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MMOs that draw female players
Threnody
Member Posts: 54
A topic out of curiosity: What kinds of MMOs draw a female player and hold her interest?
I have seen almost no MMOs blatantly marketed towards females except for maybe Hello Kitty Online ( please correct me if I'm wrong )..
Do we want or enjoy anything different out of an MMO than a male gamer would?
For me, the few games that left lasting impressions due to immersion, long-term playability and FUN factor were:
SWG pre-NGE - Yes I was an Image Designing / Dancer cliche initially. But it did not take me long to get out and explore the game world and use combat skills and leave "Cantina life" behind. There was so much depth to harvesting and crafting and socializing was important for your reputation if you wanted to be one of those crafters people sought out for your wares. Player cities.
DAoC - I have never enjoyed the blend of pve/pvp in an MMO as much as DAoC.
Shadowbane - the level of difficulty of this game with it's risks when you did simple things like kill mobs outside of the safety of a city and the customizable class discipline system meshed with community drama through subterfuge and spies.
City of Heroes/Villains - I always loved the pick up/put down play of CoH. The travel abilities and powersets were always very enjoyable even if the re-hashed missions were not.
So what draws me (i sure hope some Dev is paying attention):
Exploration
Alternatives to combat
Player housing
In Depth crafting
Purposeful community
PvP with mezz
Comments
Any developer that focuses on what female players want, is missing out on 95% of the player base.
It's much like a reality show catering to male audiences. It's actually funny they tried to do a reality show for playboy and it failed miserably. Why? because the greater population of males don't care about reality shows.
In short nobody cares what females want in mmo's, developers make games like bejewelled to grab females.
we have around 25% female players in our guild in AoC.
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I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
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Female gamers pretty much like what male gamers like in MMO's, but also have a tendency to play in more social oriented games, yet also you do find that tomboy female type too.
I remember couple years back a company tried to cater to female gamers but didn't quite hit it off with games lots of females liked. Hard to pinpoint what female gamers want beyond the social aspect of MMO's, everyone has their differences.
*speechless*
So you think that what males and females want are mutually exclusive?
There are a few things that most females I know tend to prefer. They like things a bit more intuitive and accessible. They like visually detailed character customization. They tend to put a little more emphasis on crafting and player housing and a little less on combat, but only to a certain degree. They also seem to prefer a more family-style community or guild rather than one solely focused on progression.
Surely not mutually exclusive. But the budget is always limited. If you spend your man hours too much for the fluff like character appearance, and noncombat hobbies or whatever, there's less actual content. Simple as that.
REALITY CHECK
In secondlife a good number of people that I worked with(scripting and team projects were fun for a while) .
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I'm an avid male gamer and, with the exception of the PvP, I want pretty much the same thing as the OP. I'm just more of a care bear it seems. Although I do get tickled when a smack talking testosterone monkey gets his ass handed to him by a girl in PvP. That just never gets old.
I don't think there's that much of a difference between what men and women want out of a game. As long as it's well made, we'll play.
Well for me it is a mix of things.
I loved SWG pre NGE because my two characters could do a variety of things. One of them was a musician - I just loved her (you wouldn't want to be on a road trip with me in real life - I sing the entire way and I'm tone deaf) and I loved that I could have her do a bit of music, do a bit of combat, and be a master artisan. The other character was a creature handler/bio engineer which was a whole game in and of itself.
After having tried almost every game out there here are some things a game has to have for me:
1. WASD/Arrow Key movement - Click to move destroys my wrists after a while. This is why I'm not playing ATITD, Mabinogi, etc.
2. Character who walks around - Why I'm not playing EVE.
3. Crafting - Of course my favorite so far is SWG, I like LOTRO ok though I wish it mattered more at the high end. EQ2 crafting is ok but I think it is unfortunate that they made it busy work - too much time spent responding to meaningless stuff when you could be chatting instead.
4. Opt out PVP - Personally PVP turns me into a mess, I take it way to seriously and have enough RL drama to not need it in a game.
5. Housing/Personal Space of some sort - give me something to personalize.
6. Combat that is not twitch based - I am severely jump challenged as our several guildies - it was absolutely hilarious when I was levelling my Captain in LOTRO. One of the class quests involved jumping. After 15 attempts I logged out in utter frustration and didn't play for several weeks. So you can imagine how I handle FPS type combat.
7. Exploration - nothing is more frustrating than invisible walls to someone who tries to climb every mountain.
Variety and Balance.
