FemDevs #2: Patronizing without ...patronizing

Right now, the MMOG marketplace is populated primarily with games that appear to appeal more to the male psyche (just from pure statistics -- no other meaning intended). Like table-top RPGs of our past, the environment's selection of women typically comes in the form of girlfriends or wives. The women that come in to the gaming arena of their own volition tend to be the exception to the rule.

And so it goes with the online environment: Women are a rarely any population center greater than a third of the game's players.

Is it the genre that's to blame or the marketing of the game? What can you do, as female members of the industry, to try and change the trend? Are there things missing from the current marketplace that would attract a larger percentage of women?

Corollary: Is the goal of the game a deciding factor in determining its popularity among women (i.e. adventuring and laboring over a level treadmill vs. Puzzle solving)? Would MMOGs like A Tale in the Desert and Puzzle Pirates benefit from marketing to a larger audience of women?

Ophelea from Warcry:

I wonder, has the genre been around long enough to filter through to those not directly marketed to? I'm trying to formulate this in my mind so it makes sense so hear me out (I may prattle).

6 years ago I worked at Software Etc. I sold Ultima Online. I was in management, yet I really had no "true concept" of what Ultima Online was or was to be other than at the time it was an annoyance because we never had enough. Also, the only people buying it were teenage boys - no women at all, and not even 20-somethings - so I didn't pay it much heed beyond when I had some it was good for sales.

Now, I wasn't an ignorant store manager. I read the magazines, new the sports titles (though I had zero interest), yadda yadda yadda.

But UO completely went under my radar. The titles that the "guys" were buying were Gettysburg, the current Civ, and things like Deer Hunter....but UO was niche.

Flash forward 2 years. I'm working at home, pregnant and my husband gets for his birthday in November - Asheron's Call. Now, I watch him play and I get it. I mean, I really get it. I get that if *I* play it my whole world will disappear because I'll do nothing else. I know myself and I hold out until March at which point I play - and my whole world disappears.

And here's what I guess I'm getting at. At no point did I ever have any advertising directed at me so that I would have picked this up sooner. You see, this IS the kind of gaming I would do and had there been directed advertising (which for me is Newsweek, not Better Homes and Gardens) I'd have started with UO, or EQ.

It's been 4 years. To this day, I still surprise women that I speak to in general about the online gaming phenomena. The only one's who seem to have any familiarity with it are middle-aged women and that's because "oh yes, my son plays something like that".

I believe women WOULD play without the prompting of their husbands and boyfriends if only they were exposed. But you know, what's "traditionally female" if anything really is, isn't marketed to.

Julia from Cyberwarrior

It's all about marketing and comfort.

First of all, a lot of women don't find out about these things. Even if a woman did get the invite, she's not likely to go venturing off into this new "scene" without a buddy... male or female. (If you've ever been to a comic book convention, gamer con, anime con, or horror show... you know about the stalker and creep situation. It's out of control.) So given those variables, you've already seriously reduced the number of women that would want to attend these things. Now add that to the bonus of negative social stigma associated with some of these activities.

To get more women involved in games and role-playing... you need OTHER women involved in games and role-playing that are out-of-the-game-closet.

Personally, I've witnessed the same phenomena with online bulletin board systems. I still sysop my board, but at its social peak the M:F ratio was 3:1 (although in the chat channels, sometimes us ladies outnumbered the guys). It really took a lot of women out there endorsing the BBS for us to maintain this average.

As far as things missing from the current marketplace, more female protagonists and playable-characters in games would be a good start (Warcraft 3 and Savage have barely any). Another tactic is to advertise incentives for women to play. Although, I highly doubt MMORPGS will have "Lady's Night" anytime soon. =P

Keeper at Turbine

Computers came about in those ancient decades in which women were housewives and nurses and little else. The first computer games were toys for the men who worked with computers. Since then, women have been moving in to join the men at the glowing screens, probably in large part because a father or a brother or a spouse or a friend was interested first.

Unfortunately, because computers started out as being one of those "men things", like carpentry or plumbing, it is an area which, I suspect, a lot of women just don't ever give any real thought to trying. It isn't that women don't think women should build cabinets or fix pipes or play games; it's that women never give any thought to trying it out themselves to see if it's fun or not.

If you can get the ladies to sit down and try a game, they may well take to it. Probably what needs to happen is for game makers who wish to attract women to put ads in sources that aren't read primarily by men, and to use imagery that isn't centered on pairs of breasts.

