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Let's take a look at the Android store. Looks like more of the same.
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Jan 18, 2014 04:35
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Eggn0g posted:SO I went ahead and tried to find some girl games as suggested in the OP. First thing I find is Popstar Dentist, where you clean some popstars disgusting teeth while they make this face; Obviously pop stars do nothing but eat candy and not brush their teeth in between shows. And somehow they keep that amazing figure. I am so following this thread with interest. Keep at it, Game-Dame-Gurlz!
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Jan 18, 2014 04:36
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i was not expecting this|
Destroy the patriarchy and let me be a lesbian in the harvest moon nintendo.
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Jan 18, 2014 04:36
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Rahonavis posted:Or an actress who must play different characters and wear setting-appropriate costumes. Or -goodness- a field biologist who needs to dress for different environs and gather the appropriate equipment. And any of these could be the first level of a more elaborate game (spy interacts with different people and gathers information, actress memorizes her lines and discusses the process of making the movie with the other filmmakers on set, scientist explores the environment taking photos and asking questions and observing. Crap, I just made myself want to play every one of these!) I think we totally played that game too, and it was called Storybook Weaver? There was also another weird game called Wiggins in Storyland, with minigames and also a story mode that worked in similar ways but was more limited than Storybook Weaver. My sister just reminded me that you could also force-feed Wiggins fruit juice until he barfed, so that there's my girl gaming history. I had a similar mindset growing up where I decided to reject all girly things, out of a combination of not liking to be stereotyped into them and the idea that they also were sucky because they were girly. Now I like many girly things! And do not give two shits about many others. It can be hard, though, to not get defensive about the things I am girly about. It feels like you're giving up the fight and giving into weakness if you want to just look pretty. Also girly things are presented as being terrible and inferior, and it's hard to not internalize that to some extent. Like I love playing the Sims, and spend hours and hours on it. I'll get super into dressing them in their little outfits and setting up their houses just so. It makes me feel ashamed to admit it, though, because it's got a reputation for being a stereotypical dame game, all with articles and poo poo being like wow why is this game so appealing for women?? I guess because clothes and things??? I know intellectually it's just a straight up popular game across all genders because it's fun, and that also I think that dame games are perfectly fine things to exist. But that doesn't really stop the knee-jerk stupid gamer shame when I go to Steam and see my hours played on Sims Medieval are catching up with my hours played on Skyrim.
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Jan 18, 2014 04:54
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Agent Interrobang posted:At least we had Samus Aran, until Other M hosed it all up. EagerSleeper posted:Prime and Other M are mutually exclusive stories, and one of them was an innovative revival for the series, and the other was a steaming pile of poo poo. I certainly know I which one I'm going to choose. I can totally imagine Other M Samus playing tons of browser-based girl games as a kid, just to distance her from the Samus that would only use an internet browser to research her next target.
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Jan 18, 2014 05:14
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Whoo boy, this is going to be a fun thread! I don't remember much about girl games being any more than cheap flash games growing up, since I didn't really get into the internet until early high school, but I did have sisters. My sisters and I would play together with each of our stuff. We'd mix stuff like their dolls and my Lego for example, it was pretty fun times. We'd swap, but more often it was borrowing my stuff; when I got to see their Barbies, they could only move their whole legs, arms and head and maybe had functioning knees and elbows that popped when you bent them. I could see why they didn't find them as interesting, so I was cool with them using whatever. The Lego were the real boon though, we'd build and deconstruct stuff all the time. One of my sisters loves to draw and doodled a lot when she was younger. One thing we did was she'd draw little mini-comics and I'd use Kirby Super Star's sound-test to add little sounds and music, make it all dramatic. 
