
Last night I was disturbed, when I was sitting down getting ready to watch the women's NCAA Basketball championship and my friend kept asking me why I wanted to watch. I told him it was because in all collegiate sports it's about the pride, and winning for the honor of your school and not you next 10 million dollar contract. Not all those women were going to the pros, and it was that moment that would define their life forever, so dedicating 2 hours in honor of all their hardwork to watch them entertain me is the least I could do.
After his constant complaints we stopped watching with 4 minutes left in the first half and put in the Constant Gardener (which is a great movie by the way). However when looking for the Yankees score, highlights were up on ESPN, considering Duke was up by 14 when we put in the movie, and the highlights consisted of Duke's wins, and a Duke player was at the podium talking I assumed they had thrashed the Maryland Turtles much like the Florida Gators did UCLA the previous night in the Men's championship. My friend screamed, "oh my god they lost! They lost by 3!" This is why you watch, Maryland sent it into overtime and won the game by 3 points and I missed it for a movie I could have watched any time. I missed possibly the best basketball played in the last 2 weeks for a movie.
But Kyle what does this have to do with videogames?!?
Quite simply why is it that men don't want to watch women's basketball, is it simply because in a genre (sports) which is driven mainly by male competitiveness that keeps the majority of male viewers from wanting to watch women's sports. Because they can't relate to them being that they are women and fantasizing about playing on a professional women's team is a socially unacceptable thought. How can we as game designers expect the majority of women to participate and play videogames if we can’t meet them halfway and find something compelling for them to play. Think about it, in another activity dominated mostly by males (videogames) how are we as designers going to engage the female market. Thumbbandits.com makes it clear that there are female gamers out there that will play just about any videogame. But think about how many more female gamers we could get if we actually tailored to their demands. No I’m not talking about insulting them and introducing Barbie Rally which was a recent April Fools joke done with Microsoft’s own J. Allard’s gamercard. *Update* Now I remember where I was going with this! Why not in NCAA College Hoops 2k6 or NCAA March Madness 06 why don't they include the females. You wouldn't have to change the name of the game, you would just have to add a new character model type...females. You know similar to the cheerleaders in the game only...six feet tall and more athletic. This couldn't hurt sales of the game, and it shows that you're willing to embrace female sports and female gamers without having to risk the failure of a WNBA game. If EA can waste their money come up with a budget for Arena Football I'm sure the WNBA will have their own sometime soon. Last nights game demonstrated the sport could be exciting even when played by women *gasp*. So why not embrace the opposite sex, and welcome them into NCAA College Hoops 2k6 with Marrissa Coleman (pictured above) eventually gracing the cover of the game.
To all the future male game designers out there, you have to start considering the female gamer, and to broaden our user base have to take into consideration that there is an equally large audience ready for the taking. The only way we can do this is by concentrating on their wants and needs and taking that chance that they may want to play games *ehem* Nintendo *cough* Nintendogs is definitely a start, and most DS games can easily be enjoyed by both sexes. No doubt the Nintendo Revolution is going to follow the footsteps the DS laid down. So to end my rant congrats to the Maryland Terrapins, and hopefully Sony and Microsoft can embrace the female game market aswell. |