Do Men and Women Play the Same Games

[@Kross415]

I think it's really simple, some women like "men games" and some women like "women games" but what the industry is trying is to do is to change "men games" in order to appeal the women that like 'women games" or no games at all, failing men and women alike and getting no one interested.

[@michaelpettersson4919]

I got three sisters and they all play video games. Looking at what they play I would say one of them play games I suspect few men playing them. The other two however are not going to play candy crush games or farming "simulators".

[@Kross415]

@@michaelpettersson4919 It's pretty easy to see for people with gaming experience in my opinion. No matter how much you try to change a game like Battlefield or Space Marine 2 my gf is NEVER going to be interested in them and I'm never going to be interested in a Hello Kitty game 🤷‍♂entertainment doesn't need to be inclusive, it needs to cater to its audience.

[@michaelpettersson4919]

@@Kross415 Exactly. There is a difference and that is OK. Also, I suspect that attempts to feminise male dominated games will actually drive away the small minority of women playing those.

[@adrianocs4]

​@@michaelpettersson4919if you develop something for everyone you end up developing something to no one. Very rarely a product can cater to all publics.

[@masteroak9724]

A bit worse than that. They want gender neutered games focused towards the so called "non-binary" crowd that counts with even less numbers than women.

[@Sephvion]

The funny thing is, when they are trying to cater to these chicks, they are actually losing the original chick gamers who liked it prior to the changes.

[@Fireopal94]

@@Sephvion very true! I wish they'd leave it alone.

[@zaphael7238]

Thank you for pointing that out so many people forget about us chick gamers. I miss the way games used to be and I’m tired of how games are now.

[@humrH2360]

The Japanese already cracked the code decades back by having demographic genres. They already noticed that works for not only different genders, but also age groups had differences in visual and narrative styles to them. Yet it is also by letting their work maintain a specific target that they are more likely to gain *_actual universal appeal._*

[@phaeton01]

this breakdown matches my experience, ive worked with one genius level female developer and all the rest were average blue hairs or lazy girl devs

[@adrianocs4]

I work in maintence and we have exactlly one girl who is a mechanic from a total of 60 technicians, but if go to the marketing the inverse occurs, men and woman excel at diferent fields, going against it will result in failure.

[@relishcakes4525]

If I remember correctly, intelligence levels between sexes are almost exact opposites. Men have more geniuses and handicapped with few "average" intelligences, women have many of "average" intelligence with very few dummies or geniuses. I don't know why this happens but it's kinda neat.

[@michaelpettersson4919]

They MAY buy there are games that almost only appeal to women. And there are of course games that almost only appeal to men. This is entirely ok.

[@Fireopal94]

I agree with your statistics and your conclusion, however the reason this is happening across the board is to thwart the male gamer period. They want to change the way male gamers think. They have access to all of the data you do and more. Looking at demographics and statistics are what corporations DO. It's why the gaming industry has been so successful until now. There is something else going on here that we are not completely aware of. If it was happening in only 1 or 2 companies it would be a fluke but it's happening on a global scale and in all forms of entertainment and advertising. Other parts of society too.

[@Mr4real0316]

Thank you for the information. I did not know CD project red and Ubisoft both only hired female emloyees and excluded male employees. I will never ever buy another Ubisoft or CD project red game again. I wouldn't want them to soil their hands with my masculine money.

