by MAGNUS-8M » 14 Jan 2013 16:01
What do they want exactly? If they focus too much on the most feminine of activities, you wind up with a game that makes them feel stereotyped, and people would complain about how condescending it is. Do they just want role-reversal, such as having most games being like Super Princess Peach, or female-Shepherd in Mass Effect, or do they want a reskinned Contra with girls instead of guys?
I can understand that playing a game where all girls, both heroine and damsel-in-distress types, are busty scantily clad bimbos, and being offended by that. But I doubt they'd really be satisfied with games like Sewing Hero or Happy Cake Oven 2000, and it doesn't seem like simply reskinning a game with properly-dressed "grrls" who are saving bishounen Fabios in black slacks, no shirt, and black-bowtie detached-collars would actually do that much different than the original design. It'd be the same game, and it might even offend some of them as being sold a stereotype.
So.. seriously, what do they want? I'm not saying there's no alternative, but I mostly mean that this sounds more like they're inventing a very over-dramatized problem that will end up in the same fractal pattern they're saying they want to avoid in the first place. What's worse is that anything they do will become a comparison for what's available, and it'll be an obvious stereotype no matter what it is, and then they'll be offended by that.
Look, I dislike MLP:FiM myself, but even I know that it's a quote-unquote "show for little girls" that reaches across many audiences. And it's typically stated that it's because the show is so good... well, why not just make... I don't know, GOOD video games? Stop deciding to make things based on stereotypes and just make a good video game, right?
That's the thing, though. Gaming's serious business, and a large part of business is selling by stereotype, not selling by the art of making something good. Advertising that 'we need to make a good grrl-game' is basically saying they want to cover up a bad game with a gift wrap that will make their target audience feel good about their stereotyped likes and dislikes. You might get a few awesome games that transcend their target audience because they're just that good, but then you have the others that are mostly just a marketing tool. Just make a good game for any-gender and you should be fine.
If it was up to me, I'd just tell people to play one of the Harvest Moon games that allows you to choose a gender, but I know people still find fault even with that. You're never going to please any side, but because it's part of a business market, they're always going to try to anyway.
I admit I'm not a fan of games that cater more toward males (i.e. most-if-not-all shooters), but I'm not a fan of the games that are supposed to cater to women, either (things like Style Savvy, for example). I do tend to like things that have universal appeal, though, like Mario, Mega Man, Katamari, etc. I'd like to see more things in that spectrum.
