“Chess for Girls” — What women want from games
September 27th, 2007
Asking what women and girls want from games is the wrong question. The question probably has no real answer, and if anyone ever found one, it’d basically be useless.
I’ve put off writing about the topic of women and gaming for a while for two reasons. First, it’s a difficult and big topic. Second, it happens also to be a topic I care a lot about.
Thanks to a minor synchronicity, I’ve decided that today’s the day I begin to tackle to subject, though I’ll have much more to say on the subject in the future. The synchronicity that sparked this post involves reading this one at female-gamer.com and discovering the following video (thanks to this post on Feministing.com).
A very funny fake ad from SNL, but unfortunately it’s not really all that outlandish. The early 90s saw the introduction of “Battle Trolls,” macho versions of the bright-haired plastic dolls popular with girls. Although I saw the original ad over fifteen years ago, I still remember the narration: “Everyone knows that girls like trolls, but what to boys like? Battle Trolls!”
It made me shudder then, and it makes me shudder now, especially when I watch my two-year-old daughter putter in her kitchen for a few minutes making imaginary cakes, then switch over to her pirate ship for some high-seas adventuring.
I don’t pretend that, within our culture, a person’s gender doesn’t influence what he or she looks for in games. I won’t bother to speculate on how much game predilections depend on the biology of gender (my instinct an experience suggest biology has almost nothing to do with it, but that debate goes hopelessly beyond the scope of this blog).
But every time someone asks, “What do women gamers want?” We get the silliest answers—from men, from women, from everyone. For instance, a fascinating article in The Escapist a few weeks ago on the topic of heroines in video games included quotes from a variety of women in the industry. While one woman wished that female video game characters would “be wearing pants,” another said
Give my heroine a PMS day where she, unexpectedly and without reason, decides to pull the ears off small bunny rabbits. Have her try to leave the house and go back to change shirts four times. Let her have some upper body limitations and figure out how to manage using her legs.
Seriously? I game almost exclusively with women, and I don’t know a single one who wants menstruation in her escapism.
Here’s the main reason the question of “what women want” is stupid: We all want exactly the same thing from our games. Oh, some of us may prefer puzzles, others strategic board games, and still others vicious PVP, but what we really want is fulfilling entertainment.
In games with a narrative (most video and tabletop roleplaying games, for instance), this means that we want to be heroes—reluctant heroes, action heroes, and antiheroes, perhaps, but heroes nonetheless. On the more abstract, gamey side, we all want to be challenged, usually progressively, but not overwhelmed.
Do some women want the chance to decorate their avatars in MMOs in greater detail? I can assure you that an equal percentage of men want exactly the same thing. Do some adolescent men like to drool over cheesecakes in chainmail bikinis in their game books? Well, plenty of men are turned off by such illustrations, too.
In the end, the reason fewer women than men are attracted to all genres of gaming has everything to do with culture and almost nothing to do with “what they really want.” Almost all video and roleplaying games fail with women not because women don’t want to play such games, not because the games haven’t been successfully targeted to women, but because the games have been targeted at the hard core of a niche market. Most developers still market to the passionate minority. As soon as they start developing for people, not for “Men aged 18 to 35″ or “Women with $50,000 median income,” they’ll really start seeing a profit.
—
I could go on and on about this topic. As I said, it’s very important to me. I’m an unashamed feminist and an unashamed gamer. My regular gaming group comprises one man and four women. And, straight male though I am, I too bridle at the absurd physiques that decorate the books and the sexist language (see he or she) that even my favorite game company ridiculously insists on using.
So I’ll have more to say on the topic in coming posts.
Entry Filed under: Gender, Popular Perception, Problems
4 Comments Add your own
1. Pai | September 27th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Amen! It’s great to see guy gamers who get it. =)
2. Mark | September 28th, 2007 at 5:35 am
Out of genuine interest: why is it “sexist” to use “he” as a generic pronoun in games?
(I delved into this debate once before and I have little conclusions tbh)
How would you propose marketing roleplaying games to “everyone” rather than “passionate minority”?