[@heatherharrison264]

It is refreshing to see some data in a video like this. I think part of the reason that some of these companies are attempting to target women is that they see an underserved audience, and they want money from this audience. Naturally, they don't seem to know how to properly target this audience, so they are bound to fail many times before they stumble onto a successful formula. I'm a woman who has been a gamer since the late 1970s, and I have certainly felt that the mainstream hasn't exactly matched with my preferences for much of this time. My preferences at least roughly match with elements of the studies presented here, albeit with some huge exceptions. For example, I've never played a mobile game. My platforms at first were the Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit computers, and arcades. (In the early 1980s, gaming wasn't only for boys - plenty of girls enjoyed the consoles, and it wasn't unusual to see girls in the arcades.) Later on, I moved to PC, and I'm still there. RPGs are an interesting case. They potentially offer a lot of things to a lot of people, and depending on how they balance the different elements that go into RPGs, they can turn off potential audiences or bring in new audiences. I've been into RPGs almost since the beginning. I discovered Ultima III in the early 1980s, and I've been hooked ever since. As the genre has evolved, many mainstream RPGs have lost me - the loss of systemic depth (which I view as a sort of "dumbing down" of the genre) and the shift toward action are developments that I have not welcomed. Baldur's Gate 3 is a return to form for the genre that makes me very happy. Maybe it is age more than gender that explains this, as I am drawn to a more old school style. For me to truly enjoy an RPG, it has to feature a good mix of exploration, narrative, and quality characters. Combat is not a priority, and I often find it tedious or frustrating, though I do appreciate a well designed turn-based battle that behaves as an interesting puzzle to solve. Here, I think it is gender speaking loud and clear. The studies indicate that men are into the monsters, and women are not. (In my case, I like the monsters just fine. I simply don't want to fight them.) I would be curious to see if there are gender statistics on Baldur's Gate 3. To me, it feels like it threads the needle well. It provides some tough and gritty battles for the guys (with different difficulty levels to suit everybody's taste), and it provides stories and characters that the ladies will appreciate. It provides romance options for everybody, though I tend to get annoyed by romance, and the party members seem like they are trying to constitute an anime harem - a minor complaint, but a complaint nonetheless. With rare exceptions, I think game developers make a mistake when they try to be all things to all people - unless they really know how to strike the right balance, they are likely to fail. Going for the lowest common denominator is likely to result in a muddle of mediocrity that satisfies nobody. There is nothing wrong with going after a specific audience, giving them what they like, and doing it well. The stereotypical male gamer demographic has been served well for decades. I'm glad to finally see more games that appeal to people like me, but the audience that was served so well for so long should continue to get games that they like too. Gaming should be for everybody, much as it was for a brief time window in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

[@AccolonnTV]

Very good and insightful comment. Thank you for your insight. I do agree with you, right now they seem to just fumble and stumble about incapable of identifying their core audience. Like, if you want a game to target a specific audience then it's important you nail every aspect of it. I think it's very hard(read NOT impossible) to make a game for everyone.

[@mr.squanch]

There is just one tiny "problem". The same people would then have to admit that men and women are different. Unfortunately, these are the same people who believe that men and women are just a social construct. So what happens now is that they will simply ignore it, because any concessions indirectly include the admission that their ideological worldview is very likely incorrect. So the problem lies one level deeper than simply acknowledging that the statistics look the way they do. My conclusion from this is that many companies will continue to lose a lot of money until the people in charge are replaced, because that is more likely than these people changing their views.

[@phoenixshell3772]

Exactly, and that is why Eastern developers and Studios are on a role. They still have a grasp on demographics understand that female/male preferences are different. Western devs are basically banned from admitting what the issue is, so naturally things will never improve

[@MashoneNBK]

Sadly, these companies are trying to recruit women for the wrong reasons, they are trying to check a box so they can get better tax incentives. I know that women make excellent game developers, are excellent workers and do great work, but all people seem to see is the activists who are pushing an agenda and then equate that to all women. I know most women in any industry just want a good job and a place to grow. There is nothing inherently wrong with a diverse workplace, and excluding a stellar employee because they are white or male is wrong. We have to remember that does not mean that the diverse person in a position isn't automatically lessor. And here's the problem, if you look and a black airline pilot and automatically think where they the best person for the job simply because they are black, well I hope you can see why that's a problem.

