Why Doesn't the Industry Make Good Girls' Games?
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- čas přidán 14. 05. 2024
- Why are there so few quality girls' games? Why does the industry treat girls' games like shovel-ware? And why is the best horse game Red Dead Redemption 2?
I'm Moony: a lawyer. But I'm not talking about law in this video. Instead, we're going to explore the history of the girls' games movement, analyze the reasons behind its collapse and the effect that the collapse had on the video games industry.
Girls' games are both fun for all, and important! Let me see if I can convince you to give girly games a shot!
10% of Moon Channel's Revenue goes to charity! We are currently supporting Doctors Without Borders (MCF). You can learn more about Doctors Without Borders at www.msf.org/.
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Please also consider supporting Moon Channel on Patreon!
/ moonchannelyt
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Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
02:49 - Girls' Games You May Have Played
04:44 - Early History of Modern Girls' Games
07:23 - Her Interactive
09:09 - Barbie Fashion Designer
10:49 - Story of Purple Moon/Fall of Girls' Games Movement
13:09 - 90's Gamer Girl Quotes and Analysis
16:10 - Industry's Conclusions After Girls' Games Movement
17:57 - The Obvious Takeaway Neglected by the Industry
19:43 - Girls' Games are Naturally Compelling, but Lack Good Mechanics and Presentation
23:26 - Moony Rants About Horse Games
25:45 - Conclusion
26:36 - Post Script
27:29 - Credits Gag
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Additional Reading:
Femicom Museum:
femicom.org/
Horse Games Flowchart:
cdn.discordapp.com/attachment...
Beyond Point and Click: The Search for Equity in Computer Games (See, pg. 28):
files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED...
The Mane Quest:
www.themanequest.com/
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The Track List, by Fan Request:
Sorry, I had to get rid of the timestamps; they were messing with the chapters!
(1) Outset Island - The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker;
(2) Amazing Facsimile - The Sims 3;
(3) Sunny Peak - Hamtaro: Ham Ham Heartbreak;
(4) Able Sisters - Animal Crossing New Horizons;
(5) Groove No. 1 - Style Savvy Trendsetters;
(6) Delightful Dundull - Star Stable;
(7) Twilight Town (Roxas) - Kingdom Hearts II;
(8) 9 AM - Animal Crossing New Horizons;
(9) The Roost Cafe - Animal Crossing New Leaf;
(10) Summer (The Sun Can Bend An Orange Sky) - Stardew Valley;
(11) Autumn in Selphia - Rune Factory 4;
(12) Horse Race - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time;
(13) Epona's Song - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time;
(14) Map - Hamtaro: Ham Ham Heartbreak;
(15) End Song - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney;
(16) Moonlight Sonata - Hamtaro: Ham Ham Heartbreak.
Track playlists and additional reading resources might someday be a Patreon reward!
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Subtitles by: James Hugh
(Thank you, James!) - Hry
Alice from The Mane Quest here THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS 😭❤
You've hit various nails exactly on the head, and I hugely appreciate the shoutout to my work 💕💕💕
Wow, what an honor! I'm so grateful for the work that you do, Alice: it is my pleasure to share it. It is not an exaggeration to say that my opinion on horse games and girls games owes a lot to your influence!
For my viewers, I encourage you to learn all about horse games from Alice too, at: www.themanequest.com/
@@moon-channel I was super psyched to see this exists!!! I love seeing my work have impact like this, it brings me SO much joy 🥰🥰
aaaaaaa HII
As for specially girly game - I like the idea of "time princess". It's a game combining dress-up with text quests, where the main character dresses up as character of various stories and investigates them along with her cats. I wish there were some more interesting mechanics though.
@@annasolovyeva1013 and some of the stories teach some actual history!
Playing red dead 2 now as an adult is just like playing with Barbies when I was a kid. Horses. Dress up. Roleplaying. A similar amount of violence.
I, too, remember when Barbie ended racism
Lost it at similar amount of violence 😂
God, I'm a guy myself but my experiences with toys share similar themes
Ain’t that the truth!
The problem with RDR2 roleplaying options is that they are useless because the game is too easy, in RPGs like Kingdom Comes not eating properly, sleeping or even dressing accordingly will influence the game, in RDR2 it's completely optional, just abuse cigarett*s and other items easily found everywhere and you can beat the game easily, your lack of roleplaying doesn't influence the game at all.
Good idea with bad executions, seems like they were ambitious then restrained themselves to please a more casual audience, but if that was their concerns they should just have proposed different difficulty modes
I meet loads of women online through RDR2
One thing I’ve never understood is publishers saying the female market isn’t good, while sims 4 has sold more than 30 million copies and is one of the biggest franchises in gaming. I’ve always played games, everything from sims, to every lotr game under the sun, wow, to star stables. However my favorites will forever be simulations + survival. The market exists, they just don’t want to.
And the amount of girlies pirating all the Sims too!! It’s defo not a negligible number.
What games do you recommend? I've become interested in survival games (most recently Vintage Story) and am still looking for really good life/work/society simulations (most recently Democracy 3).