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Jan 18, 2014 05:28
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Agent Interrobang posted:At least we had Samus Aran, until Other M hosed it all up. Having never played the Metroid games, my understanding of Samus is basically "Ripley but she's in a video game". I... I don't want to know what happens in Other M do I...?  Cyan Dag posted:I think we totally played that game too, and it was called Storybook Weaver? There was also another weird game called Wiggins in Storyland, with minigames and also a story mode that worked in similar ways but was more limited than Storybook Weaver. My sister just reminded me that you could also force-feed Wiggins fruit juice until he barfed, so that there's my girl gaming history. Never heard of Wiggins but Storybook Weaver rings a bell. I'll have to look it up later. As far as the "Girly girl vs. Tomboyish" play discussion, I may go into more detail when I can get on a computer but for now, imagine Invicta dinosaur models rubbing shoulders with the original My Little Ponies.
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Jan 18, 2014 05:47
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Knowing as much as I do about marketing, these games are slowly ebbing away at my soul. Each of these games had at least a week's worth of research and planning, and a ton of effort going into it conceptually. It's actually pretty disgusting.
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Jan 18, 2014 05:49
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This is a fantastic LP and thread so far! Are you going to dive into ~girl gamez~ that are popular with a larger audience, either ironic or otherwise? I'm thinking specifically of a game like Secret of the Magic Crystals.
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Jan 18, 2014 05:55
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I've seen ads for these "girl games" ever since I was a little boy on the internet, and I remember wondering what they'd be like. It's nice to finally know that I wasn't missing out on much. That being said, I'm eagerly looking forward to this thread. I'm loving the contrast between serious discussion and the silliness on screen, and I'm legitimately interested in the implications of these games. Rahonavis posted:Having never played the Metroid games, my understanding of Samus is basically "Ripley but she's in a video game". I... I don't want to know what happens in Other M do I...? No. You don't. Other M is...not liked by the fanbase, and for good reason. Some Metroid fans may tell you that there is no Other M game. But if some deranged part of you wants to see it for yourself, we have an LP of it in the archives. At any rate, any more discussion on that should probably be talked about somewhere else.
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Jan 18, 2014 06:05
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John McClane posted:I'm thinking specifically of a game like Secret of the Magic Crystals. SOMEBODY gave me that game for Christmas, so this will happen eventually.
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Jan 18, 2014 06:20
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Holy cow, gold already. Congrats, Vacuum!
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Jan 18, 2014 06:34
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NinetySevenA posted:Let's take a look at the Android store. Oh god, that fairy's eyes. I'm wondering if the reason they make these games is that they actually believe that females are some mysteriously untapped market and that they rely on
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Jan 18, 2014 06:48
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Okay, I've installed a whole crapload of hot loving garbage games onto my iphone to try for this thread, and I've already begun receiving random endless notifications that I neeD TO GO DO MY HAIR FOR THE PARTY RIGHT NOW. Dvac why did I install these. Why.
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Jan 18, 2014 06:49
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gobbledygoat posted:Destroy the patriarchy and let me be a lesbian in the harvest moon nintendo. This but ironically.
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Jan 18, 2014 07:03
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dijon du jour posted:Man all of these games so far are about dressing up and getting boyz. This stinks. Aren't there any that are a little more progressive? Is this that game where you clean up after Santa goes psychotic?
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Jan 18, 2014 07:28
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Are you going to get around to Gears of War? That was pretty much the quintessential "girl game" for consoles.
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Jan 18, 2014 07:49
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Oh man oh man, the dress up game, creation of the starting and practicing flash game maker who happens to also be an artist. And the rest of this... Everything. I'm so glad I'm around for this. I see nothing not purely magical coming out of this.
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Jan 18, 2014 09:12
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What the hell is this dress up games for only girls? I love to dress up. Actually whenever I play World of Warcraft I usually can't afford to buy anything to raid with because I spend all my gold on new hair cuts and new dresses for my buff dudes. I am going to murder dragons while looking fabulous and don't you dare tell me other wise. 
