I just went to a panel called, “The female takeover of casual gaming.” Not sure what I was expecting, but I did learn some interesting statistics. I’m wondering, though, if the panelists really analyzed the statistics in an accurate way. A few notes from the panel, and then I’ll make my arguments:

- Statistically, females don’t like the first person shooter games, or “core” games (as the panelists called them) as much as they like games like “Diner Dash” (which I had never heard of until today). So basically, female gamers are generally more attracted to casual games than they are to core games like Counter Strike, Halo, World of Warcraft, etc. The panelists argued that this was because of the nature of the game – females are generally not attracted to virtual killing sprees or violence in general

- Women don’t want to compete online, they want to collaborate

- Less than 1% of game coders are women (at pogo.com it’s actually 1.01%). Females tend to be the “artists” in gaming development – working mostly with UI and design

- Women are generally more attracted to games with a strong social networking component. So, for instance, Scrabulous on Facebook, or something called imview which I can’t currently find online.

- More people have played Diner Dash (on playfirst.com) than have played Halo or The Sims (this one really got me. I had never heard of Diner Dash until today.)

To address the first statistic, that most women aren’t attracted to first person shooter games and would rather participate in something less violent and with more of a social networking component, well, I tend to think that this statistic mis-represents what is really going on in gaming right now. I am a big fan of Counter-Strike. I play a few times a week, mostly to relieve stress in the most banal of ways. And really, I’d rather not socialize with anyone while playing any game.

But I’ve noticed, while playing CS, that when a player admits she is a woman, two things happen: one, she immediately has a huge target right on her forehead – the rest of the server (generally all male) go all out trying to kill the female player as fast and as violently as they can. And second, the male players are generally embarrassed that they have been killed by a woman (it’s really offensive, actually) – and men who weren’t killed by this particular woman, rag on the other guys who were. Pairing this with the second statistic, that less than 1% of game coders are women, well, clearly core gaming is a mans world. There is NO respect for female gamers unless their skill level far exceeds most men that they are playing against.

The statistic that women generally don’t want to compete online, and would rather collaborate, well, I question the foundation of that statistic. I want to compete online, but I want to compete on a level playing field, and not have my game play effected by the fact that I’m a woman (and I don’t want to hide the fact that I’m a woman either). I wonder if many women don’t even consider playing first person shooter games like Counter-Strike because they know they will be surrounded by men, not be taken seriously, and will be used as target practice.

The reason, in my opinion, that women are not attracted to these ‘core’ games like Counter-Strike is not necessarily because of the nature of the game, but rather the nature of the community. There is already a well established and very closed male community in most of these games, and to break through as a woman is extremely difficult, and often unpleasant.

So the large influx of women playing casual games, I think, is more a result of there being few other options elsewhere. It’s generally not fun to play as a woman on Counter-Strike, and the only times I have revealed myself as a woman while playing Counter-Strike have been when I have dominated the game and am ready to leave that particular server. It takes a lot of work to establish yourself as a serious and to-be-reckoned with female gamer.

The last statistic, that more people have played Diner Dash in the last year than have played Halo or The Sims, well, I tend to question this statistic as well. With Diner Dash you can play online for free, download a 60 day free trial, or pay to download the game. I am curious as to what the panelists definition of “play” was – was it downloads? Was it the number of times people played the game for free online? If I wanted to play Diner Dash for free online every day, am I a separate statistic each time I play?

This all got me thinking about what we do at EchoDitto – a large part of what we do is build communities online. It seems to me that these “core” games have a huge flaw in their community building. Obviously Counter-Strike, Halo and the like all have very large and dedicated communities – but the communities are so established that there is almost no room for growth. I have no evidence to support this, but my guess is that the men playing these types of games get older, stop playing, and are replaced by younger teenage males. The cycle continues. What little advertising and outreach there is, is mostly targeted towards males.

So how can we translate this to what we do at EchoDitto? Obviously we are not involved as an organization in the gaming community just yet, but when we work with clients to help build their online community, we naturally try to reach out to males and females equally. In general, with community building online, the process is to find the core demographic and target that demographic, right? So theoretically, if we find that males are generally more attracted to what a site offers than females are, it makes sense to target that demographic – to target men. By doing that we are surely building a community, but aren’t we also significantly limiting the growth of that community?

Shouldn’t Steam (where you can play Counter-Strike and the like) start targeting women more aggressively to better grow their community and diversity? But then again, why change what you are doing if it is working, right?

I’ve surely made some generalizations here, and maybe I’m totally off, but in my opinion, the reason there aren’t more women playing these first person shooter, or more violent games like the ones I have talked about here, is because we just aren’t welcome. So what’s the next best option? Apparently it’s Diner Dash.