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."

Comments

sounds like their needs are addressed quite well

[superwiz]

Unless, of course, 50% of the gamers (the women) flock to a medium which they don't like.

Haven't gamed in a while, but,,,

[mcgrew]

I don't understand why a game developer would want to tailor games to a single sex, male of female. The broader the appeal the larger the audience. Why target only half your potential audience? Games are an art form, and every artist wants as many people as possible to enjoy their works.

I seem to remember a decade or so ago someone attempted to target girls with some game or another, and it was denounced by women as sexist.

Now, kid's games I can see targeting one sex or another. My daughters had a Barbie game on the PC and they loved it. No boy would want to play it, however.

Re:Haven't gamed in a while, but,,,

[kinnell]

Just an educated guess, but I expect the vasty majority of game designers are men and it's not so much that they're trying to aim their games at men as that they're designing games that they would like to play.

Re:Haven't gamed in a while, but,,,

[icebraining]

Targeting the whole audience isn't really effective, you'll just make something for the least common denominator and nobody will really like it.

WoW makes a killing ignoring the huge casual audience. Wii sells tons ignoring the hardcore gamers looking for hyper realistic graphics. Even games like Civ succeed because they focus on a very small but extremely loyal number of gamers. And as you said, many games are either targeted at adults or children - GTA wouldn't have been such a success if it was rated E.

By the same token, there are huge female audiences that are attracted to specific gameplays.

Re:Haven't gamed in a while, but,,,

[delinear]

I don't understand why a game developer would want to tailor games to a single sex, male of female. The broader the appeal the larger the audience. Why target only half your potential audience? Games are an art form, and every artist wants as many people as possible to enjoy their works.

Well, one reason is that games which are designed to target everyone tend to be watered down, "design by committee" type mindless pap. Look at the vast majority of party games for consoles. They're designed for all ages and both sexes and they tend to be incredibly formulaic and dull, play once or twice then forget affairs. By turning your focus on one particular part of the market (and in the case of games, males have traditionally always been the biggest spenders) you can deliver a much more satisfying experience much more reliably and you'll sell a lot more product.

The number of games that successfully target any audience are pretty tiny, it either requires massive upfront investment to get them right or else you have to be incredibly lucky (not a good business model), the Nintendos of the world can pull this off most of the time, but most of the other stuff ends up in the bargain bin at the local store within a couple of weeks of release. That being the case, it makes sense as a developer to focus on your traditional market and see a much better or more guaranteed return on investment. It's the same reason Ferrari don't make regular road going cars - sure the potential market is huge, but the risk is similarly huge (massive competition, brand devaluation, etc) and they already have a guaranteed market doing what they've always done, so there's little reason to change.

I suspect if we ever do see a rise in games specifically for women, it will be driven by indie developers who have far less to lose - and systems like XBL and the various mobile app stores have made it much simpler to deliver content to a large audience for minimal cost. The difficulty, based on what I've seen in the past, is delivering an experience that is not patronising to women - they don't spend all day dreaming about horse riding or playing dress up, but looking at "games for girls" in the past you'd be forgiven for thinking that was the case.

Re:Haven't gamed in a while, but,,,

[mcgrew]

Well, targeting isn't what should be done, anyway -- unless your only purpose in making the game is to make money. Ironically, do that and your game isn't likely to sell. Writing a book that you would want to read, making a movie that you would want to see, making a game that you would want to play makes for good reading, watching, and playing. "Targeting and audience" is just hackwork and usually results in dreck. Look at the music industry, for example. Music shouldn't be an industry.

Back in the Quake days there were a LOT of woman playing Quake. I had a fairly popular Quake website and got a lot of email from players, and discovered that a lot of "guys" were really women who kept their sex secret to avoid the juvenile sexual harrassment. Of course, there were also a lot of proud females, one clan, the PMS clan (Psycho Men Slayers) comes to mind.

My daughters were teenagers then, and both of them were avid Quake players. We had lots of fun playing on the home network I'd set up. My oldest daughter's 26 now, and is still an avid gamer. My youngest is assistant manager at a GameStop store across the river from Cincinatti. The ex-wife never was into gaming, so of the Quake players in my family, two thirds were female.

Re:The Sims

[Smekarn]

Judging by your spelling/grammar and your views on gender related topics you should cool the fuck down when it comes to comparing people to three year olds.

