A New Study Tells Men What [Some] Women Want

A new report just came out, detailing how female gamers are being largely ignored, despite the fact that more and more women are getting involved with video games. The entire report costs money to read so I have not read it, but Industry Gamers gives a brief overview of what is being said.



In short more women are playing both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 and forty-four percent of female gamers would rather not play casual, music or fitness games. The most interesting part of that article however, was the quote that says (I am paraphrasing here) women have different gaming habits than men. Women would rather play single-player games, and see character and story as more important to their gaming experience than competition.


Do Not Want.

Now I do not speak for all women, that would be unwise, but I have to agree with that statement at least for myself. The majority of games I own are single player and when I do play online games I would rather play co-op than competitive (though I still enjoy a round of Halo or CoD every now and then). Of the games I own the vast majority are also story and character heavy games such as Enslaved, Dragon Age: Origins and Portal and I would rather play those than something like Madden or Gran Turismo.



The report made me wonder, since the majority of my friends are male gamers, what is it that other female gamers want? I know what I look for in a video game, but I am not all women and it would be nice to hear the opinions of other female gamers.

As an aside, here is a slightly old article that I rather enjoyed reading. The article deals with female gamer stereotypes.