The Sims is now the largest PC game franchise in history and has attained this notoriety through one crucial element: the female gamer. I did a Google search for “female gamers and The Sims” and most of the sites I came across emphasized that women are one of the biggest reasons why The Sims became such a high-selling game. An article in the New Zealand Herald said it best: “Wright has done what many have tried and almost all have failed to do. He's crossed the boundaries of video game appeal and given female gamers something to get excited about, while still keeping the average 15- to 24-year-old male player happy” (view article). This is a trend that Wright is continuing with Spore.
When Wright compares Spore with The Sims, he usually refers to the creative aspects and possibility for artistic expression in referring to why his games draw a female audience. In a game like The Sims, there’s no shooting, strategy, or general skill involved in playing the game. It’s a virtual sandbox where you can create characters and have them interact with other characters. This makes the game very approachable to pretty much anyone. When you play Spore, you can clearly see that Wright has definitely made it a point to continue the theme of customization and creativity. It seems like women who wouldn't normally be interested in video games might find this a bit more entertaining. Spore is quite a bit different from The Sims though, because a big part of the game is having strategy and skills to get through each level. Because Spore has the ability to lure in that female crowd with the simulation element that was present in The Sims, perhaps this will give women the chance to get some new experience with the strategy game genre. It's interesting to think about how Spore has been accepted by women since its release. Looking at the sales figures of Spore since its debut in early September, it's been in the top two spots for top-selling PC games until just the other week when it dropped to number four. This shows that the response by the gaming community is definitely high and I would venture a guess that a good percentage of that crowd is made up of women who had a good experience with The Sims.
My only problem with this whole discussion is that there's now a sort of stereotype that goes with the female gamer. Because there's been such a dramatic response by women with the release of The Sims and Spore, it seems to portray this demographic as one that is only interested in more "feminine" games that don't require much action or skill. It seems like the design team for Spore had similar ideas. In one of my many readings about Spore, I came across an article on GameSpy.com where one of the game designers was talking about the design process of Spore and mentioned that as long as you put big eyes on anything, "the little girls squeal" (view article). It's sad, but across the board it's pretty true. I wanted to dispel this stereotype by pulling up a website about women and video games. I was sure that there would be discussions about how women are just as willing to play FPSs and MMORPGs as men. So, I went to the first site that came up, which was WomenGamers.com. When I looked under the Games tab to see what kind of games they were promoting, I felt a little sad inside. The stereotype was raging on this site with featured games such as Cooking Dash, Sally's Spa, Chuzzle Deluxe, and Magic Encyclopedia. I checked out the About Us page and saw that the point of the website was to cater to the interests and needs of women gamers. I can see that they're trying to get women interested in games, but I just couldn't get past the stereotypes. As a woman who enjoys playing FPSs with friends and many other games on my computer, it just made me a little disappointed to see that the women of this website thought that these would be the only games interesting to women. I suppose I can't argue with the sales figures for these games though. It's true that some women will never develop a liking for traditional "masculine" games. It's good that The Sims and Spore are at least paving the way for women to get into games that are also widely accepted by men. As I said earlier, hopefully Spore will serve to get even more women interested in the strategy genre as well as simulation.
No comments:
Post a Comment