My wife becoming a Type A chatter watching Northerlion playing Dressmaker.

I don't like games specifically made for males or females. Because a game should not made with the gender in mind, but focus on gameplay and telling stories. Is there study where certain type of games are attracted more by males or females?

She cant stand his every choice

I don't think games should be designed to be exclusionary towards a particular gender, but not every story or setting is going to universally appeal to everyone. I don't have any particular studies handy, but I feel like it's pretty intuitive to assume a game about designing a type of clothing that is traditionally associated with women is, in general, going to appeal more to women than men.

There will be exceptions to that, of course - I'm sure there are some men out there that play and enjoy Dressmaker, but designing a game about dressmaking with the intent of appealing to women isn't necessarily exclusionary, it's just knowing your audience. I'm not even sure how you'd design such a game in a way that is equally appealing to both women and men, honestly.

Not enough? There are more games than you could play in a lifetime that women can enjoy, even after you exclude all of the male-fantasy shit.

Translation for old people?

Smant's chat: "99% quality? Might as well wrap her in a garbage bag lol"

Their wife watches a streamer play the game in the post, which is one where the player gets to design dresses. The streamer she watches is bad at designing dresses, so their wife sends chat messages to the streamer that tell him how to do better.

Northernlion: Streamer
Type A Chatter: Someone who cares about the game and tends to backseat game.

Dressmaker for men would be high fashion - weird geometric shapes and shit. More "interesting" and less "looks good"

Designing for a target demographic is fine. Almost every male streamer I watch played this game, and I enjoyed it as a man myself, even if they had women in mind during development. Nothing in the game alienates male gamers.

Designing with a woman in mind just means focusing on a subject matter that polls well with women.

Honestly, I don't remember the last time a game grabbed me like this one did.

All games are available for women and there's a ton that women play. We're long past the age of games by and for men only but since this narrative still gains traction, I guess we're stuck hearing it.

I love that fact that the devs of Broforce and Gorn made this game.

You say that as if gender biases don't exist or that stories and gameplay should not cater to them. The most played games by women and men are very different and there's other games that both play equally. FPS is mostly men and life sim/puzzle is women. Knowing this difference, designers should absolutely build for their user base's preferences.

I'm so happy the game is doing well. It's been delightful but I am the absolute core audience for it. Felt very good! I wish there were a few more pigeon commissions though.

this sounds perilously close to "skill issue".

there may be lots of games to play if you cut out all the ones you don't want, but there's no button that does that, so you have to wade through an ocean of stuff to find the comparatively few small tidepools where the things you want exist.

there's a lot of everything now. it's the proportion that matters.

Women do love games. The market share before the toy stores made it a choice of who to cater to were about even. Women made some of the best games early on, and the female gamer demographic never went away, it just got shoved to the side for fanservice.

There are plenty of games for women, and im not saying this dismissively. It depends what these women like. They just aren’t hardcore soulslikes. Most women arent into that. They prefer casual or social games they can fit onto their existing life, like candy crush or farmville.

I’m a woman gamer, most of my ladyfriends are gamers. I definitely play a different subset of games than most of them, but there’s no real lack..

We even have big franchise games that are aimed toward women like horizon. I fucking loved those games, and we need more like that! They made me better at shooters in general, a genre I have never been good at or spent time with due in part to how male-focused it was.

Women love video games

Well duh, we created the scene.

enough games for them

Maybe in Western nations, where you exiled them.

targeting women

Words predators confess.

She might enjoy a streamer called lilsimsie. Lilsimsie does a lot of cozy games and has done a lot of cute stuff in dressmaker.

It really isn’t, and yes you have to wade through, but that’s true of everyone, we all have to find what we like. There are a fucking ton of games.

Most of my ladygamer friends are into cozy games where they grow things, or games where they can be social with their friends who also play. Bonus if it’s both. Extra bonus if it’s cute. Its why all the facebook games were such a huge hit. Social sims are great for helping people stay in touch and giving them a reason to talk, which is a big focus of most women’s lives. We tend to have very strong social bonds, because we look for ways to reinforce them, like games.

So we don’t need a lot of games, necesaarily, we need games that suit a purpose for the people who want to play. And long-term same games are great for that.

There is a whole industry for women's games. Good +15 years ago I was part of external / independent teams that developed games for them. (They were not that successful hits but still)
It is just not as evident as steam or any other game store: Bigfish Games
Now they are just starting to realize that, there are women on Steam.
But don't forget all the big cozy hits that are "surprising" hits: Stardew, Portia/Sandrock. Casual games are thriving as they should!

i can't think of a recent, decent game that screamed more "this is for girls" than this one. yes, there is stardew, which isn't particularly gendered, even if it tends to attract more women than other games, and the less good, uh, homages to it, like the disney princess one (not sure i would call that decent, tbh). and there has always been the sims. facebook and mobile games have always had a large, often predominantly female audience, but most of those are very cheap. and world of warcraft cuts pretty well across gender lines.

but this one is so overtly about traditionally women's hobbies and it's also really good. that makes it rare to me.

and you know who doesn't have to wade? people who like call of duty, madden/2k/whatever, etc. while a lot of men don't like those games either, it's hard to argue that their fan base isn't primarily men and that they are marketed exclusively towards men. there is a lot of that stuff. the rest of us have to wade. women have to wade harder.

proportion is what's important, and women are vastly under-represented.

I recently played a demo for a game called Greenhearth Necromancer that was definitely made to be geared more towards women. It's about you moving into your grandma's old apartment after she dies and using your witch powers to bring dead plants back to life.

i can't think of a recent, decent game that screamed more "this is for girls" than this one.

