[MUD-Dev] Re: Gender specific

[Mike Sellers]

At 01:45 PM 11/9/97 PST8PDT, Adam Wiggins wrote:
>[Marian Griffith:]
>> On Wed 22 Oct, Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad wrote:
>> > But as there are game companies that are specificially targetting
>> > female buyers the competition will be there in a couple of years.  You
>> > don't want them to get your "customers", so that may eventually force
>> > others to follow.  I guess "totally convinced" was a bit strong... :)
>> 
>> I wonder if many girls are going to buy computer games. I've been
>
>Currently women are reported as purchasing 40% of all PC games sold.

I just saw this, so maybe I've missed most of the discussion.  But anyway,
I would sure love to see the support for this claim -- as near as I can
tell (given our market research) you're too high by probably 2x at least.  

>Also, I think a new generation is now reaching maturity that has grown up
>not believing that computers are magical devices which nerdy men like
>to play with, but instead thinking of them as household appliances which
>can be used for recreation in the same way as a TV.  

This is what every PC software vendor is just _waiting_ to have happen.
Unfortunately, we ain't there yet.  It's going to take probably another
five years, just given demographic and usage trends.  As someone pointed
out to me recently, *most* of the people who will be on the Internet in the
year 2000 haven't logged on yet.  

>My two cousins (both
>female, one age 17 and one age 12) grew up playing computer games.  There
>are, as near as I can tell, very normal and healthy young women, except
>for being more articulate and better at problem-solving than most of their
>peers who grew up watching TV instead of playing quest games.

First, generalizing from individual experience like this is extremely
risky.  Second, all the real data I've seen shows that game players in
general and computer game players in particular score only mildly (barely
significantly) higher than the population in terms of intelligence, problem
solving, and spatial recognition.  They also score mildly lower on some
social interaction norms.  As more and more people use computers and play
games, these effects are washing out; we look more and more like the
general population every day (think about THAT as you ride the bus ;) ).   

>Also, although killing things may be considered 'boy stuff', the best
>Quake player (very arguably) in the world is a woman.  She beat John
>Romero (creator of Quake) soundly, as the final round of world-wide
>Quake competition.  Of course there is also the all-female Quake fests
>which has become quite popular recently.  I understand that there were
>several hundred players in attendance recently.  And that's only one game,
>with a supposedly male-oriented theme.

Yes, but these women and their clans are notable at least partially because
they ARE women.  The only estimate I've seen (no attribution handy) claims
that around 10% of all Doom/Quake players are women.  This figure may even
be an exaggeration upward.  

>Finally, one might note that the Barbie Fashion Designer CD-ROM has
>been on the top ten list of best selling CD-ROM games for half a year
>now.  I have trouble believing that this product has a lot of marketability
>with 25-year-old D&D-playing males.

This one is definitely a positive sign -- as are the enduring (sometimes
baffling) sales of Myst.  Nearly everyone in the industry believes they can
crack open the "girl market" and several are making solid efforts.  Thus
far though, no one outside of Barbie has been really successful.  

>>  ...Just looking at all the games is scaring  and
>> hardly inspiring to try to find some game  that might possibly be
>> interesting to play.  After browsing through the first rack I was
>> definitely tempted to just run out and find something more inter-
>> esting. The only computer game I have is Myst and that was a gift
>> from somebody who knew I would like it. I never would have bought
>> it myself. So I am not sure that there will be games targetted at
>> girls anytime soon.
>
>So, what you're saying is that you've never played any computer games, so
>wouldn't actually know what they are like?  I'm not saying that you will
>like them or not.  Currently I don't play very many games at all, due to
>being very busy with work and other interests outside of computers, plus
>the fact that not many games have really impressed me lately.  But I
>think that making a statement about something which you haven't even tried
>is somewhat presumptuous.

Actually I think if you really read what the woman above said, you'll see a
good crystalization of the problem of reaching out to the female market --
and for that matter, reaching out to the 95%+ of *men* who don't play
computer games.  They are intimidating and/or uninteresting even on the
shelves, and those few that many women have played have been gifts and have
not exactly energized them to run out and buy more.  Of course, the fact
that most game developers are male (on top of that, most are single white
males in their twenties) doesn't exactly endear them to a somewhat
'foreign' market.  If anyone is being presumptuous here, it is the
developers who cannot do more than snicker at the very people they would
love to court as customers.


Mike Sellers                                    Chief Alchemist
mike at online-alchemy.com                         Online Alchemy              

        Combining art & science to create new worlds.