Ophelea from Warcry

Now I agree completely. I'd LOVE to see an ad in a Cosmo not centered on a woman's breasts. *grins*

And they say that's a woman's magazine!

But seriously, women's media is consistently ignored. But, I'm not sure its just the people placing the media. Could anyone see the Oxygen channel ACCEPTING an Anarchy Online ad?

As someone who has to FIGHT for ads for the network because we're MMPs (not women vs. men) I find myself educating the advertisers as to what makes us different than your standard "gaming site". Why is WarCry different than say Gamespy and what are those advantages disadvantages?

Until you get the right creative and the right advertiser and the right media outlet willing to take a chance on said campaign...Oy..my head hurts thinking about how long it would take to get women in MMPs.

Jessica from Turbine

This is where you run into the differences of the mass media (magazines) versus niche markets (games). Results have shown over the years that if you want a man to actually read a magazine, you put women on the cover and throughout. If you want a woman to read a magazine... you put women on the cover and throughout. Why do you think Cosmo has a sexy woman on the cover, instead of a hunky guy? Because the women are checking out the model's clothes and wondering if we could ever be that thin. Last time I checked, 10% of Cosmo's readership was male.

That obviously doesn't work too well with PC games in general, so far. Note that 51% of the college age videogame players are women and look at how console games are marketed versus PC games. That'll give you some clues on how to appeal to women gamers.

An AO ad might do very well in Cosmo; among the women I knew when I played that game, we competed like crazy to find the original Miir outfits, which are so sexy as to be scandalous. Several made me blush to wear them, and I was behind a monitor! The difference between, say, Laura Croft and us is that we could pull off our sexy clothes, don our mostly sex-less combat armor and move out as "one of the team," as it were. We could choose our mood. Heck, when I needed to upgrade my armor, I got the money by table-dancing for tips in one of the Omni-Tech bars; I made a million credits in three nights. Oh, and got three marriage proposals, but that's another story, :D. On the other, I knew women who never got out of their armor. They had that choice and took it.

So, if the AO ad showed the proper contrast (sexy *and* capable, buffed warrior *and* attractive woman), they might be surprised at the reaction from Cosmo readers. 'Course, many of them would be driven away quickly by the sheer complexity of the game (as are many male players).

The point I think I'm trying to make is: Most women still want to be women while gaming; they just don't want a stereotype rammed down their throats. The biggest problem with games today is having games designed for men and (occasionally) women. If designers would just design for people, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Carly from NCSoft

Women, generalizing broadly, are more comfortable socially than men. I've read that it is likely that women developed language much earlier than men did, as a result of cavewomen sitting around the campfire cooking and raising children. They developed language and sophisticated speech in advance of men because the types of information that they needed to communicate (for instance in telling a child how to do what he or she needs to do to survive) than men needed to communicate while on the hunting ground (as in, move left, sneak up on the enemy, hit him with your club now!)

This also suggests to me that women developed right-brain communication earlier and probably in more sophisticated ways. Right-brain communication is non-verbal. It includes all those very subtle changes in the muscles of the face, or in the sound of the voice, that help us intuit what another person is thinking or feeling, whether they are telling the truth or not, etc. A mother must be able to recognize subtle changes in her baby in order to protect that baby from harm and pain. Right-brain communication theory suggests that there are small impulses and signals sent from the brain to the face, vocal chords, and other parts of the body which can be read and interpreted by the viewer's right brain. Most, if not all, of this communication is subconscious.

If these things are true, it would seem logical to me that a woman will have less fun with a computer game simply because she is unable to use any of her natural interaction talents for sophisticated communication via verbal and non-verbal signals. Men, on the other hand, naturally less sophisticated in these areas will find just as much entertainment and use of their innate skills in the online environment. Speech is choppy online, and there is no ability to communicate non-verbally in any of these games. A woman sitting in front of a computer for the first time could be similar to what it felt like to try to talk to someone over the telephone for the first time. I have heard that many people were uncomfortable having conversations on the telephone early on. Women have adapted nicely to that, I might think.

All humans gravitate towards activities which highlight their innate skills and disguise their innate flaws. For men, the computer offers more opportunities for emphasizing their innate skills than for women.

So, the question remains: what can the current marketplace have in it that would attract more women?

Maybe voice chat could help?

Natalia from Cyberwarrior

I think that there will always be subjects that are of more interest to men then women. For instance it is taken for granted by most that football is a game more interesting to men and I have never come across any female organization that wanted to champion female involvement in the game.

