Games for the other Gender

#21 Mare: Thanx... I really think we should talk about game designs.
I have a few ideas of my own, which i think would appeal more to the womens' side (and its in a fantasy ....ummm.... 4got the word that i'm looking for) What did you think of the Bungie (who makes Halo) hit, Oni? I see by your art and general talk you like Manga and Fantasy. If you never played this, u must seriously consider (One of my ALLTIME favs). And thanx for all the info.

BTW! I dig what you've done with orchid

Axel: What about the quake chicks? I'm trying to get a female fanbase... If you read up futher you'll know what i mean... they're the odd ones out... I want to design something the majority of women would like.

It's going 2 be a strange project... As i would have to get women to tell me what needs to be different, without going on male instinct.

I've also noted that my women (starting to play games, often struggle with the keys and/or controllers). I asked my GF to try out Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance on Xbox; she tends to randomly press buttons. After i told her that L2 is the through button, she kept on randomly pressing buttons (excluding the Throw but)... and then SOMETIMES she presses throw (with success).
Which brings me back to what has been said, by Mare, fast games aren't always an option...

Non fast Game types:
- Sims
- RPG
- Quests
- First Person X (without the shooting its FPX? :)
- Third Person X
- Puzzle

Maybe combine some of these:
- Third Person Quest: Eg. Garden Fairy on a mission to find her lost friend.

I seriously need coffeee....

#22 Fantastic thread, guys (and girl!)...

I'll just add something that I think can be implicit in the above posts, but I'm not sure: the purely evolucionary view.

Men and women had hundreds of thousands of years to evolve on a certain path; in early human societies, men were the gatherers/hunters that spent lots of time out of the house/cave, while women were in the cave tending the children and the elderly, which implied lots of times communication of the most advanced type (specially, the communication of emotions or emotion-handling, to allay primitive fears, etc)...
Although we've come a long way, only relatively recently did the woman started having different roles in society... we could say that both men and woman are genetically manipulated by Nature for their roles... and 4000 years of "civilization" can't undo what's done in 100000 years of "human history"...
In that aspect, it's natural that:

- Men are more violence driven, oriented more to the predator/prey kind of games... If they need to be mentally challenged, they prefer to be by logic puzzles without any consequence on their own moralities, or where humour (specially not-clean humour)
- Women prefer communication as a tool of conflict solving... They prefer "puzzles" that challenge their perceptions of right or wrong, where the morallity play is very complex... Their sense of humour is more situational that men's (more related to the actions of the character, like the cliché clumsy guy/animal/creature)

Of course, this is a gross generalization... by wife dislikes action games where you can't sever enemies limbs, etc... she also likes Diablo (mindless killing), and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (another example of mindless killing)... but she loves games like Syberia and Primal, where she cares about the characters...
These glitches in the evolucionary theory for gamming, IMHO, are related to the confused (or should I say, more complex) relations that are establishing in the civilized society (the role of the woman is no longer that of a mother or nurse, the man is no longer the provider)...

Oh, I just remembered another remark I want to do make; about romance... I also think that it relates to evolutionary theory (the selection of the best breeding partner)... note that in some situation this can be one, and in another, it can be another one... maybe that's the appeal of the "bad" characters... in a world without conflict, they wouldn't stand a chance as breeding partner, but if the world is going to chaos, they have some sort of appeal...
I don't agree with Mare Kuntz on on point, though: "The other characters should be bishounen"... There are lots of evidence (specially in the more westerns cultures, particularly Europe, I think) where the hyper-male characters that have a weakness are also very desireable to woman: Dante in Devil May Cry, the guy from Resident Evil: Zero, the Prince in Prince of Persia, Solid Snake... I think the emphasis is not on how pretty he is (although it helps, as it helps men that women in games are good looking and desirable, even if they are bitchy or something), but how "helpless" he is, and how that manifests in the game... for instance, events in the beginning of the game remminding some past grief works pretty often, I think...
But of course, I'm not a woman, and I might be letting my testesterone talk for me! :)

A final point I would like to make is the fact that these notions of "games for women" are being continuously challenged by changing perceptions and cultural reason... The hyper-female starts to have some appeal (at least gauging for the ammount of hyper-females in comic books today)... I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 or 20 years, we have to completely redefine what games for women or men are...

#23 Oh, just to throw some more wood to the fire, I would say that women prefer above all RPG, but in the purest sense (think about it: _Role_ Playing Games; it's not Dice Playing Games)... Almost all games that were refered as marginally attractive to women are RPGs in one form or another (The Sims are more of an RPG than a Sim, IMHO)...

Hum, my longest thread post ever... :)

#24

Quote:A final point I would like to make is the fact that these notions of "games for women" are being continuously challenged by changing perceptions and cultural reason...

But there are common differences between men and women, that should be used. Maybe we should start looking at what the Film industry is using, and compare that to the gaming industry. There should be similar things and tends/trends...

