I have to link to this Wonderland post, Alice blogs about the keynote address at the Women in Games conference in Wales. (That seething green mass across the pond is me jealous of you, Alice)

The post is long, but very compelling. She of course talks about things like casual consumption and overall investment (ie, women aren’t going to be as “hard core” as men), and she almost teeters on the brink of branding all women gamers as Sims-loving, Karaoke-singin’ fluffbots, but then she reminds everyone of something they already knew: “Skill and intuition games like SSX really appeal to women.”

(fanfare)

I like that one of the targets are short, easy-in-easy-out level design. There is, of course, the idealist in me that doesn’t like the fact that games might be altered to fit the schedule of a woman who probably does the majority of the housework and errands. But there’s also the realist — if you’ve only got five minutes to play before you have to go pick up the kids from soccer practice, why not play and beat a level?

But the fact is that this keynote wasn’t about targeting women like me, O’Danu or Moira. This keynote was about attracting women who don’t already play games. I don’t really expect most women to go from nongamer to Level 70 WoW asskicker overnight. But talking about games like SSX, Harry Potter, and other less-cubbyholed videogames as entrylevel titles along with games like The Sims is definitely more diversity than we usually get whenever people get on a podium and start talking about what women gamers like.

Mighty Ponygirl posted this entry on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 8:00 pm and filed it under Women in Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.