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[The Technomancer]

Very very fascinating read. Also very relevant to the thread we had recently on sex appeal and why in its current form it might be a "problem"

 

[sono]

Has any accepted research been done on what kind of video games appeal to girls.

I was recently on a long flight sat next to a girl I didnt know (she was around 25 years old accompanied by her boyfriend sat the other side) I saw she spent some time gaming on the inflight entertainment system in between movies.

She played:

bejeweled
chequers
solitaire

These games dont appeal to me

 

[Riddick]

The fact that people are getting banned in this thread for having a different opinion is pretty troubling.

It's the normal now in all gender threads.

 

[Mumei]

I'd like to avoid the meta-discussion about gender discussions on GAF, please. They don't get better by talking about how bad they are; they get better because of the efforts of good posters.

Thats a cop-out

Wouldn't the same apply to guys who are labeled as nerds, weebs, and losers among their peers? The ostracization you mentioned isn't something limited to the female gender. You can go through your life either doing what you want or what others want you to do.

"Boys who are labeled nerds, dweebs, and losers" [for their preoccupations with video games] aren't the male corollary to girls here; the male corollary would be the the boy who is interested in playing with dolls, princesses, Easy Bake Ovens, and other products that are marketed as appropriate for girls and inappropriate for boys. If anyone here is suggesting that boys do not also face gender policing when it comes to their toy interests, I'd be quite surprised.

It is a perfectly reasonable assertion to say that children are taught very early on - through dress, physical appearance, language, color, segregated restrooms and symbols - that one's status as a boy or a girl is very important marker of identity. When children are two, they discover their own gender. We know from studies of both adults and children that very shallow feelings of group identification can create positive feelings towards things that study participants are told others in that group like. For instance, in a study where children were identified as "Red" or "Blue", the children expressed a preference for toys they were told were liked by children of the same color, and a preference for playing with kids of the same color. These should be meaningless distinctions, but their identification with the group created these feelings. Some studies suggest that the overwhelming drive young children display in insisting on gender appropriate play or dress might be explained by this need for in group belonging.

This is no less true for toy preferences, and the literature broadly suggests that the combination of gender identity and knowledge of gender stereotypes motivates gender stereotypical play, and this begins very young.

I don't think that this article seems to be suggesting anything more radical than, "Marketing for video games shouldn't explicitly (or implicitly) write off girls as a potential audience by either denigrating them or ignoring them." I agree with what you said last - you can ultimately be interested in whatever you want to be. I'm interested in non-gender 'appropriate' things, myself. But that's not a good counterargument to the assertion that the status quo is a problem, anymore than arguing that because someone can succeed in spite of structural inequality, structural inequality doesn't matter.

 

[Odrion]

On a positive note, I recently discovered that Goldieblox exists and there's an incentive out to introduce engineering-based toys to girls.

Their commercial is pretty awesome too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLYdoyFfmc

 

[Nekofrog]

It's the normal now in all gender threads.

If they were getting banned for having a "different" opinion, that would be one thing. That's not why it is. It's usually coupled with a complete misunderstanding of the topic at hand, attempted derail, or some form of thread whining ("not this shit again" syndrome).

 

[sonicmj1]

A person with a passion for what he/she loves to do wouldn't and doesn't' care about what society has to say about them. My point was, gamers (specifically male) have been overcoming negative stigma since the birth of the industry. I don't understand why female gamers feel they are specifically targeted or excluded when it comes to these things. If there was a big enough market for female gamers do you honestly think companies would spare any time targeting products towards them? When the dude-bro gamer got involved in gaming we saw a massive shift in marketing campaign, and hell, even video game trends. When/if the female gaming community becomes large enough to see an investment opportunity you'll see an automatic shift in the industry.

Boys who liked video games had advertising targeted to them, and while "nerd" is an outsider label, it's still a faction in its own right. It's a group you can belong to. You can hang out with other nerds and do nerd things together and feel like there are people who accept what you do somewhere or other.

