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Women Remain the Ignored Audience In Gaming
donniebaseball23 writes "Research firm Interpret has released its new report, 'Games and Girls: Video Gaming's Ignored Audience,' which finds that while the female audience in gaming has grown, games tailored to their needs and preferences continue to go missing. Women represent 50% of the market and their usage of HD consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3 is rising. 'It remains to be seen whether developers and marketers will effectively invest in understanding and exploiting the undertapped female gaming market,' said Courtney Johnson, analyst for Interpret."
Ok, I'm sure this is going to get modded to oblivion, but here goes.
Why the hell do I care?
When I dress up as a boy and go to work and have to deal with women who get bamboozled by basic Word features like tab stops, why do I care? If these women don't care about games or any other tech, why, as a guy, do I care?
When I dress up as a girl when I get home and fire up Monster Hunter or BlazBlue or whatever I feel like playing, why the hell do I care what some other woman wants out of games? If other women don't want to play video games, why do I care?
If women want to be "represented" in video games, they can get out GCC, SDL, and whatever else and make their own games. But they don't.
Besides, the girls at work who do play video games are perfectly happy with Smash Bros from what I understand anyway. I don't like Smash Bros. Does that make me underrepresented in Smash Bros? Why should anyone else care that I don't play Smash Bros?
Why do we all have to bend over backwards to try to get people who have no interest in our hobbies to be interested in our hobbies? They're just not interested, so why the hell should I care?
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I am a woman and I play Diablo II, Mass Effect, Oblivion, etc. I can tell you that eventually I got tired of seeing the dead women spreadeagled on tables in the Harem level of Diablo II and was alienated by being able to kill female prostitutes in GTA. (Just two examples.) Also, I get tired of no eye candy for me, the eye candy always *is* me. I think you're right; the "needs and preferences of women" thing is a bit disingenuous. My "needs and wants" are fewer rape jokes and less T&A in the games already produced. If you're going to have soft porn in your game (no problem with that), at least balance the gender a bit. Would you play completely through a game that had half naked men and only men that were half naked in it?