This week I seem to be seeing discussions on gender in gaming. First were two posts on Corvus’s blog, and just now I was reading a book on game design that talked about this topic. Those influences brought back my memory of my first game design test for a job, which unfortunately I failed. Which got me thinking about the notion that game play is gender specific. Such as how all boys will play FPS games and the girls go for the puzzle, which leads me to my thoughts on this.
Going back to my test, one of the questions that was asked of me was “how would this game be targeted towards women? and I remember my response ” I believe that if game play is good enough, it will be enjoyed by everyone not counting if characters look like porn stars”. To this day I don’t know if this response hurt or helped my application. Reading my book today, I reached a section where they talked about having to design games for women and how the team who developed the Bratz titles were able to think like girls and designed a game for them. Which leads me to my quandary, is game play itself gender specific?
A few notes on my background, I believe that game play above all else is king when it comes to designing games, and that is the first thing I come up with thinking up a game title. I am incredibly thick skin, and haven’t ran into anything in a game that made me shut it off for moral reasons, that’s not to say that it hasn’t unnerved me a bit. I find the talk of designing game play for men or women absurd. Game play by itself is not gender targeted, I’ve seen men play puzzle titles or the sims, and women who play fighting games and FPS. The distinction is made once story, and aesthetics are put into the equation.
Let’s look at that Bratz title, now I’ve never played any game with the word Bratz in it ( god willing I never will have to), but I bet that one aspect of making it appeal to girls is having you dress up characters. Here is my reasoning, that with some creative altering that system could be put into a game targeted at males, it’s what you do with the game play not the game play itself that determines the group your aiming for. When thinking up ideas, I think to myself if puzzle fans will like this, or action fans, never if this title will appeal towards men or women. I think the reason for this issue is that game writing and story telling haven’t caught up to graphics and game play yet. We still have games with stereotypical men and women in them.
So here is my challenge to those who read this blog, take a game that is targeted towards women and using the same game play systems, make it appeal towards men. Also do the same thing to a game targeted at males but make it appeal to women. Just because I know the type of responses already, any fighting games will not count as I already know what changes everyone will make to them. Games that the gender of the character is interchangeable also doesn’t count, and dating sims for the importers out there don’t count either. You may change the setting and story if you want, but whatever game play systems are featured in the title must be in the changed version.
I’ll start, using any of the Bratz titles or games aimed at young girls, let’s make it about knights in medieval time. Players can dress up the knights in various colors of armor and since this game will be aimed at children we’ll keep the gameplay simple and style cartoon like. The knights that are dressed up will appear in simple mini games and completing them will unlock more options to dress them up.
For women , this one I’ll admit is a bit trickier it’s too easy to just take a game and just switch the characters out from men to women. So I’ll try to use Max Payne, we’ll have a female detective along the same skills and intelligence as Max. She lives with her boy friend who pushed her to rise in the ranks as an officer so that she can have a positive effect on the city and supported her all the way. She of course has to deal with officers who see her in a negative role, and eventually gets a major drug bust on her own which interferes with corrupt officials. She arrives home one day to find her boyfriend dead from junkies and the police aren’t bothering to investigate as they’ve been paid off. She is now depressed and angry that her actions have led to the death of the man she loves and feels that it is all her fault. Thus she starts a one women attack on the drug dealers and manufacturers of the city to avenge her boy friend. Before anyone asks, yes she will enter seedy businesses in her quest, but she will not be performing any sexual or suggestive actions in the game. Over the course of the story she’ll learn to accept the death and realize that her boy friend loved her for the fact that she wanted to have a positive effect on the city.
Phew, I will admit that the Max Payne alteration was just me putting together a quick story in my mind, I think I may have written the plot to the next Lifetime original movie. In both examples the game play was not altered just the context of it. Lastly I want to know, which gender was Katamari Damacy targeted at, as I had a lot of fun rolling that big sphere around all over the place.
Josh
