I’ve yet to receive a response to my request for topic suggestions. This probably means one or more of three things: you people aren’t reading my column, or you’re so satisfied with what I have chosen to write about that you have nothing to suggest, or you just don’t care. The first case is not something I can rectify with my column. The second case takes care of itself. But apathy—is there anything I can do about that? Perhaps a little controversy.
One topic always spurs heated debate. Why are game players mostly male? Theories fly. Luckily, since we’re trying to generate controversy, it happens that I have the only correct theories, which I’ll deign to pass on once I’ve shown how ridiculous the others are. Let’s start by trashing some common misconceptions:
1. No one has ever tried making games specifically for women.
I hear this often from determined software developers new to the industry with a cause that will revolutionize the industry. I don’t hear it from old hands because they’ve all seen the games released that were intended for women and girls. One of the first I remember was the fabled Epyx Barbie game, released around 1985. It captured the commercial, sexist feeling of Barbie perfectly, and actually did surprisingly well—I believe it only lost a little money. Why that was the case I’ll address later. Many games have been made with women specifically in mind: perhaps a tiny fraction compared to all the games released, but enough to conclusively put this misconception to rest. It will be interesting to measure the sales of the latest Barbie CD-ROM, being advertised on TV now.
If the person speaking to me is a woman, often they move on to the next preconception.
2. The problem is that men make the games, and they make them for other men and boys. If women actually made the games, other women would buy them in droves!
Wrong again! Really, with tens of thousands of computer and video games out there, don’t people realize that it might have occurred to someone to let a woman design a game for other women? I’ll touch on three specific efforts, and I’m sure there are dozens if not hundreds more. The least known was a coin-op arcade game developed at Gottleib (also known as Mylstar for a while) in the early 80’s. The designer/programmer, Lyn Oswald, was one of the few women in the field, and she was sure she could break the sex barrier in games. Hers involved leading cute little ducks through a screen of dangers. It sounded just like the kind of thing that would appeal to women, and some arcade games like Pac Man/Ms. Pac Man and Centipede had fairly high female player ratios, so developers knew it was possible. But the nearly complete prototype never made it past the testing phase, failing to even come close to the competition in player interest.
Better known was the Infocom text adventure "Plundered Hearts" by Amy Briggs. This was a game that combined the classic Infocom game quality with a bodice-ripping romance novel. Another dud, measured against other Infocom games of the time.
Perhaps best known are Roberta Williams’s games from Sierra. In particular her Laura Bow mystery games were, according to Sierra’s own PR, aimed at the female market. I don’t know the demographics they got—adventure games typically have one of the highest ratios of women to men players of the various game genres (meaning perhaps 1/3 women, not a majority)—but the sales figures clearly have paled compared to the more violent Gabriel Knight games, or even Roberta’s more recent Phantasmagoria where she turned to horror themes.
3. Too many games out there are about killing. Women need games about topics specific to their likes.
I won’t argue with this basic premise. I think that too often designers in our industry depend on violence and gore for commercial effect without much regard to artistic merit or game play, much like the film industry does when it gives us Halloween 17 or Nightmare on Elm Street XXVIII. But what topics are specific to women’s liking? When men are asked this they often suggest making a game about shopping, or cooking. This always has struck me as only slightly more logical than if sex roles were reversed, and women game developers were saying, "How can we get more men to play games? I know, let’s make one about taking out the garbage!"
A related misconception is that Ms. Pac Man appealed to women by putting a bow on Pac Man and adding a "romance" interlude between screens. The fact is, the idea of Ms. Pac Man came after Pac Man had already broken the gender barrier and shown that a sexless yellow blob could appeal to men and women. Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man were the second and first most successful coin-op video games of all time. Similarly, Centipede, a shooting game, appealed to men and women alike. Some ascribed it to the pastel color scheme, apparently chosen by a woman, but it’s pretty hard to believe that was the deciding factor.
The idea of women-only topics inspired games like the aforementioned Plundered Hearts. But that game appealed to far fewer women than the asexual Tetris, which would to traditional thinking have been predicted to be a male-oriented game because of its dependence on spatial perception. The fact is, games aimed specifically at women’s interests just haven’t done very well. Which is challenged by the last misconception I’ll cover.
4. If only a game was made that did appeal to women, it would sell huge numbers!
The logic here is that women are a largely untapped market, which is true. But the assumption is, "If you build it, they will come" and that’s just not supported by the facts. The games that have been a hit with women so far have done so while also appealing to men, instead of by going out on a feminine limb. The obvious logic for this is that a game that appeals to both sexes will have a larger potential audience. But there’s a much more compelling reason.
The production and distribution channels for games reward games that look like slightly improved versions of previous bestsellers. If a game is designed to be perfect for women who have never been interested in computer games before, but is of little interest to men, it’s probably never going to get a chance to prove itself. First there are the internal company hurdles, where most of the decision-makers (mostly male) are cautious about untested markets. If the game is made, the distributors (mostly male) have to believe in it or they won’t order it in large enough numbers to make it a hit. And then the retailers must believe in it enough to recommend it to their customers. But the final link in the chain is that someone must go into a store and buy it. The very woman that the game was designed to appeal to is by definition unlikely to go to the store to find it, and is less likely than a man to own a computer to play it.
So, is it hopeless? Will games that appeal primarily to women never come about?
Quite the contrary. It is inevitable that with time such games will become successes. Look at more mature industries like novels and film, where women-oriented titles are a thriving subset. But several things need to happen first to the interactive market and distribution system. The biggest hurdle of the distribution system is already under attack by the Internet and online distribution. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the first financially successful Internet entertainment offerings are online soap operas, a "traditionally female" demographic. It’s also interesting that although online soaps are interactive entertainment, they’re not games. In bypassing the normal distribution channels, we eliminate those filters of company executives, distributors and retailers. Entertainment that appeals to women can be sampled directly by women. There are more men than women surfing the net these days, but that is also likely to change. The social changes in our society, as more and more people grow up computer-literate, are helping level the gender fields. When computers were a hobby market, they were almost exclusively used by men. The more they become a mass-market device, the more they are used by "just plain ordinary people," not computer geeks.
And that’s the single biggest barrier to interactive entertainment for women. It’s not that there’s something wrong with women who don’t like games. It’s a flaw in games that have depended on their inbred game-savvy male audiences. Games have evolved from some very specialized forms that have for the most part been very male-oriented. While a combat flight simulator might end up selling to a literally 99% male audience, it’s not surprising that the one genre that has consistently had 25% to 30% female players is adventure games. Stories and puzzles are the heart of adventure games, and those are both gender-neutral things. In the early LucasArts days we were surprised that the Indiana Jones games had more women playing them than the Monkey Island comedy games, which on the surface seemed more gender-neutral than the macho Indy image. It makes sense when you consider that Indiana Jones movies have appealed to both men and women, and compelling stories with strong female characters are big draws in books and movies as well. As our industry matures we will continue to diversify, with some genres like fighting games appealing to mostly male audiences, and others like adventure games or SimCity and its descendants breaking out into a larger audience. With time and maturity, we’ll see a diversified audience for interactive entertainment. And then, perhaps, even games narrowly focused on women can be successful!