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I am heavily into MMO games (I am one of the few hundred Japanese playing EVE Online for one), but my wife's attitude towards my game addiction is that of toleration, and she doesn't play at all.
My brother's heavily into Final Fantasy XI, and his wife's attitude is that of resignation. So there's two samples for you and against my fellow countryman.

Hello... I'm female, a gamer and I'm addicted - there's my confession! I love playing any type of game whether it's a board game or video game. I'm known to play Eve-online and my PS2 at the same time. I love retro gaming Bubble Bobble will always remain the best game of all time. I don't why a lot of women seem to 'hate' video games or see them as a waste of time. But, on the flip side I have loads of girlfriends who game as much as I do. Each to their own I guess.

Men - choose carefully when you pick a wife. I'm a female gamer, I know lots of other female gamers - we do exist you know! And we're good looking, even tempered, gorgeous and great fun.

So don't moan to me if your woman's a console widow. You should have chosen your woman more wisely!

I am a female gamer, playing World of Warcraft . I played mostly RTS games before WoW, although also occassionally the Sims. Console wise, I have never owned one but I do like playing Pikmin on my boyfriends Nintendo.

In my server on warcraft, there was a guild specifically just for females. I know one other girl in real life who plays warcraft.

From my close friends (girls) one enjoys playing Pro Evo with the guys, the other likes free internet games, another first person shooters, and others enjoy games such as the Sims and Rollercoaster tycoon. I can only think of 3 girls that I knew well who don't play games.

I think actually it's unusual for a girl not to play computer games, from my experience - even though most do not play for the same amount of time many males do.

Personally, I am happy with the games out their, and I doubt I would play a game made specifically for females (because I imagine that being pretty dull!)

I used to play games on my PC and on my games console - then I moved in with my gf. Now the console lies there unused because she doesn't see the point in them, and the living room TV is a communal thing, after all.

Now I have to play games on my PC in smaller resolution with the sound turned down or headphones. Ah well.

Maybe I should get a Wii...

Hi

I attended a conference called Digital Generations and the discussion about gender and gaming was a good one.

There seems to be 2 questions to consider (at least!) to begin with.

(1)Are women/girls socialised not to play computer games
(2)Are computer games addressing female audience.

The 2 questions overlap, but come from different angles. Some research showed that a large percentage of engineering students were hardcore gamers, but again women were in a minority. Are women socialised against technology in general? or current technology inherently male orientated. I would love more discussion about this!

James

I'm a single bloke with a background in electronics and physics and I write software for large corporate systems for a living - you'd think I'd be prime gaming material but I've never owned any console and since having my first computer (over 20 years ago now), I've probably only bought a handful of games - none of which I've played with for years.

Despite various attempts by friends, I just find it impossible summon any kind of interest in computer games. Am I normal???

I am a woman and I used to enjoy computer games as a child/teenager, but at that time I lived in a remote rural area and had little opportunity to socialise with others. For me, computer games distracted me from the loneliness I would have felt otherwise. Then we moved, I found friends of my own age, and I forgot all about computer games.

Maybe women develop better social skills than men when young, and don't feel they have to fulfil their social needs online? I still prefer to socialise with others than to sit in front of a screen pressing buttons.

In response to James:

I do think that girls are socialised not to play certain types of computer games. When I first started playing wow, I was reluctant to let my friends know that I was playing it (becuase I thought they would think badly of me). They now know I play it, yet I still think they think that's a bad thing! When I used to play Age of Empires, I never talked about it to my friends becuase that's a 'guy' thing to do.

However, with games such as the Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon - girls aren't socialised against playing that type of game. Most of my friends will have played the Sims, I can't think of any of them that haven't (even if they don't particularly enjoy pc games)

I am female, and I play a lot of Computer Games. My partner and I recently decided to do away with a TV and buy a projector instead. This conects to our Xbox, PS2 and our new Wii. Gettting rid of the tel was the best thing we ever did. Now if we sit down for a quet night we do so by playing a game together. This is far more interactive and far more fun.

I do know, however that I am not te "average women". In short I am a techie, (degree in Pure Maths and Computer Science, PhD in AI). I think the low number of women in computing is directly related to the low number in the industry.

Most young boys first experience of computing is gaming, girls do not generally get that experience, so they do not get enthusiastic about computers. If we can persuade more girls to play computer games than we can help solve one of the IT industrys problems.

On a related note playing some computer games is good for brother-in-law. My nephew could read before he reached school as he had played a lot of text based RPG's. The teacher was very impressed by his reading age, but found it slightly odd he knew the word for Dragon and not for Dog!