I noticed a larger percent of females like a variety of things to do, not just combat or just crafting. I'm not saying males don't like variety, most do I'm sure, I"m saying overall female gamers are more likely to dislike the fact that the combat is drastically better than the crafting, or vice versa, or the custamization is drastically better than the combat or vice versa, they want more Balance. Most males prefer balance I think, but it's not as big of an issue for them, like: "Oh it's a combat game anyway, its called WARquest, if I want good crafting I'll go play CRAFTquest."
I guess I should make a list of stuff I like and want in MMOs and games in General since I'm a girl, and maybe some dev cares:)
What I Like:
1. Having a large variety of ways to PVE or PVP.
2. Seamless or mostly seamless worlds.
3. Stories that aren't just serious, but fun too.
4. Companion pets and Toys.
5. Minigames. Would like to see more of this.
I Want:
1. I would love if there was a Platformer type MMO.
2. I would love an MMO like Eve, but didn't have real time skilling, and had combat like my first space fighting game (besides Asteroid, but that doesn't count)=Star Wars: X-Wing vs Tie Fighter...I haven't played a single player game with better space/air combat than that, so it would probably be hard, so just way more exciting than Eve.
3. A Sandbox MMO that is more about PVE and about getting along with neighbors, not that it can't have PVP, just not focus on it. Also it would be nice if more Sandbox games had it where starting the task isn't harder than doing the task.
4. If you are making a game with Classes, make the stories of the Classes cool, make more unique classes, and make classes have more customization without having to branch into other classes.
5. Crafting/Tradeskills could always use a boost. Make it more like a minigame, or have a minigame option (can easily see this with ones like fishing). Make crafting more varied, most games have crafting that is very easy vs very hard, or very basic (this item makes that item), or very complex.
6.Personal Housing/ Guild Halls: Make these cooler.
7. If you are making a leveling game, make multiple ways to level.
8. I would like a fantasy MMO with a story that isn't so common.
9. I would love to be able to play a MMO with a political system beyond war, like an Anti-Elf society to lower elven rights so NPCs are meaner to Elves, or a Pro-Bunny party to create strict laws against bunny killing so mean people who kill a bunny can't enter Town because of their malicious act.
-I want a Platformer MMO
But what if you play WARCRAFT?
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
1. I would love to know where you got your statistics there. According to the Entertainment Software Association "40% of all game players are WOMEN. In fact women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game playing population (33%) than boys age 17 or younger (18%)." -2008 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry - ESA.
Over the last 12 years of my online gaming experience, I have encountered a far greater number of women playing male characters - than men playing female characters, too.
2. Developers -should- care what women gamers want out of games, otherwise they risk excluding a signifanct source of new feedback and new revenue. To do anything less is to sell a game short of it's potential and that, from a business standpoint is stupid. To say that women gamers want "bejewelled" is not only sexist but ignorant. I'm a female gamer and personally, I can't stand bejewelled.
That said - as a woman who plays MMORPGS - I want a game that captures my imagination and offers entertaining play. I like dynamic quests and the opportunity to advance at my own pace in whatever I do, be that grinding out levels or crafting. I like player housing and role-playing. The most imporant thing to me, game mechanics aside, is a strong and intelligent community. If the game community is full of jerks...I'm not going to play there no matter how much I enjoy the game itself.
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Between 40 to 50% of the members within the last 3 guilds (population between 20 to 50) I was in for the MMO I've been playing were female. Some can be confirmed via Vent while playing while others are comfirmed via contests that expose their appearance (pictures and Youtube). A few can be confirmed via Facebook.
Some play for the chatting and atmosphere. Some play because their husbands also play (these couples usually lead guilds). A few like to make fanart or do cosplay based on the costumes within the game. A few admit to liking the fit but not overly muscular male characters that they can control.
As a female gamer some of the things I love in a game are:
1. Pets..omg I love pets, I really miss the Creature Handler profession in pre cu SWG, but beastmaster is ok in the NGE.
2. Exploring. I love to explore new game worlds.
3. A complicated crafting system (like Vanguard, or my favorite again was SWG's crafting system.
4. A game where you actually interact with other players. I really hate todays games where you solo quest to end game. You only group when you need help with a quest .then everyone is like..ok I got what i needed, I am outta here!
My favorite games I have played to date are of course pre cu SWG, DAoC, and EQ2 before it became solo friendly.
Socialization and Customization is my biggest thing in an MMO. Now, I'm not saying the game can be terrible, have no PvP or no PvP. I expect everything a normal MMO should have, and done well. But those two things will keep me playing the longest. If my friends are playing, and we can chat easily, group easily, do group content, and I can have lots of fluff stuff, I will enjoy the game so much more.
