Making Video Games Desirable for Women (for Dummies)
Hervé St-Louis of Comic Book Bin writes an absolutely precious bit of stereotyping about women in games. It’s not like this is professional journalism or anything close, but it popped up on my news feed, so I feel compelled to respond. With such grammatical wonders as “Women are chatty and like to interact with others. They are more prone to gossips too! Hey don’t sue me, scientists said so!” (with no corroborating link) it’s not really a wonder he pulls off such impressive such quotes as:
There are no reasons why video games should attract more men than men. Women like to play games as much as men. Some even specialize in mind games, but that’s another topic! The basics of any game are that one does not know the outcome and gamble on the future based on skill and intuition. Skill and intuition are something women generally don’t lack.
The games that they choose to highlight as being “for the ladies” include The Sims,, Desperate Housewives: The Game, and The My Little Pony: The Game (their bad grammar, not mine), which tells you all you need to know about their opinion of us.
His closing paragraph is similarly adorable.
Having more women playing games is not a noble aim. Video games are after all entertainment venues that are not crucial to people’s lives. However, too many women who would like to play games often find limited appeal with existing titles.
So, despite the fact that men voraciously consume videogames, making gaming somewhere in the arena of a $10 billion/year enterprise (and that’s using old numbers, I’m not sure where they stand now), it’s important to point out that getting more women to play games is not a “noble” aim. Somehow, this smacks of a “Let them eat cake” attitude that should go over well.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:50 am
I liked The Sims. I’ve seen no other computer game all but start a fist fight between four grown men, arguing about what color drapes their Sims would like best.
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:21 pm
“Women are chatty and like to interact with others. They are more prone to gossips too! Hey don’t sue me, scientists said so!”
What a load of bullsh*t. I’m an introvert GD’it! Socializing is NOT my “thing”. Bah.
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Gossiping through videogames: “OMG, guess who’s totally augmented their high score?!”
I suppose we should thank him for not suggesting that they market Sim Vaccuum or something like that.
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Sim Sandwich Mania. Make sandwiches for your man *and* gossip on the phone. A game that teaches you to balance your two main core skills! It’ll sell millions of copies! How’s the my little pony: Hairstyle Confidential going? Right on schedule? Excellent. Package it with Cake Mania II: The Frosting.
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:56 pm
That actually made my brain hurt.
That was about the most confusing, poorly edited thing I’ve read in years.
I almost laughed out loud when I got to the line: “Just because a game is principally for a female audience, it doesn’t have to be over saturated with pastels and fuchsia colours. Don’t make the game play girly either. Let’s get out of stereotypes and make games that challenge all.”
I couldn’t decide if the article was supposed to be a joke or not. I mean… that quote bit comes right after the section that ends “If there is a way for many players to collaborate on a single objective, it’s certain that it will appeal to women.”
Because, gods know, that’s not based on a stereotype.
When will my brain stop hurting?
Gah.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Roy, I had to double-check the date on that thing because I didn’t want to be hoisted by my own petard, as it were.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Im with Roy on this, that was confusing and hurt my senses. Its like one of those damn eye puzzles, you know the ones. The ones you just want to eat, just so they will stop playing with your eyes before you are forced to gouge them out. I think it was either a fantastic impression of something written by someone pretending to know a vast amount of what they were talking about, or something written by someone pretending to know a vast amount of what they are talking about. That’s it I bet, the author just has a rather bloated opinion of his own authority and knowledge on the gaming industry.
Was the original copy on a piece of slate written in poo by any chance? Maybe Im going too far saying that, but it certainly would take away some of the bewilderment if it was…
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I love the part where he just gives up on the question of women playing a war game, like the very concept of a woman playing Gears of War is up there with men giving birth.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Well, he is apparently completely unfamiliar with the fact that there are already female gamers playing war games and other .. what was it? games marketed as geeky? Not entirely sure what that means to him, but as a geek, gamer, and female, I just have to laugh.
His overall tone suggests he knows very few actual women, since he’s spouting stereotypes like they’re gospel. Though what he actually said about women playing war games was:
Marketers are convinced that women won’t play a war game. I’m not sure.
That’s the least clear statement ever. It could mean he’s not sure the marketers are right (which, yeah they’re not, if that is indeed what marketers say), or he’s not sure he’s lucid. Given the amazing amount of research this guy has obviously done about marketing, gamers, and women… yeah.
I’m guessing this guy doesn’t know much about gaming in general either, or games like WoW and other MMOs would completely destroy many of his assumptions about cooperation and social gaming. As in MEN DO IT TOO and hey, some of them enjoy it! Geez. A 40-man raid is by definition “a way for many players to collaborate on a single objective”. And oh my god is it ever social.
