Women and the Game Industry

Published on July 27, 2005 By CariElf In PC Gaming

On Monday, CNN used the furor over the change in rating for GTA: San Andreas to ride one of the game industry's favorite hobbyhorses: why most women aren't interested in computer games. This is something that seems to mystify the mostly male game industry, and the IDGA even formed a Special Interest Group (SIG) called "Women in Game Development" to try and get more women in the industry. Being one of the few women developers in the game industry, this sort of thing interests me, and I've read articles from the IDGA and other places about how women aren't interested in gaming, or game development. The general consensus is that the male-dominated game industry is generally not making games that women like, so women aren't interested in the games, and are not interested in developing games. This is part of the truth.

The article on CNN claims that it's because women don't want to play violent games where the women characters are sex symbols, and they neglect to mention the games where you don't even have the option to play as a female character. This is true as far as it goes. First person shooters aren't my first choice of games, and Halo is the only one that I've played for any length of time (and the feature I like the best in Halo are the vehicles, not running around shooting aliens). None of the women who I know who play games play first person shooters or GTA. None of them play Lara Croft either. CNN goes on to claim that the perception of games being violent and debasing women is what prevents women from entering the game industry, which acerbates the problem of games being created that women don't like.

I went to Lawrence Technological University of Southfield, and women students were in the minority, more so in the Computer Science major. I had 3 female classmates who were also Comp Sci majors, and I knew a few more who were in the graduate program. None of them were interested in programming computer games. I don't remember if I ever asked them why they didn't want to program computer games, but I now have the vague impression that they considered the game industry too instable. Game development is really something you have to have a passion for, and it's not something that you just end up in after college, so maybe it is true that women don't want to program computer games because they aren't interested in computer games. However, I don't think it's necessary to have women in the game industry first to make games that women like. Even if you assume that the majority of game developers are socially inept (being the geeks that they are), I'm willing to bet that many of them have mothers, sisters, and female cousins available for consultation.

I think that the game industry would be better off analyzing what kind of games that women like, and why they like them, rather than spend time worrying about what games they don't like and whether women characters with smaller cup sizes would make a game more acceptable. The women gamers who I know like playing games like The Sims, Sim City, strategy games, role-playing games, horse racing games, puzzle games and word games. I am going to separate the kinds of games that women like into two categories: casual games and building games.

Even women who I wouldn't call gamers like to play causal games like Bejeweled and Bookworm. They're quick, easy, fun games that you can pick up and put down at will without having to worry about remembering what you were doing in your last save game. They don't require a commitment of interest. Most women have other priorities than playing computer games, so casual games appeal to them. Casual games also tend to be extremely polished. Their sound and music is excellent, and the graphics are appealing. Bejeweled, for example, has an effect where the jewels shine like a beam of light has just hit them. It's just as fun to play the Bejeweled clone I downloaded to my new cell phone, but I definitely miss the quality of sound and little graphical touches that are available in the original, pc version of Bejeweled.

I lumped all the other kinds of games that I mentioned that women like into the category of building games, because that's what they all have in common. In strategy games, you build empires. In role-playing games, you develop characters. In the Sims, you build both the world and its inhabitants. In the horse racing game I mentioned, you breed horses and then race them against other horses to try and win blue ribbons. True, they also generally lack buxom females and gore, but I would argue that it's just as important that these games allow you to create something. These are also kinds of games where you are either able to play as a female character, or you aren't so much a character as playing God. It's also fairly easy to make these games either gender unspecific or allow you to choose between male and female. In the case of a role-playing game, it might create more artwork to have to have female models, but if it makes the game more appealing to women, it's probably worth the investment.

There is also the fact that the games geared towards little girls are not always of the best quality. I used to baby-sit a lot, and some of the little girls I babysat for had the Barbie games that Mattel makes. The games they had were buggy, bloated, and traded more on the popularity of Barbie than on good game design. Habits form when people are young. If I hadn't had a computer with games on it since computers didn't even have hard drives, I probably wouldn't be a programmer, let alone a game developer, today. Too many computer games as a kid can be bad, but computer games also help your spatial relations and hand eye coordination. They're also more interactive than TV.

