Games + girls = ?

One of the biggest mysteries of our time is, of course, the combination of games and girls. Do they mix? Well here's my two cents.

At least they seem to mix really well.

I think the public opinion is that games are for (teenage) boys. At least it used to be like that. Of course it's easy to think so when you look at the games today. When you see a game or advertisement with a women with huge tits and very little clothes on, it gives us a pretty good hint to whom the games are made/advertised to. Well not all games are like that, but big part of them is. And why is that? Because sex sells. There's no denying that. I can't walk on the street without seeing ads with good looking women on them. But it works. My head turns nicely when I walk past them. I like women, can't help it.

I wouldn't mind playing with her.

So it seems like games are for boys, but don't believe everything you see. Today's generation has grown up with games surrounding them, so they see more easily what's the deal with games. And this includes girls. I understand if my mom says that games are for little boys. Only thing she knows about games is a tv commercial about Gran Turismo. Well that and solitaire she plays occasionally. That was my mom and she's is 60, then lets move to my girlfriend who is 19. She used to play games just like me when she was little. Mario and Tekken were great she says. She also played WoW few years back. Well today she doesn't play that much anymore, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't like games. I bought all the available Crash Bandicoots from PSN and she played them all through. She also tried Flow (game where you control the character by moving and turning the controller and not by pushing any buttons) but didn't like it. "Only suckers play games like this. I want my good old pad with buttons" she said. Words of a true gamer. :p

That's only one person I know, but if we look at the game industry as a whole we can easily see how the girls are taken into account more and more. They even have a word for it, social gaming. Ever heard of it? Popcap Games ordered a survey about social gaming and guess what, the majority of those gamers are women (55% - 45%). If you look only Facebook the gap grows even bigger (69% - 31%). So the girls in fact do like to play games. They just play them on Facebook, at least for now. One interesting point from Popcap's survey (this includes boys too, but girls being the majority of those gamers it still gives us some direction):

• When asked to choose as many reasons as they wanted for playing social games from a lengthy list, social gamers cited "fun and excitement" as the most popular motivation (53%). Stress relief (45%) and "competitive spirit" (43%) were next most popular respectively, followed by "mental workout" (32%) and "connect with others" (24%).

Those most popular reasons look familiar. At least for me they are the reasons I play games (although some games cause more stress than relieve it). "Competitive spirit" is also one big reason for all online gamers, whether they play CoD or FIFA or whatever.

Maybe this is why girls don't play with consoles...

So the reasons to play are pretty much the same but games differ. I believe this is because it's so easy for girls to play Farmville or whatever on Facebook. I'm pretty sure they would like "real" games just as much if they only had the chance to try. These "real" games have so many different genres that there surely is something for everyone. For example games like Little Big Planet, Sims, ModNation Racers and Viva Pinata are great if you want to show someone that there are also other games than the GTAs and CoDs. And I'm not stating here that those two are bad, just that they are so well known already. Also Guitar Heros and Singstars etc are easy to approach.

So, games and girls, do they mix? I'd say yes. Girls like to play but they just play the games that are available to them and most of those games happen to be on Facebook or somewhere else on the internet. If we want to get them on the couch to play with us we need more social games for consoles or the current games and consoles with different kind of marketing strategy.