• Hello. My name is dolofonos daimonas, and I am going to be talking to you about videogames. Sort of. The main concern of this lecture is why we don’t see many girls playing games. So I found a friend who is a girl gamer. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce miss leigh Alexander. Those of you who follow video game news may have already read some of her work. Leigh is the news director for gamasutra, a former associate news editer for kotaku, and she maintains a blog called “sexy video game land”. I asked her to join us today because she’s written a great deal about todays topic, and since I’ve already stolen her notes, let’s get started. For a long time, the video game world has been male dominated. A majority of game designers are male, and a majority of the people we call gamers are also male. We guys have been enjoying our games for many years now and we’re looking forward to many years of gaming to come. But every now and then when we stop to look around ourselves we sometimes wonder why women don’t seem even remotely interested in our favorite hobby, which leads me to our question of the day: why aren’t women interested in video games? I don’t mean to say that there aren’t girl gamers out there, because there are. We all have a sister/friend/cousin who can kick our a** at halo (I know I do) and more women are working in the game industry than ever before, but even so, the ratio between male and female game designers is still extremely imbalanced. Actually, I say that but it really depends on how you look at it: female interest in video games has actually sky-rocketed within the last decade because of the increase in casual gaming. And if popcap surveys are to be believed, these women outnumber us and the average gamer is no longer an 18-34 year old male, but a women in her 30s. but the surveys fail to mention that this average gamer is only playing peggle all day. This new wave of female gamers mostly fit into the casual demographic so they’re drawn to the browser based puzzlers or simulators. However, if you look at any line outside of gamestop on the release of a major console title and there’s nary a women in sight. And the women who do stand in those lines, the ones who counted the days until the release of final fantasy XIII is a very small minority. In some cases their fandom may even alienate themselves from other girls. Example: whenever Leigh tells people what she does for a living. Upon hearing this; men tend to be surprised and interested in her career, women become weirded out and uncomfortable around her. I’m sure there are plenty of exceptions to this, but let’s be honest. How many of you girls can actually talk games around your girlfriends for more than a couple minutes without things getting awkward? Now, the game industry has been making a focused effort to recruit more women into the workforce and diversify their consumer base. There are a lot of women out there who could be regular customers and it seems that the industry has finally figured that out. Efforts are being made to bring more women into the fold, but outside the casual market, nothing seems to be working. Meanwhile, we guys would love to have more girls join in on the fun, but it seems to take just as much finessing to get your girl to play as ever. And I know it’s kind of condescending to say, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Why aren’t women interested in the big console hits? The halo’s, the call of duty’s, the bioshock’s. is there something about the gameplay that just doesn’t appeal to the feminine mind? I guess that could be a factor, but like I said before: there are a lot of women out there that actually like these games. Is it a problem with the premise that all these games tend to share? The sci-fi, space marines, explosions, and big breasts? Actually, that probably has a lot to do about it. But I think it’s just part of a much larger issue. Looking at our industry from its humble beginnings to now, we’ve always had this image of games being kind of a boys club. This industry has been male dominated for a long time and our games reflect that. Games have been designed and marketed to suit the tastes of males for so long that women may be conditioned to be excluded from our culture. This world and these games just aren’t for them. Just because we aren’t trying to exclude women doesn’t mean they feel welcome. Naturally we’d like to solve this problem and our first instinct is to address past grievances. Last year, Eidos announced that they will be redesigning their most popular character: Lara Croft, in order to widen franchise appeal. They were unsettlingly vague in describing what they meant by “redesign” but the most obvious option was to dial back the pandering sex appeal and market lara to someone other than teenage males. In theory this maneuver makes some sense, but Lara croft has always been one of the most prominent sex symbols in gaming and this trend she helped to start towards hyper-sexualized female characters may very well be the main reason why women are put off by our pastime. Even female gaming fans have expressed their anger towards the exploit of way in which women are often represented in this industry, and it’s pretty hard to argue with them. You can’t really blame women for looking at the box art for X-blades and thinking “ya know what? I don’t think this game is for me”. Even if you enjoy playing a game with an attractive avatar, the obsession with breast physics has to get irritating eventually. So in a way, eidos’ gesture makes sense. However, assuming they did give Lara a complete makeover, would a mundane, conservative Croft appeal this game that much more to women? She’s been gaming’s biggest sex symbol for so long, it’s going to be hard for anyone to perceive her differently. And if women as a group feel that the Tomb Raider games just aren’t for them even a complete Lara overhaul probably isn’t going to change their perception of the brand. Change Lara all you want, I don’t think women are paying attention. It would be like Hooters announcing that they were going to reinvent the hooters girl. “sexual innuendo will no longer be our mission statement and from now on our scantily clad waitresses will be dressed in full business attire.” Would that really make women more interested in hooters? No. It’s