Girl Gamers: Less Than What You Think

Girl gamers are definitely not many, but they do require different needs than male gamers. 

EA’s chief operating officer David Gardner has figured out that girls + gaming = money; that is, if you can get the girls to stick around long enough, says BBC News. EA’s research shows that only 40% of teenage girls play games, as opposed to 90% of teenage boys, and that girls tend to lose interest in games within a year. Gardner theorized that if EA could figure out how to keep those females gaming, it “could add a billion dollars” to EA’s coffers.So, what’s the problem? Gardner figures that girls don’t game because the content aimed at their gender simply doesn’t appeal to them. “They don’t want ‘pink games,’” he said, “They are not trying to play girly game where Paris Hilton and Britney Spears go shopping and put make-up on.” (Actually, Dave, the Britney Spears game was more of a Dance Dance Revolution clone than a cosmetics sim, but we get your point.)

EA’s own The Sims does gangbusters with the fairer sex (70% of Sims players are women under 25, actually), but one franchise is not enough, a fact of which Gardner is likely most acutely aware.

In an effort to create content that female gamers will find more appealing, four of EA’s eleven studios around the world are run by women. “That’s an important start,” he said. It’s a sad state of affairs when a company is celebrating the fact that less than half of its available creative leader roles are held by women, but at least it’s a move in the right direction.

http://wii.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153011

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