Wanted: Female Game Testers 549
BaronVonDuvet writes "The BBC is covering
this story
regarding the lack of female testers for the new Tomb Raider game. Given that there are a number of female gamers (admittedly far fewer than male gamers) why are they having so many problems finding women? Is this a sign that the female gaming market has never really taken off? Is the way men and women approach a game really that different? Are they really interested in finding women testers or is the whole thing a publicity stunt? If you're an interested woman maybe you should get in touch."
Women Don't find.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Women Don't find.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think liking massive, balloon-like honkers is a matter of taste. Now, I like video game babes as much as the next guy, but I've always found Lara Croft to be laughably ridiculous. As for evidence, well, I can say that a lot of ludicrous video game boobs come out of Japan--thus, America isn't the only place where this is prevelant.
Girl Gamers Unite (at my house) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Girl Gamers Unite (at my house) (Score:2, Insightful)
If you think I'm flaming, just read one of the hundreds of Venus&Mars books on the shelves nowadays.
P.S. I posted this below, but on rereading it seems more relevant to here!
Re:Girl Gamers Unite (at my house) (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you remember Purple Moon? They thought much the way you do. "Oooh, girls like talking, so we'll make games about how difficult it is to get through school! They'll gossip about the other girls, and they'll try to be popular."
Purple Moon didn't survive. They were eventually bought by Mattel, mostly (as I recall), as a method of acquiring inexpensive office equipment.
As someone who's made successful [kidsdomain.com] games [amazon.com] for [businessweek.com] girls [superkids.com], I can say that girls do like to solve puzzles.
It's true that they're not as into score as much as males are; they tend to prefer goals. And they don't project themselves into the character as much as men do, they usually prefer to play alongside the onscreen persona.
Granted, my games are for a slightly younger set, but the lessons translate well into later life.
Also, think The Sims. Very high female user base. Not really much "conversation", per se, but lots of goals.
That being said, I know several girls who game many types of games, both inside the game industry and out. I believe that most of the female aversion to gaming had to do with the way it was introduced in the 80's, rather than a genetic predisposition. But I tend to favor nurture over nature.
=Brian
Re:Girl Gamers Unite (at my house) (Score:5, Insightful)
There's evidence to back this up.
The American Association of University Women [aauw.org] did some extensive research [aauw.org] into why girls don't tend to get into computers -- and one of the things they studied were games.
And they found that the typical computer game (Go Forth and Shoot Things) did not appeal girls because they generally found them boring and repetitive. ("Oh look. Yet another game where you make things explode. Been there, done that. YAWN.")
Games ostensibly designed for girls (Talk, Shop and Be Popular!) also didn't appeal to girls because they generally found them inane and dumb.
Games like Myst, however, which was more goal-oriented and focused on problem solving, were a huge hit with girls. (Note that games that girls would tend to enjoy would also appeal to boys.) That is, girls like games that make them THINK, not mindlessly shoot things.
I'm female, and it irks me to know end when the knee-jerk suggestion for a "Game for Girls" is something like "Chat with the Computer". Here's a clue -- why would any woman chat with a computer when there are REAL, LIVE people to talk to?
Re:Girl Gamers Unite (at my house) (Score:4, Informative)
An interesting note is that I also work in the public school system and can say that something has happened in the last few years to push girls further and further away from tech. We run Lego robotics and have to beg to get 2 girls out of 30 kids to join. Visual basic classes are lucky to have 1 girl and it is beginning to look like the old 'wood shop' - it's for boys and if a girl takes that class it's just because she is just trying to meet boys. When you do get the rare girl to join VB, she will usually write a calculator program or some type of game that would appeal to a small child. The boys will always include a gun and something to shoot, and the cooler the blood the better. For robotics we noticed that once we made a demo bird robot and glued brightly colored feathers to it, all of a sudden many girls took notice of the legos.
eSchool News (free reg required) has an interesting article about how the DoE is investigating sexual discrimination in tech-ed throughout the country.
Re:Girl Gamers Unite (at my house) (Score:3, Funny)
I guess you've never seen Kornelia in action? In terms of parallel activities, she's clearly:
* Collecting every pickup on the level - to make sure you don't
* Looking to see which way you flee - and planning a route the other way around the level to meet up with you again
* Choosing a nice spot for your new asshole
* Making a shopping list for tomorrow
Re:Girl Gamers Unite (at my house) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Girl Gamers Unite (at my house) (Score:2)
Re:Girl Gamers Unite (at my house) (Score:2, Funny)
My daughter is one. (Score:3, Interesting)
The funny thing is that she will also play on the barbie website [barbie.com] for hours. My son won't go near it.
So maybe someone should try and figure out why boys don't want to play barbie.
Cluelessness in action (Score:4, Interesting)
Where's the sexism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lara doesn't get naked (admittedly, I've only played TR 1, so maybe I'm missing something that occured later in the series), she's not stupid, she routinely guns down bad guys, she's strong, and she's capable.
She does, however, have large breasts, which coincides nicely with the fantasies of 14-18 boys (and 24-38 year old game designers). But some women do in fact have large breasts.
True story: several years ago I bought my then girlfriend a Playstation and Tomb Raider. I didn't see her on weekend afternoons for a few months, because she was always playing Tomb Raider. She loved it. The fact that this woman also had large breasts might have something to do with why she didnt' seem to mind Lara's physique, but it does beg the question: Why does the appearance of a large-breasted woman automatically make something sexist?
