alt Hacker NewsPersonally what I find weird about this whole ordeal is that from my many years of interacting with nerdy (or maybe not so nerdy) women who played computer games is that there exists one franchise that combines the holy grail of complex gameplay (so it can't be dismissed as another match 3 clone), with insane amount of female appeal, both in the number of hours played and the number of people who play it.
And that franchise is The Sims.
Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players, there has been no new game in the franchise other than the safe but ultimately unambitious Sims 4.
I've heard a ton of complaints about players about how much better, more complex and featureful the Sims 3 was (and that game was a glorious mess), and Maxis themselves have acknowledged this. I think there has been a sequel in work at some point in time, that promised to bring back the complexity, which has been cancelled unfortunately.
So in a nutshell, despite all the rage around this question, the industry somehow doesn't even make the games that are known to do well with a female audience.
Another example would be Stardew Valley, or Undertale, which had a huge female following (and sales to match) but had to come out of the indie scene, because all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worse at making things that appeal to women than either companies that existed before, or random indies coming from outside the professional world.
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I think the real problem is "AAA". AAA games and consoles/gaming computers are expensive and rely heavily on marketing tech-specs and graphics for their appeal. These games usually don't innovate much in gameplay, design, or aesthetics. They are just the same game as last year with higher resolution and more jiggling. With marketing and design culture being male-oriented as discussed in TFA, the studios making AAAs don't/won't have the confidence to make new kinds of games, because they haven't yet identified an archetype that can be sold repeatedly.
The Sims 4 continues to mint money. It came out in 2014, but they've released expansion packs for it every year since then. The latest one came out last month. It costs $40. They've sold tens of millions of these expansion packs over the years.
I agree that it is weird that there hasn't been a AAA attempt to unseat it. You'd think that it'd be a safer bet than yet another hero shooter.
> all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worse
Corporate interest is primarily financial, anything beyond that is unfortunately all too often only (financially motivated) virtue signalling.
If you want girl games, make them. Don't expect others to make them for you.
Asking for AAA game studios to make something else is like asking a pizza shop to start making burritos. Sure, you can ask. But really, you should just make your own rather than trying to convince someone else to do it for you.
Simulation/Sandbox games probably do well because of their open ended nature.
My GF, daughter and me all play Stardew Valley but we play it wildly differently. It is a farming/relationship simulator for them and some kind of capitalist min/max farming and mining simulation for me.
But yes, the Sims 3 and the 700 add ons are all heavily in their rotation, they make me look like a gaming amateur if you go by hours logged.
World of Warcraft has been super successful in its space, and yet Blizzard has failed to make an actual sequel.
> Another example would be Stardew Valley, or Undertale, which had a huge female following (and sales to match) but had to come out of the indie scene, because all these super politically progressive AAA gaming companies somehow are worse at making things that appeal to women than either companies that existed before, or random indies coming from outside the professional world.
Boomer shooters also came out of the indie space. Survival craft hits? Generally indies. There's plenty of genres that, for whatever reason, have been largely ignored by the biggies.
> (so it can't be dismissed as another match 3 clone)
As a "serious" gamer, dismissing (and other dismissable games like smartphone Monopoly) makes sense, but if the topic is "girl games", dismissing them is a mistake. I don't have official stats, but based on women around me, they're very popular, with several saying they're addicted to it/them. So what if they're not Baldurs Gate 3 or Stardew Valley. While we want a depth of discourse deeper than "make GTA6 but in pink" in order to actually appeal to women, leaving out a popular genre with women as Ann address of study because they're insufficient complex while trying to study that area seems shortsighted.
> my many years of interacting with nerdy (or maybe not so nerdy) women who played computer games
You have a particular experience.
I am not a girl, I do not play games.
The women I know who play games, none play games like that.
Animal Crossing would be another game that has a massive female audience from a AAA studio.
> Despite the fact that there has been a huge industry push in the last 10-15 years to make a game that draws in tons of female players
Ultimately its poor marketing. They want to make Call of Duty and get that audience, but also get girls to play Call of Duty. Instead of making a game with mass appear to both boys and girls.