Getting the Girl

1up.com has a great article up entitled Getting The Girl. Zoe Flower discusses female gaming stereotypes, the role of women in gaming, and the mythical "girl formula" for gaming success. From the article: "Lara Croft continues to personify an ongoing culture clash over gender, sexuality, empowerment, and objectification. It was while standing in my first-ever ladies' room line at E3 2004 as I pondered the Playboy bunnies, the return of Leisure Suit Larry, and the slew of buxom virtual ladies headlining each booth that I questioned whether the industry had evolved at all."

objectification?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is focusing on a woman's body objectification? And not focusing on her mind or her personality? Clearly I don't look at women's bodies as "objects" but as "women's bodies". Oh well. I just treat that as one of those words like "empowerment" that doesn't really mean anything except to indicate how much self-censorship you have to impose around the person who said it.

For the record I don't like Lara Croft or booth babes or fake tits, but I'm not ashamed to find a woman attractive based on her looks alone.

Nintendo...

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that I'm really liking about Nintendo is that they seem adamant about acquiring new markets for their products... the DS in particular - many women have taken to the device, loving games like Feel The Magic and the Mario 64 DS minigames... The new method of input is a lot easier for newbie gamers to grasp than, say, an Xbox controller with god knows how many different buttons on it. Instead of relying on the tried and true 12-25 male market, I'm really glad Nintendo has been wanting to branch out more.

Most people seem to think that just because girls don't want to play these violent FPSes and GTA clones that are rampant at the moment, they will never be interested in games. But I know quite a few girls who are into games, including my girlfriend... but the kind of games they play - The Sims, (thing) Tycoon, puzzlers, and many Japanese RPGs, is pretty different from what's currently popular with your typical casual male gamer.

I think the best way to get more girl gamers is to have more girls producing games... Feel The Magic is a hit with the ladies, and it was headed up by 2 women. Plus, The Greatest Game Series Ever [phantasystar.com] was headed up by a woman :)

Re:Target Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't mean that you should only target your largest audience. Women are still a huge market

The question is, do the big breasted women alienate female gamers to the point where the female sales lost outweigh the male sales gained?

Given the marketing budgets of the average game, I'd be inclined to think that they've done their research and found that it really doesn't alienate them that much.

Of course, this will be dependent upon the fact that they'll be considering existing female gamers, and not considering how many are put off from gaming altogether by this attitude.

Re:Target Audience

[dnoyeb]

Women are more adaptable in that sense. I can not see a man playing a game with men it it which were designed to be sexually attractive to women. It would be a turn off.

But I can easily see the reverse.

Booth Babes

[Brandybuck]

Do booth babes sell product? I can recall only two sets of booth babes at a LWCE. The first was the BSD Daemon Babe, Cerwin Ercen. She remains popular to this day. But her popularity has more to do with her geekiness, ordinariness, and her obvious play on the booth babe stereotype. Cerwin as a booth babe is clever hack. It's screaming to an unlistening world that you don't have to be a lobotomized and plasticized supermodel from the pages of Playboy to look sexy.

But at that same expo there was another set of booth babes (and a couple of booth studs for "balance"). They were the epitome of the stereotype. What booth was this? Frankly, I can't remember. These people were so out of place at the convention that even the models looked embarassed.

They didn't show up at the next show.

Re:Target Audience

[Olix]

Some of my Real Life female friends are gamers. I got really shocked the first time one of them mentioned playing UT2004 online. Then I felt realy guilty. Still can't temp any into coming to a Lan party. I guess hanging around with a load of sweaty Blokes for a weekend is not their cup of tea, for some reason.

Re:Target Audience

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a guy gamer, and I'm turned off by scanty clothes. When I'm playing a game, I want to throw down, I don't want to look at T&A. I loved the gameplay of Tomb Raider, but my favorite levels were the ones in which she was wearing regular clothes (like the arctic levels). And, I like the game "Ghost in the Shell" but I wish they didn't stick that thong/tights combo on her. At least it was more modest than the series, I guess that's something.

Why can't they put realistic clothes on the characters? A female super-cop would be wearing a loose-fitting, comfortable jumpsuit and body armor, not a thong over tights. I mean, really.

For me, any overt sexuality ruins a game. Or at least, lowers its value a bit. It's just an annoying distraction.

Re:What about the studly men!?

[kaiidth]

Well, both sexes are regularly 'objectified' (if anybody's a believer in "objectification is just a politically correct excuse to whine", see this site [psu.edu] for a bit of not-too-crap research and discussion on the matter, such as it is), although it's a relatively recent phenomenon for men - there's a vaguely interesting article on the subject here [asu.edu].

One suggestion in this article is that the increasingly frequent appearance of these idealised images of men are causing similar effects to those often seen in women, blamed on objectification by feminists, and laughed away by the rest of the world :-) And I quote:

The bodies in advertisements come to represent an ideal that individuals seek to achieve, and hence provide the foundation for a masochistic or punitive relationship with one's own body. It becomes possible to think about one s body as if it were this thing which followed one about and attached itself unevenly to the ideal outline which lingers beneath (Coward, 1992, p. 416). The dislike for the body becomes pathological and has very real consequences such as low self-esteem, distorted self-image, eating disorders, and even changing the body through painful plastic surgery (Coward, 1992; Kilbourne, 1999;Wolf, 1991).

