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Duncan

The Sims and Girls

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Warning: the following is basically thinking out loud and possibly redundant.

I was at a friend's house today, (a male friend - PLOT POINT) and noticed he had a copy of The Sims 2 lying around. I asked whose it was, and, no surprise really, it was his sister's. I remembered this post Yufster made a while ago about - I think I'm remembering this right - about basically only girls are interested in The Sims. And yeah, in my experience that's almost completely true. I actually had a copy of the Sims at one point, which I had for about a week before I lent it to a friend. (Who, as it happens, was a guy. And actually that is the only guy I know who has any variant of the Sims.) He never actually gave it back, but I didn't really care because, well, it was the freaking Sims.

So I started thinking - not instantly, it's not like I start thinking about this crap on cue - how did it work out that the Sims is something girls like and guys, well, not so much? Does it come down to that 'casual gamer' marketing phrase (I typed Marekting there for a second. Discuss.), and that the Sims, as an arguably 'casual' game, will appeal to those who aren't necessarily gamers and are just looking for something fun to play? And that that group of people are predominantly women? Are women supposed to go for a game which is more open-ended, with simple gameplay and that is easily replayable, rather than something which is more focused and intense, like Half-Life 2? (I bring that up because I have arbitrarily decided it is the hot game to reference.)

I know this is generalising badly, by the way.

Of course, from certain people at the Adventure Gamers forums (and I guess this is moving into adventure games a bit and holy shit am I using a lot of parentheses in this) you would get that the female audience is mostly made up of older women for whom keyboard controls are anathema. So of course they wouldn't go for Half-Life or whatever. I really doubt that's it, though.

It feels like - and this is a feeling I get pretty much exclusively from gaming websites - that there's this apparent need to legitimize the industry by getting women interested in games. I mean, men and women can and will (obviously with exceptions) like different things, and just because vast hordes of women may not be interested in Halo 2 or whatever other mainstream games there are doesn't mean they don't have an interest in the industry.

But the Sims is mainstream so these women may have an idea of what's out there. I think the mainstream is divided into games men might like and games women might like, and there isn't much crossover between those two groups. Maybe it isn't a case of casual girl gamers playing the Sims and those gamers basically are the female mainstream audience. But even given that I don't think anyone would argue that the games industry and the mainstream in particular isn't dominated by testosterone.

Maybe there's a minority in the mainstream audience of female gamers who are casual gamers, I don't know. None of this is based on factual evidence, and how's that for a weak closing statement.

Man, I looked over this. You should all respond as if I wrote something totally coherent and capable of provoking great debate. :shifty:

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The reason why I don't like the Sims is simple: It's mundane and boring; like the real life. You know what would be really interesting? A massive online version, in which you can meet real people. And you should be able to be a burglar, or a cop. Or work for the FBI. You should be able to drive around in your car, and cause accidents. Or start a riot and burn down city hall, because the taxes are too high. The possibilities could be endless.

--Erwin

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it's comparable to movies: guys generally go for action, girls for romance-boring-talk-talk-talk-movie-crap

so...in games: guys: acccctionnnnnn, girls: adventures, rpgs ;)

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You know what would be really interesting? A massive online version
They could call it The Sims Online!

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I like adventure games, rpgs, and that ilk. I also liked playing the Sims. I didn't buy it, but I liked it when I borrowed it from a friend. The Sims 2 interests me, but it's expensive.

Of course, I also like to blow stuff up every now and then, but that gets old, and most shooters are plotless wonders.

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Also I read a story in Electronic Gaming monthly a while ago. It was about getting girls to play video games. It said the sims was a good choice because women like open ended things and are better at monotonus stuff then we men.

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Ooh, a topic about games and girls, what an irresistable combination ;) Hmmm, female casual gamers... I think a big reason that there is probably a higher proportion of female 'casual' gamers is just because there are fewer good games out there that target female audiences. As said above, it comes down to what you want from a game. Although I'm happy to play anything that presents me with a challenge that I can keep trying at, I'm most happy playing games that let me blow lots of things up, become super-powerful by the end of the game, or defeat (often simulated) opponents by superior use of strategy, (that last one is not just about strategy games, it's also why I love Counter-Strike). I care a lot less for rescueing anything, saving the world, seeing a compelling story through to the end, or nurturing people/animals/cute aliens to keep them happy. Although the latter goals also feature in some great games that I've enjoyed, they tend to be be a lot more common in my female gamer friends' favourite games. I think that there's probably a lot more games designers out there with my preferances, albeit not necessarily talented ones. I also remember an article (no, this was in a magazine, not the thumbs one...) saying that women want to be more emotionally involved with games, be it via the story, character interaction, emotive facial expressions, etc, but that only recently has technology become advanced enough to get that depth of experience across without requiring a lot of talent.

