Women and Video Games : Game Devs Hate Chicks

Developers Don't Make it Easy for Them

Published on March 6, 2007 By greywar In Gaming

I am a gamer and my wife is decidedly not. Nonetheless she makes an effort to play a few games with me. Lately though it seems as though game developers are going out of their way to keep her from finding any appeal in their products.

Our favorites are games that support local multi-player in cooperative mode. The most notable of these in recent days has been Gears of War. Gears has a simple split screen coop view and a solid system of gameplay. She and I played through the entire single-player game on coop mode and enjoyed it despite the fact that she couldn't choose a female avatar to represent her. Instead she played as Dom the hulking ultra-male soldier. This is far from an exception in video games.

Rainbow Six : No female avatars for utterly no reason. Additionally the coop story mode inexplicably has no briefings or voice-overs.

Raw Vs. Smackdown 2007 : A game that comes within a rat's whisker of being a great game for couples. You can make incredibly detailed character models of either sex and customize everything from their move sets to the motion of their walk (Really I wish I could post a movie of the Gay Negrodamus wrestler's entrance... it still cracks us both up). She and I really got into the game initially as I was playing through the Season mode and she would help me along in coop mode or fight against me when I got tired of the AI's fighting style.

The game's humorous (often unintentionally) setting helped keep her interested too. Unfortunately this game's developer really doesn't want girls to play. Why do I say that? Well they actually added code to prevent you from using female character models in Season mode and about 80% of the game's standalone modes as well. Want to have your wife fight someone in a cage match? Tough shit, they have disallowed it. The part that kills me is that they very obviously did this on purpose! What for? To ensure gamers and their wives/girlfriends can't do things together? To decrease sales and online play? Why?? WTF???

These games would seem to be custom made for women. My wife loved the character generator with it's amazing array of choices and options but then is not allowed to use her creations? Plain retarded.

We also play a lot of the Samurai Warriors franchise of games. She likes the system and hordes of baddies to kill. the games even have a few female characters to choose from! Good step. Then the most recent iteration comes out with the option to create your own character again! "Great!", I think to myself as I buy it. "She can play with her own avatar! That will be fun." Of course the character generator has roughly 3 female models with about 0 options for customization. Not bad but still pretty lame considering that and earlier iteration of the series had a more full featured system. No one reuses code anymore?

Crackdown: No female avatars, no local co-op. Back in the store 2 days after I bought it. Great game, poor attempt to appeal to couples.

Most of the time the inclusion of female options in these games comes at little to no cost to the developer. In other cases the community of modders would be all too happy to do the damn characters models for the developers for free yet most game devs simply don't put forth the minimal effort it would take to vastly broaden their game's appeal.

In Smackdown's case the developer actually expended additional time and effort to keep women from playing. What's the deal guys? Are you that frightened of girls or do you just hate those gamers who actually have wives or girlfriends? Figure it out and get some counseling.

Comments (Page 2)

FireBender

on Mar 07, 2007

My cousin is a woman and she loves video games.

Vivisector9999

on Mar 07, 2007

My lover has always enjoyed playing that old Worms World Party game with me. Sometimes she even kicks my ass at it. It's a lot of fun trying to outwit and outgun each other.

And yet she has never once complained that there aren't any girl worms, or that all of the team voice sets that you can pick seem to be male.

Oh, yeah, and even though it's really cartoonish, the game is full of guns and bazookas and bombs and fire and explosions and exploding animals and other shit that only boys are "supposed" to like.

I guess she just understands that it doesn't really matter whether a character in a damn video game has a penis or not.

(Although, in fairness to you, that Raw vs. Smackdown thing where you can create girls but not play them in so much of the game is weak. I mean, why bother allowing it if you can't do anything with them? That doesn't make sense.)

tetleytea

on Mar 07, 2007

My wife plays at www.pogo.com. That game site has chick written on it all the way. I feel gay just playing it.

DodgyDude

on Mar 07, 2007

I think it's more the market myself, It's not so much the devs its the corporate philosophy behind the marketing. So if your looking for a scapegoat look no further than the end user.

Even when the lead character is female as in Lara Croft it seems to only inforce the feeling of a male dominated user base influencing the development and marketing of games.

This situation isn't going to change overnight, If ever. But I don't find any problems with playing games that have female leads , Like Dreamfall.

All I can say is it's a tricky situation for the games manufacturers when the game players are so overwhelmingly males. almost a catch 22, the industry desperately wants more women to play more games but where do they begin.

