Culture, Gender Games

The trouble with analysing game play in gender terms is that it's a very coarse filter. It's got two bins - male and female - and any conclusions you draw from the commonalities in those bins are very broad, and doubtless exclude a lot of subtleties. That's why we are drawn to audience models which do not make any reference to gender, such as our DGD1 and (coming soon?

) DGD2 models, Nicole Lazarro's Four Keys and the notorious Bartle type model.
Alice usually posts pictures, so it's nice to see her deciding to get verbal for a change, as in her recent post . Also, she reports on Ernest's talk .

Ernest has been a part of International Hobo now for about four years, but we mostly meet up face to face only when we're speaking at the same conventions...

We're a highly virtual company. A brief aside on Alice's summary of Ernest's keynote: when he speaks negatively about market-driven design, his point is that the game must have a vision, not that there is anything wrong with market-orientation per se; every commercial game must always aim to at least make back its development costs. (Unless his views have changed significantly in the last month!

)
Perhaps there are gender differences around realism in games: maybe violence appeals less when it's more realistic. But again, maybe that's cultural: Japanese game design is all about the fantasy, whereas American game design is all about the reality. Curious?

I've been wondering about this...

I'm going to dip into Temperament Theory briefly, so be warned. In terms of games, we associate fantasy (and sci fi) settings with the Rational and Idealist temperaments (traits which are reflected in about 25% of the population), whereas a desire for realism is more associated with the Artisan and Guardian temperaments (traits which are reflected in about 75% of the population).
American game design may favour realism because US game development is more democratic - and I use the word here in a negative connotation.

Democracy is great...

except if you're in the minority. And the Rational and Idealist are a minority in strict terms. As the market has driven Western games, they have veered ever more towards the mass market, and hence to the majority temperaments, and hence towards realism.

On the other hand, in Japan, career choices are driven to some degree by vocational tests and other elements which mean that many Japanese people end up in jobs which are effectively selected for them, rather than choosing their career path. (I don't consider this to be an innately negative approach, incidentally - and many Japanese people are grateful for the guiding hand). I wonder if it is not the case that those with the Rational or Idealist tendencies don't tend to make up the majority of Japanese developer staff, because of this vocational guidance system.

Although it must to be said, the Japanese culture at large is more open to innovation, so it may reflect wider cultural issues.
We associate the Rational and Idealist temperaments more with Hardcore players than with Casual (for whom the Artisan and Guardian temperaments are more closely associated), and as such it may be the case that the export market for Japanese games tends to appeal to the Hardcore more than the Casual market. This indeed may be the problem Japanese game developers are encountering - the global market is becoming more homogenised, and therefore more focused on realism, less on inventive fantasy.

The way I see it, the Rational and Idealist players are still around, they just make a smaller market. But, they're still a market - and if we're right and this reflects a considerable volume of Hardcore players, there's a lot of vocal game evangelists in that market. It may only be 25% of the market as a whole (in broad strokes) but its a group that can be polarised more readily, and as such may be a more stable market.

Which is to say, even if there are three times as many potential customers in the Artisan-Guardian market, you won't capture even a third of this market without the help of a license or the zeitgeist.
Perhaps, then, the Artisan-Guardian mass market can be left to do its thing, while the Rational-Idealist market can also survive making interesting and original games to target about a quarter of the market. (It suggests these games should use a quarter or less of the development budget of a mass market game).

How does this relate to gender? It doesn't, because play needs do not (as far as we or any other game audience model researcher we've found can tell) strictly hinge on gender issues. But, as Sheri Grainer Ray points out in , the problem is not strictly that we aren't making games for women but rather that we are making games which are off putting to women.

A recent list of the , number 4 is Ridiculous portrayals of females , or as we have termed it, Oversized Novelty Breast Syndrome. Most games (especially Western games) suffer from the problem that they are designed to be adolescent male power fantasies - and generally this makes them quite unappealing to women. But it is usually not the case that the game couldn't be enjoyed by female players - if it was made in a less gender offensive fashion.

Then there is the issue of violence. So many games are based upon violence that we sometimes forget that it's not a given. As Alice says:

Maybe we all believe the hype that games are all about violence and shooting and boys?

And yet a cursory think produces Beyond Good And Evil, Katamari Damacy, King's Quest, The Hobbit, The Sims, Monkey Island, Rachet and Cla-.. ok I stop, the list is endless.

Ratchet and Clank, incidentally, should not be in that list. Unless she's being ironic, Alice seems to have momentarily forgotten that this is a game about violence and shooting - it just happens to have a cartoon representation. My wife, who has become an avid game player perhaps by necessity of being married to me, did not get on with the game despite generally loving 3D platformers - because the primary interaction with the world is shooting weaponry (albeit amusing weaponry).

NiGHTS: Into Dreams perhaps would be a better additional example, although it is becoming an increasingly obscure reference.
As many people have noted, it's not about making games for women so much as it is about making games which don't appear to actively exclude women. That's why Sheri talks about gender inclusive game design.

And it's not just the game design, either. Marketing, as Alice points out, is another key issue..

. I actually think it could be the biggest problem right now, as lacklustre industry marketeers target adolescent boys because they happen know how to target them. But I know that marketing people do know how to advertise to women, because I've seen tampon advertisements.

(Hey, they make me want to buy tampons sometimes, so effective are they at portraying their lifestyle choice). Does marketing know how to advertise in a gender independent fashion?
I'd like to take this moment to give a concrete example of the problem with marketing games.

The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time had the potential to appeal to a cross-gender market. It should have been advertised to a gender-neutral audience. Instead, the UK advertising used the tagline: Will you get the girl?

Or play like one. Shameful. Thankfully Nintendo have cleaned up their act somewhat since then.

I agree with Alice when she says that most issues of gender are actually issues of culture - because cultures tend to create gender-based roles and we, as learning creatures, tend to imitate and repeat those roles. As Ernest says (paraphrased by Alice):

There is no such thing as a universal sisterhood. You don't know what goes on in the head of a woman in another culture because you don't know what's going on in their culture.

You have more in common with a man of your own culture than you do a say, Masai woman. Femininity is ethnocentric. So you are feminine if you feel feminine whatever that means to YOU.

This is key to making videogames that is meaningful to women. I have no idea what Japanese women want. Even less idea what a Maori woman wants.