I’ve noticed that as well. A lot of industries (including anime even) saying it’s because the market for these things are low but then there are always huge examples to where that’s just now true. Makes me wonder why people in these industries are so reluctant to just not make content for girls..
I think recently it's starting to dawn on them, with indie devs often more likely to make games that end up becoming popular/associated with women and making bank
That's because anything populated mainly by women suddenly becomes unisex. Which is actually fine and almost universally true. As advertising managers found out, even men prefer ads aimed at women. (I'm a marketing major, marketing in practice student and ex entrepreneur). In the 90s data found that "soccer moms" were the US's primary economic force and when they catered to those women, sales went up. Of course, it's different now. No one has money, so it doesn't matter)
But, yeah. If women like it, it's for everyone. And that's not just conjecture. It's data driven
I think this is why games like Baldurs Gate 3 really won a lot of girls hearts too!
I mean honestly fun things are fun, so a lot of it is going to depend more on if you can sell girls on the game or not, and if you don't actively drive them away from it.
It's a low bar, but a lot of devs are still digging holes specifically to go under it. A lot of the time, all you have to do is give the option to either play as a girl or at the very least a guy who doesn't look like a roided out beefcake, like, say, Link. Or Dante.
@@psiah9889 Or like an actual Astarion.
If the game was bad, Astarion would've saved it from drowning. The game is good, and Astarion is its wings.
Moral of the story: need more female players, make more Astarions.
@@Manas-co8wl But Astarion is a dude
@@cryorayeah, as a guy it's a bit confusing but I see the point. I love Karlach's character and I'd play the game even if she was the only main character. Maybe it's the same with Astarion and girls. Maybe he's attractive to some, fan service for men works too after all. Maybe it's a mix of both
@@goolgepl2112 Astarion sounds like a Thalmor from Skyrim.
0:20 My first thought was “If dudes didn’t also like dress up, nobody would pay money for skins.” I’m going to watch the rest of the video now. What a great opening.
about 1/3rd of my 4300 hrs in destiny has been spent getting fashion pieces, countless hours in cod games spent getting skins for guns. Anyone arguing against it is lying out of their asses
@@BcDyxaLKgoNdgU Would you still buy/collect those skins if the gameplay was uninteresting?
@@chellinacell7450no i wouldnt
and i didnt...... i do customize too look normal usually. though at some point now make it looks as ridicilous as possible so i can laugh and see if the game even alow that the option
What a garbage take. There is a difference between liking a game primarily focused on dressing your character in realistic clothes, and game like Destiny 2 which features soo much in it's game, one of which is equipping gear that affects your performance in that game.
This sort of thing is exactly why I'm happy to see the rise of indie games. Not for girls' games _specifically,_ but because indie games don't get so tied up in out of touch "market research" and what they think will make the most money.
Big companies have always been a bit rubbish when it comes to interesting games.
indies tend to follow a specific market and excels at it unlike majority of triple a that caters for everyone being the jack of all trades & master of none, the possibility that a girly indie game might release in the near future is very likely
@@testhekid They're are more like the early days where intrinsic feeling about what's right will find an audience.
I kept thinking of "Unpacking" and how it's so relaxing and rewarding when you place everything correctly. I don't think I've ever thought of it as a girly game but, to be honest? I think it checkes all the "requirements"
@@matiassanchez1362 You could consider it more unisex.
Nintendo could conquer the entire gaming industry by making a highly polished "Nintendogs + Horses" game for the Switch.
NOOOOO i want NINTENDRAGONS
Fuck it, Nintencreatures it is
True
Dude, I'd buy that in a heartbeat. I horse care sim mixed with a dog care sim?! Amazing!
@@davebob4973 I also vote for nintendragons!!!!!
Riding horses across Hyrule in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom brought so much joy. Along with the ways you can customize their manes, bridles and equipment, BoW and ToTK are definitely top tier horse girl games.
I've been playing Breath of the Wild on the Cemu emulator with the Linkle mod... so actually playing a girl instead of Link. Still wouldn't call it a "girl game" though. I mean even if I'm playing a girl and riding a horse, it is still the biggest, meanest horse in the game and it is being used to trample bokoblins into the dirt.
Playing Twilight Princess and running around as a dog, a pretty boy, or a pretty boy on a horse is also very nice!
@@SotiCoto I did a playthrough with a certain playable Zelda mod. It was a lot of fun and really well done!
would you consider Elden Ring to be a horse game in the same way?
You are mixing things up. Riding horses was never a girls-only activity/game. It's part of human heritage, and zelda just added that as a way of fast transportation without breaking the immersion for players, not with the intention of copying old horse Riding girls game. There is nothing girly about the horses like the old girls games.
I showed my girlfriend the whole girl experiences section and she says she felt exposed, especially with the Miles Edgeworth part hahahaha
Hearing a man validate the value of women and femininity and girliness literally made me emotional.
yeah, seeing the thumbnail and title made me think i was going to watch a video of a woman speaking about this topic, but it just hits kinda different when its a guy talking about it
I think that says quite a bit about our cultural moment in time. Some think only masculinity has been attacked, but I think femininity was attacked first actually. Both have been attacked to the point where they have in a way become undefinable and/or irrelevant. A man talking about the innate goodness of femininity or a woman talking about the innate goodness of masculinity has become foreign in our current society.
