Why Aren`t More Women Involved in Gaming? - Women’s Gaming Style is Different
(Page 2 of 4 )
Many women dislike the way some marketers target them, because their approach often comes off as condescending or reinforcing outdated views of women. Putting a “typically male” product in a box with flowers on it or painting it pink insults our intelligence and won’t make us open our wallets. (And some of us would sooner strangle Barbie than play with her). That said, there are certain differences in the way women and men play games.
There are clichés that surround female gamers in the industry. Some suggest that women play only casual games or adventure games. Don’t tell that to the Quake Women’s Forum, GameGirlz, WomenGamers, or any of the other thousands of gaming websites built by and for women who game. According to the IDSA, 30 percent of gamers who play more than 10 hours a week are female. That’s more time than some people manage to spend on their favorite hobbies!
Despite those numbers, women do tend to have less leisure time than men have. This means that we want a game we can get the hang of quickly, without lots of complicated controls. Ernest Adams, a game consultant who founded the International Game Developers Association, reinforced that point recently in an interview with BBC News. “Women don’t have free time even to set up a game. They require a game that is quick to get into and doesn’t require a great time commitment.”
It follows that any game we do get involved with should repay the precious time we spend with it. Merely shooting up our enemies isn’t enough; we want games that engage our brains as well as our reflexes. At the risk of adding yet one more female cliché, women also prefer games that allow them to interact and communicate socially in some way. It should come as no surprise, then, that some genres of games that are popular with women include role-playing games, narrative adventures, easy driving simulations, puzzle adventures, fast arcade puzzlers (think Tetris), and life simulations (such as The Sims, mentioned in the previous section).
Game researcher Aleks Krotoski holds up Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as an example of a game that is popular with both men and women “because of the depth of the storyline and character.” It is also an example “of how to make a game for a female market who don’t like to die,” since the game allows players to rewind time if they die. Hmmm. This may help explain why the usual “shooter” games marketed to males hit a sour note with women.
Even when women do play shooter games, they don’t play them the same way men do. Mary Flanagan, a game researcher at Hunter College, mentions in a 2004 paper working with girls who play Grand Theft Auto several times a week – but a significant number of them “pay no attention to the mission structures in the game, but rather, prefer to `just drive.’” Likewise, in some first person shooter games, girls like to “just go off on their own, and test out the virtual body to `see what it can do.’”
Next: Why isn’t the Gaming Industry Getting It? >>
More Opinions Articles
More By Terri Wells
/ 9 