always been a boys club and that isn’t going to change soon. This is going to be a harder problem than we thought. How can we break down this sexual barrier and make women feel a little more welcome? As an industry, there is a lot we can do. I think it’s great that more and more game companies have a growing female presence. It’s not going to break the stigma of the boys club over night, but having more women aboard will bring a much broader perspective of design and our approach to making games. If it’s true that women are more inclined to using the right side of their brain than men, they could be the key to creating games with a more universal appeal. I think we can look forward to much more variety in our future gaming as women join the team. As for recruiting more female game-players, there are a few ways we can go about that. We can always try making games that appeal to women at a younger age so the next generation of girls can grow up with an appreciation of the gaming industry. Which is pretty much what ubisoft has been up to for the last few years. My hat is off to our French and Canadian brothers. You guys know how to plan ahead. (Canada still sucks) But I think the greatest impact is the growing popularity of the casual games. The sudden rise in the casual game market has taught millions of newcomers the fun of video games. Games are reaching completely untapped audiences and women make up 74% of said audience. That’s a huge number of women who are discovering games for the first time. It’s easy for us game fanatics to dismiss bejeweled or diner dash, but these games are drawing this new audience in. With time, many of them may grow curious enough to cross over and try their hand at a halo match. Once we’ve got their attention, we’re going to have to keep it. And that’s where we need to make major changes. As an industry, we need to seriously reconsider our marketing. We need to examine our habit of manipulatively using women for appeal. Like booth babes at our conventions and exploitive character design. I’m not saying that all of this has to go away, but we need to consider the effect this stuff has on our industries image. Let’s go back to Lara for a minute. Toby Gard, Lara Croft’s designer, made her to be a stunning, sexy, powerful, over-the-top heroine. Pretty much a female Indiana Jones. But she’s never really been marketed that way has she? You may see a hint of Toby’s Lara in the games themselves but outside of them she’s marketed as a sex symbol posing in topless photos. Toby designed a strong, classy women and marketing reduced her to eye candy, a label she may never be free of. It’s not just an issue of character design. I don’t think women are so fragile that they can’t handle playing a sexy video game character. Almost every game character you have ever played as was is an idealized fantasy character. It’s not just the way they look: the way you market these characters and the way they behave is just as important. If a strong female character is thrown nude into an issue of playboy, her image as a strong female character has been tarnished and she seizes to be a character we can respect. Maybe if we stopped treating all of our heroines like floozies we’d have a few more female roll models that women can identify with. And this seems like a good time to note that certain women (you know who you are) are contributing for this problem. While the industry is using women for sex appeal, some women are guilty of using the industry for the same reasons. And it’s not really helping things. Being sexy and being a girl who plays games are both easy ways to draw attention, so I understand why certain people would capitalize on that. But I don’t think this trend is doing anything to help the industry’s image. We guys may appreciate the imagery but we’re smart enough to see the lack of authenticity behind it. Well… most of us are. Most of these girls aren’t gamers and we know that. They aren’t part of our club, they are just using our hobby as marketing material. These women who exploit our media for sex appeal aren’t setting a very good example for us. It’s telling the female mass that women aren’t equal participants and can only be involved in an exploitive way. Admittedly, it’s a bit unfair to point fingers. A lot of these girls may be legit gamers who just enjoy flaunting what they’ve got, and it’d be really unfair if we demanded that they set a good example. But at the same time we have so few other types of female presences in gaming, and this can’t be helping either gender feel more comfortable with each other in the game space. Women feel alienated, men feel manipulated. But aside from those grievances, we have to make video games that will appeal to our newly expanded audience. This is where the game industries new female recruits can be particularly helpful. With greater variety in the industry’s workforce, we will begin to see a greater variety of the kinds of games that industry produces: new settings, new gameplay innovations, new character archetypes (finally) and new approaches to design. Greater diversity in the gaming industry and fanbase could be one of the greatest steps forward for video games. In fact, perhaps the ideal solution would be to just stop drawing the gender lines completely. It may be that when we stop thinking about games for men or games for women, and just make games for people, things will start to improve. Yes, certain kinds of products and imagery appeal to men while other kinds appeal to women and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you have to wonder if all of this boundary drawing actually boxes women out instead of inviting them in. What good is it to make these games for women if we’re only keeping them at an arms length from the rest of the gaming culture like a huge, exhaustively researched kiddy pool. In the end, I think we would all love for more women to discover video games, and I think this shift is already on their way. Casual games may be just what the doctor ordered. A gateway drug if you will. It all starts with a game of cake mania, soon you’ve bought a DS, and before you know it BAM! You’re outside, teeth chattering, waiting in line for the next big console blockbuster. Casual games have opened the floodgates to a nervous, untapped public. Let’s try our best not to scare them off.