I found an interesting view on girl gamers. Brandy Lynn Stredder claims that video games are enforcing stereotypical assumptions about women and are targeted at girls rather than adult women gamers. She actually suggests marketing games more age- and gender-neutral instead of putting people into certain categories and she argues that key to this is creating engaging narratives. The article seems to be from around 2001 and I wonder if this ageism and sexism is still as prevalent in today’s gaming industry.

I love this post by Alice. Funny how sophisticated women who used to love pink would not been seen dead using a pink bit of kit. The recent research I did highlighted how only 9% of British women actually want a gadget that looks feminine. Women want technology to be beautiful, sleek and sophisticated. I’d like to see the new silver DS lite although still think the PSP in piano black is gorgeous. There’s so many opportunities for tech companies to deliver the kinds of technology women actually want to buy. As I have said before, pinking up is dumbing down.

Although not directly related to Lady Geek, people might find the article Still too few women (FT, 22 October 2007) on gender in management education and the article Developing world cracks glass ceiling (The Guardian, 15 October 2007) on gender stereotypes across the world of interest.

“I hate the games shops as much as his Xbox. The boys make me feel stupid. All I want to find him something new he’ll enjoy, not made to feel dumb.” Frustrated Mum, trying to find a gift for her son, aged 8

Recently I’ve been thinking about this Christmas and the number of women responsible for buying the presents for the whole family.

If my own family is typical, I will be responsible for the tree, decorations, in-law relations and presents for th whole family. The Christmas shopping is perhaps the most tedious of the festive-chores, a task which strains even my super-human powers of empathy. The overwhelming majority of my friends feel the same way: One friend agreed that she would rather have her teeth drilled than experience the bustling pandemonium of suburban Xmas retail!

What should be a delightful magical experience is to Jingle Hell. I share the frustration of the brave gifters who try to engage the acne-faced teenage game-store assistants. The only thing worse than their appearance is the quality of advice they give:

Most women who are not gamers themselves have no idea how to shop for games. They have no way of knowing what is cool, a fact that the producers of games readily exploit. This accounts for the extrordinary popularity of games based on film and cartoon licenses (e.g. Bratz, Spiderman and Harry Potter).

These games are chosen not because of critical acclaim or any knowledge of the game’s content. it’s more a case of basic brand-recognition and desperation. After spending more than five minutes amongst shelves of almost identically packaged plastic boxes a typical mom will grab at the first recognizable brand she see.

It’s no surprise that the game-gifting experience causes anxiety, frustration and the sense that we have grown apart from our Children’s generation both technologically and culturally. The end results are usually disapointing. The gifters leave with pangs of doubt about their choice. These are made worse by the frenzied manner in which kids will enthusiastically rip into their brand new games before apparantly loosing interest the moment they open their next present. Could there be a retail experience less satisfying?

We are told that the new breed of consoles have brought the gaming experience to the masses, however spend a moment in a game shop and you will certainly agree that nothing much has changed. Around this time of year the stores are full of glum-faced women trying to figure out just what their kids are likely to enjoy. The hype about mass-market gaming is making mums feel even more dumb.

I’ve noticed that all shoppers seek refuge in comfort zones. This means we tend to go into shops we know and feel comfortable in. Women who find comfort in spacious, tactile department stores often do not understand the language of the game-store boxes: The fact that the art on the game-boxes often bares little resemblance to the game only adds to the confusion when you cannot remember which console your child actually owns.

The end result is lost-sales as mothers will drift back towards the safe areas. Perhaps, she thinks, I can buy little Harvey something else this year. This is how game-retail is failing the games industry.

The answer that some pundits suggest is to abandon retail entirely: To shift the games-buying experience entirely online. But this is not a solution for many women. The Internet is great if you know what game you want if you don’t it can be even more daunting than browsing the shelves.

I think the solution is much simpler and requires a less radical shift in the way retail works. Games retailers need to recognize a few simple facts about the way women like to learn about the products before buying.

For example – around this time of year many lingerie stores employ male assistants in order guide male shoppers through the complexities of buying female underwear. Why can’t games and tech retailers provide a similar experience to help the mums? All I’m asking for is a little bit of empathy from the sales-people and designers of games-retail.

I saw this Panasonic ad in one of the Sunday mags. It’s not that it’s a bad ad (and actually the overall thought of Ideas for Life is a great one) ; it’s just that it misses an opportunity to tap into the female mindset and how women buy technology. It’s talking about one of the things that is going to appeal to women: a well designed, small high definition video camera. But the masculine and literal way it talks about ‘power’ and all the technical detail of advanced optical image stabalisation fails to appeal to me.

