GDC: We Need More Women In Video Games

[Neeka Keet]

^I suspect it is you who has entirely missed the point so let me explain it to you.

Once again, someone who is not involved in something wants it to change to suit them despite it not needing to. Just look at the title of this thread. "We need more women in video games". Why ? Why do we need them ? Need implies that the games industry will somehow end without women when it simply will not.

The fact is that casual gaming and the chase for women's money that's come with it has done nothing to improve the overall quality of the games industry's output. If anything, it has become drastically worse. A quick scan through Metacritic will show that.

So what? Casual games are obviously a niche that had yet to be tapped and Nintendo was smart enough to save their company by taking a chance.

BTW women aren't the only "casual gamers". You make it sound like crap games are all designed to appeal to women.


P.S. You really think that using a Girls Aloud song is meant merely to appeal to women? You don't think they could be trying to appeal to young people and the general public who seem enjoy vapid crappy pop music?


NEEKA KEET, who is about to log some serious time on Fallout 3 tonight on her XBOX 360 and tommorow is gonna have some fun playing Rockband 2 with friends on her PS3.

 

[Hermiod]

So what? Casual games are obviously a niche that had yet to be tapped and Nintendo was smart enough to save their company by taking a chance.

BTW women aren't the only "casual gamers". You make it sound like crap games are all designed to appeal to women.

Nope, just the crap casual ones that happen to be flooding the market. Unfortunately, the two markets - casual gamers and women - have a very signficant amount of overlap.

P.S. You really think that using a Girls Aloud song is meant merely to appeal to women? You don't think they could be trying to appeal to young people and the general public who seem enjoy vapid crappy pop music?

Girls Aloud don't exactly have a huge male fanbase.

NEEKA KEET, who is about to log some serious time on Fallout 3 tonight on her XBOX 360 and tommorow is gonna have some fun playing Rockband 2 with friends on her PS3.

I love this, I really do. Every time the subject of what games women play comes up - or what music they listen to, or what cars they drive or anything else to do with any area of male interest - there's always a woman who comes along and says "Look at me! I play Fallout 3/listen to Iron Maiden/can strip an engine/understand the offside rule!"

We know! We get it! Some women like the same things as men! We understand that!

 

[Arrqh]

So what? Casual games are obviously a niche that had yet to be tapped and Nintendo was smart enough to save their company by taking a chance.

BTW women aren't the only "casual gamers". You make it sound like crap games are all designed to appeal to women.

Nope, just the crap casual ones that happen to be flooding the market. Unfortunately, the two markets - casual gamers and women - have a very signficant amount of overlap.

As has already been pointed out, the glut of shovelware on the Wii is very clearly not limited to titles that are attempting to appeal to women. A significant portion is targeted at men and another large portion targeted at everyone. Therefore, you tying the poor quality games directly to games targeted at women is wrong.

 

[Neeka Keet]

So what? Casual games are obviously a niche that had yet to be tapped and Nintendo was smart enough to save their company by taking a chance.

BTW women aren't the only "casual gamers". You make it sound like crap games are all designed to appeal to women.

Nope, just the crap casual ones that happen to be flooding the market. Unfortunately, the two markets - casual gamers and women - have a very signficant amount of overlap.

P.S. You really think that using a Girls Aloud song is meant merely to appeal to women? You don't think they could be trying to appeal to young people and the general public who seem enjoy vapid crappy pop music?

Girls Aloud don't exactly have a huge male fanbase.

NEEKA KEET, who is about to log some serious time on Fallout 3 tonight on her XBOX 360 and tommorow is gonna have some fun playing Rockband 2 with friends on her PS3.

I love this, I really do. Every time the subject of what games women play comes up - or what music they listen to, or what cars they drive or anything else to do with any area of male interest - there's always a woman who comes along and says "Look at me! I play Fallout 3/listen to Iron Maiden/can strip an engine/understand the offside rule!"

We know! We get it! Some women like the same things as men! We understand that!

I think you overreact and generalize too much. But if you wanna blame women for what ails the video game industry go right ahead. Also you're being very condescending and as a female gamer I don't appreciate it because I deal with enough crap about it as it is.

