And part of that culture is providing a fucking toxic environment for anybody who dares to venture into their treehouse without the proper credentials.
There’s nothing wrong with different people identifying as gamers, but that doesn’t mean they are the same thing. When people complain about a lack of female gamers, they aren’t referring to people who play Candy Crush.
Facebook gaming at this point is separate even from casual gaming. It’s a different mindset, where you are specifically limited to a short amount of play. The setup is different, as the idea is to create these short but strongly addicting games that appeal to a broad audience and keep them coming back for short nuggets of play. The idea is to appeal to people who don’t have that traditional desire to play a game.
And, what’s more, those people don’t call themselves gamers, any more than people who play solitaire at work called themselves gamers. That’s kinda the point–Facebook games appeal to people who would not identify themselves as gamers.
Hence, like the vast majority of Slate headlines, this one is extremely misleading.
This is typical of in-groups in general, though I would argue that it’s particularly acrid in groups that see their fellowship as a sanctuary from the alienation they suffer elsewhere. I wouldn’t say this sort of thing is good, but I’m sympathetic… except… as is implicit in the issue at hand, this tends to manifest in a particularly sexist way. A female is assumed phony until she demonstrates her credentials.
This is not to say that no other kind of profiling goes on. Some people’s credentials are established simply by their being socially awkward. And anyone who looks at first glance like a doofus, dork or spaz is granted instant credibility in geek circles. If they’re male, at least. There is no hard data to cite, but I am just as persuaded as anybody that such people are overwhelmingly involved in geeky hobbies. But we also know damned well that a lot of people in geeky hobbies give off very different vibes – young Republican MBAs, dudebros, skateboarders, stoners, goths, jocks, etc.
However, if it’s true that there is a meaningful overlap between geeky hobbyists and dweebs, whether because the same mental or biological factor that causes people to seem like goobers also draws them into hobbies that involve a certain degree of obsessiveness, or because somehow certain hobbies had critical numbers of socially awkward people and so attracted people who enjoyed not being judged harshly, it’s still the case that a lot less panic is created when a non-dorky male tries to enter the circle than when a female of any type does.
So, while I understand in general the alarm about what’s happening to the hobby when it gets, as it were, gentrified by newcomers, defending this concern will sooner or later run me up against the fact that a lot of these people just have a problem with women.
Sigh.
You can knock the women that play phone games, while I’ll be over here creating a game specifically for them. Call me when you’re done ignoring a profitable market segment. 
I mean hell, some people don’t play anything but fighting games and racing games, and never touch FPS or MMOs. Others only play sport games. Are they not gamers?
Though if I am to be completely honest, no, I don’t consider those who exclusively play games in the sudoku/crossword/candy crush vein to be “gamers” - mostly because I doubt they would call themselves that. But hell, they have money to burn so let’s get cracking!
Of course it’s like the porn thing. First we make porn for men. Women find out they dislike this porn because it is not catered to them. It is assumed women dislike all porn because all they have encountered is male-gaze porn. So all that is created is male-gaze porn because the porn creators assume women don’t like porn. Self-perpetuating cycle. However,if we create porn for women, women will buy it. (Small-time cite: Smut Peddler - no naked bits in link but a bit risque) The problem isn’t that “women don’t like X” it’s that “we haven’t created a version of X that appeals to women because we think it isn’t profitable”. Same thing for comics, for games, for…well, anything. I mean, where is the Jane-Austen-era styled dating game on XBOX? Eh? We create rip roaring romance games and the women will come. They’ll learn that we have the goods they want. Or, y’know, whatever else they want to play. But have you seen the amount of women falling all over Garrus from Mass Effect? They want more.
It’s toxic inside the clubhouse as well. RPG players vs “Call of Madden” dudebros, Western RPG vs Japanese RPG, Console vs PC, Xbox vs Playstation, AAA cutting edge vs Indie Retro stuff, etc. No one’s happy!
Larger developers/publishers already have their fingers in all the pies, including mobile gaming. Smaller ones might just not be interested in allocating their limited resources that way because they want to make a space dragon adventure, not a cupcake matcher even if the latter might be profitable.
There really aren’t that many gamers at all. People who game less than me are posers who aren’t real gamers. People who game more than me aren’t gamers because they are clearly loser freaks with no life, and don’t count.
Nobody said there’s a problem with that. But it’s a self-perpetuating cycle, like I said. We don’t create games women like, so they don’t like as many big-name games as men do, so fewer women play the big profitable games, so less women get into wanting to make games, so less women are in the industry to make games they know women will want, so women in the industry are treated like outsiders and harassed and stonewalled, so they are less involved with making games women like… etc…so on…
It’s not a problem that someone wants to make Space Dragon III with gory headshot action. The solution isn’t less art, it’s more art. We need more, more, more. I can still nitpick about how women are portrayed in games though - that doesn’t mean I necessarily want less Space Dragon III games. Hell, in an ideal world where we have a bunch of great games where women are portrayed as capable heroines I won’t give a shit if we also have games with women in exploited sexy roles, because we have both sides represented. There’s always room for a little smut as long as it’s not portrayed as the status quo. But when we’ve got a bunch of games that only do the one thing and not the other, I’m going to want something else.
