Silicon Sisters Say Game Industry Still Doesn't Understand Women

[Hagi]

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. ^^

And guys don't?

I'm frequently annoyed when my ManShep apparently lacks the brains to approach most situations with any form of tact or consideration. When just being friendly causes every single female on board my ship to fall head over heels in love and the only way to defuse such a situation is by acting like a jerk.

I mean hell, the whole reason thousands of men are currently excited about Deus Ex is because it gives more options then just shooting and killing stuff. And even Deus Ex is, in my opinion, not nearly giving enough options.

There's a little more variety to our gender then just the CoD frat boys (not in any way or form implying all CoD players are frat boys). Just like there's a little more variety to your gender then just the dress-up & dating sim tween girls.

The Industry knows what frat boys want. They don't know what men want, they don't know what women want.

These Silicon Sisters are downright insulting by stereotyping all men as above mentioned frat boys. And although it's not my place to say, I think it incredibly insulting as well to stereotype all women as dress-up & dating sim tween girls.

 

[Fasckira]

Silicon Sisters? Really?

Are they trying to come across as a porn stars? I think Im being trolled.

 

[Xrysthos]

What women want... that's easy, it's a movie with Mel Gibson.

On topic, I'd say that this is more stereotyped than what they seem to want to avoid. I know several members of the opposite gender who enjoy video games, and none of them would really go for any of the things listed above.

 

[FuzzyRaccoon]

I think its about points. Games have always been around killing things and getting points. From Mario to modern day. A lot of woman i know prefer Sims or those game you have to match 4 similiar coloured crystals to get points. So really, woman are catered for in games. They just want something like Gears but without killing people. Dont think that would work, fuck even i think its easier to kill something than to reason and pursuade it to stop killing me.

I found the times in KotOR when I could convince someone to join me, or to take the high road. I do wish this was in more games. I find it to be incredibly rewarding, because then you have an ally instead of a dead thing that's only good for lute.

That being said, that'd a nice option of something like a spy game. I'd have fun with that.

 

[kebab4you]

"It took 30 years to really perfect the three things that males seem to really love, which are shooting, and driving, and sports,"

Really? You went there? While at it why don't you make games about house chores and giving birth to babies? T.T"

 

[martin's a madman]

I smell some generalisation up in this *****.

 

[Treblaine]

Hmm, makes me wonder.

Would I trust a group going by a name like Gaming Brotherhood to tell me what kind of games I like?

 

[CyprisVeil]

You know what I want out of games? Exactly what I'm getting, but preferably with better writing and maybe a bit more imagination--and yes less scantily clad ladies would be nice, but I'll just quietly rant about that and then continue on my way. I like to assassinate, go on quests, spy, shoot, race, and all that other stuff just like guys. What's in my pants doesn't really factor in when it comes to enjoying video games.

 

[Simalacrum]

...who are these Silicon Sisters and what have they done to deserve our attention?

If it were an industry expert, such as Gabe Newell or Hideo Kojima, fine, I'd listen. But from what I can tell this is a new studio which has made a single game for the iPhone (which looks a bit crap, at that).

All that they've said is something that adheres to a rather sensitive stereotype. Not all girls like 'girly' films like Hannah Montana, for example, and Bronies have shown that a lot of guys aren't all guns and explosions either. What the Silicon Sisters are suggesting could result in a sexist catastrophe of a game.

 

[Charli]

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

Pft I'm female. I laughed.

We like...RPGs? I guess I dunno I think the female mind is too complex even for females to understand some days. I'm not surprised the industry doesn't 'get' us. But hell I derive my enjoyment from enough games I don't see a problem anywhere. The superficial games are appealing to the demographic that wouldn't normally go near games ANYWAY. Most girls who are already interested in games find enough to occupy themselves.

 

[Brian Hendershot]

There has got to be a joke about making a sandwich somewhere around here...

Anyways, what I really want to see from video games is more story development (some of our plot would barely pass for a B-movie and need I mention that are highest grossing video games come from the perspective of space marine, soldier in Russia, space marine, space marine, soldier in middle east and maybe an Italian plumber?)and the ability to express myself the way I want to express myself in a video game. That is more important to me than making a set of games catered towards niche part of the audience.