Since girls were excluded by most console game advertising, and they don't fit into the nerd peer group, where do they belong? A girl will inevitably be an outsider for playing in a male-dominated genre. Most people don't want to put up with that. So girls move to less conspicuous methods of video game consumption, like in the PC or mobile space, that don't require them to purchase a big device that identifies them by their hobby. And the people who target them there can make millions.

 

[Zoc]

That implication wasn't my intention. Targeting one demo doesn't mean purposely excluding another, and even if you write "males 16-25" on a form it doesn't mean you're going to exclude other players. But it does illustrate how people think about target demo, and how you can get trapped in that way of thinking. Especially if you work at/with a larger publisher, target demo is something you will discuss multiple times and for most "normal" games the easy assumption is young makes and further assumptions and decisions may spring from that.

Except I think it may be true. Lots and lots of 16-25 year old males are very insecure about their masculinity these days, and the more gore and naked chicks are in a game, the more it will make them feel macho to play it.

BTW, I don't think this is a sexism debate at all, and making it one is going to derail what was an interesting discussion about why there are so few good games with cross-demographic appeal, like Myst or adventure games. There have been a ton of ultraviolent games lately that I have greatly enjoyed (Batman, Bioshock, Last of Us, etc), but besides a few standout indies, that old style of game with universal appeal has fallen on hard times and Kickstarter.

 

[boiled goose]

A person with a passion for what he/she loves to do wouldn't and doesn't' care about what society has to say about them. My point was, gamers (specifically male) have been overcoming negative stigma since the birth of the industry. I don't understand why female gamers feel they are specifically targeted or excluded when it comes to these things. If there was a big enough market for female gamers do you honestly think companies would spare any time targeting products towards them? When the dude-bro gamer got involved in gaming we saw a massive shift in marketing campaign, and hell, even video game trends. When/if the female gaming community becomes large enough to see an investment opportunity you'll see an automatic shift in the industry.

Why didn't dudebro gamers exist before? Hint: You are basically proving the point you are trying to refute.

 

[The Technomancer]

I do find it interesting that the places that girls historically and currently do game the most, PCs and phones, are multipurpose devices. I think there's been, especially in the last decade or so, a very insular focus on the 16-35 male demographic in the console space that has shut out a lot of women from even caring about consoles.

 

[DiscoJer]

This is from 2010, so obviously things may have changed since then. But I think it's a very interesting breakdown. Companies mainly target console gamers nowadays, and as you can see the overwhelming majority of console gamers are male. Those or similar statistics are likely what publishers are seeing and using when they greenlight or cancel games.

That chart illustrates what I've been saying for years - gaming only seems male dominated, because people only look at certain types of gaming - console mostly, while ignoring others, like casual gaming

Big Fish Games in particular seems to get overlooked. They have about a million game downloads a day (and recently they passed 2 billion total. Billion). Sure, they aren't all sales, but that's a huge amount of people interested in games, and it's mostly women.

Those types of games even have their own gaming conventions - Casual Connect.

 

[zeldablue]

Marketing...

In Russia, medicine has always been associated with women. Because of that, doctors are almost all female.

That certainly wasn't the case here as most associate doctors as a powerful male oriented career.

These things are cultural and create preconceived notions that don't actually make that much sense. Pink used to be the male color not too long ago. What happened? Obviously our view on what a girl and boy should do can change very easily if there is a cultural shift making it so. If toys R us brainwashed parents (through marketing) to buy barbies for our boys and mechs for the girls, we could easily screw things around for our children's career path.

It's called conditioning, that's exactly what marketers exploit. I study advertising and public relations, and it is somewhat cringe worthy how people market. It's a big love hate thing.

 

[Orayn]

I do find it interesting that the places that girls historically and currently do game the most, PCs and phones, are multipurpose devices. I think there's been, especially in the last decade or so, a very insular focus on the 16-35 male demographic in the console space that has shut out a lot of women from even caring about consoles.

Yeah, I feel it's more an issue of female gamers not becoming attached to those platforms rather than having an incredibly strong affinity for Bejweled, Solitaire and the like. Most casual games have a certain level of universal appeal, so naturally they're popular among people who haven't become attached to predominantly male-oriented core software.

