FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION

A Few Generalities

Having warned you not to treat men and women as polar opposites, this section offers a small number of generalities about how male and female play patterns tend to differ among Western men and women (the only group for which much research exists). These observations may not apply to women in Japan, China, Korea, or India—all important new markets for games.

■ Men and women like to learn differently. Women generally like to know what they will be expected to do before they have to do it rather than be thrown into the deep end to sink or swim. Unfortunately, this makes most arcade games unat­tractive to women because arcade games make their money from the player's ignorance.

■ Men and women have different attitudes toward risk. Women are more likely to avoid risks that they cannot compute. Men are more willing to experiment even if it means losing frequently.

■ Women are more interested in people than things and like to socialize as part of their play experience. This explains why online games are more successful than single-player games among female players: Online games allow the players to socialize.

■ Men and women have different conflict resolution styles. Women prefer that violence have a justification; fighting for its own sake is of little interest to them. They are not opposed to violence per se, but they like the violence to be given a context, such as a story. Women also like to use lateral thinking to find alternatives to brute-force approaches.

■ Women enjoy mental challenges and finding elegant solutions to problems.

This accounts for the popularity of puzzle games among women.

■ Women like to customize their avatars. Men often treat their avatar characters as puppets rather than people, someone simply to be controlled for the sake of win­ning the game. Women tend to identify with their avatars more. A woman uses the

avatar as a means of self-expression and likes to be able to make the avatar look like herself or a fantasy version of herself.

Again, remember that these are generalities. Although they don't describe every woman, you should be aware of them.

Do not try to design a “women's game” simply by creating features that address these generalities. Rather, design an intrinsically interesting game and bear these issues in mind as you consider the effect that your design decisions will have on your potential customer base.