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Jan 18, 2014 10:22
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Psychedelic Eyeball posted:Are there any girl games that aren't there to remind you that if you're a girl, you're utterly screwed and must spend 500 dollars in beauty products every day? Mass Effect. Edit: Oh wait, in Mass Effect 2 you have to spend plenty of resources to remove those glowing scars on your face, and become the beautiful porcelain gun goddess that you are inside. Mass Effect 1 and 3 still stand. StoryTime fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Jan 18, 2014 |
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Jan 18, 2014 10:33
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Dreadwroth posted:Uhhh I think I meant biological sex, but I am probably wrong so feel free to ignore my halfassed opinions on sexuality. And yes, gently caress the patriarchy. I think most people use the word "sexuality" as a synonym for "sexual orientation", but here's a dictionary definition, so... hmm. Also, since it may be useful to the thread in general, here's what the World Health Organisation says on "sex" vs "gender".
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Jan 18, 2014 10:51
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It's kinda rare that I encounter a games thread which I support entirely, yet can't bring myself to watch the videos through in full becasue I find it so heartbreakingly awful to see this type of gendered stereotyping promoted so hard. You are stronger people than I.
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Jan 18, 2014 11:38
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StoryTime posted:Mass Effect. I point out that they had a competition for which Femshep should be the official one. Instead of just going "you know what, we've had the same appearance for the last 2 games for Femshep, why not just keep that one?" Also she appeared on none of the box art. And the Blue Skinned Alien Space Babes are practically all either mercenaries or strippers. Mass Effect was more a game where you can play a girl (but obviously canonically Shepherd is a man because pfft girls being the heroes) rather than a Girl Game.
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Jan 18, 2014 11:43
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Veloxyll posted:[...]Femshep[...] I rest my case.
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Jan 18, 2014 11:51
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Growing up in a family dominated by girls(as in for some reason everyone had two girls and one boy), I grew up with a different view of what a girl game is. Its more about doing something constructive, instead of destructive. It was my oldest sister that got me into Civilization, back on the Amiga, and my female cousins that got me into strategy games(Warcraft 2, tycoon games, TBS).
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Jan 18, 2014 11:53
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StoryTime posted:Mass Effect. Now, now, be fair, you could also cure your scars by being nice to people! Besides, that did apply equally to both men and women. (Wait, what am I saying, Shepard is canonically female )But I kept them anyway, because I liked my Shep to look like the kind of woman who would murder you as soon as look at you, and nothing says 'Dread Space Captain Shepard' like glowing red scars and eyes. Regarding the 'are they really games' question... I'd say that a lot of those 'make-up games' you showed are toys, rather than games; the distinction being in the lack of a clearly structured ruleset and defined goal.
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Jan 18, 2014 11:53
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Powerfrog posted:I would like to see some of those "dating sim" games. I remember a surprising amount of them had nothing sexual about them at all. And an unsurprising amount of them did. Otome Games? Hakuoki has been mostly LP'ed over in this thread it hits the end game a few times as afaik so should still be a good read. Someone if they wish (read: are crazy) can jump on over to Ren'ai and delve into some original English language visual novels that will have female main characters. For actual dating sim games for women the Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side games I know have translation patches for the first two on DS. They seem to be well liked since Konami is still producing the series. If anyone knows Japanese how is Dengeki Girl's Style? Which is a monthly released magazine about games aimed towards a female audience.
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Jan 18, 2014 12:36
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Dating Sims for girls come in two flavors - Otome Games, where the protagonist is female, usually bland enough to be self-inserted on, and frequently affects the plot very little. She meets a large cast of men, engages with them on some level, blahblah, pick which one you wanna gently caress. Plots vary from 'you're a japanese high school student, duh' to, uh, actually existing. Sexual content is usually nonexistent or minimal (though not always), especially since these games are frequently released on DS/PSP/whatever instead of the PC. Examples include Hakuoki, Sweet Fuse. Then there's the ones where two hot guys gently caress.
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Jan 18, 2014 13:21
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Endorph posted:Then there's the ones where two hot guys gently caress. Do these play differently than the former?