Re:Where's the sexism? (Score:4, Insightful)
Secondly, whether or not the accusations of sexism are valid, they are nonetheless widespread. If you're looking for an explanation why female gamers wouldn't want to test this game, you must look more to the game's reputation than the merits thereof.
Re:Where's the sexism? (Score:4, Insightful)
They are the extreme not the norm
Re:Where's the sexism? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's an interesting and accurate point, but it's missing the main idea. While both female and male video game characters differ drastically in appearance from the average real person, the direction in which they differ from the norm is different. Male characters tend to be more gruff and muscular, implying physical capability, intimidation, and power. Female characters, on the other hand, have ridiculous proportions, including huge breasts, tiny waists, and slender arms and legs. These visual attributes only serve to objectify female characters (like Lara Croft), because they emphasize sexual attractiveness and nothing else.
Of course, I am only talking about the visual differences--one could argue that Lara is an empowering character due to her unrealistic acrobatic and athletic abilities in the game. However, that would be ignoring the egregious differences in her appearance, which, I might add, would probably preclude ANY acrobatic activity in a real person. Like walking upright.
Re:Where's the sexism? (Score:3, Interesting)
So being sexually attractive makes you an object:
bullcrap. Your making a delibrate category error,
between object as in subject/object or goal/object
as in object of desire, and object as in unthinking item, in other languages you wouldn't
be able to get away we such an obvios error. Men should not have to be ashamed of having a sex drive.
Re:Where's the sexism? (Score:3, Insightful)
I never said being sexually attractive makes you an object, either, but in case I misled you, let me be more clear about what I meant: in this genre of video games (there are obvious exceptions to the rule for both the portrayal of male and of females), men are made to _look_ strong/independant/capable, and women are made to _look_ appealing to men.
If it's still unclear why this is objectifying, ask yourself this: If a man had the body-type of Duke Nukem, or Chris from Resident Evil, or the character from Metal Gear Solid, what would he gain? Well, those characters are visually different from normal in a way which would give them greater-than-normal physical strength, which is advantageous to them in a way that doesn't depend on other men or women--they are simply stronger and therefore more physically capable. Well, fine. Now, if a woman had the body-type of Lara Croft, what would she gain physically? I contend that anyone with that body type in real life would be physically impeded.
Finally, I never said that men should be ashamed of having a sex drive--in fact, I have no idea what I said to make you said that. What's interesting about the fact that you said that, though, is that it supports my point. If you think that Lara Croft looks different than the normal female as the result of a male sex drive, then you're right. If you think that most male video game characters look the way _they_ do because of a sex drive (female or male), you're wrong. Therein lies the fundamental difference--women are portrayed to cater to a male sex drive and men are portrayed to cater to a male power drive. The result is flimsy, big-breasted females and muscular, powerful males. This isn't exactly rocket science, nor is it some kind of fabricated, liberal nonsense.
Re:Where's the sexism? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, this begs the question: Which object does more harm to women? The game that is played by teenaged boys looking to see a girl in daisy dukes bounce her well rendered boobies up and down while holding firearms, or the toy that teaches impressionably young girls that, when they grow up, they should be thin, blonde, and busty or else they're not worth a shit.
Re:Where's the sexism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lara is supposed to appeal to males with her figure and her brains and strength appeal to females. I find her figure much less offensive than models and actresses, who look (and possibly are) anorexic. Lara couldn't possibly be anorexic.
Another poster was accurate when he/she said (to paraphrase) just because a character in a video game has big boobs doesn't mean it's sexist.
Re:Where's the sexism? (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a time I would have thought testing games were cool. A good buddy of mine clued me in to centipede, and I wasted countless hours on tetris. But Lara Croft? Really now. Maybe if she would swap that I-wanna-look-like-bad-girl barbie push up bra for something more realistic. When I first saw the posters in one of the local gamer shop, a few years go, I thought: cool, a chick for a lead character. Until a few seconds later when I saw the rest of her profile. How crass, no hot shot sniper would dress like that. Her breasts would get in the way of shooting any large automatic weapon. Seeing impossibly, unrealistic breasts makes me think of when the aging character will have had numerous chemos, spinal taps, back surgery, and the last ditch effort mastectomy. Lets start the save Lara fund.
As far as the 14-18 range thinking back to when I was in that range: I didn't really have free time to devote to gaming, computing resources were scarse and I didn't have any extra money to pay for a computer games. If I had the time, and cool computer, I probably would have played doom after hearing about it from a friend.
Until a game can duplicate the fear/fun, release of addreninal factor of nearly getting myself killed cycling the GGB at night, in the dark, in heavy fog/rain, gusts of 30mi, I'm sticking with RL.
Are they testing for bugs or content appeal? (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt gender matters in bug testing unless women tend to play games in significantly different ways than men (thus excercising different parts of the codebase). Since Women are obviously going to be such a small segment of the target market for the game, what difference does it make?
--CTH
MY GOD! (Score:4, Funny)
I am as shocked as you are to find this blanant sexism in Street Fighter, Soulcalibur, Dead or Alive, and others!
Since I, for one, am not a Ninja Master with HUGE MUSCLES, I know I must be as shamed playing these games as the women who do not have huge DDD chests are when playing Tomb Raider! Because video games are meant to remind us of our own painful realities, right?
Guys?
Re:MY GOD! (Score:2)
damn. I'm brimming with tears right now just thinking about it.
