[MUD-Dev] Boys and Girls - was (Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #163 - 25 msgs)

[Marian Griffith]

In <URL:/archives/meow?group+local.muddev> on Tue 25 Dec, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> From: "Marian Griffith" <gryphon at iaehv.nl>

>> I think there is even a deeper question here. We have to ask
>> ourselves *IF* women like games at all.

> I have a wife, six sisters-in-law, eight nieces, and two cousins
> who are all heavily obsessed with The Sims.  Most of them don't
> really care much about other games.

> While it doesn't PROVE anything, it's a pretty strong indicator
> that "if you build it, they will come".

>> I think it is important that we, and the games industry, stop
>> looking for the mythical "girl game".  Girls are not one
>> character. They have tastes as diverse as boys.

> That's true, and there's a lot more to a first-person-shooter than
> shooting.  But the industry is interested in games that will sell
> to girls, because they do not sell a lot of games to girls -- so
> when we say "girl game", it's really just a convenient label for
> "new kinds of games that will sell to people who don't buy a lot
> of the old kinds of games".

First of, I see those as quite different things: games for girls and
games for everybody who does not yet buy (a lot of) games, and from
what I have read this is not what most people mean when they write
about "girl games".  Second, it is still silly to think about girl
games as a single game that girls buy.  If you were to set out to
create a game that "boys" want to play you would not find anybody
crazy enough to lend you the money to do so. They would rightly
expect you to come up with a con- cept and theme and so on.  Why
would it be any different for girls?  Just because girls do not buy
many games does not mean it makes sen- se to think of them as a
homogenous group.

Of course in this thread, and in the Gender differences -> spatial
navigation one, there have been quite a few remarks about what it is
in games that is more appealing to women than the average game that
is being made right now.  The Sims happens to be the most recent one
that does not rest heavily on a gameplay concept that strongly ca-
ters to the male preference.

>> We simply should quit to try to put games in "boy" and "girl"
>> niches, and start thinking of new and more varied games.

> I think it's a huge mistake to take a clear and concise term that
> effectively represents a large number of complex ideas and throw
> it out over some misguided sense of political correctness or
> scientific accuracy.

I do not think it is a mistake, let alone a huge one :), and I do
believe that the term is not clear (though perhaps concise). It cer-
tainly has nothing to do with political corectness or scientific ac-
curacy.  "Girl game" is misleading because it suggests that it is
possible to create a game that all girls like. Even if that is not
the intention of the phrase. The Sims is a girl game, but it
certainly was not in- tended to be. Myst was a girl game. Barbie was
supposed to be a girl game, and was not.

> When you say "girl game", you mean "a game that appeals to
> girls". Everyone knows and understands that. The alternative is to
> say something like "atypical game", which means nothing, or
> "noncompetitive user-modifiable software toy with limited command
> set directing highly flexible and powerful creation and
> customisation interface", which effectively means nothing because
> nobody knows what the hell it means except the idiot who wrote
> it. (Not to mention it's probably not quite accurate.)

It is a problem, of sorts, because you have girl games; and first
person shooters, and roleplaying games and puzzle games and real ti-
me strategy games and sports sims. It suggests that there is one ty-
pe of games for girls and many different types of games for boys.  I
do not think that is feminist, or politically correct, to point that
out. The phrase girl game is a potential misunderstanding.

> It is certainly not 100% accurate to say that The Sims and RCT are
> "games for girls", but it is indeed accurate to say that both are
> "games that appeal to girls" -- at least when compared to other
> games. I think it makes *perfect* sense to refer to specific types
> of games by their target players, at least until we have an actual
> quantifiable description of the game itself.

When talking about games it indeed makes far more sense to describe
them by content, gameplay and appeal factors, rather than by a la-
bel like girl game.  If you want to make games that appeal to girls
you have to figure out what it is in games that that target audience
likes, and how current games in the chosen genre lack, or provide,
for those preferences.

If you want to make a "girl game" you end up with barbie, or with a
virtual horse, because "girls play with dolls until they are old e-
nough to love horses". This is generally nonsense and lazy thinking.
If you want to create a game, even a first person shooter, and you
want to give it an appeal to women, you have to figure out what it
is in the current crop of games that is off putting, confusing or
downright revolting, to women. You may find out that within the con-
strictions of the genre you can not overcome every problem point. In
that case you end up with a niche-market game and there is nothing
wrong with that.  I would like to point out that, when I talk about
women in the above example, I really mean a much broader audience.
Women is just a convenient label as an example, but the issue is not
just about women.  The same mistake is made when people are starting
to look for games for "casual gamers", though less fuzz is made over
that it seems.  Anyway, I think I have lost the thread of what I was
meaning to say, so I will leave it at this for now :)


Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...

Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey

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