 

[Deckard Cain]

The article is okay but marketing is one piece of a much larger pie as to the reason girls do not play many video games. Other pieces of that pie would be very non-PC as well. As soon as people understand there will never be gender equality(in terms of #s) the sooner we can move on from topics like this.

 

[Mononoke]

I just don't really know how marketing can ever move away from exploiting gender stereotypes. I mean, it's just easy money to sell to "male demographics". As a male myself, I would love more diversity, and for them NOT to keep marketing big boobs, explosions, high octane aggressive/action. I'm burnt out on that crap. Yet this kind of marketing is still going strong. Just look at the film industry, they haven't made much progress.

So then it all comes back to, who is to blame? Is it then Male's fault, for continuing to buy this stuff? I mean, after all companies just sell what people want. Until people stop buying it, I don't see why a business would ever give it up. If suddenly they realized female demographic is a gold mine too, what's to stop them from not doing the same kind of exploitation to the female demographic? (They already do this with certain kinds of movies).

Outside of having these debates/discussions, I don't really see what the solution is on a grand scale (the mass market). It seems like humans are generally shallow, and businesses will continue to give them what they crave.

EDIT: I didn't mean to point fingers with blame. I only bring it up, because I'm curious what the source of the problem really is (identifying it), and how do you fix it. It seems to me, both genders are accepting to being exploited (I mean, having product marketed to them that narrowly focuses on socially constructed gender roles). And both genders will eat it up.

 

[Kazerei]

Nobody is stopping the girl from ditching the doll and picking up the computer. Though primary market for dolls have been females, and not because parents forced them to play with dolls either.

You're really downplaying how strongly social expectations influence us. Individuals can break from the norm, but the overall tendency is to follow the norm. Boys can buy toys from the "girl" aisle, and girls can buy toys from the "boy" aisle, but overall they will be driven to want with what they understand are gender-appropriate toys.

You can keep saying "but there's nothing stopping them!" all you want. That's just not the reality of it.

 

[damisa]

I do find it interesting that the places that girls historically and currently do game the most, PCs and phones, are multipurpose devices. I think there's been, especially in the last decade or so, a very insular focus on the 16-35 male demographic in the console space that has shut out a lot of women from even caring about consoles.

Companies could always just develop more on the PCs and phones women already have than force women to buy consoles. I don't see why spending money on GTA is any better than spending it on candy crush.

 

[SolidSnakex]

That chart illustrates what I've been saying for years - gaming only seems male dominated, because people only look at certain types of gaming - console mostly, while ignoring others, like casual gaming

I think it's because consoles are where people want to see change. But that's also a space, at least according to what little data we have, that really is dominated by males.

 

[OldAsUrSock]

Those ads.....


Jesus fucking Christ looking back on them now with open eyes as an adult. Awful awful shit. How does clearly angling a product AWAY from 50% of the freaking world even make sense from a marketing perspective?

Tons of companies do this.

 

[GoodCoffeeJoey]

On a positive note, I recently discovered that Goldieblox exists and there's an incentive out to introduce engineering-based toys to girls.

Their commercial is pretty awesome too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLYdoyFfmc

You're a couple weeks late there. Everyone hates Goldieblox now.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_facto...ting_the_pink_aisle_or_just_selling_toys.html

 

[The Technomancer]

Those ads.....


Jesus fucking Christ looking back on them now with open eyes as an adult. Awful awful shit. How does clearly angling a product AWAY from 50% of the freaking world even make sense from a marketing perspective?

No dude its just sex appeal, they just know their target audience, why are you such a prude man?

 

[params7]

When it comes to making decisions, it isn't as simple as just doing whatever you want to because you feel like it. Depending on your ethnicity, sexuality, gender, class, ability, etc. you are still affected by your surrounding environment. If you're told constantly by media, friends, colleagues, family, etc. that it isn't 'feminine' to code for computers, your decision-making is obviously influenced to some extent, because most people care about what others think and what is considered to be normative behaviour by society at large by virtue of us humans being social in nature.

