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["Girl Games"] Tell me what games girls and women play before I go ballistic on EB
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When you're talking about kids, it's even more difficult to find good data, since games are so often bought for kids instead of chosen by kids, and most academic studies of kids focus on educational games.
WoW - When she was still my girlfriend she called me up and said "I bought WoW, you should get it too." We've raided in some pretty serious guilds and at least 30% of those guilds were women.
Sims - She unabashedly likes moving furniture around and building families. Sounds stereotypical, sure, but you better not call her a casual gamer. She takes this shit seriously.
JRPGs - She puts some ungodly amount of hours into Persona, Final Fantasy, etc etc. She can pretty much recite every trick, strategy, or secret in FF8 from memory.
WRPGs - Baldur's Gate 2, Dragon Age? This is, again, pretty much her thing.
She also plays DnD, and board games. Twilight Imperium? Shes pretty scary good at it.
They will play almost any kind of cooperative game on the Wii (e.g. Lego Star Wars, House of the Dead, New Super Mario Bro's) along with their partners or friends.
The only games that I know they play by themselves are things like Animal Crossing, Little King Story, The Sims and WoW.
Going by this chart, female gamers overwhelmingly prefer the Wii as their system of choice. It's not a big financial investment like the other two consoles and has a unique controller that anyone can understand at a glance. M-rated games do not sell well on the Wii. Recently, The RE: Chronicles game and the Dead Space spin-off, both highly rated by critics, didn't break 15K in sales in the US for their debut month - they bombed this holiday season. So what does sell on the Wii? Just Dance. Just Dance sold 500K units in the last two months.
IGN gave it a 2 out of 10.
So who bought Just Dance? I don't have any numbers so I'll just make some wild, uninformed guesses here. It wasn't the elderly casual gamers; their arthritic joints seize up when they think about jumping around and gyrating. It wasn't the ten year old casual gamer because there are no Pokemon in it. And it wasn't the male 18-24 year old casual gamer because he's too busy playing XBOX and Playstation. Who's left? Girl casual gamers. Coming off some kind of 'Dancing with the Stars' high, they must have been the bulk of consumers who bought it and left the M-rated games to rot in the sun. Suda 51 is weeping. Keep in mind I'm just pulling explanations out of thin air - I don't have numbers but it seems most likely in my twisted, misogynistic brain that girl casual gamers were most responsible for buying this trash.
How many of you guys have girlfriends or wives who are more interested in mini-game collections like Carnival Games and Mario Party vs Metroid and Battalion Wars?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtvhceQWlAo
PSN: theIceBurner, IceBurnerEU, IceBurner-JP | X-Link Kai: TheIceBurner
Dragon's Dogma: 192 Warrior Linty | 80 Strider Alicia | 32 Mage Terra
Lisa: Duh! A challenge I could do!
That pretty much sums up my wife's gaming habits. She likes puzzles, but she's not very competitive. Her two favorite games are Plants vs. Zombies & MySims: Agents - both games with a heavy puzzle element, room for creativity, but light on difficulty.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
- Rock Band
- Some RTS games, like Red Alert 2 and Age of Empires
- Yakuza
- Final Fantasy VII
- Valkyria Chronicles
- Uncharted 1 and 2
- Metal Gear Solid series
Games some friends of mine play:
- WoW
- Final Fantasy series
- Valkyria Chronicles
- Soul Calibur series
- Mario Kart
- Suikoden Series
- Rock Band
- Singstar/Karaoke Revolution
So in my group of friends at least we're all console gamers mostly. And I'll take myself out of this discussion because the sight of the colour pink on a game cover tends to make me vomit in my mouth. So going by my friends, if you wanted to do 'girl games' that aren't disgustingly stereotyped, you'd go with:
- Music games
- MMOs (or just WoW)
- Anything Nintendo
- Most JRPGs
All of those kinds of games are really accessible for everyone, except maybe JRPGs which are more of an acquired taste. Really I just wish the marketing people would push 'Hey, play this game! It is fun for everyone and here are the reasons why it is awesome!' rather than 'Hey girl! Play this girl game! It is PINK and FRILLY and has PRINCESSES! And it's totally for GIRLS, LOOK HOW GIRLY IT IS!'.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
Nintendo kinda had something with some of their DS celebrity ads, the games they chose, and the general presentation of those games.
I'm honestly looking (and taking suggestions) for a PS3 update of a game where you can just ride around a pony in hi-def gorgeous landscapes like SotC. I was thinking Red Dead Redemption maybe, but I get the impression banditos and random, violent encounters will spoil that as a good choice to play with her.
