This week, there was a lot of discussion on Female Games and what that means. We read from Shira Chess’ “Ready Player Two” where in the Playing With Identity Chapter, it defined what a Female Game really consists of. It was said that games that are “low risk,” and more forgiving are more appealing to the female audience. Games like FarmVille and Words with Friends were called out specifically as being Female games since they are more social games.

What I want to focus more on however is what was mentioned on page 39 of the book. “We have a problem where the game industry does not see women as a market. They see women as a genre.” By viewing women as a genre, this makes any game that is released for women, the same typical social game that is defined as a “Female Game.” For men however, they are viewed as a market. Games are built to target a market but there are plenty of games that have the ability to target that specific market. When women are viewed as a genre, the games released for women typically fall under the “women genre” of video games. This limits the different variety of games that would be released for women as well as it groups all women into the same target audience. For the market place for men, there are more child appropriate games like “Cars” for younger boys and more mature games like “Grand Theft Auto” for older men. However, for female games, they all fall under the same category. The are all social, low risk, low consequence games.

I want to relate this to the ever so popular game “Animal Crossing: New Horizons.” This game falls perfectly under the guidelines for a female game. It’s social, no chance for failure, low risk and the worst that can happen to you would be an attack from a wild tarantula that forces you to Re-spawn. People who play this game varies from kids, to women of all ages, to men as well. This game seems to fall under the Female Category but who it exactly targets is hard to tell. Since these female game target such a large pool of people, you can never really tell who its real target audience is. However for a game like “Grand Theft Auto” you can tell immediately it is for a more mature male audience. Speaking of audience, why is it that when Men play a “female game” like Animal Crossing, they are not questioned about it but when a female plays a typical male targeted game, they are told that they don’t belong?