Personally what I find weird about this whole ordeal is that from my many years of interacting with nerdy (or maybe not so nerdy) women who played computer games is that there exists one franchise that combines the holy grail of complex gameplay (so it can't be dismissed as another match 3 clone), with insane amount of female appeal, both in the number of hours played and the number of people who play it.
And that franchise is The Sims.
Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players, there has been no new game in the franchise other than the safe but ultimately unambitious Sims 4.
I've heard a ton of complaints about players about how much better, more complex and featureful the Sims 3 was (and that game was a glorious mess), and Maxis themselves have acknowledged this. I think there has been a sequel in work at some point in time, that promised to bring back the complexity, which has been cancelled unfortunately.
So in a nutshell, despite all the rage around this question, the industry somehow doesn't even make the games that are known to do well with a female audience.
Another example would be Stardew Valley, or Undertale, which had a huge female following (and sales to match) but had to come out of the indie scene, because all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worse at making things that appeal to women than either companies that existed before, or random indies coming from outside the professional world.
Animal Crossing would be another game that has a massive female audience from a AAA studio.
> Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players
Ultimately its poor marketing. They want to make Call of Duty and get that audience, but also get girls to play Call of Duty. Instead of making a game with mass appear to both boys and girls.
I think the real problem is "AAA". AAA games and consoles/gaming computers are expensive and rely heavily on marketing tech-specs and graphics for their appeal. These games usually don't innovate much in gameplay, design, or aesthetics. They are just the same game as last year with higher resolution and more jiggling. With marketing and design culture being male-oriented as discussed in TFA, the studios making AAAs don't/won't have the confidence to make new kinds of games, because they haven't yet identified an archetype that can be sold repeatedly.
The Sims 4 continues to mint money. It came out in 2014, but they've released expansion packs for it every year since then. The latest one came out last month. It costs $40. They've sold tens of millions of these expansion packs over the years.
I agree that it is weird that there hasn't been a AAA attempt to unseat it. You'd think that it'd be a safer bet than yet another hero shooter.
Simulation/Sandbox games probably do well because of their open ended nature.
My GF, daughter and me all play Stardew Valley but we play it wildly differently. It is a farming/relationship simulator for them and some kind of capitalist min/max farming and mining simulation for me.
But yes, the Sims 3 and the 700 add ons are all heavily in their rotation, they make me look like a gaming amateur if you go by hours logged.
> (so it can't be dismissed as another match 3 clone)
As a "serious" gamer, dismissing (and other dismissable games like smartphone Monopoly) makes sense, but if the topic is "girl games", dismissing them is a mistake. I don't have official stats, but based on women around me, they're very popular, with several saying they're addicted to it/them. So what if they're not Baldurs Gate 3 or Stardew Valley. While we want a depth of discourse deeper than "make GTA6 but in pink" in order to actually appeal to women, leaving out a popular genre with women as Ann address of study because they're insufficient complex while trying to study that area seems shortsighted.
If you want girl games, make them. Don't expect others to make them for you.
Asking for AAA game studios to make something else is like asking a pizza shop to start making burritos. Sure, you can ask. But really, you should just make your own rather than trying to convince someone else to do it for you.
World of Warcraft has been super successful in its space, and yet Blizzard has failed to make an actual sequel.
> Another example would be Stardew Valley, or Undertale, which had a huge female following (and sales to match) but had to come out of the indie scene, because all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worse at making things that appeal to women than either companies that existed before, or random indies coming from outside the professional world.
Boomer shooters also came out of the indie space. Survival craft hits? Generally indies. There's plenty of genres that, for whatever reason, have been largely ignored by the biggies.
I have two young daughters who love video games. While there is definitely a great deal many games in my Steam Library they aren't interested in, that's mostly a reflection of my tastes not being shared by them. As it is, there are _many_ games on Steam that they've sunk thousands of hours into. Some that immediately come to mind are A Little to the Left, Unpacking, Hogwart's Legacy, Grounded, Minecraft, Tower Wizard, Little Kitty Big City, A Short Hike, Squirreled Away, Donut County, Goat Simulator 3, Plants vs Zombies, Kingdom Rush, Castle Crashers, Putt Putt, Pajama Sam...
We'll even play co-operative games of Barony, and Borderlands; but those are more that they want to spend time with their Dad. Likewise, I don't think they'd ever have picked up Castle Crashers or Kingdom Rush if I hadn't played those games in front of them and with them.
I think an important undertone in many of the games that appeal to them is that they're primarily focused on solving a puzzle and telling a narrative through puzzle resolution. Only one daughter is particularly fond of the doll dressing aspect of some games, and there are dedicated Android apps for that specific niche. Neither is particularly interested in playing first person shooters or epic CRPGs, unless it's done with my involvement. Also important is the presentation; there's only one game in those that I listed which is in any way presented with modern realism, the rest are _clearly_ stylized in a more playful manner. But maybe that's a reflection of their age?
