What do women want in gaming?

Off-topic
#1

Continuing the discussion from The Escapist under attack since 4am:

It’s not that simple a question, mostly because there is a heavy degree of segmentation in gaming and, of course, because it neither possible to state (without stereotyping) or demonstrate (without more study) what each segment actually wants in a game of [genre X].

But, to your last sentence, you must understand, if the choices are:

  1. Just don’t game.
  2. Play the game that at least offers you some of what you want and try to avoid/ignore the stuff you don’t.

The slender segment of women who play console, FPS, and MMOs choose #2.

The greater segment of women who play mobile/web games choose #1 (which is one of the reasons there are so many of them and why they are so similar on the whole but vary in depth of detail and focus on activity).

My personal opinion? Well, it’s biased because I’m definitely part of that console/fps/mmo segment who chooses #2. But, as to what I would prefer:

  • MUCH deeper granularity of character customization; particularly in faces, hair, eyes, and clothing.
  • MUCH more reputation and status for crafting/trade success and progress.
  • The ability to be successful in a game without having to engage in combat at all.
  • The ability to be successful in a game by facilitating or coordinating things for other players.
  • The ability to increase in reputation and status in the game for knowing things about the game world (e.g., how to find, best means of X, etc).
  • The ability to achieve prominence and game-related rewards for leading events, parties (hunting or social), etc.

In short, a game world where there are no levels, no grinds, and no Red Queen; open-ended like life is, combat has less emphasis than the day to day activity of making your living and earning your place in the society; how well (or not) you reflect your race’s culture and ethos should matter. How well you treat the others who make up your community (server, etc) should matter.

I’m sure I could come up with more once I’ve had more coffee.

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#2

I think it’s a very basic mistake to talk about something like “male taste” or “female taste”. Reality is that we are all individuals and while some groups of people could tend to something it’s not a hard fact or something we should take as a basis for a serious discussion.

If you ask me we don’t need more focus-group driven games. That’s EA’s business. Do we really want everyone following that forumla?

If we want games to evolve we should have a look at the movie and TV industry. Although they still have their own problems the whole industry is in a much more mature state with a great deal of “uncomplicated variety” going.

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#3

Idunno, my wife wants to have fun in games, I want to have fun in games and so we beat the shit out of each other in Mortal Kombat :stuck_out_tongue:

Seriously, I find the question a bit pointless - sure, there are going to be some trends amongst females vs. males, but bottom lines is… God damnit, LordCrash. /\ what he said :smiley:

2 Likes
#4

I do not think we are disagreeing here, unless you’re actually saying the topic has no merit; in which case, the research from all angles (actual research, not focus groups) demonstrates there is untapped market for something other than power fantasy combat games, particularly among the female demographic.

To the point, kindly look at the list of top games on PC for 2013 and note where RPG and MMO are in relation to less realistic (graphics) simulations (real world activities). That “The Sims” take 6 of the top 10 should be telling.

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2014.pdf

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#5

according to bioware, it’s gay romance simulation. do you agree?

#6

ubtrollin’ brah. :smile:

#7

I do very much agree that there is market for games which are not about typical power fantasy topics. But I don’t think that we should limit that to “female topics” which imo has too much of the notion that women and men can’t or don’t enjoy the same things. Imo one of the biggest problems with this approach is that you take a worthy goal (= more variety and topics in gaming) and limit it to an all female target group.

Of course - as I’ve already pointed out - you can observe a tendency for certain topics among different groups of the population (based e.g. on gender, age, education, social status,…). But does that say that for example many men don’t wish to play different games as well (which means games without or with different power fantasies)? It’s the same thing if you call every FPS made for the “white male teens” target group.

So no, I don’t think that the topic has no merit, quite the contrary. But I think that the approach should be as inclusive as possible and not kind of exclusive from the beginning.

Imo one of the biggest problems holding back more variety in gaming is that the structures in the gaming industry are very inflexible with clear market segregations. If you compare the gaming market to the movies market it’s basically only movies without TV in gaming. It’s either blockbuster (AAA) or art/independence film (indie). But the whole modern variety of the visual-only medium is on TV and the gaming industry is missing that. How many “female-targeted” blockbusters were released in the past years? I can’t recall many tbh. But there is a whole lot of stuff on TV targeted mainly for females or a mixed audience (just think of the many great TV series).

I think the whole topic is quite complex. It has also a lot to do with who is working in the industry at which positions. That’s of course a gender question again, but not exclusively. It’s also about the mindset of people who work in the industry. We - as gamers - get what they like. So do we need more women in the industry or just more “poeple” who enjoy a greater deal of variety and different topics?

6 Likes
#8

I do like how games which probably have even bigger market power (indeed, the .pdf itself claims 30%) are magically forgotten on the top 10 lists on similar documents, and that is casual games. My point is, I don’t believe that the success of Sims is caused by them being very popular amongst females, I believe the success of Sims can be attributed to how easy to learn and play the game is, while providing hours of unique entertainment.

#9

You ever play Mount and Blade: Warband? It sounds very close to what you just described.

