10 ms·

A Love Letter to 'Girl Games'

121 points by zdw 7mo ago

dleslie 7mo ago
I have two young daughters who love video games. While there is definitely a great deal many games in my Steam Library they aren't interested in, that's mostly a reflection of my tastes not being shared by them. As it is, there are _many_ games on Steam that they've sunk thousands of hours into. Some that immediately come to mind are A Little to the Left, Unpacking, Hogwart's Legacy, Grounded, Minecraft, Tower Wizard, Little Kitty Big City, A Short Hike, Squirreled Away, Donut County, Goat Simulator 3, Plants vs Zombies, Kingdom Rush, Castle Crashers, Putt Putt, Pajama Sam... We'll even play co-operative games of Barony, and Borderlands; but those are more that they want to spend time with their Dad. Likewise, I don't think they'd ever have picked up Castle Crashers or Kingdom Rush if I hadn't played those games in front of them and with them. I think an important undertone in many of the games that appeal to them is that they're primarily focused on solving a puzzle and telling a narrative through puzzle resolution. Only one daughter is particularly fond of the doll dressing aspect of some games, and there are dedicated Android apps for that specific niche. Neither is particularly interested in playing first person shooters or epic CRPGs, unless it's done with my involvement. Also important is the presentation; there's only one game in those that I listed which is in any way presented with modern realism, the rest are _clearly_ stylized in a more playful manner. But maybe that's a reflection of their age?
- ericmcer 7mo ago
  Isn't it kind of misguided to approach this as men studying women and trying to make more things that appeal to them? Video game distribution is insanely low friction. Last month the best selling game was Resident Evil (6m copies) and right alongside it you have a Slay the Spire 2 (3m copies) which is made and distributed by like... 15 people maybe? I definitely don't think I could make a better game for women than women, so hopefully more girls get into playing and making games. It is definitely one of those areas where you have an opportunity to stand out from the 10,000 games that come out every day.
  - IncreasePosts 7mo ago
    If we agree that women statistically have different preferences with regards to video games than men, wouldn't it also be reasonable to think that women might have difference preferences towards careers and hobbies than men?
    - rjp0008 7mo ago
      The past 40 years we went from pinball and arcade machines, to most men playing some sort of game on a personal device (phone, console, computer etc). I could see the next 40 years capturing women in the same capacity given the right infrastructure and content.
    - sapphicsnail 7mo ago
      I imagine most of that is cultural.
      - Hasslequest 7mo ago
        It would be convenient if it's cultural because it would explain why transfeminine nerds retain "masculine" nerdy interests while avoiding a faux pas.
        sapphicsnail 7mo ago
        Calling it a faux pas implies that being treated as women is a tiny, inconsequential thing for trans women. It means the world to me. If I "retained" masculine interests, it's because I still enjoyed them, even after I no longer felt pressure to act like a man. I played Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, and preferred beautiful/cute games before I realized I was trans. I probably would have played more if I didn't care about my friends calling me a f--. I also like plenty of "guy" things but so do plenty of cis women. I had this exciting period of trying all sorts of new things when I came out and I'm only just starting to see what I truly enjoy when I don't worry about the opinions of others.
  - something765478 7mo ago
- disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
  > Neither is particularly interested in playing first person shooters or epic CRPGs, unless it's done with my involvement. This is interesting, as my five year old daughter loves Pillars of Eternity. That being said, she mostly just likes to watch me fighting monsters and change the outfits of the characters. She absolutely adores the simulation games (Avatar World, Toca Boca World etc) which leads me to believe that she'd love the Sims. I wonder if I can get them on Switch? She has Animal Crossing, but there's a lot of text there which she isn't yet comfortable with.
  - bigfishrunning 7mo ago
    Toca Boca World is a game my daughters (8 and 10) love, and i completely don't understand. It doesn't seem to have a goal or any mechanics --they're just playing dolls on a screen, which is cool but with so little interactivity i think i'd rather they just play with dolls (which they do also...) Animal crossing has very recently started to take over as "favorite video game", and at least there's a *game* there...
    - trelane 7mo ago
      > It doesn't seem to have a goal or any mechanics --they're just playing dolls on a screen, which is cool but with so little interactivity i think i'd rather they just play with dolls > Animal crossing has very recently started to take over as "favorite video game", and at least there's a game there... A large part of the problem here is that folks believe that "game" necessarily implies goals and mechanics. From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/game https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/game > 1. a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other vs > 2. activity engaged in for diversion or amusement Lots of folks see it as definition 1 (cooperative is still a contest against some non-player), whereas your girls seem to be operating under definition 2. The equivalent to your statement from the other side of the fence would be women that deride male competition. At the end of the day, we likes what we likes. Doing fun things is the fullest definition of a game. So the application of the priciple looks different depending on what the people enjoy.
pwdisswordfishs 7mo ago
I was talking to a woman last night who still has the Barbie Riding Club CD-ROM that she played in 1999. She mentioned trying to get it to work a few years ago on her computer at the time but it not working. (This probably would have been on Windows 7.) I thought I remembered a recent update from one of the various API/engine re-implementation projects (e.g. something like but not necessarily ScummVM, Wine/Proton, or something associated with archive.org's Emularity project) that included a list of new titles that had become playable due to some recent fixes, and among those titles were (I thought) a bunch of Barbie and other low-budget franchise games in that vein. There wasn't any particular focus on these outside any of the other games listed—they were just mentioned in passing. Someone did bring it up in the comment section—maybe here on HN—but searching around didn't turn anything up. Any ideas?
