[MUD-Dev] games gender bias (Re: Affecting the world)

[Adam Wiggins]

[Ola:]
> I'm still trying to figure out how one should design a good
> singleplayer game for average girls/women. What are your favourite
> games? (I'm not saying you are average!) If Creatures had been more
> playable then I guess that theme would have constituted a good
> gamecomponent for a mud, "take care of your pet, breed new puppies"
> type of gameplay (for both genders).  Another activity which I assume
> would be more popular with females is "design your own cloths for your
> avatar".

Well, I think you could have a game design with a broader appeal without
necessarily making the subject matter pedestrian.  In my experience
the two things that seem to make games more attractive to females is
abstractness and non-competitiveness.  Tetris is a prime example; I recall
reading studies which claimed that Tetris actually had vastly *more* female
players than male.  Not sure if that's true or not, but I certainly know that
Tetris and other puzzle games in the same vein are much more popular with
women that I know or have dated.  Also in this category are the old
vector games, where there was no such thing as head-to-head play, and the
shapes were all abstract out of necessity.  Gravitar seems to be a favorite.
Modern video games are mostly SF2-style fighters, which are of course
exactly the opposite of what I'm describing - 100% competative and completely
non-abstract.  Muds tend to be similar - they describe a very specific
situation, character, etc, and are often competative, either directly (PK)
or indirectly (compteting for the same resources).  How you would translate
this into something useful for a mud design, I don't know.  I am trying to
design a game with lots of different options under the 'make your own fun'
category, but at best I can only decide what's fun for myself, and in the
end I'm a male in his twenties that is looking for an adrenalin rush and
a chance to do things in a game that I can't do otherwise.  If someone doesn't
like the current crop of games availible but thinks they could make one that
they would like, I urge them to go ahead and do it.  They will then attract
those that otherwise stay away from such things and the genre grows to
allow for a wider variety of designs.