Hey cypher -
Kind of an old thread now, so maybe you won't read it. She plays mostly RPG'ish things, the baldur's gates, nwn, that kind of thing. She isn't so much into FPS games. So yeah, I would guess there's a gender divide in game types...

I'm female, an old lady even, and I like all kinds of games. Honestly I prefer Max Payne to the Sims. I 'd rather have a good story/objective/graphics than some gathering-bubbles-or-care-bears game that I assume is geared towards women. I consdier myself a feminist (horrors!) but I like grand theft auto. Go figure.

Reid, what kinds of games does your GF like? Seems like there would be some kinds that appeal more to men vs women.

Weird. Between my girlfriend and I, she's the one that games. So I end up buying games for her for christmas/birthday/etc, thus skewing the demographics artificially towards men.

Am I the only one like this? Something tells me no...

This doesn't surprise me (I write professionaly about the gaming industry). Most gamers these days are not kids, and that's for the best: We get a wider variety of content and ideas in the marketplace. In fact, it appears that "kiddie" type of games are becoming a smaller subcategory onto themselves. This would explain Nintendo's dimimishing (though it's still importnat) influence upon the industry.

There definitely seems to be more women (actual women, not men playing as women) in the online MMORPG category. They're not playing stuff like Ultima Online or Everquest, but "simplier" fare like Neopets. I predict that The Sims Online, when its been out for a while, will turn out to have a majority female userbase.

I actually don't know a lot of women who 'waste time' playing computer games, but I know dozens of men who play AS women. I wonder if this phenomenon is observed by others.

This is a nice change of pace, and reminds me of the sort of game-design articles I read in the hoary ur-times of SF gaming; zines like The Space Gamer had a fair amount of theory.

And then there's:

http://www.eff.org/Global/America-US/Publi...e_designers.article