@@VunderGuy I agree.
If you get rid of designated roles for the sexes, you must also erase the concepts of femininity and masculinity, I mean those categories don't mean much of anything if it doesn't make one better suited for one thing over and against another thing. Defeats a crucial purpose of the innate distinctions. What's motherly instincts without a female with feminine characteristics? It would make no sense.
Personally, I think the people who hate women most are feminists, they want women to be men, they don't want women to be women. If you make the sexes equal in roles, equal in capabilities, then that means they're exactly the same, which defies reality, we know better.
@@VunderGuy During WWII, the Red Army had almost 1 million women, of which around 500,000 were called up to serve as soldiers. These women changed the course of history and were omitted.
In American Civil War, more than 400 women disguised themselves as men and fought in the armies to free their nation and terminate slavery.
Only to mention two important documented moments.
Maybe you're just misogynistic and think women don't fight in wars.
@@_SpreadingLove_ What you call and think of as misogynistic is actually a love and care for women. We understand, and frankly anyone who has a truthful realistic understanding of human history and anthropology understands that women are not very well psychologically or physically suited for things like combat. Actually, everything that makes someone better suited for war and combat goes against the grain of what womens natural feminine qualities tend to be, women were not designed to do the difficult things that would make for good killers/fighters, to be assertive, authoritorial and aggressive. I'd say from quite a bit of anecdotal evidence I've witnessed and learned about; when women take on more masculine characteristics, they tend to not be able to handle them well, they can be more irrational and go more easily overboard when trying to take on a more masculine persona, or just fail badly at it. You think of all the qualities that make for something like a good wife and/or mother and those qualities are polar opposites of the qualities that something like war requires.
The truth is we care about women so much that we think it's not only better, but it's morally obligatory/imperitive that WE (MEN) TAKE THAT DIFFICULT PLACE! Women should not be allowed to be subjected to that.
Ugh, I hate feminism, some of the worst bunch of brain washing, woman destroying garbage that modern society has ever spat out! Feminism, when looked at from a historical, logical, well informed, and critically thought through perspective, should lead one to conclude that it is an ideology that hates and wishes to destroy women.
Women in war and the like should be very rare exceptions, and only necessary under the most dire of circumstances.
Your compassion for women’s interests really brings me a ton of joy. It reminds me of my dad. My dad didn’t just give me Barbie movies, dolls, etc, he found enjoyment in them. He genuinely likes the Barbie movies, telling me over the years that they’d make fun stage plays. He likes fantasy and whimsy. He likes Phantom of the Opera, romantic songs, he even recently watched the Vampire Diaries haha… He set a standard of appreciation of feminine things that would be really hard for me to find in men. I did everything I could to adapt to men as I got older. The humor, male dominated games, being more guy-like in order to get along well with them. But you seldom find men who are willing to do the same for women’s interests. You find often than not, men making fun of feminine EVERYTHING, especially in other men, shaming each other for taking an interest in feminine things unabashedly.
Your dad sounds like an awesome person and father
That's how it is, unfortunately. Your father must have embraced his feminine side. People have a more dominant nature but everyone has both feminine and masculine sides. So you become a more well rounded person by developing both.
i love girl games especially on roblox :D and im a boy
As an adult now approaching my 30’s I only started embracing more feminine stuff in the past 3 years 🤯 When I look back on all the things that I really connected with growing up, they were all really, really girly. But I had 3 brothers and what I now understand was veiled misogyny in my family growing up… So with time I learned to hide it.
It helped when I left my ex behind who didn’t like girly stuff (idk it was a weird dynamic but he for sure didn’t like me as I was and was constantly trying to change me), and started to be single for a time and discovered that my authentic style is super femme (I like to call it power femme haha bc I live for ginormous shoulder pads but then smaller frilly details in my signature looks)…. And the amount of confidence I have embracing my real self is immeasurable!!! I always get compliments when I put in the effort with my outfits 🤗
I just hope you don’t feel forced into being something you’re not. I don’t feel like I need to change most of the time but ofc there are probably instances…
Like the one time I was told I couldn’t wear a skirt that hit my ankles when delivering pizzas (still feel like that is sexist)
Why did you try to fit in with men when you clearly couldnt. Just stick to girl and leaveen alone.
"There is both value and meaningfulness intrinsic to every part of the female experience" I can't express how it felt to hear that actually. I wasn't focused, I was using the video as a podcast while drawing and I teared up.
same
One "girl game" that I really enjoyed was Super Princess Peach. It's marketed to girls and has "girly" aesthetics, but at it's core it's simply a very solid jump-n-run.