Sadly, from my own personal experience, there's not much difference between the two; a couple of my friends have daughters with a DS and the girls will typically pick out The Prettiest Princess or something along these lines. There's not really a thing of "choosing for the kids" because they're brought to GameStop and are left to pick for themselves as to what they want.
Inherently "girl" game? The only one that springs to mind is Britney's Dance Beat, last-gen on PS2. Interestingly enough, it was a solid rhythm game; it just had a not-very-good musical selection.
No to the first part. No to the second part. No to the third part, but have there really been many good games that also give off that "girl game" vibe? Super Princess Peach, I guess, that's all I can think of
Unfortunately, the industry seems unable to separate games which appeal to kids from games which appeal to adult women. Games such as The Sims likely appeal to women not because they overtly appeal to something in women moreso than in men but simply because it's a fun game for a lot of people without massive steroid men or impossible women trying to stay inside a combat bikini. The appeal is that there isn't a focus on a given gender which a lot of games tend to have, even unintentionally. A lot of decisions to make a given game appeal more to a given demographic naturally means it will be less appealing to another one; devs/publishers seem intent on not understanding this and thus want to make the same games they've been making but also make them appeal to women.
Mario Kart
Mario Party
New Super Mario Bros
Rhythm Heaven
She has tried a few of those puppiez and horsez crap games but apparently they don't hold her interest nearly as long as any game starring a big fat plumber.
American otaku/co splay friend: Rock band, sing star, ace attorney
Sister: Shining force I and II, Professor Layton, ace attorney series, world ends with you, Persona 3/4 ( this one is maybe an outlier as she plays games and systems my brother and I hand down, Shining force was part of our child hood as we'd all take turns watching and playing together). Also Princess maker on the pc
My Brothers Japanese wife Nintendo ds first party games i.e. Mario princess peach yoshi ect.
Work Friend who has an English degree: Metal gear solid 1 (only the PS1 one), god of war PSP, loco Rocco patapon 2 and now patch work heroes.
Most girls at work although anti video games will get drunk at parties and play rock band and singstar.
With the execption of my sister who picks games origionally brought by my brother or my self (she has my di lite when I got a PSP) the rest of them choose their own games.
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
I'm (jokingly) squinting at the green box on the left side of that stand wondering if it says "All the rest of this shit in the store is for the men!"
I also have to echo that of the girls I know who game, they have been playing something Nintendo-branded for the most part, but are also playing stuff on 360.
I think what's also an interesting point is how the DS is marketed right now, and how it contrasts to how it was marketed just before its launch in 2004. Who remembers this commercial?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZhOS1GkSPk&feature=PlayList&p=CAACCB9B6C123348&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=35
That sure didn't last long, did it?
I WILL NOT BE DOING 3DS FOR NWC THREAD. SOMEONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO TAKE OVER.
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More Friend Codes!
Mario Kart Wii: 3136-6982-0286 Tetris Party: 2364 1569 4310
Guitar Hero: Metallica: 1032 7229 7191
TATSUNOKO VS CAPCOM: 1935-2070-9123
Nintendo DS:
Worms: Open Warfare 2: 1418-7870-1606 Space Bust-a-Move: 017398 403043
Scribblenauts: 1290-7509-5558
Yeah, for several months, Brain Training and Wii Fit became 'That game Olivia Newton-John played' at work. They of course sold like hotcakes.
I thought they used relevant celebrities in those ads (like Beyonce in the Rhythm Heaven one and...well, I guess Lisa Kudrow kills that argument too)
Then I gave her a Wii and she has not stopped playing Zelda on that as well.
Steam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXW2yUWCaBg
This is Australia, though, so she still has a significant following.
Do you guys watch Xanadu?
Friend J (so that I can keep track of who I'm talking about here, ha) loves survival horror games, RPGs, and also the odd party type game, be it mario party or smash bros. She's not the most skilled gamer, but she loves horror movies and zombies and such, and the atmosphere that survival horror games create is just amazing for her.
Friend H mainly plays RPGs. Mainly JRPGs. She plays the SHIT out of them, though, she's probably the most thorough player of those types of games that I know. Fuck, she's played those FF4 afterstory games that originally came out on cell phones. She has a better FF4 advance file than me, and 4 is my favorite. She did some serious (:winky) bargaining with her husband to arrange her playing FF13 first. She loves the games.
Friend M also plays mostly JRPGs, from Chrono Cross to the Final Fantasies, but also played a little bit of MMOs here and there.