"But I from itali/swedenn/bolgaria/american school system, i no know english!!1"

Well, as long as you treat women the way you appearently do based on your own retarded observations, I see no foul in treating you like an idiot based on what ever reason I feel like.

Men vs. Women

[grodzix]

In other news, it is discovered that male population is ignored in fashion industry. There is great inequallity if we look at fashion where vast majority of products is aimed at female population. You just have to look around your nearest shopping center to see that most shops are centered around fashion and most of this shops target women. No shit, really? Women aren't being targete by game developers? Guess what, maybe it's because most women don't give a flying fuck about games? Just like clothes shops don't target men cause most men don't give a flying fuck about fashion.

Re:Men vs. Women

[L-four]

But they should because Men account for 50% of people who ware clothes and probably 80% of the people who don't.

So... what ARE those needs and preferences?

[pommaq]

I really don't think adding a playable female lead character to everything is the answer. I'm a man and I have very little in common with the usual muscle-bound he-man videogame protagonists. You can play as a female in plenty of games (WoW and Mass Effect, for instance) but the overwhelming majority of players are still men. So I want to know what the article thinks those mythical "needs and preferences" are for female gamers. From the available data I'd say they're actually pretty well catered for - only we call them "casual gamers". Browser games, smartphone puzzle games, word games, etc - they're all at 50% or more female gamers.

This discussion seems to crop up every now and then and the question needs to be rephrased - why don't females play "hardcore" games? What is it about them that makes them inherently male? Me, I don't think it's about what your avatar looks like or how story-driven the game is. I think it's all down to culture. Same culture that tells us videogames are for 13 year old boys. All we need is for games to be great, immersive, well done, and for the shift to happen. It's gonna be slow, though.

Re:So... what ARE those needs and preferences?

[Yaroslavna]

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?

Re:So... what ARE those needs and preferences?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, I get tired of no eye candy for me, the eye candy always *is* me.

Would you play completely through a game that had half naked men and only men that were half naked in it?

But so many male characters ARE beefy hunky shirtless guys (In Western-made games at least). The God of War series has Kratos in nothing but a loincloth for the entire thing. Conan, same thing, just off the top of my head.

  And if beefy dudes isn't your thing, there are plenty of shirtless feminine men in Asian-made games.

It seems that people generally play characters they want to look at, or characters they want to be. I've known a few women who won't play Chun-li in Street Fighter because of her "gross man thighs." Those same women liked Bayonetta.

That harem area of Diablo 2 was DESIGNED to make you(and everyone else) uncomfortable. It was a place where a bunch of women were slaughtered. Plus the guards! How many dead guards did you flip over looking for gold in that level? But oh, dead man so it's okay.

Re:So... what ARE those needs and preferences?

[hedwards]

As opposed to the rampant objectification of men in the popular media? I do have to wonder why it's suddenly such a big deal when it adversely affects women. Mind you that in the US women make up slightly more than half the voting population and have all sorts of rights and protections which don't apply to men.

Why do I care?

[Velex]

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?

Never Pleased

[RivenAleem]

Duke Nukem Forever was all about women. What more do they want??

Re:Never Pleased

[hedwards]

Probably just mad because they could never get a guy like Duke to be interested in them, no matter how many times they shake it.

So explain Nintendo?

[itsdapead]

I see plenty of TV adverts for games that are very clearly aimed at women - Nintendo in particular has made a big push in this direction (and families, and older people of both sexes). I'm not qualified to say whether these really meet the needs of women, but its clear that the manufacturers think they do.

Presumably TFA has some narrow definition of gaming that excludes casual games, Sims-a-like, pet simulators, fitness trainers, online bingo etc. That just leaves one of this year's biggest game releases (Portal 2) which featured a female protagonist, and a female (ish) big bad making bitchy comments about our hero's weight.

Now, if it turns out that women are rejecting this pink fluffy stereotypical family-friendly stuff, and want more subtle changes to game design, that's a different story.

Perhaps Duke Nukem would have got a better critical reception if they'd taken a tip from the "Smack my Bitch Up" video and, right at the end, panned the camera round to reveal that Duke was actually a woman...?

Move along, nothing to see here.

