by Kimberly Foster

Created on: August 04, 2008

I am a 43 year old female and I love video games! I'm not alone, there is a very large, very game savvy female demographic out there that video game manufacturers quite simply ignore. There doesn't seem to be a straight-forward reason as to why this is the case. If you ask the marketing departments of any of these companies you might get an answer that women simply don't play video games as much. I would dispute that point, but if there are fewer females playing video games, I would ask the video game industry why?

As a gamer, I am interested in games which make me use my brain. I like games of strategy and simulation. In particular I love games that require me to use my creativity. I absolutely adore The Sims and play it for hours. Every time I think I've burned out on it, I find some new interesting twist to it. I find myself driving down a residential street and I see a house and wonder if I could build it in the game.

I also love Age of Empires and have been playing it since it came out. Again it's a game of building civilizations. It's also a game where you wipe out other civiliations which, I will admit, is less fun for me.

My best buddies are guys who also play video games. Their interests in games lean mainly towards the "kill everything in sight" variety. We talk about games a lot and it seems that we really have different tastes. Where they like games where you destroy things, I like games where you build things. I think this is where the video game industry can learn alot about the gender difference in game play. While I do not claim to be representative of my gender and its tastes with regards to video play or anything else for that matter, I do think that women would take more interest in video games if there was more of a creative element to them. I think that the only contact women get with video games is what they see the men in their lives bring home. If those games are about armies going to war or magical "Conan the Barbarian" type superheros slashing and bashing their way through a parade of baddies, well to that our interest tends to wane. But if the games require you to create empires or fortunes or just really cool houses, well maybe you've got a sale.

The marketers of video games and the companies themselves would do well to take another look at games for the female population. There's a market here that has been ignored far too long. Since it's generally accepted that women do most of the purchasing for their households, and there are a lot more women than there are men, the industry may want to take a look at the seemingly uninterested female gamer.

I've been playing video games literally since they came out. From Pong & Eagle to Asteroids & Pac Man, from Space Invaders to Missle Command, Centipede & Pole Position, I've played them all and love them, so now as look at the Halo's and Grand Theft Autos of the gaming world I think, hmmm, I wonder if they'll ever make a game that I might enjoy?

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