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What generates greater interest in mmos for female gamers?
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
I will tell you straight up that I am not a female gamer and I don't know the answer to this question. I can't even say whether female gamers, statistically speaking, want anything different in an mmo than male players. And the last thing I want to do is start making sexist assumptions about what women want.
But I do know that historically fewer female players play mmos then males. So there has always been an underlying assumption that at least some female players might be looking for game features or settings that they are not getting, which could account for some of the disparity.
A few mmos seem to have better luck in drawing female players. WoW, for example. And I ran into a fair number of female players in original EQ and SWG also. The problem is, those are 3 very different games in many major respects, so it's hard to draw any inferences.
What do you think? And if you would not mind, it would help if you stated whether you are a female gamer, because obviously female gamers are in a better position to know what they like and dislike.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Comments
Male gamer, speaking purely from anecdotal conversation with female gamers.
The ones I've known have mostly played healer, non-combat or pet classes and have tended to be more interested than most male gamers in collecting fluff items like mounts and non-combat pets. In the SWG days, I knew several who spent their entire gametime in cantinas dancing and/or playing music.
The majority of female gamers I know tend to pick "pretty" or "cute" races. Elves, Humans. Gnomes.
It's certainly not an absolute rule, though. I've also known exceptions.
The hunter gatherer past of humanity. Women are the gatherers which explains their crazy need for shopping and males are the hunters which explains their desire for competitive sports or killing stuff and each other in games. Males usually are more competitive and they show it in the game too. Desire to have the bigger sword or kill others in pvp. Games are made for competition and that's why there are much more male players. Females have this maternal behaviour (raising a pet, healer)
From my experience females are drawn to mmo mostly because of the social factor but usually they leave because of the enormous amount of testosterone that mmorpg males usually create. In other words males see in a mmo war while females see a community and a way to socialise.
http://mashable.com/2010/02/17/social-gaming-survey/
Also would help if more male gamers knew how to behave around female gamers.
And vice-versa.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Farmville
This is a very sound analysis.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Interesting question Amathe I had to think a little.
I'm a female gamer and for me it was the diversity some of the "older" games offered, Star Wars Galaxys is a prime example of this. Taking part in building social networks like the towns,shops and guilds or maybe bio-engineering an awesome but complicated pet that could take weeks, months even to get right.
Taking time out to hang with friends, chatting around campfires or dancing in the cantinas........After having sorted out the baddie!
Don't get me wrong as I also love to quest, raid and fight, but I get no real buzz from obtaining "uber" gear. In fact sometimes it feels as if some people are being driven by the fear factor, the epic fear of failiure in other's eyes rather than the comradship of battle.. The problem with just raiding etc is, it also gets to feel empty after a while and repetative.
I love to shop
) ... So for me bring back player made ones..nothing quite like looking for a crafted droid who can hold your tools and work for you! Or even choosing which house to buy and the items to fill it with.
Basicallly I guess I like more divergence, making the "world" feel more real and with a few pink frills attached.
Character creation is an important part, the need to feel a connection and that your character is a some-what unique individual.
Like you I don't want to make any sexist assumptions and I feel a lot of males would appreciate more stimulating depth too. Maybe there is very little difference between male and female (except the pink frills of course, well in some cases). But it does seem more gals play Sims and more guys Battleground Europe. Maybe we should just merge the two
)
Will be interesting to hear what others have to say!
Male gamer here. I have dated half a dozen female MMO gamers.* I was always curious about this and asked this.
Some of the themes that emerge as to likes are:
Good social interaction systems.
Interdependence.
I've also asked them what would make them want to play MMOs more.
Some of the dislikes are:
Immature boys.
Sexism - i.e. don't like getting on vent as people have the mistaken belief that they can't play as well, are not 'hardcore'
Racism and other -isms, calling people retarded, saying others 'got raped'
*by MMO gamers I mean people who have played 'serious' MMOs, i.e. the ones on this site, not facebook games. I have probably dated dozens of people that play online facebook or online poker, scrabble games.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Male gamer here and even to me it's obvious the female market hasn't been tapped fully. I don't think it's the indifference to mmo's as a concept but more in relation to what they offer, as others here have stated. I think because most game designers are male it's hard to relate.
So imo, if rl is anything to go by I think they need to introduce a more complex cookery class, one where you can actually burn the shit out of the food. We have blacksmiths etc but what about a class that cleans the armour, and manages to shrink sheet metal also add meta ironing skills for undergarments perhaps. We all get mounts and buy the skill, where's the ability to go around crashing into other players on horseback, where's the ability create a mile long que of mounts behind you all trying to get past?
I also feel one of the main sticking points for female gamers is probably npc quest givers. I mean they give you a quest and expect you to fulfill it, you have no option to stand there for a week and argue with the npc until he just goes and kills the fkin boars himself and then gives you the reward anyway. There should be at least 20 out of every 30 days where every npc just runs away from the player, this would add a certain amount of realism and immersion.
This is just off the top of my head but I just don't think the devs are trying to get the female gamers in imo.
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
LOL!
Now, I know what it is to be in love.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
There is probably something to this.
Though of course there are women on this board who seem to love the combat as well. However, of the few women I know who would even contemplate playing games (or who do in limited amounts) they always ask the same thing "do I have to fight all the time".
Seems that they don't mind doing "some" fighting but in general they have told me they find it boring. and don't want it to be a focus. They prefer exploring and puzzle solving.
Of these women, the only one who seems to like combat (she found left 4 dead a lot of fun) is not interested in the competitive nature of it, just likes to do it.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Female gamer here, although I may be a statistical outlier because I like my game worlds dark and gritty rather than pink and fluffy.