[Ross R. Smith]

Without being sexist, there are definitely games out there that are more suited to either males or females, but they don't outright say it on the box. From my experience, more males seem to have embraced playing games such as Football(soccer) games, FPS games and heavy RTS and other strategy games, females are definitely more prevalent on other types of games such as MMORPGs (In a decent sized guild, a large section of the playerbase are normally women), Simulators such as The Sims and Farmville and adventure type games.

It's the content of the games that is the problem. The majority of women are not interested in guns and tanks and explosions such as the large majority of men really wouldn't care to design and build a farm. I definitely don't think that any man or woman wouldn't play a game purely because it wasn't designed specifically for them, that's just silly.

There are games where women, by design, aren't featured in games (Such as WW2 and other war games where women in the army were either non-existent or low in numbers). I don't think because of this women would just stop playing it, it doesn't work like that, I've talked to quite a few females while playing RTS games, that's just what type of games they like.

There are many games with a female hero/antagonist but going further than that to specifically tailoring it to women would alienate a large portion of the fanbase. I am aware that it notes female gamers as being 50% of all gamers but I personally don't see playing the occasional browser-based flash game as 'gaming' and a 50:50 share is definitely not prevalent in the majority of games online.

Re:sounds like their needs are addressed quite wel

[beefmusta]

Unless, of course, 50% of the gamers (the women) flock to a medium which they don't like.

Exactly. From TFA:

"Market representation for women has grown to 50 percent overall, with console use rising significantly in the past two years"

Apparently, we're supposed to think that somehow this demonstrates that female gamers are being ignored and not getting what they want.
Next they'll tell us that women are being forced to play games against their will.

Re:tackle the root of the problem, not the symptom

[MareLooke]

It's also not generally accepted for women to play games. I know my sister gets serieus omgwtfbbq reactions when she mentions she's off to a lan party with some friends to play (among other things) Unreal Tournament. While a lot of guys are (once they've recovered from the shock) like "MARRY ME!" usually girls respond like "You stay where you are while I walk backwards to the door. Slowly. Don't make any sudden moves." Seems to me like it's a bit like coming out of the closet, everybody knows it exists, but you'll get shunned over it anyway.

Now I'm willing to accept that she's an exception (and/or I live in a pathetically retarded country in this respect) for playing shooters but if the forums about RPGs/Action adventures are any indication there's quite a few women playing those and there's not usually complaints about the game being "designed for men" (there is, sometimes about lack of romance options for women, but this is something that's improving itself, if there's an audience then there will be (changes to the) product.

Pretty much my feeling

[Sycraft-fu]

Games are for fun, so that women are playing them says they are having fun with them.

To me it just sounds like whining. If there are specific things that need to be done differently to attract women to gaming, let's hear them. However just saying "Oh they aren't good for women," sounds like bitching without evidence to me.

The only thing they list in the article "For instance, they are much more likely to prefer to play solo than men, and play games for less competitive and more narrative- and character-driven reasons." is stupid. Why? Because we HAVE plenty of games like that, and there is no reason that ALL games should be like that.

To me what that says is "Women tend to like single player RPGs more than multi-player FPSes." Ok, wonderful. Turns out there are plenty of those. The market is being enough for both kinds of games, and in fact for more than that.

I also question that one since story driven, single player games have been around for much longer. While competitive multi-player games are popular, they are new. For many a year single player was the big thing (because we lacked the Internet), yet fewer women were in to gaming.

I personally think any lack of women in gaming (which I've not observed, lots of women play games in my experience) is more cultural/mindset than anything else. Women feel like gaming is not something they should do, so they don't. That isn't the sort of thing different kinds of games really can fix.

So if things really need to be done different, well let's hear it then. However all I see here is bitching that amounts to "Girls don't like online FPSes." To that I say:

1) So what? There are plenty of other kinds of games. We can have games for all kinds of people, not every game need to be targeted to every person (as such a thing would fail).

2) Says who? Though far less common then men, there are women who enjoy shooties plenty well.

Re:Pretty much my feeling

[Chris Mattern]

Minecraft (and I suppose its newer counterpart, terraria) ARE co-operative, non-violent, and social.

Non-violent? Sssssss....