- dleslie 7mo ago
  There's instructions by a user named Grace_Grape here: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/barbie-adventure-riding-club-mof https://www.myabandonware.com/game/barbie-adventure-riding-c...
  - pwdisswordfishs 7mo ago
    I'm not looking for instructions about how to get Barbie Riding Club to work. Our conversation led to a vague memory of the blog post/release notes. I'm looking for that blog post, the list of titles, and the short subthread about it that I mentioned not being able to find.
    - lstodd 7mo ago
      It's apparently explicitly supported by dxwnd, but I failed to find anything in release notes or anything like a post you mention. Binary download however contains an 'exports' directory which is basically a list of titles it supports. Great reading in itself. https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/
      - 6mo ago
ecshafer 7mo ago
> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing This idea is trotted out but is really blatantly false when you think of it. Jayne Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. These books have all withstood the test of time and are considered fine literature but are absolutely feminine. Romance novels are considered less than because they are not good books, just in the sense that Conan the Barbarian is also considered not fine literature despite being dripping in masculinity. Manhattan, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally. There are tons of "chick flicks" that are considered great films. Some directors like Catherine Breillat are extremely feminist in their works and well regarded directors with well regarded films in cinephile circles.
- torginus 7mo ago
  I mean Conan the Barbarian literally exists (by the authors own admission) because he wanted to write historical fiction but couldn't be bothered to do the research.
- seneca 7mo ago
  Acknowledging that I'm not adding much to the conversation here, but I just wanted to respond to say you actually changed my opinion with this post. Those examples are slop not because their category is bad, but because most things are slop. That's fairly clearly true once it's pointed out.
- TulliusCicero 7mo ago
  Bringing up books is particularly funny considering that reading, writing, editing, and publishing of said books are all things that are dominated by women. And yeah most romance novels are trashy, but it's not like milslop Clancyfics are better. Most people just want some shallow entertainment and that's fine.
  - tialaramex 7mo ago
    Actually Romance is probably a stronger novel genre than say Science Fantasy. The bulk publishers run several lines of novel length stories you can pay for, you can pick how "spicy" is OK for you (some cultures are like "OK, yes I like a plot but there is fucking in this story right? Do NOT cut away from the action"; Other readers will be angry if there's so much as a French kiss between our happily-ever-after couple, even if it's only alluded to and not actually described) as well as themes (Doctors? Werewolves? 18th century Dukes? Billionaires?). If you want pulp science fantasy there aren't a lot of options AFAIK. On the other hand for shorts science fantasy is much better off. Apparently anybody who can knock out six pages of romance tends to use somebody else's character development as shorthand and so can only publish to AO3 but if you can knock together a decent SF story in six pages that's worth some cash from a pro or semi-pro magazine. Even pretty hard† SF, which is not a common taste, can shift enough copies of a bunch of shorts to make economic sense. † Science Fiction is graded "harder" the more likely that if you ask "How does that work?" about something in the story the author gets as excited as Hank Green and starts explaining details that may or may not just be facts about our universe which they've incorporated into their story -- as opposed to "A wizard did it" or "That's not important". The diametric opposite of the MST3K mantra.
torginus 7mo ago
Personally what I find weird about this whole ordeal is that from my many years of interacting with nerdy (or maybe not so nerdy) women who played computer games is that there exists one franchise that combines the holy grail of complex gameplay (so it can't be dismissed as another match 3 clone), with insane amount of female appeal, both in the number of hours played and the number of people who play it. And that franchise is The Sims. Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players, there has been no new game in the franchise other than the safe but ultimately unambitious Sims 4. I've heard a ton of complaints about players about how much better, more complex and featureful the Sims 3 was (and that game was a glorious mess), and Maxis themselves have acknowledged this. I think there has been a sequel in work at some point in time, that promised to bring back the complexity, which has been cancelled unfortunately. So in a nutshell, despite all the rage around this question, the industry somehow doesn't even make the games that are known to do well with a female audience. Another example would be Stardew Valley, or Undertale, which had a huge female following (and sales to match) but had to come out of the indie scene, because all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worse at making things that appeal to women than either companies that existed before, or random indies coming from outside the professional world.
- ecshafer 7mo ago
  Animal Crossing would be another game that has a massive female audience from a AAA studio. > Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players Ultimately its poor marketing. They want to make Call of Duty and get that audience, but also get girls to play Call of Duty. Instead of making a game with mass appear to both boys and girls.
  - bluefirebrand 7mo ago
    > Instead of making a game with mass appear to both boys and girls. Or admitting that there's just no such thing as universal mass appeal
thendrill 7mo ago
It's really hard not that deep... Video games and technology has always been spearheaded by "autistic" tendencies... There is a certain repetition that autistic people and people with adhd have. Most of those people are men... Women were never excluded. They just never found much interest in it. Just like it is for chess or motor sports.
- TulliusCicero 7mo ago
  There's definitely some exclusion, but I'm still inclined to agree that interest is the larger determining factor.
- malicka 7mo ago
  Chess is actually an incredibly good counter-example: The moment women’s chess clubs and teams started proliferating, women started participating much more. Chess had a “guy’s club” connotation to them, and women were effectively excluded because of that. No intentionally excluded, obviously, but effectively.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
    Soccer is a similar example.
- doublerabbit 7mo ago
