There's been a bit of back on forth on the subject of females and gaming this last week as a number of blogs tackled it from various directions.
One of the more interesting posts I came across is this one from Greg at the Synapse Design Blog. The reason it's interesting is that it's based upon some work in differences in how males and females approach games and for me that's just plain an interesting subject.
And besides, the author didn't come across as the typical crusading "this hobby treats girls badly and needs to change!" fanatic in his blog, but as someone a bit more reasonable- i.e. a designer who wants to match a design to a need.
So, Greg is going to run with this. Naturally my first thought is "is that a valid thing to do?"
That question raised two others. Let's look at them.
1. Is the core idea (i.e. Carol Gilligan's assertions) valid?
Oddly enought the Psyhology Today link didn't source its references other than dropping some names. Searching online I came up with this article about Carol Gilligan's work.
That short overview I linked above certainly has it's issues. How does "Women... consider hurting another immoral at all costs" fit in with real world behavior that includes what I'd call massive psych-warfare intended to reduce its target to emotional mush. Watching groups of girls at High School will quickly reveal that there are other motives that most certainly include 'hurting another'. Nor does my gaming experience with females indicate avoiding inflecting injury as a high level goal, they tend to be if anything even more dangerous than the male players IMO.
I think those granted the title 'feminist' often carry a mindset with too much baggage to be completely honest. Negitives tend to be downplayed to say the least.
Now that overview may have simplified things too much. And like all such things, individuals are always individuals and thus rules are made to broken. I'm not going to dig deeper into it unless I have a reason or time. But color me doubtful on the details while agreeing that there are (from ten thousand feet) differences.
However for the sake of debate, let's accept that the differences are those noted by Greg as reason for his direction in design. Everything starts as a leap of faith, and he has chosen this one as his.
2. Plan Meet Need, does this direction in game design make sense?
Here was my first thought on reading Greg's post: So, boys like rules and obey them while girls play socially and will adjust or ignore the rules to meet social goals...
...and Greg's response is to design a game with lots of social and interaction rules...
...that boys will follow and girls will adjust or ignore.
So in design, Greg is thinking like a boy and designing like a boy to meet his view of the needs of girls who will do basically what they want anyway.
Now that's rather harsh, but it's how it came across to me. And it's what my own experience indicates.
Still, I'm rather interested in what the result will be, maybe Greg has hit on something and it is possible to design to the female mindset. I'm all for letting him try. There's something to be learned either way.
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When my wife sits down to game, her main interests are:
1. Kicking ass
2. Cool settings that fire the imagination
3. Kicking ass
4. Interacting with interesting NPCs
5. Kicking ass
Now, maybe she's not the average female, but a lot of the female gamers I've known have enjoyed kicking ass -- in one way or another.
Just sayin'.
Sorry if this double posts, I got a weird failure message.
My reply is up on my blog. ;)
Dr-Rotwang Your experience matches mine, in both table top and the online worlds
Greg: Now I don't know if I should answer here or with another blog post.
I will say this much...
In my blog, I wasn't so much responding directly to your design goals, as I was responding to the article you linked- which was very much about male and female interaction with rules and had nothing to do really with killing. I feel you're inserting that concept, at least given the quote from PT you linked to.
That said, I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion, and the outcome will still follow the pattern I'd expect if the PT article's viewpoint is correct.
It is my experience, really, that there is no difference between Male and Female players. There is a difference in Gender Culture at times, but even then, it's hardly a universal thing. Those that tend to tout that there *is* a difference usually are coming from a biased gender culture to begin with.
The question isn't "How do we get female to play a roleplaying game?". That's stupid because there are many already doing it. The whole Vampire LARP scene is dominated by them. The question I suspect is being asked, instead, is "How do I get a female to roleplay a game with me?", and THAT has nothing to do with system, but personal dynamics.
kensanoni: I think your first statement is rather foolish and is more driven by wishes of the PC crowd than anything.
Everyday experience and much modern research indicates that there are indeed differences.
You note this even in your objection, "The whole Vampire LARP scene is dominated by them" is clearly not an example of little difference. Why Vampire LARP and not GURPS table top? Why Lord of the Rings Online and not EVE Online?
You're last statement about personal dynamics however is much better and I would agree that it's likely not a issue of rules or system.
There is certainly a difference between how guys play and girls play and I think that a lot of the insights we're seeing are correct and very valid, however like you I think the conclusions being jumped to aren't quite the right ones.
My admittedly limited experiences witnessing girls as gamers indicates they like a few things, anything with a social aspect attracts them, from Farmville to larp. Next while guys like complex systems to manipulate and compete with, girls seems to prefer simple systems.
Here's a thought. When guy's compete for dominance they usually do so to establish a pecking order. Once that order is established they don't really compete constantly to re-establish anything, they just move on with the set as it is. Girls on the other hand seem to grapple constantly for the upper-hand even when dominance is clearly established.
What does this mean? I don't know. However I think there's a correlation between this and the women I know being able to continue playing Farmville for months and months and months long after the guys have gotten bored of it, also why we see various games used to frame the social interactions rather than the game simply being played by multiple people. It's a slight but very apparent distinction as illustrated by the Grand Theft Auto example.
I think understanding the reasons behind these items would help game designers bring out better RPGs for everyone. Hopefully some of the girl gamers can clarify things a bit better because I certainly don't think that the answer is "more social rules".
a humerous commentary was written about this in the mid 90s
http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/acksep97.html
From the article Clovis linked-
"In fact, you could probably predict what sorts of RPGs will come out next year by going to a male strip club and looking at the costumes."
This strikes me as a highly successful business model.
"The chicks will seek-out encounters on their own. "Excuse me, Mr. Orc? Can you tell us if this is the way to the Dark Forest?" Mind you, they aren't going to the Dark Forest for anything in particular, they're just going to see what they can find there."
This is hilarious to me because of all the sandbox-style games that are popular now. Back in the 90s, this paragraph was humorous because it was something that no one would do in an RPG. (I assume. I was learning how to read and add single-digit numbers during the early 90s.) These days, if your game system can't support that, you're a railroading troglodyte.
Maybe that's the problem. Maybe people should just design good, innovative games, and girls will play them.
But what do I know? I'm just a girl .
Swordgleam: having been gaming from almost 'day one of the rpg', I can answer how the orc encounter would have been handled in the 90s and before.
It would have been handled by role-play between the players and the GM with a outcome suitable to the campaign at hand.
More modern games take things to various degrees out of the hands of the players and GM and moves it to system. But I'm no fan of such methods.
I think that game preference can change too. Myself for example, I have game books coming out of my ears. There's not enough room on the shelves to even store them all so they're sometimes just stacked haphazardly around the house. I have spent a ton of time working on the minutiae of character design from a powergaming standpoint, how I can make myself most badass or combine stuff in interesting ways etc. Now though I want less of that stuff. Just less overall. Less rules, less restrictions. I want more freedoms and I want to be able to make whatever character I have conceptually in mind without running into system problems in which I have to change my idea for the sake of the architecture of the game. No more diplomacy skill or persuasion. Just roleplay. The whole sandbox OSR crowd made me realize something has been missing from the games I play. I want to kick ass and do unpredictable things and roleplay without the rules getting in the way.
Is that the way girls play? *shrugs* I dunno.
I don't think the hobby treats us badly, just some of the goobers in it and it's often not even intentional they just don't know any better.
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