So will making games that women like generate more women interested in becoming game developers? My guess is that it would, up to a point. However, there is still the problem that women are less interested in programming in the first place. CNN says in its article that only 10% of software engineers are women, as opposed to 4% in the game industry. Let's assume that both of those figures are accurate, although I think that both might be a bit too generous. That means that only 14% of all software developers are women. I blame it on the difficulty of getting women interested in math and "hard" science (like physics). So, if people are really interested in getting more women in the game industry, they're going to have to get them interested in math, science, and then programming first. People, particularly women, have the perception that programming is very difficult, and that computers are way too complex. Well, I'm a game developer, but the thought of teaching kindergarteners scares me. Yet, there's a lot of people who say "those who can't do, teach" and think that teachers have a cushy job with summers off; they have no idea how hard it really is and how much skill good teaching really requires. We have to direct young people's minds away from thinking that different disciplines are easy or hard, and instead direct them into thinking of things in terms of what they like to do.

It's not going to be easy to get more women interested in gaming and game development, and it's going to take effort on the part of more people than just the ones in the game industry. The game industry, like all the other parts of the entertainment industry, have to know their target audience, and that might actually involve talking with women.
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Comments (Page 1)

iTZKooPA

on Jul 27, 2005

Personally I think the problem also has to do with the social views on games. Even though the target audience is the cash rich teenagers to late 20 somethings, and male, numerous other audiences play games, and in large portions. The problem is that "games are for kids" in most older peoples eyes and even in the younger generation. They are also seen as uncool if it isn't a sports game or gore/violent game like GTA. This leads to some people who like those various other genres to be left out and feel bad. My point is that most people will try to limit the things that will keep them out of the social mainstream, the said social mainstream for younger girls is NOT playing games, although I do think its slowly changing.

There are many women/girls around my age (22) that play games, and not just the "builders" you describe. I meet my girlfriend of four years running in a Quake 3 Arena Lan that I setup, been fragging each other ever since. So while I do believe most of what you said is correct, what I stated is probably another piece of the puzzle...

And as a programming in training I can also atest to the lack of female programmers. In my year there are only 2 computer science majors, one is thinking about leaving the field even though we are about to goto our senior year. Below me there is anything from 1-25 females in the field, while there are over 200 males. The high end, 25, comes from freshman year when most of the CS majors, as a whole, drop out anyways...

I say just think of yourself as a pioneer, a leader, not a follower like myself

Lucky_Jack

on Jul 27, 2005

Interesting. The posts above piqued my curiosity about my son's graduating class -- from CSUH (California State University at Hayward --- or, with the recent name change, CSU, EB --- California State University, East Bay) class of 2005. I tried to count the male and female names in the list of BSCS graduates, and came up with 77 male, 8 female, and 113 where I was unable to even guess gender (non-english names, Asian, Muslin, Slavic, etc..)

Knowing a little about cultural traditions of some Asian locales, mostly from coworkers, I suspect that the ratio from Asian locales leans more towards female participation than in the American (hemisphere) and European locales, so I am guessing that the overall ratio is between a 7:1 and 5:1 male dominance in his class.

I am also trying to remember what the ratio was where I worked (I am now retired), and I remember a much more even distribution. Close to 1:1. Of course, we weren't developing games, and we weren't developing PC apps. We were developing and expanding the OS, data base managers, and programing languages for the mainframes made by IBM. Perhaps another factor in my impression is that my work locale was in San Jose, CA.

This all sounds very wierd. Why would the schools of higher learning today have such a different proportion than the work place I remember?

CariElf

on Jul 27, 2005

The problem is that "games are for kids" in most older peoples eyes and even in the younger generation.

This perception, however, is changing. There are a lot more of adults who grew up playing games like Breakout and Pac Man and at least some of those people now own X Boxes and PS2s and GameCubes.