Re:MY GOD! (Score:5, Funny)
Ever notice how
Re:MY GOD! (Score:2, Insightful)
A muscle bound man does not compare to a women with exceptionally large breasts. For one, muscles are _used_ during fighting. Laura's breasts are just gratuitous. The games you mentioned would only be sexist if the male characters all had extremely large penises.
-Serra
Re:Cluelessness in action (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cluelessness in action (Score:5, Funny)
OK, who here remembers being an oversexed immature teenage boy?
Re:Cluelessness in action (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cluelessness in action (Score:2)
"They're breasts. If you saw them everytime you got up and looked in the miror and everytime you looked down, you wouldn't find them so facinating after a while."
Re:Cluelessness in action (Score:2, Interesting)
the female form, is objectifing or insulting.
A good deal of woman are attention seeking and
loving feeling desired (thank goodness). Where
do you think all those girls that make porn or
music videos or run these own amature webcam
pages come from.
Indeed its takes quite a perverse form of philophobia, to turn "you look pretty, i like to
have sex with you", Into "your an object, i want
to degrade and rape you".
Why should we be ashamed of having a sex drive?
Big Tits? (Score:5, Funny)
Because I know if the role of the main character were reversed, I damn well wouldn't be wanting to stare at it.
Re:Big Tits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yea your right, its a good thing that every lead male character in a video game isn't the stereo typical big,buffed,ripped solider/warrior/space marine.
Re:Big Tits? (Score:5, Insightful)
Male characters are typically displayed in what could be considered a comic-book style heroic archetype. The lone wolf, or what have you.
Female characters are typically portrayed as "Tits and ass with a sword or a gun."
That doesn't really appear to women looking for interesting female characters to play.
No One Lives Forever is a great IP to draw women into the FPS market, as the character is a strong female who's sexy without being naked or endowed with 44DD breasts. Will it be successful? Probably not, because advertising is still geared to young males.
No matter how you cut it, the characters will always end up trying to appeal to the people who buy the games, and the people who make them. And that's mainly guys.
Re:Big Tits? (Score:2)
Re:Big Tits? (Score:3, Informative)
On one women do not like men looking at them as sex objects which this game might encourage them to do( wont make a difference but do not tell the girls that). On the other hand men might expect the average female to look like Laura Croft and all the super models in Hollywood. If this happens, women may feel that the men in their lives wont appreciate their physical beaty and would force the women to live up to an unrealistic expectation. Did you know the average model retires at 24 oe 25 because they look to old? Its silly and I do not blame today's women for being upset. Infact even Matel is changing the way barbie looks because it really does have effect the self esteem on pre-teen and teenage girls.
As a guy, I do not understand any of this at all and would never judge a women by her physical appearance. However this is how women think and why most of them do not like Tombraider for these reasons.
Re:Big Tits? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually there a quite a few models aged up to
thirty. In porn models can work until a lot older, they still sexy well into there late thirties. Which only goes to show that fashion magazine editors are lot fussy about youth than men are.
Why not? (Score:5, Funny)
Because I know if the main character were reversed, I damn well wouldn't be wanting to stare at it.
I have no problem looking at Lara frontally
cheap pickup tactic (Score:5, Funny)
As pitiful as it seems, I don't think the guys writing this software have any other means at their disposal... come on... that Lara character is way out of their league... now that they finally realised it, they want to get dates... it's only logical...
Women have different interests (Score:5, Insightful)
However action games are different. As men we like to feel powerfull and dominating other players and bein competitive makes us feel good. Women do not share this instinct.
I think a game designed for women would consist probably of alot of interaction with other players and less macho "hey, look at how fast I can shoot the bfg". I notice in quake3 that most of the female players like ctf and freezetag since there is more player interaction.
Tombraider just does not have these qualities.
Re:Women have different interests (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at this page [nickyee.com] of some EQ demographics study. At least half of the male EQ players reported that they have at least one character of the other gender, so over 200,000 "girls" you met through EQ may be guys.
Only 16% of the total number of players are female, so your "maybe over 50%" guess is way off. While this is better than for the average game (where it's 5 - 10%), it's nothing spectacular.
Remember: When you're online, just having boobies doesn't mean it's female
Re:Women have different interests (Score:3, Interesting)
www.eqwomen.co.uk [eqwomen.co.uk]
So I can vouch for the fact that there's at least one real EQ female player. :)
Re:Women have different interests (Score:4, Interesting)
I introduced my girlfriend to Age of Empires, and she played it for ages. The interesting part was that she wasn't all that much into the big fights. She likes to build the city and defend it. when we played network games together I'd have to do all the conquesting, with her acting as relief force.
I think that is why she really can't get into Warcraft III, since warcraft is more geared towards war.
But the game that really got to her was Diablo. To begin with she didn't wan't to play it alone, since the atmosphere was to scary
When we got Diablo II, we gave the old to one of her friends who also got hooked. Now 4 of her girlfriends are deep into Diablo II, and exchange tips.
I haven't been able to get her to like any 1st person shooters. She gets quesy (spelling) when she plays them, and she just don't have the dexterity (and doesn't want to train it).
My theory on this is that since one of the differences between the male and female brain is the grasp of 3d object (True!). The 2d gameboard of the previous games might be more intuitive to women than true 3d scenarios.
That being said - I know quite a lot of ladies kick as 3d also - but I am only talking on average.
Maybe Women Don't Like Lara (Score:4, Informative)
I think there would be two big reasons they don't have women who are interested in being game testers:
1) It is, from everything I've read, an awful job that can suck the enjoyment of a game out of you.
2) Relatively few women would be what most men would consider a "hardcore" gamer.
