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How Women Became Gamers Through D&D
An anonymous reader writes: To add some historical context to the currently controversy surrounding attitudes toward women in gaming, Jon Peterson provides an in-depth historical look at the unsurprisingly male origins of the "gamer" identity. It also examines how Dungeons & Dragons helped to open the door for women in gaming — overturning a sixty-year-old dogma that was born when Wells's Little Wars first assumed the "disdain" of women for gaming.
I really hate things that are made to "appeal to women". There's no reason a screwdriver needs a pink handle, and there's no reason why women can't play and enjoy the same games that man do. When you start a game of Skyrim it doesn't ask "do you have a penis?" and boot out of the game if you answer no.
Skyrim's actually really popular with women. Partly because it's so open-ended and exploratory, and is presented more as an adventure and less of a proving grounds ("I'm so hardcore I killed all the halo aliens on the level in 4 minutes"). You're free to play the way you want to play, and your decisions are meaningful.
Even just being able to play as a lady character makes a big difference, rather than having to play as Generic Grizzled White Dude #58.
So yeah, building games that appeal to women isn't hard to do - but it does require that you build games that don't cater exclusively to the "hardcore gamer" audience.