Oh my god this comment unlocked memories of my childhood. This was the one of the few games my non-gaming cousins (girls) played. I loved it and the concept so much.
its funny stereotypes were that little girls arent aggressive but i vividly remember wanting to beat the shit out of everybody in line at the new york city toys r us for the my little pony seat on the ferris wheel
Not to mention, the sims community is well-known to have a lot of people who just love to torment their sims, another game that's more popular with a female audience.
And I'm a guy who hates guns, cars and football... And wants games involving nurture, creation and love :p
(still enjoy all sorts though, including driving games and rail shooters)
Haha yeah, and I was a savage little creature when I was younger
I thought that was the stereotype, honestly
when I was a little lady, I used to pop out the head of my Barbies and make go through terrible accidents or just awful scenarios
@@kailomonkey Stardew Valley team hhhhh
I'm the Co-creator of Calico, Kells! Thank you so much for mentioning (with clips) Calico!! My goal with Calico was to make an extremely feminine game that any gender could play, but it absolutely is a part of the history of girl games. I'm glad that the movement of Cozy games is growing so much now a-days, but it's still very rare that you see a pink and sparkly game. I hope we see more in the future!
omg calico was such a good game I always recommend it to friends when they want something small. it really felt like someone with very similar tastes to my own learned to make games so they could make the ultimate self-indulgent game full of the best features from all their other favourite games. every feature I came across I was just like "yesss, I absolutely would include that if I was making something just to make myself happy"
I LOVE THE GAME SO MUCH! It's so comfy, cozy, and the style is just adorable.
I love Calico! I remember backing the Kickstarter and being super excited because it was the exact kind of game I wished I had growing up as a kid. Thank you for bringing such a lovely game to life!!!
calico is a great game
Calico was such a fun game! I enjoyed every minute of it. And the dreamy color palette and soothing music were just wonderful. Thank you for the great experience!
When I was a little girl, I played DOOM, some military strategies and chess. Among the “girl games” I liked playing Nintendo’s "Little mermaid", but I finished it very quickly and got bored. I also played SIMS, I was interested in planning gothic mansions and creating cemeteries
Found Wednesday :)
yeah, the video is way to stereotypical. most people just do things they like (playing doom or strategy) without actually thinking too much about it. people are way more varied then this video would suggest! only if you bring this identy politics into the topic people begin putting themself into smaller and smaller boxes they try to fit! i played doom too but i also like to play dress up (theater) and nobody cares!
@@boohoo5419so.. you didn't watch the video? because that was literally the point.
Little Mermaid on NES was played by almost everyone, it had cross-appeal, probably because of Disney, you'd have guys play it as much as Lion King, Batman, Aladdin and Ninja Turtles.
@@boohoo5419 found the person who commented without watching the video
"Your favourite character was Miles Edgeworth" delivered like it's a hard read but it's more like newspaper astrology because everyone's favourite character is Miles Edgeworth
My favorite character is Dick Gumshoe because I'm a gay male
Unless you ask a sapphic in which case the answer will most likely be Franziska
The ds was the era where i saw and tried the most girls games because of my sister. Its kinda funny how i never noticed that correlation between the “dressup” games and buying skins to look a certain way. Or a character creator being like a doll, or the caring for an animal games and taming a horse in breath of the wild or red dead. Girls games have had a very important impact because some of these crucial elements of todays biggest games have root’s probably to these early girl oriented games. Or at least it provided ideas as to minigame type content
True. Heck, I pride myself on being able to create really attractive female characters in games with character creators...and I can certainly see the correlation between that and dress-up games.
The DS had a lot of girly games. Was a lot of fun.
While not disregarding the impact of girl oriented games, I want to respectfully share a nugget of my research on the topic of character creation, which is pretty interesting actually.
Character creation did not begin with girl oriented games, it actually began way back with the early days of D&D, runescape and other tabletop RPGs where you choose a character's race, gender, background and other details. This aspect of tabletop RPGs was one of the things that early computerized RPGs (videogames as we call them now) like 1988's Pool of Radiance tried to emulate to great success, with one caveat, this isn't really a character creation screen, at least that's not how we define it today, and while the idea was there we would not see a *visual* character creation screen until much later, perhaps in the era of the aforementioned girl oriented games that dominated the early 2000s.
Point being, girl oriented games were not the first to do the idea, but they *may have* been the first to do character creation as we know it today.
@@wo0o0o97 in old school dnd, you do that type of character creation... drawing art of your character.
When I was a kid, I found a really old book of jokes at the library. The humor was of the old-fashioned yet timeless kind.
The one joke I remember is: "Why do we dress baby boys in blue and baby girls in pink? Because they can't dress themselves!"
This was clearly a simple anti-joke derived from the redundant punchline, but I often think about how this joke has a hell of a lot more truth in it than what whoever came up with it probably was thinking of.
oh absolutely. the amount of times ive told my family 'just get my nephews whatever clothes we can afford that will fit, theyre too young to care' and my dad replies with how you cant just do that, you cant just put the boys in girls clothes even though most of the clothes at garage sales is baby girls clothes. he never has a reason, just "you cant do that".
