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09
Feb

From Barbies to Borderlands: What Women Want

Posted by Rachel Burger

The Chinese Game Shop

Last year, I was 11,000 miles away from home staring into a tiny Beijing shop with amaranth shelves and bright bubbled posters trying to attract female customers. Lining their walls were stacks of unplayed Bratz and Hannah Montana games for PC, Nintendo, and other console systems (which are, interestingly enough, banned in China).

At the time, I was working for a magazine called Time Out that ran reviews of the Beijing scene for expats. After hearing about this store, I jumped on the story. Once I was there, fixedly eyeing the “girl” games around the store, I wanted to leave. However, a redhead in Beijing does not go unnoticed for long. The shopkeeper saw me, rushed out, pulled me in, and said, “Pretty girl! Pretty girl!” She handed me the Chinese version of this game:

Smiling politely, I explained that I was a reporter. I got the facts about her store and left without impulse to purchase anything.

Why would a store targeting women and girls leave me, a female gamer, so disappointed? She offered many of the games available to us in the States, decorated the store with symbolic shades of pink, and greeted me warmly when she saw me looking into her store. Her problem: all that she offered were games made for girls 12 and under.

Here in the States, female gamers of all abilities and interests are faced with a similar predicament. There is plenty of media targeting grown women in other industries (think chick flicks, Oprah, and Cosmopolitan), why not in video games?

What Is Available Now?

With women now taking up 38% of the video game market, why do the top games for women include Nintendogs, Farmville, and Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010 when top books read by women include adventure (Corelli’s Mandolin), fantasy (Poison Study), and mystery (The Pact)? Omitting first-person shooters (a genre which women statistically do not enjoy, though that is changing), there is plenty of room to make action games targeted towards women. Look at what’s available now:

Samus acknowledging her strong female qualities in the Metroid games

Samus’s feminine qualities are hidden by a ginormous, manly suit

Over-sexualized non-player female characters

Over-sexualized female children

Impossible body standards (and we thought Barbie was bad!)

These kinds of images scare away real-life women from playing video games! I refuse to believe that most women want to be constrained to their Farmville crops in lieu of rescuing the world.

Sex sells

I hear this argument a lot, and I am willing to offer an alternative. Yes, sex sells, but so does romance. Women pour their money into novels, magazines, and movies where the girl gets the guy (here’s an exercise: try to think about movies with female protagonists where the woman does not end up with a man). Romance is a key ingredient for getting the female market. Sex might sell to men, but romance will get female attention.

I also encourage more video game characters to look like Nathan Drake instead of Mario.

What Women Want

If the world were perfect, this would be an easy question in any context. All women are different and thus have different desires. As someone who enjoys more action games, my request would be as follows:

  • Strong assortment of lead females (flat-chested/big-boned/CLOTHED all okay by me)
  • Strong NPC females (same as above)
  • A choice between playing a male or a female
  • Developed plot and potential romance (Mass Effect II mastered this). The story should be the centerpiece of the game, and may even be more important than the game’s combat system.

Women don’t want a pink video game store with titles targeted at little girls, and there are better games available than iPhone Tetris and Bubbleshooter. When developers start marketing towards women, they are going to tap into a gold mine of possibilities. This is not to say that women don’t already enjoy casual games, but when it comes to adventure, fantasy, and RPGs, we are settling for less.

Are you a female gamer? What kind of games do you play? What games do your girlfriend, sisters, or female friends play? Let us know in the comments!

Related posts:

  1. Life as a Female Gamer Part I: Make Your Own Damn Sandwich

Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted Classic Posts, Special Feature |

  • Luis
  • Jason Kenney

    Well:

    (1) lolicon… is sort of an accepted thing in Japan, so most Japanese RPGs have the obligatory loili character, then again I would consider the all characters in a Final Fantasy game to be over sexualized. In my own experience however, I know more women then men that play JRPG’s in general (It was a girl that introduced me to chronotrigger, while most of the guys were playing DOOM).

    (2) Sakura Wars, Growlanser II, and Persona 3 (FES) all have relationship mechanics… and half of Persona 3 has a woman as a protagonist. I do have a disadvantage in understanding if these games do appeal to female gamers moreso or not. However again it’s my female friends that generally play them. I do know that they are niche titles and don’t sell nearly as well as say Halo 4: Master Chief meets Abbot and Costello.

    (3) One female friend I know plays fan translated Japanese dating sims, most of them are male oriented with erotic images as the goal… but she has told me about a few that are female protagonist -> relationship with a man oriented. Maybe some females at an american publisher can look into bringing the game over in English and on Mac.

    (4) Nathan Drake? Really? Is that what women want these days… (sigh).

