Silicon Sisters Say Game Industry Still Doesn't Understand Women

[kzeelio]

This, quite frankly, pissed me off. At least 75% of my gaming time is spent shooting things in the face. Sure, I do like the "persuasion" elements of some games, like older (and newer) RPGs that have speech checks, but that just makes me feel like the savvy rogue I tend to play as. Who also tends to stalk people and then blow their brains out from a distance.

And assuming what men want is also very sexist. I know men who will choose a JRPG over Halo or CoD any day.

If I wanted a game about "empathy, strategy, and relationship building" Id play the Sims. And then get bored and trap them all in tiny room and set them on fire. Silicon Sisters (I'm sure they've got plenty of silicon, too) can kiss my ass.

Edit: Oh, and if you want to get women into gaming, how about introducing them to the well-written, character-oriented, and strategic games that already exist, most of which actually do have an easy mode (thanks for assuming that all women want easy games, btw).

 

[weirdee]

But we have Cooking Mama! How do we not know what they want?!

Spoiler: Click to view

I am a terrible, terrible human being for that joke. Absolutely terrible. Please ban me from these forums. I do not deserve mercy

I have even more terrible news.

They're making Camping Mama.

 

[Keava]

But it like blowing stuff up. Or maybe more so see stuff being blown up. The problem is, yes, single-player games rarely offer me enough of secondary things to do other than blowing stuff up.

In MMOs i fall into that generic group of female gamers playing healer/support roles and i do miss greater use of those abilities in Single Player oriented gameplay with exception of few cRPGs. I want to be able to do something more than just press button to kill stuff.

Problem is however, apart from RPGs there ain't much of place for such game-play in other genres, or at least, so far, no one found a way to make a game about support play out well.

I do agree tho, that unless you are somehow into gaming from the get go, it isn't that easy to get lured into the medium for a female. There is very few games that don't have just pretty cliché and generic set-up of characters, and adventure games seem to be mostly thing of past. The industry clearly needs more games like Dreamfall, with strong female lead that ain't just bent on destruction 100% of time.

 

[ThatLankyBastard]

I didn't think girls were that left out in games these days... Hell! Most of the girls I know are more than happy to blow my brains out or nuke my ass in CoD...

I can see where they're coming from though... So when they make a Modern Warfare 2: Female Edition, where you stop the terrorists by talking about your feelings and sharing recipes, someone PM me...

 

[Smooth Operator]

The founders of Silicon Sisters Interactive [http://www.siliconsisters.ca/] say the videogame industry has perfected the art of making games for guys but still doesn't understand what women want.

Noone does...

And anyway their dating sim equivalent isn't really unknown to the industry, tho I never understood why not just go outside and get a better experience.

 

[Twad]

Maybe if they asked.. and got them in larger number in the industry in positions of leadership it woudnt be a problem.

'Cuz so far the only thing the industry seems to understand about women is "pink" and "cleavage" .. even there they got it all wrong imho.

 

[sth128]

Oh yeah. They're totally about what women want. And all male gamers want shooting, driving, and sports. Just like all female gamers want sandwich-making simulations and New Moon vampires.

That's why you don't let noobs run a company. They will use "research" to reduce an entire entertainment medium capable of levels of interactivity unseen in its peers down to three things, then label them "male only". I hope they fail so hard they become silicone sisters and take up pole dancing as a career.

 

[Crystalite]

wow... just wow.

Being female I can definetely say that the worst and most sexist insults do not come from men "trying to oppress us", but from our fellow women who think that adhering to gender stereotypes somehow means "giving women what they want".

This just makes me rage. They seem to know what girls of 12 might like, but women? Yeah, sure, all we do is shop and "pursuade" people, because we are to weak willed to stand any kind of real adult conflict what so ever. Women can´t like to pretend to fight! The mere thought will make us break all our collective fingernails! We don´t want real stories, or a real challenge in Gameplay, and we sure don´t have any twitch-skills... We don´t have even remotely functional bodies!
Oh no, a gun! what way do I even hold this? Can a man come and rescue me, please?

This is so disgusting...

 

[Nimcha]

The founders of Silicon Sisters Interactive [http://www.siliconsisters.ca/] say the videogame industry has perfected the art of making games for guys but still doesn't understand what women want.

Noone does...

Haha exactly what I was going to post. Even I don't know what I want most of the time.

 

[Grey_Focks]

...what? First of all, the name Silicon Sisters...really? That's what you went with? Well alright then.

Also, I know quite a few girl gamers who enjoy a lot of the same games as me, everything from Oblivion, to Blur, to freaking Battlefield. Stereotyping really isn't a good idea, and I'm willing to bet any game you folks design specifically for girls will flop horribly.

 

[Suicidejim]

There's a reason few games are based on subtleties, it's because they're far too complex to create. In a conversation, body language, tone, word choice, even which syllables you emphasize can alter how your message is received. In RPGs like the Elder Scrolls series or Mass Effect, you get maybe 6 options at the most, pre-determined phrases that cannot be altered and have no body language or tone behind them. And generally one of the options will say something like "Punch in face" to account for those who wish to role play as a villain/ass. Not even the most advanced AI is capable of grasping the subtleties of human speech and body language, so compared to the relatively simple mechanics of, say, a shoot-out (aim gun, bang, repeat), it's simply not feasible. Not to say there isn't a lot of scope with the kind of conversational mechanics we already have (as much as they tend to limit me, I still love the conversational aspects of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect), but if you want to evolve it into a full game, you're going to have to wait a lot longer than 30 years to get a truly superb result.