I could care less about pets and things like that.
I like games that are well-designed, well-written and fun.
The only real difference I can see between me and a lot of male players is that I don't have an epeen (well, obviously), I don't need to be "the best", min-maxing hurts my brain (in b4 someone says "tiny female brain") , and while I like to understand the mechanics and how to play my class, I've never been swayed by the "you must have the staff of raging lava equipped with the gloves of uber uberness because then you'll crank out an extra half-percent of DPS ya noob" arguments.
Oh and Mr Wolf up there made me laugh with his post, but if there was a game with ironing etc. in it, I'd run a mile. Enough of that to deal with IRL as is.
The highlighted statement is where your post went wrong.
Studies consistently show the ratio of males to females in online gaming and MMOs tends to be very close, and is closing each year. Women have always played games...especially MMORPGs (wherein we have always had our highest concentration). The myth that women play games at a level far below men is just that... a myth. But like most myths and urban legends it is hard to get rid of.
And to answer the question you aimed for...I do not feel that women gamers are any more quantifiable in what they want in a game than male gamers are. In short, I feel the question is not valid, because it assumes 1. Women want something different than men in games, and 2. That women can be lumped into a statistically valid box when it comes to something as subjective as "what we want".
* Edited to finish my thought. Silly jumpy browser.
But if you DID have the staff of raging lava with the gloves of uber uberness (the lvl 3 version) then it would just be SO salty.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
No, it's not a myth. Women do play games in general much less than men.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
My wife says she would play MMOs if they weren't all the same, and that they would offer good storyline and story telling within the game. Also most current character models found in games turn my wife off of MMOs as well. She would prefer more realistic character design and models for the players and the monsters. She also doesn't care for the whole just go kill X amount of monster quest without a purpose.
When I say realistic she doesn't mean the game has to be all realistic and what not just that if its an elf make it look believable and have decent animations for movement etc.
Dustin
Show me the statistical studies? I however work in the game industry and have seen dozens of studies done in the last 10 years I have been on the job and they all show a fairly consistent ratio of 60/40 (give or take a few points), which is NOT "much less". In fact, a few studies have show a much much closer ratio, and one even had women outnumbering men in some age groups when it comes to online gaming.
If any one thing bothers me about the state of games and the game industry more than any other...it is the clinging insistence of many male gamers that this myth is true. I won't hazard as to why they feel the need to believe this despite scientific evidence, but it is annoying as hell.
*Edited for spelling and such.
I don't believe that this is true of online gaming in general.
I've seen claims that female gamers make up anywhere between 40-70% of the demographic in online gaming, though this generally includes casual games such as those found on social networking sites.
My lady is sitting here with me so this is where I'm pulling this post from. I'm going off of personal experience rather than statistics here.
Female gamers seem to drawn more towards the Asian style MMOs, especially FF style games. What got her to play MMOs were things like chocobos and moogles (She started with FFXI). She is more into the little things in MMOs rather than progression and big raiding (although she does these things from time to time, just not religiously)
She doesn't like games like WoW and more westernized MMOs (pretty much the main games people like on this website) because of the way people act and how rude people are to each other. PvP also draws her away from games. Several ladies that regularly play MMOs with her and I cannot stand competitive game play (I'm guessing they don't like the tension it brings).
So my conclusion...
Stop being so rude to people, if someone is bad at the game then don't slam them about it, just enjoy the game. Don't treat people like you would on Xbox live or in YouTube comments. Don't ogle every female that you come across, the decent ones hate it. And add more cooperative content to the game rather than competition.
According to some BBC article, 40% of WoW players are female.
I've always felt that WoW goes out of their way to appeal to women. Character models, quests, pets, classes and so on.
Oh, and lore too. Sylvanus Windrunner and Jaina Proudmore.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Yes, the studies that show women outnumber men in online gaming tend to include non-MMO type online games. In those studies women vastly outnumber men. In MMOs alone, women still consistently maintain 40% + of the player base in any study done since the late 1990s.
One problem there is that - although you can have co-operation in a game (of course), you can't have a game without competition. Even if it's just competition against the AI. I do think you mean inter-personal competition, though, so yeah I agree the part I quoted.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I would still point out that 20% is still a fairly large spread between two groups and there is at the very least a much largely perceived larger frequency of encountering men over women gamers albeit, women are starting to become more and more common.
In regards to a previous post, sure attitudes and beliefs between men and women can be shared but let's not neglect social/culure that do impose some kind of difference between men and women and this does impact attitude. Now I'm not supporting everyone's theories on female gamers, but I'm just here to point out that there ARE differences in terms of attitudes shaped by the environments we are raised in between a male and female.
Why are parents more protective about their daughters as opposed to their sons? Why do girls play with barbies and boys play with G.I Joe's? Why do we dress baby boys in blue and baby girls in pink? The genders aren't as equally minded as you make it out to be based on basic societal impacts.
P.S. I have a girlfriend who games with me and you don't want to know the difference between attention she gets as opposed to the atteention I get. Again, why do gamers feel more inclined to talk to females more than males? I think many can relate or perceive this.
"Studies consistently show the ratio of males to females in online gaming and MMOs tends to be very close."
Just as a point of clarification, my post is about mmos. "Online gaming" is a much larger group than just mmos. So when you add all of online gaming to the equation, the numbers change.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Males are more likely to be percieved as a threat or competition than females.
BTW, I have played various female characters in MMOs, and have noticed virtually no difference in how my characters were treated - other than occasionally beign asked if I was female IRL.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2