Game plans for girls

Wander into any video-game store and you could be forgiven for thinking that women do not play games. But the statistics paint a different picture.

More than 40 per cent of game players in Australia are female, yet most games on the store shelves are of little interest to them.

Despite this, the profile of the typical gamer has changed drastically over the past decade, with middle-aged housewives now as likely to play games as teenage boys. The average gamer in Australia is now 28 years old, up from 24 just two years ago. And despite being largely ignored by the game industry, 41% are female.

Women and older Australians are the fastest-growing audience for computer and video games, and if trends continue, by 2014 the average age of Australian gamers will be the same as non-players - 42 - with an equal number of male and female players.

Trends are similar in the United States, where 38% of gamers are female, spending an average 7.4 hours a week playing, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

Much of the recent growth in the game market and the dramatic shift in gamer demographics is due to the success of a small number of non-traditional games such as the SingStar karaoke range, the Buzz trivia titles, Wii Sports and the hugely popularly hand-held games such as Nintendogs and Brain Training.

The Sims, the world's most popular computer game, has also been hugely popular among women, as has the multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. Both are largely about building relationships.

Even a cursory glance at some of the many internet forums and websites highlights the fact that many women enjoy games from all genres, some even forming female clans such as Girlz, Frag Dolls, War Sisters and PMS playing testosterone-fuelled shoot-'em-up titles such as Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament.

Women have no interest in the majority of commercial games that are released, particularly when they are being marketed almost exclusively to males. Studies show most women gravitate to "casual" titles such as online puzzle and card games, trivia, word challenges and action arcade games. The Casual Games Association reports that 74% of paying customers for these games are female.

It's not surprising that women tend to shy away from most of the games on store shelves when publishers routinely use semi-clad female characters to ply their wares, appealing squarely to adolescent male fantasies.

And invariably the type of game that gets most media attention is violent and aimed at young men, such as Grand Theft Auto IV (see stories on pages 10 and 11).

The industry's response to luring women gamers has often been cynical and heavy-handed. Many of the games aimed at females are unimaginative, such as Ubisoft's new (paradoxically titled) Imagine range of hand-held games that feature stereotypical "pink" subjects such as dressing up, cooking and nurturing babies and pets.

Many industry insiders believe the key to creating more games that appeal to women is to get more women into the industry. By diversifying the workforce, developers hope to create products that appeal to a wider audience.

In Australia, female game developers make up only 5% of the industry while the International Game Developers Association puts the worldwide figure at about 12%.

Eve Penford-Dennis, an art tutor at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment, has worked in game development for 15 years. She says that although most people in the industry assumed that gender inequity would eventually balance itself, "it never did".

"It became obvious that we needed to do something," she says.

Moran Paldi, a designer at game studio Tantalus, says women tend to be better at communication and conflict management - crucial in the studio environment. Most games are built by teams of 30 to 100 people, including programmers, artists and designers.

One of the big problems with games often cited by women is the lack of characters with which they can identify. While action heroines such as Lara Croft may inspire debate among girl gamers for having a bit each way - showing some hick-kicking girl power while at the same time displaying plenty of cheesecake sex appeal - many female game characters are merely ornamental and inevitably scantily clad.

Paldi argues that "until we (women) start making games ourselves there is no way we will be able to see representations on screen that we can recognise and identify with. We need to start making a generation of games that women want to play, and get them excited about creating their own content," she says.

But there is hope that change will come. More than 100 million games in the enormously successful Sims franchise have sold since its launch in 2000. Its astonishing success is due in no small part to the fact that it appeals strongly to both sexes. Publisher Electronic Arts says more than 60% of Sims players are female.

Sims designer Will Wright says his team deliberately tried to make the game appeal to women. "I think the main reason we were able to do that successfully was that about 40% of our development team, and my two other designers, were women," he says.

Although game development has never managed to shake its geeky boys-coding-in-the-garage image, many behind-the-scenes roles are highly creative - something the industry is keen to emphasise in its attempt to lure more young women.

Game developer Paldi agrees: "It's not just jobs for code geeks any more. There are all sorts of jobs available, from production and design, to art and animation."

She says another major hurdle is stereotypes: "There is an awful lot of negative press surrounding the type of games being made. But not all games are about shooting people in the head."

Like many of her female colleagues, Paldi believes the stereotypes are damaging because they affect the number of female game players, what publishers invest in and female interest in game development. "Many women react to this tired old stereotype by thinking `this game doesn't interest me' and so never explore the exciting opportunities the industry offers," she says.

"At Tantalus we make positive, kid-friendly games. I am excited by the work I do as a designer and feel I am making a positive impact on people's lives by encouraging them to engage in thought-provoking game play."

While the academy's Penford-Dennis acknowledges that gender imbalance is not unique to the game industry, she's not sure her IT colleagues have the solution.

"This is a huge problem across IT in general and still there isn't a magic answer," she says.

"It's also difficult for individual developers to put forward initiatives to solve the problem themselves. There needs to be that push from the industry as a whole to encourage more women into development."

Paldi says awareness about the roles in the game industry should start in schools.

"We need to let young girls know that they are not strange or alone, and that they don't have to emulate men to succeed," she says. "It is an awesome industry to work in and it's still small enough for people to be able to make global impacts with the work they do."

- © Fairfax NZ News