That I agree with. This is still a big issue in conservative societies, at least the middle-east and the Indian subcontinent. The girls are heavily expected and trained for housework chores at a very early age and groomed for a homemaker's life whereas boys were only encouraged to become doctors and engineers. This needs to stop, though is this also widely practiced in the West?

It is not as simple as having access to whatever you want to do. That's not how the world works. There are so many forces, institutional, societal, personal, even in the way we employ language, that keep people in their assigned boxes of marginalization and discrimination based on things like sexuality, ethnicity, race, gender, etc. Thus, it is not a matter of a girl just picking up a computer instead of a doll.

I get what you are saying, environmental stimuli has a significant effect on your wants and desires - BUT - it comes nowhere close to being the only factor in determining your interests.

There are also innate born passions which people can use in turn to affect the shape of their environment, if an effort is put forth and met by encouragement. This is a good thing - because these affect (and note the a) Gender Roles. And Gender Roles are always evolving, and and they will exist as long as the concept of a Male and Female exists in human society. As long as subsets or categories exist - there will be observations and generalizations made about them. Such is human nature, and this is not inherently negative as it is just information. But this information is used by marketing departments. Publishers just want to maximize their profit by targeting the majority. The reason for not including female in Nes ads was not because Nintendo hated women, but because Ninetendo wanted to sell the most to the biggest purchaser group. Capitalism, not misogyny, drove those advertisements and its the same way today.

 

[Juliet's 8½ Spirits]

I don't think that this article seems to be suggesting anything more radical than, "Marketing for video games shouldn't explicitly (or implicitly) write off girls as a potential audience by either denigrating them or ignoring them." I agree with what you said last - you can ultimately be interested in whatever you want to be. I'm interested in non-gender 'appropriate' things, myself. But that's not a good counterargument to the assertion that the status quo is a problem, anymore than arguing that because someone can succeed in spite of structural inequality, structural inequality doesn't matter.

Why not? Look, I'm all for more girls/women coming into this industry, but why should companies be forced to appeal to a market that isnt there? When the dude-bro audience came into the picture with MW, the entire industry changed. The DS had a very large female userbase, and what did you see on the DS? many female oriented games (that weren't all bratz games). Now, it isnt surprising that you're seeing the same thing with mobile games. All it takes is one game (something other than Dance Central) that will bring in casual female gamers, similar to what MW did with the casual male gamer. Until then, I don't think video game companies should be given shit for targeting the male gamer as their core demographic (which they are).

Boys who liked video games had advertising targeted to them, and while "nerd" is an outsider label, it's still a faction in its own right. It's a group you can belong to. You can hang out with other nerds and do nerd things together and feel like there are people who accept what you do somewhere or other.

Since girls were excluded by most console game advertising, and they don't fit into the nerd peer group, where do they belong? A girl will inevitably be an outsider for playing in a male-dominated genre. Most people don't want to put up with that. So girls move to less conspicuous methods of video game consumption, like in the PC or mobile space, that don't require them to purchase a big device that identifies them by their hobby. And the people who target them there can make millions.

Where were they excluded? by the call of duty ads every year featuring female gamers? I'm not trying to sound like as ass here, but can you show me an advertisement in recent years that specifically discouraged female gaming? (I'm genuinely curious)

 

[Devolution]

I just don't really know how marketing can ever move away from exploiting gender stereotypes. I mean, it's just easy money to sell to "male demographics". As a male myself, I would love more diversity, and for them NOT to keep marketing big boobs, explosions, high octane aggressive/action. I'm burnt out on that crap. Yet this kind of marketing is still going strong. Just look at the film industry, they haven't made much progress.

So then it all comes back to, who is to blame? Is it then Male's fault, for continuing to buy this stuff? I mean, after all companies just sell what people want. Until people stop buying it, I don't see why a business would ever give it up. If suddenly they realized female demographic is a gold mine too, what's to stop them from not doing the same kind of exploitation to the female demographic? (They already do this with certain kinds of movies).

