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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."
They like frequent rewards
The only other place I have read a sentence even remotely expressing the same idea is in a scientific study on small, furry animals.
Women? JPEGs don't play games!
Thanks to whoever came to such an insightful conclusion. How about everyone just makes games that don't suck in general instead of trying to get rich off of them? There is no possibility that any male gamer could also not desire games that are easy and fun to play on their *mobile phones*! As if each game currently available for these devices was aiming to be a MMORPG.
Another thing that I've noticed is that most of these "girl games" are no different from the games "everyone else" plays with the exception of the addition of stylizied or cutsey graphics that just somehow assume that every female in the world can identify with or is missing from their current games.
It would be nice to see more games that are not only fun but everyone of all ages regardless of their personality can enjoy. I think Nintendo is a good example of this. I often dislike these types of movements in seemingly trivial areas such as entertainment when their energy could be better used to beating the out a lot of the old prejudices from other corners of our culture rather than perpetuating stereotypes. Solitaire: Now for women! FEATURING 100% more pink and every card has hearts on it! What was wrong with the old, and seemingly neutral solitaire? Too "masculine"? Whatever.
That said, there are differences (be they biological or social) between the average male and the average female gamer. But I think that one of the biggest is that even a reasonably dorky and hard-core gaming female, like myself, tends to be repulsed by or at best "tunes out" the sophomoric sexuality present in many games. I'm used to it now, and I'm not a prude by any means, but it still breaks the spell of, say, Morrowind, to find a random strip club. And Ivy from Soul Calibur is an awesomely powerful high tier character, but no physical person could move let alone fight with that amount of jiggle and wedgie. Back in middle school I actually stopped playing Duke Nukem because I found the strippers annoying as all hell, though I found the rest of the humor quite amusing.
Like I said, I'm used to it now, but trying to get females into buying games is made much more challenging by the alienation that stems from games seeming to be aimed at males only. This is due both to game design and gamer culture. A game that prominantly features boob jigglage and the lan party asshat asking who your boyfriend is since you obviously can't be there to play games yourself tend to be major buzz-kills.
I just think most females would gladly play the same games as males, if there wasn't that initial alienation. Luckily there's an awesome group of folks at my school who I can play COD, Soul Cal, WoW, Starcraft, or Karaoke fucking Revolution with if I so choose (and have time).
And now I return to my tech desk job repairing computers. That's the other thing. If someone actually taught these sorority girls how to actually use (and not ABuse) their !$!@#$!@$!@#%@# machines, things would be a lot better for women-in-gaming and for me in the specific.
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.