A console made for girls. Would you buy it?

[DonFerrari]

SuperNova said:

DonFerrari said:

I told you several times now how games in the 80's ended up being more targeted at a young male demographic, and it initially (late 70s) had nothing to do with market research. There wasn't a market yet to do any research on. In fact when they did start to research their demographics and noticed games appealing to more than the teen-boy demographic, some tried to capitalize on that (aka. MS.PACMAN 1982) read up on it if you don't believe me.

You're constantly mixing up eras and facts as well. The original 1987 SF arcade release had no female playable characters whatsoever in fact it doesn't contain any female characters at all. Starting with the mid 90s you're talking about a diffrent gaming landscape with diffrent demographics as the trend of trying to cater for female gamers had started to gain traction (not that I think Chun-Lee and Blanka were envisioned to attract female gamers....).

As for why games with themes of violence and gore with fast paced gameplay to accompany it were primarily appealing to young 80's boys, there's tons of research out there about adolecent play habits. And while of course there are outliers, like just about everything this isn't a binery, the majority of girls prefer social and imaginative play, while the majority of boys prefers more constructive (i.e. building stuff), physical play. Science isn't quite sure why this is the case on the nature vs. nurture scale and everything we've found so far points to some nature being involved, but a significant amount being due to nurture and the way children have been encouraged to play. If you are interested in this topic you can read up on it.

Anyways the way that can manifest in video games is pretty easily apparent if you contrast, for example, Double Dragon and Animal Crossing. One was produced by an all male team and is basically styled after a traditionally male power fanatasy of buff dudes beating up even buffer dudes and dragging the trophy girl back to their caves in the end, with an art-style grounded in realism, accompanied by fast-paced action gameplay vs. a slow-placed game about resource gathering through relationship builing with the stylings of a bright and colorful imaginative world full of cute animals, produced by an all female-led team.

One is a test of physical skill aimed at boys with realistic trappings, while the other is  definitely styled in an aesthetic that appeals to most girls and women, but is essetially social play aimed at everyone. The same, for the record, also goes for Candy Crush it is styled in a bright and cute aesthetic, without being so overtly 'female' as to exclude men and is a puzzling game, one of the traditionally more inclusive genres, with teh higherst amount of female players.

As for games that are in traditionally male-dominated genres and despite that have a higher than average female player base, look no further then Fortnite and Overwatch, two games with a bright, friendly, colorful aesthetic and gameplay elements that go beyond just trational twitch gunplay (Twitch shooters being the genre with the second lowest female player base). 

Yes, MS. PACMAN was a big hit as it was the bestselling aracade cabinet the year it released and was one of the most popular and profitable arcade cabinets of all time. It also got a litany of console ports, well into the 90s. Again, do your own research if video game history, development and deographics actually interest you, there's tons of good channels, websites/blogs and even books out there that cover a lot of this stuff.

 

Thanks for the well thought response and to actually even agree that a lot of the gaming atraction comes to the type of games, not to shoehorned aiming at boys or girls on the marketing itself.