Another reason for fewer female gamers in certain genres is because some games, exemplified by FPS's on the PC, require a huge investement in time and frustration just trying to learn the controls and pick up the required gaming 'lore' and language to a level where you can finish the single-player mode, let alone 'pwn' online opponents. I've sat quite a few of my female friends down to play various types of games on my PC and consoles, and even the ones who love fighting and shooting things as much as I do found Doom3 a hell of a lot more frustrating to try and play than House of the Dead 2 (with lightgun), or Gran Turismo 3 (with steering wheel). It's hard to remember how awkward it over 10 years ago when I first mastered using a keyboard and mouse for Doom1. In short, some games require a lot of motivation and patience in order to break through the frustration barrier necessary to master the skills and knowledge required to even play the game, let alone finish it. My cousin Tom has always loved games, and has the motivation, but not the patience. He never progressed to using the mouse and keyboard for FPS's, and now never tries playing them anymore, even though he used to love them back in the day when keyboard alone was good enough. I think men are more likely to adequately obsess about games or indeed anything technology based, be it overclocking your PC, tuning up a car, or researching quantum theory or weapons. Women usually... don't see the point, and would rather play an equally great game that is more accesible :)

I feel compelled to add the required disclaimer here: These are all sweeping generalisations, based mainly upon personal intuition and vaguely remembered, un-referencable sources :chaste: Of course, if there are any girls out there who obsess over my favourite kind of games and love technology, (and dare I hope, martial arts and comics), for God's sake, come visit me in Brighton :eyebrow:

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I have always been a hardcore gamer, and I have always been frustrated at the lack of females whom I can share my interest. Interest, in fact, is what I think it comes down to. Since I was in about the 7th grade (about 12yrs. old), most of my female friends have been interested in one thing above all others. Personal reationships. First it was thier clique of friends in school, and then later thier boyfriend, followed by husbands and children (over the course of many years, of course).

I am a gamer who enjoys many FPS (esp. horror based ones), MMO's, and The Sims equally. I enjoy The Sims mostly because the interpersonal interaction between all the sims. I like to make new ones all over the neighboorhood, and watch the realtionships they form. As for my love of the more action-oriented genres, I have a little theory. As an only child, I was bored a lot and overly socialized by adults. I found my peers dull and uninteresting. So I spent a lot of time playing with whatever console I had begged my parents for at the time. It was the only thing that really kept my attention. That's what Freud would say, or something. Only it would involve my father somehow.

So, personally, I think the issue is more a social development thing with females. Females who had a lot of game-playing male friends, or used games to escape boredom, seem to enjoy games more than girls who wanted to hang out at the mall all day with their friends. I think The Sims succeeds in bridging the gap between gaming and being fixated on interpersonal relationships.

On a side note, I know guys who like The Sims 2 for the strategy elements and the architecture sim. They couldn't stay interested longer than a month or so, but that may be Halo2 or HL2's fault.

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On a side note, I know guys who like The Sims 2 for the strategy elements and the architecture sim. They couldn't stay interested longer than a month or so, but that may be Halo2 or HL2's fault.

Heh that sounds like my only guy friend who likes (liked, really, as this was a couple years ago) the Sims. He didn't bother with the main game after the first few minutes- he just entered the "give lots of money" cheat a lot of times and started working to construct the most extreme mansion possible. He managed to get it to let him have an indoor gymnasium and stuff, it was pretty cool. He's an architecture student most of the time, so I guess that was the part that was the appealing toy to him. It was kind of awesome, funny, etc. I think he also tried to make the female into a lesbian.

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[...] I think he also tried to make the female into a lesbian.

Yeah, you can definately do that. A gay female friend of mine has played the Sims 1 lots, and started her first character as a woman. She never tried anything on with the male friends, but kept being friendly with the women, eventually flirting where possible, and actually found a female sim who responded. She moved in and slept in the same bed, and after a while they adpoted a son :)

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There are plenty of guys who are into The Sims, but they tend to be casual gamers. My wife loves The Sims. Oy, does she ever.

I find it boring as all hell. Not because I'm a guy, but because it's open ended (I need to fell like I've accomplished something when I play a game for several hours at a time) and because the actual gameplay doesn't appeal to me.

