norr said:
1. Do you feel that most video games are aimed towards men, And if you think so..
Depends on which genres you're talking about. Are most AAA games aimed towards men? Yes. Are most point and click adventures aimed at men? No.
a. Why do you think this is?
A lot of reasons.
For one, there is still a social stigma on gaming in general. The main games that get past this social stigma are games like Call of Duty, which are heavily aimed at men, for obvious reasons - much like you'd expect a mostly Male audience for the Die Hard movies, or Fast and Furious movies. There will be women that play them, however they are in the minority.
Additionally, social stigmas are, stereotypical as it sounds, exaggerated for women. Some don't really care. I have those sorts of friends. At the same time I've got my partner, who feels a constant need to always go out dressed up, in good looking but impractical clothes, make up on, and socialise with all the people, even the ones she hates. Why? She needs to fit in, and not doing any one of those things will get her ostracised. With gaming having a stigma over it, unless it is accepted in the circles that women frequent, they are likely to be ostracised for gaming more than it just being accepted. For guys, its easier. You say you game, and you play boring games, you're not going to be the most popular guy ever, but people are less likely to hold it against you, and us guys seem more comfortable with not being liked by some people than people like my partner, who feels the need to be liked by everyone [For god knows what reason. Even she admits its stupid].
Beyond that, there is the general stereotypes. "He broke my heart, I broke his Xbox", "You know you've got a keeper when he'll stop playing CoD for you" and all that bullcrap. Its stereotyped that guys are dudebros who sit at home and play on their consoles, whilst women want to spend time with them and are often sidelined in favour of games. Is it an accurate stereotype? I highly doubt it. Its still one though, and one that pits females as opposition to gaming.
There's also the fact that the games industry, I.E: The people making games, is a predominantly male work force. Men will make games aimed at men, by and large. Some will be able to make ones gender neutral, some female developers will help make ones aimed at women. By and large though, what appeals to one gender is harder to understand for the other gender, and in a industry dominated by males, this means the female viewpoint isn't as understood as it could be.
There's also issues with being identified as a female online. Whether its Facebook, or in a game, its not uncommon to get "Marry me", "please go out with me", "Hey you're a gamer girl I'm not a douche please love me" messages for women. Unbelievable for men, but just a quick browse through the 'not-friend' message banks on my female friends' Facebooks show how common it is there, let alone asking the ones that game about what happens in games.
None of these is a catch all reason, but they all build up to minimising female involvement in AAA gaming at the very least. As said originally, it depends what genres and what you define as gaming though. Facebook games? I'll bet its the opposite; 10-20% male players, 80-90% female. No guy would be caught dead playing something that lame, but I can not tell you the number of "This person needs fruit for their farm" or W/E requests I've received, 90% from grandparents, the rest largely from my sister and her friends.
b. How do you think it shows through? (eg. Over sexualised female characters)
A lot of ways. Over sexualised characters is one thing, predominance of Action and big explosion and shit male-oriented games in the AAA marketplace is another. Jokes regarding women in gaming that have circulated on the internet, and the discussions that spring up around them. The fact that in most MMOs you play, all men are men, all women are men, and all kids are FBI agents is a rule that is generally closish to the truth [There will certainly be women players, they're likely outnumbered by the number of men playing a female character]. How rare it is to find a girl who plays games, or will admit to it, compared to a guy [Though again, this depends on how you define games, and which genres we talk about].
Honestly, there's a lot of factors here that give the appearance of women not gaming. As said though, again, it depends on what genres you're talking about.
2. Would you say more women or more men play video games?
Again, big dependence on what genres you're talking about.
AAA blockbuster games? Men, easily.
Facebook games? Women, parents and old people exclusively.
Games like Pokemon? Probably a 1:1 split.
Overall its anyone's guess. The number of women who game is growing, but you really need a more detailed question if you want to get a better answer.
3. Do you think video games should be more geared towards men or women?
Should be the same as any other medium. There are studios that cater to both. Of course, romance movie type things don't exactly carry across to the videogame world well, outside of visual novels [Which are mostly made in Japan, and are likely a fairly contentious subject overall with the whole goal of the game being 'get with a member of the opposite {Or same, in some} sex'], and thus the easy card on how to appeal to women is gone, and we've got a lot of male oriented studios instead.
I'll add to my previous answers some here, in that a lot of this is probably due to game making being fairly difficult, and an IT subject, compared to other media. Creating a book, or a movie, requires very different skillsets to making a game. English, I would say, is probably the most important subject for them, with some media studies for things like how to Frame scenes [Though Ironically that was included in my highschool English classes when I did them]. English, in my experience, is a female dominated subject. Most people hate the subject and see it as boring, of the few who like it, most seem to be females. I don't know a single male in my old school who took up the English Literature elective class, but plenty of females who did. Naturally, everyone has to do English, and there are probably still plenty of guys who did English Lit [Though not at my school], and thus we see a very mixed gender bag when it comes to authors. Even then, you don't need to have excelled at an English class to do well as an Author. You just need to be able to do creative writing well, and have a story worth telling.
Game making is an IT subject. You don't hire someone who's only skill is writing stories, as anyone can write stories - you want people who can write stories, and design levels to be fun, and who knows some stuff about programming, and 3D graphics, and a variety of other bits and pieces too. Because of this, getting into game making requires going through an IT course on game making - and IT is a male dominated subject. Because of this, most of the people who will even study to make games, will be males, let alone the ones who actually get the job for it. Not studying IT, and making a game, is impossible unless you have money to pay someone to make the game for you, whilst you just write the story. You need to have studied IT, either self studied, or university studied, so you know how to program the game, or most of the time even use a simple world editor like the one for Warcraft III to make mods for a game. This locks a lot of people out of just making games that would appeal to them, whereas if they wanted to anyone could write a book that appealed to them and put it online - it might not be good, but you could read it. Without IT knowledge, you couldn't even make the game. You could just write down your idea and hope someone likes it enough to do it for you [Odds are, they don't].
Anyway, that veered off topic a bit, but I stand by my original statement; it should be a mixed bag, with studios/groups dedicated to making games for different demographics. Unfortunately, this would likely require a higher female interest in the IT field - which has started to happen, bit by bit, with the help of university and government incentives.
4. What could the gaming industry change to make things better?
Right now?
God damn the game industry has so much to fix, making more female oriented games is at the bottom of the list. If they made more GOOD games in general, more females would probably be interested in playing them. The problem is, games are still a reasonably new form of media, and thus we're still figuring out how to make them well.
In general, game makers need to worry less about following fads - big open worlds, heavy action focus, bikini armour, hot graphics, sequel hooks, multiplayer - and worry more about making a good, self contained, game. Focus more on the story and gameplay, and make them suit each other, rather than trying to shoehorn in everything that seems to be popular ATM. Once they do that, we'll have good games again, after a bit of a settling in period where they figure out what does and doesn't work. At that point, once we know how to make good games, they can start turning their attention to making games focused at other demographics, like women, or mature adults ['cause god knows most games are still aimed at children, even if they have an R18+ rating].
What could it do to make things better? A lot of things. Too many things for this post. I'd need an entire thread... No, an entire Forum dedicated to the things they could do better. Eventually, we'll hopefully get to the stage where we can look at games and go "The biggest problem is you've made all the girls have large breasts. Give some variety instead of trying to sexualise them all". Until then though... We just have to hope they figure some of it out at some point.