The second reason may be the most important. Many of us guys (myself included) love playing all kinds of games and doing so as much as we possibly can. I've enjoyed games running the gamut from Frogger on the Atari 2600 back in the olden days to Civilization III on my PC today with many consoles and game genres in between. For many of us male-type hardcore gamers, any job in the game industry - even a low-paying monotonous one like game testing - would be a dream come true.
On the other hand, the games that I've heard of and met women playing have been games like Everquest (massively multiplayer role-playing kind of thing), The Sims (hasn't everyone with a computer played this at least once?) and, in my mom's case, puzzle games like Tetris and casino games - my grandmother loved playing Casino on the Atari 2600 lo those many years ago. Outside of a couple of pretty narrow genres, there is a huge gender gap in gaming.
Finally, I don't expect that a third-person adventure game starring a female protagonist with anatomy so exaggerated it would make Pamela Anderson jealous is going to get women (at least women over 20) excited...unless they want to buy it for their significant other to get him worked up before hitting the sack.
Re:Maybe Women Don't Like Lara (Score:3, Informative)
Frankly, any woman who is a "hardcore" gamer has gotten used to seeing oversexed characters and hanging around with clueless dweebs.
-A. Aria
Re:Maybe Women Don't Like Lara (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be a dream come true for many of us female-type hardcore gamers too, but it's hard for us to get noticed by the male-dominated game industry. Just in my own experience, applying for testing jobs or any entry-level position at a game company is a tough proposition. My resume didn't even get a glance, even despite having previous testing experience.
In my opinion, the reason more women don't get hired by game companies is two-fold: most games are directed at men (and thus have male testers, designers, developers etc), and as a result most women don't feel welcome enough to apply. Those that do apply are probably lost in the avalanche of resumes from male applicants.
If game companies want quality women testers, the industry as a whole has to make women feel more welcome and accepted. And hyper-sexualizing female game characters does not make a woman want to play the game, let alone apply to work at the company that develops said game.
Re:Maybe Women Don't Like Lara (Score:2)
It's possible that game companies just aren't conscious of the fact that they aren't doing enough to get women into the club. It reminds me of the NFL where for the longest time there were exactly zero black coaches despite the fact that the majority of players in the league were African-American. The argument was always that they were looking for someone with experience at the pro level, and of course the vicious cycle was that you couldn't get experience without getting a job. Since the uproar, there still hasn't been enough progress but there has been some and they have a program designed to ensure that African-Americans have a shot at getting into, and moving up in, the coaching structure. Perhaps the same needs to be done by the big video game companies in an attempt to bring along interested females so that we can get more designers who are women. This, of course, would likely have the effect of bringing more women into the game-playing fold which will feed more "hardcore" women into the cycle. As a male-type gamer, that seems to me like it could only be a good thing.
As to the hyper-sexualization of female characters in games, I agree with that to an extent as well. I know that I was quite pleased when I picked up Buffy the Vampire Slayer (XBox) and they didn't overdo the SMG 'hotness factor' by enlarging breasts and giving her a bunch of 'shimmy.' In the interest of full disclosure, I will however confess my prurient interest in the graphics of the upcoming DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball game - with the caveat that if the game isn't fun to play I won't be buying it for the virtual skin (there are too many places to find other media where the skin is far more realistic). :)
All in all, I have to wonder if this latest Tomb Raider is going to stoke a lot of interest in female OR male players. I'm sure that there's a market and obviously the hype machine will go full-bore, so it will probably sell plenty of units. It would be nice, though, if they could drop the cup size by half or more and just produce a good game. Dare to dream, I guess.
Idiots (Score:2)
Playtests (Score:2)
Wanted: Female Game Testers (Score:5, Funny)
Reverse it and feel your dinner come back up (Score:5, Funny)
Let me put it this way: most guys would not jump at the chance to beta test a video game in which the main character was an incredibly ripped half-naked man with thong underwear and an incredibly unrealistic buldge in his crotch clearly outlining every detail of his oversized genitals as they freely bounced around in ancient tombs.
Bad thought huh?
I don't know (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't know (Score:3)
And last I noted, I'm not a sex object. Granted, I'm a grad student, I'm not in IT.
Lea
Re:Reverse it and feel your dinner come back up (Score:3, Insightful)
Lara is *neither* half-naked, nor in thong underwear... she just has big boobs.
as the flat-chested geek who tries to go to the gym that i am, i think it's the equivalent of asking a guy to test StreetFighter or the likes, where ken just has huge pecs i'll never be able to match!!
bottom line: it's a game, people.
Voice interaction (Score:2, Interesting)
If you think I'm flaming, just read one of the hundreds of Venus&Mars books on the shelves nowadays.
The Fallacy of the Woman Gamer (Score:5, Funny)
For context, go read the real column, and remember all the good times with oldmanmurray. Anyone have any idea what happened to them?
The Fallacy of the Fallacy of the Woman Gamer (Score:2)
I know of two, in-the-flesh, breasts and all, have real lives EverSmack players. The funny thing is, they play the game and I don't.
One is a college student who gets drunk often, holds excellent dinner parties, and is engaged to one of my best friends. The other is a clinical technician by day and bartender by night, who plays EQ like a maniac.
I also know of several console gaming women, all late 20s, early 30s, who game. They do it not because their husbands/boyfriends want them to, but because they independently enjoy it. While they might not play to the fanatical exclusion of everything else in life like some men, they enjoy games, they buy games, and they don't mind saying so.
