It’s not uncommon today to walk into a local retailer and find girls playing with the demo model of a Wii while their moms look over the nearby shelves of DS games. This hasn’t always been the case. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago—fewer than 15 years actually—when the mantra in the game industry was “girls don’t play games.” Although there were one or two small attempts at producing games for girls in the early 1990s, they went largely unnoticed as the industry focused squarely at their traditional market; males aged 12–18.

Although the industry could back their claim that girls didn’t play computer games with numbers that seemed to support it, no one really bothered to ask the question of “why?” They were quite happy to leave it as a mystery of the female gender and continue producing titles that fed the male market’s growing appetite for digital entertainment.

Then, in 1996, Mattel released Barbie Fashion Designer (Digital Domain, 1996). This little title in its pretty pink box became a juggernaut that racked up more than $500,000 in sales in its first three months. Unlike other “blockbuster” titles of the time, Barbie Fashion Designer continued to sell well for the rest of the year and the following year as well. This unprecedented success got the attention of game industry executives everywhere.

They saw the girls’ market as an untapped audience just waiting for games. Although there were some developers who attempted to produce girls’ games that were alternatives to Barbie, most publishers pushed their development teams to produce titles “just like Barbie” and soon boxes in varying shades of pastels filled the shelves.

Unfortunately it quickly became quite clear that these numbers wouldn’t hold out for every game marketed in a pink box. The girls’ games that weren’t Barbie didn’t sell near the numbers Barbie herself did. As the sales dropped, the quality of production dropped. This resulted in dissatisfied customers, which, in turn, resulted in lower sales. Pretty soon it became apparent that only Barbie could be Barbie and the interest in developing “girls’ games” dropped off almost completely.

So, although Barbie had the unique ability to convince an industry that girls do, in fact, play games, it also had the dubious honor of becoming the model for what the game industry thought all females wanted in games. In other words, the industry redefined an entire market of women into a single genre of “fashion shopping and makeup for girls ages 6–10.” What this led to was the industry returning to the original belief that “girls don’t play computer games” and following this up with production of more games targeting the male market exclusively.

However, the game industry continued to grow and by the 2000s it was closing in on numbers rivaling the Hollywood movie industry. By this time, publishers had grown quite large and quite a bit more commercial. They took a look at their audience and realized that it was still, after 15 years, primarily male ages 15–25. They understood that if they wanted to continue to grow at the rate they had been growing, they were going to have to expand their markets. In the mean time, girls had discovered IM chat, cell phones, MySpace, and other digital entertainment sources, so it was quite clear that they were technically savvy. The question became how could publishers reach that market without resorting to “pink” games? Was it possible to design games that reached a broad, inclusive market?

When a potential female customer goes to purchase a game, she is faced with a rack of game boxes that are aimed at selling the game to the players the publishers see as their core market—white males ages 15–25. Unfortunately to reach this market, game industry marketing people continue to use images of exaggerated female characters: female characters dressed in armored bikinis, wielding improbable weapons above impossibly sized breasts. These exaggerated female figures are certainly not going to attract any female players. In fact, they will serve as just the opposite. They serve to tell the female customer that this game is not intended for her. Should the female customer get past the character art on the screen and into the game, she will likely be faced with female character choices that are strikingly similar to those represented on the cover: little to no clothing, exaggerated body proportions, and sexualized postures.

But many people will argue that male characters in games and in advertising are just as exaggerated as female characters and male customers aren’t offended. They may go so far as to state they believe girls are just “too sensitive” and should “just get over it.”

In some ways those people are right, but in many ways they are wrong.

An avatar is a representation of the user in the virtual environment. When players select something to represent themselves, they want that character to be a hero. In our culture today we expect our heroes to have certain characteristics. We expect them to be young, strong, and virile/fertile. To us, that’s what a hero is. The way we know a person has these traits is through physical manifestation. The human body has distinct characteristics which indicate youth, strength, and virility/fertility.