  The interest has been there just never promoted as a your welcome too. It has pleasantly been gate kept. The early 90's was heavily painted pink and dolly for girls and camo & macho for the boys.
- CobrastanJorji 7mo ago
  It's both. Women were definitely excluded, especially in the 80s and 90s. Ads were a little....let's say a little focused on the male gaze: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1k3dre/game_boy_pocket_seriously_distracting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1k3dre/game_boy_poc... Games went very hard into the "shoot stuff" genre from get get-go (presumably in part because it's comparatively easy to design and make) and stayed there, and that's also a factor. But ALSO, yes, the folks making games tended to be male, and so the target audience also tended to be male. But on the other hand, as more games became available, and especially as mobile gaming on phones became possible, women quickly climbed back up to being about half of the gamers, so it was certainly never about any inherent differences in how much they'd like games so much as just what sort of games different people might like.
haunter 7mo ago
It all comes down to the character design too. Look at games like Valorant, Overwatch, or Fortnite. Shooters which would you generally associate with men but INSANELY popular among women just because they have good character designs and appeal not because of the gameplay at all.
- TulliusCicero 7mo ago
  Wait, do we have actual gender breakdowns for each of those games?
  - sjoedev 7mo ago
    There are no concrete numbers for Valorant that I know of, but the “Head of Esports Partnerships and Business Development for North America & Oceania Riot Games” Matthew Archambault was quoted saying the Valorant player base is 30-40% women [1]. That seems plausible to me based on my own experience playing Valorant. [1] https://gamesbeat.com/how-riot-games-wants-to-ensure-that-valorants-esports-stars-include-women/ https://gamesbeat.com/how-riot-games-wants-to-ensure-that-va...
- bluefirebrand 7mo ago
  You have to be kind of careful with that too In my experience there's a substantial number of women who are fans of something like overwatch, but not of actually playing Overwatch. They like the designs and the world, they make fanart and fics and such, but they don't actually play Now, that might still be a real success for something that is billed as an esport, but if you're trying to move actual copies of your game you have to be aware that there may be a real big disconnect between your fans and actual paying customers The usual disclaimers apply: I'm not trying to imply that no women play games or that women are "fake gamers" or whatever. This is just my personal observation
  - something765478 7mo ago
    > In my experience there's a substantial number of women who are fans of something like overwatch, but not of actually playing Overwatch. They like the designs and the world, they make fanart and fics and such, but they don't actually play I'm the same way with Warhammer 40K. I love the lore, but have no interest in actually playing with the miniatures.
torginus 7mo ago
A point of contention with the article. Most women I know who played the old Tomb Raider games loved them, and preferred them to the reboots.
- mghackerlady 7mo ago
  We liked that there was a strong female lead that wasn't pathetic, I haven't played any of the reboots but from what I've heard maybe they changed that?
  - bigfishrunning 7mo ago
    The reboots are very much about growth -- she starts off as a scared teenager but grows into an unstoppable killing machine by the end. I could see them being less appealing to women though just because of the intense amount of violence in those games (as compared to the original ones)
    - hackable_sand 7mo ago
      That's not growth, that's a regression. That is trauma and suffering. Nathan Drake is similarly presented as a hero, but requires a deep psychopathic disconnect from reality to exist as a character.
      - bigfishrunning 7mo ago
        Everything is trauma and suffering. But with those comes perseverance. Perseverance requires strength, and survivor trilogy Lara Croft finds out how strong she is. That's growth. I would not call her "pathetic" by any means
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo ago
    It's perplexing that strong female leads often end up just being more masculine. Perfect Dark N64 commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAo7Vt4X_Ys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAo7Vt4X_Ys
charcircuit 7mo ago
[flagged]
Silamoth 7mo ago
Great article! Needless gendering absolutely hinders innnovation, in game design and elsewhere. (Not to mention the unfairness, oppression, and general absurdity). Slightly unrelated, but the point about tutorials starting with the “basics”, i.e., “making a character move and attack” is interesting. On the one hand, if you have a strong enough grasp on programming fundamentals, it should be pretty easy to take what you learn there and make a “dress-up game”. Heck, a basic dress-up game shouldn’t be any harder than a platformer. But if you lack that fundamental knowledge and are only interested in games, you need to develop it somehow, and you don’t want to build ‘boring’ console apps; games should be a platform for learning programming. So I agree wholeheartedly with the author: we need more diversity in introductory game programming tutorials! Of course, that brings us to another can of worms with programming education: Tutorial Hell. But beginners need to start somewhere, and that somewhere should motivate them to continue learning and exploring on their own.
- gizmo686 7mo ago
  It is more than just a problem of tutorials. Game engines absolutely favor some genres over others. If you are inexperienced and asking for advice on making a game, the most common answer nowadays is to use Unity. That is reasonable advice. Unity is a well established engine, with good tooling, a bunch of tutorials and community knowledge, and can be made to solve almost any problem you throw at it. However, Unity is oriented around "traditional" games like the article describes: entities moving around in a 2d or 3d world. If your game fits that mold, you can have something up and running within a day; even with no experience. If it doesn't, you are going to need to spend time fighting the engine before you have even the basics of a playable environment. Maybe you have an idea for a game that is story driven, where players read a portion of the story, then make a decision about what the character wants to do. If you know what you are doing, you would pick a light novel engine light RenPy, and you'll have your basic game environment up within a day.
TulliusCicero 7mo ago
I don't really agree with the author's assertion that things that appeal to women are treated as inherently lesser in general compared to things that appeal to men. I think plenty of things for both genders are treated as silly or shallow or dumb (and that's not entirely inaccurate). I do wonder if there's data on this, though.