/me go digs into more stats...

BTW! The Gaming Industry has passed the Film Industry in revenues, which i find quite amazing...

#25 Gareth - It's not that I watch too much anime, it's that everyone else watches too little! ^_~ Truly though, I think that anime and related Japanese entertainments like ren'ai games are a great area to research for writers/designers/artists in general, and especially for people interested in targeting a female audience - shoujo anime (a genre marketed particularly to teenage girls) is a much higher quality product than western soap operas or romance novels, and therefore a better startng point for new design for that audience.



Diogo De Andrade wrote:
"I don't agree with Mare Kuntz on on point, though: "The other characters should be bishounen"... There are lots of evidence (specially in the more westerns cultures, particularly Europe, I think) where the hyper-male characters that have a weakness are also very desireable to woman: Dante in Devil May Cry, the guy from Resident Evil: Zero, the Prince in Prince of Persia, Solid Snake... I think the emphasis is not on how pretty he is (although it helps, as it helps men that women in games are good looking and desirable, even if they are bitchy or something), but how "helpless" he is, and how that manifests in the game... for instance, events in the beginning of the game reminding some past grief works pretty often, I think...
But of course, I'm not a woman, and I might be letting my testesterone talk for me! :) "

I don't disagree with this - some bishounen could be consdered hyper-male. Visually, you occasionally run nto seven foot tall swordsmen with muscles everywhere, or the bit less extreme warrior type similar to a samurai of football quarterback. They still have to be handsome though. And I think I mentioned vulnerability/woundedness as an archetypally attractive charater trait, didn't I?



Burning - You're welcome, and sure let's talk about game designs. :) No I haven't played Oni; I remember picking it up and looking at it, but I don't remember why I decided not to get it (probbly lack of $ lol), so I'll take another look at it.

OT art stuff:

Orchid - Yeah, that drawing seems to be everyone's favorite one that I've done. I find this quite ironic since I put a lot less time and work into it than some of the other things I've done, there was no design work involved at all, and if you look at the source image of Tomo from the anime Fushigi Yuugi that I used you can see it's really pretty derivative:
www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~lowsokhu/images/lalaland/bachelor/contestant11/tomo2.jpg

But if you liked him, why don't you take a look at this guy (yes he's a guy, just very femme lol), he's much more original and he isn't on may samples page yet because he's new. (I need to update it... >.< )
members.cox.net/wickeddelight/elffinal.jpg

#26 Two words

Shopping Game

#27 @Burning - I did read further up the first time. My point on Quake chicks was to illustrate that trying to generalize the audience by gender is not something that is cut and dried, that in trying to think "what do women want in their games?", the consideration of the girls who dig guns and gibs must be accounted for. 'Course, by the same token, the consideration of guys who like good plot and character interaction probably ought to be taken into account as well. But I digress.

Perhaps the best way of trying to develop a game that appeals to women is to start by creating a game environment, a sandbox of sorts, and see what they tend to play with more. Do they try chatting things up with other players and NPCs or do they start pistolwhipping characters and rampaging across the landscape? Classify the game environment and its options as a limited alpha. Make it limited, a few people here, a few people there. Expand the number of participants if you want a broader spectrum. Reduce the number if you want a closer look at a specific facet. Take samples. Collect data. Repeat until you think you've got enough to move forward to the next stage. By making the development of the game an iterative process, you get a much better hands-on sense of what female gamers want AND you end up building a community that will be looking forward with bated breath to your final product. Such an approach would not be logistically easy from an initial standpoint, but it would pay for itself handsomely in the long term.

#28 Axel:

[/quote]The consideration of the girls who dig guns and gibs must be accounted for.[/quote]

I understand what you're saying... But that's not what I am aiming for... I don't really care about them (Quake chicks)... "Care" is probably the wrong word but I'm not English, so i don't know the correct word. When people design a game they think of specifics in the GAME, and they fail miserably to include the "fun/addictive" factors for women.

I personally think it's because it's 99.9% men in the Design department.

And i agree totally with what you say in your second paragraph,
but where do we start?

#29 You start at the beginning. ;)

Seriously, you need to think about the initial environment that you want to be setting the game in. A manor house on the moors in England? Nine square city blocks in New York City? The jungles of the Congo? The moutains of Mars? Where? When? the other questions of "What?" and "Why?" are what we are trying to discover. "Who?" is going to be sort of the bridging question, since the players you would invite to this theoretical alpha would be part of the "who" and the NPCs you created for the players to interact with would make up the other part.

Part of the idea of having a sandbox is that you can always introduce new areas and new concepts without really disturbing the flow of things. Makes things much nicer to experiment with.