[@mr.squanch]

@@MashoneNBK Yes, you could be right, at least in part. But in my opinion the problem is not that women can also be good game developers. So assuming there were no ideology/LGBTQ/woke agenda boxes being checked, as is apparently the case at the moment, I would still say that a development team made up entirely of women and supposed to develop a game for boys and men from scratch would most likely fail. At least if there isn't some advice from a male side somewhere. So the problem is less whether they are good developers, but rather the extent to which they can put themselves in the shoes of men. Those who truly and intrinsically understand men/boys are men and boys. That's why they will always produce better games when they are for men and boys. I am also convinced that the opposite is true. A women's team will most likely produce more appealing games for girls. It could be that simple.

[@rickybobby5153]

Gender being a social construct doesn’t mean men and women aren’t different.

[@jjrob114]

Mobile gamers aren’t gamers. They are people who like to play on their phone.

[@playlisttarmac]

I suspect I am a woman that prefers games designed for men. Most of the games I play (except 1 or 2) have no or very few female gamers streaming them, or when I play open games most of the other females are with a partner playing. I get quite bored with "female" games and am not particularly interested in the games I like changing to cater for different sexes.

[@CounterPunchGames]

Most women only play the lowest common denominator casual games I've known this since I was a child and somehow multi-billion dollar companies can't figure it out?

[@rasmuskristensen9094]

im 8 minutes in and this hit me, sorry if u speak about it after: They aquire these women in the positions because they want to make mobile games.

[@AzureDraco86]

look at accolonn doing more research then the entire triple developers put together :3

[@freddiedixon5244]

The question is how many Men gotta suffer until its ok to just have a game thats for men and vise versa to try to combine both into one its get boring and way to long where is more base in politics than having fun, so its like a stand off

[@relishcakes4525]

The crazy part is that you can show the proof to many of these people and they still wouldn't believe you.

[@RetroRick1990]

I think you're right, I also think those companies having these restrictions targeting specific group of people will fade away, this is a perfect time for other companies to raise and shine, that kind of place where they hire people based on skill and innovation, that people that has nothing related to color or gender, good developers that focus on creating games, regardless of peoples difference.

[@afcansf5996]

You haven't been paying attention if this according to you is the second time a studio comes out of the closet. This has been going for years and none of the studios have been quitted about it. You just choose to ignore this for more than ad decade.

[@IceTrey-ob7px]

Like it or hate it, you can ALWAYS tell female-led content.

[@garver5833]

Can't please all the people all the time.

[@zolvarm9587]

It kind of explains how "making a game for everyone" fails. If you put in a lot of things that women like into a scenario that mostly men like, then you just have each group ingesting a bit of poison until they just want to quit. If there is a sci-fi game that looks cool to men but has a bunch of immersive storytelling and weak gameplay, then most women are out when the trailer drops because of scifi and most men quit because the gameplay sucks and the story drags on.

[@NoirMorter]

My friend has been developing a fighter game. It was originally pc only the. His small crowd kept asking him to put it on mobile since many didn’t have PCs. I wonder what his audience breakdown is.

[@BUDA20]

2% in sports and FIFA game advertising is about womans soccer... wtf...

[@stevenedwards8353]

The first genre on that list with the highest percentage of female players that ALSO widely appeals to men is the high fantasy MMO, and even then 64% of men make up that genre. So by catering to only women and trying to exclude men, you are risking losing pretty near 2/3 of your audience in the BEST CASE SCENARIO, and potentially up to 80-90% of your audience OR EVEN WORSE

[@rebeccachapman1231]

The women who typically enjoy "men's games" are just as turned off by what is happening to the industry as the men. It's one thing to ask for the option to be able to choose something other than a chainmail bikini, but a whole different thing to remove the chainmail bikini altogether due to "male gaze" nonsense. The game industry needs to boot out all of the blue-hair NB activists and go back to making games "by gamers, for gamers."

[@river100200]

Great video. I dont think it mathers to much what sex work on what game aslong as your look at what your target audiance wants. Also Hiring based on anything then talent and team work is stupit.