I meet almost as many females in WoW as I do males. No singles though, I've asked, its always their boyfriends or husbands that get them into the game.
A few females in EVE, but they seem to be rarer. Or harder to find.
I haven't had much luck with finding any single females, sadly. I ask and ask and ask, but nope. Just because I'm fat and sweaty in all my pictures doesn't mean I'm not a good guy! Personality is more important than looks.
Sorry started ranting there...
but no, MMOs have a lot of females. The real question is...how many of those females are single? And thats very few.
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Hello Kitty online is for 40 year old guys with signs in their yards.
I just have one thing to say, fairies, something like this:
You make them customizable, different colors/wings/sizes etc. if you have a good variety of clothes in game that will also keep girls playing for a while.
Of couse, having an attractive playable race such as fairies will not keep females interested for long if you have a crappy gameplay.
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By far and away, Star Wars Galaxies proportionally, with WoW because of it's polish, content, ease of entry and art-style.
Fallen Earth i've noticed has a few due to SWG similarities, EvE also has a good amount.
Not if they develop games for phones / facebook. But hey...you've already got it all figured out...
I agree with this. All the girls I know who play MMOs are more, even if only slightly, into the social aspects than it seems to me the average male. Other than that, I haven't noticed too much difference, in my current guild we have female PvPers, crafters, and PvErs.
Then there is the fact that games, MMOs, just haven't attracted as many females and I'm sure we don't know the reason(s). If someone did, they would have capitalized on it by now.
Having read several books on evolutionary biology, there seems to have been a tendency even pre-historically for men to engage in warfare and hunting and women to perform other survival skills. Still, the aptitude testing on modern humans show very tiny differences that might be related to the natural or sexual selection processes involved there. Cross-culturally, spatial-relations (kinda like applied geometry or the ability to perceive size, weight, distance) tends to be higher in males. Language proficiency tends to be higher in females. Though again, only slightly statistically significantly, meaning that the differences in aptitude are so small that you can expect them to have almost no value in predicting whether male A or female B would be better at language or object recognition.
That is the nature part.
The nurture part is probably stronger. We have all sorts of cultural teaching that runs so deep. Take an infant out wearing blue some time and people will say "oh he's so strong" dress him in pink and they will say "she's so pretty." Yes we start indoctrinating that early.
So maybe, we train boys to think about fighting, and most MMOs are 90% about fighting and we have 90% of people playing them men. With a game that is 90% about not-fighting (farmville? i dk really) what is the precentage of males v females? I don't know since I've not played, but the only people I know that play this are gals.
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Im fairly sure that the World of Darkness MMO will draw female players
its a glorified catwalk
I work with a number of females of the opposite sex that enjoy World of Warcraft. They enjoy the raiding, crafting, and are mostly mages and clerics.
I guess it is hard to generalize as not all men like the same type of games just as not all women do. But for me personally, community is one of the biggest factors. No matter how good a game is, if it's full of a lot of rude people, I just move on. I also like having something more to do besides combat. I also love great in-game music.
Games I've most enjoyed:
EQ2 - Although I never particularly liked the combat and classes, I liked the crafting, harvesting, housing, monthly events, etc. Our guild was about 60% female.
SWG - Had a musician as well as a tailor who ran a costume shop. Loved the player owned towns and shops and hanging out in the cantinas.
DAOC - Loved the open world and dungeons, that home town feeling and pride, the housing villages.
LotRO - Love the "world is alive" feeling you see in the towns and villages. So many beautiful zones with areas that serve no purpose other than to explore them. And the music system has created so many community opportunities.
Although I've tried everything, these are the mmo's that stand out to me and why I played them.
Yay lets get some more female gamers that can tell us not to curse in guild chat!. They are always the ones slapping a pg-11 on any guild I have been in. Nooo thanks. I'm quite fond of the male female ratio as it is now
As for what MMOs that draw the most females. F2P ones. My gut tells me they are less likely to pay a monthly sub but more inclined to spend 200 on fluff in F2P games. Browser games included
Bingo. You always know when a female toon is actually being played by a female when she complains about no one talking in a group. Women are all about socializing. Designing content that requires more communication between players might be a way to draw in more women.
I'm also willing to risk being run out on a rail and say women are more inclined to get into crafting--cooking especially.(DON'T HIT ME I BRUISE EASILY)
However I'm not willing to say that women usually want to play pure support characters. But I do think women are more inclined to help others and enjoy playing classes that can cast buffs. As long as they aren't mad at you.
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