There are many women/girls around my age (22) that play games, and not just the "builders" you describe. I meet my girlfriend of four years running in a Quake 3 Arena Lan that I setup, been fragging each other ever since.

Or is it that you just happen to know a lot of female gamers? You met your girlfriend on a LAN. There's a lot higher probability that you are going to meet a girl gamer on a LAN rather than, say Freshman Composition, which is something that most or all of college students are required to take and where the male to female ratio is more likely to be even, even at a technical university like Lawrence Tech. It comes down to the percentages, and the number of people that they represent. I would also argue that of the females who are gamers, they are more likely to be casual gamers, role-players, etc than those who play FPS.

We were developing and expanding the OS, data base managers, and programing languages for the mainframes made by IBM. Perhaps another factor in my impression is that my work locale was in San Jose, CA.This all sounds very wierd. Why would the schools of higher learning today have such a different proportion than the work place I remember?

There probably was/is a higher percentage in California, as a lot of the tech industry is based there. Also, I suspect that there are probably higher percentages of women in Computer Information Science (services? Systems?) degrees than in Computer Science programs because the math requirements are not as high and it doesn't sound as intimidating. Databases are also less exotic than other areas of software development and you don't necessarily start in programming if you work with databases. Enrollment in Computer Science and related majors are down now anyway, since the burst of the dot com bubble.

LDiCesare

on Jul 27, 2005

I don't know much about game industry, but indeed in sciencs and in computing in particular, there are not many women. I remember the proportions of girls where I was were pretty interesting. I studied in France where we have an original system (grandes ecoles). You'd find a fairly even number of males and females in commercial schools, a majority of men (about 2 to 1) in biology, about 5 to 1 in math and many to 0 in mechanics... And where I work, a proportion of 10% looks a bit small but not that much.

iTZKooPA

on Jul 27, 2005

The problem is that "games are for kids" in most older peoples eyes and even in the younger generation.

Thats absolutley true, I actually meant to state that myself.

True it certainly is more likely to meet gamers there but I do believe as you stated above the trend is changing. There were ~15 guys at that Lan and 3 girls but the fact is, I didn't invite them, they came from seeing the sign and 2 of them turned out to be really good players. Hopefully come 20 years for now these numbers will even off a little more but I honestly believe that Men and Women do think and see things differently. I just hope that the industry takes hold of the untapped female population to prevent the crash everyone is expecting, The Sims did a pretty good job of it and so do a few MMOs.

Good rant btw

Evil Roy

on Jul 27, 2005

this was posted over on QT3, which is kinda interesting.......

"Basically, the study involved giving small groups (4 - 10) of kids seperated by gender some standard playground objects like rope, balls, hoops, chalk, beanbags, etc. They were told to come up with a game that they would have to explain and play with an adult in 30 minutes.

What the researchers were expecting to find were that boys games were more violent. On the whole, neither groups' games were particularly violent. What they did find was that the girls' games averaged between 3 and 5 rules. And when they explained them to the adult observer, they generally explained them in terms of the goal of the game. While playing the new game, the adult would then intentionally break the rules to see the girls' reactions. For the most part, the girls would simply change the rules as they played to facilite the adult playing the game as well.

For the boys, however, the typical game involved 5 - 20 rules, with many variations on a single rule and sometimes unspoken protocols as well. When the game was explained to the adult, it was explained in terms of its rule base rather then what the ultimate goal of the game was. When the adult intentionally broke the rules during the initial play through, the boys would generally grow irate, and would be much less willing to redesign the rules to accomodate the adult...."

maybe? iz interesting anywayz......

JillUser

on Jul 28, 2005

I might catch some flak here but I think the big thing that keeps women from being a considerable variable in the game industry is the fact that most women prefer to spend their free time interacting with other human beings. Most of the women I know might want to play a casual game, like CariElf said, you can pick up and put down at will. They don't want to get into anything lengthy because that would deter from their ability to take and make phone calls, respond to the needs of their family, etc.