- drfloyd51 7mo ago
  I can read a trashy romance novel on a bus. But if I crack open a skin mag, I am a weirdo. So which is the lesser? Actually… false comparison. They make skin mags featuring men too. So let’s try this: Woman reading a romance book. Vs a man reading a romance book. One of those is “weird”.
  - jamilton 7mo ago
    I don't think either of those would typically be seen as weird? It's certainly less common, but I think the people most likely to find it weird would be those who would think women reading trashy romance novels is weird too.
  - jmye 7mo ago
    Your comment has real "a man wears a schoolgirl outfit and a woman wears a schoolgirl outfit, but society doesn't like one - checkmate feminists" logic to it. The idea you'd start with comparing porn to a book says enough about how honestly you're coming to this conversation and where your starting point was for what romance novels even are.
- Rendello 7mo ago
  > Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing. I was excited to read the love letter to girl games, but this article is more of a disparagement, as if everything that appeals to women is regarded as trash. There are plenty of things made by women for women that are universally loved. There are shallow chick flicks, yes, and they're not trying to be anything more than they are (I love a lot of them). It seems that the author is the one framing all these things as worthless. Is a game worthless because it never hit the (very competitive) mainstream? The game mentioned in the article, Consume Me, has 922 written reviews, the majority of which are very positive. It has the description: Consume Me is a semi-autobiographical game that depicts dieting, disordered eating, and fatphobia. In my opinion, the art looks cool and the game looks fun enough, but I don't get the impression it was aiming for mainstream appeal. Why should it? Mainstream games are often addiction traps meant to separate players from their money continuously. This article needs more love and less disparagement.
RobotToaster 7mo ago
>games in traditionally feminine genres like fashion games and visual novels ... > The solution is giving people the tools to start exactly where they want to start Isn't ren'py one of the easiest game engines to use?
- 3uruiueijjj 7mo ago
  Calling visual novels a "traditionally feminine" genre is rather hilarious.
Barrin92 7mo ago
I don't think the reason is primarily that games target men but rather that very few women are interested in this stuff: Traditionally feminine activities and aesthetics are a wellspring of untapped potential in video games. In Consume Me, your strategy is informed by a collection of cute outfits that offer various stat boosts. Terry Ross’s Sweatermaker is a crafting game inspired by the real process of knitting. That sounds like the stereotype out of a 1950s commercial that more than a few women I knew would think of as kitsch. I don't even think there is something that gendered for men either, for example some of the more stereotypical cartoonish fantasy or action franchises of the 80s or 90s have relatively little appeal with guys today. And personally I think that's probably a good thing because anything that targeted at a demographic tends to be, to put it mildly not exactly an artistic achievement I recently saw a video essay by a woman about the surprising popularity of the souls-game and horror genre among women, and the extent to which she appreciated the more 'monstrous femininity' (which you also get in folklore) and I was thinking, maybe you don't get 'chick lit' in games because ironically enough the average gamer now demands more aesthetically mature media than the average reader. You can't make a 50 Shades of Gray game.
TrackerFF 7mo ago
Curious, is The Sims considered a "girl game"?
the_af 7mo ago
My daughter likes most games as long as I'm willing to play with her. She dislikes excessive gore/violence (but has a good threshold anyway... she can watch me play Left 4 Dead 2 even though she finds it scary). She likes relaxing sandbox games such as "Tiny Glade", story/puzzle oriented games like "Planet of Lana" or "Cocoon", racing games like Mario Kart 8 and Need For Speed (she's awful at it, but she likes it), platformers like "Princess Peach: Showtime!", and will gladly watch me play Space Marine or even help me with XCOM Enemy Unknown (by pointing out enemies). We're currently having a hoot playing "It Takes Two", which is a coop split-screen puzzle platformer. I think pretty much her only requirements are: "not too scary" and "I can play next to daddy". That's it. Not necessarily just "Girl Games". One thing I discovered with her is that we both have very low tolerance for "talkie" games with lots of cutscenes where you must skip through all the pointless dialogue. They are very kid-unfriendly (kids want to just play the game and read very slowly anyway, if they can read at all) and, if I'm being honest, also adult-unfriendly. Most games have crap storylines anyway, just give us the gameplay and imply the larger plot briefly, much like Planet of Lana does.
drfloyd51 7mo ago
lol. So many guys here taking about how girls are involved in gaming. Me too! But from a different angle. The vast majority of gaming focuses on zero-sum resolution. Someone loses or dies so someone else can continue or live. In my experience as an American white male I have a feeling women would be drawn towards win-win resolutions, or even games that are not so focused on conflict. So taking COD and swapping the bad guys for aliens and the base for a “house” and nuclear secrets for “children” isn’t going to succeed. (And would also be super sexist.) But really don’t listen to me. Ask a woman.
cenazoic 7mo ago
> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing. I can’t find it now, but I recently read a history of CYOA books. There was a discussion about the fact that although they feature a nameless, race-less, gender-less, age-less, etc, “YOU”, the covers almost universally depict a male protagonist. This was because market research (in the 1970s, IIRC) showed that while girls will buy books with boys on the cover, boys wouldn’t buy books with girls on the cover. I wonder how true that remains.
- dvngnt_ 7mo ago
  Probably the reason why Nintendo made a Game Boy and not a Game Girl
sapphicsnail 7mo ago
[dead]
rtz121 7mo ago
I thought this was about the other type of "Girl Games"...
anon-3988 7mo ago
There's a lot of "girl games" in the industry. Have you heard of LADS [1]? The studio makes plenty of girl games with the Nikki franchise. There's also Stardew Valley and Disney Dreamlight Valley. It feels like a lot of people just overlook these games. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Deepspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Deepspace

