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New Mobile Gaming Geared For Women
Gamasutra has an interesting interview with Kristin McDonnell, CEO of LimeLife Inc. The company specifically targets female mobile gamers, and she talks about what steps they're taking to make sure they reach out to a challenging sector of the market. From the article: "But if you look at the female gameplay preferences, they are very consistent across ages. So, women who play games, if they're kids or even in their 40s, they like to have short play sessions, especially in mobile. They like frequent rewards, they like learning modes, they like to be able to interact socially, they like to be able to customize the experience. And so those types of gameplay benchmarks are really consistent across the ages, and it's really kind of the game mechanic that you might put on top of it."
My gf LOVES Zookeeper on the DS....
She plays for hours,
She doesn't get rewards (unless a monkey looking like its being electrocuted is a reward)
She plays it in bed (v.unmobile?)
and theres no learning mode...
Go figure?
On the other hand my bother fits all of the mentioned "attributes" in the articial....
How about gamers generally are just different? Some like somethings, some like others? Aiming games at girls isn't going to work. The girls play "lads" games because its taking the mickey out of lads (you can't do this? and im a girl!) plus they are the "norm". Give a guy a "gurls" game and he wont touch it, and if he sees his gf playing it, he will laugh at her for being a woosie.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
As a girl, and a gamer, I'm mildly insulted. I play WoW and I played UT and Counterstrike. I like "boy" games. I love FPS. I love MMORPGs. I play the little quick games they say girls like, but more as a time filler than anything else. "I've got 5 min before Star Trek comes on. I'll play Text Twist!" As for colors, I prefer Reds and Blacks to Pinks and Oranges. Maybe it's the Goth in me, I don't know, but "Girly" colors just don't appeal to me. I know the statements made weren't supposed to be stereotyping girls but they were. Why should solitaire with random AI girls be anymore fun than regular old solitaire? Solitaire isn't a social game; that's why it's called solitaire, and not socialtare. At the same time I know my sisters would rather play solitaire with purses and kittens on the cards than spades and clubs. What they say isn't all ridiculous but it only feeds a stereotype that women have been fighting against for years.
"Just call me Girly Blank"
No kidding. But it doesn't matter if the game's "for girls" or "for Hispanics"; anything that starts out by trying to pander to a given group ends up sucking. Genre novels that are "for gays" or "about a black detective" suffer from the same thing.
My local paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, went through a phase where they introduced a bunch of what they clearly saw as "niche-market" comics. "La Cucaracha" was meant for the Hispanic audience, and then they tossed in the gawdawful irony-for-the-irony-impaired "Mallard Fillmore" to placate the right wing, and so on. They all stunk. I don't care if the strip is conservative or liberal; it should try to be funny though.
But you're right:
I have 12-year-old twins, one of whom is a girl. Even within fairly innocent titles, my daughter's choices among the female characters are invariably dressed head-to-toe in latex, or baring their legs up to their ribcage, or (worse) channeling "My Little Pony" commercials. The Jedis all seemed to want to dress like Leia as Jabba's slave girl in Jedi Academy. "Princess Peach" plays her Mario Tennis in a short skirt, iirc.
As a parent, it's hard to find games that don't throw that in your face.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.