My Thoughts On Why Women Don't Play Games

I read an interesting article/essay today on gameergod.com which outlined the author's views as to why there aren't many women gamers.

Although I will agree that there are a few games that have taken an overexaggerated view on how to present female characters in their games, aka the stereotypical big breasted, tiny waist vixen, it is my feeling that the author also took a very narrow minded view on what the problem really is and here's why:

1) Sexy avatars really aren't the problem, its the genre of the game thats the problem. The AAA games market is basicly dominated by a lot of accountants who are too afraid to break out of the normals, as such for years now they have been basing their decisions of which games to fund on past hits. As such if you keep looking further and further back on this evolution you will see that it goes way back to the late 80s/early 90s where guys played with tech and girls didn't. Meaning that all the games we have right now are based on what guys have liked and wanted to do in games and essentially this means shooters and simulators. Thus it doesn't take a genius to realize why women don't play these games because shooting shit and driving a tank or car doesn't really appeal to the mass market of women.

On the flip side however making Dress-up, Beuty Salon and Pony games are not the answer either (although they do sell well, but I contend that this is because of a lack of suitable games for girls and not because its what they want). These games are just as stereotypical as having some large breasted bimbo walking around with a pair of bazooka's blasting the shit out of everything. Instead I feel that the market needs to talk a closer look to break out hits like "the Sims" to really figure out what appeals both the current generation of men and women gamers and is also a massive commercial success.

2) Women actually make up the majority of game players. Yes, it's true! There is a huge market of women aged 20 to 35 who are at home raising the kids or working in an office that play games. The catch is they don't play games from the AAA publishers they play "indie" or "casual" games (you know that other market that the so-called games reporters arrogently ignore because they don't understand or have a clue) such as Solitare, Mahjong, Bejewelled and Chuzzle (to name but a few). Because of them they have made the "casual" market into a hidden gem of $2.5 billion in sales per year and in the process have made the AAA publishers stand up and take notice of all the little games that they (and many AAA gamers) arrogently wrote-off as mickey-mouse and too simple.

So why do women play casual games and not AAA game offerings? It isn't because female avatars in games drip of sex appeal, no it's because these women lack the time to invest in a AAA game (due to house chores, watching the kids, having to drive around, etc.) or simply are not used to the fast paced action of AAA games. Women of this generation (20 to 35) are not used to dealing with fast paced games, its the same reason why they cannot flip through TV stations and see what is going on on a channel as fast as a man can, they haven't been conditioned to recognize this stuff and adapt like most of us have thanks to our years of TV and Gaming experiance. I can bet you that in the next 5 or 10 years as more women from the "Nintendo" generation grow up and get older you will see them adapt to AAA game offerings because they have been conditioned as they have grown up to hectic, fast paced games.

3) The current generation of women aren't "gamers". As I stated in point 2, the current generation of women aren't gamers and didn't grow up playing games. In the next 5 to 10 years we will definately see this shift as women want to play more fast paced games and honestly won't give a rats ass if they get some cute but sexy avatar to play if the game is fun.


So in summary what have we learnt about women gamers? Well in all honesty they don't give a shit about how sexy or stereotypical an avatar is. Women gamers don't care if they are Lara Croft, a DoA girl, or Princess Toadstool, they care about the same things men do and that's "Is the game kick ass fun to play?". If you can do this while keeping in mind the psychology of the target audience (which essentially means telling your AAA marketing guru to either fuck off or explain to him in very simple words with examples why something needs to be done this way) that you are trying to hit then yes, women gamers will play your game.

Getting Older

This past Sunday was my birthday (turned 26) and I spent it with a lot of friends and family at my in-laws cabin that rests of the shores of Pigeon Lake. Aside from nearly polishing off a 1 litre bottle of Vodka in a day and a great meal, I also got a new helmet for the ski-doo/snowmobile and a gift card for a local electronics shop (I can almost hear that 360 calling my name).

One interesting thing that I discovered while we were out at the lake was that my dog has a love/hate relationship with snow. She is still pretty small so she gets cold easy (and at a mighty -20C high for the day it was pretty cold), but she's also an energetic pup that loves to jump into the freshly fallen snow and play around. If only digicams didn't fail at this temperature I would have some pictures to share.

Also as a bonus add-on to my birthday I was treated last Thursday to a delicious meal at a great restaurant here in Edmonton known as Japanese Village. Located in a historic building from the early 1900s this restaurant serves you a delicious helping of food prepared Japanese style with a master chef slicing, dicing and singing/entertaining you while he cooks. The restaurant does serve your typical sushi but they are better known for an addictively delicious steaks, shrimps, lobsters and chicken served to you with beans, soup, zuccini, mushrooms, onions and a desert bort of sherbert. Well worth checking out if you ever come to town.

I also finally recieved my DVDs from the great guys over at texturemonk.com, there were over 13 DVDs in total with a mixed set of nice high resolution reference photos combined with a few tiling textures and misc bitmaps. Overall I am very impressed with the quality of the DVDs, especially for a bargain price of $80 USD, and I am also very impressed with the guys that run texturemonk.com (since we had an issue with the DVDs getting lost in the mail, so the guys quickly sent over another set over to me, free of charge and gave me an extra month subscription for their site). As such if you are an artist looking for some a nice texture set for cheap, check out texturemonk.com, you won't be sorry.