#10

I do think that worrying about catering to one sex over another or worrying about being inclusive of both sexes can be handled merely by exploring other forms of content. As phydra… excuse me KING phydra :smile: … says, her preferences includes things like greater character customization and the ability to succeed in a game without the necessity of combat. Indeed, around 2005 the gaming industry saw the female gender rise to become the 51% majority population of “gamers” in general. Much of this was attributed to “social” gaming like The Sims series, which by 2006 was on its 3rd version, casual games like Bejeweled and social games like Farmville.

When Star Wars Galaxies went online in 2003, it enjoyed an initial success because it included full careers in medicine, biological engineering, entertainment and commerce without having to pick up a blaster. Entire guild cities popped up all over the servers and people would log in for hours just to socialize. After 11 years, Linden Labs’s Second Life online world enjoys a user account population of almost 1 million people because it persists in offering much the same: commerce and socializing without relying on violence. This does not only appeal to many female gamers, but to all sorts of gamers and even people who typically would not consider themselves gamers.

I realize much of the latter examples are achieved due to the fluid interaction of human players in an MMORPG, but the theory is sound: Give the players a little bit of leeway to do more than run and shoot and not only will they add to the fun and content, but their activity will draw more to the game. People spend hours just customizing their characters or building homes in the Sims as well as Skyrim; why not more of that? So many big time publishers are so afraid of open content and non-combat objectives yet time and time again it proves to draw deep from the well of the potential gamer population.

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#11

I don’t tend toward exclusionary perspective, it’s just that was the context in which the question was asked.

I know MANY men who long for an MMO along these lines, too.

As to the research, other reports (sorry, not publicly available) indicate clearly that “The Sims” in particular are being driven in popularity by women at a ration of almost 5:1.

@TexasTig - Precisely. Realism is about more than graphics, much more. One of the most important elements is community and you can only have strong, healthy community if you’re not polarized around a small slice of a much larger pie of possibilities. The examples you provide are solid ones and the analysis backs this as well.

I do wish game companies would get to it. But if they won’t, maybe the Indie industry will show them what they’re missing someday.

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#12

Maybe just say we want a “game” along those lines?

#13

I’m talking about MMOs in this thread; you can talk about anything you like.

#14

A Sims MMO would fit to your suggestions.

Except for the multiplayer part everything else sounds like a typical Sims game. Don’t get me wrong, I played them too. So there’s exactly a game for these purposes you mention. I don’t know if Sims 4 is actually capable of multiplayer but I guess it isn’t.

#15

I fully agree with what has already been said several times: Probably also many male players (including me) would be interested in a game with features such as those described by phydra. Nevertheless I think one of the most important reasons why such games are so rare hasn’t been mentioned yet. They are just incredibly hard to get right. After all, the video game industry is an industry and I’m pretty sure that if it was easy to develop such games and make money with them, someone would already have done it. Compared to the game mechanics of a FPS a crafting system which lets you be creative, which is non repetative and which assigns reasonable values to goods sounds like rocket science. I think it’s for a reason that many early video games are somehow based on shooting or hitting stuff. It’s just comparatively easy to implement and still enough fun to sell enough copies. I think it is important to keep that in mind when talking about why video games are what they are today.

Having said that, I am fully in favour of adding more variety to the market. One should just keep in mind that the physics of a bullet is way simpler than a believable model for a society or an economy.

1 Like
#16

Or join EVE mining corporation :slight_smile:

#17

I truly have to side with @LordCrash and @TexasTig on what they wrote up there.

The gaming sphere could definitely always use some more complexity and variety over just straightforwardly going for the cheap thrills and action, which is everywhere these days and is considered a standard by people running the industry. Which is the very point.

The stuff sells, so we’re making it. And we’re just trying to throw in some more of what we think is the popular selling point to get even more customers. So easy principles, lots of eye candy and don’t make the product too costly for the revenue it can earn us…

This all actually leads down to the general changes currently taking place in the industry as a whole. The rise of crowdfunding and the indie sphere, something like the old-school craftsmen managing to re-crate a competition to the mass-production industry with affordable products tailored for the customers countering the average stuff that’s growing cheaper and cheaper in every aspect without its selling costs actually dropping.

And sometimes even with other stuff getting pushed in which the customers weren’t really too interested in, but some of the producers were simply sure it will be cool 'cos it’s trendy outside these days and may score them some additional points for opening to even wider audiences.
And some people may have even thought of starting to get outright educational on the audience as a whole and teach them an important lesson on the outside world of today and the best way, of course, is to make the stuff hit them in the face…

I’m deliberately being vague here, because these patterns can be easily atributed to way more then just one matter in the gaming industry and we all encountered them in various forms time and again. These are certain universals that are actually behind most of the current disturbace in the gaming Force, out of which even this thread kinda spinned-off.

Getting TLDR to my point: What do women want in gamnig? That’s not it.
What do people want in gaming, actually. Lots of “the gamers” which are said to be “over” today by certain people. But it’s really not the whats that is the issue. We can pretty much all agree on most of the whats.
The whole problem is in the hows from the beginning.

End of my getting thinking aloud again. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#18

No, it really wouldn’t; you see, I want a historical, realistic, medieval experience/world with all of this.

Not even “Medieval Sims” would do it because, well, it’s sims and I want to immerse, explore, and get as much of a “real” experience as I can, not play “god”.

If anything, I’d say I want SCA-Online. Heh.

#19

Damn… http://www.ea.com/the-sims-medieval

#20

WH can pack bags and go home. We are all doomed!

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