Interview: How to Appeal to Girls Without Pissing Off the Guys

[Greg Tito]

Interview: How to Appeal to Girls Without Pissing Off the Guys

At GDC and this week at the Triangle Game Conference, Jennifer Canada presented her Guildhall thesis on gameplay points to which female gamers respond well, but she told us that guys seem to like them just as much.

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[DividedUnity]

Interesting article. The 2 out of 100 ratio was a bit suprising though i thought it would be a bit more than that. Also the title of the article sounds like a relationship advice thread

 

[Aptspire]

Portal seems to also have some of the characteristics enumerated in the article, while it also had a very 'geared-toward-females' environment (the mention of the 'take your daughter to work day', as well as others)

 

[Irridium]

I've always wondered. Do gamers really only like what we have now (pretty boy male leads, completely bland), or do we buy them because thats all there really is nowadays?

Could be interesting to look into.

 

[Negatempest]

Just going to say that a sim-date added to some games where it's appropriate would get as many boys as girls. I can see over half of the audience denouncing the game for having a sim-date in it, while 80% of those people that denounced it would be playing it when no one is looking. The same way that sim-date games have always pulled in audience, while no one is looking.

 

[Jared]

Interesting article. The 2 out of 100 ratio was a bit suprising though i thought it would be a bit more than that. Also the title of the article sounds like a relationship advice thread

I was surprised too, I didnt know it was that...small? I suppose dont know as much as I thought lol.

Although, it does sound intresting...despite it sounding, as mentioned above, how to hold a stable realationship

 

[Shockolate]

Whoa. Her last name is Canada?

Sorry, that's the only thing that I really found noteworthy.

 

[VGStrife]

Is it really that surprising that good ideas appeal to everyone? And that not all women are the same 'types of gamer'.

Credit where credit is due on finding what people like, and that lots of games have started using them, but ultimately unsurprising in my eyes.

 

[Cousin_IT]

From the anecdotal evidence at least, it seems to prove more that "girl" features are just as appealing to "guys"; which suggests that making a game that appeals to both genders is as simple as moving away from pigeon holing every design, artistic & feature decision as either male or female.

Since mainstream games usually means Halo, Gears of War etc, I still don't understand why there is confusion why large queues of women don't form up to buy & play them, just as there aren't long lines of them queuing up to see Transformers. The Sims, Farmville etc are played by huge numbers of men as well as women, which pretty strongly suggests to me the issue is not "why do women play these 'casual' games" but "why are we surprised women aren't that interested in our 'core' games about butch men beating up other men & treating women as at best poorly realized plot devices, but usually just eye candy?"

Design a game without asking "how can we make this appeal to a specific gender?" & you'll have one that appeals to both.

 

[Kiithid]

Just like a good movie a good game attract both male and female audience.
Between the shades of grey it's not hard to point out wich gender would prefer what, considering steriotypes.

 

[Embz]

Im a computer science undergraduate and I also am only 1 of 2 girls out of around 95 boys. Ive always wondered why girls never seem to get into computers or gaming. Found this article very interesting, maybe its the advertising of games that put girls off, rather than the actual game-play?

 

[FinalDream]

the fact that the very aspects of gaming that were geared towards women, actually were things that appealed to males as well.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts, these things are universal and the building blocks to any good game regardless of gender.

 

[kogane]

I've always wondered. Do gamers really only like what we have now (pretty boy male leads, completely bland), or do we buy them because thats all there really is nowadays?

Could be interesting to look into.

I agree with this. What I love most about games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect and others that let you create your own hero(ine) is, that they don't have to look so disgustingly perfect.
Scars? Only the evil guys have them (except when they must be just as prettiful as the good guys)! The character that just had a breakdown and is crying really hard?
LOOK, DON'T THE TEARS MAKE THEM EXTRA PRETTY?

It's not Uncanny Valley, exactly, it's just boring. Yes, we can see your pretty graphics. And your pretty characters, that look just like all the other pretty characters out there! /end rant

Oh, I forgot about the "I'm so normal, look at me, I'm sososo nor- WOAH suddenly (you never expected this to happen, no really!!) I'm in the middle of this super awesome adventure and the hero, even thought it makes no freaking sense!" character types.
And the ones that are only defined by how much ANGST they create.

 

[CK76]

Im a computer science undergraduate and I also am only 1 of 2 girls out of around 95 boys. Ive always wondered why girls never seem to get into computers or gaming. Found this article very interesting, maybe its the advertising of games that put girls off, rather than the actual game-play?

Studies I've read suggest that it is the image of maths and sciences that give a stronger negative image in females than males.

The modern era has witnessed (in the west) the rise of the female in the education and work fields (first time in US history more women in workforce than men) and these trends would be even more so if women far more than men did not elect to take breaks or stop working (generally related to pregnancies, children and family).

At University women outnumbered men in nearly every class, took a communication course and it was 10 to 1 women. Then a C++ course, zero women out of class of 40. Most estimates have women college graduates accounting for 56-61%, that's a huge gap of developing skilled professionals.

So while women are becoming more educated and stronger position in workforce it still seems there is a stronger stigma among females as identifying themselves as nerds. Look at many video game credits, females in marketing, management, human resources, but how many are programmers making the actual game? Once women want to be programmers they have the ability to take over the industry with the legions graduating from colleges.

Seems like a cyclical issue and how to break it. Likely spend a while figuring that out as industry grows and evolves.

 

[Worgen]

this makes me think of warhammer online, I had two friends who were girls on it and both of them were absolutely deadly pvpers and they loved it, they came from daoc before that and one of them also played alot of lord of the rings online and had plenty of battle stories about it also.

 

[Heart of Darkness]

I downloaded the mod. The concept definitely sounds interesting, and I'd like to see how Canada did this thesis for myself. I've bookmarked her page, too, and will try to take the survey to see what her methodology was for collecting data.

Of course, now that I read why this mod has come into being, I might also slightly skew the data. Hmmm...

If the thesis has already been written, then I don't see the harm, but if it's not, or hasn't been submitted, then I think I'll just look at the survey instead.

 

[Wakefield]

Wow what's with the piles of negativity here? Great article Greg and it was a pleasure to read.

 

[wildpeaks]

Is it really that surprising that good ideas appeal to everyone?

Indeed, that was the same thing that got mentionned in the previous article about Canada (also about making games appeal to girls).

And I also agree that not all females like the same things, it would be like "how to make a game appeal to guys", it's more complex than that.

For example, about that 2 out of 100: back when I played L4D/L4D2 every evening, we often encountered women, hell even 40% of our clan were and we weren't specifically targeting them.

There are more around than you think, just don't make a big deal out of it when there is one and you might be surprised.

But it's nice in the article that they try to see what could appeal to a broader audience.

 

[littlejimmy155]

Correcting a mistake on the first page. Lords Of Magic is not a real time strategy, it's turn baced.