Re:The Fallacy of the Fallacy of the Woman Gamer (Score:2)
Re:The Fallacy of the Woman Gamer (Score:5, Interesting)
> There are no women gamers, and anyone who tells
> you otherwise is a liar. They don't exist. In the
> '80s there was one, but she died.
Sorry, but I'm still alive. I started on an old pre-Atari console in the 1970's. I've since played games on the following mainframes, consoles, micro and personal computers:
Honeywell mainframe (StarTrek, with printer terminals)
IBM 370 mainframe (StarTrek, with new fangled CRT terminals)
Timex Sinclair 1000 doorstop
Commodore 64
PC from XT to Pentiums
Genesis (& CD & 3DX)
GameGear
Nintendo 64
Dreamcast
Playstation
Palm III
Handspring Visor Platinum
Macintosh (OS 9 and OS X)
Playstation 2
Sharp Zaurus SL-5500
Game Boy Advance
GameCube
I own or owned all the machines above except the two mainframes; those were at college.
My current favorites are Twisted Metal Black (PS 2), Tony Hawk 3 (PS 2), Sonic 2 Adventures Battle (GC), and Star Fox (GC). I am (extremely) eagerly awaiting the arrival of "Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee" for the GameCube, and "Godzilla Domination" for the GameBoy Advance.
Most of you guys don't have a clue about what you are talking about. But you don't let that stop you from eagerly pontificating about what we girls (or my case, women) like or don't like in games.
Hint: women have different interests, in games as in other things. Personally, I love the 3D games with worlds to explore and stuff to do. I also like to fight and smash stuff.
And no, I'm not going to go for a Tomb Raider testing job, because the job is in the UK, and I am in the US. Besides, they would have to do a lot of work to upgrade the graphics to modern levels. Star Fox has fur, even in game play. Fur is one of the hardest things to do in 3D. Before I played the game for the first time I would have said it was impossible for them to do fur on a console. Obviously, I was wrong. But, hey, I am impressed.
"His power is unequalled.
His battles are legendary.
His return is near..."
"Godzilla 2000" trailer.
G Countdown: 18 days (www.godzillaoncube.com)
Re:The Fallacy of the Woman Gamer (Score:4, Funny)
There are no women gamers, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. They don't exist. In the '80s there was one, but she died.
Sorry, but I'm still alive.
Oh thank God!! Do you have any idea how worried we were?? Why didn't you ever tell us you were all right?!
Hey everyone! I found her! =p
Would You Test It? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, if the games didn't teach them, then certainly the movie would have!
Reasons which come to mind! (Score:2, Interesting)
Gender bias in gaming (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously though, this has to be one of the more gender biased games out there. Angelina Jolie had to wear a heavily padded bra to get even close to the required size demanded by teen males with raging hormones. Even then she was still one size too small .
There is a lot of information that indicates the opposite to the idea that girls do not play as much as boys, if you are willing to go look for it. This article [womengamers.com] has some interesting points.
Maybe if they wanted to appeal more to the female audience, they could remove some of the bias, and hey, it may not be dismissed outright by the female community as soft-porn for the male teen masses.
Men and women are different (Score:4, Insightful)
And seeing as how most game developers are male....why should these games appeal to women?
Re:Men and women are different (Score:3, Insightful)
Saying something like "Most game developers are male, so why should these games appeal to women?" is like saying "Most authors of literary classics are male. So why should literature appeal to women?" Demonstrably, it does.
I heard once that women aren't supposed to be competitive. We aren't supposed to like violence or gore. Ha, ha. Seriously. Anyone who thinks women aren't competitive doesn't know many women very well. And everyone has ways in which they're violent, regardless of whether they're male or female.
weapons? (Score:5, Funny)
"A women's mind would bring a different angle to the game."
Maybe women could offer a new perspective on weapons. Things like guilt grenades, verbal tripwires, performance increasing sports bras (those things are huge- any woman will tell you it would hurt to jump around like that), crotch kicks, and keyring stabs would add a new dimension to the game.
Finally, female players would be able to work out their aggressions and live out their fantasies on a level equal to their male counterparts.
Have they tried advertising?... (Score:5, Interesting)
None of the games they are producing these days are targetted at the market "people who can read".
You want to sell a game to my mother? She plays "Zelda" on her Nintendo; she also played "Pogo Joe", and "Space Invaders".
You want to sell a game to one of my three sisters? Try "Zork", or any of the other text adventure games. Or try "Breakout" or "Arachnoid" or "Ms. Pacman" or an older pinball game. Or, if you want to sell a PC game, try "Sim City" or "Lemmings".
I know that doesn't sound like most of the games they sell these days I guess that's why they don't sell them to women.
-- Terry
Re:Have they tried advertising?... (Score:2)
The Sims, Alpha Centuari, Civ II, Neverwinter Nights, Final Fantasy 9. There may be others, but this is what I know.
As far as I can tell, The Sims is really popular with girls. But then, those chicks don't have huge boobs. Mabey there's something to be said about the fact that in The Sims, you play as a mother figure who takes the trash out and cooks dinner, while getting people up for work/school. 'Course, then again, in Alleyway, you play as a platform you move around the bottom of the screen to bounce the ball... Sometimes a cigar..