Why does it need to be “this is for girls” though?

I’m not saying having more games aimed at women is bad, it absolutely isn’t.

I’m challenging the idea that there aren’t a lot of games for women. Which is objectively not true for exactly what you yourself pointed out. The games that women gravitate toward are ungendered. And that’s fine.

I’m personally never going to be interested in playing some game about fashion. It feels like barbie games from the last 40 years and no thanks. I’m glad some women and probably a ton of men who like fashion are into it. (Like you do realize there are tons of male designers?)

Gendering this shit is dumb.

I loved the crap out of Hello Kitty Island Adventure to be honest, and while I haven’t personally played dressmaker it’s awesome that it’s an expanding targeted demographic.

A woman I work with only plays one game: Call of Duty.

I know a lot of women who actually deeply appreciate soulsbornes and i dont like this "women arent hardcore" narrative.

Bloodborne, for easy example, has a deep maternal-horror throughline. Disconnecting the female experience from bloodborne leaves you with... British people?

My wife loved god of war 2016 (not a soulsborne, but you get it) and it helped her to fix a part of her relationship with her father. She also defeated the last valkyrie hitless on Give Me God of War.

Damsels in distress arent off the table, but dont be misogynistic about it. Fanservice can be done tastefully (and there are plenty of female gooners who appreciate the female form as well).

What women dont like, is being objectified or forced to look at their struggles as fetish content.

Male power fantasies are often hit or miss too. My wife loves doom but cant stand the call of duty campaigns.

Cool, I’m glad she’s into it.

Why is this being treated a a refutation to my personal opinion?

Sorry, but you cannot honestly think that most women are into soulslikes when not even most men are into them. Idk about the other references you are making because I’m one of the vast majority of women who have no interest in soulslike. (Actually that’s not structly true, I despeately want to like them, but don’t, but I still have no clue what you are on about)

I never said women aren’t hardcore, we give birth and raise kids. That’s hardcore. We do whatever the fuck we want against society, that’s hardcore. We can like anything across a broad range, but it would be silly to think that most women give a fuck about being represented in wwe, for example. This is similar.

What I’ve been saying is that women are more into social games, overall as a statistic, because that is factually correct.

I didn't say most, i said "a lot". I also covered much of the second paragraph here so im not sure what the argument is. I agree that ~50% of the population is also capable of greatness, mainly because i also belong to it :3

Theres definitely a stigma against women in gaming spaces, but believing thats the fault of the games' content is 1/8th of the story; the majority of it is just regular ol' misogyny and systematically-instilled self-doubt.

Im not mad at you or trying to downplay your opinion, i just disagree with the notion that women are for some reason repelled from "difficult" games by the content itself, primarily soulsborne games, because they have intricate feminist views on occasion. I think its far more likely they are drawn to unpopular games because male audiences are absent, allowing a female space to flourish.

Well said! I think it's a matter of identity too. My mom plays bejeweled and Farmville, and used to play SNES. She didn't like 64, but played Myst and Riven and lots of PC games.

But if you ask her if she's a gamer she'll say no without hesitation.

Sounds delightful! :)

just disagree with the notion that women are for some reason repelled from "difficult" games by the content itself,

Which I never said and in fact have disgreed with, so that’s probably why.

If you don’t make up my position, you might get it :)

It isn't.

Then why does it matter?

Because all women want to make dresses in games. LMAO! My girlfriend absolutely wrecked Skyrim with daedra followers screaming: “I SMELL WEAKNESS” while double-fisting destruction spells and setting the place on fire.

It was another example about the variety of games that women play, intended to be positive but you seem to think it was somehow negative.

Sorry for agreeing with your point that women have made and played a wide variety of games.

The problem has never been that women don't like games, it is that men have made women feel unwelcome in many ways in gaming culture.

Some women do, and making it sound belittling or something worth mocking only serves to continue the narrative that feminine things are lesser and unworthy. Women can rain hell on imperialist scum and make dresses.

There are also plenty of guys who want to play Dressmaker and that is also OK.

I have been hearing about this game and I think it's worth celebrating because:

A) It was made as a labor of love, spearheaded by a dev who wanted his wife with health issues to be able to make dresses again
B) it was made on a shoestring budget by a small team of devs (non-corpo)
C) It is staunchly anti-AI in its assets and code
D) Its assets are hand drawn with original foley and music composed for the game

Honestly the fact that its geared towards women is one of the less interesting things about it. I'm so happy for them and wish them every success.

Hell yeah

And making women sound like Little House on the Prarie cast offs isn’t helping either.

my wife loves her stream

that lady can talk forever

does damn good designs

The real lesson here is make a good game and people will play it.

Dressmaker for men is just Dressmaker.

Sorry, but you cannot honestly think that most women are into soulslikes when not even most men are into them.

What you just said amounts to 'nobody likes soulslikes' which is just fucking insane, soulslikes are obviously popular.

As a guy, other guys acting misogynistic infuriates me. The label incel is also very cringe, almost as cringe as the incels themselves. It is alright to be single okay? Its actually fucking awesome sometimes. Furthermore, some people are not meant for relationships. And guys blaming all women for some unspecified grievance when they themselves won't look three seconds at themselves and their behavior, or somehow deludes themselves into thinking "supermodels should be throwing themselves at me the second I climb out of my basement, and if they don't, it's obviously because of trans/LGBTQ/woke and I just need to double down on being s toxic piece of shit. That surely will make me attractive!". /rant

British people?

Oh the horrors!

They prefer casual or social games they can fit onto their existing life, like candy crush or farmville.

what even is this take