PRINTGirls who game
Melissa Huffer
Despite the male-dominated gaming industry’s tendency to ignore women, such gamers such Robbie Hill remain dedicated to casual and hardcore games.
July 24, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Controllers in hand, Robbie Hill perches on the edge of the couch. Like a skilled assassin, Hill shoots off the heads of slack-jawed zombies and an axe-wielding hermit with ease.
Moments later, a scream shatters her cool exterior as a giant armed with a chainsaw lops off her character’s head. She falls back into the folds of the couch, exhales and smiles. Adjusting her rimless glasses, Hill brushes her bangs out of her eyes.
Casual Games
Easy to learn
Requires little video game skill
Non-violent
Played in shorter increments
Simpler in concept
Less expensive
Replayabie
Addictive
Hardcore Games
Harder to learn
Require gaming experience
More complex
Time-consuming
Marketed more toward men
Violent or suspenseful
Require a console to play
- Gaming issue glossary
- A new grip on rehab
- Rated ‘E’ for exercise
- It’s my turn to play
- Kings and queens of strategy
- Doc hunt
- Tabled obsessions
- For every age
- On the job with a pinball wizard
- Off-screen games
- Where virtual meets reality
- What’s next?
- Bent on experimentation
- Guess who games?
- Table-Top Gamer: Patrick Nolan, 38
- Negin Rising
Hill is a video gamer. This is her hobby: For four to five hours a day, she retreats into a virtual world.
She’s hardly the only one. According to a 2007 survey by the Entertainment Software Association, women make up 38 percent of all video gamers. Once believed to be an industry driven by men and teenage boy consumers, new trends suggest game developers are starting to think more about the opposite sex and beginning to market to both genders.
“People are aware of the male-dominated industry, and they want to open up their games to everyone,” says Jill Duffy, senior contributing editor for Game Developer, an industry magazine. “It’s about opening up the games to the individual rather than redirecting them toward women.”
Games become casual
According to a 2007 Casual Games Market Report, 74 percent of paying “casual” game customers are women. Game developers target these casual games toward mass consumers because they are easy to learn, require little to no video game expertise and skill, are non-violent and are usually played in smaller time increments.
PCs are the common platform for casual games, which helps explain why the ESA reported that 47 percent of online game players are female.
Duffy says she attributes this popularity to the prevalence of the computer, its use for more than just games and its gender-neutral marketing. Game consoles, however, are marketed more toward men, she says.
Because the casual game market is growing by 20 percent each year, other consoles such as the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii are adding casual games to their repertoire. These games are designed to attract women and newcomers while also trying to stay popular among men and established gamers.
The Guitar Hero series on Playstation 3, Brain Age on Nintendo DS, Live Arcade games on Xbox and Wii Fit on the Wii are just some of the new games that appeal to this range of gamers.
“More games are becoming gender-inclusive,” says Ashley Jenkins, community manager at the entertainment products’ developer and publisher Ubisoft. “These games don’t pander. Women aren’t stupid, and if we play something, it better be good.”
Gaming companies are marketing social games that anyone can join in on. Sony and Nintendo are also marketing easy-to-use, non-traditional joypads that are less intimidating. Because casual games are both cheaper and easier to produce, the reward is greater than the risk for manufacturers.
Duffy says Nintendo has done the most in terms of marketing to everyone. “The Nintendo Wii looks much more like a family-friendly toy or electronic device than most other game systems,” she says. Compared to the more “masculine” and “powerful” standard black or steel gray of traditional controllers, the Wii’s neutral color makes it seem more accessible, she says.
Brian Hulsizer of Game City in Columbia says that women make up approximately 5 percent of his customers, and those who shop at his store seem to like interactive consoles. These consoles are made for casual games and allow players to get up and move around.
“From what I see, a lot of women lean toward Nintendo Wii or Nintendo DS,” Hulsizer says.
At the other end of the spectrum are the “hardcore” games. The definition is flexible, but these games are traditionally marketed toward men, are violent or suspenseful and require gaming experience, a console and a lot of free time.
Jenkins says approximately one in 10 hardcore gamers is a woman. Because a lot of casual gamers are women, hardcore female gamers such as Hill are often not marketers’ biggest concerns.
However, a growing number of these women refuse to let the fact that they’re not considered a target audience keep them from exploring hardcore games.
“Since I’ve been playing, I see more and more (hardcore women gamers),” Jenkins says. “It’s getting to the point where it’s not seen as anything special or unique. And that is great.”
Honing the addiction
For the most part, women tend to like role-playing games and action-adventure games because they are easy to get the hang of and have narratives, Jenkins says.
Hulsizer says many of Game City’s female customers tend to buy games that have a
story line and characters they have some influence over.
On the other hand, Duffy argues that choosing a game has nothing to do with a person’s sex. “People enjoy certain games based on their personality, not their gender,” she says.
Monique Boye, Seattle founder of the blog Girls Don’t Game, enjoys everything from puzzles to first-person shooters and says RPGs are popular among women thanks to story lines, brightly pixelated scenes and their ability to enrapture.
Columbia gamer Melissa Stemme, 29, recently became an RPG fan for these reasons. “The games they are making now have stronger narratives than the games I played in the '80s,” Stemme says. “It’s like watching a good movie or reading a good book.”
Stemme says she usually sticks to a certain game niche, which consists of platformers such as Okami, Ratchet and Clank and Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. These appeal to her because they are colorful, are not “staggeringly difficult” and involve puzzles and obstacles.
Although 22-year-old Columbia gamer Stephanie Berg enjoys first- and third-person shooters, she prefers PC puzzle games because they don’t consume her time like video games do. Such games as Bejeweled don’t require a huge time investment. Of these, Berg’s favorites include Jewel Quest, Solitaire and Mahjongg.
“I don’t want to get immersed in video games and forget about school,” Berg says.
Berg doesn’t totally forgo RPGs, however; she enjoys the social aspect they provide. And other women are also doling out punches and roundhouse kicks to the faces of their opponents in multi-player fighting games. Although virtual beatings might sound antagonistic, they provide a way for gamers to bond.
“It’s just a way for my friends to hang out together,” Berg says.
The gaming gender gap
Female characters in video games are typically depicted as gorgeous, busty and sensual. These images seem ripped from the pages of Maxim.
“Guys make what they know,” Jenkins says. “These guys have no idea what appeals to women.”
According to Game Developer research, 9 to 12 percent of those who work in video game development are women, and most are in PR and marketing. Only 3 percent of video game programmers are women, and these women are paid, on average, $8,000 less than their male counterparts.
However, there are more females in the business and production side of the game industry, with women accounting for 18 percent of game producers.
“I think the pathway into careers in business and production is a bit more welcoming to women than careers that traditionally lead to more technical jobs,” Duffy says.
Duffy says these women are not pigeonholed. Instead, the shortage of women in the IT industry is because women in sciences usually have biological science degrees while men typically pursue degrees in IT or computer science majors.
“You can’t just recruit women into programming jobs,” Duffy says. “If women are not going into those fields of study in large numbers, there isn’t a talent pool to recruit from.”
Despite stereotypical portrayals of women, Jenkins says that animated beauty might just be a video game trademark.
“I would be hard put to point out an unattractive female, but I would be just as hard put to point out an unattractive male,” she says.
Outrageous beauty aside, game makers still ensure these women are built with brains and power.
“I’ve never seen a stupid female video game character,” Hill says. ‘They are usually really smart, really strong or really wise. Even in fighting games, when women are beautiful and busty, they are still ridiculously powerful, and they’re mean and nasty. They aren’t going down without a fight.”