I make games for a living and play them in my spare time. I cringe every time I see any example of gender generalisation in games and especially in their advertising methods. However, I do believe that the damage was done a long time before children start to pay attention to advertising. Women are taught and/or influenced, by the people around them as they are growing up, into a role that has no room for play time. Even now, when I’m at home, I struggle with a constant nagging feeling that I should be investing my time into ‘something more worth while’ and I have to justify my play time as research (to myself!). Women do play lots of casual games but suffer from guilt for it, if you know women you think don’t play games it is probably because they don’t want you to know that they can easily lose an hour playing minesweeper. Fully fledged retail console games are deemed to take just too much time investment to achieve the same level of satisfaction. The industry would like girls to buy more games, but it is deemed to be a wasted effort to try to market to them. Saying all that, attitudes are changing and now that schools are using more game-like educational software, I believe this will allow the next generation of girl gamers to become more accepted.

P.S. Most girls I know that generally won’t play games seem to watch endless hours of soap operas, which I deem to be a complete waste of time, so there you go!

I'm not female, but I do play a game which has a female fanbase (Planeshift). I think that what people look for in games is very varied. It seems that women are more geared towards social games like MMOs (Planeshift, WoW and similar things). Rather than wanting to blast the latest monster apart.

The games industry is already swinging towards games that require more co-operation and socialising, this appears to be what people want.

Although my girlfriend is a keen gamer, I know that she's in the minority. It's important that consoles such as the Wii and DS bring gaming to non-gamers if the hobby ever had a hope of gaining truly widespread acceptance.

A lot of the ignorance and bigotry directed towards gaming (Keith Vaz, raise your head!) usually comes from a lack of understanding. Hopefully the policy makers of the future will all be gamers and then someday we might see games treated with as much respect as film and music.

It's not about getting spousal approval for gaming. It's that the video game industry, firmly led in this respect by Nintendo, wants to get more people playing video games. The biggest group of people who currently *don't* play video games is the group of women. Some do, many don't.

Who's the woman Miyamoto spends the most time with? His wife. So it's natural that he'd pay attention to her reactions. And it's also fair to assume that if he can make games that appeal to her, he'll be at least part of the way towards making games that appeal to non-gaming women in general.

It may not be an aversion to gaming in general, more to the extended amounts of time girlfriends or wives are ignored in favour of it. Spending an entire weekend where any attempt at conversation is responded to with "not now, it's a boss!" is hardly a way to sell gaming to women.

And it would work exactly the same way women to men - "shush, wait until the ad break, I'm watching this!"

Hi i love and couldnt live without my consoles.
Im 46 and started way back with a modest commodore 64 - which i still have, right up to the ps2, now iv just brought my daughter a nintendo wii - fantastic console - i just love rayman raving rabbits lol. As for other games GTA San Andreas - Resident evil - Tomb raider and Project zero series are fantastic. Love most games.
Im still gonna be gaming when im 90+ lol.

My wife and I are both gamers; it's one of the things that drew us together in the first place! I find quite a lot of women playing the MMORPGs that my wife and I play or played (Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, City of Villains). I think that since most MMORPGs are, on the whole, easier than many of the traditional single player games, coupled with the chance to talk to people all over the world, it makes them more attractive to a wider range of people, men and women alike.

Women aren't the financial target games' companies need to attract, it is people over the age of 45. OAP Bus Simulator would rule!

One problem the way games endear themselves to a male audience only(though it is improving) is the way player avatars are designed.
Male characters are portrayed as heroic idols - "Who wouldn't want to play this character? I'm strong and brave and I can do anything" whereas female characters have a tendancy to look pretty (the large-breasted kind of pretty). And that's it. Sure, they might have the same attributes and abilities as the male avatars in terms of game mechanics, but who wants to play an avatar designed purely for eye candy purposes? Bugger that, I want to be a hero.
Fortunately things have improved a lot, with World of Warcraft being an excellent example of how female and male avatars can be just as interesting as each other. I can happily play either a male or female character on WoW and not see a difference in how heroic I look.
For an example of how the games industry not only failed to consider a female target audience but did a good job of alienating it, one need only look as far as "Duke Nukem", the original "Prince of Persia" (Save the princess? Please.) and yes, "Tomb Raider".

at the grand old age of 28 i consider myself to be a veteran gamer. most if not all my male friends are gamers and all have struggled to get their wives and girlfriends into gaming. i have had limited success with my other half - co-op games such as Star wars and LOTR on PS2 proved very addictive when played togaether but my wife would never play games on her own. on the subject of the wii we my friend brought one round on new years eve and proved a success probably because alot of the games are very social. overall most women i know still believe games are a waste of time but spend hours watching and discussing soaps and reality tv

I was never a big video/computer game player when I was single, but after being married a few years, my wife and I bought a PS2 on a whim.