~Will
If the game were DDR... (Score:2)
Chat Rooms (Score:5, Funny)
-Sean
Paid the Same as a Man?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the women I know find the majority of computer gamedom less than interesting. And that's no surprise if you consider that so many of the games out there are designed specifically to take advantage of male fantasies: the player becomes the hero, the conqueror, the savior, the avenger. What's more, the player often achieves victory through violence which becomes more and more graphic and gory as memory gets cheaper and processors become faster. And as others have mentioned, many games are overtly sexist.
The computer games that women seem (to me) to enjoy the most are those that are nonviolent and don't require immersion for long periods to gain proficiency. Puzzle-based games are good bets. The games that the women I know enjoy the most are Tetris, Shanghai, Solitaire, Minesweeper, Pac-Man.
The computer game industry has largely ignored women, and the games that have been hits with women have largely been pleasant surprises for the industry. My guess is that one of the real problems for the industry is that (I presume) there aren't many women designing and writing computer games. I don't think it's impossible for men to design games that women will want to play, but it won't happen on a large scale without some serious market research from the industry, and earnest sensitivity to the results from designers and publishers.
Women represent a huge and largely untapped market for game publishers. It's astonishing that more attention hasn't been paid to women and their awesome purchasing power.
Female Game Testers? (Score:5, Funny)
What kind of "female games" do you have in mind, and what is involved in testing them?
This could be a lot of fun!
Perhaps it's because Tomb Raider sucks? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps it's because Tomb Raider sucks? (Score:5, Funny)
You do realize how many Slashdot readers have been waiting their whole lives to hear those six magic words?
What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
More likely, female testers won't offer any different criteria than males, since the aspects of the video game (3D shoot em up, or RTS, whatever the case may be) have an across-the-board appeal regardless of gender. If this is true then what is the point?
I don't have any problem with female game testers, I'm just having trouble finding out why it should be a big deal.
Sexism in games. (Score:3, Insightful)
All true - and PLENTY of other games (not to mention Anime or other geek pursuits) are just the same - women with gigantic norks, fsck all clothing, highly sexualised imagery.
But the representations of men are pretty much the same - HUGE chests, massive biceps, chiselled abs.
Is it only because women don't play games as much as guys do that we never hear about male sexist imagery as we do about female?
Sexist games? I think not. (Score:3, Interesting)
If anything, Tomb Raider managed to make some male gamers play a female character for the first time in their lives. I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing, now that I think about it.
Anyway, back to the subject: why is it so hard to find women to play Tomb Raider games?
Simple: women and men think in different ways (okay, it hasn't been cientifically proven that women think at all, but let's admit they do).
When women play the game, they're playing a game. When men play the game, they're in the game.
This became clear to me one day when I was playing Tomb Raider and my mother walked by. I showed her a few of Lara's moves and I said "see, I can also jump backwards like this". And she said "you? it's not you, it's her, on the screen". I've seen other women react the same way to similar games. Men never have a problem placing themselves in the game, even if the character is a woman, or a robot, or a mutant slug.
Women find it much harder to picture themselves inside the game world, as opposed to sitting on a chair, playing the game. That's why women prefer games like Solitaire and SimCity and The Sims and other games where the player is clearly "on the outside". Games where they move the pieces but are not one of the pieces.
This has been shown again and again by psychological studies, and is also the reason why most men drive more naturally (ie, without having to concentrate on what they're doing) than most women; men become the car while women try to control the car.
Of course, some women can drive instinctively, and some women play Tomb Raider and Counter-Strike and hate solitaire. But I can't say I've ever met one personally, and I do go out sometimes.
RMN
~~~
Maybe you're right... (Score:2)
Admittedly I don't know any other female gamers myself, but I don't know too many gamers in general. I do know that I've never had a hard time putting myself in the game. Back when I had a Playstation, one of my favourite games was Spyro the Dragon (I had both of them), and you have no idea how many times I caught myself physically readjusting my position trying to see around corners and stuff. I'm just glad no one was watching. I probably looked pretty silly trying to see around the corners inside a television set. :)
The reason I've never played Tomb Raider or Duke Nukem is that I'm not really attracted to games with lots of guns in them. I like racing games, though. Maybe the subject matter has more to do with why less females play, than the actual style of gameplay or way of thinking.
Vagrant Story, now that's a GIRL game. (Score:2, Funny)
Lara on the other hand is designed for drooling teenage boys who can't get a girlfriend. (Oh god, am I going to regret that comment?)
Bunk. (Score:2)
Does anybody really believe the guys behind Tomb Raider are interested in a woman's mind?
Maybe I'm sexist... (Score:2, Funny)
Guys (as a generalisation) love the technology itself. Because of that, beta is cool - getting to see the latest, greatest thing, pushing the technology to its limits.
Girls (as a generalisation) tend to use technology for things they find useful. Technology is a means to and end, not an end in itself.
So, girls want to have fun playing, not testing.
Games that a women would want (Score:2, Interesting)
I personally think games that aren't just look, shoot, shoot again, die, would be more popular among female gamers.
Do the women who read Cosmo look like those IN it? (Score:5, Funny)
Women arn't offended by thin big-chested women in the magainzes they read, I can't see how they'd be offended by thin, big-chested women in the games they play either. (And come to think of it, arn't most of the women in chick-geared comics asthetically well above par as well?)
Tomb Raider and Girls/Women and playtesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
While most of the 'girls' shun FPS like UT2003 as to fast, violent and competetive, it's Lara Croft - once they discovered how fun it actually is to play the game, that makes them agree to invest on an 'also-gaming-computer'.
Tomb Raider is actually a visually diverse game with good animation and a third person perspective that is not just as emerging as an FPS
The problem with getting female testers is that you really have to take them and put them in front of the box until they say: "Ok, it actually isn't that much of a waste of time as I thought."