[@Halfrican-Jones]

Woah, your argument is good, but don't disrespect Cyberpunk like that in the thumbnail, I think they are more honest than the pandering nonsense of Concord.

[@dawgatemybrain]

Men are naturally so good at making games, they don’t need any mentorship programs, duh.

[@emikochan13]

we don't necessarily need more geniuses, we could also give the chance to the existing geniuses born in places where they don't get the support to foster it. The USA has the most Olympic medals because excellent people have the chance to excel, not because there are more excellent people.

[@kimmoruohoniemi7158]

I actually know female gamers irl, veteran gamers at that. They like all sorts of games, and play lot of the same games I do. And their preferences are basically the same as men have when it comes to gameplay and content and so on. The biggest differences are that women like to stare at Drake's bottom in Uncharted, while I rather focus on the female sidekicks! Claims that women especially, do not like violence in games, and that they like to look fashionable in RPGs and so on is just nonsense. Most male gamers do not like over the top violence in games either, and most male gamers also like to dress their character in fashionable manner in RPGs. So, both genders are the same. And finally, women can be just as obsessed with hardware as we men are. Heck, most of these chick gamers I know, are far more knowledgeable of current hardware than I am! I have no idea what the latest graphics cards are, while they can list top ten cards from memory!

[@AccolonnTV]

No offence bro but what you've just given me is anecdotal evidence, or what we call non evidence. Your experience is useless when I have given you studies with thousands of women confirming the majority opinion. The women you know are likely friends of yours because they're outliers and you don't know the other women because they don't play the same games as you. Exceptions to a rule doesn't prove a rule.

[@rebeccachapman1231]

​@AccolonnTV Yes, I'm one of those female outliers as well, and in all the decades I've been playing games, I've known maybe one or two others at best, and I'm probably being generous. All I remember wanting in games was more armor and clothing options and more stronghold/base building/decorating options in open-world RPGs. (Which as it turns out appeals to many men as well who play those types of games.) I definitely didn't want all the crappy romance simulation and making EVERYTHING about relationships, self-identity and representation, DEI, and whatnot going on now.

[@zoltanschweifer4304]

All of you youtubers are partially wrong So my wife works at QA and she sayed that they are looking for game developers and QA personal and freelance developers. Specially women because almost all of they devs are from Ukraine or Russia. So they cannot dragged back to they country to fight the war. This is the main reason they just disguise it to get some government support from European countries or the EU itself. So this is just partially true that they have an argenda an and ideology in mind. This is just a disguise for support.

[@zoltanschweifer4304]

BTW you can even look this for your self. Arabia/ Chile /China covering a huge amount of hiring in gaming space and QA and they all look for female.

[@rickychase18]

i mean there is always the argument that the majority of the reason why more woman mobile game than pc or console game is usually down to sometimes the investment of time they have and or the way they've been treated in trying games on the pc or consoles which to be fair theres a lot of videos out there showing the sort of treatment woman have gotten when attempting to play shooters etc now this isnt to argue your point about the market more to say that if say woman directed games and safe spaces shifted towards the pc and console market it could increase these figures again this probably has 0 to do with development and more to do with if said companies actually partook in market research rather than simply insisting that there product is good and will sell.. but yeah anyways

[@rickychase18]

but saying that generally speaking most woman get into gaming in relation to the experiences they've had with it and these are usually around games of an older nature especially in terms of rpg's and usually are not looking for a game that targets woman as there audience right ? i mean you look at big platforms that surrround gaming like streaming services of twitch and youtube a majority of the woman that are gaming on pc and console usually have some correlation with males gamers themsevles be it good friendships partners etc they arnt predominantly woman look for games that woman want they are wanting games that are just enjoyable as games right ?

[@Vladislav888]

1:40 Counterpoint: HoMM, Disciples and the Devil May Cry They are lightning in the bottle, though