A title is meant to grab your attention, give you some idea of what you are to be getting, entice you to look further and explore…right??  Umm, not with games aimed at females or so it seems.  If a game producer wants to target the female market, surely they need to give the game a title that will instantly tell the female that this game is for them.  they have to make is blatantly obvious given the fact that many women don’t play video games and aren’t too interested in them.

With games that are targeted at men on the market at the moment, it doesn’t seem to really make a huge difference what the title is, most male gamers already know about an existing game or one that is due to come out and probably what it is about whether it be war, motor racing or street fighting as they play these games, read the magazines and talk to other fellow gamers.

They don’t need the title to tell them what they are getting, therefore it doesn’t seem to be too important.

Games currently on the market that are designed with women in mind appear to lack substance in the title; they give no lasting impression of what the game is about and so why would women want buy them let alone play them?

www.giantbomb.com says that there are 367 games where a female is the protagonist, so it isn’t that there aren’t games out there aimed at women, but with titles like ‘mass effect’ and ‘alien syndrome,’ (these games have females as the main character) women would probably take one look and think, oohh, i’ll buy that for my 14 year old nephew!

After looking through some of the 367 games, I found a few titles of games that may scream out to women.  For example, Catwoman.  Fair enough, it may still have been aimed at men primarily, but women will instantly look at it and want to know more.  They will then see this powerful sexy woman who battles against evil using her senses and the use of a whip, and decide whether this would be interesting to play.

Another title which will immediately appeal to women is Cooking Mama. Yes the words used in the title are very obviously aimed at women: mama and cooking, but is this what games aimed at women need?  To really get women to look, is this the bluntness that is necessary?  From this title it is clear that there is a mother who cooks and after looking at what the game has to offer, you can see that cooking mama designs recipes and tests them on her friends and family and has to rise up to cook-off challenges.  Cooking Mama’s title grabs your attention, then shows you that it is a worthwhile game to play; women will get something out of it.

Cooking Mama may have got it right. A title that intrigues you followed by a game that is interesting to play.  So if there is a game for women where a female is the protagonist that fights the baddies and protects the good, why not tell the intended audience this.  For example ‘Kick-ass Mum.’

Maybe games titles should be more like the titles of films.  For example, The Orphanage released in 2007 was a horror which largely appealed to women possibly because the word ‘orphanage’ creates images of children and therefore is more likely to pull at a woman’s heart strings.  This idea focuses on softer and more feminine words and phrases used to appeal more to women within the horror genre in gaming.  If a game was released called ‘Unnerved Children,’ this may be more likelyto capture the female audience.

The top and bottom of this argument is that the title is seen first, before the overview of the game, before the colours and characters, so why not focus on making the title jump from the shelves at the audience that it is aimed at? Simple? Well not, apparently, for game makers.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Head First’s intern programme brings in talented young people on their way up into their career. Their abilities and their views all make the culture of Head First that much richer and holistic. This view, by Helen McCready, takes a look at Lara Croft and her place as a female role model.

When the game Tomb Raider was released in 1996, it caught the attention of both the press and the public.  The fact that the main charcter was a female probably added to the world wide attention the game received.  Lara was beautiful, intelligent and independent, so you would have thought that she would have made more women want to play the game than probably did.  Surely this strong female was on the right track to attracting more females to gaming even if it was still principally aimed at men.

Lara Croft was on the right path to increasing the amount of women playing games.  the character was successful, powerful and attractive and there was definitely interesting content within the story, so where was the wave of female aimed games that should have followed her?

Although Lara croft embodied strong traits, did women really identify with her? Could they get past the gravity defying breasts, tiny waist and unbelievable beauty and would it have better appealed to females if she was a little more toned down, for example, slightly older, with a more womanly shape and a tad less stunning

Many women in society are increasingly becoming more successfull in their careers, home and social life, but it’s hard to maintain this level of beauty as well.  The imposing physical looks of Lara could have threatened and intmidated women and therefore made them less inclined to even pick up the game in the first instance.

Maybe if she was marketed differently and the box of the video focused on her adventures rather than her body, we may have seen more women playing her. Though this is another argument in itself.

It got me thinking that if Lara Croft seemed to have everything a woman might desire, why didn’t more games like her’s continue to be made?

I wondered whether the timing was wrong.  The game was released 13 years ago, when there wasn’t this air of ‘real women’ that is banged on about so heavily in the media today and so were women ready for her.  was Lara Croft before her time?  If a similar game was released today would more women go for it given the emphasis on the idea and in many cases, the fact, that the woman of today can have it all, and that includes amazing beauty.

The only thing that could have been considered ‘bad’ about the character of Lara Croft would be how she was sexualised and i don’t need to go over her attributes again.

Otherwise, the game could have been perfect for women.  Lara didn’t have a male character alongside her telling her what to do, she had no annoying side-kick, was fiercely independent and was able to adapt to various situations when necessary. She fought against many other female characters, so she was definitely in a woman’s world.

However, lara didn’t have many other responsibilities besides her work.  She had no man in her life that we know of and no children to think about.  Was this something that put women off warming to her?  She could be considered to be a career woman but didn’t have this all round great life that women want today.  But was this the idea, for women to be able to emmerse themselves within a game that didn’t focus on whether there was a love interest or other responsibilities?  If, however, a character did have all these things, would she represent better the woman of today?

Whilst writing this i decided to talk to a female gamer and get her take on it.  She wasn’t intimidated as such by her appearance, only dissappointed that the gaming industry as a whole felt the need to portray women in this way and view the male market as only desiring this level of game where women are ridiculously sexualised.

Research shows that 40% of gamers are now female so it’s not that there is a non-existent market for women, but that the type of games out there are not appealing to women in the right way.  The female gamer i spoke to raised an interesting point: is it the general attitude of the gaming industry that needs to change?

She pointed me to a game called portal that was released in october 2007 where a woman finds herself trapped within a science laboratory and has to use a device in order to escape.  What is interesting about this game is that you play the game through the eyes of the female, therefore it makes no difference to the player who you are playing.  It eliminates the focus on what the character looks like, how big her boobs are and how minuscule her attire is.  This game also included what women seem to like most about video games: puzzles.  Something involving behind the game itself, where you can feel you have achieved something rather than just how many punches you can throw in order to split the opponent’s head open.

There is another reason why I believe that the character of Lara Croft was on the right path to including women in games.  The fact the game doesn’t end means you can rewind time so she never dies.  Aleks Krotoski mentioned this in her article for BBC News Online, September 2004.  Women don’t want to play something where the challenge is not to get killed, but to explore new surroundings and having to use
strategy in order to get to a higher level.  Many women may lose interest quickly if all the have to do is fight a big boss man, kill him, then it’s game over.  Well, what would make you want to continue repeating this? Whereas if you can keep redoing the puzzle, for example, until you can get it perfect, the feeling of achievement is surely heightened.

There are many reasons illustrated here as to why Lara Croft should have been the main template for further developing the female protagonist in games in order to enitce more women to play, but it still doesn’t seem to have happened thirteen years later. This leads me to thinking that the gaming industry continues to think that women aren’t interested in and don’t play games.  Well it’s about time the industry started to listen and learn from what are rapidly becoming the major players!

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.