Adding new meaning to what we know as 'Games'
By Carius

Hello everybody and welcome,
Before we proceed any further I would like to read the following:
[blockquote]Disclaimer
This is an informative article, I have no intention of offending or aggravating anyone.

Everything presented in this article has been a result of conclusive research involving both search engines and real people.

This article does not cover "Women" as an overall category, everybody is an individual and entitled to their own opinions, this is merely evidence of the majority.[/blockquote]Alright, now that all of the legal stuff is out of the way, let me ask what a lot of you pasty, acne-coated nerds are probably thinking to yourselves...



What is a Woman, as a Gamer?
In a lot of ways we misunderstand that Gamer Girls are more like us than we think, however they are also as foreign to us as say; what we actually know exists on Mars, however they can generally be grouped into one of three categories.


The Casual Gamer Girl
Has a nice ring to it, wouldn't you say?
The CGGs dominate the female population with their ability to enjoy a game without ever having the need or desire to get better at it or want to play it again, this has become a HOT TOPIC for many game developers because this population is a very good market investment if it gets utilised properly.

In most cases a girl will not even think twice about wanting to pick up a game to play it, they are more often than not; a single child, or one that only has sisters.
They are raised in an almost enclosed environment where moral values and a focus on the future are what gets enforced by their parents, there will be a few board games to pass the time because they have educational elements to them (counting, strategy, logic, spelling, etc.), but beyond that and the possibility of a computer containing Solitaire and Minesweeper, there will be no existence of a console, handheld or anything of the like, it's just the way they are.


Hardcore Gamer Girl
HGGs are scary, chances are that if you're a gamer of any sort you've come across one of these individuals.
Harcore Gamer Girls are relentless, they play as dirty as you and chances are they look as dirty as you, if not for other physical characteristics; you could mistake one of these people for just another guy based on how they act.

Excuse the inaccuracies of the picture above (clean desktop, yelling at a racing game while using a joystick, ONE CD rack), it's just to emphasise the fact that this sort of girl will get into any game they are good at just about as much as any guy would, cursing, yelling and everything else comes standard.
Generally speaking if a guy were to ever date one of these people they will either be 'whipped' as it's known nowadays or will be in constant competition or fights...


THE Gamer Girl
Your Stereotypical Gamer Girl fits into this category if she actively plays games (not necessarily well), and has enough knowledge of them to remember the controls for future playthroughs, however they only play one particular type of game and sort of leave their skills on a plateau of mediocrity, they're the sort of person you can beat at their own game after a few minutes of learning the controls but don't have that competitive bone to make them angry or aggressive if they lose, they play for the sake of having fun.

These types of girls are pretty much a true balance between the life of a gamer and the life of a normal person and they switch back and forth accordingly depending on their mood or circumstances, these particular individuals will be the focus of this article, so let's continue with why.



Females and the Games Market
First of all, the types of games that a stereotypical Gamer Girl plays needs to be established...
[blockquote]Life Simulation Games
Puzzle Games
Role Playing Games[/blockquote]Take a close look at the three game types listed above, what would you say is consistent about the way they are handled by a female player?
Give up?

Control

Whether they like to admit it or not, women are devious and controlling individuals, it comes naturally and prepares them for parenthood later on in life, but for the time being if they aren't trying to control their boyfriends or various objects and activities in day to day life, they get their fix from these sorts of games.
They enjoy being in control, having the ability to alter the outcome of every character in a Life Sim game, or deciding where to put every piece of the puzzle in order to win, or even deciding where to allocate their different stats, money and items to make their heroes as useful as they can be; it's what attracts the female gaming populations to these particular types of games.


Life Simulation Games
These games have been around forever, since way back in the text-based game days, however they didn't really become big until Electronic Arts capitalised on an idea that has since been known to suit women PERFECTLY, that is none other than The Sims.

Look at this, 8 versions of this damn game and it isn't even including The Sims 2 which most likely had another 5 or 6 different versions on top of that.
For the amount of guys you can ask who say The Sims games are awful, the results speak for themselves, people are eating this stuff up like an icecream dessert and if it isn't the men then it has to be the women.

Since then The Sims have been ported to just about every console and handheld of this generation, why?
For the same reason mentioned before, women eat it up and by porting the games to other systems developers gain wider coverage of ALL female gamers, following that, there's the added possibility that a girl might just purchase a particular console in order to play other games of this type.

The Marketing Genius
Nintendo has been a very clever monkey compared to the others grouped around it.
Upon release of the Nintendo DS, their debut game was none other than Nintendogs, hell they offered deals that gave you the game when you bought the handheld way back in the day. It was a brilliantly executed marketing strategy that paid off well for them, it was guaranteed that the male population would already be drawn in by the console's mere existence, but it took some more applied thinking to have the same effect on the female population.
Nintendo was clever in this way because gradually they began to release different versions of the same game (hello, someone took a page out of The Sims book).

One could say Nintendo was almost a sly dog with their marketing strategies, people were oblivious to it but upon the release of the DS, the supporting games to keep the girls hooked followed, the next most popular games being Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon.

