Game Industry Plans Increased Focus on Women Gamers

Posted on July 2, 2005

The game industry plans to focus more on women gamers in the future according to this BBC article. The article says game developers will focus more on puzzle games and multiplayer games to interest female gamers. Games like The Sims and Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates have already proven to be popular with women gamers.

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.

Always-on also has an article about the game industry's hopes for women gamers. The article says women are already starting to close the gap in the amount of time spent playing games per week:

In the game industry, the term "hardcore" refers to repeat buyers; currently, male gamers buy more games per month by a 0.95-to-0.67 ratio, according to IDC.
But a respectable foundation on which the industry can build the ranks of female customers appears to be in place, as 43% of all gamers now are female, according to the Entertainment Software Association. The average female gamer over the age of 18 logs 7.4 hours a week, a number that's closing the gap on male gamers, who play for an average of 7.6 hours a week.

A white paper by ELSPA, an organization for British computer and video games industry, describes some of the games women like to play:

The results of in-depth interviews with 20 women who play games indicate that favourite titles include role playing games like the Final Fantasy series (Square Enix, 1987), narrative adventures like Legend of Zelda (Nintendo, 1987), easy-to-pick up driving simulations like Colin McRae Rally (Codemasters, 1998), puzzle adventures like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (UbiSoft, 2003), quick-fire arcade puzzlers like Tetris (Atari, 1988) and life simulations like The Sims (EA/Maxis, 2000). Those who reported that they particularly enjoyed action titles like Halo; Combat Evolved (Microsoft, 2002) suggested similar reasons for their satisfaction with the game as those who preferred nonaction titles.The presence of a good plot, rich characterisations, choice in how they pursue goals, freedom of self-expression, novelty in challenges, immersion in atmospheric virtual environments, pickup- and-play capabilities and flexibility. Women also indicate that identifying with a character is important to their enjoyment of to their enjoyment of a game. Arguably, as more women have been vocal about their game playing, there has been an increase in strong female protagonists.

There is a Women in Games Conference in Scotland this August that will discuss womens' role in games, what kinds of games women like to play and career and networking opportunities for women in the gaming industry. The BBC article noted that female gamers make up 69% of the gaming population in South Korea -- so there should be plenty of room for the number of female gamers to grow in the U.S. and England.