Made Without You in Mind

The old 'games are sexist' discussion doesn't seem to be a thing that will disappear soon. Damn, the feminism movement have what? 50 years now? And yet we are not living in an egalitarian society. maybe we will never have, because men and women ARE different, psychologically and physiologic. I am all for equal respect and rights for both, but we must admit that we are different.

Some things are made for men. Others are made for women. Like bras, for example. You will hardly see a man going to the lingerie store and complain that they don't have a corset for men. You will not see women going to a men clothes store and complaining that they don't have suits for women. Because they know that those stores are not made with them in mind.

A few months ago, I said in a old blog how games must be more inclusive.How they make a try to make a game where everyone should few comfortable playing. I partially changed my mind. I still think that certain games, like the FPS, should allow for more diversity. They could make female avatars for the players to choose, instead of forcing all women playing to use the manly men avatars. Also, fighting games could balance the scantily clad female fighters with more sensitive clad ones, or offer second costumes less revealing.

But certain games ARE made with a 'just men' approach, while certain games are made with 'only girls' approach (I will admit that most games made for girls seems to assume that only 9 year old girls play games). The same way certain games are made with kids in mind and others are made for mature adults. Asking them to be more broad would hurt those games in a way.

What we need and I talked before is more diversity. We need more games that appeal to the different audiences. Today, the gaming community is bigger and more diverse than ever. Developers and publishers need to realize that. It is not just the male teen full of hormones that play games anymore. They need to diversify their portfolio under risk of losing a great chunk of possible costumers.

Diversity is a beautiful thing. We should seek for it. And the game industry need to realize that as soon as possible.