Jumping back to the initial subject now, we see that Life Simulation Games hold pretty much the entire majority of the Gamer Girl population with the exceptions of the truly casual and hardcore gamers. The key word through this entire topic is LIFE, girls want to mimic and control life as accurately as possible and take note of realistic outcomes to potentially practice in day to day living.


Puzzle Games
Puzzle games are basically the next closest thing to board games when talking about games for girls, with that said; this genre leaves the widest possible opening to develop a game that will appeal to Casual Gamer Girls. You will always get your standard releases of 'electronic board games' on just about any platform but it doesn't mean anything for girls who don't really play games to begin with.

Taking a leaflet out of Nintendo's book again; they released Tetris DS pretty much as soon as the DS came out as well.
Without going into reiteration of what was mentioned beforehand, Tetris is probably the oldest electronic puzzle game that has been enjoyed through every generation of gamer since its creation, along with the in-game promotion of Nintendo's other mainstream games it was another good marketing strategy to once again tackle the majority of the female market, but even without that market it was more than appealing for the male market also.

Stepping back for a bit again, the point of a puzzle game is to get the player to think, and thinking is something that women spend a lot of their time doing, therefore it was only natural for someone already thinking outside the box to release something like Big Brain Academy, and Brain Training.

It's sort of like a mish-mash of Life Sim and Puzzle game, in that you do simple, menial tasks that are represented with real life scenarios and objects, personally, there is nothing that appeals to me about these sorts of games but they are performing increasingly well against more upscale games in the market.
Following that, there is the mish-mash of Puzzle Game and RPG, better known as Puzzle Quest, regardless of what many of us have been led to expect, Nintendo is developing for its female and casual market and it seems to be paying off for them.


Role Playing Games
Finally, the RPG is seen as more of an interactive storybook through a girl's eyes, you have the Plot, the Characters and the Setting all right there in front of you to see rather than constistently having to imagine, following that you have the ability to explore, go shopping, or just continue following the story, however the action elements of most typical RPGs can be off-putting for a lass just interested in a casual read-and-explore adventure, so light-hearted cutesy games are in order.
Probably the best example to give for an RPG with a light hearted storyline, cutesy graphics and plenty of exploration value would be Pokèmon.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend as they say, next to that Pokèmon has everything going for it in regards to the female population; cute creatures to collect and ultimately control, the ability to dress them up, give them names and feed them, as well as the ability to follow a light-hearted storyline to give the game some added weight of purpose. If anything, Pokèmon is THE Role Playing Game for girls, and it's at this stage I'll mention feeling sad for clocking up around 250 hours on my Diamond Version.

Although most of this section was just a big ego stroke toward Nintendo it is only because they are the ones who are capitalising most effectively on a seemingly untapped and rich source of revenue, sadly for us men we're going to have to make some room on the couch while our sister, mother or lover takes control of the Wiimote to play Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree.



Where are we Headed?
The future of our games at this stage is still very much unknown, all that is known is that similar to Reality Television, these sorts of games are going to become increasingly popular until the contents of your local game store contains them in obscene numbers, so to brace you for this potential future I thought I'd take a look around to see exactly what sort of games are being made that are targeted toward girls nowadays.


Ayiti, the Cost of Life
http://ayiti.newzcrew.org/ayitiunicef/

You start the game with a choice of 4 initial strategies to choose from:
Health, Happiness, Education, Money...
You play through the game trying to maintain or improve whatever particular strategy you chose...


Alter Ego
http://theblackforge.net/alterego/alterego
Alter Ego is basically some sort of elaborate Myspace or Facebook bulletin...
I had a quick 3-question run and all of a sudden I go from a badly cut hand to just a simple boo-boo on my finger...
Basically the game covers different choices that you could have made at different stages of life and how they could have POSSIBLY panned out...
Don't let my little example fool you though, the game is REALLY LONG, too long for your average guy to have the patience for anyway.


Student Survivor
http://www.studentsurvivor.org.uk/2/

Student Survivor is basically some sort of elaborate virtual pet game, except instead of a pet you have a school student, you type in commands such as 'eat' 'sleep' etc. and watch the student slowly do all of it, the aim of the game is to keep the student happy and healthy for a total of a week's worth of play time, if you can honestly be bothered with playing it for that long.


The Hook-Up
http://games.the-n.com/games/hookup/

I didn't even want to go there with this game, but here we are...
The Hook-Up is basically like every other dating sim game, you're a new girl in town, talk to just about everyone and they are aware of your newly established presence and will stop at nothing to ask you out, what ever will you do?



Whatever our future holds, I'm going to be making the most of what I have now and will continue to hope for the best...
After all, it can't be all bad, right?
Right?

However, due to the current impact that websites like Myspace and Facebook have on just about everyone, games like Alter Ego are likely to make a comeback, I used it as an example and if anything a game like that would be likely to become very popular again considering how many damn bulletins and notes you girls make.
All it really needs is a function that posts up your overall score along with a description of yourself as a person and Hey Presto! You have an award winning game right there.

welp...
Someone didn't read the disclaimer...