Re:Pretty much my feeling

[cgenman]

I've spoken to quite a few other developers about the mythical "attracting the female audience." And on a pragmatic level, it seems like there really are only about two things one can do:

1. Avoid sexist jokes or other red flags turn female game players away.
2. Make a great game.

That's pretty much it. Any other stereotypes that get thrown into there degrade quickly into generalizations into which most people don't fit. And quite frankly, it's hard enough to make a game worth playing without trying to target a demographic so broad that you might as well just say "people." If you avoid male monoculture by in your office by finding a few talented female developers, #1 winds up greatly reduced.

Now, making women feel welcome in gaming culture is a different thing. A big part of that is voice chat online, and that is a huge problem we're all trying to solve.

Re:Pretty much my feeling

[Gaygirlie]

Being a female gamer myself I gotta say I really agree with your post. Especially "I personally think any lack of women in gaming (which I've not observed, lots of women play games in my experience) is more cultural/mindset than anything else. Women feel like gaming is not something they should do, so they don't. That isn't the sort of thing different kinds of games really can fix." seems to me to be the single biggest obstacle. Even among my friends I have girls who simply don't play games because "it's a guy thing."

I personally have never really cared about conforming to social standards or other people's opinions so I've been a happy camper myself. 2 of my ex-girlfriends and the current one are all gamers themselves too, and all happen to be of the type who doesn't follow fashion and trends and don't really care that much about what other women think of them. That to me seems quite a clear indicator that it's all about the society.

Re:Pretty much my feeling

[Sycraft-fu]

I've observed the same kind of development on the male side of things over the last 20ish years. When I started playing games, in 1986, I was odd to be doing so. It was only the "nerds" that played games. Normal boys weren't in to that kind of thing. I was odd for wanting to play computer rather than sports. Today? Nothing odd at all about being a gamer. People would probably be more surprised if I told them I didn't play games, being 31 and male.

Younger (as in under 40 or so) men all seem to play games. The kind and amount varies, of course, some people (like me) love it and play a lot, others play occasionally, but it is a very socially accepted thing.

Women just seem to be behind to some extent. Being a gamer isn't ok for some women. Many of those women actually play games, like Facebook games or phone games, but tell themselves they are really "video games" and so don't count.

With time, hopefully, everyone will appreciate that games are a very valid form of entertainment just like TV or books and if you enjoy them, you should play them. Gender, age, etc don't matter, do what you like. There aren't "girl games" and "guy games" there are all different styles of games, RPG/FPS/strategy/simulation/etc and you play whichever ones you like. Girls can play Battlefield 3, guys can play The Sims 3.

Killing pixels...

[Giovanny]

My wife has a Wii and a couple of games on my PS3. She says she's a gamer but I haven't seen her touch a controller in nearly a year with the exception of when we play Rock Band together. I would absolutely LOVE it if she was into COD or some-such. We would so be killing pixels together... But I doubt that would ever happen because men and women, despite exceptions to every rule and so on, are fundamentally different. Men = hunters. Women = gatherers. Although I think things are (very, very, very) slowly shifting, we have evolution to thank for the lack of females who are hard-core gamers as most hard-core games are tasty-violent with a freakin' laserbeam.

Re:The Sims

[idle_ether]

When the Sims 2 came out i remember all the boys i lived with being far more excited about it then the girls ^.~ but wow, seriously impressive argument mate, girls like clothes ALL girls like clothes and have the brains of 3 year olds.. thats like saying all men drink beer and play football. Dunno about you guys but I had more fun playing Postal 2 then The Sims 2, and while it is true that as a girl i do prefer games where there is a better story (Assasians Creed II) and clever game play (Portal 2) I just as much enjoy some good slow motion heads going splosh (Fallout 3). It's true whats stated about giving Women better choices with games, I'm sure guys feel a bit weird running around as a female character, so imagine how we feel! It does get boring playing the same old Mr Superman role all the time and have the female characters be nothing but good looking game fodder. That said it does have to be appropriate to the game, and it's certainly not a magic bullet to make a crappy game suddenly 'lady friendly' wtf that means.

I know

[Dunbal]

They need to take their games and add a virtual clothes rack and clothing store, where you can buy boots and other little items for your avatars. That way an additional challenge is presented: "Hmmm, should I spend this billion ISK on a Carrier class starship, or should I spend it on a silly looking monacle for my avatar?". The women, of course, will choose the clothing. And the men will choose the big pew pew ships. And so the game will be much less frustrating for women because they will still get pwned, but at least they will die stylishly.

