Women Invade the Gaming World!

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Horror! Brace yourselves! Women are invading our world. According to an article at BBC News, there is a need for more games for the female audience, as well as more female developers. Here's a snip:

Games consultant Ernest Adams will say the stage is set for an explosion of women gamers, especially in the area of massively-multi-player online gaming.

There needs to be a sea-change in the industry, with more female developers and more games for women, he believes.

Mr Adams is to address the 2005 Women in Games Conference being held in August in Dundee, Scotland.

Looks like they're going to strip the gaming world of the inherent testosterone. On the other hand, who doesn't secretly dream of a girl who likes the stuff. Read the whole thing at BBC News.

 

About time. Actually I have met a lot of women on forums that play games but most are strategy games or building games. Off hand I can't think of any that play Diablo but there must be a few.

Mayber female characters will get some decent armor.

 

Yeah, that would be great. It must be obvious that those female characters are made by male developers. It's quite a unilateral view, centred around sexiness as the defining factor of a character.

Of course, a large share of players wants just that: scantily clad female characters. Admittedly, sometimes it actually does look nice. Still, it's beyond me how it could possibly have the same protective value as normal armour.

Some of the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale saga in-game portraits were pretty and pretty decent at the same time. Realism before all, if you ask me. Maybe if we had more female developers, female characters would be more natural.

 

Since I am a BG, etc. fan my only concern is that games might get too generic. By that I mean it might be hard to tell the boys from the girls. I thought Arcanum did well with that. The females wore real armour but still looked like females.

It will be a while before we see any results from this trend.

 

You know, realistically, it might be hard to tell a guy from girl in battle. Imagine both genders wear long hair equally and she wears size A or B. Then if she's also tall and has somewhat strong face features and a decided face expression... there is some chance of passing for a pretty young guy. Same way as a pretty guy passing for a girl if he has long hair and isn't overly tall. But in close quarters, the mystery is solved, I guess.

 

I dont know about that. You cant really tell that Keira Knightley is not a male untill you consider the fact that she is wearing a dress

 

We were talking about armour in case you missed that.

 

Dispite having an athletic build, I usually get mistaken for a girl from behind, mostly due to having long hair, but hopefully that classifies me a 'pretty young guy'

It would nice for designers to make female armour more realistic, after all the Iranian female warriors used to cut of their breasts so they could be more efficient in battle - in games they seem to grow about 20 cup sizes and still excel with bows and other weapons (Diablo 2 anyone?).

The problem is that even when you do get female designers, instead of revolutinizing female roles, they keep to the same formula as hormonal teens, as they know it probably sells more, sad but true.

 

Where are the games with the scantily clad gorgeous guys for the hormonal teenaged females, then?

 

I don't believe that a hairy male fighter wearing a kinky armour would look good at all.

 

@Cesard: Perhaps your butt looks girly.

Last time I heard a "lady", I was already in my twenties IIRC.

 

hahahah maybe, but I don't wear my trousers that tight.

I agree, realism above all, but lets not make things too PC, after all we might get a game based around a homosexual character that is battling homophobes with his pink 'longsword of equality' (plus 5 extra damage to bigots!) and floral armour of dazzling.

 

I will believe it when I see it. Once my clan has at leats 3 or 4 girls in it will i believe that women are actually playing my game. Realistically tho a lotta women aren't into video games...

 

Wrong, Gatekeeper, women do play video games but they might not be the ones you play. Women also have a time problem. Most prefer strategy games to hack-n-slash. I think you miss the point of the thread. The problem isn't getting women to play games but to get games women want to play.