But having them go out and say: "Hey, I dig sitting in front of a dead, rather uncommunicative box striking my lone wolf ego - I have some time to spare for gametesting."? No way.
Are you really suprised that PC-game testing usually isn't a womens pasttime???
Tomb Raider is Male Fantasy (Score:5, Interesting)
Having said that, there are fairly clear reasons why many women would not enjoy Tomb Raider, and I think the inability to grasp these reasons reflects badly on the maturity, sensitivity and empathy of some of the posters here.
First, game characters have personas which players are invited to identify with or work alongside. This is true although the player controls the character's actions. For example, Pacman is an opportunistic, greedy, but essentially nonviolent character. He is not paranoid or vengeful, but believes that "turnabout is fair play". Since he's constantly in motion, we can't tell if he's utterly relaxed or utterly frantic. When Pacman eats a ghost the result is a non-lethal stay in the "penalty box". Likewise, when Pacman is "tagged" by a ghost only one of three pacmans is consumed, like a pinball falling off the board. These softened deaths imply that the interaction between Pacman and his pursuers is merely a game, not a life and death struggle. Pacman is one of the few games that appealed to females.
The typical first person shooter projects a somewhat different character. Although he rarely appears on screen, his persona is clear. A ruthless killer hunted by ruthless adversaries, he is skilled in handling a variety of firearms. His body is a killing machine, not a sex object. He is not on display.
Consider Lara Croft in light of the above. She has the persona, in a way, of a young man - aggressive, exploratory, self-contained. But she has the body of an attractive young woman, complete with a tiny waist and large breasts. And that is also part of her persona - the panting after exertion that emphasizes her breasts. Lara is an attractive woman who is inherently amenable to a masculine style of thinking and action. To understand why this could irritate some women, consider her opposite number: the male hero of romance novels or of soap operas. If you're a man, don't you feel a kind of gut hatred for the blow-dried, earnest, wide-eyed soap character who makes heartfelt speeches about his feelings?
I think the reason is that he's a gender traitor, a man with the soul of a woman. Superficially masculine, he is overly melodramatic and concerned with relationships. Most of all, he hits the spot for millions of women who would like the men in their lives to be like that - handsome, well groomed, full of deep emotional conflicts that he's happy to air.
Lara, of course, is a male fantasy. She has, from our viewpoint, all the desirable characteristics of a woman with none of the unpleasant baggage. It's hard to imagine her asking if you think she's fat. In fact, it's hard to imagine her caring about your opinion at all.
Others in this thread have wondered how there can be any objection to Lara's breasts when male action heroes sport gigantic muscles which could also be considered sexy.
First of all, Lara is eroticized, placed on display for the player's enjoyment, in a way I haven't seen any male game character presented. Admittedly, I haven't played many games recently. I do agree with the feminists, however, that our cultural presentation of females as erotic objects is so ingrained that it's hard to notice. Can you imagine our musclebound action hero filmed from the side, panting in that delightful way Lara has? We simply don't detail, illuminate and present male bodies as we do female bodies.
Second, the muscles of a male hero are assets in his adventures. If combatting a city full of evil aliens, I'd like someone built like Duke Nukem to help. But if I had to pick a woman to help me raid a dangerous tomb, I'd rather have one of those granite-faced female Sherrif's deputies you see in L.A. than a slender, busty model. Lara isn't really built to fight - she's built to titillate.
Lastly, it's interesting to note that Lara, like many heroines designed to appeal to men, is quite a loner. She doesn't seem to have parents or siblings or a boyfriend or husband - any of the emotional connections that would be interesting to women, but a turnoff to men.
Discouraging comments (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's the essentialist ones that peeve me the most. Take it from someone who has studied a good deal of evolutionary psych; there is not a whole lot of evidence that there are personality differences between men and women which cannot be accounted for by environment . In essence, the only real difference you're looking at is in naughty bits. There is nothing, nothing about having female naughty bits that means that you don't like to play video games but do like to make cookies and shop. If you don't believe me, say to yourself, "Women don't like video games because they have vaginas" and realize how ridiculous that sounds.
I am a female gamer (my current obsession is Morrowind, for the curious; I spent money I didn't really have to get a Geforce 3, *just* to have the advanced water effects). Furthermore, I know, plenty, plenty of female gamers. No dearth of them; from my housemate who stays up until 3 AM playing Okage, to my Soul Caliber ass-kicking close friend. I don't know where you're looking if you can't find female gamers. (I suspect the answer involves parents' houses and subterranean areas). Go to a convention, for chrissakes!
Admittedly, there probably are more male gamers than female (I base that on environmental, not biological factors), but I suspect that the reason they're suffering such a dearth of play testers is that well, many women gamers have distinguishing taste in games, and let's face it, Tomb Raider suffers in originality. For example, I don't tend to play many FPSes because I don't think they're very interesting. It's not that I'm not "competitive" or don't like violence or don't "want to be feel powerful"--everyone wants to feel powerful!--but that they tend to be ugly and monotonous to me after a while. I much prefer strategy games, especially ones like Alpha Centauri or Civ III which have an endless amount of possible endings, or games that have been well-crafted (hence the Morrowind obsession) to suck you into the experience (so much for the "theory" posited above that women don't like to enter into the world of the game). I think a lot of distinguishing gamers, male and female, would agree with me on this.