I think that most women find the genre not very interesting, even those who tried it. And its not just women, also a lot of older men are not interested. Possibly because the time spent on-line or at the computer does not generate any productive results for them in the real world. There is little advertising or marketing can do to change the opinion of those people.

The women who are more likely to be susceptible to computer games advertising (any games, not just MMORPGs) would have to be in high school or university, as then they are still not responsible for children or spouses. No matter what we do some mindsets will not change. But I think that increasing exposure to computers in general will cause some women to naturally become more interested in computer games.

Ellisa from Mythic:

To build on Natalia's football example: I am dating a hard-core sports fan. On Sundays he watches all the football games and commentaries. It takes up his whole day, he looks forward to it all week, and considers it time well spent. I like football enough, but I can't generate that kind of interest for it. If I don't do anything on a Sunday besides watch a couple of games I feel that I've wasted my whole day.

I think that for many women, gaming is the same way. My girlfriends use their computers for all kinds of things including email, shopping, education, and chat. Some of them are casual game players and a few of them are hard-core gamers. I wouldn't say that my casual or non-gaming girlfriends haven't been exposed to games, or that they need moral support from a friend in order to try them. They just have other things they want to do, and gaming can be a serious and problematic time-sink for them.

Being a woman these days is very demanding! We're supposed to be ambitious, successful at work, model thin with great hair and wardrobes, have well-adjusted kids, clean homes, a whole range of hobbies, prepare healthy meals, and the list goes on and on. So if the industry wants women to dedicate more time to games, either drop society's expectations of us to a reasonable level or else give us a game that makes dinner, does the dishes and straightens up the house, while letting us chat with our friends/family, see movies, exercise and develop our talents.

Kha'tie from Ubi Soft

Everything I've read today just keeps illustrating that the game I'm currently involved with, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, will be a great hit with all people. All ages, both genders, anyone who wants to get into this game can and will be. It's a great way to put aside stereotypes and just PLAY.

I don't want my first post here to sound like a plug for Uru, but everything you find your other MMO games lacking in appeal for women may just be found in Uru.

I've been a fan of the Myst series for 10 years, and it's largely because Myst does not discriminate, nor is it an atmosphere where you'd feel safer with an extra measure of testosterone or extra cup size.

Myst games are about traveling to new worlds and exploring by solving the mysteries of an ancient time and civilization. Sure, adventure MMOs may not be for everyone, but this woman bets that it's a great way to introduce more women to playing online, building communities, and enjoying their computer for a lot more than email and recipe-swapping.

Ophelea from Warcry

A Tale in the Desert = Crack for Ophelea

I was asked to review this for a company that was considering publishing it in the US. I held out because I was AFRAID to play. I was afraid that I'd never play AC again. I was afraid it would be like my first year of MMPs where I put my kids down early so I could play.

I did eventually review it for one night. And at 4am when I drug myself to bed because I'd spent 6 hours MAKING BRICKS I knew I had to delete it off my system

So...from THIS female's point of view, yes they could.

Julia from Cyberwarrior

The goal of the game, how it's presented, and how a player gets there DOES influence the kind of people you attract to the game.

For (a crazy) instance, do you think a lot of women or men would want to play a game where a goal is date-raping women...even if it were presented something like "puzzle fighter"?! Among some circles, this kind of game may sell like hot cakes. But what company would dare to market this to a large audience of women? =)

(Side note: speaking of which, do a search online for "thrill kill". It's a little known Playstation game that never made it to the shelves. Yes, it even features rape.)

For a game to appeal to a person, that person needs to have that idea or fantasy seeded in them already. Women that read lots of romance novels that take place in medieval Europe are indeed more likely to "see" themselves in a game with that sort of setting better than another lady who primarily reads present-day present-time suspense novels (not to say the latter is incapable though). Likewise, the guy that road-rages a lot and has fantasies about fast cars and violence towards other drivers, probably would be drawn to a game that advertises these in-game features. Part of being a good designer is to tap into these desires and know who you're wooing. And then lure carefully!

I haven't played A Tale in the Desert or Puzzle Pirates to say these games should or shouldn't market to more women... but I agree the time-sink issue is a problem. There are just so many priorities (and people in our lives) competing for our time these days and the responsibilities only pile up higher if you're married. Natalia had a good point in mentioning that women in college or high school may be more receptive to try a game out... especially if they already have a computer and the game sounds like something they can relate to.