Neat GM advice on Female Gamers:

[pawsplay]

Although, I did have a girl rant about me here once cause I'm such a terrible DM. And in her rant, she wrongly accused me of being sexist. But I've learned women tend to use that word in the same way a man uses the B word to a woman. Cause I sure as hell am not sexist and my opinionated & extremely confident/educated Afghan wife would not have married me if I was.

I am really not comfortable with the parallel you drew between a man calling a woman the B word and a woman calling a man a sexist. Calling a woman by an epithet reinforces a historical power equality, calling a man a sexist critiques it. Whether or not a person in each person may be justified or not in calling attention to negative behavior based on a distorted viewpoint, I do not think you are justified in making the parallel you have made. The historical disparity between men and women is not a neutral matter; while women have at times wielded superior power in certain domains, at certain times and places, the overwhelming arc of history has been for men to oppress women. I am sure you are likely not a sexist, but I am not sure you are what I would call culturally aware, either.

 

[Merkuri]

Didn't they? "The Sims" certainly was not aimed at women in particular--it was just a continuation of the SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife line. I'm not offhand aware of any games specifically targeting women (as opposed to not turning off women) that have been big hits. Yet the percentage of women playing video games has risen steadily.

Exactly. The Sims was not targeted specifically towards women. I seem to recall that the amount of women who enjoyed The Sims was a surprise.

I wish I could find statistics to back this up (my Google fu is weak today, and all I can find on this topic are several year-old articles) but all of the games I can think of that are popular with women gamers are gender neutral. I think they include a lot of the Wii games, which tend to be very family-friendly. You will not find very many video game best sellers that include ponies or pink bows (which is what some video game companies think women want) but you will find plenty that deal with puzzle-solving (Bejeweled!), simple sports (Wii Tennis), dancing (Dance Dance Revolution), and life-simulators (The Sims).

 

[Hussar]

Didn't they? "The Sims" certainly was not aimed at women in particular--it was just a continuation of the SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife line. I'm not offhand aware of any games specifically targeting women (as opposed to not turning off women) that have been big hits. Yet the percentage of women playing video games has risen steadily.

Here is the trailer for Sims 3 on Youtube:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPnK9JHoddc]YouTube - The Sims 3 - Official Trailer[/ame]

This is not pretty strongly targeting women? Having babies, woman astronaut, woman leaving man at the altar etc?

Yup, there's stuff for guys there too, but, that's a pretty heavily targeted ad for me.

Yes, I agree that the original success with the Sims with women might have been unexpected. Pretty much because no game had managed to get much of a female following previously. But, it looks to me, that once they realized that they had cracked the market, they went after it pretty agressively.

 

[jonesy]

Here is the trailer for Sims 3

Ok. And? You're using Sims 3 as evidence that Sims 1 was targeted at women? I think you've got that a bit backwards.

The first Sims was advertised as a continuation of the Simcity line of games. "New perspective on city building". The marketing emphasized the city element, not the relationship element. It was a surprise hit because the makers never expected women to immediately jump on board a game series which had previously been seen as a construction toy. Especially since the game wasn't really that well marketed to begin with. The previous Simcity games had relied on fans getting the new sequel anyway.

As for whether Simcity was actually only played by boys, I don't know.

 

[Dausuul]

Here is the trailer for Sims 3 on Youtube:

YouTube - The Sims 3 - Official Trailer

This is not pretty strongly targeting women? Having babies, woman astronaut, woman leaving man at the altar etc?

Yup, there's stuff for guys there too, but, that's a pretty heavily targeted ad for me.

First... I watched it with the sound off, so I can't comment on anything the voice-over might be saying, but just looking at the pictures, that's about the most gender-neutral ad for a video game I've ever seen. Men and women equally represented more or less everywhere. Count 'em.

This is EXACTLY what I was talking about upthread with regard to the default point of view being male. The fact that the ad even contemplates the possibility of players identifying with female characters as well as male is enough to make people say it "strongly targets women." Take the life destinies section. You mention the female astronaut but ignore the male rock star and the male criminal mastermind. Two life goals illustrated with a male character, one with a female character, and somehow that's skewed toward women?

