Nintendo DS Spa
December 7, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Here's a different take on games for health: the Nintendo DS Spa, which I spotted recently at Lenox Mall in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood. The service offers complimentary massages, during which time massagees are invited to play DS games. If in-mall massage-demos weren't enough evidence of Nintendo's commitment to advertising their wares to women, an accompanying brochure available at the pavilion offers the following invitation: Nintendo DS is all about moments. Those moments between class or before work. Those moments just before you head out on the town with your girlfriends. ... And if you've always thought video games weren't made ...

Do Girls Prefer 2D Games?
December 18, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

The term is finally over and I'm ready to get back in the saddle here, at least until the holidays further interrupt our regularly scheduled programming. This study isn't new, but it's the first time I'd seen it. Tina R. Ziemek published the results of a study on 2D vs 3D game preference in boys and girls ages 13 and 14 in Two-D or not Two-D: Gender Implications of Visual Cognition in Electronic Games. The study asked boys and girls to choose games from a Nintendo 64 emulator start screen and measured preference through choice and post-study ranking. The results ...

Imagine Game History
October 4, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Brian, Alice, and Leigh all wrote something snarky about Ubisoft's newly announced Imagine line for girls. They are right to point out the explicit, troubling, simplistic gender roles the games endorse. But none of them manage to locate these games historically. Videogame critics, bloggers, players, and journalists have a very short memory, and little sense for history. This makes it hard to remember that Babyz was first released in 1999, created by PF Magic, the same company that did the original pet sims Dogz and Catz (collectively Petz) in 1995. Ubisoft bought the rights to the Petz line in the ...

Intimate Controllers
May 4, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Think you've seen every kind of alternate interface? NYU ITP student Jenny Chowdhury has devoted her masters thesis work to making a videogame controller out of a bra and undershorts. She calls it Intimate Controllers. Players have to touch each other in intimate places to play games created for the device. There's a video of one of the prototypes on her website, which seems to be a rhythm matching type of game tied to an abstract fiction about compatibility with one's partner. Great stuff. (thanks to Nico) ...

Two Women in Games Events
April 4, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

One in Europe, one in the States. Women in Games 2007 will be held April 19-21 at the University of Wales, Newport. The program is here. Women in Games International 2007 will be held at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA on April 26, right after the Game Developers Exchange conference. ...

Column: Super Macho World
November 15, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Hey there! As you may have noticed, I haven't been posting lately. The reason is simple: my PhD dissertation deadline approaches, so I am basically disconnected from the world. Hopefully, early next year I'll be a free man but, meanwhile, I'm sure Ian will post enough for both of us. If you want a sneak peek at what I'm writing about, you may want to check out my new column at Serious Game Source. It is a look at the new Mario games available on the Nintendo DS, notably Super Princess Peach. Ok, time to go back to writing! ...

Farming, Gender, Narcotics, and other related things
August 2, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Last week Natsume released new versions of Harvest Moon: Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life for GameCube and Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town for GBA. I hesitate to say that I'm a "big fan" of Harvest Moon, but like Animal Crossing it's a game that charms and allures me, both as a player and as a designer. The 3d Playstation and Gamecube varieties felt too complicated, but I've played an embarrassing number of hours of Harvest Moon on GBA, and I've still yet to convince someone to marry my sullen, zucchini-planting avatar. I do still carry my chickens around ...

Women in Games 2005
July 17, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The Women in Games 2005 conference is coming up this August 8-10 at the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland. The conference promises material about both the role of women in the games industry and future games that might appeal to women. Keynote speakers include Ernest Adams, an independent games designer, teacher, founder of IGDA, Melissa Federoff, a Microsoft Games Usability Engineer, Constance A. Steinkuehler, a MMORPG researcher and game columnist, and Aphra Kerr, a game researcher at the Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster. I know Ernest, Constance, and Aphra and can strongly recommend them. And I'm sure ...

"Bored housewives" play online games
June 10, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The BBC News reported today on a research study that says "bored housewives" are fueling the growth of online games. The article draws from a new Screen Digest research report about online gaming markets to 2007. From the article: "Amazingly, every single one of the major casual games service providers reported that this growth was being predominantly fuelled by middle-aged and female gamers, the antithesis of the hardcore gaming markets," said report author Nick Gibson. "We jokingly termed this the bored housewife," he added. This is a very dangerous kind of thing to say, and it suggests that even researchers ...

