As I wait for my copy of Avalon Code to arrive in the mail, I'm thinking in the back of my mind about how my wife wants to play it when I'm done. I was sort of surprised to hear that, but then again, despite being married for 10 years and having known her even longer, I still can't predict with any sort of reliability what games she's going to like.
I've decided to try to stop guessing. Instead, she flips through the Nintendo Power as it arrives, tries out demos on the Nintendo Channel, and will just occasionally pop up with a "hey, I want to try this." I have no hope of predicting it—how could I ever have guessed that she'd be more into Ninjatown, chasing down all those A rankings, than I was?—so I just roll with it.
The industry was trying to guess for a long time, too; the untapped hordes of female gamers were highly sought-after, but rarely reached. Nintendo finally won them over by realizing that the secret wasn't being overtly "female", but just making games that could connect with everyone. I think the secret was trying to say not "how can we make a female game", but "why aren't women playing our games"? Now I'm being pushed by one woman-friend who became a recent Wii addict to join in with a bunch of friends in weekly Mario Kart meetups online, and we're all having so much fun that Excitebots is likely next. A few years back, most of these same women would only consider games for kids, and now they're into it themselves with a passion I never expected.
The take-away point: women are people too, with just as wide and varied taste as any man. Expanding the gaming audience to include them isn't a matter of pandering to their sex; it's a matter of making sure that you're making experiences that can be enjoyed by everyone. And I think that attitude of inclusion—not annexing—is what is driving Nintendo's success on this front.
The industry was trying to guess for a long time, too; the untapped hordes of female gamers were highly sought-after, but rarely reached. Nintendo finally won them over by realizing that the secret wasn't being overtly "female", but just making games that could connect with everyone. I think the secret was trying to say not "how can we make a female game", but "why aren't women playing our games"? Now I'm being pushed by one woman-friend who became a recent Wii addict to join in with a bunch of friends in weekly Mario Kart meetups online, and we're all having so much fun that Excitebots is likely next. A few years back, most of these same women would only consider games for kids, and now they're into it themselves with a passion I never expected.
The take-away point: women are people too, with just as wide and varied taste as any man. Expanding the gaming audience to include them isn't a matter of pandering to their sex; it's a matter of making sure that you're making experiences that can be enjoyed by everyone. And I think that attitude of inclusion—not annexing—is what is driving Nintendo's success on this front.