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.Once again, this is not a political statement, just an observation by one individual.I won’t venture to explain, just yet, why women would have this instinct.This is not to say that men don’t enjoy relationships and don’t derive pleasure from them, that isn’t the case.However I believe women get more of a kick from it, and the ubiquity and popularity of the female equivalent of sports: soap operas, are proof.My definition of soap includes the "X-Files", "Party of Five", "Ally McBeal" and all similar shows (those are soaps for the younger crowd).Soap operas create the illusion that you are part of a social group, and you watch each episode to find out who is going to be the next Alpha monkey, who is having a baby, who is breaking up or getting together.All of the plot twists in soap operas are generally events that change the social dynamic in an extended family group.In essence, soaps depict a fictitious, hyper-dynamic family group (and associated peripheral characters) interacting in stereotypical relationships.These TV families are extended, completely dysfunctional of course, and alliances (both sexual and otherwise) are made and broken very quickly.Soaps are essentially a distillation of all of the events that impact the social dynamics of the extended family and group.The main draw of soaps are the events that effect the power dynamics and emotional well-being in a family.The younger crowd soaps such as "Dawson's Creek" or "Party of Five" deal with pre-family social dynamics, and feature almost exclusively the topic of establishing relationships between men and women and friendships.Women are geared to being keenly interested in what is going on in a social unit, and are very concerned with events that may affect the dynamic of the group, such as a break up, or a new child, a dispute, a death, a newcomer to the group.etc….This was especially useful when the survival of a group of pre-historic humans often depended on their ability to get along, when changes in the dynamics of the group could de-stabilize social harmony to the point of actually threatening their existence.Women to a large extent still take on the responsibility of ensuring social harmony, and have developed many skills and abilities to do this, such as intuition, the ability to empathize with others, and highly developed language abilities.This is why language has far greater layers of meaning for women.We may speak the same language but we use it differently, and men often get into trouble when they fail (or succeed) to employ the subtle nuances in their language that convey the proper intention.However, unlike men, women get to use all of their instinctive abilities in daily life.They engage in rewarded behavior all the time, unless they are orphaned and in solitary confinement.A good deal of a woman’s feelings of well-being depend on how her relationships are going and she spends a lot of time tending her collection of relationships each day.Therefore they don't generally feel compelled to pursue this kind of satisfaction in a computer game, they don't need to! In fact computer games are a solitary and time-consuming activity, and therefore are considered anti-social and destructive to relationships.This gives games a very bad reputation among women.Maybe we can change their mind?Games for WomenSo what kind of games would give women the same "kick" that men get out of games? Instead of trying to get women to like action games, what has to happen is games must be specifically designed for them, by them (ideally).This has been attempted with mixed success already.The "Barbie-dress-up" games for pre-teens are one foray into this complicated subject, a very basic and primitive one.But in my opinion these are not as much games as they are multi-media software.The "Sims" is probably the only serious attempt at trying to hook the mature female audience.And it comes pretty damn close.But does it give that "soap" feel? I don’t think so, primarily because of the abstract and mechanical interaction between the characters.One of its major problems is that there is no talking between the characters, only pictographic representations of what they are saying.This is a major obstacle to female "buy-in".The truth of the matter is that designing the game that would have wide appeal for women is going to have to replicate to a certain extent many aspects of female daily existence.It's going to have to realistically depict various types of relationships in various degrees of contextual complexity, and make extensive use of language based on very good scripting.Voice acting will have to be top notch, and the scripting of stories and personalities in the game will have to be extensive, realistic and maturely done.Characters in the game will have to react to the player in multiple and sophisticated ways, with next to no repetitiveness.In essence, the game will have to have next to a completely functional human Artificial Intelligence, very rich and detailed art, complex and long stories, and multiple outcomes based on a wide array of choices.In other words, the ideal game for women can’t be done yet, because the requirements necessary to interest the sophisticated female brain are beyond the abilities of current game technology.But we can start small.We can start by designing games that feature more detailed and esthetic interiors (thank you Aurora), that feature more mature and professional voice acting and scripting, more detailed and sophisticated characters and stories.We can start with this and gradually develop our designs until we have the ability to create complex stories about next-to-real people in interesting situations.Then maybe, just maybe, we can get them hooked.Philippe O’Connor, Producer for Strategy First Inc., based in Montreal, Canada.poconnor@strategyfirst.com.Discuss this article in the forums© 1999-2002 Gamedev.net.All rights reserved.Terms of Use Privacy PolicyComments? 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