Game conference to focus on untapped female audience

[Akasha]

When it comes to women and video games, there are two big issues: not enough play them and not enough build them. Why that's the case will be addressed at the first Women's Game Conference (www.womensgameconference.com) whose agenda is expected to be unveiled in a few weeks.

While 39% of all gamers are said to be women, according to data released at the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo, 39% of the industry's revenue doesn't come from women. Far from it. It is generally acknowledged that women prefer so-called "casual games," which include bite-sized card and puzzle games that can be played online for little or no cost at such Web sites as Pogo.com, GameHouse, and MSN Games.

According to industry analyst David Cole of DFC Intelligence, women make up 65% of the audience at Pogo.com, 70% at GameHouse and 76% at MSN Games' puzzle and trivia section. MSN Games alone claims it has over 30 million registered users, two out of three of which are female.

"That's a staggering number of people," Cole observes. "If you visit a site like Pogo.com, you'll find 150,000 to 250,000 people playing at any given time. And there are quite a few sites like that. So we're talking about several hundred thousand people playing simultaneously, a number that's far greater than the number of people who walk into retail stores and buy games. It's just that a lot of that online gaming is free and isn't generating money for anyone."

Cole forecasts that the number of online gamers will soar from today's level of 95 million online to 198 million by 2008.

The owners of online game sites are, of course, aware of the potential and are trying different ways to create income: Some charge subscriptions fees, others offer a try-before-you-buy experience where the game download is free but, after a certain period of time, the cost of ownership is approximately $20.

Meanwhile, women are rejecting console platforms like PlayStation and Xbox and PC games -- those sitting in boxes on store shelves -- in droves. And not much is being done by game publishers to make them palatable to female gamers, according to Sheri Graner Ray, the chairperson of the Women's Game Conference.

"The fact is that women are not buying our titles," says Ray, who is also a senior game designer at Sony Online Entertainment and the author of last year's book "Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding The Market." "And that's exactly what I want the conference to address -- what is it (about) our titles that is keeping them away."

Tobi Saulnier, vp of product development for Troy, NY-based developer Vicarious Visions, confirms that during her conceptualization and marketing talks with publishers, the topic of whether a game will or won't appeal to female players rarely comes up.

"We work on a lot of publishers' top properties," she says, "and we're part of the process that brings great games to market. But conversations about how we can make the games appeal to girls isn't part of that process."

Vicarious Visions built "Finding Nemo" and "SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom" -- both of which have found an audience with male and female gamers. She is currently working with id Software on the Xbox version of the forthcoming "Doom 3," a retelling of the 1994 best-selling first-person shooter.

"This industry will continue to have some games that press the boundaries of what is acceptable," she adds. "And those games will attract more men than women due to their sexual or violent themes. That's just the nature of this industry."

But Sony's Ray says the issue is less about what kind of game attracts women and more about what barriers exist in games that prevent women from accessing them.

"Understand that I'm not talking about adding pink, fluffy kitties to games," she insists. "It's more about addressing things like the female learning style vs. the male learning style. Look, I don't think we'll ever make a Madden football (game) that's a gender-inclusive game; it will continue to be a predominantly male game and that's fine. But publishers need to understand (that) that's a static -- soon to be saturated -- market. And should they want to make a different category of game with a more expanded audience, they can do that by knocking down some barriers."

A big part of understanding those barriers, says Ray, is enticing more women to work in the games industry, a career path largely ignored by women because of their unfamiliarity with gaming as compared with their male counterparts.

"For the past 10 years, any software marketed to a female audience was mainly productivity-oriented," says Ray. "So we get a lot of male gamers who want to join the industry because they played great games when they were younger. I can't imagine a woman saying the same thing when her only software experience was with 'Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.'"

And so the Women's Game Conference -- which is being held at the Austin (Texas) Convention Center Sept. 9-10 in conjunction with the Austin Game Conference -- will serve as both a networking opportunity and an "awareness-raising" situation for women who never considered the industry as a career choice.

"We need more women in the games industry to build games that women will love and to bring more diverse opinions to the table," says Laura Fryer, director of Microsoft's Xbox Advanced Technology Group and a member of the Conference's steering committee.

Fryer reports that the industry's personnel needs are changing from technical to artistic, mainly because programmers are starting to use common game-building tools.

"The emphasis is switching to content and gameplay," she says, "which means that the teams of audio, art, and design people will be doubling and tripling in size. That will mean a lot of opportunities for women who tend to enjoy those kind of jobs over programming."

Currently, it's nearly impossible to determine how many women are in the games industry -- or even what percentage of the business is female, according to Robin Chenoweth McShaffry, vp of operations at Mary-Margaret.com, a recruiter that specializes in the games industry.

"You'll find that most game companies are shy about sharing gender information on their employees," she explains. "Even as recruiters, we don't have a lot of empirical data on gender in the marketplace. It is a little sobering, though, to go through our own large database and find so few women."

But the fact that a number of women have moved into influential positions within the industry is what has created a buzz -- at trade shows like E3 and the Game Developers Conference -- about the need for more women, says Christopher Sherman, the executive director of the Austin Game Conference. That is what led to the creation of the Women's Game Conference.

"We have an interesting opportunity here," he says. "The next-generation of game consoles will be out in the next two years, which can lead to all sorts of changes in the industry, including leadership changes. This is a very disruptive time which doesn't happen very often. And we ought to take advantage of it."

Sherman estimates that 200 to 300 female attendees will be in Austin in September, a number that Sony's Ray finds exhilerating.

"When I went to my first Game Developers Conference 10 years ago, I think there were six women in attendance. Now we finally have enough women in the industry to do this -- although we could use a lot more. I can't wait until I finally see a line at the restroom," she joked. "That's the sort of barometer that's really telling."

[size=18px]Top female gaming executives[/size]

NOTE: Who are the most influential female executives in the video game business? The following list is based on an informal survey of several long-time, high-profile game industry experts who struggled to confine it to only 12 women executives.

* Cindy Armstrong, vp international business development, Sony Online Entertainment
* Mary Bihr, vp global publishing, LucasArts
* Lucy Bradshaw, vp and executive producer, Maxis/Electronic Arts
* Beth Doherty, vp sales, Acclaim
* Laura Fryer, director, Xbox Advanced Technology Group, Microsoft
* Germaine Gioia, vp licensing and business development, THQ
* Alison Locke, exec. vp, North American Publishing, THQ
* Sheri Graner Ray, senior game designer, Sony Online Entertainment
* Samantha Ryan, CEO, Monolith Productions
* Kathy Schoback, vp content strategy, Infinium Labs (IGDA chairperson emeritus)
* Nancy Smith, exec. vp and general manager, North American Publishing, Electronic Arts
* Kathy Vrabeck, president, Activision Publishing, Activision

Information Source : The Hollywood Reporter