We really enjoyed playing cooperative games -- the genre didn't matter -- but it's turned out to be pretty tough to find good console games with good cooperative modes. Our favourite was an old 1st-person shooter where we could stalk around together and blast the baddies in split-screen view, but increasingly it seems like multi-player options are designed for online play -- which isn't really practical when we're both sitting on the same sofa in front of the same console and screen.

Doubtless online playing is really cool -- it's just not of much interest to us as a couple, and we don't game much individually. Maybe we'll go back to the PC and play strategy/simulation games or something. But we're not sure whether the immediate future of console gaming holds anything for us.

My wife was never interested in any of my console antics (although she liked watching the games) even when I bought the Wii. She thought playing the Wii or any other console for that matter was stupid and makes you look daft.

I finally convinced her to have a go on Wii Sports (tennis particularly). After a quick brush up on how to use the Wiimote she was playing tennis in our living room.

After the first game I asked what she thought she was thoroughly wrapped. We played game after game until she finally was convinced that the Wii was actually a really good investment.

Although she doesn't play the Wii much she is now more willing to play a bit of tennis, round of bowling or couple of innings of baseball than she would the Xbox or Playstation2.

The Wii is a real achievement in appealing to the non-gamer.

I am continually working to get my wife playing. I've always been a massive Nintendo fan, currently having a Gamecube, PS2, and XBOX360. My wife eventtually fell for my DS, so now we have 2. I'm sure she'll love a Wii. It's a shame that gaming has such a bad stigma...where is the crime in play and escapism? As we grow old it is one thing many of us cease to do, but gaming allows to have fun and interact with something.

Well, a female gamer would be my ideal match. Where can I meet all these female gamers. Oh, online I guess..

In Response to Sandy:

It's the age old dilema of how to meet people when your hobby is shutting the door on the world and closing the curtains. My GF barely tolerates my gaming addiction and FFXII isn't helping! However, the recent Wii purchase has her doing all sorts of exercises with Wii Sports and she rules at Bowling. Unbeaten. Show her a 'typical' console though and her eyes will roll over and she'll start screaming. Maybe future gaming wives should start a forum to better highlight their plight and find a man!

I'm female, & I game. I've been playing City of Heroes since it was released, and have reciently picked up WoW. I have previously played Everquest, and dabbled in a number of other computer games, both "casual" and adventure. I have never gotten into console games.

In my experience, I am an oddity, though I do know other female gamers, mostly through meeting them online.

As to the original questions:

So are women happy with the experiences they are being served up? Personally, I do tend to go for experiences that are more than just "hack & slash". I want more story content or social contact, or tradeskills, not just a series of enemies to defeat (though a good battle can be fun too).

What do you think of the wife-o-meter? I got no problems with it. He looked to those he personally interacts with to gage reactions to things, and then broadened that to the general public. He has also convernted his wife, who now accepts and understands more about something that is important to him.

Is gaming something that still needs spousal approval? Yes, but not in the sence of "females have to approve of this" but in the sence of "this is something I spend a lot of time & focus on, and if my spouse can't or won't accept that it's going to cause a lot of friction" regardless of it the spouse is male or female.

I am currently a Uni student taking a course in Computer Games Design at Staffordshire Uni, and I note that our head lecturer is female.
However apart from that, the class in terms of students is obviously male dominated, and although good friends with one girl on the course, noting the attitude and stick she gets from other girls, which seems to me to give a mostly negative attitiude towards girls and gaming.
I think their needs to be a slight realistaion on the female part that games are not a masculine thing to do, although male dominance and arrogance also needs to be addressed.

Actually, "most" gaming isn't done by teenage boys. The average gamer is 33 years old - just thought I'd clear that up.

And in response to your question about a spouse playing video games, let me say I'm not married yet (I'm only 24), but I don't know if I would ever marry a girl who didn't at least enjoy a round of Mario Kart every so often - I'm not looking for spouse approval, but spouse participation!