 

[ckeymel]

Hilariously, as a woman, I looked at that image before reading and thought "this is the game they are trying to combat right, because I would never want to play something like that!" /sadface/

 

[Sickly_Gazelle]

After reading the article and watching the trailer for their game 'aimed at girl-gamers'...

I can't help but wonder if they're trolling.

 

[FrostyChick]

I want to wrap my fingers around her throat and not let go till the twitching stops...

This is without a doubt the worse pile of girly-girl bimbo drivel I have read in a while.

I don't want a crappy high school dating sim. I want a first/third person action RPG where I can play an inhuman badass with psychic powers/magic/cybernetics and the ability bed any woman they meet. (bonus points if the main character is female, or can be female)

 

[2fish]

From my study of a human female playing games.

Girls like Portal.

Girls like Assassins Creed.

Girls like Saints Row.

Girls murder all who oppose them.

Girls murder those who don't oppose them.

Girls laugh and have huge smiles while doing so.

I am afraid to let girls play Prototype....


I like my study more but both are inaccurate.

 

[Xaio30]

Maybe they should shut the fuck up and instead focus on enlisting more female game devs.

The reason why the game industry (if true) does not understand women is:
1. The most profitable genres right now are aimed at men.
2. The lack of female developers.

 

[cynicalsaint1]

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.

...

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.

You know, I'm not quite convinced that this is an issue you have because you're female. I've heard plenty of people complain about things like this regardless of their gender. For example I couldn't stand how my FemShep would always sound like she was trying go into super flirt mode any time she'd talk to Jacob despite the fact that I had her going after Garrus. And those rare occasion where games are good about having non-combat options I tend to hear guys praise the inclusion of more options just as much as anyone else.

Really this a lot of this article sounds like a lot of generalizations to me. I mean I hate driving and sports games for the most part, and I'm really not much into straight-up shooters all that much. Yeah CoD is the biggest game ever and shit, but basing your view on the entire medium on that fact seems to really miss the big picture.

It sounds like they're trying to make the video game equivalent of "chick flicks" to CoD's "dumb action movie" in the video game world - and I'm not sure that really does anything to help make games in general more welcoming towards women. It just means more dumb games where everything is pink instead of brown.

 

[Dastardly]

Silicon Sisters Say Game Industry Still Doesn't Understand Women

Permalink

My issue here is that they're basing this on "research" into what women like... yet claiming that current expectations are based on stereotypes.

How did the current market arrive at their beliefs of "what women want?" Sales figures. Surveys. You know--research. Certainly, it's not clinically-controlled research, but you can hopefully start to see the problem here.

The game market's current expectations of what women will like is based on a broad view (no pun intended) of what women say they enjoy doing. When you find trends in a group, and then you apply those trends in a more universal sense, that's called stereotyping. You're taking something that is in many cases true, you're assuming it's "almost always" true. And that's exactly what it seems Silicon Sisters is doing here. It's just being done under a different flag.

The other problem? Perhaps we should consider that modern society still sorts girls into pretty narrow channels early on in life. That could very well manifest itself as a preference for stereotypically "girly things" because those give a feeling of social reward (you're looked at favorably for "doing what you ought to"). Designing games around those behaviors could very well be working to reinforce these stereotypes (while coincidentally cashing in on them).

Newsflash: You can't specifically target a humongous group without stereotyping--and more likely, participating in existing stereotypes.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

There has got to be a joke about making a sandwich somewhere around here...

Spoiler: Try this...

"maybe they just want a good sandwich-maker sim?"

OT:

How are we supposed to know what women want when they don't know it themselves?

exactly. if they know so much, why dont they say what women want.
and if we have those games, i will punch them in the feminism.

 

[drisky]

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 part deeply offend me. One they try to say all men care about is shooting things, then they say they want a game thats basically about manipulating men with there bodies. Fuck that notion. I don't want there to be a game about using feminine wiles to get out of speeding tickets.