Though I agree with everyone that women primarily want a fun game, and that that should be your primary objective, I did want to comment on something else. Whenever this sort of topic comes up, a lot of people say you should avoid girls with skimpy outfits and supermodel figures, because girls don't like that. In my experience, this is not exactly true. It's true that in many ways supermodel characters are based in objectification and promote an unhealthy fixation on being thin, and that maybe girls shouldn't buy into that, but the fact is that many of them do. Especially girl gamers, who are often surrounded by a male-dominated culture. Given the choice of character customization in games, most girls do, in fact, make their characters look like sexy supermodels, with the primary difference being that they aim slightly more towards "beautiful" rather than "slutty" as a teenage boy might. Very few women are going to jump at the chance to play an ugly, overweight, middle-aged heroine. So while it might garner you a few thumbs up from body image activists, it will mostly be wasted time, since 95% of your girls are going to pick the supermodel characters anyway.

In many ways it's true for male characters as well, except that boys will often put "dangerous" before "attractive", so boys don't mind playing as scary, ugly tough things (orcs, undead). They don't want to play lame, pudgy, weak-looking things.

So I'd say you're fine sticking by the cliche supermodel proportions for most of your character models, men and women. As long as you don't portray the women within the game socially in a demeaning way, and allow them clothing that leans more towards the positive side of sexy (beautiful, seductive, powerful) rather than the negative (slutty, demeaning, objectified), you'll be fine.

My wife likes games that I find boring. So obviously, if you make the gameplay boring, it's a great game for women!

All joking aside, I've found that my wife _does_ prefer games she can play with family: Bust-a-Move is a fun and easy game that people can play. She also likes Harvest Moon and Kingdom Hearts. . . I assume because they have cute characters and are generally low-stress. It helps to have hooks with stuff she already likes (she adores Disney cartoons).

After showing her this thread, my wife declared: "Either women like games or they don't. Women who don't usually play RPG's will not be interested no matter how much you orient it to [them]."

Quote:

Original post by ishpeck My wife likes games that I find boring. So obviously, if you make the gameplay boring, it's a great game for women!

LMAO!

Quote:

Original post by ishpeck All joking aside, I've found that my wife _does_ prefer games she can play with family: Bust-a-Move is a fun and easy game that people can play. She also likes Harvest Moon and Kingdom Hearts. . . I assume because they have cute characters and are generally low-stress. It helps to have hooks with stuff she already likes (she adores Disney cartoons). After showing her this thread, my wife declared: "Either women like games or they don't. Women who don't usually play RPG's will not be interested no matter how much you orient it to [them]."

Thank your wife. Even though that doesn't help much in direct guidance, it gives me the thought that the game needs to be easy to pick up, and not require intense study to master enough to just be fun. And, if it only appeals to women who like RPGs, I'll have to live with that.

You can design a game for woman to a point where there is a fat drunken husband murdering mini-game. However this doesn't mean they will play it, you need to design a normal game with what woman like built in, and research has shown that they prefer (generalization) prefer relaxed uncompetitive games, such as free cell and mind sweeper. Best of luck though you may get some new gamers but odds are you won't, best of luck however.

Going by what my own mother likes to play i would say that anything with guns, blood and decent multiplayer works well enough.

Don't try to focus on women, focus on making a fun game and women will like it.

What I'm getting from this is a validation of my original concept, which is to build the game where the hard-core war-gamers can customize their units, with lots of details, and fight other players. And those who aren't so serious can focus on the diplomatic, economic and other aspects of the game.

Now, the hard part is actually pulling that off in a fun way.

Many good points said here. Fun and casual-friendly gameplay is key, in my oppinion. World of warcraft is a good example of this.

Cool idea! As a female gamer i can tell u it is something I would consider playing. It's good to know people are trying to cater for a female audience, but i don't actualy think it requires that much thought. A lot of the girls i talk to seem to like exactly the same stuff as guys when it comes to games.

I heard somewhere that for a lot of girls the most important thing is social interaction. If you can't involve a multiplayer that involves other people, get some intelligent NPC in there that you can somehow interact with. Perhaps if u run a small village u could make it so that u can talk to the people living there and interact with them, find out wat they want. Slutty female characters made for the male audience can be a bit of a turn off, although that's not to say they can't be attractive. As said in a previous post, sexy female characters are ok as long as they're cool and have brains. It's possible to make female characters that girls aspire to be and males are attracted to (take lara croft for example). Plus, if guys can hav their sexy female eye-candy to look at, I think it's only fair that we get some nice hunky dude in there as well, right??? lol...

Now i just have to add, personally, I hate it when people think that just by drowning something in the colour pink they can attract a female audience, like a moth to a flame, (don't get me started on the pink playstation,lol). Yeah, I know, there have been times when it has worked, and sales have improved because of that colour, but god I hate it. The colour makes me wanna throw up. Purple isn't quite so bad though.

When it comes to games I like a nice blend of puzzles and battle (but no cute pink fluffy characters please!!! lol)...

Yep, I'm another female gamer and erissian and JBourrie pretty much have it spot on.

The game needs to be
a) Fun (as with all games)
b) Not demeaning

If you're a man, "not demeaning" is more subtle than you think it is. The fact that you don't mind a game where women trade men doesn't translate to women traded by men as being inoffensive. The ONLY situation where that would be acceptable would be if the player's task was to stop it.

If ALL women have huge breasts, that is bad. Bikinis for armour is bad. Major characters all being eye-candy is bad. Scenes where the female character has to dress in a bikini and parade around for a man are bad unless you can make them comical or otherwise emotional. Or the men have to do the same. It's all about equality, really.

A world exclusively or predominantly made up of patriarchal societies is bad. A world where all the city guards and members of the army are male is bad. A world where no man ever stays home and looks after the kids or does the cooking is bad. A world where young healthy women are helpless (useless) refugees after a city has burned down is bad.

If appropriate to the game, options for hetero and homosexuality are good.

Unless you're telling a story wholly focused on THIS character (e.g. Tidus from FFX) as opposed to the player's character, you should be able to choose your character's gender. OTOH there was no reason J.D. from Deus Ex had to be a man.

Sexy men like Final Fantasy male leads is good but no female gamer is so superficial that they'll buy a game based on an illustration. "Sexy" men like Marcus Fenix aren't sexy. They're scary. Don't think that that kind of art design counts as appealing to women.

Social interaction... meh. The original Sims game was single-player only. Nintendogs is single player. Social interaction is good but not essential and you'll find that an awful lot of female gamers don't use headsets on Xbox Live because they get too much grief from 14-year old American boys going "OMG, a girl! You must be fat."

Okay, I think that's plenty to think about.

Quote:

Original post by JBourrie Of course chicks with big guns aren't the only thing that bugs women. My wife has told me that she is annoyed by the portrayal of men in games as well. Men are designed (in American games especially) as the "ideal man's man", small waist with an unrealistically large upper body and ironman muscles. Women often find this design intimidating and a little bit sad.

Just model your male characters after Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. that'll get rid of the manliness in an instant ;)