SXSW: Getting Girls Into The Game

Joystiq had some nice coverage of the SXSW panel “Getting Girls Into The Game: Designing and Marketing Games for Female Players“.

The point was made, and made again that girls just like good games.  I dislike pigeonholing female gamers into “casual gamers” or “Sims players”.  A good game is immersive, interesting and challenging – qualities that are not inherently “male” or “female”.

“Some market research has shown that girls like stories that are story-driven, or games where you have a specific, constructive goal like The Sims or Civilization. However, we’ve seen women who love to frag people in Halo 2, so it seems like the types of games that girls like … are exactly the same kinds of games that guys like. Call us crazy.”

Amen to that.  :)

And of course, the very first comment was by an idiot who posted “Female gamers are usually ugly, if that helps in any way.”  /golfclap.   As one commenter pointed out, that may be one reason why there are fewer female gamers…it’s because of the immature males out there.