When I bought my camera after my first son was born; all I thought about was I wanted to capture his first steps. That was it. I had no brand or model, let alone spec in mind, which is according to our latest research, how half of UK women shop. I just wanted something that was going to be light so I could put it in my bag (yes I am sorry if that sounds naff but its true), easy to use (so I didn’t have to keep asking my husband to use it) but most importantly started to keep records of my son that I could embarrass him with when he was eighteen (yes I am wicked).

There are so many ways that technology companies could capture the imagination of women. Tech companies need to get women to dream about how technology enhances their family life. But so often tech brands just keep falling into the same old traps and stereotypes of talking about power and spec and forget who in 80% of households, controls the technology purse strings: Women.

Here is an interesting article on the constructeness of gender differences we often take for granted. It looks at all the myths about gender and language and why much of it does not stand up to scrutiny.

I can highly recommend the book.

There are now more self-help books in print than cookbooks. The majority of self-help books are bought and read by women in their millions. Rightly or wrongly, all promise the same thing – to make you happier; improve your marriage, your parenting, your homemaking skills, your finances, your figure, your attitude etc.. This inspired me to think about what motivates women and what games manufacturers could learn from this. I am a casual gamer just getting into gaming. I am reflective of a group of women in their late twenties or early thirties haven’t necessarily grown up with gaming but are openly interested in what gaming has to offer. Brain Training has sold more than four million copies worldwide and tapped into 2 key insights. Firstly that women want games they can ‘snack’ on in between putting the kids to bed, doing the shopping online etc. But most importantly, women’s need to self improve and explore new areas in order to ‘better themselves.’ This appeases their guilt of self indulging. Men and women are wired differently. For men, the games that appeal are ones that are competitive, with stats and clear objectives. For women, its much more about learning new skills and socialization.

Each night I am on my DS lite trying new games and whilst they intrigue me on the ‘cutability’ factor (MySims, Amimal Crossing, Wii play), none of them really make me feel rewarded in that way of ‘I’ve achieved something.’ If you are asking working women with children to give up their time, time that could be devoted to getting the shopping, making the dinner…, you need to make them feel they are improving themselves and not give them a reason to feel guilty. A great example is when a new game “Beginners Wine DS” offering advice on wine tasting and learning a new skill with this year’s Beaujolais. Unfortunately its only available in Japan but this feels like an a step in the right direction. Games that can make me feel rewarded. Games that make me feel I have learnt something. Games that intrigue and engage me and make me want to keep going back for more…

From research we know that engineers and designers tend to use themselves as the ideal for which they create new technologies. That means that we often end up with technology that is designed by engineers and with engineers in mind. While a small proportion of technically-versed men (and women) might find this technology easy to use, most people probably won’t. My research on gender and technology has shown that women prefer to use technology that is intuitive to use and does not require you to study the manual for hours. In fact, many men would prefer this as well.

Creating technology that is more intuitive to use is an important step in making technology more accessible to all. While the graphical user interface and the mouse as input device was popularised in the 1990s, not much has changed since then. Until recently. Apple’s new iPhone and iPod touch use a multi-touch technology to make the technology more intuitive to navigate. And what could be more intuitive than using your fingers. Last week I attended a presentation by Steve Ballmer, Microsofts’ CEO. He presented a new piece of technology which included a multi-touch screen similar to the one of the iPhone. The Microsoft Surface is a table PC that is operated by touch alone. It syncs with other devices such as mobile phone and digital cameras through simply putting them on the surface. These new touch technologies make it more intuitive to operate technology. In fact they provide tools to integrate technology much more into everyday life. Then technology is no longer designed for engineers by engineers but by engineers for people.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070530-what-lurks-below-microsofts-surface-a-qa-with-microsoft.html

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/iphone-review.ars

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/The-iPod-meets-the-iPhone-a-review-of-the-iPod-touch.ars

I’d agree  that in general the longer the debate ranges the less relevant the whole BluRay vs HD DVD debate will seem to the average consumer, particularly women, who now are equal to men for the majority of tech and gaming purchases.

There are already devices like a Tivo that allow consumers to just pick the videos they want to watch and then download them in realtime which have mass appeal to women. Owning a disk might apeal to the sort of people who like to ‘collect’ stuff, but for most women, having a simple experience on demand will probably win out – as long as it’s priced reasonably.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft are already experimenting with movie distribution – they’ve been pushing out movies to XBox Live subscribers. It works pretty well.  Economist, Sept 6th 2007