Good Girl = Bad Girl - How being too good may be bad.

There recently had been a book out on the market called, The Curse of the Good Girl by Rachel Simmons. Normally it wouldn't have caught my attention especially from the gaming perspective but it did.

The book explained that being a "good girl" holds some women from reaching full potential in society. It describes the "good girl" as being schooled, follows the rules, is a people pleaser and a perfectionist.

So how does that connect women to video games?

Simple, it shows at what kind of audience thinks the typical woman should act and I think most games use the thin line of being a bad vs good girl to an advantage.

There is the stereotypical good girl and bad girl in every game and they add them in to make the video game more appealing.

There isn't a huge difference in male characters in video games. In fact most "good boys" actually have a bad streak somewhere in their character. It isn't questioned if a male character has a good and a bad side but for female charactors they are more likely to be labeled.

Perhaps because in most games men outnumber women in video games, while even happening in movies. If there is five characters and it isn't a chick flick most likely three of them are male while two are female.

Women Outnumber Men in Statistics

In an online article it states in between the ages of 24 to 34 is the average age of a game player. But what they say afterwords is slightly shocking.

The CEA study found that 65% of women are in this bracket while only 35% of men are in there.

This leads me to think that there is more reasons to ignore these statistics while focusing on the typical gamer.

One of the reasons I think they like focusing on the typical gamer is because most people are looking at the baby boom era and how they tend to buy for children. This is stereotypical because they are even ignoring the 35% men in that age bracket. Its like seeing money just dropping into their lap. If they manage to create good enough ads and graphics.

Another reason is they enjoy making harder games for hard core gamers more than they like making casual games. Mostly I think is because they can charge 50 to 100 dollars a game this way. For the most part Nintendo is leading in creating games for the casual consumer.

The last but not least reason is that they don't take women seriously in gaming. It has improved over the last few years but there is still a big space we can improve on. Even thinking how many women put so much effort into these games you might have some insight on what target audience to aim for.

Someday they will catch on to the 75% to 35% ratio but for today they will remain clueless.

Sincerely.

Gamer Girl

Release Dates

From the expert video game player to the newbie there is nothing more frustrating than a late release date. But if you are one of the people that asks why here are some of the most common reasons.

Most of the games with late release dates are popular. Most of these games have hoards of fans just waiting in line at the store to get a copy. So it makes sense that they would put as much time and effort needed into that game.

Some games have to format their game to more than one console. Like when the Wii was just coming out some game companies had to make a copy for the Game Cube and some to the Wii, a new unexplored machine.

Releasing the information on video games can keep and hype up their audience. Its a cheap tactic for keeping their ratings high. For Halo 2 and 3 most of the people had pre-ordered their games ahead of time just because they have been waiting for a long time.

Whatever their reason is I believe that there is a time limit to announcing games early. I would have to say two years.

Sincerely,

Gamer Girl