My daughter likes most games as long as I'm willing to play with her. She dislikes excessive gore/violence (but has a good threshold anyway... she can watch me play Left 4 Dead 2 even though she finds it scary).
She likes relaxing sandbox games such as "Tiny Glade", story/puzzle oriented games like "Planet of Lana" or "Cocoon", racing games like Mario Kart 8 and Need For Speed (she's awful at it, but she likes it), platformers like "Princess Peach: Showtime!", and will gladly watch me play Space Marine or even help me with XCOM Enemy Unknown (by pointing out enemies). We're currently having a hoot playing "It Takes Two", which is a coop split-screen puzzle platformer.
I think pretty much her only requirements are: "not too scary" and "I can play next to daddy". That's it. Not necessarily just "Girl Games".
One thing I discovered with her is that we both have very low tolerance for "talkie" games with lots of cutscenes where you must skip through all the pointless dialogue. They are very kid-unfriendly (kids want to just play the game and read very slowly anyway, if they can read at all) and, if I'm being honest, also adult-unfriendly. Most games have crap storylines anyway, just give us the gameplay and imply the larger plot briefly, much like Planet of Lana does.
I don't really agree with the author's assertion that things that appeal to women are treated as inherently lesser in general compared to things that appeal to men. I think plenty of things for both genders are treated as silly or shallow or dumb (and that's not entirely inaccurate).
Great article! Needless gendering absolutely hinders innnovation, in game design and elsewhere. (Not to mention the unfairness, oppression, and general absurdity).
Slightly unrelated, but the point about tutorials starting with the “basics”, i.e., “making a character move and attack” is interesting. On the one hand, if you have a strong enough grasp on programming fundamentals, it should be pretty easy to take what you learn there and make a “dress-up game”. Heck, a basic dress-up game shouldn’t be any harder than a platformer.
But if you lack that fundamental knowledge and are only interested in games, you need to develop it somehow, and you don’t want to build ‘boring’ console apps; games should be a platform for learning programming. So I agree wholeheartedly with the author: we need more diversity in introductory game programming tutorials!
Of course, that brings us to another can of worms with programming education: Tutorial Hell. But beginners need to start somewhere, and that somewhere should motivate them to continue learning and exploring on their own.
> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing.
I can’t find it now, but I recently read a history of CYOA books. There was a discussion about the fact that although they feature a nameless, race-less, gender-less, age-less, etc, “YOU”, the covers almost universally depict a male protagonist.
This was because market research (in the 1970s, IIRC) showed that while girls will buy books with boys on the cover, boys wouldn’t buy books with girls on the cover.
I don't think the reason is primarily that games target men but rather that very few women are interested in this stuff:
Traditionally feminine activities and aesthetics are a wellspring of untapped potential in video games. In Consume Me, your strategy is informed by a collection of cute outfits that offer various stat boosts. Terry Ross’s Sweatermaker is a crafting game inspired by the real process of knitting.
That sounds like the stereotype out of a 1950s commercial that more than a few women I knew would think of as kitsch. I don't even think there is something that gendered for men either, for example some of the more stereotypical cartoonish fantasy or action franchises of the 80s or 90s have relatively little appeal with guys today. And personally I think that's probably a good thing because anything that targeted at a demographic tends to be, to put it mildly not exactly an artistic achievement
I recently saw a video essay by a woman about the surprising popularity of the souls-game and horror genre among women, and the extent to which she appreciated the more 'monstrous femininity' (which you also get in folklore) and I was thinking, maybe you don't get 'chick lit' in games because ironically enough the average gamer now demands more aesthetically mature media than the average reader. You can't make a 50 Shades of Gray game.
It all comes down to the character design too. Look at games like Valorant, Overwatch, or Fortnite. Shooters which would you generally associate with men but INSANELY popular among women just because they have good character designs and appeal not because of the gameplay at all.
> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing
This idea is trotted out but is really blatantly false when you think of it. Jayne Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. These books have all withstood the test of time and are considered fine literature but are absolutely feminine. Romance novels are considered less than because they are not good books, just in the sense that Conan the Barbarian is also considered not fine literature despite being dripping in masculinity.
Manhattan, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally. There are tons of "chick flicks" that are considered great films. Some directors like Catherine Breillat are extremely feminist in their works and well regarded directors with well regarded films in cinephile circles.
There's a lot of "girl games" in the industry. Have you heard of LADS [1]? The studio makes plenty of girl games with the Nikki franchise. There's also Stardew Valley and Disney Dreamlight Valley. It feels like a lot of people just overlook these games.
