Silverlion: Nicotine Girls maybe...? But I think it predates forge or something...

Quote from: Serious Paul;249372I guess I figure the gender divide shouldn't be important to game designer, rather just designing excellent games should be their priority. People will play a quality product regardless of their gender, or other individual factors.

I think so too.

Here's something about 4E.

http://cerise.theirisnetwork.org/archives/534

Regards,
David R

There have been several failed attempts to market role-playing games  specifically to women.  Most of these have failed because they make the mistake of confusing women with women's studies majors, of which which Blue Rose is the most amazingly glaring example.  Generally games which are attempting (for no explicable reason) to cash in on the nearly non-existent market of women gamers appeal to the sensibilities displayed by prominent women fantasy authors.

This is why they fail.  The majority of women who game are not women's studies majors, nor do they read feminist fantasy.  They are female fans of primarily male mediums.  The majority of women who like that stuff have no experience or connection to gaming, so they never learn of these games and are turned off by the learning curve (a point I will return to shortly), and the majority of women who are connected to gaming like "robot ninjas and explosions" as Willow Palecek once told me.

These games would do better if there were more women gamers, but there are not.  Why not?  Because no one has ever attempted to sell a role-playing game to girls.  Nobody has ever tried to market rpgs to the slumber-party crowd, to 13 year old girls who love The Little Mermaid and have made Disney Princesses a cultural phenomenon.

Imagine Disney put their muscle behind a Disney Princesses RPG, and marketed it with ads on Disney Channel and in their magazines.  Sure, it wouldn't attract any women to gaming, but it would have secured their mental control over the imaginations of teenyboppers, and once those girls grew up and their tastes matured, they would graduate to other games.

If Disney had released an RPG ten years ago, then Blue Rose might have been a huge success, and the Blue Rose haters would call it Advanced Disney Princesses.

Trollbabe is aimed at the gamer girlfriend who wants to try some gaming. Some criticise it for being rooted in a seventies-grown form of feminism.

Quote from: droog;249523Trollbabe is aimed at the gamer girlfriend who wants to try some gaming. Some criticise it for being rooted in a seventies-grown form of feminism.

o_O wtf/[citation needed]/srsly!?

QuoteNow, I'm not sure that's a fair way of looking at it, is very few women I've known got into RPG's on their own, they were mostly influenced by the people around them.

This has been my experience as well.  In fact most gamer girls I hang out with play RPG's because their boyfriends or I introduced them to a certain game, and then they have tried to venture into other RPG systems from there.  That is how I started RPGing.  I was raised by my uncles and male cousins, and I was one of two girls in the family.  My sister took the Disney princess route, and I ended up fighting Orcs and Dragons when I hit preteens.

Personally I never got into the Vampire RPG, because it wasn't raw enough for me, and I never found the right crowd to fit in with.   I have never had a hard time finding a good game with any D&D system, or GURPS.  Like Dr. Rotwang said "I'm not sure we need game titles aimed at women. I think we just need to run games with our particular female players' tastes in mind."

Wow.

I'm just totally shocked by this thread.

Not in a bad way, understand. Not in a "WTF did all this shit come from?" kind of way, but in a pleasant manner.

It just surprised me to the point of shock that A. the thread got more than 3-4 replies, B. not a single one was actually snarky and C. not one was an attack or crack at the OP (me). No "Only a fag would ask this sorta question!" comments.

Like I said, I'm shocked at how successful this thread is, defining successful as getting useful, on topic replies with no flames attached.

I was not trolling, but I was expecting a lot fewer replies and a lot of snark when I posted it, but I was curious and said "to hell with the dicks who will flame me for this."

Amazingly mature and numerous replies. Great job, everyone.

As to games that might appeal to women, I was wondering if wraethu might appeal to woman because it kind of "levels the playing field" in sexual terms and basically makes everyone a pitched and a catcher. But then again maybe very, very few people are interested in sexual situations in gaming so that might not apply.

I also guessed if I asked if wraethu appealed to women I'd get replies like "Wraethu's repulsiveness transcends gender." or something like that.

Anyway, this thread turned out several orders of magnitude better than I'd expected, and I'm glad to see it do so.

