Where are the female gamers?

I just got in trouble for asking whether females might like this game, see below

http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=158556&page=12

But yeah, there aren't too many here on TA, too bad. I too would be curious to know what kind of games females like, and by that I don't mean stereotyping them as just liking games like cut the rope and angry birds.

 

60% of mobile gamers are females according to a research done by umm...I actually forgot the name of the group but it was on LinkedIn. My girlfriend plays on my iPad whenever she visits me and I've seen MMO gamers who are girls. The way girls acts toward games in comparison to guys can be different but yea, both genders like to play games.

 

I think EEDAR were the ones who did the analysis. I found it here: http://www.vg247.com/2012/10/03/nearly-60-of-mobile-gamers-are-women-says-analyst/ but can't find the raw source for you though.

 

Watching the trailer for your game bores me and you contradict yourself...

So....ZERO women have viewed what? The trailer? Majority of the time, youre trailer won't be viewed by many people. Users find out about games via the iTunes apple store or by watching somebody else play a game. Both genders like playing cool and exciting games but you will rarely find people watching a youtube trailer for an iOS game.

 

I ran Flurry on my first game BubbleSand - 60% of players are women, and located in China

 

I'm a female gamer. I don't think you can say that all females like a certain type of game, in the same way that not all males like the same type of game. If this was the case the app store would be a very boring place.

(Sorry if I shouldn't be posting in here as I'm not a developer but just wanted to help with my female point of view)

 

Don't be, any info in here is used to help developers, and if you're wanting to help by all means

Not all women think alike, nor all men. But there are trends.

To the OP:

How many women beta tested your game?
It could very well be a case of too small a sample size.

How many women have you tested your trailer on? Did you do any?
This could be the key, don't assume because they loved the game they'd love the trailer.

Nothing about the green/yellow puzzle screen I see as the default image of the trailer screams 'accessibility'. To me, it screams 'Default Windows 3.1' game. Like Hearts or Minesweeper. I don't even want to start the trailer.

Find a part of your app that's more colorful and friendly. Or - if there is none - add colors and friendliness to your app.

 

Always glad to be of help

 

To answer your question, from my limited experience.

If you mean "women" as opposed to "girls", they're all sat on the sofa half watching tv and half playing facebook games on their laptop or tablet.

That's a horrible generalisation, but I'm pretty sure it has a lot of truth behind it. My wife is doing that very same thing now, and presumably so are all her friends based on how much typing she's doing every night.

One place women are not, is here. It would amaze me if over 5% of the membership of any gamer related site is female over 25 or so.

Here's a more important stat though, pulled out of arse but it gives the right flavour. Do you know how many iOS game downloaders visit toucharcade as a percentage? No, neither do I, but it must be somewhere around 0.01%

The only way to reach everyone with an iPhone, unless you have a prime time TV advertising budget, is to get one person to tell another. A lot.

 

Well, I'm a woman, and I'm not sure that's obvious to others here. I'm pretty sure Youtube doesn't know I'm female. Maybe your Youtube stats are skewed because families generally share an account, and generally a bloke sets it up?

My four daughters and I buy and play lots of apps. But I think generally we find them in different places to guys. I read The Mary Sue before I read Touch Arcade, and I very rarely watch game trailers. If I like the look of a game I just download it.

And in my experience as a developer, trailer views relate more to piracy than sales

 

To be honest, generalizing women as own segment might bring some troubles; by identifying them as something else from yourself has created already a bunch of awful girly games.

I think the basic problem with people playing casual games is that they don't identify themselves as gamers and therefore have no interest to follow the game media. That's why they are wildly scattered audience to identify, the same way as "female gamers" in this thread's context. I guess the women more into core games are already organized in the game community or have their own places for these things for time to time.

The only thing that differs to marketing things for men and women is the way they recommend things to each others; women actually listen recommendations from a trusted source and are eager to recommend good things further. Social games hit the soft spot on this one, thought overusing it in their game mechanics isn't pretty from player's point-of-view.

One issue, I think that do matter a bit, is the graphics. Or more of, the colors. I guess people will be able to play even most blatant and dull graphics, if the color combination is somehow attracting. I think many games have been ruined by overlooking the colors, because they have such a huge impact in overall design.

 

Well, I posted in one game thread that I thought it had a masculine feel to it and it was somewhat hard and repetitive type game, that I kind of wondered aloud if females would like it or not.

I said some games like Modern Combat or Nova seem more designed for young males, not that it means all females.

But one female took objection to it, saying that in this day and age, there are females that are doctors, politicians, etc etc etc, which kind of was unrelated to my post, just wanted to see if females would like that particular game or not.

And while I know some females would consider it discrimination to say remarks that females might prefer games like Facebook games, angry birds, cut the rope, or move the box; I know, my female friends, a lot of them play Angry Birds. My male friends? hardly any.

I know one game Fire Busters that came out this week was designed to cater towards girls, so there must be trends in what girls like. But doing so, and not sounding like a male chauvist is hard.

Anyway, I having a feeling that women have a trend to like social games, cute games, games with a little easier difficulty, puzzle games, and specialty games like Barbie which guys would never play.

But it is just trends, and I really don't want to be in a flamewar with all the female gamers on this board because they are the more hardcore type of gamers who would like some of these so called male oriented games.

Even that sounds kind of bad when I reread it. Sigh...

 

I generally ignore people who start harping on like that, and that's on any subject. They almost always completely miss the point in favour of pushing their political agenda.

Best thing to do is not get baited in. As you can see, I don't do political correctness. There's a massive difference between generalising to make a wider point and being a racist/sexist/whateverist, and if others can't see that difference then it's not for me to explain it.

Someone will take exception to that, and that's fine.

 

dupe

 

Well, I posted some humour in response to her retort to my post, read below:

Me Caveman, Me like warm cave, making fire, eating buffalo and bison. But me strong, me like strong cavewomen with strong hips, me no good with people, so sit in cave, but like ipad, it fun, me thinks. But no, me no own shovel, but I do favor, I put down ipad, and think. But thinking so hard, fall asleep.

I could introduce her to you if you like, j/k.

It would be interesting if there was some stats to see for real what the exact percentage was for some games, especially for games like Angry Birds, Farmville, or even your game. It must differ a lot based on what kind category it is.

War Games, I would figure to be predominatly male, sports probably too. I once thought side scrolling shooters would be enjoyable to female players, but none of my female friends like Cave like shooters, why I got no idea.

But I ask my female friends what games they have, yeah, alot of Facebook type games, Angry Birds, Cut the Rope etc.

I still wonder why girls don't like space shooters. I guess it's kind of a niche thing, just like FPS being more male dominated.

 

I really am stereptyping now, but I think hormones are basically it.

Men like aggression, bragging about high scores, exploring strange new worlds, going boldy where no-one has gone before. Women are more about socialising, team work, and games they can play with only half their attention so they can do something else at the same time.

 

Hehe, you said it not me

 

Yeah, maybe that should be "people with high levels of testosterone" versus "people with high levels of aestrogen"

 

Its a shame that this is such a touchy subject. I would love to know more about marketing games to women. There is very little info on how to market a game where women are your primary audience, or whether that is viable or not. Which means no one is likely to, which means there are very few women-centric games, which means fewer women play games.