Another problem is computer gaming reputation, it still has the image of teenaged lads spending their lives in their bedroom playing games. until you break that image for good then it will be difficult to get more women interested.

I know everyone is different but it's the masses they try to please, It's all about sales. The more units they sell the more money they make and women aren't a big part of that equation yet.

So yes computer games are as sexist as the audience wants them, no more no less.
They wouldn't sell so well otherwise.

tetleytea

on Mar 07, 2007

I know everyone is different but it's the masses they try to please, It's all about sales. The more units they sell the more money they make and women aren't a big part of that equation yet.

Yes, and women are a huge and untapped market segment. Or more specifically, ugly women--that's a huge market segment. Particularly in Massachusetts.

muahahahahhahahahaaa

DodgyDude

on Mar 07, 2007

Yes, ugly women--that's a huge market segment. Particularly in Massachusetts.

muahahahahhahahahaaa

I guess you wont too much trouble pulling then .

muahahahahhahahahaaa

tetleytea

on Mar 07, 2007

Or I bet you could market existing games very easily by changing them just a little bit. Like Mortal Kombat. Just create a new, big lady sumo wrestler wielding a purse. Then not only do you market to the women, I think it would be kinda fun to lose.

DodgyDude

on Mar 07, 2007

Hmmmm.

greywar

on Mar 07, 2007

For most commenters: RTFA. Not talking about gamer girls here at all. Not a bit. Most of commentary here seems to have completely missed that point.

Actually, Rainbow six is accurate (well, liberally.) Most world military powers still don't allow females in special warfare units

Accuracy is not the issue. Fun is.

Additionally the article is about non-gamer females not girls who are out there playing NWN all on their own. There are far more casual gaming customers out there as wives or girlfriends of gamers than there are gamer girls.

No I don't own soul caliber III and it wouldn't matter if I did as it's two-player modes are competitive only. Not sure how man of your non-game wives enjoy playing competitively with you but mine certainly doesn't enjoy it.

DodgyDude

on Mar 07, 2007

The genre is also the problem. Males are most likely to do the most exciting things. I.E. war, fighting, racing, scifi type stuff. so ladies, get your asses into jets, strap on guns and kick Captain kirk ou of his seat and well play games about you, maybe

greywar

on Mar 07, 2007

Males are most likely to do the most exciting things. I.E. war, fighting, racing, scifi type stuff. so ladies, get your asses into jets, strap on guns and kick Captain kirk ou of his seat and well play games about you, maybe

I think you have just illustrated the problem (albeit unintentionally). This is the attitude that many male game devs have so they program equally idiotic choices into their games.

Thervold

on Mar 07, 2007

You'll notice that the most female-deprived genre is FPS. While there are many women who love and play these games, the market is heavily male-dominated. So business lends itself to focusing on attracting a male audience. The cyecle continues. However, there are some exceptions. No One Lives Forever was a great spy/FPS game with a female protagonist. I think more games like that one might be what the industry needs to give the genre a better light to those women turned off from the rest.

Some other games I can think of include the more recent Final Fantasy games (X and XII) that have a male protagonist and a strong female support. Most MMOs allow for both male and female characters with the added social aspect. Then you have Katamari Damacy in which the weirdness factor overcomes any gender bias.

greywar

on Mar 07, 2007

No One Lives Forever was a great spy/FPS game with a female protagonist. I think more games like that one might be what the industry needs to give the genre a better light to those women turned off from the rest.

Perhaps, but I think the industry would be better served by simply allowing more features for people whose wife is only playing because they want to do something together with their husband. My wife just doesn't give a damn about video games on her own and is unlikely to ever be changed in that regard. They can go a looong ways towards her enjoying games that we play together though.

Thervold

on Mar 07, 2007

Good point. MMOs might work, but you need to resist playing when she's not, otherwise you can easily surpass/outlevel her. My wife and I play Guild Wars together, and we enjoy it.

tetleytea

on Mar 07, 2007

Let's see, what are my gaming experiences with my SO:

There's the time my gf was playing Unreal Tournament free-for-all with me. This guy online hit on her and wanted to see if she would team up together against that tetleytea guy. She shot him.

LOLOLOLOL!!!

We'll play online Spades as partners. Little do they know, we're sitting in the same room together--and we can see each other's cards.

hee hee hee hee.... Sometimes we'll play other free-for-all games, and people don't know right away that we're actually allied. It's hilarious!

We've also had good luck playing word games like Scrabble together in co-op mode.

She has always said she is not too crazy about games involving killing, aliens, etc.. But she does like games that involve caring for characters, coddling them, building them up, etc..

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