It was the strangest mix of opinions I’ve ever seen, that’s for sure. On one hand, he tells us that women are chatty and like social games, and cooperative games (as if men liking such things is unheard of). On the other hand he says things like “don’t make it girly” and break out of the stereotype. Somehow he appears to be completely unaware of his stereotypes.
This was an interesting line:
So if we understand what women want, perhaps we’ll all have better titles to play with!
How about, make better games period, and let men and women decide for themselves what they want to play.
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:04 pm
This guy should check out a good Battlefield 2 server; both men *and* women playing a wargame where planning, communication, and organization decides who is going to end up winning. All with flashy explosions, machine guns, and other goodies flying about.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
His head would explode.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:48 pm
After a cursory scan, the article gets a 3 out of 5 on my bingo card. Not bad, but (especially given the other ways it insults women) not good, either.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:57 am
Um. I’ve started up a new Metroid Prime 2: Echoes game which I suppose could be considered girly, as it’s the only FPS I can think of where the viewpoint character is female.
But I’m still bashing my way through the extras in God of War II. I [heart] the mayhem. And I’m considered fair girly.
There are a couple of guys in my main World of Warcraft guild who won’t come play Hordeside with the rest of us. Their objections? Male Horde toons all have bad posture. (So play a girl! yells the chorus.) Oh, and they hate blood elves.
Why the hate? Why?
April 24th, 2007 at 8:17 am
I remember some of the earlier FPS’s (I’m thinking specifically of Rise of the Triad and most recently, Star Trek: Elite Force) allowed you to pick who you were playing as. With games like RoTT, which were purely first-person (not even over-the-shoulder), it really made such a little difference in the gameplay they stood to lose nothing at all by offering it; not even the time and effort of designing a second sprite.
The FPS thing really boggles me, because so few of them have anything resembling a gender-driven storyline; it’s not like you need to program for different romantic scenarios when all you’re doing is mowing down space marines. And yet games like BG, NWN, Oblivion, and other games that have a really high-level of storyboarding and storytelling will still let you pick your gender.
April 24th, 2007 at 8:34 am
MP, I’m a huge advocate for allowing people to pick as many things as possible about their character’s looks. I posted about character creation (shameless plug, I know) last week.
Personally, I think that any game that isn’t trying to establish a specific character franchise should allow the player to choose their avatar. I understand why a company might want to create a franchise- you want your Mario or your Sonic- but, even in those cases, I think that you can still give some choices. Super Mario 2 was the first game that I can remember that pulled this off well, by letting you choose which of the main characters you’d play as. Tenchu followed in those footsteps.
Any game that’s not looking to build a franchise, though, should, I think, be trying to work character selection in. Most games don’t have stories that require the character to be of a particular sex, and in cases where they do, it’s often a minor point that could be altered if necessary. Romances in games tend to be very heteronormative, as well, and I think it’d be good to see more openly gay characters, or to allow the player to choose to move in that direction (Bully and the Sims are the only two games I can think of, off the top of my head, that let the player choose to pursue homosexual relationships).
I’d definitely like to see more games embrace character creation modes. Soul Calibur III was a big step in the right direction, especially for a fighting game- letting you choose from one of the main character’s move-sets, but creating your own outfits (I’d have liked to see even more, though- it would have been nice to be able to use a slider system to make some modifications to the things like height, weight, etc, but, hey, it’s a strong system, none-the-less- clipping aside). It let me make some female fighters that actually look like they could kick some ass, instead of looking like pieces of ass.
*sigh*
April 25th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Many players collaborating on a single objective….would that be, like, a RAID?
April 28th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I have an idea for how to make games that women and girls will play. What you do is this: Make the gameplay exactly the same as you would make it for a boy’s game. When you’re writing the story, do it the same way as you would if you were writing a boy’s game. For the graphics, design them in the same way as you would for a boy’s game. As for the music, use the same music as you would for a boy’s game. And then — and this is the radical part…
… show girls playing it in the commercials.
May 5th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Hello all. Thanks for commenting on the article. Most of your comments attack this article because it does not discuss the viewpoints of hardcore female gamers such as the crowd found on this site. My article was not about hardcore video game players, which are at best a minority of women. You guys made several assumptions and say things I did not say in your rebuttals. If you don’t like my perspective on women and games, why won’t you refute the article directly at The Comic Book Bin where a mix audience will read about how you feel, instead of agreeing amongst yourselves. Seems a clear rebuttal where the article originally appeared would be more effective, especially if you want guys with “stereotypical opinions” like me to “evolve.”
I assume you’ll continue to flame me here and nuke my suggestion, but the door is open.
cheers
May 5th, 2007 at 8:01 am
The “I bet you don’t have the courage to post my comment” always goes over well.
No, Hervé if you read the post, we’re attacking your totally sexist stereotypes of women are a bunch of gossipy, mall-shopping dingalings who simply aren’t compatible with gaming beyond playing Bejeweled on their phone. The Desperate Housewives Game tanked, btw.
