What games do women play?

[PeterMerkin69]

Mine tends to dig on cinematic dreck, like LA Noire, Heavy Rain, or even things with a lot of dialogue like Mass Effect and Fallout. I had her playing Dark Souls but she's not exactly up to the challenge yet, having only recently been introduced to gaming through me. She did admit that her experiences in it made her better at other games, though, which is just plain awesome.

 

[wottabout]

I am a cisgendered female. I like good stories, I like puzzles, I like beating things up, I like jumping on things and climbing walls and looking at pretty scenery and falling to my death. I'm not particularly interested in multiplayer games or MMOs.
I have unfortunately been too busy to do much gaming lately, but the games I have enjoyed most recently are ACII, Amnesia, and Psychonauts.
Other games that I like include the Prince of Persia trilogy, Vampire: The Masquerade--Bloodlines, FFX, Bastion, Half-Life 2, Portal 1&2, the Might & Magic series, Dear Esther, and Kingdom Hearts I&II. I also enjoyed Hatoful Boyfriend, although that is more of a dating sim/visual novel.

 

[Gali]

Female here (18), my answers:
Starcraft 2: HotS
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Bioshock Infinite

I'm most interested in games with good storytelling and a setting I'd like to play in. The latter goes usually hand in hand with my other interests. For example, as a comic reader, I love to play the recent Batman games.
Also, I have at least one multiplayer game that I play constantly to get to master it. It's especially fun for me when an eSports culture/community surrounds it.


Since some answered for their girlfriends, I'll do it for my boyfriend.
Starcraft 2: HotS
CS: Global Offensive
Halo 4

He is the more competitive gamer of us, since he plays other multiplayer games besides 'our' game Starcraft. While he does enjoy a Bioshock and the like now and then, he does not get invested into a singleplayer game like I do and prefers to pwn some noobs online instead.

Anyways, good luck with your project!

 

[Playful Pony]

I most recently played and had a lot of fun with Kerbal Space Program and Sim City. I also got an ARMA 3 alpha trial thing from my friend that I have been playing for a bit. Also bought the Age of Empires 2 HD thing, which is great fun and fond memories! I only play games on my PC =3.

 

[Snotnarok]

Kitchen Simulator 2012 and Vacuum Operator '99 clearly.

Okay okay! Horribly sexist and lame jokes aside, this question is a bit silly considering if you look up Lets Plays you'll find women playing anything from Call of Duty to Mario to Orcs Must Die 2. Hell a friend on steam is always playing Killing Floor and we used to do that together quite a lot, then she played Dungeon Defenders, she's also she's super nice and teases like a beast.

A LPer I watch plays WoW, CoD, Orcs Must Die 2, a few others. So what do they play? I dunno whatever they want I think is the best answer.

 

[sensible-heart]

Well, as a woman, I don't see all too much difference between what I play and enjoy and what the male gamers around me enjoy. I think a lot of the differences come from personal preference. I won't discount a game because it doesn't look like something I'd usually be into, I would rather try it and then decide if it is for me.

Some gaming info about me:
I play PS3 preferably or PC. I don't really enjoy competitive multiplayer.
I get my competition out of trophy hunting or comparing scores in cooperative multiplayer.

When it comes to game types I find fun, RPGs are always a good standby. I tend to be drawn towards games where I can play as a female character. Strategy and puzzle games are always good with me as well.

My last three games were:
Injustice:Gods Among Us (I love DC comics so even though fighting games usually don't draw me in this one did)
Borderlands (Playing it cooperatively, a super fun game)
Bioshock:Infinite(I enjoyed the feel of it a lot more than the original)

 

[Sheebers]

Also in my mid-twenties, and my favorite games that I've been playing frequently are

-Skyrim
-Minecraft
-Jak series
-Infamous

I also really like watching my hubby play video games, and Bioshock Infinite was REALLY awesome and I think I need to get into the series. Borderlands 2 was another fun one to watch.

I've always loved RPGs and have personally always been crap at FPSs (though I find them all lacking in story and originality anyway, I just never survive in CoD longer than 2 seconds of entering a battle)....I love a game with a good narrative, character driven stuff. I'm actually maybe a bit old fashioned because I still love my old platformers like Jak and Sly Cooper, but I'm really excited for the new stuff like The Last of Us and WatchDogs and Infamous:Second son. Puzzle/creative games are really awesome to me and I can spend hours in Minecraft, happy as a clam.

I love immersion. If I can lose myself in a game like I can in a book, if I care about the characters, if I am given exciting things to do, it is going to be a game I like.

