (FPS) that portrayed romance (most likely), that centered around relationships (2 diff types: husband + wife and parent + child), that placed cooperation above competition (between husband and wife?
I can kind of see the other side of this story. I'm writing a computer game at the moment, in my spare time. It's an adventure game in the style of the old Sierra games (Yes, AGS, for those of you in the know -- My other game-in-progress is actually a homemade isometric engine).
Being a fantasy game, the plot is a little bit "out there," but if you take out all the frills, it really does boil down to:
1) Boy meets girl
2) Girl gets kidnapped
3) Boy rescues girl
Why? Well, it's the type of plot I was brought up on. In this case, the "girl" character is actually an extremely powerful mage and deadly with a melee weapon, and is letting herself be imprisoned as part of a rather large scheme to test the boy's worth, but the basic plot remains.
The article really does hit the nail on the head here... So many adventure games and RPGs are based on the "man rescues woman" stereotype... It's a bit hard to break away from. But with any game based around a single protagonist, won't you necessarily alienate one gender? If the character is male, any kind of love story embedded in the plot (Which you have to admit will usually enrich any game that isn't based entirely on death) will always involve a female on the other end (Unless you want to take a big risk and offend a lot more people). If you switch it around and put a female in the main slot (And I'm not talking Lara Croft, which obviously still catered entirely to men), you'll just end up alienating the other half of your target audience...
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm generalizing this, and I know there are exceptions to what types of games guys and girls play, blah blah blah.
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
female gamers, when was the last time you played a non-RPG that portrayed romance, that centered around relationships, that placed cooperation above competition, and didn't marginalize women as sex-objects or helpless damsels in distress? do various non-H dating sims count?
Possibly what you state is true, but certainly there have been plenty of studies that confirm that even in a relationship where the woman works full time and the man doesn't, the woman in the relationship (in Australia at least) does the majority of the 'unpaid' work around the house - add children and the disparity increases.
Your assumption about married women presumably applies to stay-at-home-moms, I make this assumption because I personally know no women who get more time to play around than their partners in any other circumstance.
What you 'don't get' is that regardless of whether your designing for women or 'mature men with responsibilities', these are things which impact on their abilties to play games - but which is statistically (in Australia anyways) a bigger impact on women - a market they say they have difficulty understanding.
If you say that men experience the same problems with the games, then addressing these issue would potentially increase their marketshare/space beyond getting a few more girl gamers and get some more of the casual gaemrs who don't want to spend that kind of money.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I won't even mention the cleavage-bearing atrocity that was XII, but if you want a game with a primary female character, check out Final Fantasy VI (aka US FF III on the SNES, etc).
The main character was a woman (Terra), and she ended up being pretty kickass. There were also some supporting female characters... well one good supporting character anyhow as Celes kicked ass.
I remember being a little shocked at the idea of an RPG with a female lead - not that I'm gender biased but it just wasn't a common thing. Overall FFVI turned out to be my favorite of all Final Fantasy games though, a fact I found had little to do with the gender of the main character and a lot to do with the plot and development of characters overall.