Outside of having these debates/discussions, I don't really see what the solution is on a grand scale (the mass market). It seems like humans are generally shallow, and businesses will continue to give them what they crave.

EDIT: I didn't mean to point fingers with blame. I only bring it up, because I'm curious what the source of the problem really is (identifying it), and how do you fix it. It seems to me, both genders are accepting to being exploited (I mean, having product marketed to them that narrowly focuses on socially constructed gender roles). And both genders will eat it up.

What people crave can and is shaped by marketing, vicious cycle I know. People want to talk about marketing in this thread, welp the 50s are a great example of "domesticating" women who were forced out of work when the GIs came home. A huge surge of marketing told them that being a housewife was the proper way to live and be. With such an onslaught of this, also bolstered by the government, it's hard not to fall in line.

The way to deal with this is to join movements aimed to challenge such limiting notions of gender expression. That means the dreaded F word.

 

[Mononoke]

What people crave can and is shaped by marketing, vicious cycle I know. People want to talk about marketing in this thread, welp the 50s are a great example of "domesticating" women who were forced out of work when the GIs came home. A huge surge of marketing told them that being a housewife was the proper way to live and be. With such an onslaught of this, also bolstered by the government, it's hard not to fall in line.

So is marketing forced to change, when people have had enough? I guess I just feel hopeless on the matter, seeing as I feel like something like the movie industry hasn't made that much progress. I mean yeah we've made progress, but I feel like we are stuck in this subtle loop where it's not offensive enough to piss people off (or at least to great lengths) like older marketing was (the 50's for example).

I almost feel like marketing today is more evil, because it's (again) subtle with what they do. They ride that line where people aren't overall offended, and yet they keep cornering stereotypes that please large enough demographics that the money keeps rolling.

 

[params7]

You're really downplaying how strongly social expectations influence us. Individuals can break from the norm, but the overall tendency is to follow the norm. Boys can buy toys from the "girl" aisle, and girls can buy toys from the "boy" aisle, but overall they will be driven to want with what they understand are gender-appropriate toys.

You can keep saying "but there's nothing stopping them!" all you want. That's just not the reality of it.

lol, what came first - the chicken or the egg? Social Action or Social Expectation? I'm really trying to dumb this down for you but like I said this is NOT just a one sided affair.

If overall tendency is to follow the Norm, then why is it that we are not following the norm from Victorian era or the crusades today?

Or maybe what you define as "social expectations" are just recorded observations. It is backwardness if people use social expectations to guide behavior. Which is why I fucking hate religions.

 

[palpabl_purpura]

It's this kind of crap that made me throw my hands up long ago and stop debating in these kinds of threads. The fact that it's still happening even today is mind boggling. People who disagree with topics like this get hyper defensive, insulting, and downright condescending almost instantly.

The games are the games.

The ads are the ads.

Take it or leave it.

 

[Gotchaye]

I just don't really know how marketing can ever move away from exploiting gender stereotypes. I mean, it's just easy money to sell to "male demographics". As a male myself, I would love more diversity, and for them NOT to keep marketing big boobs, explosions, high octane aggressive/action. I'm burnt out on that crap. Yet this kind of marketing is still going strong. Just look at the film industry, they haven't made much progress.

So, yes, it's probably not good strategy to focus directly on trying to get for-profit corporations to not do something which is profitable. Maybe achieving what we'd like to see is going to turn out to be incredibly difficult even if almost everyone agrees that it'd be nice if there were more female players of major console games because of a path-dependency where companies continue to focus on marketing to males because males right now make up the majority of the audience.

But presumably consumers who are conscious of and concerned about trends like these are less susceptible to this kind of marketing. For example, I'm pretty sure that the Dr Pepper 10 ads that target me as a male are a lot less valuable to the company, as far as my dollars are concerned, than other marketing would be. You seem to think you're in a similar position. So a path towards making things at least a little better is convincing people to care and think about this stuff. Because if more people care, then the marketing becomes less effective. So before despairing about changing the presumably rational behavior of for-profit corporations, it's worth spending more time trying to change the irrational behavior of consumers who respond to the marketing by working to increase their awareness or empathy.