#30 It's also good to start by deciding what game genre you're interested in making - single player or mmo? Combat or no combat? Sim/strategy? Dialogue with NPCs? Quests and exploring? Puzzles? Toy elements like a decorateable dollhouse and the ability for players to upload their own images, stories, and music? Subgames? Linear plot or not? Some of these gameplay elements fit together better than others, and some of them require completely different game design principeles and strategies. You as the designer need to develop a coherent vision of what you want to do and how it will work and feel to play this game.

#31 One thing that I can say to contribute to the idea is that female gamers in general, excluding those hardcore ones who actually play "male"-type games, prefer a realistic environment in the games they play. The games I'm thinking of is in first hand are The Sims and the SSX series, that my girlfriend's heavily into. Maybe this has to do with them wanting to live themselves into the role they're playing and at the same time being able to go in and out of the game world quickly. I mean, we all know how great it is to just sink down in an intriguing game and be a part of that world. I don't think that's what the typical female gamer is after, being involved in a fantasy world requires both time and patience, and the female gamer usually considers gaming a fun little thing to waste some time with. When you tell a girl that you played PlantSide all week and really felt like shit when you lost a base, the just go all "What!?", but when I on the other hand broguht a bunch of girls to my house (dunno why), they were all too excited about SSX. If all you want some quick entertainment, being a part of an ever-lasting fantasy wirld with both complex geographics and a detailed history is not gonna help you. Unfortunatley that's apparently what most female gamers are after. Quick entertainment, something to just pop into a minute before shool, like an SSX race, not a PlanetSide war lasting over a weekend.

Ok, I kinda lost my point here but what I mean is basically that to make a game attractive to female players, one should preferrably place the game in an environment that the player can find herself at home with, if you know what I mean. Taking part in full scale conflicts or having to readloads of scrolling text is just not gonna work.

#32 You will also need to consider the target audience age. Do you want to market to young girls, older women, or somewhere in between? If you are trying to appeal to the entire spectrum of ages, you are probably going to come to the one conclusion you didnt want: The Sims ;) Or something very much like it. Not many people have accomplished that for men either. There often comes a point in a man's life when blowing stuff up just isnt fun any more.

Thats one of the things that the movie industry takes into account. When speaking of movies marketed to females, it's either a movie for young girls (though often these are for young girls and young boys, but not always), a movie for teenagers, a movie for 20 and 30 somethings, or a movie for older women, and sometimes these overlap to an extent, but rarely will you see one that has strong appeal to 'females' in general.

Peace

#33 Ooo Ooo Ooo! I got this one:

Shopping Sim!!!

(Sorry ladies, but that was too easy)

Glez

#34 My girlfriend is a game developer. She plays Spyro the Dragon and the Silent Hill games just to name a couple. She doesn't care for war games though. She did play through Halo 2 with me but because it has somewhat imaginative art. My little sister loves the Tekken and Soul Calibur series.
-Ajari-

#35 Shari Graner Ray wrote a great book called Gender Inclusive Game Design. There were a few things in there that I thought were leaning too far in the other direction (instead of Gender Inclusive, these things were "male repellant") but the majority of the book was spot-on. After reading the book, though, I realized that the question of gender isn't the only question we should be worried about. What about minorities, why are all in-game terrorists Pakistani and all black people are depicted as "gangsta"? What about the overweight who are frustrated that their sims cannot look like they do?

There are alot more questions than just gender, and as game designers we should be considering all of them when deciding what content to put in our games.

#36 My game BLINDSCAPE isn't exaclty targeted for females, but it also doesn't target males. The gender of the player is unknown cause they never speak and you never see what he/she looks like cause the screen is completely black!
www.llamageek.com/misnomer

#37 @Skye

With Rumble Box we tried for the genderless presentation also. Since our characters were made out of blocks, they could look sylized without giving them any gender roles. We intentionally left out faces, hair and voices for this reason also. Finally, in our high score mode we made sure that all of the entries were genderless "stylized" names (Boxer, Slick, etc)

I know that not all games can do this, but I think any game that can should consider this sort of presentation. It makes inclusiveness a non-issue, because it avoids gender/race completely.

#38 @Skye - Your game is something totally wacked... In a cool/positive way. I've been following your stuph. Commented, but got swallowed (once again).

It's also not just about issues... I'm sure there are women out there that just don't care about gaming... That can because they haven't seen anything that really interest them. If you look at game displays you usually see Violent (to them) games or Car games. Now there aren't that many women interested in cars either. It's that there's this major untapped resource for generating more money. Men can relate to being the character, if he's White, Black or Eastern... It's a bit harder for women, because they don't want to shoot/destroy everything. Collecting coins/rings with a blue character is more exciting for them.

[Generalize=on]
Men like hardcore competitive gaming... Women wants casual gaming with open gameplay...
[Generalize=off]

#39 Well, of the few games my GF plays, they are sports (hockey and baseball), the mario and the sonic games. She plays the sports games to play with me (same team in hockey), and games she would play herself are more platformers, with unique, likable characters, Crash bandicoot is one of them. Just thought id throw my FACTS into the story