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They could call it The Sims Online!

Ludicrous! It couldn't be done!

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...how did it work out that the Sims is something girls like and guys, well, not so much?

Ever heard of Barbie? Of dress-up and dollhouses? Same thing, but the 'grownup' version. Whereas Half-Life 2 and GTA3 are the grownup versions of Cowboys & Indians and Cops & Robbers for men.

I also remember an article (no, this was in a magazine, not the thumbs one...) saying that women want to be more emotionally involved with games, be it via the story, character interaction, emotive facial expressions, etc, but that only recently has technology become advanced enough to get that depth of experience across without requiring a lot of talent.

Which means women will eventually take an interest in games en masse. This is one reason why I'm so disgusted by the adventure game genre in terms of how they're currently being marketed. If anything the adventure game is the one game type that women by and large could be getting totally involved with, but the marketing isn't there.

Also, the current technology (Half-Life 2 characters' emotive faces and body language, for example) is not being expoited for adventure games, it's these little details and subtleties that matter most when you're working with story, character, and social situations in-game, what many women instinctively are drawn to. The technology is already there waiting to be taken advantage of, but until developers and publishers become smart enough realize how to use it to tap into a potentially huge market of women (who are very powerful consumers), it's basically worthless.

Here's one of a bunch of articles on this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3615278.stm

...personally, I think the issue is more a social development thing with females. Females who had a lot of game-playing male friends, or used games to escape boredom, seem to enjoy games more than girls who wanted to hang out at the mall all day with their friends. I think The Sims succeeds in bridging the gap between gaming and being fixated on interpersonal relationships.

This is another gap in games development I noticed. In such a male dominated industry the focus - obsession, really - is on pushing technology further and further for its own sake, for the 'Wow!' factor, at the expense of working on better content. Gaming, particularly on the PC, is ridiculously complicated, alienating those who aren't tech savvy by nature, and this includes many women. In a sense it's like a boys club where girls are treated objectively, demonstrative both within the industry itself as well as in the culture of gaming.

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it's comparable to movies: guys generally go for action, girls for romance-boring-talk-talk-talk-movie-crap

so...in games: guys: acccctionnnnnn, girls: adventures, rpgs ;)

does this mean I'm gay? :erm:

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Oh for fucks sake, can't you just open another thread dedicated to crap like that? And make it sticky? :innocent: hahaha man that is so funny.

Back on topic, many of my female friends are gamers, and many of them are Anti-Sims. And not just because they don't like it, but because they feel that liking it would be letting down the female gamers side. There are definitely more and more girls getting into games. And females more often look for a story and real characters in games than guys do. I cannot describe the joy I felt yesterday when myself and two other girls were searching the xbox section for a good game (any genre as long as it had a good story and gameplay and characters), and we overheard Dave and Gramo talking about how cool Call of Duty is, because you can see the exit wounds. We felt so much better than them.

Still, I have no idea why girls enjoy The Sims. I guess maybe they enjoy it on the same level as I used to enjoy Pizza Tycoon. Although I never used to make pizzas, I just did Mafia Jobs. Hmm. I guess it takes a certain type of personality to play a game like The Sims, and it's not the sort of personality that 'real' gamers tend to have. Or something. Did that make sense?

It's also harder to be socially acceptable among a group of females if you're a gamer, than it is for a group of guys.

I haven't slept in two days so I'm not making a lot of sense, but you probably catch my drift.

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Sims is a strange animal.

On one hand, you can get sucked into it's sickly charms, and you can identify with the silly little things that the characters do. And on the other, it makes you want to puke!

I've enjoyed my experiences with the Sims on the whole, but I stopped playing not long after the launch of the first game, basically because I played the thing to death when I first bought it, and then discovered how repetitive it was becoming. Personally, I think it's acheived great things, introducing a whole new itinerary of people into the interactive world of computer games. This can be considered a good or a bad thing, but that's a completely different argument.

Simply put, you wouldn't find me getting sucked into this game for hours on end anymore, staying up till stupid o clock in the morning, trying to get my Man Sim to bed my Woman Sim, have them get it on the go for 15 hours straight to make their own gene defined baby sim! Yesterday for instance, I was playing Fable till 6.30am, because I was absorbed in the game and the story, and I wanted to find out what was going to happen next. (Geez, I have no life.). However, that said, there are similarities between Fable and the Sims, in that, you are essentially creating this character through his actions in the World, you're getting married, buying property and owning a shop to make some extra cash etc, and you are interacting with other characters, either positively or negatively, and they are responding to those actions.