And crossing over with my interests of art and comics and cartoons, if a game has a strong and unique artistic style, I REALLY appreciate that. I will actually take a UNIQUE stylized comic-looking design of graphics over hyper-realism any day(not to say realism isn't good! But I just REALLY love a game with some artistic flair to it. Cel-shading is freaking GORGEOUS in Borderlands 2 and Bastion is amazing in terms of its art. Journey? Absolutely beautiful!! Infamous also has a really nice Comic theme.)...I view Video games as a venue of art, and am really impressed when the artists on a project really step up to the Artistic qualities that they can play with in making their game unique to look at.

My interests are all over the place, but I don't like multiplayer FPS, or Sports games...If I want to play a sport, I would WAY sooner get a friend and a ball and actually PLAY. JRPG's have kind of lost my interest a bit too because of the time it takes to get through one...

 

[Halima Saranov]

I'm a 29-year-old woman and I play a ton of games, but the three games I'm playing the most right now are Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 (for working out), Assassin's Creed 3 and I play a ton of Angry Birds on my Ipad. Some of my favorite games though are Bastion and From Dust. Both were amazing. I do play Call of Duty: Black Ops II, but I have had a ton of issues with trolls on that game, which is why I love Assassin's Creed multiplayer. The people who play AC multiplayer never troll me for being a girl. It's like night and day.

Quality and creativity are the most important things for me in a game. A narrative helps, but isn't required. The game has to be good. That's all.

 

[LetalisK]

The games my wife has played/plays and really enjoys:

World of Warcraft
SWTOR
Sims 3 and every motherfucking expansion >.<
Left 4 Dead games
Resident Evil 5/6
Borderlands series

uh...I'm sure there are others in there. The weird thing is she has the anxiety level of a mouse being chased by a cat[footnote]To the point where she refuses to play shooters type games without me.[/footnote], so when we co-op shooters(she hates competitive multiplayer), she supports me with a sniper rifle from a very safe distance while I run around shotgunning everything. Yet, when we play something like World of Warcraft, she heals and could totally carry me(I consider healing the most stressful position, personally). I say "could" because I'm such a badass tank she doesn't need to. >.>

She's also one of those weirdos that likes watching me play. She loved the God of War series and never even touched the controller.

 

[Lightknight]

I'm pretty sure women play... games. Any games, all the same games any guy might play. i really don't see the purpose to this question.

So far, this is statistically untrue. As I said in the previous page, as of 2009 80% of women who played games on consoles used the Wii (9% used the ps3, 11% the 360). This distribution was significantly different from their male counterparts, who had 41% playing Wii.

It remains to be established if women actually prefer different types of games or if it's related to something else, like hardcore games being often ridiculously sexist and failing to accomodate them.

We really need some more recent data on this topic. I'd like to see if those numbers have changed. We do know that the female gaming demographic has increased from 40% to 47%, but we don't have data on what kind of games they play and we don't have new data on what kind of games males play. It's expected that the increase to 47% may be proportionate to the increase in smart phone gaming since 2009 rather than an increase in console gaming but even that hasn't been divulged.

I'd think this kind of data would be gold for development companies and their marketing departments.

 

[mysecondlife]

My sister told me one point that if she played games more frequently, she thinks she would like Assassin's Creed because its historical setting.

She has little patience for games that require dual analog sticks though. So games from consoles like GBA, DS,N64 and The Sims is what she sinks her time into.

 

[CleverCover]

I'll speak for me and members of my family.
My 14 year old sister: Fighting games and JRPGs
My older cousin(25): stealth games and Sims
My baby sister(11): currently enjoying Harvest Moon on the 3DS
My younger cousin(13): playing Minecraft
My mom (50): word games

Now me (21 and Female)? I love RPGs and platformers and puzzle games. Can't pay attention long enough for MMO's.
1. I picked up Portal 2 and loved it.
2. Playing Rayman Origins and hope to get Sonic Generations soon
3. Trying to play though Catherine but timed puzzles are my Kryptonite so I play ME3 to calm down.

I'm generally forgiving of gameplay if the story and artwork is great, and if the characters are excellent, I'll be playing it non-stop. But good/entertaining characters are a must.

 

[littlewisp]

If you're ever in a similar situation I suggest you don't follow my example >.>

I know that was probably half in jest, but c'mon guys. Women are people. Different people like different things. Different people react differently to different things.

I, for one, get pissy at my fiance when he goes easy on me in anything (especially with games, because then you're just stomping on my fun), as with anyone else. While yeah, there's some differences between the sexes, let's not continually reinforce silly stereotypes. I remember Kameron Hurley had once said in an interview that she'd asked a male author (forget his name) what he did that made his point-of-view female main characters so relate-able and believable and he said he just treated them like they were people.

So while doing research (and I say that loosely, since a thread like this doesn't constitute research, though they are fun every once in awhile) is necessary and all of that, let's not lose sight of the big picture: women are human beings, the same as men are. One person's experiences and biases are not necessarily another's.