For the male physique, youth, strength, and virility manifest in several traits. A young, virile male will have the traditional “V” shape with his shoulders broader than his hips, accented by a slender waist. His hair will be long and thick. Strength is indicated by large arms and legs and broad shoulders.

For the female physique, youth, strength, and fertility manifest in physical traits as well. A young, fertile female will have well-developed breasts which are high on her chest. She will have a slender waist and long, thick hair. Strength will be represented by a well-rounded derriere and well-developed legs.

So in order to draw attention to the heroic characteristics of the characters within a game, the game industry will exaggerate these “heroic” traits. Male characters will have exceptionally large shoulders and improbably huge arms. Females will have exceptionally large breasts placed nearly under their chins and hair that looks like a shampoo commercial as it swirls elegantly around her even in the middle of battle. These things are equally exaggerated on both genders because they say, “I am a hero.”

But with the female characters, there is something else that is also exaggerated.

On the female characters there will also be an exaggeration of those physical signals that indicate sexual arousal and sexual receptivity. In other words, on the female characters, it is not only the heroic traits that are exaggerated but also those traits that say, “I’m ready for sex right now.”

What are those traits? Any “Introduction to Human Sexuality 101” course teaches that the human body has several physical manifestations that indicate when we are sexually aroused and receptive.

When the human body is ready for sex, there is a blood rush to the face that causes the face to flush. This blood rush causes the lip tissue to engorge making the lips appear fuller and redder. It also causes a similar effect with the eyelid tissues, causing the eyelids to appear thicker and heavier, thus resulting in the look that is often referred to as “bedroom eyes.” Respiration increases as sexual excitement increases, often causing people to breathe through their mouths. At this time the person’s nipples will also become erect.

In female characters, not only are the “heroic” traits exaggerated, but these traits that show sexual arousal are also exaggerated. Female characters are pictured with a flushed face, half-closed eyes, erect nipples, and large red lips on an open mouth. Then she is dressed in a manner to emphasize and draw attention to these traits and she is posed in a sexually “receptive” posture such as standing with an arched back. And all of these traits are not just present, but they are present and exaggerated just as the heroic traits are exaggerated. These female characters are hyper-sexualized.

The most interesting point of all this is, the male body exhibits the exact same traits when ready for sex—the nipples, the lips, the eyes, the face flush. However, these traits are never present on male game characters, let alone exaggerated! And, of course, for the male body there is one additional indicator of sexual arousal as well—the erect phallus—and that is certainly something that would never be depicted in a game character!

So, essentially the game industry says to the female customers, “Here, girls, you get to be represented by this character who’s ready for sex all the time” and yet they would never think of doing that to its male characters. In fact, if someone suggested to an industry marketing team that they put a male character indicating sexual arousal on a box cover they would think that person was insane. They would know an image like that would not help game sales and would probably actually hurt sales. Just consider how likely it would be for the average male gamer to pick up a copy of World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004) if it prominently featured a male stripper on the cover or in the Internet ad or in the in-game images during the download.

So, although the industry knows that putting a sexualized male character on the box cover would certainly be a barrier to its traditional customers, such companies do not hesitate to put hyper-sexualized females on the cover and in the advertising art. Yet they do not understand how this can keep a potential female customer from picking up the box. And she certainly can’t buy it if she won’t pick it up!

Why is this different from typical women’s magazines? Those magazines are full of images of sexualized women. The difference is this. When a woman reads one of those magazines and looks at those sexualized women, she thinks “Wow... if I use that perfume... I can look just like her, when I want to!” In other words, she can look like that at her choice. She has options and has control over her sexuality.

Does this mean that the game industry should only use unattractive female figures? The answer is definitely no. Remember, the players want to be heroes. They want to be young, strong, and virile/fertile. This does not mean unattractive. It is possible to produce art of young, strong, attractive female characters without exaggerating the physical traits of sexual arousal. By removing this barrier, it becomes much more likely that the potential female customer will actually pick up the box—the first step to purchasing the title.