I, as a mother, get very little free time. When I say "free time" I mean time when I don't have to be available to my family. When I do have any, I like to use it as "me time" and computer games are not on the top of the list there. Basic self maintenance usually is. A haircut is much more enjoyable without screaming kids for instance. An occasional manicure or pedicure is wonderful. Even a nice long bath or walk beat out sitting at a computer.

When I catch a few moments to be on the computer, I like to do things that involve interacting with other humans like reading and writing email notes or blogging on JU. I have a BS in Applied Math and Computer Science. I took EE classes and their were one or two other females in my classes. I didn't know any of them who gamed.

Just my two cents.

CariElf

on Jul 28, 2005

No, that's a very valid point. I once babysat for 2 little girls 3 days a week during the summer, who were 4 and 2 at the time, and all day we played Barbies and house and typical little girl stuff. By the end of the day, I was dying for adult conversation. I didn't go home and play computer games, I went looking for someone to interact with!

Judo_Jimmy

on Jul 28, 2005

Problem is, problem is... Is there a problem? Is it really that bad. Does it need to be made a problem? It is very unPC to admit there are diferences between men and women these days. Lets face it though, women and men are not interested in the same things. Should we force anybody to be interested in something they are not. Capitalism is the cause of the situation. Men buy most of the games, so most of the games are made for men. I have a job were I meet lots of people. Most women I meet are just not interested in computers more than for work, email and the internet. I have 2 boys and 2 girls. The boys like the violent games the best. The girls like neopets. The girls like to chat online, my boys would rather stab themselves with sharp objects than chat online. It is not like girls do not have the oppertunity, it is they choose other oppertunities. I say let them be. Kids spend too much time inside anyway, kick them outside and tell them not to be home til dark. Oops did I say that out loud.

iTZKooPA

on Jul 28, 2005

I say let them be. Kids spend too much time inside anyway, kick them outside and tell them not to be home til dark. Oops did I say that out loud.

HAHHAHAHA
nice one

CariElf

on Jul 28, 2005

Problem is, problem is... Is there a problem? Is it really that bad. Does it need to be made a problem?

Women are viewed as a largely untapped market by many members of the game industry. In capitalism, particularly in areas where your product is not essential to people's lives and/or lifestyles (housing, transportation, food, etc.) you want to reach as many consumers as possible. What if you only made carpet that mostly only men liked? Women wouldn't buy carpet that they didn't like. They would have hardwood floors or tile in their houses despite the fact that carpet is warmer in winter, etc. To the carpet makers, this is not an ideal situation. Some members of the game industry think that if more women worked in the game industry, that companies would make games more palatable to women, and that is one of the items in this discussion.

Should we force anybody to be interested in something they are not.

No. I'm not suggesting chaining little girls (or little boys, for that matter) to computers and telling them that they can't have lunch until they reach level 10, or anything like that. However, if little girls, or young women, like computers and would like to play computer games, there should be games for them to play also. It is possible to make games that both men and women like, particularly if the game is open ended. Men and women play The Sims different ways. They both have fun, and The Sims is one of the most popular games out right now.

Judo_Jimmy

on Jul 28, 2005

I agree whole heartedly. There just seems to be this media need to make it a "problem". Look the evil men are hogging all the video games. They should pay, no more this, no more that, until for every game geared toward men there is a game geared for women. Like they have done with scholastic sports. I think everyone should have the oppertunity to do what they want. I do not think it should be done by limiting others however.

Kevin the Kitten

on Jul 28, 2005

Lara Croft is an interesting enigma: although the developers started pushing her sexuality in later titles, she was also seen as an icon of "Girl Power". So I'm suprised she isn't more popular amongst female gamers. I have heard the theory put forward that one reason for her popularity with males is that, as a female, they instinctively wanted to protect her!

p.s. Although Angel of Darkness was a gameplay disaster, I am still a Tomb Raider fan.

