All games are available for women and there’s a ton that women play. We’re long past the age of games by and for men only but since this narrative still gains traction, I guess we’re stuck hearing it.
The problem has never been that women don’t like games, it is that men have made women feel unwelcome in many ways in gaming culture.
Yep, it fucking sucks playing shooters online as a woman, you get so much harassment, which sucks because me and my all female friend group really enjoyed valorant.
Like, I’m here for more femme games. And I do think that games need to not treat women as an afterthought, giving us good character options, styles, and romance options for example. But for that, a lot of the industry has accepted that. RPGs for example understand that their audience is largely to majority women. We’re past the era of “I suppose you can play as a woman in some games if you want…”
But ultimately what we still see is that “girly games” are much less respected and women are harassed in online and competitive games, as well as we’re less respected when we speak on topics of gaming than men. This is especially the case in “gamer” spheres which still maintain a pretty hard-core misogyny problem.
But ultimately what we still see is that “girly games” are much less respected and women are harassed in online and competitive games, as well as we’re less respected when we speak on topics of gaming than men. This is especially the case in “gamer” spheres which still maintain a pretty hard-core misogyny problem.
This exactly. As if clicking heads for 100 hours makes you more of a gamer than playing the Sims for 100 hours. As if having guns and gore effects makes a game a “real” game, and no other type of game “counts”.
No matter what people say about it too, “girly games” don’t get the same investment, creative vision and hype that “masculine games” do, even when the “girly games” sell a ton.
This is both a problem with sexism and our conception of what sells, people are constantly telling stories about what kind of games people actually want and it is almost never corresponds to the breadth and depth of reality and not just in smaller indie games.
We constantly repeat that mindless sex, violence and other types of cartoonishly masculine games are what people want to buy while ignoring the massive, astronomical success of games like Stardew Valley, Slay The Spire, Balatro, Terraria, Eurotruck Simulator 2, Factorio, Subnautica etc… I really hate this forced sense of cynicism about what we desire and why.
Which… I love FPS games, I like lots of “masculine” games but we have a very narrow vision culturally of why people play video games and it pisses me off.
I also to be honest as a man feel really lonely most of the time talking about my semi-competitive FPS hobbies to people in real life, a big reason for this is women are culturally assumed to not be included in the experience so most women don’t bother pushing through the toxicity to find out if they like that type of game (why would they?)… so naturally it isn’t an easy topic to connect with not men on… and then the men who don’t play these games tend to see that as an indicator that video games are childish. How is this good for anyone?
As a man I want to live in a universe where video games can be a more common topic because who plays them and why isn’t so narrowly defined. I just want it to be a normal conversation. I want to be able to casually have conversations with women about the video games they like, and to get wrecked by women in multiplayer FPS games on the regular. Things are just better when women are included, any time men get together and exclude women it gets disgusting, smelly, toxic and weird and this has held video gaming back for decades.
Yeah, I think this failure to equally invest in girly games comes in large part from the fact that women are expected to be comfortable partaking in things considered masculine, and men are expected to be uncomfortable partaking in things considered feminine. Feminist theorist Julia Serrano talked about parts of this where because masculinity is regarded more positively violations of gendered expectations are seen as less bad when it’s women embracing masculinity. This of course is also because of many years of hard fighting for women to be permitted these things, but as she notes things associated with femininity are seen as frivolous, tainted by their association with women. Thus she posited that a necessary step towards gender equality is the fight for feminine things to be seen as valuable and acceptable for men to want without a status hit. Sorry for bringing theory into this, but your comment really drew to mind her ideas.
And yeah I was in college during gamergate, where being a woman who games on console/pc went from bad but seemingly improving to so much worse. It led to me and my friends regardless of gender generally stopping using the term gamer to describe ourselves and avoiding “gaming” spaces for the most part.
And yeah I love some fpses. Me and my then gf used to play overwatch together, it was toxic but overwatch was popular enough with women and moderated enough it didn’t get that bad (unlike valorant). Personally I prefer them to be campaigny and story focused: Halo (the good ones) of course remains a classic, ths Borderlands series has consumed far too much of my life, and I bonded with my sister as I played bioshock as a teenager. Make something like mass effect but an fps and most of the women I know that game will be all over that shit.
And yeah, I mostly play indies, I’m loving Fields of Mistria (it’s kinda like stardew), I’ve sank a concerning number of hours into Binding of Isaac, anything by Supergiant (Bastion, Transistor, Hades, etc) is an insta buy for me, Rogue Legacy 2 is criminally underrated, Gris was the perfect game to play by candlelight… Really I just like my games having art in their design and writing as well as roguelikes. And I know a lot of women with similar tastes to me.
In general though I avoid competitive gaming unless playing with friends, because I’m not very good and the toxicity is so horrendous.
