Interesting points brought up as always. I've of course often thought about this topic myself several times on and off. I remember in the first "glory days" of girl gaming in the early to mid-80's (coinciding with the industry's growing pains, where in actuality there was a delightful amount of experimentation to determine markets), where a genuine attempt was made to incorporate young girls in computer and computer gaming advertising along with boys, and there were a few companies dedicated to making games for girls. It's interesting how you bring up the popular "Nancy Drew" games, Matt, as even in the past, many girl-games or gender neutral games were usually based on literature. For every "Cave Girl Claire", there was a "Wizard of Oz" or "Alice in Wonderland". Obviously as now, most of these were adventure-type games, mostly non-action. Of course a lot of the infamous action girl games of late have been vapid Barbie and other licensed properties that are usually poor as actual games, making one wonder if these pitiful action diversions have an effect on influencing a young woman's eventual disdain for action later on.

In any case, brain wiring and general appeal most certainly have a lot to do with the preponderance of adventure-type "girl" games and the fact that more often than not, the average female it seems would rather play Ms. Pac-Man, Tetris and Bejeweled over the more intense type of games, both thematically and competitively. Men and women are different, but I do lament the lost opportunity to make simply better games, rather than targeted games. If a game is good enough and not overly influenced by testosterone or condescending (I'm looking at you, Barbie games), I think it would be relatively easy to reach both sexes effectively.

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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.
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