EA Executive: Girls Want Girlie Video Games
Author: Stephen Gerding
August 22nd, 2006
I’m not sure that girls need games about relationships - my experience with my wife and female friends who play games is that they like to blow shit up as much as the guys. Sometimes more, as my wife’s 3 hour long marathons inside Ratchet & Clank’s Battledome will attest to. Unless we’re talking strictly about teenage girls, then I’m sure the PS2 version of Mall Madness would be a hot ticket item.
Mr Gardner said one of the biggest problems was that the content aimed at women gamers was not appealing.
“They don’t want ‘pink games’. They are not trying to play girly games where Paris Hilton and Britney Spears go shopping and put make-up on.
“Those kind of things have not been that successful.”
But he said games such as The Sims and websites such as Pogo.com proved there was a market for women gamers.
“Most of the Sims players are girls - 70% are women under 25,” he said.
“The Sims is really a game about relationships - and that’s what girls want - they want relationships, they want to be able to chat.”
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3 Responses to “EA Executive: Girls Want Girlie Video Games”
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:35 am
Such a hard question to answer. The only game my girlfriend has ever played for longer than 5 seconds is Nintendogs. It’s funny though, I did a report on “why don’t girls play videogames” in college, and I found that most girls still see videogames as a waste of time — a form of procastination when you could be doing something productive — and don’t equate it with watching a movie or listening to music, as game fans do.
August 22nd, 2006 at 12:08 pm
I remember reading somewhere that those online RPGs are big with the ladies, too. RPGs in general are popular with the females.
September 4th, 2006 at 7:30 am
Being a woman, I can tell you that nothing is more boring than a touchy feely game about relationship. I want to blow stuff up. I want to know where these executives find their information when they decide women need girly video games. Even as a teenager I enjoyed a good game of Doom anytime. I am a relatively normal woman and mom.
No other women I know want pink girly games. We all just want to blow stuff up.