gamedesigngirl:

realgirlsgaming:

eliteike:

Recently I read this article about a developer who wants to create Triple-A games for women.

At first I was excited, because while there are certainly a lot of games that I enjoy despite a lack of “focused” catering to me, I am certainly always on the look out for games that have a less obviously male centered. This is one of the reasons I was able to enjoy the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises — I can create a female character, I can romance a male character, and my character’s story is equally epic no matter what gender I choose to play as.

The article, however, ended up being disappointing to me.

Read the entire article ->

Yeahhhhh I dont know how I feel about this. On the one hand I totally approve of the idea of designing games with women in mind. That’s an awesome idea and honestly is something game should already be doing. But what is in this article is a serious disappointment. They should say they’re trying to design games for moms since the article repeatedly says things like: ‘games they can play with their kids’ and ‘mommy bloggers’.

WTF?! That’s seriously frustrating to me since it perpetuates this notion that because you are a woman you should have a kid and the only reason you would want to play a game is because of your kid. I do NOT have a child (nor do the majority of my female friends around my age group, seriously I can count the ones that do have kids on one hand.) And I definitely do NOT want kids playing any game that I play. I wish they didn’t play the ones I play now. (Get off ANY and ALL M rated games! You’re 8, you don’t know what any of those words mean, and I’m sure it’s way past your bedtime.) *Note: I don’t have anything against kids, I’m just not at that point in my life and I hate little kids talking mad shit to me

I completely agree with eliteike when she says, “I would have liked to see a Mass Effect, a Bioshock, an Uncharted type of game with a female consumer in mind.” Why can’t they make triple A games like the ones I love but just keep women in mind in the process? I think a game like of these big titles which is “focusing on the drama of internal and interpersonal conflicts between desire and the emotional bonds of love, family, and friendship” would attract tons of women, mothers or otherwise. And to be honest this would probably improve the games we already have.

There have been so many games (which I love) where the female lead falls in love the protagonist for ridiculous and unknown reasons which leave me wondering what the hell that girl was thinking. My favorite example of this is Star Wars the force unleashed. (SPOILER ALERT) In this game you play Starkiller, Darth Vaders secret apprentice. He and his ships captain (the sexy leading lady) fly around the universe and kill off jedi and such. Its obvious that Starkiller has the hots for this lady because she is obviously gorgeous but why does she end up liking him back?! He’s evil (you can be good at the end but that’s beside the point) and he is a jerk to her in most of their very short interactions. There is very little that justifies their kiss at the end of the game and it makes the kiss scene seem seriously out of place. Improving the interpersonal relations between characters is difficult to do in games but I think this is a necessary change as games continue to evolve.

So all in all, I don’t mind that this company is trying to make games which mothers can play with their kids. That’s awesome and there is definitely a huge market for that but there is a huge difference between that and making games for women. So it’s great that you want to make games for moms, just don’t act like your making games for me.

This is why we ladies gotta create our own games that we would want to play.

Sometimes the best way to get what you want is to do it yourself, rather than waiting for someone else to do the job (ie, current industry) who clearly fails at it pretty hardcore.

I think the main thing is to not design games for women, but to design games for ourselves.