    (5) Samus is the suit… I got annoyed when Metroid Other M did not portray her as the ruthless bounty hunter… and if they are going to show her… she needs

    a.) more muscle mass, and smaller breasts (she’s athletic).
    b.) burns and battle scars.

    She shouldn’t look like someone that one would want to bed, but someone who scares the hell out of you.

  • Anonymous

    I started gaming on a 286 so have been doing this for a long time now, and am perpetually surprised that the gaming industry, for the most part, ignores women. There’s a huge opportunity there – more than 50% of the population! – for those firms who want to take it on and do it right. For me games need three qualities: a great absorbing story line, beautiful graphics, and if possible, some degree of open endedness. Also, the less complicated the controls, the better. I refuse to memorize dozens of key commands — it should be point and click. The most complexity I can put up with for commands is on the order of KOTOR or Civilization – I’m not a button masher and that destroys the fun of the game for me.

    Among the games I have most enjoyed are Civilization, Myst series, Baldur’s Gate series, The Sims, and KOTOR, in part because of the open-ended quality. The games all allow for exploration, you are not driven by a need to get to the next monster immediately, you can look around. Similarly, on the console, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are among the best games ever made, and I can’t wait for The Last Guardian to come out.

    Other games I have liked were the entire Myst series. I don’t care so much about relationship systems in games – they can be fun in The Sims, but I have enjoyed that game much more since they added in quests – even though they are unchallenging and silly compared to a real RPG – and am looking forward to Sims Mediaeval coming out soon.

    What I really want even more are great story lines, and practical interfaces. I thought the great flaw of the LOTR games (I bought one and never finished it) was the dependence on being able to mash button combinations – what a waste of time, I’m not going to memorize Cmd-Shft-H-7-X just to get my character to jump. Forget it.

    Other games I have found fascinating might fall into the ambient category – fl0w, Osmos, Cloud – I would love to see more games along these lines, too.

    I agree with you that the overly sexualized female characters in many games range from ridiculous to offensive, and I pretty much skip those games. If there’s a bimbo on the box, I don’t buy it. I don’t want to be looking at virtual silicone implants the entire game, nor do I want pink Barbies with poodles, endless versions of Solitaire, or a virtual pet.

    I’d like to find a really challenging, interesting, RPG with great graphics, an absorbing and adventurous story line, a couple of really amazing quests, and something more challenging and intelligent than giant spiders or flying eyeballs of doom to pit my wits against. I’d like my actions in the game to have more dynamic consequences – to actually change the story arc. I’d like to face setbacks – most of these games relentlessly carry you along on the story line, even if you screw up. If I screw up I want to have to take another path, change what I’m doing, learn from my failure, like I have to do in the real world.

    Another area of gaming that is badly neglected is retirees – they have disposable income, plenty of leisure time, and love to play games – but for many folks, the graphics become hard to read at some point, and the tiny little details vanish. When you’re 70 like my dad you are not going to be able to see a tiny little five-pixel item on the screen…or read the teeny little fonts. Nor are most of them interested in offing a bunch of zombies, but there is definitely a huge market there, and it will only get bigger as the boomers all retire.

  • Karen Newcombe

    Oops, didn’t mean to be “anonymous” – that long one there was mine.

  • Rachel Burger

    @Jason There are lots of games with relationship mechanics, and there should probably be more of them! I myself have played Japanese dating sim games… they would have to be far less erotic to be popular in America. That said, lolita is something that is not tolerated well in the states. We’d probably have to have a culture shift before fully accepting sexually precocious girls.

    Sakura Wars: Old but great game. I approve.
    Growlanser II: Old but great game, but I don’t think it’s for everyone.
    Persona 3: I’ve honestly never heard of, but I will look into it!

    And yes, really, Nathan Drake, though I personally prefer his action-hero progenitor Indiana Jones.

  • Rachel Burger

    @ Karen What a great entry, and we are on the same page in terms of games (Myst has been one of my favorites, though I have to admit that I wanted to throw my computer out the window during certain points of the game). I’m also excited about the new Sims game coming out in March. Have you ever played Fable? They look to be quite similar.

    I love your point about complex controls. While I understand the need for them on personal computers, I deeply enjoy the simplicity of many console games.

    NeverWinter Nights 2 is another great game that I strongly recommend!

    Noted on retirees–definitely a market that hasn’t been thought of! What kind of games can appeal to them?

  • Jason Kenney

    @Rachel I recommend the PSP version of Persona 3 since it has the most bonus features.
    My friend Lisa is currently playing a Japanese game called “Devil on the G String” which she’s enjoying.

    My current problem with the industry is the focus on FPS games. Outside of indie development, every other genre has stagnated. Japanese RPGs are becoming more like Action games, Tactical RPGs have abandoned the market except Nippon Ichi which make the same game every time. I think it’s because outside of FPS the only professional game engine I know that companies sell is Paradox’ EU3 engine.

