Is gaming a guy thing? Statistics say no, but Vancouver-based dev Silicon Sisters Interactive reckons the industry is still pushing out games made for male audiences, because it doesn’t get what women want.
“I think there are different levels to what you can offer,” co-founder Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch tells GamesIndustry.biz. “What we’ve seen is a fairly superficial offering where, in the absence of truly understanding what women want in terms of game mechanics and connection, what we’re getting is a female wrapper around a game that’s really designed for men.”
“It took 30 years to really perfect the three things that males seem to really love, which are shooting, and driving, and sports. And those are absolutely kick-ass games now, and you really have to sit back and go, “What is the equivalent for girls? And please God, don’t let it take us 30 years to get to as high a quality level as that,” adds other co-founder, Kristen Forbes.
“It’s not particularly difficult to make games for someone other than yourself, and it was so much fun to evolve with that industry. It was so new, and not conservative, and not set in its ways, and there was so much still to discover and improvements still to be made. It was a fantastic industry [to work in] in that regard, and then it was us sitting down and going, ‘so, it’s not shooting and driving and sports for us, so what is it? What’s that incredibly cool mechanic that gives us the same thrill?’”
Well, what indeed? Perhaps somewhat tragically, the company’s first release, the iOS title School 26, is a game targeted at 12-16 year old girls, featuring gameplay based on empathy, peer pressure, and high school life.
Which suggests that, maybe, Silicon Sisters doesn’t know what women want either.
I quite like a bit of chocolate from time to time, though.
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