Why I Want to Make Games For Girls: A Rantifesto Part 3

Disclaimerz: The rant here is based on personal experience with gamers and non gamers. Also, I'm very obviously not a writer; I prefer using an informal, colloquial voice in my work. If you disagree with anything said here or have a suggestion, please read this post before responding. Let's start a dialogue--I want to learn from you and hear your side! 

You can read Part 2 in all its horrifying glory here 

 

Part 3: What a Girl Wants, What a Girl Needs

In the past two parts of my rantifesto, I wrote about the reasons more girls need to be involved in games, and why popular culture is still preventing that from happening on a large scale. But this last entry is probably the one I’d rather you read, if you read any at all (especially if you’re a game developer!). I’ve thought a lot about what games for girls absolutely need the most and have rooted it down to three key attributes devs have yet to address. If this is a topic that interests you and you’re making games for girls, consider whether or not you’re hitting these marks, and if not, what the reason for that is.

1.       Girls don’t see relatable/interesting problems, issues, or concerns in their games

Admittedly, this is a slight cheat, as the concerns to which I am referring don’t necessarily have to be ‘for girls’, although they are most often attributed to what girls in this society have been raised to concern themselves with. Either way, cute boys, BFFs, familia, fashion, shopping, are largely absent from our games in ways that interest girls. Maybe a lot of developers see it as a disgusting cliché or a joke. But this is what lots of people actually think about daily—I don’t think it’s shallow at all—at the heart of each is a self vs societal tug of war girls go through trying to grasp their own identity in a world that doesn’t take them seriously.

 How do I express my emotions to people? Who can I trust? Where do I come from? How do I make my outward appearance reflect how I identify myself? What do I like to do in my free time? There’s so much juiciness here that any game could pick one and run with it for a mile. And!!! before you go claiming that this stuff is super complicated and hard to address in a game, I don’t believe a game has to be complex to play with them and present them in a way that feels relatable to girls. It could be a thematic or cosmetic use, it could be part of a deep narrative you’ve intertwined with the gameplay, it could even be a single element you’ve abstracted and turned into a mechanic. I know any good game designer worth his salt can do this for girls, god knows they’ve been doing it for decades for boys. Hey! That’s my girlfriend Bowser just stole! Hey! That’s my hometown the evil emperor is threatening! Hey! That’s my skill that my rival just challenged! You see what I’m talking about?

2.       Girls don’t see characters like themselves

First, a little extension of the first point; there are lots of issues that both boys and girls share, but only the boys get to have the issues addressed because they are the ones being represented in games.

Here’s something I thought about that kind of blew my mind a while ago when I realized it, and I believe it’s part of the reason, despite the supposed “advances” the game industry is having towards female representation, that more girls aren’t gaming. It’s the fact that all so-called progressive female characters I’ve seen don’t look or act anything like a normal girl. They’re a little too badass to be real sometimes—have you noticed that, too? I mean, it’s really cool that gamers have the option of playing a powerful woman, but I feel like her character is a cheap type of wish-fullfilment to female gamers who are already accustomed to the behaviors of the idealized male game character (who is also problematic in a lot of ways, again, a topic for another time). In the end I often struggle to see anything but an aesthetic difference.

But boys have a one up from the rest of us, because there are plenty of other games with characters that they can relate to. Young men who are coming of age and finding their place in the world, making friends and learning life lessons. Average joes who were just minding their own business when extraordinary circumstances were thrust upon them, calling them to become someone better than themselves. As a matter of fact, these types of characters populate some of the most iconic games we know of, because gamers grew up with these franchises, their lives were shaped by playing as these characters. Red and Blue from Pokémon, Link in most incarnations of the Zelda franchise, Freeman in Half life, Chrono from Chrono Trigger (actually just, like, every main character from early JRPGS), The Earthbound Krew, Little Mac from Punchout, Threepwood from Monkey Island. The dude riding his bike like a maniac in Paperboy(did he even have a name?) The list goes on. I put it to you to name five playable female characters in games today who start out as regular people (or at least regular in the context of their game’s world, such as a villager in a fantasy game). I genuinely cannot think of one. I have been trying to for about a week now to include in this article.