Increasingly, these consequences are manifesting in men, who are responding to a consumer culture that is less and less forgiving of those who are not sufficiently young, thin, and attractive. In response to these images of the perfect male, men are getting manicures and facials, dyeing their hair, concealing blemishes, and spending millions on plastic surgery.

In 1992, men spent $88 million on liposuction, facelifts, nose-reshaping, and eyelid surgery. This number increased to almost $130 million in 1997. In 1996, men spent $12 million on penile implants, and silicone calf and pectoral implants are rapidly increasing in popularity (Fraser, 1999). In addition, men now account for almost 10% of individuals suffering with eating disorders (Fraser, 1999). In short, men are increasingly dissatisfied with their bodies, go to great lengths to achieve a more youthful and hard-bodied appearance, and are suffering the psychological consequences that are a side effect of consumer culture.

So there we are. Finally, equality of the sexes; we all get to have bad self-image thrust upon us! The bonus side is I suppose that one day it might well equal out; when we're all totally freaked out, bulimic gym zombies, maybe there'll be an advertising revolution of some kind.

And the cynical part of me also wants to add: what goes around, comes around...

Re:Target Audience

[qurk]

Should game designers put an option in their "options" menu for "sex of player" then?

And would most women want a small-breasted woman on the computer screen?

Personally I think small-breasted woman are fine (as long as they are my age, 25-30). Big boobs are great, but overrated perhaps? Come on!!!

Big boobed girl - "duh like totally want to go to the mall"

Small-boobed girl - "whoa lets play 100 more rounds of KOF 2002 and then we will know who kicks ass!"

Uh......it's not hard to choose, guys.

Re:Target Audience

[Stellaaa]

Here I am! (One of the 3% of female /.ers)

Loved the old side scrolling Duke Nukem. Can't say I ever felt any attraction to him. On the whole, FPS bore me to tears - I played original Wolfenstien back in what? 1993/4? and have never really cared for any since - Doom Quake whatever just more of the same.

The game I have played the most, in all its forms, is Civilization. No large-breasted women or body-builder guys. The game I have played additively since I got it for Christmas is Sid Meier's Pirates! (Sid is GOD-did I mention that?)

Pirates! does feature a variety of large breasted women in those 18th century corsets that just make the ole boobs pop right out. I don't find them the least attractive (despite rumours to the contrary I am not a lesbian) but I must admit (shhhhh- don't tell anybody) I find my handsome young swashbuckler character strangely attractive. It's not his Arnie-like build (he is quite skinny actually), or that he stops and thinks about stuff (I do that for him). I think it's the pony-tail and tall boots. Or maybe the way he handles his sword ;-) Arrrrrrrrr. Shiver me timbers.

Stella

Re:Target Audience

[Marvelicious]

sexual stereotypes created by men

Sit on a bench in a mall for a couple hours sometime. You will notice that women dress almost in uniform by age group. I'm sure no man decided all women should do that "streaked" hair thing, but In my area 75 percent of women in their 20's have it.

I'm sorry, but people have to take responsibility for their own actions. If you dress a certain way, it's your choice. If you let advertising or stereotypes influence that, it's your choice to do so. If you think you need to lose weight because of some perceived stereotype, go ahead - after all anorexia and bulimia aren't a drop in the bucket compared to obesity in this country, and the majority of us could stand to lose a couple pounds. Doesn't matter to me, I'll still be in sandals, levis and an aloha shirt with long hair. Every few years or so, I'm accidentally fashionable!

Re:What about the studly men!?

[identity0]

Jesus, this topic is filled with so many misconceptions of what women find attractive that I feel the need to interject. (disclaimer: I am a guy, but I tend to pay attention to what women want more than to the latest kernel release, unlike most slashdoters)

You know what videogame character I've heard women I know be attracted to the most? It's goddamn Link, from the Zelda series. Not some steroid-abusing freak from Serious Sam or Duke Nukem, but the cute little dude with elf ears. The Final Fantasy guys are popular with girls, too.

The muscle-bound tough guy is more of an asperation for guys than an attraction for girls, though girls like that to a certain extent. Girls tend to like the more realistic, cuter guys who have an personality than one-liners about kicking ass.

Simple question: have you ever seen Arnie or Stallone on the poster for some chick flick? No, it's always some relatively wimpy-looking guy like Cusack or Cruise. So stop pretending that Nukem & pals are trying to attract women - they're clearly not.

As a side note, Nintendo seems to be doing a much better job of attracting women than other companies. The girls that I knew in high school who played lots of video games always seemed to be talking about Nintendo games like Pokemon, Mario, Donkey Kong, Kirby, etc.

Heres a novel idea

[Anonymous Coward]

A game is a product. A product is designed for its market. The success of a product is measured in sales and proffit. There is no other consideration.