Smart development insight
I was checking my Yahoo mail account the other day and a link reading “How to get your girlfriend to play video games” came up in the newsfeed. I intended to take a look at what had been said, but I got distracted and forgot. So just a little while ago I typed it into search and got this:
It makes sense. And it’s pretty amusing from my perspective. Especially the “If you do find a girlfriend who already loves video games…keep her.” tip.
[/targeted subliminal message]
Hehe… ^^;
Anyway, I originally wanted to comment on this, but I found a different article that I thought would be much more significant to this class blog.
SXSW: Getting Girls Into The Game: Designing and Marketing Games for Female Players
What the article basically gets at is that girls like the same kinds of games that guys do. Have you ever seen us show interest in a game like Wedding Dash or Dogz/Catz/Horsez that are clearly targeted for girls? I have one thing to say about those games…
LAME.
I’ll take a stab at Resident Evil over that any day.
So the point that the article makes is that you can’t categorize girls into their own group because we’re just as diverse as any other demographic. Some of us may be more inclined to play Mario while others are more into Halo. Essentially, we’re just like guys. We like games. We like the same stuff as you do. So the solution, or at least the heart of the problem, is marketing. Games need to be marketed girl-friendly. How that’s to be done isn’t covered, but it’s a good point. A lot of good games are lost to us because we don’t see it. Take Zone of the Enders, for example. I wouldn’t have given that game a second look if I saw it in stores, but Brian introduced me to it and I love it!
Oh, and listen to this…
“According to the panelists, ‘Please don’t lock your game up in EB Games, girls don’t like to go in there. And don’t put a chain-mail bikini babe on the cover.’”
Amen to that.
For one thing, it’s offensive. For another, we already get enough shit from traditional media about needing to look good. We don’t need it from a new source, thankyouverymuch. But that’s a blog for a different day. ^_^
PotM: Coming Soon.
