Man, fuck this.
“Targetting women from the get go” by doing what? Women hate patronising. Just make games not be sexist. Options to customise the character and treat each sex as equal.
I know plenty of women that love games like Witcher or elder scrolls. MMOs got huge population of women. Hell, even fallout is very popular.
Why? Because they weren’t trying to “target women” they just weren’t shitty about them.
Make good game, people will come, people, not men or women. This is bad message to send.
(And yeah, game is cool)
I have been hearing about this game and I think it’s worth celebrating because:
A) It was made as a labor of love, spearheaded by a dev who wanted his wife with health issues to be able to make dresses again
B) it was made on a shoestring budget by a small team of devs (non-corpo)
C) It is staunchly anti-AI in its assets and code
D) Its assets are hand drawn with original music composed for the gameHonestly the fact that its geared towards women is one of the less interesting things about it. I’m so happy for them and wish them every success.
The problem has never been that women don’t like games, it is that men have made women feel unwelcome in many ways in gaming culture.
As a guy, other guys acting misogynistic infuriates me. The label incel is also very cringe, almost as cringe as the incels themselves. It is alright to be single okay? Its actually fucking awesome sometimes. Furthermore, some people are not meant for relationships. And guys blaming all women for some unspecified grievance when they themselves won’t look three seconds at themselves and their behavior, or somehow deludes themselves into thinking “supermodels should be throwing themselves at me the second I climb out of my basement, and if they don’t, it’s obviously because of trans/LGBTQ/woke and I just need to double down on being s toxic piece of shit. That surely will make me attractive!”. /rant
The real lesson here is make a good game and people will play it.
I’m so happy the game is doing well. It’s been delightful but I am the absolute core audience for it. Felt very good! I wish there were a few more pigeon commissions though.
I love that fact that the devs of Broforce and Gorn made this game.
There is a whole industry for women’s games. Good +15 years ago I was part of external / independent teams that developed games for them. (They were not that successful hits but still)
It is just not as evident as steam or any other game store: Bigfish Games
Now they are just starting to realize that, there are women on Steam.
But don’t forget all the big cozy hits that are “surprising” hits: Stardew, Portia/Sandrock. Casual games are thriving as they should!I recently played a demo for a game called Greenhearth Necromancer that was definitely made to be geared more towards women. It’s about you moving into your grandma’s old apartment after she dies and using your witch powers to bring dead plants back to life.
Sounds delightful! :)
I don’t like games specifically made for males or females. Because a game should not made with the gender in mind, but focus on gameplay and telling stories. Is there study where certain type of games are attracted more by males or females?
I don’t think games should be designed to be exclusionary towards a particular gender, but not every story or setting is going to universally appeal to everyone. I don’t have any particular studies handy, but I feel like it’s pretty intuitive to assume a game about designing a type of clothing that is traditionally associated with women is, in general, going to appeal more to women than men.
There will be exceptions to that, of course - I’m sure there are some men out there that play and enjoy Dressmaker, but designing a game about dressmaking with the intent of appealing to women isn’t necessarily exclusionary, it’s just knowing your audience. I’m not even sure how you’d design such a game in a way that is equally appealing to both women and men, honestly.
Dressmaker for men would be high fashion - weird geometric shapes and shit. More “interesting” and less “looks good”
Dressmaker for men is just Dressmaker.
You say that as if gender biases don’t exist or that stories and gameplay should not cater to them. The most played games by women and men are very different and there’s other games that both play equally. FPS is mostly men and life sim/puzzle is women. Knowing this difference, designers should absolutely build for their user base’s preferences.
All games are available for women and there’s a ton that women play. We’re long past the age of games by and for men only but since this narrative still gains traction, I guess we’re stuck hearing it.