I am also among the female fanbase of EVE-online. When I first my fiance, all he could talk about with his best friend in my presence was this game. Tired of losing interest in what he was talking about, I subscribed to the game myself. I love it: I love the beauty, the interaction with other players, the customizable characters and ships. I became so engrossed in the game and in the desire to do well in the game, I bought a second subscription so I could have two characters going in different directions (the first is industry oriented, the second combat).

Is the "wife-o-meter" a sensible one? Yes. I know how it feels to be the MMORPG "widow." One takes time out of the day to spend time with one's significant other only to find that person is interested in playing a game instead of being with one is a rotten feeling, leaving one to think that she/he is not as interesting, fun or important as the game at times. The key to getting around this is communication -understanding the why's, the exceptions, the expectations, possible solutions, etc.

My take on the lack of female players is that it is partly due to socialization or lack there of with video games. I have three younger brothers who contributed greatly to my familiarity with video games which often resulted in many breaks-ins to male conversations and an at-ease social engagement. Encouraged by this I continued to dabble in console and computer games.

Nowadays I see more girls at younger ages playing video games. I think that has been made easier in part not only to games targeting girls but portable game systems like the Nintendo DS and PSP. Unlike when I was a kid playing console games, they do not have to worry about more experienced male players over their shoulders yelling instructions, which can take all the fun out of it. With greater acceptance of girls' interest in video games, the gameplay experience for both sexes has improved.

I'm female and I don't game, although almost all of my other female (and male) friends do. Many of my friends find this strange, because in other ways I fit the "gamer" stereotype; I played D&D in high school, I love sci-fi and fantasy, my undergraduate majors were in physics and math, and I'm now employed doing research in astrophysics.

My reasons for gaming don't have anything to do with my level of technological expertise or access to game systems, since I'm proficient with computers (my work now actually involves about 50% coding and 50% analysis) and I actually had many opportunties to play games as a child, because my best friend growing up had both a Nintendo and whatever the Sony counter-product was. I simply find every game I've tried to be really really boring (and my best friend forced me to try a wide variety before she gave up on me). Of all of them, I have to say that the first person shooters were probably the most enjoyable, so I don't think that female "targeted" games would improve my interest level :) I guess I feel like anything I've seen in a game could be done better in a book or a well written movie/television series, and I'd rather read or imagine my own stories lines than have to interact with a pre-made world with a fairly restricted set of options for how characters can act. Finally, I'm an artistic snob and with the exception of some of the cinemas in the Final Fantasy series, the graphics in most games really turn me off, because they just can't compare to what a person's imagination can generate.

On the other hand, I don't really care if my future husband likes games, as long as he doesn't get addicted and still has a functional life (I figure I can put up with gaming if he can put up with me spending most of my free time coding or reading journal articles, since I'm a type A personality and bring my work home too much!).

Or you could adopt my 'no wife-o-meter' approach. I'm single, forty-something and have been an avid gamer (ok, an addicted gamer!) since my late teens in the arcades, then a Sinclair spectrum, and these days on PC. I don't need anyone's permission to play Oblivion 'til two in the morning! Mind you, I am missing out on other 'action' :o) but you can't have everything.

Guess I'm one of those crazy few who don't feel gender is particularly relevant in video games any more, or won't be in the very near future. It may have been in the past, but the reality is that latest (and forthcoming) generations of games encompass so many types of 'play' and interaction that chances are good people will be drawn to some aspect of them, regardless of that person's gender.

Previous generations may have labelled video games a 'boy' thing, but as tv, movies, the internet, and games merge closer and closer that gender stigma will vanish completely. In fact, as the Second Life / Home models merge with the WoW models, pure 'games' as such will likely go the way of the dodo bird.

Hopefully, all of this concern about 'females not liking games' will cease when we realize that the successors to SL and WoW won't be able to be called 'video games' at all.

Long time male gamer here, 25. My wife, 23, also long time gamer from what she's told me. Short history:
She grew up with Sonic the Hedgehog. In high school she got an Xbox for Xmas. We bought dozens of games together and had Halo parties. She was big DDR fan. We both have a Nintendo DS. When the Xbox expired, I upgraded an old computer of mine and we started playing Guild Wars together, and Counter-Strike. Just recently she bought a Wii with her tax return.

Her friends are gamers too, but to differing degrees. One plays exclusivly DDR games, and another plays a wide range from FPS to RTS, and MMO. I would say that female gamers are satisfied with the market and only look forward to new technology like the rest of us. The angle Nintendo is using to attack the new (but mature) gamer market is smart. And seeing as how most people who haven't played a video game by their 20's are women the wife-0-meter is a good source for information.

