FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
Designing to Rppeal to Particular Groups
In the concept stage of game design, you must choose a target audience for your game, and throughout development you must keep that audience in mind. This appendix briefly addresses some design considerations you should take into account if you want to appeal to three groups long underserved by the game industry: adult women, children generally, and girls specifically. We also briefly discuss accessibility issues for players with disabilities of various kinds, as well as resources for further research. If you plan to design with these groups in mind, it pays to give extra thought to, and do extra research on, their needs and interests.
But what if the player is female?
—Sheri Graner Ray, Gender Inclusive Game Design
Women represent a gigantic portion of the gamer market. Audience research shows that in the United States, more adult women (34 percent) than teenage boys (18 percent) play video games, a statistic that may surprise you (Entertainment Software Association, 2009).
Men and women don't differ nearly as much as various works of pop psychology would like us to believe. Few individuals conform completely to traditional stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, and men's and women's interests overlap considerably. In Gender Blending, Holly Devor (Devor, 1989) quoted studies showing that as many as 50 percent of heterosexual women identified themselves as having been tomboys as children. Unfortunately, far too many game designers (and product designers in general) treat men and women as entirely different species with little in common.