Second, you claimed video games "made great strides by bringing out products that targeted women." That's flatly untrue in the case of the "Sims" franchise, of which "The Sims 3" is just the latest installment. Games that are developed with the intent of targeting female players tend to bomb, because the vast majority of game developers, execs, and marketers are male and their idea of "targeting women" is "make it pink and sparkly."

For the most part, games that find a strong audience among women were not built with that in mind--developers set out to make a cool new game, choose for whatever reason not to pump it full of testosterone and sex kittens, and suddenly, wow, women are playing our game! Whodathunkit?

Obviously, when it comes time to release the next title in the franchise, you're going to keep your existing players in mind. That's just basic marketing sense. But if you consider the demographics of the "Sims" player base (84% female), an ad giving equal representation to men and women is hardly a major push to market to women! If you look at games where the demographic goes the other way and 84% of the players are male, how many ads have anything like equal representation?

 

[xipetotec]

All i can say is my group is about half/half actually. In both variances of the group I run.

 

[MrMyth]

Here is the trailer for Sims 3 on Youtube:

YouTube - The Sims 3 - Official Trailer

This is not pretty strongly targeting women? Having babies, woman astronaut, woman leaving man at the altar etc?

Disclaimer: I've never played any of the Sims games, nor do I know particularly much about them in general.

Nonetheless, today I was in a Gamespot and they had a Sims 3 trailer running in the store that was all about a guy Sim doing guy things. So... not sure I'm sold that a single video link is conclusive evidence of the entirety of their marketing game.

 

[DumbPaladin]

I can understand a boy having trouble relating to women other than his mom. That's part of growing up. But when grown-ass men can't quite wrap their heads around the idea that women are people and individuals, that makes me wonder where they learned about women.

Ah, I would suggest this is a misunderstanding of the male of the species. I believe a majority of men are more than able of understanding that women are people and individuals; some of them simply don't know (and were never taught) how to behave in the best possible way around them. A lot of men ARE taught that you have to behave very differently around women (there's no one set difference -- some are good and some are bad) than you can around "the guys", and that's part of the equation, too.

Just as "all female gamers" can't be lumped into one category, I don't think "all male gamers" can be either. I would argue that some men simply have social awkwardness around women, and this leads to problems at D&D ... I'd also argue that some men probably enjoy "time with the guys" at D&D and aren't too happy when a new lady joins the group. I'm not exactly speaking on personal experience, because most of the people I've invited to join my D&D group have been women, and I'm a guy.

I also agree that the genre of D&D may be part of it -- I remember that when I worked at a gaming store, the employees who played Vampire: the Masquerade and asked me to join were in a large group that was actually majority-female ...

 

[DumbPaladin]

I am really not comfortable with the parallel you drew between a man calling a woman the B word and a woman calling a man a sexist. Calling a woman by an epithet reinforces a historical power equality, calling a man a sexist critiques it. Whether or not a person in each person may be justified or not in calling attention to negative behavior based on a distorted viewpoint, I do not think you are justified in making the parallel you have made. The historical disparity between men and women is not a neutral matter; while women have at times wielded superior power in certain domains, at certain times and places, the overwhelming arc of history has been for men to oppress women. I am sure you are likely not a sexist, but I am not sure you are what I would call culturally aware, either.

Sexist isn't an epithet, but it instantly stigmatizes you to be called one. So you're right in that the two are not on the same level, but I wouldn't want to be called either.

I don't really think this is the right thread for such an argument, do you? No group of people anywhere are going to agree on what's objectionable and what isn't. This is not intended as a repudiation of the history of women in the world as you have stated it.

I could just as easily point out, that there ARE quite a few accusations that can be made by women against men that are instantly believed by the audience hearing the accusation -- and being called a sexist is one of them. There are others.

A better analogy is women having their moral character called into question based upon what they choose to wear or the fact that they have more than 1 sexual partner at a time. That tends to be (off the top of my head) the accusation that a man (or a woman) can make against a woman that is regularly accepted.

I don't think Oryan_77 has been making his points well at all in this thread, but I can understand what he's talking about on that particular point. Clearly, you don't, but I would suggest that is due to a lack of awareness on your part about some male experiences.

 

[Afrodyte]

Re: "targeting" women

Honestly, it's more a matter of not repulsing us by constantly mansplaining (instead of just listening) and doing things like this (instead of, y'know, acting like women have better things to do than please a man).