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Jan 18, 2014 13:28
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StoryTime posted:I rest my case. Male shep gets called either Male shep or Broshep :p
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Jan 18, 2014 13:29
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Caufman posted:Do these play differently than the former? Some of the games have more 'simulation' elements, where you raise certain stats to appeal to certain guys or to buy items to give them as gifts, but not often, and it still isn't much of a game. There are a *few* games with more, well, gamey aspects, and sometimes successful franchises get actual game-game (game) spin-offs, for instance Hakuoki getting a Hack n' Slash game, but that's a whole different ballpark.
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Jan 18, 2014 13:34
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Aces High posted:
Because there are people who don't want to play full RPGs and just want to play with a dollmaker for a few minutes? I hate to put myself in the position of looking like the 'defender' of these crappy flash things, but I want to nudge the critique into being against the actual negative parts of the game and not just against pink and sparkly things existing. There are some actual games based around fashion, most of which I haven't played but some of which are considered to be pretty good games in the casual market. They're nothing like these little flash things, of course. They do still tend to have the same problem of restricting all body types to the same ridiculous cartoon model of being impossibly skinny, exaggeratedly curvy, and Sassy Hip Thrusting all at the same time. However, they have clear rules and gameplay and put the player in a more professional position. You're not just trying to make "yourself" up, you're running a shop or a fashion show or something. As for otome games, they are yet again made for a totally different audience, and are highly varied. There are only a tiny number of originally-Japanese games available on the PSP, whose names were already stated, but there are a LOT of them for mobile phones. Again, the market affects the nature of the game. Phone games tend to let you buy one character's story at a time (because phone games need low price points and multiple purchases, that's how that market works), and usually guarantee at least a halfway happy ending because they don't want people to be angry about the money they've just spent to buy that character. Most English-language otome games on PC are written by westerners and tend to have more active protagonists but honestly there are Japanese-written ones with active protagonists as well. There's all kinds of things to say about them but they're very different from the sort of kid's toy we're talking about above.
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Jan 18, 2014 13:37
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Yeah I wasn't trying to toss otome games under the bus, I was speaking in generalizations. I really enjoyed Sweet Fuse, and there's an entire running gag in that game of the protagonist calling people out on being assholes. Also 'most' RPGs actually don't allow you to choose male or female when creating your character. Off the top of my head, and in recent memory, I can only think of Oblivion/Skyrim, Bioware's entire library, Fire Emblem: Awakening, and I guess Tales of Xillia let you choose between a guy and a girl protagonist, but 95% of the game was still the same, and both were still part of the story - it was just choosing which you went with when the party split up. And there are segments where you play as the other one anyway. Also also, I'm definitely not trying to accuse anybody of anything here, but it is kind of funny that your mind went to 'games where there's a choice' instead of 'games where there's a female protagonist.'
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Jan 18, 2014 13:45
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Dress-up is not just for girls. I know of a series of dress up games for guys called Armored Core. As for girly games, there's Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble - http://www.mousechief.com/dhsg/ A board-game-style detective story, in which boyfriends are obtained with a little bit of flirt, and then discarded as single-use damage shields, when that hag a year older delivers a particularly sick burn.
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Jan 18, 2014 14:06
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It bothers me that in the image at the top of the page, only one game stood out as potentially acceptable: She's wearing a helmet and having fun outside, maybe this one is OK? Meanwhile everything else about that image is kind of depressing. I'm vaguely aware of these games, and of the other pressures on kids the age these are targeted at, but I had no idea they were this pervasive.
