So, That Women in Games Thing...

Wow, women in gaming face challenges! I never realized!

By comparison, chicks in Darfour sure are lucky. No one's putting them through the crippling angst and constant psychic balancing act of being a girl gamer.

But here, it's so damn hard. Just pressing RESTART is, like, a revolutionary act for women. I salute you, brave pioneers!

There has not been a genuine effort at capturing a female audience (outside of the Mary-Kate and Ashley games, Barbie, etc. which is aimed at little girls) because, ironically, the guys don't have the balls to make one.

The big problem of the industry right now is that, generally, we're stuck with games that are marketed to a certain audience. The big money is in the teenage males, and in dark, bloody first person shooters. It's stayed that way, because that's where there be monies.

I have a feeling that, pretty soon, everyone's going to get bored playing the endless Quake or Half-life clones (doesn't matter how many new features there are, they still have the same basic theme and core gameplay). Sales will plummet, and maybe the publishers will have the balls to go for a new market.

With clever enough advertising, and a good enough game, you can sell a game to women. It takes effort, though, because the men in the industry don't really know What Women Want (HELP US, MEL GIBSON!!). Do a game that satisfies women without cheapening them, and it will probably sell (again, all it takes is good marketing).

How to do that? Not aiming to satisfy the Freudian concept of the id, the desire to fuck, eat, and kill, is a pretty good starting point. Women aren't as enthusiastic about fucking and killing as menz are. Eating? That depends.

Man..sands of time was so deliciously awesome :(

I just really loved how they played farah into the story. LOVE LOVE LOVE. I didn't even bother renting the sequel when I found out what they were doing :(

Bah. I agree there need to be better female archatypes, though there are a few good ones out there as it is. I especially love the women charcters in halo, well fleshed out. not like that you sickos!

Anal spelling observation! It's Gamestop, not Gametop.

Mona Sax = coolest and yet least sexually exploited female character in a game ever

She wore jeans and a black shirt, and looked incredibly fucking badass carrying a massive Dragunov sniper rifle around.

She needs her own game, set in a time before she met Max.

what was the name of the girl that did all those sierra games way back?
roberta williams or something? she made some fun games.

"...I realized how sheltered I had been from the traditional bias toward women in technology...no one was encouraging gaming or animation as a real career option, in any capacity."

This reminded me of one night in college when it was 2 AM and I'd been trying to debug a C program for the past three hours. I was in the lab, and one of the guys was looking over my shoulder and said "Oh hey, I know what's wrong." I so happy that he'd finally found the fix, until he followed it up with: "You're a girl, that's why it won't work." That was years ago and I still think he's a jerk.

On the flip side, I totally broke down in tears in the TA's office when I couldn't understand coding linked lists and the TA was really nice in helping me after that.

I agree completely with Remo on this, SoT was a great example that a game that has general appeal can be successful. (and critically acclaimed)

WW was a terrible sequel that lacked everything its predecessor had improved from the console's generic 3d platformer template.

Strange how there's no mention of WoW which seems to attract lots of girl players (in addition to the guys who play girl avatars). I don't know how WoW stacks up against the other MMO's (like EQ, or GW) but I imagine there is a healthy gender balance there. Most of the girls I know who play (LAN party / clan / wow) got into it to be with friends (male and female alike) or play games for short periods - nintendo Wario Ware, or Mario where you can pick up, play and drop it. PP:SoT was like that too - episodic, pick up and play.

I'm not sure if the "portrayal of women in games" agrument is a sound one, since it's pretty congruous with the portrayal of women pretty much everywhere, and the portrayal of guys for that matter. Games present augmented reality - guys are trim, attractive, muscled and witty. Girls are slim, sexy, pneumatic and sassy. The problem I think is one of story and characterisation. It's not that the player models re-inforce these hollow archetypes, is that they usually have lame dialog and are part of a throw-away plot, reminiscent of mid 90s action movies. If these games were movies, the average audience would be 16-30 males, so why are we surprised when the video game audience is like that?

Why is it up to anybody to encourage women to enjoy the same career paths as men? It's not as if women are completely excluded, there are a ton of non-violent games already out there for the taking, the arguement of bias always seems to assume there is absolutely nothing out there to play.

