Games for Women, Games by Women

It would be real nice to see more women game developers. I'm all for women becoming as interested in gaming as men; there's no reason whatsoever to believe they can't be. The problem is most games are made by men, for men. And men can only go so far in making a game that can appeal to women. The Sims is cool, but I guess women may also want some more variety than a simple life simulation game.

Funny... I'm not a female, and I want games with all of those qualities...

Not just women. I like games that fit these kind of characteristics too.

Well, unlike you first two posters, I'm a real man. I want my games to be impossible to learn, easy to master, impossible to play for fewer than 16 hours a day, and entirely mind numbing.

Extremely specific niche?

Like 55% of the population specific?

Females are the biggest untapped audience imaginable.

And like the first two said, those are good qualities for many games, especially for people who have work, family, etc.

Still I also agree with bazald (whether he's being sarcastic or not). I often long for the days when most games were still tough as nails. Ninja Gaiden was a godsend last generation.

bazald - I'd love to know how you make a game impossible to learn but easy to master. :)

Sense - I like hard games too. I just don't want them to be hard in the first 10 minutes, or because of an issue like arcane controller design or having to jump onto an area one pixel wide.

I think it depends quite how one defines "learn" and "master"... Learning the rules and controls in Geometry Wars, for example, is easy -- as is summarising the aim of the game. However, I can't get high scores. That's not because I don't know how to play, it's because I'm not prepared to stick at it enough to work out the tricks for staying alive (and master the game). In contrast, learning to play a FPS or RTS game involves a fairly tough learning curve. If you've never touched the genre before, there's a whole lot of knowledge to obtain and skills to practice -- how to aim with a mouse/controller, the layout of different maps, the quality of different weapons. Playing the game repeatedly, you learn all that stuff, and when the learning experience is over then you're pretty close to mastering it.

As for the "niche" remark; sure, females are a great audience for games, although we're not as untapped as we're made out to be. The niche, to me, is the regular holding of "Women in Games" events which basically cover the same points again and again. Every time someone goes away from one of these conferences or meetings with a head full of ideas on how to make an innovative game that will also appeal to women, that's great. But isn't there more that these events can be doing?

Though its little to do with games, my girlfriend is getting amazing with pixel art now. We're hoping to get ourselves a Rev development kit when they're finalised and bang out some classic 2D pixel games.

I go for those above qualities too. I value gameplay above everything, and prefer 2D to 3D. In that 3D just looks pants when it tries to look real and fails miserably. Music is high up on my list, but actual music. Not orchestral, not pop music. Turrican, Sonic, Mario. etc

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold up a second. WOMEN are playing GAMES?!

This whole "games for women" idea is such a load of crap. You pick a game genre, I personally know a woman who excels at, or at least thoroughly enjoys it. My girlfriend absolutely devours RTS titles and platformers. I have a female friend who will hand just about anyone their ass in pretty much any FPS she can get her hands on, and I have yet another female friend who sincerely enjoys fighters. And I can name another few that are fans of the GTA series.

Naturally there are genres of games that attract more women than others, just as there are those that will attract more guys than others, but really, I doubt that there's such a great difference that the subject of "games for girls" should garner as much attention as it already gets.

#4, kinda like how Hollywood ignored male tastes and now it's killing their business?

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/13/051213173239.bo5ciosh.html

Straight from the above link: "It's not just a slump in box office, but also in sales of DVDs," Kyser told AFP. "This is mainly because of unattractive movies that don't appeal to young male audiences, the cost of movie tickets, parking, the shrinking window a movie's theatrical and DVD releases.

Girl games are fine but the industry shouldn't forget their most loyal and profitable customers as well.

Wait, how is Animal Crossing "Non-casual?" I play that game to relax, which means it's casual. It's also easy to pick up and play for like 5 minutes, I do that often too. Unless you define "casual" differently.

#12 -- It does depend how one defines casual. ACWW's platform and price point put it out of the casual category, but if you go purely on gameplay, it does fit many of the key criteria (interstitial play, easy to learn, rewarding play after a short amount of game-time, can be repeatedly played daily). I think of ACWW more like a second job, though; it's a daily commitment :)

I think it's nice to see other females involved in the industry. But I do wish the industry stop separating us into seperate gender groups. Why not combine both groups together into one event? Why the need to have an event that is focused mainly on the individuals gender? It sounds border line sexist. I am a believer of equality when it comes to these types of issues. If guys can’t do it, we can’t do it either. It’s not a fair game! As a female gamer and also a programmer, it really bothers me when I get rated for either my gaming abilities or my programming skills based on my gender. I want respect for my mental abilities, not for my sex.

In regards to developing games that are going to appeal women. Well there is already games that seem like they where developed to appeal to male gamers more. But that still doesn't justify us to do same for females. Two wrongs don't make a right. We should be setting a better example.

I also, don’t like the stereotype that the typical female gamer only enjoys games like WoW, Animal Crossing and the Sims. I have read that in so many articles about what type of games appeal to female gamers. When from the games that I mentioned I only enjoy one of the games. I personally like variety of games. I am game to play a Basketball game during the NBA season. In addition, I am game to play majority of FPS titles available. And just like me there is other female gamers that are on the same boat.

As a female gamer, I find that I buy more and more games for the plot. I was a big fan of the first person adventure games before that genre went belly-up. I don't ever hear anything about plot being important when driving for a female audience, though, and a male coworker recently informed me in a rather matter-of-fact way, that serious gamers didn't play for stories, anyway. I find it interesting that no one ever discusses this, because it seems like the female audience would find long and involved storylines a selling point for games.

I'd like some input re some things I have discovered that 'learning games' aka Serious Games, appeal to women in particular. I'm organising a conference and want to discuss this topic as a way of opening the mainstream games market more to women (that age-old question). I know casual games do that but do people think that 'learning games' do that to. If so, shouldn't the publishers release more titles with a degree of learning design in them (carefully balanced with game-play obviously. Does anyone have views on this? Check out the link for more about the conference BTW.