EDIT: As I looked over this message I decided there was about a 25% chance that "Wraethu's repulsiveness transcends gender." would become someone's tagline someday. If anyone sees it as a tagline, let me know, ok?

Or maybe it will be "Wraethu offends both genders equally."

QuoteAs to games that might appeal to women, I was wondering if wraethu might appeal to woman because it kind of "levels the playing field" in sexual terms and basically makes everyone a pitched and a catcher. But then again maybe very, very few people are interested in sexual situations in gaming so that might not apply.

To be quiet honest, I have always found any sexual situations added to a game, seems to lead the game off track, and pushes it into a different direction.  Not that having any sexual element is bad, but I am not aware of the game you speak of.  I will have to check it out and maybe give you a an opinion later.  It can be appealing, but I guess I would like to see how in depth the content is, and how the DM introduces it and furthers the game with the element.  I mean I have heard of the famous words of   "Ale and Whores"....and it seems that is where some games eventually lead to, but I have never played a game where a sex element was really needed.   Just kickin the crap out of the bad guys and taken their treasure was always good enough for me.

Quote from: Vaecrius;249555o_O wtf/[citation needed]/srsly!?

As far as I can see Ron Edwards is a sort of unreconstructed Second Wave feminist. This is a feminist image, then, for him:



Gutsy woman goes out and does it for herself. "I am Woman, hear me roar!"

But some people think it's problematic in the same way 'booth babes' are problematic. Objectifying gaze and so forth. You'll see it sprinkled across a bunch of threads.


Or are you asking about the 'aimed at the gamer girlfriend' part of what I said? I've had a look, but I can't find a direct cite for that yet.

Not sure the feminism would be welcomed by the females in my group. None of them seems to be thinking that she needs feminism to pave the way or something.
One of them even prefers playing guys. Well she never said so but she played only one female character in 5 different campaigns so far.
One, my fiance, plays men and women equal parts depending on the character concept she imagines and the third only plays female characters.
None of them plays characters which are likely to become part of plots with overly sexual content - though romance and tragic romance are well recieved, they usually like it gritty.

Quote from: Idinsinuation;249412I agree with you there, I don't even think we need to necessarily focus on "particular female players' tastes" but instead just focus on running well rounded games that appeal to a variety of tastes.

I should clarify -- I mean the particular female players at your table, as well as, you know, everyone you're playing with.  Is that what you mean, too?

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!;249602I should clarify -- I mean the particular female players at your table, as well as, you know, everyone you're playing with.  Is that what you mean, too?

Pretty much yes.  I was aiming more at gaming in general rather than anyone's own specific group, and that we don't need games which focus on a specific audience but rather games that are well rounded and appeal to a wide variety of players.

Quote from: Idinsinuation;249607(W)e don't need games which focus on a specific audience but rather games that are well rounded and appeal to a wide variety of players.

Ah.  OK.  I'd put that more in the GM's hands than in the designers', though.

Quote from: Venosha;249569To be quiet honest, I have always found any sexual situations added to a game, seems to lead the game off track, and pushes it into a different direction.  Not that having any sexual element is bad, but I am not aware of the game you speak of.  I will have to check it out and maybe give you a an opinion later.  It can be appealing, but I guess I would like to see how in depth the content is, and how the DM introduces it and furthers the game with the element.  I mean I have heard of the famous words of   "Ale and Whores"....and it seems that is where some games eventually lead to, but I have never played a game where a sex element was really needed.   Just kickin the crap out of the bad guys and taken their treasure was always good enough for me.

Yes, I would think, given the appearance of the average male gamer in north america at least, that women gamers would be particularly wary of any kind of sexual innuendo developing in their group.

RPGPundit

Yeah...there is that cliche that a lot of gamers want to think their characters and themselves look and act like Errol Flynn - when really they have more in common with Flynn's drinking buddy Alan Hale. *


- Ed C.






* For those of you NOT into classic movies, Alan Hale played Little John (THE BIG GUY) in the classic 1939 Robin Hood movie and was the father of Alan Hale Jr. - "Skipper" of Gilliagan's Island.