Please think before you make generalizations about what women like and don't like. Don't tell me I don't like to be competitive, don't tell me I don't like to feel powerful, because it's a lie. And for goodness sakes, quit reading the John Gray, it's bad for you.
Re:Discouraging comments (Score:3, Interesting)
You state "Take it from someone who has studied a good deal of evolutionary psych; there is not a whole lot of evidence that there are personality differences between men and women which cannot be accounted for by environment."
Whether or not this is the case, it does nothing to invalidate "women don't think like us[...]" You effectively agree with this statement when you blame environment rather than biology. Also, I have some interest in psych and one of my roommates is huge on it. If you could describe or reference any of those studies, I'd be very interested in reading them and showing my roommate.
If you don't believe me, say to yourself, "Women don't like video games because they have vaginas" and realize how ridiculous that sounds.
How about, "women don't like video games because they have different ratios of hormones which affect their temperments and development than guys do?"
I don't know where you're looking if you can't find female gamers.
Did you see the poll recently that
many women gamers have distinguishing taste in games
So we've gone from "Please think before you make generalizations about what women like and don't like" to assuming that all women have good taste in games and "don't tend to play many FPSes"?
games that have been well-crafted (hence the Morrowind obsession) to suck you into the experience (so much for the "theory" posited above that women don't like to enter into the world of the game).
I'm not sure if this refutes the theory. It could be interpreted as supporting that theory - many people have argued that women enjoy watching the story, I've seen several comments from women who "can't wait to get to the next little bit of plot information or character interaction" [see here [slashdot.org]]. Is this a case of being _in_ the game, or watching the story unfold?
Maybe it's just because (Score:5, Insightful)
Women WILL Buy Games!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I say two words? The Sims.
Oh, wait a sec. I want to add a third word if you don't mind: Myst.
Women WILL buy games. We will buy them by the truckload, and we won't flinch at popping out the plastic for the lame, overpriced expansion packs. You know, the one that lets the characters go on dates, then the one that lets them go on vacation, then the one that lets them have pets... ad nauseum.
I don't have statistics, but I'd be willing to bet more than a handful of women also bought the first Tomb Raider game. Why? Because it wasn't all about shooting and gore. It was basically a puzzle game. It had cool (for the time) graphics and a female main character. Oh, yeah, and Lara's breasts were a more manageable size back then.
What we don't buy, no matter how many times you guys remake basically the SAME FRIGGIN' GAME, is an FPS where the whole point is to run around fragging (or for most of us, being repetitively fragged by) 14-year-old hormone spouting boys pretending to be big macho men. Ugh. In what way is that supposed to appeal to us? Well, ok, the thing about getting to take out some of our aggressions by blowing away a few testosterone OD cases does have a certain appeal, but you have to practice WAY too much to become good enough to do that. Meanwhile you have to be humiliated over and over again by swaggering male figures... and basically, we get enough of that in real life.
So look, what I'm trying to say here is, game companies could make a lot more money if they would make games that appeal to men and women both. Sure, they could just keep doing what they're doing and marketing to the pubescent males, but the real money comes when you create a game that appeals to both sexes. Of course, the game would have to have a PLOT, and CHARACTER INTERACTION (spraying the other person's brains all over a brick wall does NOT count), and interesting SITUATIONS or PUZZLES to solve... oooh that's just too much work. It's probably a lot easier to just make another FPS with, I dunno... bigger guns or something. Or more realistic gore. Yeah that's it! More gore!
My daughter.... (Score:4, Interesting)
She played Tomb Raider a little, but found it too scary (she was less than 10 when she first tried). She plays Tomb Raider today, but not on the computer, but as a pretend-fantasy game with the house and her friends (I had to make her a paper gun, and many objects become "artifacts" that need to be collected, sofa cushions and the space under the table become caves). Very cute...
Perhaps some old school games would do? (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, from a programmer's perspective perhaps the problem is that games for girls just aren't as sexy or as wham-bam to write as games for guys? Perhaps it isn't as profitable to engage in writing these programs because its hard to dress them up and make them fly?
I mean my wife and I joke about this all the time. Here I want to conquer the world, and there she wants to make it more livable.
Re:The old problem (Score:3, Insightful)
you'd want to hope they could tell
Re:The "Tomb Raider" franchise is sexist (Score:4, Interesting)
I do admit that they went overboard with the sequals though...
Re:The "Tomb Raider" franchise is sexist (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The "Tomb Raider" franchise is sexist (Score:4, Funny)
Oversexed?, Lara Croft just kill things, and
solves puzzles, there isn't any sex in Tomb Raider
apart from the fact, the main character is health
fit young woman, most of the male characters in
games are health fit and attractive too. It would
be kinda dull watching grannies and granddads shotting at each other, and walking on zimmerframes.
Re:The "Tomb Raider" franchise is sexist (Score:5, Insightful)
Game characters are caricatures period. I don't see why the one of the few games that has a lead character of a woman should be some sort of statement on feminism or body image. Do you think girl gamers want to see the average 5'4" 142lb woman dressed conservatively? Or do they like male gamers want a superwoman who kicks ass and looks good too.
Its only women in college and older who take the jaded view. Younger female gamers realize just like any other games they might play its just a character.
Political correctness has no place in gaming, just like it has no place in Movies, books or music. If something is truly offensive it will fail, if it does well it obviously meets the standards that our society has set.
Your call for a video game being more "PC" is a dog that doesn't hunt, sorry.
Or perhaps... (Score:2, Funny)
It's called a PLOT. (Score:3, Insightful)