CariElf

on Jul 28, 2005

until for every game geared toward men there is a game geared for women

Gamasutra, which is the website for Game Developer Magazine, has a Question of the Week feature where every week they ask a question and invite the members to give their opinion. Last week, it was about the ESRB ratings and whether the government should legislate the ratings. One of the responses included criticism of stores not carrying Adult Only titles; their position was that there is a market for these games, and they should be available for adults who want to purchase them. I think that this is a similar issue to the game industry's desire to get more women into gaming.

Games like role-playing games and strategy games lose nothing by making them more appealing to women, whereas FPS games would probably be hurt by trying to make them more acceptable to women. One of the real problems in the industry right now is that AAA games budgets are getting larger, and publishers are less willing to take risks. People in the industry talk about looking for alternate sources of income like the movie industry does. However, I think that it would be possible for game companies to make more money simply through diversification. There's no reason why you can't make both Elf Babes in Bikinis with Big Guns AND a game that will be more popular with women.

Lara Croft is an interesting enigma: although the developers started pushing her sexuality in later titles, she was also seen as an icon of "Girl Power".

Sex Symbol and Girl Power doesn't always go together. My friends who are girls avoid those games out of the principle that she looks like a Barbie doll. Women are strange creatures. Most women's best friends are other women, but other women are also competition. Women can be sneaky and will tear another woman apart behind her back, then be sweet and friendly to her face. I've noticed that guys tend to be civil to a guy they dislike if necessary, but they don't ask like they're best friends. So maybe it's a deep seated envy that keeps girls from playing Lara Croft.

If I was going to make a FPS with a heroine as the main character, I'd make her moderately good looking with reasonable clothing and still have her kick ass without getting a hair out of place. I don't know that it would make it more attrative to girl gamers or potential girl gamers, but it would be more attractive to me.

Ugleb

on Jul 28, 2005

I think you're viewing this in the wrong light somewhat. It's not so much beng called a 'problem' as a 'conumdrum'.

The companies are asking "why won't they play?" because they are failing miserably to sell their products to half of the worlds population. If women woke up tommorrow and decided that they suddenly like to play games, revenues would be double instantly.

The male players (most of us) are asking (generally) "why won't they play?" because they cant share their gaming experiences with their female friends/important other. We must have all had that time where you play through a brilliant gaming moment and just want to talk about it with someone, but the only person around is Rachel, who thinks that 'gib' is a weird little abbreviation you just thought up for 'gibbon'. You can talk to her about last nights episode of Scrubs, but you can't talk Gal Civ. Both are entertainment, but one is Not A Valid Subject For Discussion.

I think the reason why female gamers don't like Lara Croft is her enormous breasts, only plausible through male imagination or plastic surgery. Personally I think it was men who pushed her as an icon of 'girl power', in an attempt to justify her existence. Oddly enough, as a male gamer I never feel comfortable controling female characters. Not sure why, maybe its because they always wear very tight outfits and come retro fitted with the afore mentioned inflatable breasts. Makes me feel like a bit of a pervert? Hard to say, I just never play as a female character if I don't have to. I imagine this works in reverse, games that don't offer the choice of a female avatar could break the feeling of immersion for a female gamer.

I think the great 'hope' of starting to unlock the riddle lies with the MMO's, as games like World of Warcraft, EVE-Online, Everquest and so on offer many of the 'female appeal' factors that CariElf mentions. You create a character, which can be female. You don't have to fight if you don't want to, you can take an industrial/crafting path and make things for other players. You can play with friends, and meet new people to play with or just talk with. I play EVE, and I know of players who don't even undock from the station for days if not weeks at a time. They're traders and builders. They research equipment designs, order production, set buy/sell orders and just chat with people. You could play the game for years and neve get into a fight if you want. Or you can get into every fight going, which is what I like to do. It's the same game, yet it doesn't exclude female interest, such as a game like GTA3. How many women do you know that like to go around bsting pimps, popping caps and trawling for ho's in their spare time (in games, not reality btw)? I don't know any.

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