(On a side note, I've just completed Fable, and had a blast. While it wasn't everything it was hyped up to be, it was still a very competent and very entertaining piece, which I want to come back to at a later date, to try out alternative measures with my character, and see how it defines the story.)

For me, I'm a story driven gamer. Sure, sometimes I step outside my boundaries and get fresh with titles that aren't dependant on a deeply woven epic script (Mortal Kombat, Monkey Ball etc). But I'd prefer to be immersed in a developers tale, or even develop my own tale within a game. I'm not really a big sims fan like that, but I can appreiate that it is fun for what it is, and I can see how people can get addicted to it.

This game has drawn a line in the sand between gamers, and in doing so, has brought more and more people into games than ever before. My only hope, is that these people will also try out other titles on the market, and not just buy every Sims expansion pack released and call themselves a gamer!

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I've been trying to think of other semi-mainstream 'girl games' and I'm coming up kind of short. Apart from the Sims, the only other things I can think of are whatever first-person-point-and-click stuff the Adventure Company puts out. Which, as I understand, the 'older women' demographic just go nuts over.

Both those types of games are - well, not derided exactly, but... okay, kind of derided by the gamers who aren't playing them. And those gamers are usually predominantly guys. Guys who think that Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 aren't just cooler than the Sims, they're also the better games. (I'm not trying to slam anyone here, I'm probably one of those guys.)

And since the industry and gaming press in particular is male-dominated, I think there's this perception that unless women are playing the 'cooler' games they're either 'casual gamers' or resistant to innovation or newer technology.

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...since the industry and gaming press in particular is male-dominated, I think there's this perception that unless women are playing the 'cooler' games they're either 'casual gamers' or resistant to innovation or newer technology.

Yes, that would be the perception of guy gaming geeks. But I think the truth is that the industry has ended up being more exclusive towards men at the expense of women. The very architecture of the industry itself seems unwelcoming to women, down to how gaming and its world and culture are dealt with psychologically. Many women don't tend to be techno savvy, and games are all about technology. There hasn't been much work, for example, in marketing user friendly hardware and software in terms of games, which has an alienating affect on a potentially large female market (which is how I imagine how a lot of the men want it). That is, hardware and software that's specifically tailored to make implementation as effortless as possible for those who don't have PhD's in Computer Science, much less know the difference between a disk drive and a hard drive.

From my observation this looks to be how a lot of men prefer it - to keep the girls from muscling in on their territory by making it as difficult as possible for them. What few women there are in the games industry are more the exception than the rule. Check out this Thumbs news report from not too long ago:

Gamers, listen up: Denise Fulton is your man!

3 October 04

"Informal estimates put the percentage of women in the industry at around 10 percent, and even then, most tend to be in jobs in customer service, marketing and quality assurance. Relatively few women work as game designers and producers, and even fewer are programmers."

At least that's the deal according to The New York Times* in their profile of Denise Fulton who, at 34, is an executive producer at Ion Storm in Austin, Texas. You had better be nice to her, boys, as she is in charge of overseeing the next Deus Ex game!

But Ms. Fulton is not the only rarity representing the fairer sex in the digital arena. Laura Fryer (executive producer at Microsoft for Xbox games) and Nicky Robinson (who helped program Army Men and Battle Tanx) are also among the very scant few.

Says Ms. Robinson about testosterone fueled upper managements at some game companies, "They all have to prove that they are tougher and more macho than the guys in the other department or at the other company."

Common sense would best describe many of the grievances these brilliant women have about a lot of the games out there—overcomplicated interfaces, overly gratuitous violence, overtly representational gratuitous violence, overtly oversexed digital representations of women.

So naturally they feel obliged to even the score. An assistant professor of computer science at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, Ca., Dr. Elizabeth Sweedyk has received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. With it she is working on a course design for women to inspire them to create games that are, let's just say, less testosterone pumped. Says Dr. Sweedyk: "Do women not play games because the games that are out there are designed for men, or is it just that women really don't like computer games? My guess is they don't like the games that are out there."

Besides, the success of these women and the eventual gendered democratization of the games industry and gaming culture can only mean one thing: more awesome, interesting, and diverse games for everyone! And isn't that a good thing, 'guys'?

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But I think the truth is that the industry has ended up being more exclusive towards men at the expense of women. The very architecture of the industry itself seems unwelcoming to women, down to how gaming and its world and culture are dealt with psychologically.