Awesome response!
To add a wrinkle here I am not that competitive emotionally, I appreciate competitive multiplayer games because of the magic that happens when two humans (or even more fun two teams of humans) are interacting through a dynamic system.
Singleplayer and co-op games are awesome, my mind just loves the loop of pulling a clever trick on someone and then being forced to react to the response they choose to catch me off guard…and seeing how that evolves and continually challenges my mind to reframe things, that is the addictive part to me and NPCs/AI doesn’t really bring that to the table without a ton of human artistry in the game design (one of the reasons Halo 1-3 or Half Life 2 are considered some of the best singleplayer fps games, it ain’t easy to make that…).
What I want from a competitive FPS is not to be the best player, it is to play an FPS where when I lose I feel like it is because my awareness wasn’t correctly oriented or that I made an incorrect choice and when I win it was because I genuinely out played the other team not just found a narrow exploit I could repeat over and over again. This is really the same reason people like really good singleplayer games like Slay The Spire or Monster Train in a way right?
I say that though to underline that I don’t have the mental profile of a stereotypical “competitive gamer” and that the toxicity of competitive gaming environments turns me off, both when people lose sight they are doing something joyful together and when they are just plain mean to other people about trivial things such as making a noob mistake or they are sexist, racist or hateful in another way. I don’t play virtually any “popular” competitive video games for these reasons, I stick to smaller indie games with fanbases that are very good at playing competitively but are generally excited about new players no matter how much they fumble around.
The narrowness of environments dominated by manifestations of toxic masculinity bring us all down and it results in warped pictures of even the people that supposedly “fit in”.
Overwatch tangent. There are several flanking characters who though a mix of stealth or mobility take detours around the main traffic of the stage in order to initiate from a less expected angle.
Sometimes this means two characters from opposing teams unexpectedly run into each other off the beaten path. Often times they duke it out. Others…they will silently crouch at each other from a distance to negotiate armistice, slowly approach each other, squat and jump a few times to be silly, then continue on their merry way. From that moment on there is established understanding that you only kill each other when protecting someone else on your team.
The real awkward moment is when you have negotiated a truce and then someone from your team crashes the back room party only to waste your new secret friend. Rude.
As a guy, other guys acting misogynistic infuriates me. The label incel is also very cringe, almost as cringe as the incels themselves. It is alright to be single okay? Its actually fucking awesome sometimes. Furthermore, some people are not meant for relationships. And guys blaming all women for some unspecified grievance when they themselves won’t look three seconds at themselves and their behavior, or somehow deludes themselves into thinking “supermodels should be throwing themselves at me the second I climb out of my basement, and if they don’t, it’s obviously because of trans/LGBTQ/woke and I just need to double down on being s toxic piece of shit. That surely will make me attractive!”. /rant
So true! The number of times Gamers™ act like apes when a woman is discovered to exist in a gaming environment… Sigh
Even 4chan liked Dressmaker. A good game’s a good game.
I do not usually ask basement dwelling neckbeards what their opinion is. It is not really important.
Same reason I didn’t ask you.
4channer with the classic “no you”.
I guess you cannot “ironically” throw me a racist of homophobic slur here though.
Your defensiveness was not pretty.
Show me your friends and I will show you who you are.
I would argue that all games are for whoever wants to play them. Shitty take from a dev trying to market their game.
Man, fuck this.
“Targetting women from the get go” by doing what? Women hate patronising. Just make games not be sexist. Options to customise the character and treat each sex as equal.
I know plenty of women that love games like Witcher or elder scrolls. MMOs got huge population of women. Hell, even fallout is very popular.
Why? Because they weren’t trying to “target women” they just weren’t shitty about them.
Make good game, people will come, people, not men or women. This is bad message to send.
(And yeah, game is cool)
It’s not patronizing, nor is it as simple as making games not sexist. There are games that you mentioned target men and women, and there are games that target men, but few games that target just women and treat them as competent players.
I’ve had a few thousand hours in games with majority male player bases like R6 siege, League, Tarkov, Battlefield, Tekken, CoD, Wardogs, etc. When I play, it always makes me feel like I’m walking into a men’s bathroom, like I shouldn’t be there even if other guys are okay with it, and most of these player bases are not. Sometimes, it’s the edgy aesthetics, or the fan service, or lack of female character options, or the edgy music and sound effects. The rest of the time, it’s one guy being sexist while the others stay silent. A lot of these reasons are why women prefer shooters like Overwatch, Valorant, Fortnite more than the above.
The fact is that girls and boys are socialized at a young age to like different things or stay away from them, and that will always produce a skewed gender player base for any game. In games with few women, we rarely get to speak up for each other when male players are being sexist, and men don’t often back us up.