/incarna rant

PS: All the women I know prefer big guns over pretty boots any day.

Re:I know

[RivenAleem]

My Soon-to-be-wife will only play one computer game with me, Borderlands. The reason being, she can shoot and play around with me, but it things get out of control (swamped by bandits) she knows she can just cover her eyes and panic until I've killed them all. If you ask her what her favourite part of the game is, she'll tell you:
"Opening the boxes and finding items"

She's not mentally deficient in any way (I think) it's a simple case that she finds it more enjoyable to run about with me looking for the powerups while I worry about where she should put talents, what quest we're on and where the boss's weakpoints are.

Funny thing is, though, when we were nearing the end of the first playthrough, she was surprisingly good at the game, often thinning out a field of baddies with a sniper rifle before I could close the distance for shotgun use.

They definitely get different forms of enjoyment out of games that we do. The kind of game that will appeal to both genders is one that offers a reward that both genders values. Which is why Farmville/The Sims or such games are so popular to both, you can tailor the rewards to your own liking.

The community

[feidaykin]

I think the biggest barrier for entry for women gamers isn't the games themselves, but the gaming community. We all know of The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, but women get presented an even uglier side of online gaming. This site has some good examples: http://fatuglyorslutty.com/

It seems the moment a female gamer reveals her gender she's automatically the target of the most vile and despicable comments the online community has to offer. Granted, most gamers are thick skinned and can brush this stuff off. But it makes me wonder how many women have tried playing a game, had an experience similar to the ones at the site above, and gave up entirely. It would be nice if the online community were a little friendlier. We would all have more fun that way, regardless of gender.

um...

[Charliemopps]

Women don't buy ridiculous gadgets like Xboxes and such... so why would those systems make games for them? That doesn't mean women are being ignored. Facebook games anyone? Bejeweled? I'd argue that if you just counted the number of games out there, there's actually MORE tailored to women than to men. The only difference being, Men are willing to pay a lot more for their entertainment and entertainment companies are happily willing to take their money.

Re:Same for movies, tv shows, books, etc

[jellomizer]

Men are easy, you just need to have these three letters and add letters to the end BOO,
M
BS
TY
MERANG...

Re:The Sims

[ATMAvatar]

Samus in every Metroid game was female. She is arguably one of the first female protagonists, though the fact that she is hidden behind that suit 99% of the time makes many people assume she is a male instead.

We'll write games for women

[Linuxmonger]

We'll write games for women, as soon as they tell us what they want - be specific, say what you want, not just that what we offered isn't it!

Re:The Sims

[Samantha Wright]

There's a trick here that's creating the illusion that women aren't interested, and that trick is that the goalposts for what makes a "girl-friendly" game are moving. When Pong came out, there was a very extreme gender bias in anything related to technology or computers, and as such, the average woman didn't feel comfortable stepping into something so clandestinely electronic. It wasn't that there was a major stigma associated with it, but merely that the subconscious sensation of being a fish out of water became extremely unpleasant. In gaming today, this is still a problem for a large portion of women, though fortunately more and more are being raised on excellent titles like the Portal series (which has, of course, been discussed to death) that not only fail to propagate the chauvinism (which the eternally popular puzzle games also do), but present women in a variety of roles with meaningful emotions.

Still, the proximity in genre and cultural context to some of the worst offenders (Duke Nukem and Lara Croft come to mind, but even military games like MW2's single-player campaign are so Saxton-Hale-grade manly it makes me physically ill) has a powerful dampening effect: the prolonged success and influence of such games still underscore the message "you are an outsider here," and that's something that today's teenagers are really the first to make a stand against, en masse. Every Zoey (L4D) and Samus helps push against this... but Valve, why do you still only have one girl per L4D game? All it takes is equal representation. We figured this out in academia; heck, the engineering department at my university now has a 20% female undergraduate population. It's not as hard as it may seem at first.

write games themselves

[hort_wort]

The free market is supposed to solve issues like this on it's own. Why don't a bunch of women get together and start their own gaming company then? They could call it Amazon. Errr, AmazonGames. .... Okay, forget Amazon, but they could have their own company and write games that they would like. Why do "we" have to write games for "them"?

Re:sounds like their needs are addressed quite wel

[couchslug]

"Next they'll tell us that women are being forced to play games against their will."

