“Targetting women from the get go” by doing what? Women hate patronising. Just make games not be sexist. Options to customise the character and treat each sex as equal.
I know plenty of women that love games like Witcher or elder scrolls. MMOs got huge population of women. Hell, even fallout is very popular.
Why? Because they weren’t trying to “target women” they just weren’t shitty about them.
Make good game, people will come, people, not men or women. This is bad message to send.
It’s not patronizing, nor is it as simple as making games not sexist. There are games that you mentioned target men and women, and there are games that target men, but few games that target just women and treat them as competent players.
I’ve had a few thousand hours in games with majority male player bases like R6 siege, League, Tarkov, Battlefield, Tekken, CoD, Wardogs, etc. When I play, it always makes me feel like I’m walking into a men’s bathroom, like I shouldn’t be there even if other guys are okay with it, and most of these player bases are not. Sometimes, it’s the edgy aesthetics, or the fan service, or lack of female character options, or the edgy music and sound effects. The rest of the time, it’s one guy being sexist while the others stay silent. A lot of these reasons are why women prefer shooters like Overwatch, Valorant, Fortnite more than the above.
The fact is that girls and boys are socialized at a young age to like different things or stay away from them, and that will always produce a skewed gender player base for any game. In games with few women, we rarely get to speak up for each other when male players are being sexist, and men don’t often back us up.
Women didn’t have the decades of head start in gaming culture, experience, and exposure to be as competitive as men in most multiplayer games. Hell, I wasn’t even allowed to play video games as a kid. There isn’t enough momentum yet in the gaming world to fix sexism in video games by just making them not sexist.
The solution right now isn’t to eliminate games that target men, it’s to introduce high-skill expression games that appeal to women. The dresses on the dressmaker discord are insanely intricate and difficult to make, yet all of us feel like we belong as a gamer.
To fix sexism in gaming, women need to have our own gaming culture that goes beyond what a majority male game development world thinks we want and are capable of. We need to catch up on decades of video games and consoles being primarily marketed to men, and stigmatized for women.
I think it’s fine to target primary women or primarily men, it’s tangential to being sexist or being shitty, you can do both, do neither, or do only one.
It’s just that a lot of niches targeting men are already occupied and enjoyed by the players (probably of all genders), because men tended to be considered the main audience, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy as women felt left-out and rightfully.
On the other hand, I’m not a woman and may be completely wrong in my opinion, and would be glad to hear from someone who knows how things are, not how they seem to be
I can only give examples i came across, but considering she’s my wife and we’ve been gaming for +20 years togeter, she loves games like CoD zombies or even recently gears of war. Famously “male targetted” but even MW2 (the og CoD mw2) had a lot of popularity with women.
Almost like target demographic has always been more of a suggestion.
I truly and seriously believe women just like being mad about things.
Make a dress-making game and say it’s for women, they’ll bitch about gender roles. Market a half-diet soda that’s got some sugar, some artifical sweetener in it with action movie cliches and a tagline “It’s not for women” and they’ll bitch about exclusion. What’s it like to have never been happy?
They were anecdotal examples, not an exhaustive list. We could add Baldur’s Gate 3, Hades II, Grounded 2, and Farming Simulator if you want more recent ones (again, anecdotal).
Man, fuck this.
“Targetting women from the get go” by doing what? Women hate patronising. Just make games not be sexist. Options to customise the character and treat each sex as equal.
I know plenty of women that love games like Witcher or elder scrolls. MMOs got huge population of women. Hell, even fallout is very popular.
Why? Because they weren’t trying to “target women” they just weren’t shitty about them.
Make good game, people will come, people, not men or women. This is bad message to send.
(And yeah, game is cool)
It’s not patronizing, nor is it as simple as making games not sexist. There are games that you mentioned target men and women, and there are games that target men, but few games that target just women and treat them as competent players.
I’ve had a few thousand hours in games with majority male player bases like R6 siege, League, Tarkov, Battlefield, Tekken, CoD, Wardogs, etc. When I play, it always makes me feel like I’m walking into a men’s bathroom, like I shouldn’t be there even if other guys are okay with it, and most of these player bases are not. Sometimes, it’s the edgy aesthetics, or the fan service, or lack of female character options, or the edgy music and sound effects. The rest of the time, it’s one guy being sexist while the others stay silent. A lot of these reasons are why women prefer shooters like Overwatch, Valorant, Fortnite more than the above.
The fact is that girls and boys are socialized at a young age to like different things or stay away from them, and that will always produce a skewed gender player base for any game. In games with few women, we rarely get to speak up for each other when male players are being sexist, and men don’t often back us up.
Women didn’t have the decades of head start in gaming culture, experience, and exposure to be as competitive as men in most multiplayer games. Hell, I wasn’t even allowed to play video games as a kid. There isn’t enough momentum yet in the gaming world to fix sexism in video games by just making them not sexist.
The solution right now isn’t to eliminate games that target men, it’s to introduce high-skill expression games that appeal to women. The dresses on the dressmaker discord are insanely intricate and difficult to make, yet all of us feel like we belong as a gamer.
To fix sexism in gaming, women need to have our own gaming culture that goes beyond what a majority male game development world thinks we want and are capable of. We need to catch up on decades of video games and consoles being primarily marketed to men, and stigmatized for women.
I think it’s fine to target primary women or primarily men, it’s tangential to being sexist or being shitty, you can do both, do neither, or do only one.
It’s just that a lot of niches targeting men are already occupied and enjoyed by the players (probably of all genders), because men tended to be considered the main audience, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy as women felt left-out and rightfully.
On the other hand, I’m not a woman and may be completely wrong in my opinion, and would be glad to hear from someone who knows how things are, not how they seem to be
I can only give examples i came across, but considering she’s my wife and we’ve been gaming for +20 years togeter, she loves games like CoD zombies or even recently gears of war. Famously “male targetted” but even MW2 (the og CoD mw2) had a lot of popularity with women.
Almost like target demographic has always been more of a suggestion.
I truly and seriously believe women just like being mad about things.
Make a dress-making game and say it’s for women, they’ll bitch about gender roles. Market a half-diet soda that’s got some sugar, some artifical sweetener in it with action movie cliches and a tagline “It’s not for women” and they’ll bitch about exclusion. What’s it like to have never been happy?
Username checks out.
Seems like you’re the one mad about women. Can I offer you a chill pill?
Dont you think giving examples that are 10+ years old reinforces the point that not many games seem to appeal to women?
Most games that aren’t at least 10 years old are unappealing to anyone, not just women.
Most games at least 10 years old are appealing to at least someone
Most games are unappealing to almost all people
There are a lot of people and a lot of games
They were anecdotal examples, not an exhaustive list. We could add Baldur’s Gate 3, Hades II, Grounded 2, and Farming Simulator if you want more recent ones (again, anecdotal).