iDevGames

Back in the day-and that would be in the Dark Ages-girls didn’t play computer games. It doesn’t matter what logical deduction, common sense and sales figures said; they just didn’t. Then, in 1995, Patricia Flanagan started “Her Interactive” and in 1996 published McKenzie & Co., which eventually sold 80,000 units. This created somewhat of a genre of girl-oriented games, with companies like Purple Moon¹ churning out a few titles. In 1997, Mattel published Barbie Fashion Designer, and sold 600,000 units in its first year. However, by the end of that same year, Purple Moon closed down, with Mattel’s multimedia division following shortly thereafter. In 2003, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball hit the stores. What the heck happened?

If that little enigma didn’t spark your interest, then potentially doubling your sales might. Consider Myst, for a long time the best-selling game ever. It sold in enormous numbers, especially to women, despite not being especially tailored for a female audience. Then, consider The Sims, seen by many as one of the most female-oriented games ever. The Sims outsold Myst, Riven, and Exile in a snap, with a total of nine additional The Sims products (seven expansion packs, two special editions). As of the fifth expansion pack, The Sims had sold 24 million copies. Why? Well, it did, among other things, have a potentially doubled customer base. It is estimated that 60% of The Sims players are female—that’s over 14 million units.

Sheri Graner Ray has written the book many of us didn’t know we needed. Not only is it a sparkling rÃ(c)sumÃ(c) over one of the darkest, save most stupid, corners of our industry, it is also a good game design book, and a brief summary of the latest in gender research. In a market where female customers are tended to either by The Sims or by making the cover art pink, any kind of change is welcome, and this book does look like the Holy Grail to me.

The book sets out with a brief history of our industry’s less than intelligent moves to capture female gamers, as well as its tendency not to appeal to them at all. It then moves on to explain women’s relationships to computers, another area where it is evident that the computer industry is… young. Finding a platform in the common view that early childhood sets up gender roles for the citizens in our community, Graner Ray builds a very plausible explanation as to why computers are seen as male objects. She then points out a few important points on which girls playing games differ from boys. This first part of the book is explosive enough to boost your sales, if you read it carefully. Now, there are twelve more chapters like this, so you might as well head over to Amazon and buy the book right away. It’ll pay back in no time.

See, the book is that relevant. I had already made a few plunges into this facet of game design, so I had an idea of what to expect. Still, I had an aha! experience on at least every other page. Chapter two, “Evolution of Female Characters in Computer Games”, is a discourse on what the computer game industry still finds fully acceptable in a female avatar (and to be honest, Monty Python couldn’t have done it better than we do). The chapter “Reward & Gameplay” outlines techniques to motivate female gamers and keep them coming back to your games, no pink bunnies required.

So, what does distinguish men from women-when it comes to the hard facts in a gaming context? Both a lot and little. A comforting summary of what this book is about would be to say that it is easy to appeal to both sexes, it’s just a matter of not making the same cave-man mistakes this industry is so fond of. Because, as Sheri Graner Ray re-iterates throughout the book, there’s no need to change games very much to appeal to the female gamer base-just stop driving them away (can anyone explain to me why the Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness box has Lara’s bustline embossed in bas-relief?) And it is not about cutting the violence out; Diablo II has a stable female player base, and studies conducted by Her Interactive have shown that most female gamers aren’t repelled by violence at all.

The part on how men and women learn is also extremely rewarding, with easy-to-implement techniques on how to capture the non-hardcore gamers. For those of you who still aren’t interested into appealing to female gamers, the chapter is very useful nevertheless (why the heck you would want to close out half your customer base is your problem!). This just goes to show that behind the gender-based material, this is a genuine and very solid game design book.

‘Gender Inclusive’ is easily read, to the point, and equipped with a very nice paper quality. The reader misses out on pictures, though. In many places there are image references onto the Net, but since the book is at times very graphics-focused, its lack of images seems a little unconsidered (although I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if this lack has to do with game companies feeling embarrassed…). Another thing that I always find impressive in a book like this is identification and adherence to a specific target group. There is very little technical talk, so it appeals to everyone within the industry. Still, it provides small nudges and aides for those who are standing on the brink of the industry. Good work there!

Take note of the title of this book—‘Gender Inclusive’, not ‘Games for Girls’. Sheri Graner Ray goes to great lengths to help the reader make games appeal to women, but also sprinkles in quick fixes to common turn-offs that many games are riddled with. It is this facet of the book that is relevant for us here at iDevGames. While most of us won’t face the problems of hiring people for a few years to come, 90% of the book is directly applicable to the kind of games we build here (not to mention that the Mac platform is somewhat feminine in nature). Undoubtedly, though, some of us will make it to a point where sexual harassment on the job will be our problem, and by then you’ll thank Sheri for writing this book.

Quite a number of puzzling questions are answered in this work. For instance, why do women prefer bombing runs over dogfights in flight sims? If the violence isn’t a turn-off in beat-‘em-ups, what is? Why do guys feel OK about playing with female avatars, but seldom the other way around? I won’t give you the answers since I want you to go to your local bookstore and flip through this book. Then, I want you to chuck out the money for it. Among the books I’ve reviewed, I have often felt that the one at hand is important for many. This book is mandatory. I want you to buy it so much. Why? Because our industry is dead without it. Dead, I say. We need this book so badly—so badly.

Graner Ray’s book is, together with ‘Chris Crawford on Game Design’, and David Freeman’s ‘Creating Emotion in Games’ (review upcoming here on iDevGames), the absolutely essential game development book for the next ten years to come. Should ‘Gender Inclusive’ become required reading over at Full Sail and the other game development schools, the industry would change in a day. It is that irresistible and that interesting. The book is a freaking TNT charge!

• Theory of Fun for Game Design’
• Rules of Play : Game Design Fundamentals’
• Chris Crawford on Game Design’

• Creating Emotion in Games’

193 pages 1st edition (September 2003)

Charles River Media

ISBN: 1584502398

f1. Now defunct game company backed by Paul Allen, dedicated to producing games targeted at girls. The company was shut down in early 1999.

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