So is marketing forced to change, when people have had enough? I guess I just feel hopeless on the matter, seeing as I feel like something like the movie industry hasn't made that much progress. I mean yeah we've made progress, but I feel like we are stuck in this subtle loop where it's not offensive enough to piss people off (or at least to great lengths) like older marketing was (the 50's for example).

I almost feel like marketing today is more evil, because it's (again) subtle with what they do. They ride that line where people aren't overall offended, and yet they keep cornering stereotypes that please large enough demographics that the money keeps rolling.

It's important to note that that line has moved over time. Progress really is being made, although it's in fits and starts and I'm sure that sometimes we take a few steps backwards. Edit: But yes, realistically change is going to occur on a generational time scale, because it's a lot easier to teach people to know better in the first place than it is to correct them after they learn wrong.

 

[Nekofrog]

Why not? Look, I'm all for more girls/women coming into this industry, but why should companies be forced to appeal to a market that isnt there?

You know, the first company that actually attempts to cultivate this "market that isn't there" is going to hit a fucking gold mine.

 

[Devolution]

The market is there but people are afraid. And the creative field isn't zero sum.

 

[SolidSnakex]

You know, the first company that actually attempts to cultivate this "market that isn't there" is going to hit a fucking gold mine.

Didn't Nintendo basically try to do that with the Wii? I remember them even bragging about the number of female gamers they had on their platform compared to others.

 

[GorillaJu]

Your level of education has nothing to do with it. You can have a PHD and still have an uneducated opinion, which you do in this instance.

You're really endearing yourself here. Keep up with the personal attacks, it strengthens your non-existent argument.

 

[ArjanN]

yes but all of those titles in the quote are videogames. they're "very different things" in that one game might feature cartoon birds you fling at pigs and the other is about gunning down brown people with military grade weapons. both games should be considered equally as appealing and appropriate for either sex, however due to marketing, they are not.

I don't think that's due to marketing, i think it's due to the nature of the games themselves.

Also Doom and Farmville are technically both videogames.in the way that The Godfather and Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill are both movies.

 

[zeldablue]

You know, the first company that actually attempts to cultivate this "market that isn't there" is going to hit a fucking gold mine.

Didn't Nintendo hit that gold mine briefly with the Wii and DS?

Wii Fit, Nintendogs broke records and then an outstanding amount of women and girls started enjoying more game like Mario Kart and Wii Sports. Nintendo started them off with very casual, non-violent games and then eased them into more competitive party games. Apparently Zelda: Phantom Hourglass did very well with Japanese girls.

Nintendo might have been able to keep that expanded audience if they hadn't frozen up with there marketing for the Wii U. (Too expensive and not casual...but not hardcore either)

 

[Laughing Banana]

So does gender stereotypes exist because of marketing or does marketing exist to conform to already established gender stereotypes?

Chicken or egg?

Didn't Nintendo basically try to do that with the Wii? I remember them even bragging about the number of female gamers they had on their platform compared to others.

Didn't Nintendo hit that gold mine briefly with the Wii and DS?

Wii Fit, Nintendogs broke records and then an outstanding amount of women and girls started enjoying more game like Mario Kart and Wii Sports. Nintendo started them off with very casual, non-violent games and then eased them into more competitive party games. Apparently Zelda: Phantom Hourglass did very well with Japanese girls.

Nintendo might have been able to keep that expanded audience if they hadn't frozen up with there marketing for the Wii U. (Too expensive and not casual...but not hardcore either)

And whoopie, many in the gaming community, including a great number of GAF, hates them for it.

 

[Steel]

Looking at the charts pointing to female video game consumption being much greater on PC, I can't help but wonder if that's partially because of the difference in online environment.

On PC, unless you're using voice chat, gender really isn't significant at all. On the other hand, on Xbox live you have a mass of immature trash talkers in chat, intolerant of high pitched voices(I admit, squeeky voices via XBL voice chat annoy me too) and perfectly willing to trash talk any high pitched gamer into oblivion. It would make it difficult to build up a friends list to make the environment more tolerable. This is especially true before party chat was implemented.