Incidentally, this seems a bit patronising. "No, ladies, you DON'T want that, those games are for the men, you wouldn't enjoy those. Here, play our talking game instead. What do you mean you want to play Devil May Cry? NO. THOSE AREN'T FOR YOU. They don't have a valuable feminine perspective. Let the men play those. You go talky-talky."
I'm not saying we don't need strong female perspectives in games, or that we don't need to make them a little less male-dominated, because those really are important issues that need to be addressed, but dividing games into "Games for Men" and "Games for Women" probably isn't going to help.
Then again, I'm a man. I have a better chance of flying to Mars than I do of understanding the opposite gender.

 

[Odlus]

That's funny, my girlfriend (a woman) seems to have no issue enjoying games I, as a man, enjoy as well; games such as Kingdom Hearts, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy, Jack and Daxter, Guild Wars (heck, we've both been lapping up all of the info for Guild Wars 2 for awhile now). It's almost like she's a person that enjoys things other people enjoy as well.

Might as well argue that women don't enjoy movies with violence as well.

 

[Treblaine]

"I use persuasion as an example. That's something women are incredibly good at: persuading people with our words and our thoughts and our bodies... and how do you translate something like that into a mechanic?" she said.

I'm a guy and I find that depressingly sexist.

Sorry if I'm being harsh but that just sounds like a slut-simulator. One nasty stereotype of women is they use their sexuality to mainpulate people at the cost of demeaning themselves. I don't know, maybe like violent video games it works as a release mechanism but I really worry that such attitudes that women really get satisfaction from this should be pursued.

PS: not all games are shooty-blasty-racing stuff:
-Portal 2
-Civilisation V
-Flower
-Braid
-Mirror's Edge
-Flower
-Echochrome
-Minecraft

Don't tell me that Minecraft's satisfaction of building is purely a male quality. Even if that's true I think that's an instinct that would be good to instil in all females

I hope she is hideously hideosly wrong, but then I consider my sister and the only game she ever liked was The Sims, where she would micro manage and tormet these poor gibberish people's lives. Like a god.

Then when I blow up an alien invaders head to save the world from apocalypse she is like:

"Oh, why can't you play a nice game like The Sims"

Sorry. But as far as I'm concerned games like The Sims are softcore torture porn. It's not a game where the aim is to make them happy, they are playthings to manipulate and toy with.

 

[SouthpawFencer]

I'm having trouble understanding the hostility here. Their statement was not an attack on anybody. Let's be blunt here: being angry at somebody for saying that the majority of video games are more appealing to males rather than females is like being angry at somebody saying that water is wet.

Case in point: the wife of one my friends was watching me play Dragon Age: Origins from the beginning, and said "How much of a masochist do you have to be to wear a BRA to bed?". I shrugged and replied "Well, in their defense, there's a decent chance that nobody involved with the production of this game has ever had an OPPORTUNITY to see what a woman wears to bed."

I believe that they have a point, given that the gaming industry is mostly dominated by men.

And, if my reaction to School 26 is similar to the reaction that females have to a typical male-oriented video game (my reaction: "Uh... why don't I just pound nails into my head instead? That sounds like a LOT more fun!"), I can understand why they are taking issue with the situation.

And, keep in mind that this is a gaming studio, not some wannabe journalist with an axe to grind and an anti-male agenda. They're actively putting their money (and time) where their mouth is, and they're aiming for a niche market that they feel isn't being adequately served by the current crop of games.

If they're right, they'll make money and there will be a larger selection of games to choose from. If they're wrong, they'll go bankrupt.

Personally I'm curious to see if Silicon Sisters are going to have any success with the games that they're producing.

 

[Worgen]

oddly enough the japanese probably have more games aimed at women then we have here in the states... or at least more games that are the kind women would enjoy

 

[Princess Rose]

Women have evolved to deal in "subtleties," Forbes said, and so the female equivalent of the visceral thrill men feel when they shoot something will likewise be more subtle. "I use persuasion as an example. That's something women are incredibly good at: persuading people with our words and our thoughts and our bodies... and how do you translate something like that into a mechanic?" she said. "If that's something that we're good at and gives us a visceral sense of satisfaction, then how do we turn it into gameplay?"

That is so true.

I love Bioware to death, but one thing they tend to lack in dialog options is subtlety. I try to have my FemShep coyly ask Jacob about his relationship with Miranda, and FemShep is like "I don't take kindly to this sort of thing on my ship!" which is not what I meant at all.

Don't get me wrong, I love shooting stuff too. In a 3rd Person perspective anyway. Or blowing stuff up with fireballs. But I would certainly appreciate a game with more subtle ways of expressing myself.

Oh! - or the ability to play a character who deals with situations other than kill everything. Some games (older RPGs mostly, but a few newer games as well) will allow for an option to talk one's way out of a situation - but only very rarely. I'd love to see more opportunities to play a game where I can talk down the Super Mutants instead of blowing their heads off.

Unless, you know, I'm in a heady-shooty mood. A girl likes to have options. ^^

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

This is the sort of attitude that leads to "chick-flicks", and is in fact more sexist than the industry not attempting to cater for a specific gender. Great job "Silicon Sisters", you've offended both men and women by stereotyping them both.

 

[GeorgW]

I know plenty of woman gamers and they like games just the way they are. Sounds like they're just stereotyping women. That said, they do have a point, I just don't think they know what it is. Still, they're designing a game for 12 year olds, why do any of us care?