 

[SecondPrize]

Hello I am a woman, we play the same games men do.

What three games have you played and enjoyed lately?

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Bioshock Infinite
Magic the Gathering : Duels of the Planeswalkers

What is most important for you to enjoy a game?

A good story is important for me personally, failing that good gameplay. I play a wide range of games, from Final Fantasy to Call of Duty. I personally don't see much difference in games that girls play, really we like killing stuff too.

What's the deal with Magic the Gathering : Duels of the Planeswalkers? Do you get to build decks and play em like normal magic or is it another game type with a magic theme? I tried downloading a demo or trial from steam but couldn't get it to run. I'd like to just be able to play magic for fun, standard pauper on MTGO is fine but it'd be nice to play with better stuff without spending money for pixels.

 

[JLML]

Inb4 this becomes a hilarious sexism Flame War thread. INB4! This site needs to chill.

Dan, you sexist feminazi politically outspoken southern pansy!!!

OT: Not very social, thus not knowing that many people outside the intrawebz. Still, one people of female gender whom has been socialised previously played Black Ops a lot. Spent about half the time during the visit up there in the neighbouring country playing Black Ops together. Think the main part of enjoying the game was shouting angrily at whomever killed her.

 

[Naeras]

My girlfriend loves Heroes of Might and Magic 3, as well as some smaller puzzle games and point-and-clicks.
Also, we plays board games(Dominion, Carcasonne, Ticket to Ride, etc) almost all the time, if you count them.

Other than that, my ex and my sister loved fighting games. And Worms. Glorious Worms.

 

[Lilani]

-snip-

Lately I've been neck deep in the Professor Layton series. Holy shit on a stick these games are a blast, and the stories are fun as well. I got a 3DS not long ago and I never owned a DS before that, so now I'm spending time catching up on all the DS exclusives I've missed. In the last few weeks I've blazed through Curious Village, Diabolical Box, and Unwound Future. Which one I play next depends on what the local GameStop has used (I think they had the next one, I just didn't want to leave the store with more than $30 in games this close to the end of the semester).

I'm also nearly done with Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance (the end boss is a cruel ************), and I'm also working on Pokemon White 2 when I can. Next up in my DS adventures will be more Professor Layton, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and maybe a bit of Phoenix Wright.

As soon as I have Internet powerful enough to download it again (which should be sometime next week, fingers crossed...) I'll be reinstalling Bioshock 1 and finishing it up. I don't know why I ever stopped playing, I got it on Steam ages ago and I just...stopped. I think TF2 and Skyrim may have had something to do with that. I'm an admin on a TF2 server and while I had good Internet I racked up over 700 hours in that game. And of course Skyrim is also an obscene time sink. As soon as I finish Bioshock I'll be buying and installing Bioshock Infinite.

In my experience, women often like the same kind of games men do. It has less to do with being male and female, and more to do with being into games or not being into games. They might play a bit differently--I know in Minecraft I tend to turn into an interior designer and make nice little cottages, and like to download cute texture packs to make everything look comfortable (Jolicraft ftw), and a lot of the guys I know like to build elaborate machines that I never had the patience for because they're too complicated and it takes too long to get the stupid materials. They can build their stupid armed castles with their cactus moats, I don't care, I'm going to have fun in my treehouse villas.

 

[Bioluminescence]

I'm a lady who likes to play a variety of games.

The three games I have enjoyed playing most recently are:
Bioshock Infinite
Okami HD
Sim City 4

The qualities I enjoy most in a game are an interesting story, a unique and interesting artistic style, and generally good writing. I'm willing to put up with some wonky controls if the game in engaging (I'm looking at you, Silent Hill). None of these really apply to Sim City 4, but I have this inner bureaucrat that draws me towards games where I can arrange things in a neat and orderly fashion.

As with a lot of people what I look for in a game depends a lot on my mood. Sometimes I want a challenge or a puzzle, sometimes I want a great story, sometimes I just want something pretty and relaxing, sometimes I want to be a god among insects, and sometimes I want to arrange commercial and residential zones for maximum efficiency.

 

[soul_rune1984]

I play a variety of different types of games. I play survival horrors like Silent Hill and Dead Space, FPS like Bio Shock and Half Life, RPG's like Elder Scrolls and Final Fantasy. I also play puzzle games like Portal and platformers like LBP. I also like casual games like Sims. It realy depends on my mood.

 

[DRTJR]

My girlfriend,(Whom like I am, is in collage so mostly 3DS games.)
Fire Emblem Awakening
Pokemon White 2
Mario and Luigi: Bowser's inside story

and for comparison myself
Fire Emblem Awakening(300+ hours)
Pokemon Black 2
Lego city undercover