My experience with female gamers on XBL supports this(And my experience with the two real world female gamers I know who only play PC and Nintendo consoles also support this). I'll use two as examples, one of them was in love with COD(And sucked at it), another that I played with often loved halo(And was better than me at it). In both cases, they were brought to console gaming by their boyfriends(Funnily enough, both dumped their boyfriends and kept playing XBL).

In this case, their boyfriends introduced them to a bunch of people they could add to their friends list and play with right off the bat, which is what I believe made them get into online gaming, whereas otherwise people would have likely been so verbally abusive that it would be difficult for them to get into it.

So the point I'm trying to make is: Much of the disparity between the gender balance on PC and on consoles is possibly as much due to the online environments as simple marketing exclusion.

 

[JesseEwiak]

I don't think that's due to marketing, i think it's due to the nature of the games themselves.

Also Doom and Farmville are technically both videogames.in the way that The Godfather and Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill are both movies.

Don't you think the fact that you compare FarmVille to something horrible and Doom to something fantastic a small part of what this article is talking about? Casual 'girl' games are trash. Hardcore 'manly' games are awesome. Add in 20 odd years of reinforcement and here we are.

 

[charlequin]

Yeah, I feel it's more an issue of female gamers not becoming attached to those platforms rather than having an incredibly strong affinity for Bejweled, Solitaire and the like. Most casual games have a certain level of universal appeal, so naturally they're popular among people who haven't become attached to predominantly male-oriented core software.

Yep. This is one of those things where a historical perspective is important, I think. In 1989, when Tetris was a surprise mega-hit and the video game everyone on Earth wanted to play, it wasn't a "women's game" (and even now, in part because of that historical association, it's seen as more "masculine" than other similar puzzle games.) Twelve years later, Bejeweled was perceived almost exclusively as female-oriented. The aggressive definition of the console space as male-oriented, combined with trends that put more women in front of PCs at home and at work, resulted in a pretty big difference in reception here despite two games whose underlying appeal was not that different.

 

[The Librarian]

So does gender stereotypes exist because of marketing or does marketing exist to conform to already established gender stereotypes?

Chicken or egg?

Well, as the article likes to point out, marketing experts like to find out what people already want/like and target those things accordingly.

 

[billy beane]

The layout of the article is really neat. Shame I'll be reading the article in Pocket though.

 

[Riposte]

Don't you think the fact that you compare FarmVille to something horrible and Doom to something fantastic a small part of what this article is talking about? Casual 'girl' games are trash. Hardcore 'manly' games are awesome. Add in 20 odd years of reinforcement and here we are.

You make it sound like Doom is FarmVille with a Call of Duty skin.

EDIT: Also FarmVille is not specifically a "girl" game. It can only be made to look that way that because there are less girls playing more "enthusiast" games, though I couldn't tell the gender split on Doom lol.

 

[params7]

So does gender stereotypes exist because of marketing or does marketing exist to conform to already established gender stereotypes?

Chicken or egg?

I asked this question and nobody has answered yet.

I think its just that companies need to be answerable to their shareholders who invested money by taking out bank loans, so they just want to appeal to the largest market. Some see it as cowardice. But For-Profits will always appeal to the largest demographic more likely to buy their product, whether it is a videogame or a kitchenware ad.

I'll put my money on gender stereotypes feeding marketing. From what I've learned in my marketing classes is that marketers compile data, generalize and target. They chase, so by nature they are followers.

 

[Laughing Banana]

Don't you think the fact that you compare FarmVille to something horrible and Doom to something fantastic a small part of what this article is talking about? Casual 'girl' games are trash. Hardcore 'manly' games are awesome. Add in 20 odd years of reinforcement and here we are.

Maybe he said what he said because FarmVille is indeed trash, and not related to any gender-related assumptions and stereotypes?

I despise the word "hardcore" by the way, which is why although I do understand the word as mentioned here has a different meaning to it...

NeoGAF is a nexus of hardcore gamers, enthusiast press, and video game industry developers and publishers. This is a neutral ground where facts and evidence, presented within the confines of civil, inclusive discourse, prevail through careful moderation.