Girls need characters like this way more than they need some jaded, emotionless, but very cool-looking ass-kicker. The games mentioned above taught boys a very important lesson as players; all of their characters came from unremarkable beginnings. They had no skills to speak of, nothing special that set them apart from anyone else—but they became heroes because the game told them they could. Simply by virtue of being a player, by being a boy, they could achieve greatness. There is no equivalent of this principle for girls in games today. So all of the women they play as are distant and unrelatable—they started the game already awesome, unusual, already special; they have nothing in common with the person playing them.

I think instead of empowering girls like they’re supposed to, these “strong female characters” reinforce that sense some female gamers have that being a gamer means setting yourself apart from other girls. That playing games is only for a select, special, badass few. I’m sure anyone can tell you that kind of attitude is super no es bueno for games’ growth as a medium.

3.       Girls don’t feel validated for playing games made for them

This point is one which I think keeps a lot of games that could be excellent for our purposes from working—games today that are targeted towards girls go out of their way to claim how distinct they are from a “hardcore” title. If you want to make a game for girls, you need to stop marketing it using labels like “casual, easy, relaxing, simple, leisurely” and so forth (Ugh, actually just please never use a game’s difficulty level to market your game—protip, a game’s “hardness” has almost nothing to do with its capacity for fun, and if that’s not what you care about when you’re designing a game, you’re doing it wrong!). Instead, show girls how fun the game is. Assure them from the moment that they start playing that this game was made with them in mind, let them learn the mechanics, and then tell them that they are going to be challenged. Not just by “casual” standards, either; your game should have final levels that are tough for any kind of player, that force them to use everything that they’ve learned so far. That’s just good game design, anyway—my point is, you have no reason to go easy on girl players.

If you can teach them your game correctly and reward girls appropriately for succeeding, they will play the game. They’ve already been doing this tons of times on their mobile and browser games! I can’t get past 20 pipes on flappy bird, but my best friend who isn’t a gamer has upwards of 300. My Threes high score is 1200, and my mother, who isn’t a gamer, got 3333 on her second playthrough! My friend’s little sister can Tetris like a pro. I played the entire campaign of Protect Me Knight on hard with a group of girls who’d never touched an Xbox in their life before. The best LoL player I know spends most of her time painting nails and hanging out with her boyfriend. But nobody is telling these girls that they are actually good players. Nobody is validating their hard work.

So no matter how brilliant your game is and no matter how many girls you get to play it, you absolutely will get nowhere unless you make it clear that their achievements are just as good as any other gamer’s. You need to make it clear that yours is not the only type of game they could enjoy; that by being good at your game they could be good at any other game. Don’t baby the player or hold their hand more than you need to; treat them like a competent person. Expect greatness from your girls, and by god, they’ll be great.

I hope in reading this you’ve realized that we’ve got a long ways to go. As for me, seeing as this is kind of a manifesto, the above bulletpoints are guidelines for which I will try to make as many of my games as possible follow. I want to share this message with other developers and encourage them, regardless of their own gender, to make a game that takes them into account, too. After all, my desire for the inclusion of more girls in the game playing/developing scene will absofreakinlutely benefit everyone, but it can only happen with a proactive effort from the whole community. I probably can’t do it alone, unless I become super famous, which believe me, I am doing my best to make happen! Insert evil laugh here!

But hey, maybe you don’t feel qualified enough to do this for girls specifically. Maybe you don’t think you’re as acquainted with girls as much as I am, or you fear that your game might not do your message justice. I think that’s totally okay—but I still hold you, as a developer, responsible for roping in some kind of person who feels underrepresented in games—we also need inclusiveness on many other fronts. Swap out “girl” in the above three points for the culture or group of your preference; they probably still hold up as good guidelines.

In conclusion: I challenge you today to develop a game that wriggles its way through the "angry white neckbeard gamer" stereotypes, punts aside the media discouraging new players, walks straight up to somebody who felt they were ‘never really what you might call a gamer or anything’ and puts a finger on their lips. Then it holds them tight, kisses them passionately while fireworks go off in the distance. After coming up for air, it looks them in the eyes and says “I AM A REAL TRU-2-LIFE, LIFE SIZE VIDEO GAME. AND I WAS MADE JUST FOR YOU!”

When I’ve passed away and am survived only by my games, I want to be remembered as someone who made a positive difference with my work. Sure, she didn’t really save the world, folks will say, but she did make it slightly more enjoyable for us. I like that idea; makes me feel like my life can have meaning.