Definitely. I think video games have ended up as one of the few media industries which has this outside perception - regardless of how true it is - of being clique-y and unfriendly toward women. (I'd put comic books down as one of those industries, too.)

Many women don't tend to be techno savvy, and games are all about technology. There hasn't been much work, for example, in marketing user friendly hardware and software in terms of games, which has an alienating affect on a potentially large female market

I agree with you regarding the lack of user-friendly marketing, but I don't think that's the primary reason more women aren't getting involved in computers or games; that they get discouraged by the technicalites. To fall back on the Sims 2 again, clearly women are playing that, and that has just as many hardware/software requirements as the next game, though they may not be the most demanding. There's even a separate DVD version out, and the in-game menus have options for textures and resolutions and all that jazz. I think the alienation you were talking about is more prominent with computers, rather than games. A lot of people I know just buy new computers when they need a new computer with no regard to specifications because they don't know about that stuff and as long as the computer works, they don't really want to. That comes back to one of the favourite pro-console arguments; that you can just get a game, you don't even need to install it and it will work absolutely fine. While I should state that I have absolutely no knowledge of any particular statistics regarding this, it seems like that would be a lot more appealing to the female techno-phobe stereotype.

From my observation this looks to be how a lot of men prefer it - to keep the girls from muscling in on their territory by making it as difficult as possible for them.

I don't know about that. Admittedly, I'm never conducted an exhaustive investigation in this area, but I've never encountered anyone who's so blatantly misogynistic as to express that, however subtly. I mean, I can imagine some men wanting to keep gaming a 'guy's club', but, well, come on, they're just nuts. But if the perception created by those guys is keeping women away, then that really sucks.

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I agree with you regarding the lack of user-friendly marketing, but I don't think that's the primary reason more women aren't getting involved in computers or games; that they get discouraged by the technicalites.

No, I'm not saying that it's the only hinderance to women. But it is one of the main obstacles. You can figure in all the other obvious symptons - women as sex objects, gratuitous violence, etc.

I don't know about that. Admittedly, I'm never conducted an exhaustive investigation in this area, but I've never encountered anyone who's so blatantly misogynistic as to express that, however subtly. I mean, I can imagine some men wanting to keep gaming a 'guy's club', but, well, come on, they're just nuts. But if the perception created by those guys is keeping women away, then that really sucks.

If you read the NYT article in its entirety you'll see that the women featured therein mention the hostility towards them, much less the apprehension, however veiled. There is progress being made to counter this, but it's a slow process.

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No, I'm not saying that it's the only hinderance to women. But it is one of the main obstacles. You can figure in all the other obvious symptons - women as sex objects, gratuitous violence, etc.

If you read the NYT article in its entirety you'll see that the women featured therein mention the hostility towards them, much less the apprehension, however veiled. There is progress being made to counter this, but it's a slow process.

Again, thinking out loud...

I kind of agree with the notion that a very big problem is the social aspect. We have reached the happy state where it is no longer uncool and nerdy for a guy to be a "gamer", but that situation still exists for many girls (and I do mean girls rather than women, most of whom are now empowered enough to do their own thing - but it is the formative stages that have a lasting effect).

However, the anti-nerd days are still in very recent memory, and if anything is responsible for a lack of consideration of women in games it is this. Many, many of today's game designers and programmers were probably shunned when they were pursuing their hobby in childhood and teenage years. Where were the girls when they were putting in the hard work learning to write code on their amstrad (and I mean socially, not necessarily sexually)? Now, suddenly, they are making lots of money and being creatively succesful and out of no-where women want a slice. After they have been persecuted for being a "geek" for so long, I can't totally blame these people for feeling suspicious when the mainstream comes calling for a slice of the pie. This also explains the current crop of "game-makers as rock stars", as an overcompensation for the bad old days.

Luckily things are changing into something more healthy for everyone, but this never happens over-night.

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However, the anti-nerd days are still in very recent memory, and if anything is responsible for a lack of consideration of women in games it is this. Many, many of today's game designers and programmers were probably shunned when they were pursuing their hobby in childhood and teenage years. Where were the girls when they were putting in the hard work learning to write code on their amstrad (and I mean socially, not necessarily sexually)? Now, suddenly, they are making lots of money and being creatively succesful and out of no-where women want a slice. After being persecuted for being a "geek" for so long, I can't totally blame these people for feeling suspicious when the mainstream comes calling for a slice of the pie. This also explains the current crop of "game-makers as rock stars", as an overcompensation for the bad old days.

That's a clever perspective - the revenge of the nerds......

:clap:

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