3. Yehuda Berlinger | September 28th, 2007 at 7:57 am
You got to wonder about an industry whose majority of players are women and yet they still wonder what it is that women play.
Highly relevant link on my personal blog:
http://jergames.blogspot.com/2007/09/disconnect-between-casual-game-sites.html
Yehuda
4. Alec Bings | September 28th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Pai—Thanks!
Mark—Well, I can’t pretend that the question of gender neutral language isn’t an open debate; I just know that I strongly prefer so-called gender-neutral or non-sexist language. Authorities advocating for of the use of “he” for “he or she” dates back only to the 19th century.
I prefer to try to write for an inclusive audience, and I know for a fact that some women find the exclusive use of “he” alienating. To take an example from withing the tabletop gaming community, Lisa Steele, author of the oustanding GURPS Mysteries, has gone on record as finding SJ Games’ policy of using “he” as neuter uncomfortable. (This hasn’t stopped her from writing for them and abiding by this restriction, of course.) Bill Stoddard, another great GURPS author, agrees, pointing out that the fact that generation after generation of children reinvent “they” as a neuter pronoun—despite the efforts of teachers and parents to correct them—means there’s something about using the masculine pronoun to include people of unknown gender that upsets our inherent sense of grammar. (Alas, I can’t quote these people directly. They said these things on the subscriber-only Pyramid boards. And even if the boards were publicly accessible, they don’t archive posts for more than a few months.)
In any case, the debate rages on. Heck, some men are far more bothered by the use of “he or she” than many women are bothered by a neuter “he.” But I opt for gender neutral language. I may use “he or she”; in longer works I may use “he” in one paragraph and “she” in the next. And despite my preference, I’ll still pick up the next GURPS book when it comes out. But for an niche industry that specifically wants to attract more customers, and in particular more women, a few minor editorial efforts that make a book more welcoming to women seem in order.
And that leads to your next question, of how I might go about marketing RPGs to a broader audience. It’s a big question, and one I’m sure I’ll be posting about again, so I’ll be brief here in the comments.
I could babble (and no doubt someday will) about avoiding sexist language and certain horrible covers, but I think the real key is to focus on making games that are genuinely fun and accessible. These games grew out of a geeky niche subgenre of literature, but science fiction and fantasy literature aren’t niche anymore! WoW, too, is hardly niche, in part because the core game is very accessible. (Note: I’m not saying “women need easy games”; I’m saying “non-gamers may become gamers if they can start having fun right away.”)
The same applies to tabletop games. Sell D&D 4th edition as a set of three fairly expensive core books, an almost required subscription to a game site, a separate computer program, and one supplement after another designed to capture the dollars of your passionate core, and you’ll make good money off your passionate core . . . and no one else. Make a roleplaying game that anyone can start playing half an hour after getting it home, and although you may take in only a tenth of the money from each person who busy it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you get twenty times the number of people paying to play.
In other words, I think the tabletop game market is designing games for Pareto’s 20% and only accidentally and occasionally tapping into the 80%—who would never identify themselves as “gamers” but might well delight in a rollicking game of “grown up make-believe with rules.”
Of course, I haven’t really addressed your question, which was about marketing, not design. That’s in part because I think most of what we have isn’t marketable to a broader audience, even though the genre itself might be. I don’t claim to be any sort of marketing guru, but I do think that games have a stigma that has to be overcome. The lurid covers, insular community, and high bar of entry perpetuate this. Breaking out, the dream of many, requires some fundamental rethinking and probably a lateral attack on the market.
The key, though, is not to develop and market just for a demographic niche, but to consider the needs of everyone. This goes well beyond a question of what women want versus what men want. I’d like to see roleplaying games developed explicitly with an “everyone can join” attitude, instead of ones designed to grab more interest from already existing fans.
Anyway, those are my current thoughts on your two questions, probably too much to include just in a comment here. As I said, I’ll be posting more, and I’ll probably prioritize posts addressing the questions you raised. ‘Cause they’re great and interesting ones.
Yehuda—Yes, your post is definitely worth a read. A great resource for anyone interested in the topic. The gem, for me, is the image you have of the 1967 Battleship box. Funny and sad and absolutely fascinating.
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