So true. I like games men usually like. I wanna be a self sufficient like learning to be a mechanic for myself, I find pants more comfortable than dresses (I do wear some dresses, but not often). Why do I have to change my gender because I like things boys normally like? And also, why can't boys play girl games and barbie dolls? Who said cooking, cleaning, and sewing is for women? Heck why cant men cook? Cooking is a survival skill! I'm going on a rant. I just hate it when people have to change who they are just because they like something thats the opposite of them
@@princembatI mean, it's cultural, many things we do today have no real impact, however it's already so deep in society that it doesn't need to be logical.
if that's bad or good we cannot pmfor certain, the fact that blue is associated with male and pink female is not inherently bad, but what might spring of it can controversial
There's the issue of kids not dressed for gender being bullied in playground... kids a brutal. So a normal parent will make sure to not dress up their child in clothes that might ruin their childhood. Mostly about boys, as girls dressed boyish are more acceptable.
When I played Pokemon Crystal for the first time way back, I was AMAZED that I could finally play as a GIRL-- Pokemon has a lot of 'girl game' elements to it that I loved over the years as well-- including dress-up eventually 😏
the pokemon beauty contest thing should have been it's own game, and im sad it never made a return (im a male btw)
I yearn for Kalos' fashion. Later games have some really good stuff, but man, X&Y are pretty games and the fashion in them was amazing!
Same! It was such an important moment for 2000s gamer girls.
I'm in my 20s, I have a job, I pay bills and taxes, and I am attending college. I found myself looking for a good dress up game several times in the past few years, but most of them were shoddy and poor quality. I never got to play style savvy as a kid, but I really wanted to and still want to. I also loved the barbie flash games from their website in the 2000s. I still enjoy competitive games, but sometimes I just want a fun experience of dressing up that doesn't necessarily involve doling out a bunch of real life money to make my mmo character look more stylish. Sometimes I just want that aspect of a game, more or less on its own. It could be marketed mainly towards children, but if it's good enough quality I'd totally play a good dress up/makeup/fashion game today.
Animal Crossing has that available, one of the easier ones to grab anyway. There are mobiles games too with that, no idea how you'd look it up however.
Highly recommend the Nikki games, like "Love Nikki: Dress Up Queen" and "Shining Nikki"! They are mobile games and have gacha/paid stuff, but in my experience, you don't have to spend on them to have fun and make good outfits.
@@sincerely_vexialiterally my childhood and i still play it sometimes now the outfits are simply wonderful
Games such as Dress Up games are attractive to a very niche audience. As such, these games are less likely to attract significant funding, and as such are more likely to be simpler with less features.
You won't find a dress up game with, for example, the number clothing items that Diablo IV or Halo has.
@@hrthrhsso I guess we’re just going to ignore that Sims4 exists.
the sims is often regarded as a torture simulator I mean the sims community always goes feral when a new way to kill your sim is added and a weirdly large amount of players want a funeral event added as an option
It's because the game does sort of cater to women, and if you've ever seen girls playing with dolls, you understand that we enjoy a good dramatic death
@@chaosbean6320 I didn’t say it wasn’t catered more towards women but just calling it a doll house is a bit of a misrepresentation
@@chaosbean6320 oh definitely! Made my barbies fight to the death all the time when I was like seven, good times
Also killing everyone in the sims 3 was my personal goal when I was little, I would boot up a new save and lock everyone I met in a pool with walls around it until I got bored lmao
@@channlerharu5569 Calling Red Dead Redemption 2 a "horse game" is also a misrepresentation. It was basically feeding a car with legs while gun customization.... I spent too long fiddling with extra parts and engravings. Only misgiving I had was you couldn't store things in a house like Skyrim. And by storing in a house, I mean this frame destroying mess.
czcams.com/video/AGCZrNGiXQk/video.html
Daughter likes Sims Medieval the most, as it's not like the normal Sims games.
As someone who’s trying to develop a game for teenage girls. I got told by NUMEROUS publishers & platforms and that there’s no target market there. For one platform I did a business case document citing studies and was still turned down. And honestly I would say it was me, but every single woman I know after Covid happened struggled at getting publishing; some with all star teams & incredible demos. A friend who had a game directed to people who love broadway & musicals, or another friend who had the audience of women who love horror got turned down for the same reasons or target market being to niche / non existent. It’s actually cooked haha
(I do want to give a special shoutout to Xbox though; they were the ones who actually did believe & gave an offerer)!!! So it’s not all bad just like after hearing from 30+ publishers where I quote by an agent “my wife plays dress up games; why is this not a dress up games? You should have more of those mechanics” 💀
That is so gross :/. I wish you all the best with your project!
Like in the video "our study says girls don't have consoles" so let's not give them any good reason to want a console by contuning to make only pc girls games i guess O.o ...
Don't need to make all girl games just add co-op that allows open world coplay with good customization and alternate option that allow for community building and social progression without destruction and war.
As a girl gamer who adores both Broadway and horror that breaks my heart to hear
This is reason number one why i hate it when "they" ask me what gender am i targeting this game towards.
Excuse me are you assuming my games gender?
