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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."
The Sims was a great game. Not only for women but for both audiences. Now some hardcore girl gamer probably comes in saying it isn't so (don't mind it, there are guys who like to play those cooking games too), but FPS and heavy strategy games rarely interests girls. On the other hand the Flash click-click-click cooking games are quite stupid too, as well as something where you just have to dress the character. But The Sims made it a whole game, with all the relationship, drama and housekeeping stuff. And it was still fun and interesting to play, even for both genders (at least when The Sims 1 came out, I never really played Sims 2.. But Sims 3 seems to have lots of things to do again). You can't make the game too dumb, but you also can't just make it a shooter with manly stuff. I've traveled the world enough to see that all women like that clothing, taking care of and relationship stuff. But in real life you can't just tell her to go to kitchen, or clean the house and so on.. You have to trick her into that, but that frankly isn't so hard. The point being, women are like 3 year kids. They don't like it when you tell them what to do and what not to do, so you use psychology to deliver your message subtly and non-directly. Just don't make it too obvious.