Why the mobile carriers are slowing down the mobile game market
June 7, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Anyone who has shared a room with me for more than five hours total has probably heard me complain about the wireless market. There's a lot to complain about, after all. Until February, I was an AT&T Wireless subscriber, a company whose sole purpose seemed focused on thwarting my wireless phone use. They cancelled my account (without my permission of course) twice within as many weeks. I think I spent over 8 hours that month waiting on hold to talk to their CSRs. Recently, I've become convinced that the single biggest obstacle in the way of a growing mobile game ...

Two Women & Gaming Conferences
May 23, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Two conferences about women & gaming are on the horizon.... ...

Getting Off in Virtual Worlds
May 4, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Ah, irony. Just as TL Taylor launched a discussion on Terra Nova about women players' ability to birth in-game offspring in the forthcoming Wild West SIM MMOG, I got an email about the new Massively Multiuser Online Adult Environment, The Red Light World (warning: nudity). If you're over 18 and want to be a beta tester, they're looking for new, uhm, members. ...

Does Intel play with women?
April 23, 2004 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Here's the thing. It seems that Intel launch an IT Manager Game for training IT people. The fact is that the game is now offline (there is a message on their site:" Your Interest in the IT Manager game is appreciated. Intel is currently making revisions to the game, please check back again in the end of May to test your IT Manager skills." Verterblog.dk reports that what happened is that the game DID NOT GIVE YOU THE OPTION TO HIRE WOMEN! So, it is quite interesting that Intel pulled the game out and is "making revisions" to it. I ...

Women Gamers on NPR
April 1, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

A piece on women gamers from yesterday's Marketplace. (via the Serious Games Listserv) ...

Some Casual Games notes from GDC
March 26, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Mia Consalvo has been blogging from GDC, including this post on the Casual Games Summit. I was surprised by a few points raised at the summit (although I did not attend the entire day). First, even though the conversion rate for casual game purchases remains at direct mail levels -- perhaps 1 - 2% -- casual game publishers still insist that US$20-25 is a reasonable price for a casual game. I remain convinced that near-micropayment games in the $5 range would offer a brighter future for the segment. Second, I thought it was telling that no women appeared on the ...

Yet More on Women Gamers and Casual Games
March 12, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Another article apropos the AOL online games survey, this one in the Dallas Morning News (registration required) today. I have a few quotes in the article. All in all, it's clear to me that we have a lot to learn about casual games. I'm hoping to treat this topic with more devotion in the coming months. ...

More on Women Gamers and Casual Games
March 4, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I did an interview today about the recent AOL online games survey, which we discussed here on WCG. Gave my still nascent opinions about women and casual games. In preparation for it, I did an informal survey among a group of mothers ages ~ 35 - 45, asking why they play these games. As I mentioned in the last post and comments, I maintain that casual games function much like these non-game activities: Knitting Flipping through a magazine in the bathroom Doodling while on the phone Sylvie objected that knitting yields some kind of an end product, and thus isn't ...

Women Dominate Online Games?
February 14, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

A recent AOL Study claims that women over 40 are more likely to play online games than any other demographic. Even though men spend more time on the Internet each week than women (23.2 vs. 21.6 hours), female game-players over 40 spend the most hours per week playing online games (9.1 hours or 41 percent of their online time vs. 6.1 hours - 26 percent of their online time - for men). These women were also more likely to play online games every day than men or teens of either gender. The question, of course, is what does this mean? ...

The future of women gamers
November 9, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

A new, longish article on Game Girl Advance talks about the future of women gamers. It focuses specifically on the future of women console gamers, and I'd like to submit that this is the primary flaw of the article. Put more simply, I'm suspicious that the future of women gamers is bound to the future of console gaming. That's not to say that the future of women gamers is wholly unrelated to the future of the console market (for example, several of the comments attached to the GGA article point out that the XBox in its current form factor may ...

Women Gamers in the Wall Street Journal
October 28, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

There was a nice article on women gamers (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal today. It covers There's special iVillage zone within that persistent world game, women in XBox's holiday TV spots, and the continued growth of women casual gamers (zone.com reports that 68% of its visitors are women). One undercurrent of women gamers the article covers but doesn't mention explicitly is that many (most?) women gamers playing online are playing while doing something else, like watching TV. ...

The Grocery Game
October 25, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

I recently found out about The Grocery Game on a parenting/education message board. The website gives subscribers access to a special grocery list, sorted by store and US location. The list is designed to maximize savings through strategic use of coupons and stockpiling. It's admittedly not an electronic game in the traditional sense. But I found it interesting that she chose to call it a game -- there is certainly an underlying goal (save as much money as possible), as well as a simple ruleset (stockpile rules + coupon rules - "I use coupons like trading stock!") that yields an ...