Women gear up for gaming invasion
By Jane Wakefield
BBC News website technology reporter



Women are about to invade the male dominated gaming world, a games conference in Scotland is to be told.
Games consultant Ernest Adams will say the stage is set for an explosion of women gamers, especially in the area of massively-multi-player online gaming.

There needs to be a sea-change in the industry, with more female developers and more games for women, he believes.

Mr Adams is to address the 2005 Women in Games Conference being held in August in Dundee, Scotland.

Puzzling games

The games that are likely to appeal to women are not the traditional "hack and slash" ones or time-consuming strategy games that men prefer.

"Women don't have free time even to set up a game. They require a game that is quick to get into and doesn't require a great time commitment," said Mr Adams, founder of the International Game Developers' Association.

The fact that women also tend to be more social means multi-player games will appeal more than single-player ones.

"We are soon going to be seeing massively-multi-player online games that are dominated by female players," he said.

"Existing online role-playing games are succeeding with women in spite of their subject matter, not because of it. When we get more games whose gameplay genuinely appeals to female players, we can expect to see huge growth there," he said.

Equal split

Online games such as Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, in which gamers have to solve a series of puzzles and games set in an a pirate world, are proving highly successful with women.

The hugely popular Sims sells equally well to women as it does to men.


"It is no coincidence that the developer team on this was also evenly split between men and women," said Mr Adams.
"They are usually developing games for a male market and they are often impeded by a masculine development culture."

"The industry has become more conservative as the costs of development have risen and they are less willing to take risks."

Women represent a market that the games industry can not afford to ignore but it will require a huge marketing push alongside games designed with women in mind.

Shops selling games can often be off-putting for women and there are few adverts for games in women's magazines.

In an effort to change this, games store Gamestation has invited the UK arm of the PMS Clan, a group of 40 of the best female gamers, to come into stores across the country over the summer.

Clan members will be on hand to chat to other girls about gaming and take on anyone - boys included - at their own favourite game.

Majority in Korea

Statistics from the US Entertainment Software Association suggest that there are now more women players in the US than there are teenage gamers.


The figures include free games that are accessed via portals such as Yahoo.
The so-called casual gaming market, made up of games such as poker, pool, bridge, bingo and puzzles, is a booming one, especially among women.

A study by the UK games trade body, the Entertainment and Leisure Publishers Association (Elspa), found that women gamers in the UK made up a quarter of the gaming population. This compares to 39% in the US and 69% in South Korea.

The average UK woman gamer is between 30 and 35 years old and plays for around seven hours each week, the study found.

The 2005 Women in Games Conference at the University of Abertay in Dundee aims to look at why games have traditionally failed to appeal to a mass audience of women, as well as examining how women interact with computer games, and what has led to the recent growth in female players.


GAMES WOMEN PLAY
Role-playing games - Final Fantasy
Narrative adventures - Legend of Zelda
Easy to pick up driving sims - Colin MacRae Rally
Puzzle adventures - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Quick-fire arcade puzzlers - Tetris
Life simulations - The Sims
Source: Elspa white paper on women in gaming

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/4634519.stm


I wonder if this suvey has taken into account that many guys actually play girls on RPGs (they're hot for heaven's sakes, especially in Guild Wars!) and may influence these figures

i think its a little sterotypical for them to say what kinds of games women do and dont like

same as its sterotypical to say what games men like also. I for one don't really care for "traditional 'hack and slash' ones" unless they have the words Dynastsy and Warriors in the title. Neither do I care for many time-consuming strategy games, Civilisation 3 may well be my favourite PC game, but others like Command & Conquer bore me to death.

Its actually Role-playing games I prefer playing. Especially if its 2D and Japanese in origin.

^ I agree, I know many female gamers who enjoy hack and slash games as well as time consuming strategy games. All the female games I know absolutely love the Sims though!

I'm just a little curious: as females, do you get tired of seeing video game women in skimpy/skanky outfits? It kind of makes me ticked, since some of the better games have some women with nothing but a bikini on, and with them on the cover of the game, my parents will say no(solely because of that skanky clad woman!). Anyways, yeah that article is very stereotypical, I have some female friends who love my fighting games for GBA, and they also love Warioware: touched! which isn't really a game you can put in a genre

It doesn't really bother me...I've come to realise that male gamers expect fanservice. Such is the way of the world...men don't up and complain when wrestlers walk to the ring wearing not a whole lot more than trunks and boots, do they?



Do you parents think that somehow not letting you see picture of half naked women will somehow make you forget they exist?



I, on the other hand, tend to enjoy a good pit of hack n' slash...although I do very much prever games that incorporate hack n' slash will roleplaying, like Neverwinter Nights (which, in my opinion, continues to be unrivaled as the best online RPG of all time).

I used to play NWN, but I got kicked off of servers since people didn't like me killing the NPCs So now I just play it offline.

Not all guys like RPGs. On G4 Tommy Tallarico and Adam Sessler absolutely hate RPGs. Except when Micro$oft is involved somewhere.

i hate rpgs, my favs are racing and fighting games, with the occasional strategy game here and there

I assume, then, that your character was chaotic stupid? I remember something like that happened on a server I rped at...the guy in question was just declaired an outlaw, and the DMs put a bounty on his head. He was never able to enter town to get new supplies or weapons again, because he was slaughtered everytime he did.

In fact, since he could no longer get anywhere new to learn about quests and such, and every sngle previously friendly NPC and player in the game was gunning for him, his exp growth was so slow that he almost never increased in level, and was vastly overtaken by everyone else.

In the end, the message to him was clear - don't be a bloody retard. Even evil characters would not wander around randomly slaughtering villagers and expect to get away with it

I think this whole article is based on stereotypes.

Further more, in the world of XBL I see at least one female player per match - Period. Once I engaged in a game that was only female players.

"Women don't have free time even to set up a game"

And men do? Bah - Is it trying to say they'll send free assemblys for XBL for woman but not men?