Also I mentioned briefly what sort of game Alter Ego was, just a bit after the hide tag.

I'm a guy, I judge pretty much everything by appearance, do I need to get Xathia Vastar to write up a Male Gamers article so you can comment on the things we do and play?

It's a text-based (and now web-based), game.
The only difference between it and a Bulletin or Note is that it's far more elaborate as I already mentioned; I'm not saying it is the SAME, there are many differences but in general terms the overall look and functionality is represented by the description I gave it.
You can defend this game all you want, I didn't even say it was bad, I just said it's too long for the average guy to have the patience for.

EDIT: Blah alright you keep adding to your post and I can't be bothered adding more to mine, I've written enough.

This is a pretty great article, especially the THE Gamer Girl which is what my girlfriend is. I was so bloody surprised when I found out she plays RPGs a lot.

I only added to my post once because it timed out and then I changed it and then after a few minutes of trying I got it to post again (my internet is fucked up right now).  I'm not trying to TRICK YOU or anything.

No, you just shouldn't take such a fucking BAD tone about it.  Your entire concept of women is that they want to shop all the time, always have to be in control, and just more shit like this.  You seriously act like women don't DESERVE to play games, because they play a bunch of games that, like I said, a lot of which dudes play too (MORESO than women, don't even try to tell me that more girls than boys play Pokemon).

You are seriously the worst kind of dude if you think this is what all women are like (and don't even pull any of that "I didn't mean ALL women" shit, because it's obvious you do).  I can't even really go through the rest of your article to point out your terrible views on women, because this is bad enough.  Fuck that, man.  Fuck that.  I don't care if you meant for it to be humorous, because it definitely looks like you're believing what you say.

Okay well I'm ending THIS particular discussion here, but also forgive me for talking to ACTUAL GIRLS about this subject as well so that I don't just have some clouded man-view. I have testimonials regarding games like The Sims, WoW, etc. saying that a lot of the time it is just enjoyable having the ability to control what happens, controlling what people do, where things are placed, what happens next, etc. I'm sorry if you're taking this the wrong way because I'm in no way a sexist individual; It was nothing more of a survey similar to say... Women are safer drivers than men.


Neophyte: That's cool man, as I've already mentioned I don't expect everyone to be able to relate to this article.

man i loved the shit out of alter ego a while back, i played harvest moon for DAYS AT A TIME when i was younger, every kid ever who had some sort of nintendo anything has played a pokemon game, lots of people like the sims, nintendogs is marketed toward children, not women.

i don't know, this is a pretty cop-out article. This has been written about on every dumb games website, on the bigger ones multiple times. you said nothing new that wasn't horribly inaccurate, and the article is laden with blatant sexism (WOMEN, ON MY COUCH, PLAYIN MY GAMES HUFF HUFF).

EDIT: Dial-up, posted before i read the last four posts. Still point stands, why write a contrite, played out, not to mention sexist article?

ANOTHER EDIT (I'm not making a post): Also, i'm pretty sure when the sims first came out it was a bunch of nerdy guys playing it (makin' myself buff), and will wright's little fanboy parade is a lot of guys too. NONE of the games you mentioned are marketed specifically towards women. Your field research obviously wasn't broad enough.

I'm a girl gamer that doesn't fit into any of those categories.

I have never touched nintendogs, nor ever will and hate most of those type of garbage, filler games. I'll admit to playing Pokemon at times (not often) as well as Sims once or twice - some puzzle games are okay, like MahJongg.
I love playing RPGs - the good ones like Suikoden and Chrono Trigger), but can also beat my brothers at fighting games like Tekken, Smash Bros and some racing games. I'm not hardcore - I play on occasion when I find a good game that I enjoy.

I'm really more of a 'Let it slide' type of person.

I also find your article mildly offensive, yet tongue-in-cheek humorous.

What game ISN'T about control?  What about really open-ended and sandbox games like Oblivion and things like Garry's Mod?  Those are about control too.  Dang, the games that seem to be the most popular are the ones that offer the most control, that's what gets the most attention.  What you did is take a VERY common factor that MOST people look for in games and twist it into saying WOMEN WANT TO CONTROL THEIR BOYFRIENDS AND EVERYTHING ELSE EVER (have you ever seen a woman that has to ask her boyfriend permission in everything she does and doesn't know how to function without people telling her what to do??? because there are a lot of them).  You DO have a clouded man-view, talking to girls doesn't mean you don't represent what they said different.

I would like to state that if you were even really reading any of it he never made the impression you claim he made. I would also like to state that argueing with someone over the internet is pretty stupid, especially since they are most likely halfway across the country/world and you two would never meet. Don't get angry because of what someone said on the internet and there is really no need to write f**k and s**t. It's an article, eventually someone would get offended. Doesn't mean you have to take out any issues you have irl by complaining about a dumb article. Nuff Said, and before you think about replying...I wont say anything else to you so don't even try it.