I still find it unfortunate. Makes GAF feel like an inclusive thing, where "casual" gamers have no place to speak in here.

 

[Riposte]

Hardcore just means "dedicated", if not "passionate" (to and about the medium).

EDIT: There is a split here, that I mentioned before. If girls don't play games like Doom (or w/e) because it is not marketed to them, then why is Doom a problem in itself (basically, once you've started marketing to girls, assuming that feasible)?

 

[Zarx]

You know, the first company that actually attempts to cultivate this "market that isn't there" is going to hit a fucking gold mine.

EA, Popcap and Zynga, Big Fish etc already did. It's not really an untapped market, especially on PC

 

[charlequin]

Maybe he said what he said because FarmVille is indeed trash, and not related to any gender-related assumptions and stereotypes?

But people cite FarmVille in part out of inculcated gender biases. Why is the comparison between Doom (a top-fifty-of-all-time, genre-creating, industry-redefining game from twenty years ago) and FarmVille (a title that's only a few years old, is mostly known for questionable business practices, and which is widely agreed to be of poor quality)? The comparison is bizarre from any logical approach.

If we want to at least try to compare apples and apples, why not compare a niche male-oriented title (say, Yakuza) to a niche female-oriented title (say, Harvest Moon)? Or a big, super-casual, non-skill-oriented male-targeted AAA game (like Call of Duty) to an equivalent female-targeted AAA game (the Sims)?

I asked this question and nobody has answered yet.

Because it's not an insightful question. The entire purpose of the "chicken or egg" aphorism is that "which came first" is meaningless; each creates the other and thereby provides the indirect fuel for its own future existence. All kinds of feedback loops of this sort exist, and unchecked they often lead to minor differences being blown up into significant and intractable biases. In this case, what may have been a minor tip in marketing or original market share compounded itself through many trips back and forth until it became extremely difficult to recenter again.

 

[JesseEwiak]

Maybe he said what he said because FarmVille is indeed trash, and not related to any gender-related assumptions and stereotypes?

I despise the word "hardcore" by the way, which is why although I do understand the word as mentioned here has a different meaning to it...
.

Why do you think he chose a 'trash' girl game like FarmVille instead of a game like The Sims to make his comparison?

 

[Jintor]

So does gender stereotypes exist because of marketing or does marketing exist to conform to already established gender stereotypes?

Chicken or egg?

It's probably not an either/or.

But certainly marketing both conforms and exploits existing gender stereotypes while simultaneously perpetuating and instilling them in others, right?

 

[Laughing Banana]

Because it's not an insightful question.

Ouch, that hurts, hahaha.

 

[Box]

A person with a passion for what he/she loves to do wouldn't and doesn't' care about what society has to say about them. My point was, gamers (specifically male) have been overcoming negative stigma since the birth of the industry. I don't understand why female gamers feel they are specifically targeted or excluded when it comes to these things. If there was a big enough market for female gamers do you honestly think companies would spare any time targeting products towards them? When the dude-bro gamer got involved in gaming we saw a massive shift in marketing campaign, and hell, even video game trends. When/if the female gaming community becomes large enough to see an investment opportunity you'll see an automatic shift in the industry.

Dude, this is like all wrong.

No one has a passion about anything when they're coming into the world. Passions have to get formed. Young girls being told that games are for boys can't possibly feel passionate about them. Besides, to kids, approval is so important. For boys there's some stigma for playing video games instead of playing outside, but it's not as prevalent. That's because of the marketing. The marketing for video games gets people to accept playing video games is acceptable behavior. But since the marketing is only aimed at boys, games are only seen as acceptable for boys.

Same thing with dudebros. The marketing is aimed towards male teenagers and the demographics follow. To get women to play games, you just have to market games to them. You can't wait for the market to appear. That doesn't work for any product at all. You market the product and then people want it, not the other way around. The female gaming community will not become large enough if the investments are not made. If investments are made, then with effective marketing, the market will grow to support larger investments.