No. Not this girl. Not this day
Spike - Angel
Welcome to another installment of the EVE Blog Banter, a recurring EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux, which invites EVE bloggers to address a common topic for a period of one week. Posts run the gamut: short, long, humorous, serious, and everywhere in between, but always fun to read!
This month's banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks: "What could CCP Games do to attract and maintain a higher percentage of women to the game. Will Incarna do the trick? Can anything else be done in the mean time? Can we the players do our part to share the game we love with our counterparts, with our sisters or daughters, with the Ladies in our lives? What could be added to the game to make it more attractive to them? Should anything be changed? Is the game at fault, or its player base to blame?
70% of gamers are male. 62% of online gamers are female, and yet... only 5% of EvE's population.
Bit odd isn't it? Feels kind of sexist to go out and say "Oh but wait until Incarna comes out, then they'll have something to do," That's because it is. It's one thing to say that women prefer a social game to exploding things. It's quite another to say that they only want a social game.
Our society is how it is. Women like to talk, men like to not talk. It's ingrained in you while growing up. It may not've been the way you were leaning, but it's how you're programmed.
There are a huge number of barriers to enjoyment in Eve, but those barriers apply equally to men and women. So throw those right out.
This game has a bigger social scene than any other game I can imagine. It's ingrained into the very fabric of how we play. Standings, Diplomacy, Chat Window upon chat window, mailing lists, Eve forums, corp forums, alliance forums, leadership of corps and alliances, wars, peace, even the scams... and I could go on.
Only none of Eve's marketing mentions that.
"Take over your chunk of 0.0."
"Take over planets."
"Get engaged in massive wars on a giant scale,"
This game markets exclusively to male gamers. I enjoy pretty explosions. I've always wanted to fly a spaceship. Some chicks do too, but they're going to play the game that markets directly to them. For now, that's WoW.
Fix standings(give us a diplomat role instead of only directors) in an expansion and do a trailer about diplomacy(maybe Incarna style). Do smart marketing. Talk up the talking game. Women make up 62% of the online gaming community. That is a huge untapped potential. They'll come for the friends and stay for the pretty explosions.
I mean who doesn't love a pretty explosion...
Other Blog Banters:
Spike - Angel
Welcome to another installment of the EVE Blog Banter, a recurring EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux, which invites EVE bloggers to address a common topic for a period of one week. Posts run the gamut: short, long, humorous, serious, and everywhere in between, but always fun to read!
This month's banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks: "What could CCP Games do to attract and maintain a higher percentage of women to the game. Will Incarna do the trick? Can anything else be done in the mean time? Can we the players do our part to share the game we love with our counterparts, with our sisters or daughters, with the Ladies in our lives? What could be added to the game to make it more attractive to them? Should anything be changed? Is the game at fault, or its player base to blame?
70% of gamers are male. 62% of online gamers are female, and yet... only 5% of EvE's population.
Bit odd isn't it? Feels kind of sexist to go out and say "Oh but wait until Incarna comes out, then they'll have something to do," That's because it is. It's one thing to say that women prefer a social game to exploding things. It's quite another to say that they only want a social game.
Our society is how it is. Women like to talk, men like to not talk. It's ingrained in you while growing up. It may not've been the way you were leaning, but it's how you're programmed.
There are a huge number of barriers to enjoyment in Eve, but those barriers apply equally to men and women. So throw those right out.
This game has a bigger social scene than any other game I can imagine. It's ingrained into the very fabric of how we play. Standings, Diplomacy, Chat Window upon chat window, mailing lists, Eve forums, corp forums, alliance forums, leadership of corps and alliances, wars, peace, even the scams... and I could go on.
Only none of Eve's marketing mentions that.
"Take over your chunk of 0.0."
"Take over planets."
"Get engaged in massive wars on a giant scale,"
This game markets exclusively to male gamers. I enjoy pretty explosions. I've always wanted to fly a spaceship. Some chicks do too, but they're going to play the game that markets directly to them. For now, that's WoW.