121 points by zdw 7mo ago

I have two young daughters who love video games. While there is definitely a great deal many games in my Steam Library they aren't interested in, that's mostly a reflection of my tastes not being shared by them. As it is, there are _many_ games on Steam that they've sunk thousands of hours into. Some that immediately come to mind are A Little to the Left, Unpacking, Hogwart's Legacy, Grounded, Minecraft, Tower Wizard, Little Kitty Big City, A Short Hike, Squirreled Away, Donut County, Goat Simulator 3, Plants vs Zombies, Kingdom Rush, Castle Crashers, Putt Putt, Pajama Sam... We'll even play co-operative games of Barony, and Borderlands; but those are more that they want to spend time with their Dad. Likewise, I don't think they'd ever have picked up Castle Crashers or Kingdom Rush if I hadn't played those games in front of them and with them. I think an important undertone in many of the games that appeal to them is that they're primarily focused on solving a puzzle and telling a narrative through puzzle resolution. Only one daughter is particularly fond of the doll dressing aspect of some games, and there are dedicated Android apps for that specific niche. Neither is particularly interested in playing first person shooters or epic CRPGs, unless it's done with my involvement. Also important is the presentation; there's only one game in those that I listed which is in any way presented with modern realism, the rest are _clearly_ stylized in a more playful manner. But maybe that's a reflection of their age?

ericmcer 7mo ago
Isn't it kind of misguided to approach this as men studying women and trying to make more things that appeal to them? Video game distribution is insanely low friction. Last month the best selling game was Resident Evil (6m copies) and right alongside it you have a Slay the Spire 2 (3m copies) which is made and distributed by like... 15 people maybe? I definitely don't think I could make a better game for women than women, so hopefully more girls get into playing and making games. It is definitely one of those areas where you have an opportunity to stand out from the 10,000 games that come out every day.
- IncreasePosts 7mo ago
  If we agree that women statistically have different preferences with regards to video games than men, wouldn't it also be reasonable to think that women might have difference preferences towards careers and hobbies than men?
  - rjp0008 7mo ago
    The past 40 years we went from pinball and arcade machines, to most men playing some sort of game on a personal device (phone, console, computer etc). I could see the next 40 years capturing women in the same capacity given the right infrastructure and content.
  - sapphicsnail 7mo ago
    I imagine most of that is cultural.
    - Hasslequest 7mo ago
      It would be convenient if it's cultural because it would explain why transfeminine nerds retain "masculine" nerdy interests while avoiding a faux pas.
      - sapphicsnail 7mo ago
        Calling it a faux pas implies that being treated as women is a tiny, inconsequential thing for trans women. It means the world to me. If I "retained" masculine interests, it's because I still enjoyed them, even after I no longer felt pressure to act like a man. I played Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, and preferred beautiful/cute games before I realized I was trans. I probably would have played more if I didn't care about my friends calling me a f--. I also like plenty of "guy" things but so do plenty of cis women. I had this exciting period of trying all sorts of new things when I came out and I'm only just starting to see what I truly enjoy when I don't worry about the opinions of others.
- something765478 7mo ago
disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
> Neither is particularly interested in playing first person shooters or epic CRPGs, unless it's done with my involvement. This is interesting, as my five year old daughter loves Pillars of Eternity. That being said, she mostly just likes to watch me fighting monsters and change the outfits of the characters. She absolutely adores the simulation games (Avatar World, Toca Boca World etc) which leads me to believe that she'd love the Sims. I wonder if I can get them on Switch? She has Animal Crossing, but there's a lot of text there which she isn't yet comfortable with.
- bigfishrunning 7mo ago
  Toca Boca World is a game my daughters (8 and 10) love, and i completely don't understand. It doesn't seem to have a goal or any mechanics --they're just playing dolls on a screen, which is cool but with so little interactivity i think i'd rather they just play with dolls (which they do also...) Animal crossing has very recently started to take over as "favorite video game", and at least there's a *game* there...
  - trelane 7mo ago
    > It doesn't seem to have a goal or any mechanics --they're just playing dolls on a screen, which is cool but with so little interactivity i think i'd rather they just play with dolls > Animal crossing has very recently started to take over as "favorite video game", and at least there's a game there... A large part of the problem here is that folks believe that "game" necessarily implies goals and mechanics. From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/game https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/game > 1. a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other vs > 2. activity engaged in for diversion or amusement Lots of folks see it as definition 1 (cooperative is still a contest against some non-player), whereas your girls seem to be operating under definition 2. The equivalent to your statement from the other side of the fence would be women that deride male competition. At the end of the day, we likes what we likes. Doing fun things is the fullest definition of a game. So the application of the priciple looks different depending on what the people enjoy.

pwdisswordfishs 7mo ago

I was talking to a woman last night who still has the Barbie Riding Club CD-ROM that she played in 1999. She mentioned trying to get it to work a few years ago on her computer at the time but it not working. (This probably would have been on Windows 7.) I thought I remembered a recent update from one of the various API/engine re-implementation projects (e.g. something like but not necessarily ScummVM, Wine/Proton, or something associated with archive.org's Emularity project) that included a list of new titles that had become playable due to some recent fixes, and among those titles were (I thought) a bunch of Barbie and other low-budget franchise games in that vein. There wasn't any particular focus on these outside any of the other games listed—they were just mentioned in passing. Someone did bring it up in the comment section—maybe here on HN—but searching around didn't turn anything up. Any ideas?