A gentleman I work with is several years my senior and from what he tells me his wife is his only impediment to his gaming, and I know he would change that if he could. Too bad he bought an Xbox360.

"...gaming is primarily done by teenage boys"
Can you substantiate that statement? Everything I've read lately suggests that the demographic is much older.

I've gone through periods of intense game playing, being an early Zork addict. My son and I played marathon Railroad Tycoon games when he was growing up, and my most recent obsession was Kingdon of Loathing. At the moment am not doing much, but I can see getting totally hooked on the Wii. And I'm 62. Generalizations about gamers are often like talking about science fiction readers after going to one Star Trek convention. There's a lot of diversity out here that no one ever sees.

Excuse me? OAP Bus Simulator would rule! Really? I'm 50, have bought almost every console going, got a Wii on the day they came out. I wouldn't travel without my Gameboy and am particularly fond of Zelda, Mario and Yoshi, anything that can be played by 2 or more people and the PS2 eye toy (a sight for sore eyes when I play).

I am 52 and a female gamer. I had a sinclair spectrum but really got into games when we got a PC. Lemings was my first fave, which I used to sit and play with the kids. This progressed to SuperMario, Rollercoaster and Sims. We would have a great few hours playing Sims. Also Tomb Raider. At first, I had to help them thru the sticky bits, but as they grew up they soon surpased me. My son 16 mainly plays with his friends - he has Wii, Gamecube DS etc etc. I can get in the occasional game on the Wii with him. My daughter 14 uses the PC mainly for MS Messenger, but we do play Singstar on the Playstation, also the dance mat (Are theses video games?) There is more variety than people think, and as this generation grows, I think the female bias will lessen. I would love friends of my age to play the games with me.

I really dont seem what the big fuss is about with video game's! I sometimes play wow but my life doesn't depend on it, I can actually live without playing a video game unlike some people! Some people play it every waking moment and i just think what is the point. What about the things that really matter in life, ie family, friends why spend so much time on a game, cant you just play an hour or two a day, without ignoring the rest of your family and friends as thats what your doing without realising it, think about the people who you are leving out while playing these games!

Why is it important that more women play games? In fact, why is it important that men play games? I have no objection to gamers per se, but living in a house where my housemate and his friends routinely spend their entire weekend glued to the X-box, I can't help thinking that these people really need to get a life. It's fine to play for a couple of hours, but there's a whole real world out there. Melissa (Post 30) is right on, in my opinion.

Miyamoto's comments ostracize female gamers and makes male gamers look like a bunch of paternalistic out-of-touch with reality junkees.

Despite the statistics, women still game. And by making a "wife-o-meter" Miyamoto only demonstrated that he sees women--specifically wives--as a "problem" population that needs to be enveloped into the larger male culture. Which it was never male in the first place. If your wife doesn't like gaming--tough. Let her whine about it. Let her go back to making babies and dinner preparations. Meanwhile, us couples who LIKE to game and game together --will ignore and condemn Miyamoto's comments.

I'm not sure women gamers are such a minority.

I'm in my 40's and am a complete WoW addict - luckily so is my wife. However we play in a guild that has 8 other couples that play on a regular basis. Maybe we are the exception and all the other players are 12 year old boys but that is not my experience of it.

As for it being a waste of time - well maybe but no worse that watching telly. At least we have a vivd online social life (and we even meet in real life sometimes).

I do agree there are a large number of games squarely aimed at the "testosterone" market but equally there are a lot that appeal to women - for instance my wife will always be the house Civilisation queen as I can't come close to her scores!

So in summary let's not get carried away with sweeping generalisations - yes it is a broadly male pastime but it's far from exclusive.

As any of you readers have noticed, female gamers are not as rare as you think. In a society now that is full of a wide range of games to choose from, the gender gap is quickly closing.

I am a WoW addict, and so is my husband (lucky for him ^^). I know 3 other girls who play WoW in real life, and many more in-game.

It's time to drop the stereotype of boys play games - girls watch soaps (I personally detest soaps :P)

To all you girl gamers out there - Happy gaming!

Hi im a 25 year old gamer and my fiance and i play video games i dont see any gender difference nowadays compared to the early 80s when home computing took off girls still had barbies and polly pockets when us boys had ataris and C64S it just took a little time for the girls to cotton on to how cool gaming is and you see a lot of girls nowaday splaying videogames my mates daughter plays mario on a ds and there are new genres for girl gamers ie neopets and nintendogs.

ps Sega rule