this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024
30 points (75.9% liked)
Gaming
3174 readers
101 users here now
!gaming is a community for gaming noobs through gaming aficionados. Unlike !games, we don’t take ourselves quite as serious. Shitposts and memes are welcome.
Our Rules:
1. Keep it civil.
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only.
2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry.
I should not need to explain this one.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month.
Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.
Logo uses joystick by liftarn
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There are definitely games where the primary/target demographic is boys or girls though.
The arcade classic "Centipede" is a good example of this. It was designed to try to attract women to play it. The colors were pastel shades and its sequel Millipede took it further by having a "story" about an elf archer protecting a mushroom forest from a bug invasion. Centipede was partially programmed by a woman (one of four people who made the game), Donna Bailey, who was also responsible for choosing the games vibrant pastel color palette.
Now, is Centipede or Millipede only for girls? No of course not. No video game is only for a single demographic. But real world data showed that girls/ women generally played Centipede and Millipede more than boys/men did. Some things just have a general appeal to some demographics more than others. So typically when a person asks for "girl games," they just means games that will have a high appeal to girls or games that were designed with girls as the primary demographic.
Otome visual novels are this way as well. They target a female playerbase with a story-based romance game and generally feature a female protagonist who romances male characters in the game.