 

[Hermiod]

I think you overreact and generalize too much. But if you wanna blame women for what ails the video game industry go right ahead. Also you're being very condescending and as a female gamer I don't appreciate it because I deal with enough crap about it as it is.

Where did I blame women ? I blamed the lower end of the industry for targeting women with bad games. If anything, women are the ones losing out here.

 

[Neeka Keet]

I think you overreact and generalize too much. But if you wanna blame women for what ails the video game industry go right ahead. Also you're being very condescending and as a female gamer I don't appreciate it because I deal with enough crap about it as it is.

Where did I blame women ? I blamed the lower end of the industry for targeting women with bad games. If anything, women are the ones losing out here.

I want you to give me concrete examples on how the industry is targeting women specifically with crappy games. A Girls Aloud song in a commercial, btw, is not a concrete or convincing example because men listen to that crap too. I believe those women are physically attractive? As others have said I believe the industry is actively attracting the casual gamer with these products not just those people who lack penises.

 

[Hermiod]

^To begin with, as I have already explained, it was not a song, it was them. They did not sing. They were shown playing a game together. Men don't listen to music because the women are good looking. They buy men's magazines with pictures of those women instead, by the way.

There is a considerable overlap between what Nintendo and the third parties producing games for the Wii and DS consider to be a "casual" gamer and female gamers to the point where the vast majority of casual gamers are women. By targeting casual gamers, you by default target women and a much smaller number of men.

I am still waiting for somebody to prove the OP's case, that increasing the number of women in the games industry will help it in any significant way whatsoever. All I see here is one individual seeking to dilute and sanitise what has made the games industry successful and another seeking to tell me not to generalise while making a pretty damned huge generalisation herself.

 

[Neeka Keet]

^To begin with, as I have already explained, it was not a song, it was them. They did not sing. They were shown playing a game together. Men don't listen to music because the women are good looking. They buy men's magazines with pictures of those women instead, by the way.

There is a considerable overlap between what Nintendo and the third parties producing games for the Wii and DS consider to be a "casual" gamer and female gamers to the point where the vast majority of casual gamers are women. By targeting casual gamers, you by default target women and a much smaller number of men.

I am still waiting for somebody to prove the OP's case, that increasing the number of women in the games industry will help it in any significant way whatsoever. All I see here is one individual seeking to dilute and sanitise what has made the games industry successful and another seeking to tell me not to generalise while making a pretty damned huge generalisation herself.

Getting more women in the design aspect of the industry would add a different perspective in my opinion. I believe that if efforts are made to get women interested in participating in the design of games by showing what it takes education wise to get there plus recruiting and hiring women not merely to fill a quota but because these women have a passion for it is nothing but a good thing. But being pissed off that the female casual gamer is being catered to by Nintendo and other companies with games you (and myself admittedly) dislike greatly is crazy.

There's shitty movies and there's great movies, there's shitty games and there's great games. So what? They wanna sell games and they'll make different kinds to fit as many different demographics as possible.

Sorry I generalized before, a bad habit I try to control as much as I can. It's a little difficult to not overreact because you have been a bit over the top about the topic.

 

[Hermiod]

^My very first point in this thread was:

Getting women in to software development is hard. You can't make people train to do jobs they don't want to do.

That's my biggest problem here. The non-Brits in this thread won't know so much about this, but we get a lot of these kind of ideas. Let's improve industry X by making demographic Y get jobs in that industry, oh and it won't hurt that people in industry X get a good wage. Doesn't matter if demographic Y wants those jobs or not and never is the actual benefit demonstrated.

Might having more women developing hardcore games help ? Maybe. Maybe it will have an effect on the portrayal of women in games, but they still won't be portrayed any better than the example I gave - Alyx Vance.

Some will cite Lara Croft as something of an anti-Alyx, but most forget that the Tomb Raider games have generally received well above average reviews and are often fairly good games. There have been bad games in the series and those haven't sold well. It's really the same mentality that makes people think Tricia Helfer can't be a good actress because she looks the way she does.