I, for one, find the idea vaguely arousing.

What kind of sexist comment is this?

[geekmux]

"...while the female audience in gaming has grown, games tailored to their needs and preferences continue to go missing."

Uh, what the hell is this all about? Tailored to "their needs"? They act like women gamers have 3 arms instead of two. It's a game, and usually within gaming revolves around FPS gaming. "Headshots" are not "tailored" towards any gender...what, do they find that women gamers prefer more pink on the battlefield? (Yes, I know that sounds sexist, but so is the comment in TFA)

Give me a break. You either like the game well enough to play it, or you don't. Gender should have nothing to do with it. This likely has more to do with advertising within games than the game itself. Leave it to the marketeers to try and "tune" something that doesn't need tuning for the sake of doubleclick.

But I thought...

[telekon]

...that ignoring women was the point of gaming?

Re:sounds like their needs are addressed quite wel

[HungryHobo]

Except that your premise is wrong.
from TFA:
"Market representation for women has grown to 50 percent overall, with console use rising significantly in the past two years"

Half the people who play games are girls, they're not forced to play them, since games are for fun they're playing them to have fun and given that as many women as men choose to play these games to have fun it would suggest that they're already catering to real women just as well as to men.

You've been conned just as the writer of the article intended.
you were convinced that there's some kind of need that isn't being fulfilled when it really is.

Interpret sells its services to game publishers so they have an interest in convincing you that their services are needed when they really aren't.

Re:sounds like their needs are addressed quite wel

[Daetrin]

I was just going to moderate the GB poster, but instead i think i shall point out that you seem to be dead set on continuing the original fallacy.

"Many people use X" does not equate to "X is designed optimally for those people."

Do you think if there were no chick flicks that women would just stop going to movies? No, they'd still go to the "broad appeal" movies and a few of the "guy" movies so they'd still be movie consumers, but it's quite likely that total movie revenues would be less. Would women still read if there were no romance novels? Sure they would. Would the publishing industry be missing out on a huge chunk of income without that genre? Definitely! And the recent explosion of the paranormal romance sub-genre shows that there was a need unaddressed by the market, even though most of those people were probably already buying books before that point.

Really this is the best kind of marketing research. They've identified a large group of people who are _already_ customers whose desires they feel can be better addressed. Would you be equally outraged if SyFy did some market research which determined "Our primary audience are geeks who like high quality science fiction television series. Perhaps we should produce some more of those"? After all, by your argument SyFy shouldn't do anything like that because those people are _already_ watching, therefore their needs are already met, right? The possibility that those people are just desperate for any kind of Science Fiction and will settle for the crap that's currently on SyFy because there's not much else available elsewhere doesn't bear consideration does it?

"We've already got the customers, so we don't need to do anything to improve our product/services" is pretty much the antithesis of progress, and it would surprise me to see that attitude on Slashdot if it were being expressed about almost any other topic, but since we're talking about women getting into something that's been traditionally male dominated i guess that's par for the course?

Re:The Sims

[Samantha Wright]

Wow. You should have thought twice before posting.

Comparing a statistic that describes the dynamics and personal decisions of hundreds if not thousands of people to the presence of a token character is not even slightly equatable. I assume you haven't taken a second-year statistics course.

Further, the targets are different and not necessarily causally linked. The fraction of women with the potential to enjoy engineering is not the same question as the fraction of women interested in gaming, which TFS argues is about the same as the number of men; even if the sheer numbers are approximately comparable, that doesn't even support the idea that they're identical sets.

Further still, you're comparing fractions of representation to fractions of audience, which is a little like tying your own shoelaces together and then tripping over them. Universities have been improving the sex ratio in STEM programs primarily through enhanced representation of women in promotional materials and cultural portrayals of their disciplines. Because the cultural image the institutions put forth is woman-friendly, we're not turned off at the front door, and because the staff and faculty within are conscious of their organizations' intended office culture (typically canonized in policy), they themselves make an effort to be more egalitarian.

No mandate or attitude for such reform exists in the commercial world, where products live and die based on sales, even though they carry with them potentially powerful cultural impact. As a result, the games industry has a long-standing habit of staying within the boundaries it's comfortable with, lest they alienate what they perceive to be their core audience—as it often occurs in these sorts of cases, one dollar sign is making a judgment about another dollar sign's value system, and screwing over a third.