"i played a lot of boy games growing up too..." then you proceed to list so many staples from my childhood LOL so glad to have been exposed to girly games and other games that weren't just what i would have stereotypically liked. we need more girly games and we need more games for girls that aren't necessarily stereotypically feminine just as you said. thanks for what you do, this video was absolutely fantastic. and everyone go play the newer story of seasons games :)
"Any Fire Emblem games after Awakening"
I've been painfully call out.
Also he was right about Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, Pokemon, Ace Attorney (very very right), Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, Professor Layton. My experience wasn't limited to those games, but surely they had the greatest impact, and I'm still a fan.
Oblivion and Skyrim also had a very big impact on me, especially Oblivion but I don't know if I was exactly the target.
It's kind of refreshing to see a man talk about and take girls games seriously and advocating for quality instead of bashing them. Games for girls don't have to suck or push stereotypes!
prey tell , how can a game both "be for girls" and not "have to push stereotypes?"....
@@iamLI3 Because girliness and femininity are not stereotypes, they are part of a lived experience, that can't be simplified down to an aesthetic or cut and dry formula.
A game can be for girls and not push stereotypes by genuinely listening to and engaging with the interests of it's female audience and what they want to see in their games, and developing quality gameplay around that, or with that in mind.
This is different from developing a game for girls based on stereotypes, where the game is designed based on things attributed to girls, usually by a male dominated game design team, even if those things do not accurately represent what girls want, who girls are, or what they would genuinely enjoy in a game.
@@reumarks you're going to have to explain what your definition of "stereotype" is then , because this is what it should be in this conversation's context
2 : something conforming to a fixed or general pattern
neither i nor the dev consider stardew valley a game specifically for girls , we consider it a game for anyone
@@iamLI3 You left out the rest of that definition
especially : a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment
@@xxLowkeyTrashxx i left nothing out that was the full definition line
and what is your point?....
I think the rise of the cozy game is really just a rebranding of the girl game market and I love it.
Cozy Grove is definitely my favourite right now :)
I don't think it's a rebranding necessarily. I think it's more that "Girls have to be into pink Barbie dolls and stories about princesses" is insultingly one-note and cartoonish.
I play Project Zomboid and a fair few games involving engineering like Oxygen Not Included and Satisfactory. And there are women playing those games. I'm learning from CZcams streamers there are more women in my generation who had those "boy" nerd interests. And I find a lot of women engage with the characters from League of Legends. And women go in for the MCU movies too.
As an industry, games are now worth more than movies, so I think the idea of a "gamer" is starting to fall by the wayside and start to become much more casually accepted hobby than some kind of committed lifestyle choice or niche interest. Sort of the way novels and movies both started out as low-class trashy art. And the younger generation doesn't treat Pokemon as some kind of strange or weird hobby, which is not how it was perceived when I was in high school. You were weird if you liked it. When Pokemon Go was a thing, a younger man told me that it was a great way to meet girls. (I may have used an invective at him.)
I think it's more that the idea that women have to stay in a particular lane is breaking-down and that men liked to view them fitting neatly into that lane. But that's like saying women shouldn't like Legos. The appeal is universal and any social rule saying such is highly arbitrary.
@@ved2360 idk anyone who ever said women shouldn't like Legos. Idk I grew up in a very different and open minded family, I played with gi Joes and Barbies as a kid. Well at least one family was like that. Complicated childhood.
But yea I don't think it's anymore of a "all women must be into girly things, so all girls must only play girl games" and more of a "well obviously some people, even some men, are into what some would call 'girly' things, so maybe we should make a good game with a lot of girly things in it for those people?" Type thing.
I mean a lot has changed in the world compared to when I was growing up. Expectations are starting to change, along with a great many other things.
I also liked pokemon back when it was considered weird.
But yea I agree, appeal is very nuanced, and all of the industries are a little slow to pick up on that.
Cozy games, while they do intersect at times, aren't really the same thing as the growing girl games movement :) we're seeing increasing demand for unapologetically girly/feminine/pink games. There's starting to be so many otome game releases that gamers are having a hard time keeping up, and localizing companies are having a hard time putting them all out. Several companies have just fully pivoted to this niche such as aksys games. In comparison, the cozy game movement seems mostly around indies and their publishers, focused at a more neutral audience (that still captures girls/women).
@@ved2360 You seem to still be caught up in the old anti-femininity mindset. Hello Kitty is getting it's largest game ever this year and has large fan demand. Fashion Dreamer is a literal spiritual successor to style savvy and is shaping up to be a heavy hitter in the industry. The Love Nikki series is getting a AAA-style open world game on PS4/PS5. You couldn't be more wrong. There *is* a growing demand for unapologetically "pink" and "girly" games. Pretty Princess had a delayed launch in the US, and immediately got a sequel with the US launch happening ahead of Japan (it's country of origin).
I have a lady friend who says she likes Crusader Kings 2 a lot. Specifically she cited the fact that marriage existed as a mechanic as a big reason why she enjoys it. Im sure that the game's social engine has lots of potential as a draw for girls in the tween and up demographics
She's lying, it's because of the genocide and religious wars.