So if women are typically just not as interested in video games and computer programming as men are, is this really a great social ill?

Reminds me of a radio show I heard the other day about a firehouse that was accused of discrimination because they did not have enough female firefighters. Their response was they don't get any female applicants. So there was dicussion about what things must be done to make firefighting seem more like an enjoyable career path for women. Why? Same thing applies here, is it really a problem?

It's hard for designers, themselves men, to find a way to depict women in a very realistic manner, especially when all the buyers are men. Isn't it hard all the way around to change something with both sides having a weak understanding by being men themselves?

who puts an xbox in the kitchen anyway?

I really love the look of The Escapist. I want to have that website's baby. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the article once my lunch break rolls around.

Acually, i hated how whiny the girl was in PoP:SoT, and so did my girlfriend, so much so she took to killing her whenever she said something, and reloding (because of course killing her ended the game) with a grin on her face....

Just wanted to say that the tone of some of the comments in this thread make me weep.

When you're embarrassed to sit down and play a game with your wife because the barmaid has impossibly large tits, maybe it's time for some change, you know?

Just a random thought, but I'd split up them monster paragraphs a bit, Remo. I love the new variety and depth of news coverage, but I'd prefer it in the good ol' quick & easy to digest shack format of past. (in other words, please cater to my ADD)

Being a gaming student, i can safely say that out of the entire art department, there are currently NO females enrolled in the gamers stream. However i'm not all that sure about the programming stream, although my best bet is also 0% female interest.

Once the first year introductory course is over, females either leave and go off to do other things, or they enroll in the film courses.

In my opinion both even male and female input into an overall design is the best way to get a well rounded product. Women have that input which coutermeasures the male ability to turn everything into generic shit, it is definately the best way to work. So yes, it is a shame that not enough females are interested in a career in the games industry. Perhaps then we would see more quality and less generic quantity.

One specific person i can think of with an "i switched to the games industry" story is Kate Inabinet who now works for Atari in Melboune. Went down the film path at the same school i attend, graduated (Sony scholarship winner aswell) and chose to go for a job at Atari rather than work in film.
She's also an active member of the "Women in games" program and advises women to join the industry as a career.
http://www.gdaa.com.au/teachers-forum/inabinet.html#

Warrior Within sold that much better? Learn something every day, I guess.

The majority of Female gamers I know(and I know quite a few) tend to be casual-hardcore. What I mean by that is they find a game they like then play the hell out of it. This is opposite of the typical male gamer. Most men tend to either play few games, or switch between multiple games.

Women tend to be(note I say tend because of course it differs from person to person) more picky in their choices. Now, in part, I imagine this trend is influenced by the lack of things that appeal to women in a large number of games. But, the situation is a catch 22 because women tend to know exactly what they want and will spend lots of time researching games until they find something that suites them.

To say that the lack of "female" material in games is the core problem is really putting women into a stereotype. I know a number of female gamers that are looking for very non-traditional female things in the games they play. Again, it is more about women tending to play just the games that really appeal to them, whatever that might be.

The one exception to this, however, is social gaming. Women do strongly lean towards games with more social content than games without. This is why, contrary to rumors stating otherwise, a lot of women tend to play MMO or pure multiplayer games. This is merely a reflection of the majority of women in real life who tend to be much more social than men.

A good example of this would be Star Wars Galaxies. Say what you will about how the game ended up(I think its sad that it never met its potential honestly). But, in the first year of the game when, even with lots of bugs, it was extremely strong in social content(play cities, clothes, government, entertainer professions, etc) it attracted huge numbers of RL women to the game because it had a very strong social core. As the game became more pure combat focused and social issues were ignored, the number of female players slowly dwindled.

Man, kids these days, I was at this school the other day, and not only did they all have super-fancy flatscreen Imacs there, but the hottest girls (before you ask, they where like 18-19) where going on and on about how they really wanted to play Quake, and I'm like W..T..F . When I was their age, the girls used to laugh at me for my silly interest in those computer games. At 25, Im already a bitter old man.

Maybe they'll be happy when this guy starts working on a game: http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=9040250

And on a similarly amusing article: http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2005/10/gta-sex-in-city-mod-released.html

K, I'm done.