Women didn’t have the decades of head start in gaming culture, experience, and exposure to be as competitive as men in most multiplayer games. Hell, I wasn’t even allowed to play video games as a kid. There isn’t enough momentum yet in the gaming world to fix sexism in video games by just making them not sexist.
The solution right now isn’t to eliminate games that target men, it’s to introduce high-skill expression games that appeal to women. The dresses on the dressmaker discord are insanely intricate and difficult to make, yet all of us feel like we belong as a gamer.
To fix sexism in gaming, women need to have our own gaming culture that goes beyond what a majority male game development world thinks we want and are capable of. We need to catch up on decades of video games and consoles being primarily marketed to men, and stigmatized for women.
Dont you think giving examples that are 10+ years old reinforces the point that not many games seem to appeal to women?
Most games that aren’t at least 10 years old are unappealing to anyone, not just women.
They were anecdotal examples, not an exhaustive list. We could add Baldur’s Gate 3, Hades II, Grounded 2, and Farming Simulator if you want more recent ones (again, anecdotal).
I think it’s fine to target primary women or primarily men, it’s tangential to being sexist or being shitty, you can do both, do neither, or do only one.
It’s just that a lot of niches targeting men are already occupied and enjoyed by the players (probably of all genders), because men tended to be considered the main audience, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy as women felt left-out and rightfully.
On the other hand, I’m not a woman and may be completely wrong in my opinion, and would be glad to hear from someone who knows how things are, not how they seem to be
I can only give examples i came across, but considering she’s my wife and we’ve been gaming for +20 years togeter, she loves games like CoD zombies or even recently gears of war. Famously “male targetted” but even MW2 (the og CoD mw2) had a lot of popularity with women.
Almost like target demographic has always been more of a suggestion.
I truly and seriously believe women just like being mad about things.
Make a dress-making game and say it’s for women, they’ll bitch about gender roles. Market a half-diet soda that’s got some sugar, some artifical sweetener in it with action movie cliches and a tagline “It’s not for women” and they’ll bitch about exclusion. What’s it like to have never been happy?
Seems like you’re the one mad about women. Can I offer you a chill pill?
I’m so happy the game is doing well. It’s been delightful but I am the absolute core audience for it. Felt very good! I wish there were a few more pigeon commissions though.
My wife becoming a Type A chatter watching Northerlion playing Dressmaker.
I’ve been a type A (internally - never actually back seated, just felt pain within) for NL for years. Watching him play dressmaker was deeply healing (bald Gamer™ man playing the pretty dress game and loving it, is basically whatever the opposite of toxic masculinity is) but also probably the most my type A has ever come out. I was writhing in my seat. Also watching the chat give him the worst advice ever killed me. THOSE FABRICS DO NOT GO TOGETHER STOOOOP
Translation for old people?
Their wife watches a streamer play the game in the post, which is one where the player gets to design dresses. The streamer she watches is bad at designing dresses, so their wife sends chat messages to the streamer that tell him how to do better.
Northernlion: Streamer Type A Chatter: Someone who cares about the game and tends to backseat game.
She might enjoy a streamer called lilsimsie. Lilsimsie does a lot of cozy games and has done a lot of cute stuff in dressmaker.
my wife loves her stream
that lady can talk forever
does damn good designs
Oof, so close to being a haiku. Just one syllable too many.
Can remove ‘that’ and it would do, I think
She cant stand his every choice
Smant’s chat: “99% quality? Might as well wrap her in a garbage bag lol”
I don’t like games specifically made for males or females. Because a game should not made with the gender in mind, but focus on gameplay and telling stories. Is there study where certain type of games are attracted more by males or females?
Designing for a target demographic is fine. Almost every male streamer I watch played this game, and I enjoyed it as a man myself, even if they had women in mind during development. Nothing in the game alienates male gamers.
Designing with a woman in mind just means focusing on a subject matter that polls well with women.
I don’t think games should be designed to be exclusionary towards a particular gender, but not every story or setting is going to universally appeal to everyone. I don’t have any particular studies handy, but I feel like it’s pretty intuitive to assume a game about designing a type of clothing that is traditionally associated with women is, in general, going to appeal more to women than men.
There will be exceptions to that, of course - I’m sure there are some men out there that play and enjoy Dressmaker, but designing a game about dressmaking with the intent of appealing to women isn’t necessarily exclusionary, it’s just knowing your audience. I’m not even sure how you’d design such a game in a way that is equally appealing to both women and men, honestly.
Dressmaker for men would be high fashion - weird geometric shapes and shit. More “interesting” and less “looks good”
Dressmaker for men is just Dressmaker.
There are plenty of papers on feminine play, told from all different perspectives.