Once the female player has actually purchased the title, there comes the problem of how to teach her to play it. Traditionally the main learning styles are considered to be:

There are other learning styles that are often mentioned in discussions of learning styles including solo, logical, and others, but visual, aural, and kinesthetic are the main three.

The learning styles define how a person learns, but there is another important aspect: the manner in which a person is most comfortable learning. These learning acquisition styles can be directly applied to how they learn technology, including how they learn to play games. The two learning acquisition styles are explorative or “risk taking” and modeling or “imitative.”

Explorative or “risk taking” learning is an experiential style of acquiring learning. The explorative learner explores every option available and takes risks to learn. They are the ones who push every button and flip every lever. They are aggressive in their learning and may make mistakes while they attempt to acquire the knowledge. For a perfect example of explorative learning in action, simply take a typical 13-year-old boy to a video arcade and hand him a token. He will rush to the first machine that attracts his attention, throw his token in, and begin to beat on the controls while hollering “How does this work?” He will make mistakes, “lose the game,” throw another token in, and try it again.

In contrast, modeling or “imitative” learners want to know how something works before they try it. They want a demonstration of what actions they will be expected to perform and what will happen when they do it. They want to understand the risks and repercussions of an action before they perform it.

An example of a modeling learner is the sister of the 13-year-old boy in the arcade. While her brother is pushing buttons and flipping levers trying to figure out how the game works, she is standing behind him, watching him play. She will likely stand there for a while, and then walk from machine to machine, stopping to watch the attract loops of each machine. The reason she is watching is she is trying to figure out how it works and how to play it before she drops her token in. But attract loops aren’t designed to show the player how to play. They are designed to attract a player to the game with sounds, flashing lights, and exciting action. So after a while the boy’s sister wanders away with her token still in her pocket—not because she is afraid or uninterested or unwilling to play, but because her learning acquisition needs were not met.

So explorative learning is predominantly experiential and involves taking risks to learn. Imitative learning is predictive and involves wanting to know what is going to happen before the new activity is tried [Gottfried86]. The most interesting thing about these two learning acquisition styles is they also tend to break along gender lines. Explorative learning is predominantly male and imitative learning is predominantly female.

Note

It is important to note that, although each learning style mentioned here has a predominant population of one gender or another, they are not exclusive to that gender. Everything is a bell curve and there are certainly a number of male imitative learners and female explorative learners.

One of the consequences of imitative learning is that explorative learners will become frustrated when trying to get such learners to play a game. Often this means a male will attempt to get his wife or girlfriend to play but will expect her to also be explorative. Such an explorative learner will often get frustrated when she isn’t willing to just jump right in and play, but would rather just watch him play.

People will often misconstrue this hesitancy as fear. How many times has a male gamer, in frustration, said, “I can’t get my (mom/wife/girlfriend) to play because she’s just afraid of the computer!” However, upon closer examination, although she may even describe herself as “afraid,” what she actually may be is an imitative learner who simply is extremely uncomfortable being forced to learn in an explorative style.

Interestingly enough, this applies to technology even beyond games. Recently an IT supervisor who worked in a bank was tasked with teaching the tellers a new piece of accounting software. When the class broke for lunch the instructor returned to the IT department completely exhausted and frustrated. “Those women,” she complained. “They are so stupid! They just do not want to learn anything new! They’re afraid!”

A coworker overheard this and asked her how she was teaching the software. “Well,” she said, “I explain how a basic functionality works and then I assign them a task that uses that functionality.” The coworker, being aware of the different learning acquisition styles said, “Ah, well, maybe you should try a different approach. Try showing them a specific function on the overhead. Then have them try that particular functionality on their machines. Take the tasks one step at a time and let them imitate what you do on their machines. Don’t move on to the next step until they are comfortable with the first step.” The IT supervisor agreed to try it and returned to the class after the break.

At the end of the day the IT supervisor came back to the IT department. “Well,” asked the coworker, “how did it go?” “It was amazing,” said the supervisor. “It was like I was teaching a different class! They got it!” At that point the coworker explained the difference between explorative learning, which was how the IT supervisor preferred to learn, and imitative learning, which was how the students preferred to learn. By simply adapting the program to take into account modeling learning, the process of implementing the new accounting software went smoothly and much quicker than if the IT supervisor had continued to try to force the women to learn in a way that wasn’t comfortable for them.