dleslie 7mo ago
There's instructions by a user named Grace_Grape here: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/barbie-adventure-riding-club-mof https://www.myabandonware.com/game/barbie-adventure-riding-c...
- pwdisswordfishs 7mo ago
  I'm not looking for instructions about how to get Barbie Riding Club to work. Our conversation led to a vague memory of the blog post/release notes. I'm looking for that blog post, the list of titles, and the short subthread about it that I mentioned not being able to find.
  - lstodd 7mo ago
    It's apparently explicitly supported by dxwnd, but I failed to find anything in release notes or anything like a post you mention. Binary download however contains an 'exports' directory which is basically a list of titles it supports. Great reading in itself. https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/
    - 6mo ago

ecshafer 7mo ago

> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing This idea is trotted out but is really blatantly false when you think of it. Jayne Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. These books have all withstood the test of time and are considered fine literature but are absolutely feminine. Romance novels are considered less than because they are not good books, just in the sense that Conan the Barbarian is also considered not fine literature despite being dripping in masculinity. Manhattan, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally. There are tons of "chick flicks" that are considered great films. Some directors like Catherine Breillat are extremely feminist in their works and well regarded directors with well regarded films in cinephile circles.

torginus 7mo ago
I mean Conan the Barbarian literally exists (by the authors own admission) because he wanted to write historical fiction but couldn't be bothered to do the research.
seneca 7mo ago
Acknowledging that I'm not adding much to the conversation here, but I just wanted to respond to say you actually changed my opinion with this post. Those examples are slop not because their category is bad, but because most things are slop. That's fairly clearly true once it's pointed out.
TulliusCicero 7mo ago
Bringing up books is particularly funny considering that reading, writing, editing, and publishing of said books are all things that are dominated by women. And yeah most romance novels are trashy, but it's not like milslop Clancyfics are better. Most people just want some shallow entertainment and that's fine.
- tialaramex 7mo ago
  Actually Romance is probably a stronger novel genre than say Science Fantasy. The bulk publishers run several lines of novel length stories you can pay for, you can pick how "spicy" is OK for you (some cultures are like "OK, yes I like a plot but there is fucking in this story right? Do NOT cut away from the action"; Other readers will be angry if there's so much as a French kiss between our happily-ever-after couple, even if it's only alluded to and not actually described) as well as themes (Doctors? Werewolves? 18th century Dukes? Billionaires?). If you want pulp science fantasy there aren't a lot of options AFAIK. On the other hand for shorts science fantasy is much better off. Apparently anybody who can knock out six pages of romance tends to use somebody else's character development as shorthand and so can only publish to AO3 but if you can knock together a decent SF story in six pages that's worth some cash from a pro or semi-pro magazine. Even pretty hard† SF, which is not a common taste, can shift enough copies of a bunch of shorts to make economic sense. † Science Fiction is graded "harder" the more likely that if you ask "How does that work?" about something in the story the author gets as excited as Hank Green and starts explaining details that may or may not just be facts about our universe which they've incorporated into their story -- as opposed to "A wizard did it" or "That's not important". The diametric opposite of the MST3K mantra.

torginus 7mo ago

Personally what I find weird about this whole ordeal is that from my many years of interacting with nerdy (or maybe not so nerdy) women who played computer games is that there exists one franchise that combines the holy grail of complex gameplay (so it can't be dismissed as another match 3 clone), with insane amount of female appeal, both in the number of hours played and the number of people who play it. And that franchise is The Sims. Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players, there has been no new game in the franchise other than the safe but ultimately unambitious Sims 4. I've heard a ton of complaints about players about how much better, more complex and featureful the Sims 3 was (and that game was a glorious mess), and Maxis themselves have acknowledged this. I think there has been a sequel in work at some point in time, that promised to bring back the complexity, which has been cancelled unfortunately. So in a nutshell, despite all the rage around this question, the industry somehow doesn't even make the games that are known to do well with a female audience. Another example would be Stardew Valley, or Undertale, which had a huge female following (and sales to match) but had to come out of the indie scene, because all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worse at making things that appeal to women than either companies that existed before, or random indies coming from outside the professional world.

ecshafer 7mo ago
Animal Crossing would be another game that has a massive female audience from a AAA studio. > Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players Ultimately its poor marketing. They want to make Call of Duty and get that audience, but also get girls to play Call of Duty. Instead of making a game with mass appear to both boys and girls.
- bluefirebrand 7mo ago
  > Instead of making a game with mass appear to both boys and girls. Or admitting that there's just no such thing as universal mass appeal

thendrill 7mo ago

It's really hard not that deep... Video games and technology has always been spearheaded by "autistic" tendencies... There is a certain repetition that autistic people and people with adhd have. Most of those people are men... Women were never excluded. They just never found much interest in it. Just like it is for chess or motor sports.

TulliusCicero 7mo ago
There's definitely some exclusion, but I'm still inclined to agree that interest is the larger determining factor.
malicka 7mo ago
Chess is actually an incredibly good counter-example: The moment women’s chess clubs and teams started proliferating, women started participating much more. Chess had a “guy’s club” connotation to them, and women were effectively excluded because of that. No intentionally excluded, obviously, but effectively.
- PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
  Soccer is a similar example.
doublerabbit 7mo ago
The interest has been there just never promoted as a your welcome too. It has pleasantly been gate kept. The early 90's was heavily painted pink and dolly for girls and camo & macho for the boys.
CobrastanJorji 7mo ago
It's both. Women were definitely excluded, especially in the 80s and 90s. Ads were a little....let's say a little focused on the male gaze: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1k3dre/game_boy_pocket_seriously_distracting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1k3dre/game_boy_poc... Games went very hard into the "shoot stuff" genre from get get-go (presumably in part because it's comparatively easy to design and make) and stayed there, and that's also a factor. But ALSO, yes, the folks making games tended to be male, and so the target audience also tended to be male. But on the other hand, as more games became available, and especially as mobile gaming on phones became possible, women quickly climbed back up to being about half of the gamers, so it was certainly never about any inherent differences in how much they'd like games so much as just what sort of games different people might like.

haunter 7mo ago

It all comes down to the character design too. Look at games like Valorant, Overwatch, or Fortnite. Shooters which would you generally associate with men but INSANELY popular among women just because they have good character designs and appeal not because of the gameplay at all.