I was talking to a woman last night who still has the Barbie Riding Club CD-ROM that she played in 1999. She mentioned trying to get it to work a few years ago on her computer at the time but it not working. (This probably would have been on Windows 7.)
I thought I remembered a recent update from one of the various API/engine re-implementation projects (e.g. something like but not necessarily ScummVM, Wine/Proton, or something associated with archive.org's Emularity project) that included a list of new titles that had become playable due to some recent fixes, and among those titles were (I thought) a bunch of Barbie and other low-budget franchise games in that vein. There wasn't any particular focus on these outside any of the other games listed—they were just mentioned in passing. Someone did bring it up in the comment section—maybe here on HN—but searching around didn't turn anything up.
lol. So many guys here taking about how girls are involved in gaming.
Me too! But from a different angle.
The vast majority of gaming focuses on zero-sum resolution. Someone loses or dies so someone else can continue or live.
In my experience as an American white male I have a feeling women would be drawn towards win-win resolutions, or even games that are not so focused on conflict. So taking COD and swapping the bad guys for aliens and the base for a “house” and nuclear secrets for “children” isn’t going to succeed. (And would also be super sexist.)
Video games and technology has always been spearheaded by "autistic" tendencies... There is a certain repetition that autistic people and people with adhd have. Most of those people are men...
Women were never excluded. They just never found much interest in it. Just like it is for chess or motor sports.
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And that franchise is The Sims.
Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players, there has been no new game in the franchise other than the safe but ultimately unambitious Sims 4.
I've heard a ton of complaints about players about how much better, more complex and featureful the Sims 3 was (and that game was a glorious mess), and Maxis themselves have acknowledged this. I think there has been a sequel in work at some point in time, that promised to bring back the complexity, which has been cancelled unfortunately.
So in a nutshell, despite all the rage around this question, the industry somehow doesn't even make the games that are known to do well with a female audience.
Another example would be Stardew Valley, or Undertale, which had a huge female following (and sales to match) but had to come out of the indie scene, because all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worse at making things that appeal to women than either companies that existed before, or random indies coming from outside the professional world.
> Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players
Ultimately its poor marketing. They want to make Call of Duty and get that audience, but also get girls to play Call of Duty. Instead of making a game with mass appear to both boys and girls.
I agree that it is weird that there hasn't been a AAA attempt to unseat it. You'd think that it'd be a safer bet than yet another hero shooter.
>
all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worseCorporate interest is primarily financial, anything beyond that is unfortunately all too often only (financially motivated) virtue signalling.
My GF, daughter and me all play Stardew Valley but we play it wildly differently. It is a farming/relationship simulator for them and some kind of capitalist min/max farming and mining simulation for me.
But yes, the Sims 3 and the 700 add ons are all heavily in their rotation, they make me look like a gaming amateur if you go by hours logged.
> (so it can't be dismissed as another match 3 clone)
As a "serious" gamer, dismissing (and other dismissable games like smartphone Monopoly) makes sense, but if the topic is "girl games", dismissing them is a mistake. I don't have official stats, but based on women around me, they're very popular, with several saying they're addicted to it/them. So what if they're not Baldurs Gate 3 or Stardew Valley. While we want a depth of discourse deeper than "make GTA6 but in pink" in order to actually appeal to women, leaving out a popular genre with women as Ann address of study because they're insufficient complex while trying to study that area seems shortsighted.
Asking for AAA game studios to make something else is like asking a pizza shop to start making burritos. Sure, you can ask. But really, you should just make your own rather than trying to convince someone else to do it for you.
> Another example would be Stardew Valley, or Undertale, which had a huge female following (and sales to match) but had to come out of the indie scene, because all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worse at making things that appeal to women than either companies that existed before, or random indies coming from outside the professional world.
Boomer shooters also came out of the indie space. Survival craft hits? Generally indies. There's plenty of genres that, for whatever reason, have been largely ignored by the biggies.
We'll even play co-operative games of Barony, and Borderlands; but those are more that they want to spend time with their Dad. Likewise, I don't think they'd ever have picked up Castle Crashers or Kingdom Rush if I hadn't played those games in front of them and with them.
I think an important undertone in many of the games that appeal to them is that they're primarily focused on solving a puzzle and telling a narrative through puzzle resolution. Only one daughter is particularly fond of the doll dressing aspect of some games, and there are dedicated Android apps for that specific niche. Neither is particularly interested in playing first person shooters or epic CRPGs, unless it's done with my involvement. Also important is the presentation; there's only one game in those that I listed which is in any way presented with modern realism, the rest are _clearly_ stylized in a more playful manner. But maybe that's a reflection of their age?
