The girls talk about developing their own characters and in-depth character backgrounds for playing games and how some want to be tomboys, about how games for girls are usually pretty, about how if you were an adventurous girl you’d probably find girls’ games sissy, about how busy they are playing sports, about how school clubs can take up a lot of their lives and be overwhelming, about how they feel they can only have fun in their time off and on vacation, and about how their social interactions with friends and siblings can be frustrating and sad. How this suddenly translates to a simple storyline based entirely around social interactions at school with very little user input is really beyond me; at best it seems to ignore what the girls were saying and at worst go completely against it. And this is the sample of recordings she actually chose to back up her conclusions?

Does the little girl who talks about her school sporting activities making her feel so busy really want a game set at school to fill the rest of her time? Does the little girl who sadly recounts how her friends are being mean to her really want a game where she has to struggle to gain the acceptance of friends at a new school? Will the little girls who talk about creating their own characters with detailed backgrounds and stories really be satisfied by such a simple level of user interaction?

Going by what is said on this video she appears to have asked girls to tell her about their lives, and then when they’ve told her about their lives her conclusion is that they wanted simple games about everyday life. I must have missed something here because I always assumed that little boys’ lives were pretty similar to girls’ on a lot of levels: going to school, making friends, running around the playground, playing make-believe, making a mess, playing sports and going to clubs. So what is it that little boys will tell you when you ask them about the important things happening in their lives that means the video games marketed to them are filled with fantasy and war and monsters and battles and adventure?

Or maybe I’m just the wrong flavour of feminist who doesn’t love girls enough. Who knew.

As adults, we don’t enjoy being treated as exotic animals because of the fact that we play games or even worse, being harassed about it.

I think its quite simple.

Examples:
Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider series. Big hit with the female gamer audience. I know women from their teens to their forties who love this.

“American McGee’s Alice” Alice of “Alice in Wonderland” armed with a butcher’s knife. This game had such a huge following among my friends in high school.

Blizzard is also awesome about involving a female audience. The Diablo series includes a lot of kick ass females and the majority of people I know who play World of Warcraft are female as well.

These games don’t “cater” to the female view in the idea that they have to “fem” everything up, they simply display a world where the female view is equally included and acceptable.

Laurel thinks she being funny at the end but the truth is “Rockett’s Armageddon” would almost assuredly sell better than all the other “Rockett” titles combined because girls would like it better.