Meh. Good games are good games. It doesn’t matter who’s playing them.
Define “play.” I enjoy playing GTA, but not to win or complete missions. Mostly I enjoy ramming cars into things and killing random passersby. I discovered in one verson, three maybe? that you can run out in front of a car and get it to stop long enough to climb on the roof. Then the driver will drive wherever he’s going, allowing you to shoot at people as you pass by. You’ll fall off if they stop too quickly, though.
As a gamer, I was fortunate enough to marry a gamer. My friends are always careful to balance their gaming time between getting enough to make themselves happy, and not playing so much they annoy the Mrs. But as the games females play are the same ones males play I think it’s just a matter of image / marketing. If only all the females out there knew what they were missing?
For the record, my Mrs plays a lot of Pokemon on an emulator.
Final Fantasy.
She is a Chocobo breeding expert
Freelancer.
She’s not as accurate as me with her guns, but her technique of flying “Like a demented butterfly” as she puts it, means she lives longer then I do.
**Baldur’s Gate & Neverwinter Nights. **
Multiplayer RPGs are a foundation of our marriage.
City of Heroes & City of Villains.
She prefers non-melee toons, but I’d rather team with her than anyone else. We make a fluid team.
Also, she loves Zoo tycoon.
Spends hours building the dam zoos and training Dolphins & Whales to do tricks.
ETA:
You sure they were females? I know if I’m playing an MMO and I’ve got to stare at a digital ass all day, it might as well be a hot one. Most of my CoX toons are females, and my wife has mostly male ones.
Female gamer here. I mostly play RPGs and adventure games - WoW, Arcanum, Knights of the Old Republic and the Thief series to name a few favourites. I can only tell you that there’s not much of a difference between what I want from a game and what my male gamer friends want; the difference is the stuff that puts me off. I’m extremely sensitive to misogynism in games, which means that there’s a lot of stuff I won’t play or will shelve immediately. I’m just really, truly, rabidly sick of women being depicted as either wimpy bimbos or femme fatales. Thankfully there are lots of games out there with more nuanced content, and more coming every day.
Edit: And I love me some mashing cars. Burnout 3 especially.
I know a few things I really like in games, but I know I’m not unusual in this regard for gamers of either sex. I like a good story, with a coherent beginning, middle, and end. I don’t like FPS’s that are just kill, kill, kill with no decent storyline (though I will play TF2).
I like lots of interactivity in the world. Not necessarily talking to other characters, though that’s good, too. But things to fiddle with, mini games, and the like. Stuff to collect, potions/tools/gadgets that have to be created, a place to show off (even if it’s just to myself) my stuff.
I like co-op multiplayer. I loved playing NWN 1 with my husband. NWN 2 multiplayer sucked donkey balls, at least when we attempted to play it on release. I’d love to find out it’s actually playable now, though.
That’s a real disappointment.
Oh, well, I guess that means I have no need to get a PS3 until FFXIII comes out. (Which is good, since I’m unemployed. >_>)
I’ve always been of the opinion that the way to appeal to female gamers is not to dumb down the games, but to make them less subtly misogynist.
I’ll use Soul Calibur 4, to start. No offense, but the assertion that the models’ breasts in that game haven’t increased over time is, frankly, bazongas. SC4 is a very deep and accessible fighter which can be played online in a lobby-type format, good for socializing and also improving at the balanced, rock-paper-scissors style combat. But even I, mostly male, feel sorta dirty playing it. They just put way too much effort in the breast physics and unrealistic outfits for the female fighters. This is a game world where the twin Soul Swords can unleash universe-rending power and characters from frickin’ Hyrule and Star Wars can wander in unannounced, but it is a world wherein the brassiere has never been invented.
If that’s not enough general ignorance, the official site lists Ivy as 58kg (128lbs). Seriously, now. Her head is smaller than either of her breasts.
Exhibit B is Bayonetta, by the creator of the original Devil May Cry. Now, DMC has the sort of hardcore appeal that attracts people who stick with a game until they beat the boss or break the controller. It is brutally hard, but fair. There aren’t a whole lot of female gamers who are into that sort of margin of error in their games, but working where I do, I’ve met a few. (It helps that the game focuses on a cocksure bishounen in a tight shirt.)
Contrast this to Bayonetta, which had a director’s interview and factsheet in this month’s EGM (the latter recreated here).
Here’s a good one: Bayonetta’s attacks use the magical “hair” from which she creates her outfits - stronger attacks will reveal more and more of her while they’re in effect. One of them is a giant stiletto heel forming from the magical mist and stomping on an enemy. The director, Hideki Kamiya, is moving the focus from DMC’s “being cool” to “being sexy” and wants Bayonetta’s power to come from “female beauty” and other things only girls can do.
Of course, I’ll play it because it sounds like a Fabulousity++ version of DMC, but once it becomes popular as the strip-to-attack game, I doubt many serious gamers with feminist sensitivities will be giving it a second glance. Which is sad, given how good the genre can be when it tries.
So it’s really not about what “types” of games girls want to play - although easier games will naturally hit the huge casuals market better than something like SC4 or Devil May Cry - it’s becoming more about wondering whether the developers of these games have ever bothered to seek a female opinion at any point in the development cycle.
Because, well…
128lbs. Seriously.
Robin Goodfellow, that’s what I wanted to say. Awesome. Thank you. 