She likes relaxing sandbox games such as "Tiny Glade", story/puzzle oriented games like "Planet of Lana" or "Cocoon", racing games like Mario Kart 8 and Need For Speed (she's awful at it, but she likes it), platformers like "Princess Peach: Showtime!", and will gladly watch me play Space Marine or even help me with XCOM Enemy Unknown (by pointing out enemies). We're currently having a hoot playing "It Takes Two", which is a coop split-screen puzzle platformer.
I think pretty much her only requirements are: "not too scary" and "I can play next to daddy". That's it. Not necessarily just "Girl Games".
One thing I discovered with her is that we both have very low tolerance for "talkie" games with lots of cutscenes where you must skip through all the pointless dialogue. They are very kid-unfriendly (kids want to just play the game and read very slowly anyway, if they can read at all) and, if I'm being honest, also adult-unfriendly. Most games have crap storylines anyway, just give us the gameplay and imply the larger plot briefly, much like Planet of Lana does.
I do wonder if there's data on this, though.
Slightly unrelated, but the point about tutorials starting with the “basics”, i.e., “making a character move and attack” is interesting. On the one hand, if you have a strong enough grasp on programming fundamentals, it should be pretty easy to take what you learn there and make a “dress-up game”. Heck, a basic dress-up game shouldn’t be any harder than a platformer.
But if you lack that fundamental knowledge and are only interested in games, you need to develop it somehow, and you don’t want to build ‘boring’ console apps; games should be a platform for learning programming. So I agree wholeheartedly with the author: we need more diversity in introductory game programming tutorials!
Of course, that brings us to another can of worms with programming education: Tutorial Hell. But beginners need to start somewhere, and that somewhere should motivate them to continue learning and exploring on their own.
> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing.
I can’t find it now, but I recently read a history of CYOA books. There was a discussion about the fact that although they feature a nameless, race-less, gender-less, age-less, etc, “YOU”, the covers almost universally depict a male protagonist.
This was because market research (in the 1970s, IIRC) showed that while girls will buy books with boys on the cover, boys wouldn’t buy books with girls on the cover.
I wonder how true that remains.
Traditionally feminine activities and aesthetics are a wellspring of untapped potential in video games. In Consume Me, your strategy is informed by a collection of cute outfits that offer various stat boosts. Terry Ross’s Sweatermaker is a crafting game inspired by the real process of knitting.
That sounds like the stereotype out of a 1950s commercial that more than a few women I knew would think of as kitsch. I don't even think there is something that gendered for men either, for example some of the more stereotypical cartoonish fantasy or action franchises of the 80s or 90s have relatively little appeal with guys today. And personally I think that's probably a good thing because anything that targeted at a demographic tends to be, to put it mildly not exactly an artistic achievement
I recently saw a video essay by a woman about the surprising popularity of the souls-game and horror genre among women, and the extent to which she appreciated the more 'monstrous femininity' (which you also get in folklore) and I was thinking, maybe you don't get 'chick lit' in games because ironically enough the average gamer now demands more aesthetically mature media than the average reader. You can't make a 50 Shades of Gray game.
> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing
This idea is trotted out but is really blatantly false when you think of it. Jayne Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. These books have all withstood the test of time and are considered fine literature but are absolutely feminine. Romance novels are considered less than because they are not good books, just in the sense that Conan the Barbarian is also considered not fine literature despite being dripping in masculinity.
Manhattan, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally. There are tons of "chick flicks" that are considered great films. Some directors like Catherine Breillat are extremely feminist in their works and well regarded directors with well regarded films in cinephile circles.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Deepspace
I thought I remembered a recent update from one of the various API/engine re-implementation projects (e.g. something like but not necessarily ScummVM, Wine/Proton, or something associated with archive.org's Emularity project) that included a list of new titles that had become playable due to some recent fixes, and among those titles were (I thought) a bunch of Barbie and other low-budget franchise games in that vein. There wasn't any particular focus on these outside any of the other games listed—they were just mentioned in passing. Someone did bring it up in the comment section—maybe here on HN—but searching around didn't turn anything up.
Any ideas?
>games in traditionally feminine genres like fashion games and visual novels
...
> The solution is giving people the tools to start exactly where they want to start
Isn't ren'py one of the easiest game engines to use?
Me too! But from a different angle.
The vast majority of gaming focuses on zero-sum resolution. Someone loses or dies so someone else can continue or live.
In my experience as an American white male I have a feeling women would be drawn towards win-win resolutions, or even games that are not so focused on conflict. So taking COD and swapping the bad guys for aliens and the base for a “house” and nuclear secrets for “children” isn’t going to succeed. (And would also be super sexist.)
But really don’t listen to me. Ask a woman.
Video games and technology has always been spearheaded by "autistic" tendencies... There is a certain repetition that autistic people and people with adhd have. Most of those people are men...
Women were never excluded. They just never found much interest in it. Just like it is for chess or motor sports.