Talking about how we like to “play mind games, but that’s another topic” is completely insulting; and is the sort of “humor” directed at women that is typically employed as part of a larger social press to keep us “in our place” by reinforcing a notion of our unreliabilty and pettiness.
We’ve often talked about the difference between hardcore and non-hardcore gamers on this site. There are such things as non-hardcore male gamers too, but people don’t seem to make too much of that; and yet whenever anyone writes an article on a woman gamer, she’s either the topic of casual game consumption, or, if they focus on hardcore female gamers, they’re more interested in doing a pinup spread.
I posted the link to your site — I don’t discourage anyone from going to the boards of any thread I post because my commenters are very well-behaved. Can you say the same about yours?
May 5th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Re:The “I bet you don’t have the courage to post my comment” always goes over well.
No, Hervé if you read the post, we’re attacking your totally sexist stereotypes of women are a bunch of gossipy, mall-shopping dingalings who simply aren’t compatible with gaming beyond playing Bejeweled on their phone. The Desperate Housewives Game tanked, btw.
Talking about how we like to “play mind games, but that’s another topic” is completely insulting; and is the sort of “humor” directed at women that is typically employed as part of a larger social press to keep us “in our place” by reinforcing a notion of our unreliabilty and pettiness.
We’ve often talked about the difference between hardcore and non-hardcore gamers on this site. There are such things as non-hardcore male gamers too, but people don’t seem to make too much of that; and yet whenever anyone writes an article on a woman gamer, she’s either the topic of casual game consumption, or, if they focus on hardcore female gamers, they’re more interested in doing a pinup spread.
I posted the link to your site — I don’t discourage anyone from going to the boards of any thread I post because my commenters are very well-behaved. Can you say the same about yours?
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Goodness, again you’re insinuating that I said things I didn’t. The whole banter about daring to post my comment comes from you and you alone. I did not dare you to post my comment on your site. I don’t play “mind games.” It’s your site, you post what you want, or not.
To clarify with the pics, they showed what passes for women’s games currently. That’s why there’s a pic of a Barbie game. After criticizing the fact that games for women are always segmented and marketed in pink and fuchsia, do you really think I would advocate that women play only with Barbie and Desperate Housewives games? Again, you have insinuated things about the article and my position on the matter that are false.
Did you even notice that the article, was part of a still continuing two month long theme month devoted to women at The Comic Book Bin? No, because you were just too eager to flame this sexist pig, instead of looking at the big picture. It’s so much more easier to blame than understand.
That you did not like my article on women and gaming is fair. The whole point of Women’s at The Comic Book Bin is to create a bridge and dialogue for people coming for with different opinions. As the publisher of the site, I welcomed a variety of opinions on women and entertainment. Mine did not go well with your readers and you, so be it. But stop assuming and writing things that I just did not write. That’s cheap and morally wrong.
As for comments from people visiting The Comic Book Bin, and their behaviour, it’s a general site with lots of women, parents and kids visiting. Trying to paint us in the geeky male camp is ridiculous, especially when we don’t even host a forum or a blog on the site where people would have the opportunity to bash your site and it’s visitors. Again, you make judgments and attacks that are baseless.
This will be my last word on the matter on your site, as I understand very well that no matter what I write, I will just be the villain and a sexist pig here. But to make matters, clear, I have posted this last response at our Comic Space page at http://www.comicspace.com/comicbookbin/
May 6th, 2007 at 7:02 am
I’m sure it is.
Your own words are what at issue here, not the monthlong theme of comicsbookbin. Your assumptions are precious, though.
Lets say, for shits and giggles, that in February, I (a white person) decided to write an article about the game-playing habits of African Americans. In this article, I make a remark about how black people play a lot of violent games because they’re a violent race, or they play a lot pf sports games because they’re athletic. Now imagine I tossed in an aside about how they like to play the race card. I don’t think anyone would fault a civil rights blogger for posting a scathing rebuttal to my blogpost on their site, much less my treatment should I try to defend myself there. Yet you write of women that we’re gossips who like to play mind games, and you’re surprised that a feminist blog has taken you out to the woodshed. Stop pretending you’re a victim. You wrote offensive crap on your site, and we voiced our opinion of said offensive crap on our site. Welcome to the internet.
May 6th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
I had a feeling this might happen. Despite the annoying stereotypes and quaint overstepping of bounds, there is still this idea that nothing has been done wrong? And to make matters worse, there seems to be a “come over to my turf, where we do things right” undertone (i.e. “a mixed audience will read about how you feel”). Its a shame I had to slam the shit out of it, but then, I thought it was a weird, stereotypical, and generally ill thought out piece of writing. However, it seems I might be breaking internet etiquette by not saying this where “making video games desirable for women” was written…..
Shame on me, you have permission to slap my wrist.