To understand how this applies to games, you only need to think back to the tutorial in your favorite game. Most developers expect the players to be explorative learners and design the tutorials accordingly. Typically a tutorial consists of a very brief explanation of the game after which the player is dropped either directly into the actual game or into a “safe” tutorial area. Either way, they are expected to explore to learn the details of how the game works.

If the player is not an explorative learner, this type of tutorial can be uncomfortable if not down-right intimidating. If the game isn’t comfortable to learn, it is likely the player will choose not to learn it. If they don’t learn it, they won’t play it, and another customer is lost.

Because the imitative learning style is predominantly female, and the tutorials in the games are predominantly explorative, it stands to reason that it would not be a comfortable game for the potential female players to learn. Thus, actually learning to play the game is a barrier to the female audience.

Developers can overcome this barrier by paying attention to how the tutorial is constructed and making sure modeling learning is considered in the construction.

This is not as difficult as it might sound. There are several educational software products out there today that specifically target the imitative learning style. To do this they take each step of the subject and break it down into small steps that users can repeat as they wish. In other words, the software will give a demonstration of what is to be done and what the results of that action will be. For instance, it may show a mouse cursor move to a menu bar, click on a button to get a drop-down menu, and then select an item from the drop-down menu. It will then give the users an opportunity to try the same set of actions. The users may try these activities several times over until they are comfortable with the activity—meaning they understand the risks and the outcome—and then they can choose to move on to the next lesson.

Often when explorative learners are faced with this type of learning, they call it “boring” and dismiss it as “too simplistic.” They will protest that they would “go crazy” if they had to try to learn something this way. This then clearly points out that as imitative learners are not comfortable learning in an explorative manner, explorative learners are not comfortable learning in imitative ways either. This simply draws more attention to the fact that both learning styles need to be accommodated when the developer wants to attract a diverse audience.

There are developers who believe that, although modeling learning styles are fine for productivity software such as accounting packages or word processing packages, they have no place in game tutorials because they require the designer to “break the fourth wall.” This means they require the designer to address the users directly and not through the “world” of the game. The characters in the game would ostensibly have no knowledge of the keymapping for the game and would have no reason to be explaining “WASD for movement” or “R for autorun.” Designers often feel that this diminishes the game and breaks the world fiction. If they are pushed to address it, they often simply provide large blocks of text explaining the technical aspects of the game that can be easily dismissed with one click. This is not an acceptable way to address modeling learning, or explorative learning for that matter.

Although “breaking the fourth wall” may not be comfortable for the developers, it is important to realize that the imitative learner will never even get to the game if they are not comfortable learning it. So if the developers intend to attract and maintain a larger female audience, they must address the imitative learning style.

There are a number of ways to do this both within and outside of the game environment. The modeling learning can be addressed in a separate tutorial before entering the game world. This way, imitative learners would be comfortable with the mechanics of the game before they are asked to immerse themselves within the game. Another method would be to provide a tutorial within the game but that utilizes different screens and art so that it appears to float “above” the game world and thus keeps the learning of the mechanics apart from the game world. If the developers are intent upon keeping the player within the game world at all times, a “guide” character within the world can address the player and explain the mechanics. However the developers choose to address it, it must be addressed if they intend to attract and keep a diverse audience.

Ultimately, the first steps in attracting and maintaining gender diversity in a game audience lie in the very first encounters potential female gamers have with a game. The representation of the female characters on the box cover and in the advertising art can either encourage her to pick up the game or cause her to pass it by without a second look.

Once she has the game in her hands, how she is taught to play the game can dictate whether she ever actually plays it and whether she enjoys learning it. By paying attention to these first two crucial steps, developers can substantially increase their odds of attracting the gender diversity that will help ensure their title’s success—without even coming close to putting their game in a pink box!