Fix standings(give us a diplomat role instead of only directors) in an expansion and do a trailer about diplomacy(maybe Incarna style). Do smart marketing. Talk up the talking game. Women make up 62% of the online gaming community. That is a huge untapped potential. They'll come for the friends and stay for the pretty explosions.
I mean who doesn't love a pretty explosion...
Other Blog Banters:
- The Ladies of New Eden
- Is EVE a man's world?
- Sorry, No Pink Spaceships Here Please
- EVE Blog Banter: Chicks 'N Ships
- Eve Blog Banter: The Girls Who Fly Spaceships
- It’s not about fluffy bloody Kittens people!
- Space Boobies Are Bad, m'kay?
- Special Blog Banter: I Like Girls
- Special Edition or making Eve More Casual
- I wish my wife played EVE
- Is there something special about women?
- CK's Blog Banter
- The Female of the Species
- EVE Online Can Appeal to Women By Adding Casual Content
- Blog Banter: The Ladies
- Women Who Want EVE
- Tech 2 stilettos
- New Eden doesn't need to change for Eve – Adam needs to get over himself
- EVE Online and… women (sorta)
- Think Outside the Spaceship
- EVE's monthly banter - Women, women, women
- Girls Just Wanna Have... Guns!
- Draco Horizons (Blog)
- Don’t change Eve for me!
- Where Are Teh Laydeez of EVE?
- Where Are All The Wenches?
- EVEquality: The Rise of the Female Gamer
- Women? In MY SPACESHIP? Is she from Mars as well?
- Blog Banter: Captain Kirk Hates Eve
- The Female of the Species
- The Ladies of New Eden
- EVE and the X by X Genetic Succession Unit
- Sociability V
- Girl on Girls in Space
- What women want (in Eve)
- Time Is On Our Side
- Roc Appeal
- Women in EVE
- Getting In Touch With Our Feminine Side
- It's a woman's world (they just don't know it yet!)
- Women in EVE – Can it be done?
- You'd Rather Be Playing The Sims, Right?
- Blog Banter #17 – Women in Eve
- Eve vs Women
I think it's beyond just the marketing, it really boils down to the "harsh universe" angle that is built into the game everywhere.
ReplyDeleteMy wife is a heavy WoW and Warhammer player and into PvP, but doesn't even want to think about Eve.
The fact the things that are considered bannable griefing in other games are allowed if not encouraged even in empire means she doesn't have the slightest interest in the game.
I also think the death penalty thing turns off a lot of casual players. The concept that someone that just feels like "extracting tears" can destroy a lot of what you've worked to build up is not the game play experience this sort of player enjoys.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLies....you boys talk more than I do no vent. Don't gimme that "boys don't like to talk" stuff. ;)
ReplyDeleteYour point is spot on, the reason more women don't play EVE is because it's not marketed to them. So, what do I play? I like to shoot people in the face and it was marketed that way. :P
I think you have it right when you say a lot of it is marketing. Some Testing may have a point that there is a lot of things you can do in Eve that you can never do in WoW or Warhammer. But on the flip side, you can stick to high sec and avoid 90% of the situations where griefing becomes an issue.
ReplyDeleteAgain, the fact that this isn't made apparent comes back to marketing. I've spend far more time being griefed in WoW that I ever have been in Eve. Granted I was on a PVP server, but so were a lot of other women.
I think the barrier to my entry (as a female gamer, who plays WoW, & whose boyfriend plays Eve) is that they never highlight the aspects of the game that would appeal to female gamers. Eve just feels like it excludes us, from the way to the website/adds are designed, to how needlessly stupid their new player introduction to the game is.
ReplyDeleteIf they made a new-player friendly intro, and marketed to girls, I think you would see a lot more spouses of Eve players wanting to get into it.
Heck, even this contest actually got me to create a character in Eve and try to get into it, but there were so many stumbling blocks away that I got turned off as fast as I tried to give it a shot.