[MUD-Dev] Game design and gender: An interesting article

[Ben Greear]

Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> 
> On 03:12 PM 8/31/1999 -0700, I personally witnessed Matthew Mihaly jumping
> up to say:
> >On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> >
> >> On 07:43 AM 8/31/1999 -0400, I personally witnessed Jeremy Music
> >> \"Sterling\" jumping up to say:
> >> >
> >> >On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Marian Griffith wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> There is no such thing as an emergent girl game market. There is only the
> >> >> anti-girl marketing.
> >>
> >> Not true. A large number of companies have been formed rather recently with
> >> the specific aim of making computer games for girls. How well they are
> >> doing and whether they will survive is a whole different question.
> >
> >That doesn't mean there is an emergent girl game market.
> 
> There exists a market for games whose audience consists primarily of girls,
> which can be effectively termed a "girl game market". This market has been
> recognised for quite some time, but is only now receiving serious
> attention. And this is precisely what "emergent" means.
> 

I believe one such company was called something like Purple Moon.  It recently
went bankrupt and was absorbed by the barbie folks (that's gotta hurt yer
pride!!).  I remember reading a lot
of articles a year or two ago about 'games for girls'...  It acually seems like
there is less hype about it now.  Kinda like push content and portals :)

That doesn't mean that companies that could produce a cross-gender game (Myst??)
wouldn't do great, but targeting one gender specifically may get you in
trouble...

Ben

--
Ben Greear (greear at cyberhighway.net)  http://scry.wanfear.com/~greear 
Author of ScryMUD:  scry.wanfear.com 4444        (Released under GPL)
http://scry.wanfear.com


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