Categories
Game Development

Games For Girls And Other People

I ran across a couple of articles concerning making games for girls and other people who we don’t usually think of as playing games. On Cnet News there’s an interview with game developer Sheri Graner Ray who is currently the lead on content for Star Wars Galaxies. This is well worth a read because I think that she hits the problem of making games that appeal to women right on the head. Players, both male and female, want to be able to identify with the central character, that avatar has to be something they are comfortable with. By and large that leaves males with appropriately heroic character models, whereas women are stuck with models that look more ready for sex than slaying dragons! This I think explains what I consider to be one of Star Wars Galaxies best features, the ability to finely tune your character model. SWG is the only game I know of that gives such a high level of flexibility in character model creation.

The other article I read today was in the GamesIndustry.biz newsletter. It described the great risk that Nintendo is taking to reach groups of people that don’t normally play games. These are people well outside of the legions of hardcore players and the games they would play may not even appeal to the hardcore. Here’s an excerpt.

"Nintendo president Satoru Iwata makes no bones about what his company
is trying to accomplish. He wants to sell videogames to people who
don’t want to play videogames. He wants people who turn their noses up
at interactive entertainment to stand in line to buy new consoles. He
doesn’t just want to find new ways to entertain existing gamers – he
wants to show the rest of the world how much fun our medium can be as
well."

Iwata-san is taking a big risk when Nintendo is already being squeezed by Sony and Microsoft, but I think he is on to something. With the consolidation of so many smaller developers under a few large publishing companies, many fear that creativity is being squeezed out of the market in favor of safe games that appeal to the same established audience. But at the heart of most game developers lives a passionate artist for whom making yet another sequel to Gran Turismo or Grand Theft Auto just isn’t enough. Maybe Nintendo will become the new home to the dreamers and risk takers who will take the games industry to the next level while Sony and Microsoft duke it out in the past.

I ran across a couple of articles concerning making games for girls and other people who we don’t usually think of as playing games. On Cnet News there’s an interview with game developer Sheri Graner Ray who is currently the lead on content for Star Wars Galaxies. This is well worth a read because I think that she hits the problem of making games that appeal to women right on the head. Players, both male and female, want to be able to identify with the central character, that avatar has to be something they are comfortable with. By and large that leaves males with appropriately heroic character models, whereas women are stuck with models that look more ready for sex than slaying dragons! This I think explains what I consider to be one of Star Wars Galaxies best features, the ability to finely tune your character model. SWG is the only game I know of that gives such a high level of flexibility in character model creation.

The other article I read today was in the GamesIndustry.biz newsletter. It described the great risk that Nintendo is taking to reach groups of people that don’t normally play games. These are people well outside of the legions of hardcore players and the games they would play may not even appeal to the hardcore. Here’s an excerpt.

"Nintendo president Satoru Iwata makes no bones about what his company
is trying to accomplish. He wants to sell videogames to people who
don’t want to play videogames. He wants people who turn their noses up
at interactive entertainment to stand in line to buy new consoles. He
doesn’t just want to find new ways to entertain existing gamers – he
wants to show the rest of the world how much fun our medium can be as
well."

Iwata-san is taking a big risk when Nintendo is already being squeezed by Sony and Microsoft, but I think he is on to something. With the consolidation of so many smaller developers under a few large publishing companies, many fear that creativity is being squeezed out of the market in favor of safe games that appeal to the same established audience. But at the heart of most game developers lives a passionate artist for whom making yet another sequel to Gran Turismo or Grand Theft Auto just isn’t enough. Maybe Nintendo will become the new home to the dreamers and risk takers who will take the games industry to the next level while Sony and Microsoft duke it out in the past.