Girls: they all like shopping, right?

Nival Interactive, a Russian game developer known in their native country for their free to play MMOs, have announced a North American release for their Facebook game Prime World. The game has been described as the bridge between social and ‘hardcore’ gaming, incorporating strategy with co operative gameplay.



I would never look twice at most Facebook games, but an article on Prime World on Game Informer (found at http://tinyurl.com/3zlsc6e) has highlighted a particular feature of the game: gender orientated quests.

What does this mean? Boiled down to its most basic level, that your gender will affect what quests you can access as you play. The article gives the following example: ‘For instance, where a guy visiting a guy may launch a hunting activity, a couple of girls visiting might go shopping together.’ It goes on further to say that gender will even affect what classes you can play, with men getting fighting roles and women having more support orientated roles.

You can see why this has been done. Nival have tried to create a game that would appeal to anyone, even those who would never give a video game a second look normally. As with all Facebook games, it needs to appeal to the broadest audience possible if it wants to see its investment returned. This necessarily means having to appeal to generic stereotypes. Women like shopping and men like fighting, right?



You see, here’s your problem. When I first read the article, my first reaction was to go on a feminist rampage. ‘What, just because I have an XX chromosome means that I’ll want to go shopping and paint my nails and do my hair with my friends? How dare they assume that about all women?’ When I calmed down a bit, I wondered whether I would be the only one to feel that way. After all, I’m not the only woman to play video games, and they sure as hell aren’t aimed at us specifically. I mean, we’ve all seen that DOA volleyball game. Egads.

With that in mind, I put out an appeal on Facebook, to poll just how many of my female friends actually play games. The results are below:



Please excuse my pathetic Paint skills.

Now, this ain’t scientific, I know. But out of 86 female friends (I made Sunday Matt count), 23 as of Thursday 26th May have said they are gamers of some kind. The results are probably skewed a bit because they’re my friends, and so some of them are going to be rather geeky, but even so, that’s a sizeable number.

All these women play games, from Farmville and Angry Birds right up to the latest FPSs. Now, the reason I’ve brought them into it is because I have a theory that Nival want to attract women to Primal World because they’re still somewhat seen as an ‘untapped’ audience, at least by consumers (More ranting on which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/3zxcqj8).

The problem is, they’re not. Gaming was a male dominated activity in the past, but not anymore. It’s obvious that a large section is targeted towards women, with games like Cafe World, Farmville and all their spinoffs and variants. Their developers see the success these games get and seem to think, ‘Well, that’s clearly what women want’ and make even more of them.

It isn’t though, and we all know it. Some of those gamers from my poll will mainly play those kind of games, and that’s totally legit. You all know of my Cooking Mama habit, after all. Others don’t, though. They play mainstream games that don’t rely on stereotypes and pastel colours to reel them in. (Soul Calibur, I am looking at you). They ask for something more from their games.

I would hazard a guess that this is just another growing pain for the gaming industry. There will always be a place for the ‘girly’ games, as is right and proper. What Nival are doing is trying something new and different, which should be applauded when so many developers cling to familiar gameplay traits like a safety blanket. It may not work, but the experiment has to be done. I’ll have to play it when it’s released and report back, but don’t expect to see me in the virtual shopping mall any time soon.