New Video Games for Young Girls

[Atari]

Ubi Soft and Disney are widening the options for young girls with a few new (rather girly) titles. Yahoo! has the story.

Most video games are about destruction; guys love "Halo 3" because it's fun to blow stuff up. But the Entertainment Software Association says 38 percent of video-game players are female, and most of the industry doesn't know — or care — what they want.

[icewall]

Yeesh, those games sound somewhat awful. Most of the content sounds like "girl sanitized" versions of other games. I think this stuff is dreamed up in the minds of clueless marketing people that just see a marketing demographic and strategize how to make a game more "girly."

[Pocket]

The first game does sound an awful lot like Kingdom Hearts with magic wands...

Considering that all children that age ever get are half-hearted, formulaic attempts by marketing people, though, I don't really think any of these titles are that bad. Maybe some of them will even get people into games that wouldn't otherwise bother, especially the branded ones like Disney and Hanna Montana? If anything, I was a little weirded out by the title "Animal Doctor". It seems needlessly condescending. Children know the word veterinarian, or at least vet, right?

[Atari]

Considering my 3 year old soaks up new terms like there is no tomorrow, I have to agree that it's a little awkward that they are reverting to "kid speak" for the word "veterinarian." Sure there are a lot of syllables but it's not THAT hard of a word for a gaming-age kid.

[Karelina]

I just don't understand the train of thought.

Step #1. "The Sims and Guitar Hero are probably the two best selling games with women of all time!!!!! Far exceeding anything we ever expected among women gamers!!!!"
Step #2. ???
Step #3. "That means girls want more hyper girly games! Let's release another Barbie Super Princess Adventure type Game!!!!! Hanna Montana and Disney Princesses will sell great!!!!! Despite the past 340-something similar games which were complete and utter failure!!!!!"

Okay what am I missing? What goes into step two in this broken thought process of theirs come to fruitation?

[booger]

We've got enough developers here, we should put together a game with every friggin' cliche' we can think of. But the object of the game is to kill and maim all the cute unicorns and hypersexualized barbie doll robots. Unicorn blood is nutritious, y'know. And tasty too.

[Karelina]

We've got enough developers here, we should put together a game with every friggin' cliche' we can think of. But the object of the game is to kill and maim all the cute unicorns and hypersexualized barbie doll robots. Unicorn blood is nutritious, y'know. And tasty too.

Eh, I'm a soon to be developer myself. Going to college to be a game developer. And I refuse to work on a Barbie game.

... Ten Points says that they have never once consulted an actual woman on the creation of most of these "Pink = GOOD!" video-games.

[Atari]

Well, girly games are hardly a failure. Barbie games did put the young girl gamer market on the map. After all, parents trusted the Barbie brand and "Barbie" girls ate it up. Heck, my niece would probably eat it up too. Stick a pink sparkley anything in front of her and she goes nuts.

That said, a lot of companies that tried to mimic Barbie's success with super pink titles did fail as they did not have the strong name-brand recognition behind them. Disney certainly doesn't look like they are making that mistake with their upcoming titles.

Footnote: During various speaking engagements with middle school groups, I've spoken to a number of girls that love the Barbie games. There IS a market for it, and IMO there is nothing wrong with having choices for that market. It just needs to be understood that the "Barbie" girl doesn't represent all girls (it certainly never represented me).

[Gizka]

Eh, I'm a soon to be developer myself. Going to college to be a game developer. And I refuse to work on a Barbie game.

Then we could shake hands, I guess - the exact same here.

[Karelina]

Eh, I'm a soon to be developer myself. Going to college to be a game developer. And I refuse to work on a Barbie game.

Then we could shake hands, I guess - the exact same here.

Perhaps, where you going to school at? I'm heading to a semi-well known college in Washington, perhaps you've heard of DigiPen?

[Gizka]

I definitely have, but I'm studying in Holland for now. Who knows, I'm offered to go to college in the US in one or two years. When that day comes, I'll be sure to sign in right away.

[Bellemorda]

We've got enough developers here, we should put together a game with every friggin' cliche' we can think of. But the object of the game is to kill and maim all the cute unicorns and hypersexualized barbie doll robots. Unicorn blood is nutritious, y'know. And tasty too.

Funny you should mention that, boog. thanks to copious draughts of unicorn blood and practiced killing of hypersexualized barbie doll robots, I'm the bloodthirsty, ruthless rogue I am today.

[november 17th]

We've got enough developers here, we should put together a game with every friggin' cliche' we can think of. But the object of the game is to kill and maim all the cute unicorns and hypersexualized barbie doll robots. Unicorn blood is nutritious, y'know. And tasty too.

Funny you should mention that, boog. thanks to copious draughts of unicorn blood and practiced killing of hypersexualized barbie doll robots, I'm the bloodthirsty, ruthless rogue I am today.

Belle, if you were the president of a large and powerful country i'd be
afraid of you.

[Freestyler]

Paint it pink and sell it to all the girls.
Just hope none of them like to play Counterstrike! Unless you're selling pink gaming keyboards and mice.

[Atari]

*puts on her sunglasses to look at that keyboard*

My eyes!!!