TulliusCicero 7mo ago
Wait, do we have actual gender breakdowns for each of those games?
- sjoedev 7mo ago
  There are no concrete numbers for Valorant that I know of, but the “Head of Esports Partnerships and Business Development for North America & Oceania Riot Games” Matthew Archambault was quoted saying the Valorant player base is 30-40% women [1]. That seems plausible to me based on my own experience playing Valorant. [1] https://gamesbeat.com/how-riot-games-wants-to-ensure-that-valorants-esports-stars-include-women/ https://gamesbeat.com/how-riot-games-wants-to-ensure-that-va...
bluefirebrand 7mo ago
You have to be kind of careful with that too In my experience there's a substantial number of women who are fans of something like overwatch, but not of actually playing Overwatch. They like the designs and the world, they make fanart and fics and such, but they don't actually play Now, that might still be a real success for something that is billed as an esport, but if you're trying to move actual copies of your game you have to be aware that there may be a real big disconnect between your fans and actual paying customers The usual disclaimers apply: I'm not trying to imply that no women play games or that women are "fake gamers" or whatever. This is just my personal observation
- something765478 7mo ago
  > In my experience there's a substantial number of women who are fans of something like overwatch, but not of actually playing Overwatch. They like the designs and the world, they make fanart and fics and such, but they don't actually play I'm the same way with Warhammer 40K. I love the lore, but have no interest in actually playing with the miniatures.

torginus 7mo ago

A point of contention with the article. Most women I know who played the old Tomb Raider games loved them, and preferred them to the reboots.

mghackerlady 7mo ago
We liked that there was a strong female lead that wasn't pathetic, I haven't played any of the reboots but from what I've heard maybe they changed that?
- bigfishrunning 7mo ago
  The reboots are very much about growth -- she starts off as a scared teenager but grows into an unstoppable killing machine by the end. I could see them being less appealing to women though just because of the intense amount of violence in those games (as compared to the original ones)
  - hackable_sand 7mo ago
    That's not growth, that's a regression. That is trauma and suffering. Nathan Drake is similarly presented as a hero, but requires a deep psychopathic disconnect from reality to exist as a character.
    - bigfishrunning 7mo ago
      Everything is trauma and suffering. But with those comes perseverance. Perseverance requires strength, and survivor trilogy Lara Croft finds out how strong she is. That's growth. I would not call her "pathetic" by any means
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo ago
  It's perplexing that strong female leads often end up just being more masculine. Perfect Dark N64 commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAo7Vt4X_Ys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAo7Vt4X_Ys

charcircuit 7mo ago

[flagged]

Silamoth 7mo ago

Great article! Needless gendering absolutely hinders innnovation, in game design and elsewhere. (Not to mention the unfairness, oppression, and general absurdity). Slightly unrelated, but the point about tutorials starting with the “basics”, i.e., “making a character move and attack” is interesting. On the one hand, if you have a strong enough grasp on programming fundamentals, it should be pretty easy to take what you learn there and make a “dress-up game”. Heck, a basic dress-up game shouldn’t be any harder than a platformer. But if you lack that fundamental knowledge and are only interested in games, you need to develop it somehow, and you don’t want to build ‘boring’ console apps; games should be a platform for learning programming. So I agree wholeheartedly with the author: we need more diversity in introductory game programming tutorials! Of course, that brings us to another can of worms with programming education: Tutorial Hell. But beginners need to start somewhere, and that somewhere should motivate them to continue learning and exploring on their own.

gizmo686 7mo ago
It is more than just a problem of tutorials. Game engines absolutely favor some genres over others. If you are inexperienced and asking for advice on making a game, the most common answer nowadays is to use Unity. That is reasonable advice. Unity is a well established engine, with good tooling, a bunch of tutorials and community knowledge, and can be made to solve almost any problem you throw at it. However, Unity is oriented around "traditional" games like the article describes: entities moving around in a 2d or 3d world. If your game fits that mold, you can have something up and running within a day; even with no experience. If it doesn't, you are going to need to spend time fighting the engine before you have even the basics of a playable environment. Maybe you have an idea for a game that is story driven, where players read a portion of the story, then make a decision about what the character wants to do. If you know what you are doing, you would pick a light novel engine light RenPy, and you'll have your basic game environment up within a day.