Friend C spends most of her gaming time these days on WoW, but that's just because she doesn't have much, and it's something she can do with her friends. She played a lot of the platformer standards back in the day (DKC, SMB3, etc.) but I couldn't say what games she doesn't like, because she doesn't have any time to play them so I'd get to know.
As a girl gets older, they generally tend to still stick with the middle ground games that are aimed at an older audience, still Mario, Zelda, music games, Final Fantasy(they like these because of the story), etc. They drop the super girly stuff, and the kid movie/cartoon stuff. Still kinda like "cute" games. Also, the hotter they are, generally the less "hardcore" they are about games, until you get to the point where they're just there for their boyfriend, otherwise they wouldn't step foot into the store.
Of course this is a broad generalization, but it's not too off from what I've seen over the years at work. Of course you have the girls that are really into games and know a lot, but they are a rarer breed, and usually already work there.
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
Chrono Trigger
Yoshi's Island DS
New! Super Mario Bros.
Kirby Canvas Curse
Super Mario Galaxy
Electroplankton
Sonic 2 (man fuck 2, 1 was better)
And a ton of NES games, though she mostly just plays Mario (and has never passed the first world). She doesn't have the patience to learn Megaman 2, or anything like that.
She only bought a "GAMES 4 GIRLZ" title when she was like...5? She wanted a barbie winter sports thing. It turned out to be a decent game for kids, actually. Though she played some NES Counting game (starring count van count from the muppets) for a much longer period of time.
What's interesting is, she's only picked out the Barbie game. Everything else was stuff that I owned, that she gravitated towards and found compelling after she watched me play it. Most young boys I see end up gravitating towards the stupid titles like Mortal Kombat the same way young girls gravitate towards the games for girls shit. They just...Don't know any better.
OP I am curious to know if you had an older brother.
Oh god no.
However, if Andre Rieu was to put his smug face in a Nintendo ad, every store ever in the country would run out of stock.
Really now, really?
Stereotypes are quick and sometimes efficient!
Look man, I'm just letting you know what the customers are like that come into my store. This is a college town, so probably a lot of them are sorority girls that think playing games is lame.
But yes, really. I can't even name how many of these girls come in picking up a game or returning something and I ask them a question to see, and they're like, "Oh I don't know, I'm just getting it for my bf"
Like I said, I'm making generalizations. One of the most attractive girls that comes in is actually a hardcore gamer, loves Halo, Zelda, Borderlands, Pokemon, Assassin's Creed, etc.
But honestly you don't see that often in the store.
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
"Yes, 3 easy steps to quitting EQ, it may be hard... it has a will of its own, like the ring " "what bout the fanboys?wont they stop you?"
"daylight and a box of ps2 games"
Maybe, and this isn't a judgement on you, they find the average employees at Game to be total creepers and don't want to engage them in conversation. I know I've done it more then once, and they wouldn't try to hit on me.
All the hot women I know who are gamers love Nintendo, all the plain women like 360, and all the ugos like Playstation. It's a pretty small sample size though of about a dozen! :P
Objectifying, objectifying allohall.
On the male gamer side of my bros and relations and such it's a pretty even mixed of attractiveness and a slightly larger sampling size. The only slight issue is that all the balding or bald men are PC fans through and through.
Not really, no
But thanks for playing, I guess
And now you're making the generalizations
See how it goes?
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
Nope, I was the eldest of two girls. My mom was actually the driving factor behind us buying our first home computer in the mid-80s; she thought it was important for my sister and I to be computer literate. Our used Apple IIe came with a bunch of educational games and simple arcade games, but I discovered "real" games on my own when I saw a copy of The Black Cauldron in a computer store and thought it looked like fun.
However, I was a self-declared tomboy and was strongly resistant to "girly" stuff from an extremely early age (like, I refused to play with dolls starting at age 3 and refused to wear dresses starting at age 5). I don't know shit about what little girls who are closer to the middle/feminine end of the gender expression bell curve play for videogames, which is one reason why I made this thread.
Once chooses their career (or lack thereof), not so much their sex, or other elements outside their control.
Offended gamestop employee here. This is a fact. Theres nothing more annoying about being a gamer.
"Yes, 3 easy steps to quitting EQ, it may be hard... it has a will of its own, like the ring " "what bout the fanboys?wont they stop you?"
"daylight and a box of ps2 games"
So you're saying they act like they don't know anything about games because they don't want to talk to the creepy gamestore employee?
Look, I'm just speaking from years of experience of dealing with all sorts of customers. I feel like you're just making conjectures.
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
So no