It's basically a high-stakes version of the game children play where they grab two dolls and shout "now kiss!"
Unless you're playing a Greek character. Then you spend even more time cutting out bits from the dolls.
I just want to cry, I can't explain how much this video scratched an itch I've had for decades! Awesome video and I can't wait for it to open more and more discussion about this topic!!!
Portal isn't exactly a "girl game," but it's another one of those universal experiences among the gamer women I know.
I think stray will become this generation's portal. Not necessarily girly but so many girls love it
The Portal series is kind of sort of (in a really deep-dive, non-surface level way) about a toxic relationship between mother and daughter against the backdrop of STEM. For that reason alone I'd say it's a must-play for any woman even slightly interested in video games, to say nothing of how good the games are beside the themes.
True! It was one of my favorites growing up
It's funny that although everyone is aware that the protag of Portal IS a woman, people don't see it as a game oriented towards women. Also, our villain is also vocalized by a woman but because it doesn't have all the window dressing & gender coding oriented at girls/women, people don't see it that way. And, I don't know if it's me, but I feel LOTS of women truly enjoy puzzle & strategy games. That dopamine tends to hit me HARD which is why when Moon mentioned Ace Attorney, I choked a bit. lol
Also yes, i have a portal gun. (They physically coded our Protag as Latina or mixed race so I latched on it REAL fast as a latina myself.)
As a woman, Portal was freaking awesome! I loved the problem solving element. It’s too bad they never came out with more 😢
It’s actually insane how accurate that list of “girl games” you made is. Pokémon, stardew, minecraft, animal crossing & splatoon are genuinely the only games on my switch other than a single monster hunter game that my brother downloaded.
Monster Hunter is a dressup game where the raw materials fight back before you can turn them into a hat
@@miflofbierculles5117 Fashion hunting is the true endgame of Monster Hunter
I am literally begging Nintendo to remaster/revamp & release the Hamtaro games for Switch :(
@@mae2599there's probably some licensing issues with that as, and correct me if I'm wrong, Hamtaro isn't owned by Nintendo or the developer if their games.
monster hunter world was so goated never tried rise what one is on your switch? I'm a PC user though and don't have a switch
As someone who played a lot of animal-focused games as a kid, i would say not only did the gaming industry think girl games should be low quality, but a lot of companies treated these games as money grabbers. Some of the games I bought were absolute scams, but I was a kid and wanted to play with animals and, at that time, there were very few options to choose from
As a teenage girl, this channel is like a comfort zone 😭💜 thx for standing up for us.
Honestly, this isn't even just a gaming only problem. Literally before I even found this video, just earlier in the same exact day I was talking with a friend about some TV stuff that got announced and they randomly brought up "why do no girl-targeted action cartoons exist anymore?"
I had never even noticed up to that point but yeah, back when I was a kid in the early 2000s, there was loads of girly action shows like Cardcaptors, Sailor Moon, Totally Spies, Powerpuff Girls, etc. but nowadays it's basically non-existent. Yes there's still girly shows but most of them are more traditional girly stereotypes and even the few that exist are honestly largely ignored or unknown globally. For example, in Japan, there's a massive franchise with 900+ episodes and 20 seasons called Pretty Cure, it's non-existent basically internationally even though anime is so much bigger globally now. Literally only 3 of those seasons (2004, 2012, and 2013) ever got English dubs because nobody thought girls would want to watch those kinds of shows over here when they likely do.
More companies across all industries need to realize that there's room for more girly targeted projects without going full "pink, makeup, horses, etc." stereotypes and you also don't have to ignore girly stuff entirely and just go for a gender neutral experience either.
It's also really rare even now for 'girly' media' to get respect or proper releases in English. Pretty cure got released here as glitter force, which is fine. But it got many episodes cut or censored. It also doesn't want kids to know the mc's live in japan or can be severely hurt by enemies. As a fan who grew up un the DIC release of sailor moon( which finally got released uncensored in 2014), kim possible, totally spies, the mary kate and ashley back in action, and cardcaptors I was hoping things had finally changed.
The only recent girl-targeted cartoon show I can think of is Miraculous Ladybug, which was made in France. It has an English dub and plays on Disney's tv channel. I enjoyed watching it for a while but eventually the butchering of the writing of characters got to me and I had to put it down. They had one of the "villainous" bully characters start to change and become semi-good, but I guess the show writers realized she was becoming a fan favorite and didn't like that, so they made her do a sudden heel-turn and act like an even worse jerk. Ugh.
Both She-Ra and The Proud Family got revived fairly recently, Star Vs. The Forces of Evil was popular and lasted four seasons, Centaurworld was arguably pretty girly, and I highly recommend Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur which just started airing now. I think there could/should be more, but those are the few I could think of off the top of my head as a grown man.
It's because US "girls' media" is currently dominated by ideologues, so when it's a story for girls with action, it cannot just be a straightforward adventure story that just happens to star a girl and be about girls and their daily lives/friendships/hardships/whatever; it *has* to be about an abrasive girlboss fighting the patriarchy, with themes about feminism, LGBTQ, and all the other assorted baggage.