  • Karen Newcombe

    Hi Rachel,

    RE: games for older folks

    My dad is in his 70s and he used to love Civilization, Myst, and flight simulators, but with his glaucoma he can hardly see the tiny little figures anymore. I think many older folks stick to Solitaire, bubble games and card games because they can see what’s going on, and at the risk of being repetitive, the controls are fairly simple. Unfortunately, they are also pretty darned boring.

    How about games that let you go places you could never go during your life? What about games with the complexity of story line and density of character that we see in really good TV shows like Rome and Battlestar Galactica? I don’t mean they should create spin-off games, which are generally dismal, but I think nearly every adult would like to see games with that quality of a complex, fully inhabited world with a deep back story – or an actual history.

    I have to agree with Jason that FPS games designed for 16-year-old boys have become a huge focus for the industry. It’s easy — teenagers all run out like lemmings and buy the same identical things, so they are a marketer’s dream. By adulthood people’s taste differentiates and it is much harder to parse what they will and will not buy, and impossible to tell what they might buy in extremely large numbers.

    I have not played Fable but will check it out. I do want to add that I looked forward for several years with great anticipation to Spore, only to be vastly disappointed. The game is fatally buggy once you hit the space portion of the thing, to the point where it is unplayable. The ideas were brilliant, the execution was dismal. The floor is wide open for someone to remake this thing and do it right.

  • Karen Newcombe

    Looked up Fable, I remember it now. Unfortunately it came out the year I was moving across the U.S. so I lost track of it – looks like fun, I’ll see if I can find a copy – I imagine it’s probably in the “Entire boxed set” stage by now!

  • Jason Kenney

    Karen some games with decent plot:
    Bioshock,
    Chronotrigger, (Well the plot is a little weak… but the game is fun as hell).
    Final Fantasy IV, (II on SNES),
    Final Fantasy VI (III on SNES),
    Final Fantasy Tactics,
    Grandia (Playstation),
    Guardian Heroes (Sega Saturn),
    Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (best plot in zelda so far IMHO),
    Lunar: Silver Star Story (Sega CD, Playstation, PSP),
    Panzer Dragoon Saga (Sega Saturn),
    Phantasy Star II (Sega Genesis),
    Xenosaga (Playstation),
    Zork

    You can actually play many of these games on a mac (though legality is uh questionable). Some of the older games are on Virtual Console or PSOne Classics, others are +$100 on ebay.

    I should also mention while 4 and 6 have the most complex plot in the FF games. Final Fantasy IX is also good. Garnet if perhaps my second favorite FF character (after Terra).

    • http://www.gameagent.com Russ Looney

      @Jason: Pretty much knocked out a whole best of the best list. Man, I absolutely LOVED Final Fantasy Tactics. Wish I had the means to play it again!

  • Jason Kenney

    @Russ they have it on the PSN, re-relased it for PSP (which you can get for $10).

    Also I’m anticipating Tactics Ogre PSP, and Radiant Historia for DS.

    Now for those familiar with git and svn. Radiant Historia is about time travel, but it allows you to travel between time streams, and change which node is the primary time line… which means the game is essentially version control and branching the RPG.

    • http://www.gameagent.com Russ Looney

      @Jason: The news that FFT is available on PSN just made my day : ) I’m getting a PS3 soon (no plans on a PSP), so I’ll be anxious to check out the game again.

  • Karen Newcombe

    @Jason: Thanks Jason for the long list – some I’m familiar with and others not. I never really liked FF – in the early versions I hated sitting around waiting for the combat window to load, so I never went back to it. Time travel hasn’t been fully explored in gaming – I’ll bet something based on Connie Willis’s time travel book would make a fun game. Zelda has long been a fixture in our household – we still have a working Nintendo 64 and plenty of the old classic games.

  • Jason Kenney

    Russ… get the 60 GB PS3 so you can play PS2 games as well.

  • http://twitter.com/curlypaws Karen Hughes

    I also love Civilization, and have enjoyed a lot of “building” games such as some of the Railroad Tycoon and Transport Tycoon games.

    I grew up with an Atari 800 system (showing my age) and loved some of the games on that system – particularly the Infocom games and M.U.L.E. I’ve long loved games with good characters and a quest to follow; I enjoyed Dragon’s Age (though Dragon’s Age II was a real disappointment). I’ve loved most of the Fallout games (good characters) and I actually really liked Borderlands on the Mac.

    I wish that there were more RPGs with good story lines. As Karen Newcombe mentioned, some of the old Baldur’s Gate series RPGs had good themes that grabbed my interest. I’m just downloading Rachel’s suggestion of Neverwinter Nights 2 now.

    Other favourites were the LucasArts games such as Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island. I loved those games!