More on games for girls: Ubisoft’s new line

Take a look at this post concerning Ubisoft’s new “Imagine” series of video games targeting girls aged 6 to 14.

Based on Ubisoft’s study, the first games in the line, to be released in October, are “Fashion Designer,” “Master Chef,” “Animal Doctor,” and “Babyz.” [My wife observed that “Babyz” looks a bit like the detestable “Bratz.”] “We did research, and we are studying the market… that’s what the girls actually like, so we should try to fulfill their needs,” Shara Hashemi, Ubisoft’s Brand Manager for the Imagine line, told Multiplayer in an interview last week.

My response: Ugh!

I don’t have special access to the “research” Ubisoft did, but from the descriptions it sounds as if they’ve fallen into the same trap that so much research in general does. However good their data gathering, they’ve asked the wrong question. They claim the main goal of Imagine games is “to have fun.” Then they turn around and say, “The games are built on ideas and concepts that every girl can relate to and they allow girls to expand their creativity while they’re learning real facts and real-life concepts.”

In other words, as with so many girl-targeted products, these games give girls a chance to play at being older girls or women . . . and little else. These games give girls a chance to change diapers, shop for clothes, and cook.

The boy games that the Ubisoft representative said girls aren’t interested in, in contrast, give players a chance to involve themselves in larger-than-life stories and activities. In other words, the results of this “research” confirm industry and cultural expectations that while “boys will be boys,” girls will be women.

The one Imagine game that sounds like it offers something other than a pixelated version of dolls, babysitting, and dress-up is “Figure Skater,” a game in which the player strives for career-life balance in pursuit of an Olympic gold medal. That actually sounds like fun, with a narrative and an opportunity for escapist fantasy.

Okay, Ubisoft just wants to sell games to girls, so they did research that tells them what they can expect will move off the shelves and into girls hands. Unfortunately, such girl-oriented games have performed notoriously poorly, because even though many existing games have elements hostile to female gamers, women wind up playing the fun ones anyway. On the other hand, almost nobody buys the pink boxes.

I bridle at this game line because, as the parent of a two-year-old daughter, I can see the onslaught of cultural expectation coming hard and fast. By the time a girl is “6 to 14,” she’s developed her own tastes, but she’s also been given heavy-handed lessons in what she’s supposed to like.

Remember, Ubisoft began this effort because “A quarter of DS owners are young girls but less than 10% of DS games are aimed specifically at them.”

The point is not that a quarter of DS owners—the girls—are stuck with a toy that doesn’t target them. It’s that a quarter of people who find the DS appealing are girls already! Already, one in four DS owners is female, no doubt mostly playing some of the 90+% games targeted at people.

The most interesting question is: which ones?

Add comment October 2nd, 2007

A hostile play environment

Last week, I wrote a post about what’s wrong with asking “what women want” from hobby games. Now I’d like to talk a little bit about why I think people keep asking the question.

It’s weird, isn’t it? No one asks: “What can we do to get more women into sports?” Male sports fans grin and talk about how lucky they are to have girlfriends into football, but those whose sweethearts don’t care about sports don’t usually push.

And even though I belong to a “Men Who Crochet” Yahoo! group, I’ve never heard anyone say: “What do men want out of yarn arts?” Knitters expect anyone who knits, male or female, to do it for pretty much the same reasons.

Okay, knitting isn’t as complex as video games. (Oh, there’s just as much complexity about yarn types, equipment, technique, and so on, but knitting is fundamentally about transforming one form of fiber into a useful or decorative fabric.) And sports, though geeky in their own way, have a completely different set of cultural expectations (and even more difficult gender issues).

Obviously, the main reason people try to figure out what women want from games is to attract more women to a hobby in which they’re underrepresented. Existing gamers (of both sexes) do it because they’d like to play games with more women. Game developers and publishers do it because they’d like to make more money, and a bigger audience has more money.

Here’s the heart of the matter, though: the gap may be narrowing, but relatively few women are “gamers.” Oh, more and more women play games. For some games, the player base comprises mostly women.

But hobby gaming—historically the sphere of men, heavily influenced by the male-dominated sf genre, weighed down by the perception that it’s the sphere of children rather than adults—is hostile to the entry of women into the community.

Some women don’t really notice the hostile elements, or even like them. Others get “grandfathered” in by having become interested young enough not to even mind the nastier bits. Many women gamers, though, like games enough that they just overlook the nasty stuff and get on with the fun.

Calling hobby games hostile to women isn’t new, but it does explain why more women don’t game. In a day or two, I’m going to spell out what I see are the elements of the hobby that are unfriendly to women.

Add comment October 2nd, 2007