pixel for a thought: gender-specific games

Gamer world—we have a problem!

"Girly-girl" and "boyly-boy" games make up 98% collectively compared to "gender neutral & intelligent" games.

THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is the depressing, overwhelmingly sorry state of the casual genre. 

Don't believe me? When I'm looking for new casual games to review, I usually embark on a Google search quest with terms like these:

browser games
free online games
play casual games -princess
play casual games -castle
play casual games -dressup
play casual games -zombies
play casual games -shoot
etc.

Why, you ask, must I use these eliminating search terms? Because obviously someone's not using their imaginations enough! To be totally honest, I have enjoyed playing dressup games and stereotypical shooters in my time. They're not bad subjects for casual games, but it's sickening how so many creators of pretended brilliance can't think of literally anything else to make. That, or the games are generated entirely by a very clever spambot. Furthermore, I believe that this over-abundance is more or less directly correlated to misconceptions about girls wanting pink and boys wanting blue. The following statements come from a company ironically named Silicon Sisters Interactive, regarding what they consider the state of the overall game industry. And they hit the problem right on the nail's head, although not in the way they intended:

It took 30 years to really perfect the three things that males seem to really love, which are shooting, and driving, and sports. [...] And those are absolutely kick-ass games now, and you really have to sit back and go, "What is the equivalent for girls? And please God, don't let it take us 30 years to get to as high a quality level as that." (full article here)

And while I could spend an entire post ranting about their apparently sexist generalizations, for my purposes here I think it's interesting how they automatically assume that the market must be divided by gender. The movie industry and book publishers moved on from this stereotyping decades ago. (I know straight guys who've read Twilight.) 

Well guess what Sisters? If you're looking for stereotypes and gender-specific equivalents, look no further than a Google on "play casual games." As long as we're stuck in target-audience the-client-is-always-right mode, our casual games will keep coming out fluffy, twaddley, unoriginal-y. Now granted, we shouldn't throw game marketing out the window. The ESRB exists for a reason after all, and my blatant disinterest in agriculture probably means that I don't want Zynga to shove Farmville up my throat. But it's stupid to think that girls and guys would really want so many different things. Plain old fun, interesting design should always come first—that design can then be adapted to follow target audience specifications.