But you can most definitely design for a specific demographic. It’s just that there’s no limit to who can and will enjoy the game you make. A game ‘made for women’ can literally be played by anyone.
I’m not saying that you can design a game for a specific gender audience. I’m saying I don’t think games that has this focus are good games.
You say that as if gender biases don’t exist or that stories and gameplay should not cater to them. The most played games by women and men are very different and there’s other games that both play equally. FPS is mostly men and life sim/puzzle is women. Knowing this difference, designers should absolutely build for their user base’s preferences.
I love that fact that the devs of Broforce and Gorn made this game.
Not enough? There are more games than you could play in a lifetime that women can enjoy, even after you exclude all of the male-fantasy shit.
this sounds perilously close to “skill issue”.
there may be lots of games to play if you cut out all the ones you don’t want, but there’s no button that does that, so you have to wade through an ocean of stuff to find the comparatively few small tidepools where the things you want exist.
there’s a lot of everything now. it’s the proportion that matters.
It really isn’t, and yes you have to wade through, but that’s true of everyone, we all have to find what we like. There are a fucking ton of games.
Most of my ladygamer friends are into cozy games where they grow things, or games where they can be social with their friends who also play. Bonus if it’s both. Extra bonus if it’s cute. Its why all the facebook games were such a huge hit. Social sims are great for helping people stay in touch and giving them a reason to talk, which is a big focus of most women’s lives. We tend to have very strong social bonds, because we look for ways to reinforce them, like games.
So we don’t need a lot of games, necesaarily, we need games that suit a purpose for the people who want to play. And long-term same games are great for that.
i can’t think of a recent, decent game that screamed more “this is for girls” than this one. yes, there is stardew, which isn’t particularly gendered, even if it tends to attract more women than other games, and the less good, uh, homages to it, like the disney princess one (not sure i would call that decent, tbh). and there has always been the sims. facebook and mobile games have always had a large, often predominantly female audience, but most of those are very cheap. and world of warcraft cuts pretty well across gender lines.
but this one is so overtly about traditionally women’s hobbies and it’s also really good. that makes it rare to me.
and you know who doesn’t have to wade? people who like call of duty, madden/2k/whatever, etc. while a lot of men don’t like those games either, it’s hard to argue that their fan base isn’t primarily men and that they are marketed exclusively towards men. there is a lot of that stuff. the rest of us have to wade. women have to wade harder.
proportion is what’s important, and women are vastly under-represented.
i can’t think of a recent, decent game that screamed more “this is for girls” than this one.
Why does it need to be “this is for girls” though?
I’m not saying having more games aimed at women is bad, it absolutely isn’t.
I’m challenging the idea that there aren’t a lot of games for women. Which is objectively not true for exactly what you yourself pointed out. The games that women gravitate toward are ungendered. And that’s fine.
I’m personally never going to be interested in playing some game about fashion. It feels like barbie games from the last 40 years and no thanks. I’m glad some women and probably a ton of men who like fashion are into it. (Like you do realize there are tons of male designers?)
Gendering this shit is dumb.
I loved the crap out of Hello Kitty Island Adventure to be honest, and while I haven’t personally played dressmaker it’s awesome that it’s an expanding targeted demographic.
Honestly, I don’t remember the last time a game grabbed me like this one did.
Because all women want to make dresses in games. LMAO! My girlfriend absolutely wrecked Skyrim with daedra followers screaming: “I SMELL WEAKNESS” while double-fisting destruction spells and setting the place on fire.
Some women do, and making it sound belittling or something worth mocking only serves to continue the narrative that feminine things are lesser and unworthy. Women can rain hell on imperialist scum and make dresses.
There are also plenty of guys who want to play Dressmaker and that is also OK.
Hell yeah
And making women sound like Little House on the Prarie cast offs isn’t helping either.
There is a whole industry for women’s games. Good +15 years ago I was part of external / independent teams that developed games for them. (They were not that successful hits but still)
It is just not as evident as steam or any other game store: Bigfish Games
Now they are just starting to realize that, there are women on Steam.
But don’t forget all the big cozy hits that are “surprising” hits: Stardew, Portia/Sandrock. Casual games are thriving as they should!I recently played a demo for a game called Greenhearth Necromancer that was definitely made to be geared more towards women. It’s about you moving into your grandma’s old apartment after she dies and using your witch powers to bring dead plants back to life.
Sounds delightful! :)
It’s a little slice of life type game. There are quirky neighbors you can meet and do/grow things for, building/neighborhood events you can choose to take part in, and it’s all wrapped in a theme of grief and mourning.
I’ve always been mystified by the expression “from the get-go” - from the wat-huh?
There’s some irony here that a dress-up game appeals to women. I mean, considering the political climate where certain elements try to deny there are inherent differences between male and female humans, and what sorts of activities they gravitate towards.