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Jan 18, 2014 15:51
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I heard the line in one of the videos "Coloured pink and kind of lovely." and thought "Yep, that's a girl game."Cyan Dag posted:I love playing the Sims, and spend hours and hours on it. I played a lot of The Sims, but I feel like the expansions and sequels lost sight of the whole point, which was that it was a dollhouse with animated dolls. When it started getting to be more of a game, with goals and challenges, than a toy, where you can do whatever you want, I lost interest. I want my dolls to like who and what I tell them to, not dictate their desires to me. EvilKaj posted:I'm wondering if the reason they make these games is that they actually believe that females are some mysteriously untapped market and that they rely on That's basically it. The mainstream, high profile video games are marketed to boys, so there is this large, untapped market. The big budget games could change to appeal more to girls, but since they're already making money it's easy enough not to bother. So the companies with small budgets see this gap in the market and they can easily fill it with these things that cost them practically nothing to make, and since pretty much all the competition is at that same level there's no need to do better. The_White_Crane posted:Regarding the 'are they really games' question... I'd say that a lot of those 'make-up games' you showed are toys, rather than games; the distinction being in the lack of a clearly structured ruleset and defined goal. In a lot of cases this "Is it a real game?" question exists basically to deny legitimacy to video games that aren't marketed to the standard teenage boy audience, but I think the game/toy distinction can be useful as long as it's understood that there's nothing wrong with toys and they're not "the lovely version of games for girls and other mentally deficient people". Toys are fun, games are fun, and it's interesting to look at the fact that a lot of what are marketed to girls are on the toy side rather than the game side. Endorph posted:Also 'most' RPGs actually don't allow you to choose male or female when creating your character. Off the top of my head, and in recent memory, I can only think of Oblivion/Skyrim, Bioware's entire library [and] Fire Emblem: Awakening Dragon Age. Also, I can't believe no one's mentioned the best girl game ever: Saints Row 2. I don't know how many hours I've spent driving around town in my pink convertible, trying on and buying all sorts of clothes and jewellery. I love the missions and activities etc. in that game, but if there's one thing I wish other games would take notice of and incorporate is the character customisation and dressing up. And I just want to add that despite being male I love girl games. I have always loved playing dress-ups, playing with dolls, The Sims and even those lovely Flash-based dress-up games. Some of those in these two videos looked pretty fun.
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Jan 18, 2014 15:55
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Whuff, it's tough to write about a hard issue like this without sounding like a clod. The saturation of these games is, indeed, a terrible sight to behold. Apparently, according to these market researched and targeted sites, terrifying in and of itself, girls love [deep breath] buttrock, bad pop, ponies, puppies, as much makeup and dresses as humanly possible, to look hideously deformed in some fashion, and for all cultures and nations to look like slightly recoloured versions of each other. Way to go. But it doesn't help that many sites are also using texts that are... Well, a bit dubious. Take a good example, here's the British Council's copy of an article called "Girl's games". The first site this article recommends I can't appear to find, the second doesn't really deal with computer games, and one seems to have gone mostly defunct after 11 years of hard work. Still, it's an interesting subject, DVac, and I look forward to seeing more videos about this highly biased field.
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Jan 18, 2014 16:24
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When you mentioned Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez in the leadup I thought for sure it was going to be this horrifying thing. Please play this game.
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Jan 18, 2014 16:42
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SelenicMartian posted:Dress-up is not just for girls. I know of a series of dress up games for guys called Armored Core. You might just be my new favorite poster. Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble was one of the first games I ever bought on Steam. It's amazing, and I really wish the developer would make more.
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Jan 18, 2014 17:18
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I've never really paid attention to these types of games before, but now that they've been highlighted like this, I do find them more than a bit disturbing. The fact that a large majority of them are dress-up "games" where the model is a cartoony, sanitized version of your standard issue male-gaze nonsense is particularly pernicious. I don't know, it definitely needs thought and discussion. Hell, I'm a grown man, and I will spend literally hours turning virtually any game that will let me into a dressup simulator so I don't have a problem with that aspect per se. I guess the real difference (if we set aside the pink-n-sparkly problem for a moment) is that there's a reason for it, namely that I want my character to look good doing cool stuff. I guess there's a big difference in message between "you can get a makeover before you save the world if you want" and "all you need to do is look good."
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Jan 18, 2014 18:04
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