Going back to picking on Valve: only one in five special infected in the original L4D was female, and you couldn't even play her in Versus. The amount of effort that would have been required to make the Hunter, Smoker and Boomer be gender-neutral would have been trivial compared to the rest of the game.

Relatedly, and continuing to pick on Valve, players have been working for years now to create workable female models for TF2—and there's still been precious little interest from Mann Co. Even though the gender bias is part of the game's atmosphere, a significant portion of the fanbase feels slighted by it. This seems to be a stumbling block outside of extreme fantasy and science fiction; sometimes authenticity needs to be sacrificed in favour of modern moral values. Just ask Benjamin Sisko.

Re:The Sims

[Samantha Wright]

I'm sorry, but there's no "let's bash the evil x" going on here, where x is whatever pleases the audience. I have no interest in fighting with your straw ad hominems. I realise that you probably don't even know how much of your post is flamebait, so I'll try to step around it entirely. Maybe something will get through to you.

People enjoy playing games where they can closely identify with the characters. Games are already fantasies and lack realism in all sorts of other ways; where not dramatically or technically infeasible, there are lots of cases where giving the players a choice in their self-representation would do more to benefit marketability than hinder artistic value. A lot of games deal with this problem successfully without turning into Second Life.

There's no such thing as a gamer who doesn't empathise with his or her avatar within the game. This isn't vanity in the sense of Narcissus sitting in front of a mirror all day, but part of the experience and what makes video games unique. Being Duke Nukem makes you feel powerful and unrestricted; being Chell makes you feel tenacious and irritated; being Gordon Freeman makes you feel desperate but ingenuitive. Try as we might, gender is still a very strong dividing line in our world—much moreso than skin colour or cultural heritage—and as such, it has a powerful dampening effect on this empathetic process.

In the hypothetical end-game of feminism, this dividing line is virtually invisible—but then, so are the stereotypes that caused the problem in the first place. These aren't new arguments.

I didn't set out with the intention of saying that MW2 needs to be more girl-friendly, by the way; merely that testosterone-drenched games currently dominate the market, and without a counterbalance, it's easy to see the genre of FPSes as a whole as a boy's club.

Re:The Sims

[Veliena]

That's a great analysis video! As a woman who really enjoyed Bayonetta I feel compelled to put in a word for its defense. Along with great graphics and solid gameplay I felt like a badass playing this character. It's completely over the top in many respects, but I never felt uncomfortable with their portrayal of female strength or sexuality. Shocked, yes, but not offended.

In my opinion social pressures are more damaging to women gamers than the actual game selection currently available. When I was growing up I was criticized by many of my female friends for playing video games. Adults, both male and female, would suggest it wasn't a very feminine thing to do. I have a friend who said she felt like she had to play games in secret. This is where I see the greatest problem; trying to find everyone into a convenient gender assigned box.

I love shooters AND I love Supermarket Mania 2. I personally don't feel ignored. I understand many women don't feel this way, but now when I go into a game store I see plenty of other women. That's awesome.

One more point! If you want to encourage more women to play online shooters don't let the first words out of your mouth be, "Heheh! Are you a girl?" when a woman's voice comes across the chat. Please?

Re:The Sims

[Unkyjar]

You are describing a case of Cognitive dissonance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

In a similar situation should a guy sleep with someone he consider's ugly on the first date, they'll do the same song and dance.

This is a learned behavior, as we make excuses for actions we take that our friends (and by extension our social circles) would disapprove of.

Re:The Sims

[Samantha Wright]

That's not at all sexist. There are things that I find nauseatingly girly, as well. Sexism is when you apply a negative stereotype to one or both of the sexes. Macho manliness is not the same as masculinity, just the same as cute girliness isn't the same as femininity. Modern warfare military games revel in a specific attitude which glorifies violence and survival instead of treating them like the hardships they actually are. Nowhere in these games do we see battle-weary men struggling to cope with the horrors of war; instead we have action heroes in military fatigues who are swift, confident, and always in control of their circumstances. MW2 did a good deal of work to push away from this (with its constant loss of player control), but the single player campaign is level after level of dominance wish-fulfilment. This is why Machiavelli does not make a good template for a father figure, or indeed a good role model for men in general.