TulliusCicero 7mo ago

I don't really agree with the author's assertion that things that appeal to women are treated as inherently lesser in general compared to things that appeal to men. I think plenty of things for both genders are treated as silly or shallow or dumb (and that's not entirely inaccurate). I do wonder if there's data on this, though.

drfloyd51 7mo ago
I can read a trashy romance novel on a bus. But if I crack open a skin mag, I am a weirdo. So which is the lesser? Actually… false comparison. They make skin mags featuring men too. So let’s try this: Woman reading a romance book. Vs a man reading a romance book. One of those is “weird”.
- jamilton 7mo ago
  I don't think either of those would typically be seen as weird? It's certainly less common, but I think the people most likely to find it weird would be those who would think women reading trashy romance novels is weird too.
- jmye 7mo ago
  Your comment has real "a man wears a schoolgirl outfit and a woman wears a schoolgirl outfit, but society doesn't like one - checkmate feminists" logic to it. The idea you'd start with comparing porn to a book says enough about how honestly you're coming to this conversation and where your starting point was for what romance novels even are.
Rendello 7mo ago
> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing. I was excited to read the love letter to girl games, but this article is more of a disparagement, as if everything that appeals to women is regarded as trash. There are plenty of things made by women for women that are universally loved. There are shallow chick flicks, yes, and they're not trying to be anything more than they are (I love a lot of them). It seems that the author is the one framing all these things as worthless. Is a game worthless because it never hit the (very competitive) mainstream? The game mentioned in the article, Consume Me, has 922 written reviews, the majority of which are very positive. It has the description: Consume Me is a semi-autobiographical game that depicts dieting, disordered eating, and fatphobia. In my opinion, the art looks cool and the game looks fun enough, but I don't get the impression it was aiming for mainstream appeal. Why should it? Mainstream games are often addiction traps meant to separate players from their money continuously. This article needs more love and less disparagement.

RobotToaster 7mo ago

>games in traditionally feminine genres like fashion games and visual novels ... > The solution is giving people the tools to start exactly where they want to start Isn't ren'py one of the easiest game engines to use?

3uruiueijjj 7mo ago
Calling visual novels a "traditionally feminine" genre is rather hilarious.

Barrin92 7mo ago

I don't think the reason is primarily that games target men but rather that very few women are interested in this stuff: Traditionally feminine activities and aesthetics are a wellspring of untapped potential in video games. In Consume Me, your strategy is informed by a collection of cute outfits that offer various stat boosts. Terry Ross’s Sweatermaker is a crafting game inspired by the real process of knitting. That sounds like the stereotype out of a 1950s commercial that more than a few women I knew would think of as kitsch. I don't even think there is something that gendered for men either, for example some of the more stereotypical cartoonish fantasy or action franchises of the 80s or 90s have relatively little appeal with guys today. And personally I think that's probably a good thing because anything that targeted at a demographic tends to be, to put it mildly not exactly an artistic achievement I recently saw a video essay by a woman about the surprising popularity of the souls-game and horror genre among women, and the extent to which she appreciated the more 'monstrous femininity' (which you also get in folklore) and I was thinking, maybe you don't get 'chick lit' in games because ironically enough the average gamer now demands more aesthetically mature media than the average reader. You can't make a 50 Shades of Gray game.

TrackerFF 7mo ago

Curious, is The Sims considered a "girl game"?

the_af 7mo ago

My daughter likes most games as long as I'm willing to play with her. She dislikes excessive gore/violence (but has a good threshold anyway... she can watch me play Left 4 Dead 2 even though she finds it scary). She likes relaxing sandbox games such as "Tiny Glade", story/puzzle oriented games like "Planet of Lana" or "Cocoon", racing games like Mario Kart 8 and Need For Speed (she's awful at it, but she likes it), platformers like "Princess Peach: Showtime!", and will gladly watch me play Space Marine or even help me with XCOM Enemy Unknown (by pointing out enemies). We're currently having a hoot playing "It Takes Two", which is a coop split-screen puzzle platformer. I think pretty much her only requirements are: "not too scary" and "I can play next to daddy". That's it. Not necessarily just "Girl Games". One thing I discovered with her is that we both have very low tolerance for "talkie" games with lots of cutscenes where you must skip through all the pointless dialogue. They are very kid-unfriendly (kids want to just play the game and read very slowly anyway, if they can read at all) and, if I'm being honest, also adult-unfriendly. Most games have crap storylines anyway, just give us the gameplay and imply the larger plot briefly, much like Planet of Lana does.

drfloyd51 7mo ago

lol. So many guys here taking about how girls are involved in gaming. Me too! But from a different angle. The vast majority of gaming focuses on zero-sum resolution. Someone loses or dies so someone else can continue or live. In my experience as an American white male I have a feeling women would be drawn towards win-win resolutions, or even games that are not so focused on conflict. So taking COD and swapping the bad guys for aliens and the base for a “house” and nuclear secrets for “children” isn’t going to succeed. (And would also be super sexist.) But really don’t listen to me. Ask a woman.

cenazoic 7mo ago

> Games are doomed by femininity. Across media, genres marketed toward women are deemed lesser than their masculine counterparts: romance novels are trashy, chick flicks are shallow, and pop idols are embarrassing. I can’t find it now, but I recently read a history of CYOA books. There was a discussion about the fact that although they feature a nameless, race-less, gender-less, age-less, etc, “YOU”, the covers almost universally depict a male protagonist. This was because market research (in the 1970s, IIRC) showed that while girls will buy books with boys on the cover, boys wouldn’t buy books with girls on the cover. I wonder how true that remains.

dvngnt_ 7mo ago
Probably the reason why Nintendo made a Game Boy and not a Game Girl

sapphicsnail 7mo ago

[dead]

rtz121 7mo ago

I thought this was about the other type of "Girl Games"...

anon-3988 7mo ago

There's a lot of "girl games" in the industry. Have you heard of LADS [1]? The studio makes plenty of girl games with the Nikki franchise. There's also Stardew Valley and Disney Dreamlight Valley. It feels like a lot of people just overlook these games. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Deepspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Deepspace