So I’m saying that while the industry says, “There’s no money in making big-name games women would like, so why bother trying”, I’m over here saying, “But you didn’t even try to make a game they would like, so how could you know there’s no money?”
Serious question: who gives a shit?
I mean hell, even this article goes over the fact that the industry markets female-led games less because they think they won’t sell, but there’s not enough games of this type to even draw a valid conclusion like that. They might be selling poorly because of the fact a woman’s in the lead, or maybe it’s because they’re shuffling them out the door with not even 1/10 the fanfare of InFamous. The industry is giving up before it’s even tried.
Women currently play phone games the most because that’s the market that’s making games for them. If we want them playing other platforms and other games, we need to provide. We may even discover that Cupcake Match is not their favorite genre, they simply played it because they felt that was all that was available. That’s all there is to it, really.
Yeah, that’s about everything I had to say on the matter. “Gimme more games!”
I think it’s more a matter of these guys taking pride in being a “gamer”, and then turning around and using the term for some 16 year old chick playing Candy Crush on her blinged-out iPhone to kill time between classes rubs them the wrong way.
And that’s why some of us have pointed out that a better definition of “gamer” is something along the lines of it being a specific activity done in favor of doing something else.
Maybe calling the people who play Candy Crush or the Kim Kardashian game to kill time while waiting for their meal, or whatever, could be called “casual gamers” or the activity called “casual gaming”.
I don’t doubt that the number of female casual gamers outnumbers the number of adolescent boys playing console or PC games, but the number of female “gamers” is still pretty small. Based on about 18 years of PC online gaming, 5 years of Xbox 360 gaming, and one year of Xbox One gaming, I’d say the number is up to about 1 in 50 who are women now in the games I play.
I assume a big part of why they don’t make AAA titles focused on women (as opposed to more universal titles like the Sims, Sim City, Civilization, etc) is because fewer women own the consoles and gaming PCs to take advantage of them. It’s enough of a risk already trying to turn a profit on a game so why intentionally hobble yourself by focusing on a smaller part of the market and hoping that they react well?
This is where my initial remarks about the OP came in: Women might make up a majority of “gamers” but if they’re a minority of console/gaming PC owners (and by a significant margin) then you’re not going to make your console games for them. Sure, maybe some more games would promote sales there but it’s not the developer’s mission to encourage women to buy Xboxes, it’s their mission to sell games to people who own Xboxes.
Where women do own appropriate devices, such as the mobile gaming market, there’s a bajillion options because the opportunity cost is so much lower. You’re not taking on the extra burden of hoping women will buy $400 game systems to play your $60 game on.
Apparently there are dozen’s of types of gamers but for me, it boils down to a simple question: Who wants to play a game?
Some people will immediately answer, “No thanks.” Those are not gamers.
Some people will answer, “Sure, what game do you have?” Those people are gamers.
Of course, there are also a host of people in between who will only play this game or that and no other. Not really gamers to me.
Here’s the thing I’ve never understood though, what’s a “female” game? One of my closest friends is a woman who is a big gamer. She loves Killzone and InFamous and Final Fantasy and Borderlands and Diablo. But she also likes less masculine titles like LittleBigPlanet, Pokemon, and Ni No Kuni.
Is that second batch of titles “female” games because there’s less killing even though they’re all big AAA releases (maybe not Ni No Kuni)?
There’s plenty of games for everyone out there. People just need to stop being shitheads so everyone can play in peace.
Jane Austen Dating Sims. Try and keep up 
Attempts at making “female games” usually wind up being patronizing.
More important than making “female games” is making *good *games that don’t alienate female gamers. Avoid using female characters just as sex objects or punching bags. Draw on a variety of female archetypes instead of just fan-service Barbie Dolls. Hire writers who can write in a convincing female voice. The core gameplay doesn’t need to change – you just need to replace all the misogynistic fluff.
Have any examples of games where this is the case? Not stuff like Sim City but rather games where they very obviously could have gone in a misogynistic/sex object/punching bag direction but instead avoided all that.
Not a challenge, just curious to see where your thoughts are on it.
This is mostly what I was getting at but I was overgeneralizing. Sometimes it’s just simple stuff like starting up a Harvest Moon game and having to play as a man dating women. Granted, that was 10 years ago but even then, Harvest Moon definitely had all-genders appeal but the developer decided to ignore any ladies that might have wanted to play.
Still though, I could see someone making a small fortune on a regency-era romance dating sim/visual novel with a classic painted look for the visuals. There’s nothing out there like it as far as I know. I know how big the romance section is at the bookstore. Imagine what would happen when the moms of the world found a game like that!
There’s plenty of dating sims out of Japan though (and set in various places, not all in Japan with Japanese casts). If they were going gangbusters in the cash department with western audiences, I assume we’d be seeing more of them.
People are talking like the industry is ignoring women. They’re a huge segment. That’s what the thread is about.
Yeah, but really the only one you ever need to know about is Hatoful Boyfriend.