LogFAQs > #963665211

wpot posted...

Certainly agreed. All I was trying to say at the beginning was that some gender-linked preferences are statistically natural.

Beyond that, could the industry make games more appealing to (traditional) girls? Yes, as you say there is definitely work that could be done there given the history. The most natural way to address that would be to get some young women designing games that would truly appeal to themselves (which is how the industry started with male programmers) buut...yeah, that's not where the industry is right now. And marketing/expectations would still be issues.

I'll agree that the current trend of simply slapping female leads on top of traditionally male-developed genres (be in the movies or games) has probably reached the end of it's usefulness. There was a good reason to make the change and I haven't been sad to see it, but a deeper rethinking is needed and everyone is struggling with that.

The main issue with that is that a lot of the things which appeal to 'traditional girls' also don't typically make for good game design. For example, a lot of women enjoy horses. While it can make for a cheap 3DS/mobile game it just lacks the strength and depth to develop a fully fleshed out AAA game. While there's certainly ways to make more AAA games appealing to 'traditional girls' by, say, adding in characters who are more 'traditionally feminine' (can we just assume I'm using traditionally from now on in this post?), that's still a tall order and comes with it's own sets of challenges. For example, in Chrono Trigger there's three female characters in the party. One of which is a cavewoman who is 'sexy' but, aside from her sex appeal, is not feminine in any way (relying immensely on physical might and various primative things). The second is a girl who is a gadgeteer inventor which, while being a good character and so-forth, doesn't conform to feminine values. Only one of them actually conforms to the traditional norms and even then she straddles the line at times. This isn't to say it can't be done by any means. For example, Yuna is a distinctly feminine girl and is considered great as is Aerith. This isn't always feasible though. Especially in games with smaller casts. As much as I like Monica Raybrandt I can't deny for a second she's not a feminine girl or, at least, it's subdued in comparison to her other aspects such as being a warrior and so-forth. This is ignoring that such values differ across cultures in at least some aspects. What might be considered feminine in Japan isn't the same in a western culture being the obvious example.

I'm not against it in any way. I'm just not sure how it should be done, especially without compromising game integrity in at least some instances. I am aware not every game needs to conform to this either. Just... I'd like some more concrete thoughts on this before I decide if I support it or not I guess.