Those are things that kids don't really care about, so you end up with most of these shows having rabid young-adult fanbases instead, just because those align with their politics, and so the creators inevitably start catering to the tastes of that demographic, eventually leading to the shows not being for young girls anymore.
Funnily enough, Japanese shows seems to be a lot better in this regards, but then those have to contend with anime's (not entirely groundless, but absurdly overblown) reputation of being for social rejects and perverts. All in all, it's just a sad situation.
@@LeoMidori I would also add The Owl House and Amphibia to the list. Though I generally agree with the first posters opinion, it isn't quite true that there are no animated shows for girls being produced right now. But there have certainly been phases where we did hardly get anything with girls as a primary target audience.
Also even though the fandom became what it is, My Little Pony gen 4 was definitely produced for girls. I'm not sure how gen 5 is doing but I would assume it's mostly the same.
I remember feeling the need to play "boy" games as a younger girl, because girly games or even what is considered cozy games now were lesser. I still sometimes catch myself thinking "oh, she only plays animal crossing, she's not a gamer" because it's so engrained in me. Amazing video, it really fueled my thought process of what I internalized even as a girl growing up in the 90s and 2000s, looking for games that suited me.
Why would you want to be a "gamer" or be approved by those guys? They're scum. Any guy who calls himself a "gamer" is a damned joke.
Yes! The internalised misogyny runs deep 🙈 reminds me of the “I’m not like other girls” and “I mostly have guy friends” vibes I’ve thankfully moved on from since my teen years 😅
@Weyland Punani What male hobby is considered lesser? I ask genuinely because the way you phrased it came off a bit defensive, and a sort of what about men thing. Again, don't take offense
@@titandarknight2698What did they say?
i wish i could super-like this comment. me too :(
I noticed something interesting about the girl game list you mentioned(2:50). None of the games listed came from a popular animated tv show geared toward girls(with the exception of Hamtaro). I was kind of expecting a Kim Possible or Totally Spies game to make the list.
yeah i will say the Kim Possible platform jumper/shooter i had on ds was one of my favorites
Having played a bunch of my sister's 'girly' games growing up, it's nice to see a video like this
The list you made killed me, like 80% of that applied to me. Even the whole “your favourite character is Edgeworth” when regarding Ace Attorney. I was laughing so hard at how specific your description was yet how much it applied to me (and obviously many others).
Same, I felt so called out with the Edgeworth one
It's cheating a little bit because for boys Miles Edgeworth was also the most popular character... he was just loved by everyone.
Same, I was laughing during that whole segment at how accurate he was XD
I understand farming sims and RPGs, but why of all things is TF2 popular with women?
@@graywolf182 TF2 is a good game.
the whole "the everyday experiences of girls are inherently compelling and deserve fun and good and well-designed representation, which results to self-confidence and affirmation" bit actually just made me cry haha, the inner child is healing ... what a great video all around!!!
Same!! Thanks for writing this comment. It's like a lifetime of feeling guilty and embarassed by girly things was just lifted. I've never heard anyone say that before and didn't know I needed it until now.
I felt a little giddy toward the end of this video. This guy really gets it, it's so great!
im crying too
Yo it is lovely 💖
Same
For the girls' game experiences, you forgot DDR! My entire childhood was DDR on Xbox and then Rock Band on 360. Also those Facebook games all kinda based on Farmville with a different skin over it. I remember a Hunger Games one that was just as bizarre as "Hunger Games Farmville" sounds. I was also waiting for Webkinz - literally all of my AFAB friends growing up (very late millennial/early Z) had Webkinz. But otherwise, yeah, flash games, Barbie games, Minecraft - all very accurate, and I've definitely been called out 😂
Thank you for covering this! You made me realize that, even tought I grew up tomboy, creative games and dress-up games where indeed some of my favourite growing up, especially since only as an adult I could afford my dream console line, the DS and 3DS, and catching up on that amazing long awaited Pokemon and Cooking Mama action.
So instead of Xbox or Playstation, I had Ourworld, Whirled, Kongregate, Armor Games, Nitrome (really love Nitrome's cohesive library) and so so much more I can barely name since I was 11 and barely knew English at the time to tell you.
As a young girl I was annoyed how all the girl games that took my interest by cover art and title, where often so horrible in gameplay en execution. I noticed then how more typically male oriented games where of higher quality with more depth. It was honestly sad that killing something in shooting games was deemed more interesting than planting things to grow and basically giving life to gardens, animals and villages.
You really just said that it's sad to think that an explosion in your hand is more interesting than watching grass grow...
@@SeekerGoldstone that’s a gross generalization.
@@SeekerGoldstone
If you've never gotten hooked on an old flash game about keeping plants or fish idk what to tell you😂
@Amaria Jade The first part is just about preferences, and i've heard many people say the opposite, I think that you're missing the point by bigging something up while bringing something down.
It's not a generalization, that's what they said.
I just realized I see a lot of girls and women doing it for both girls and guys but I never see a guy stick up for girls or girl related hobbies/games ect. It sadly makes me happy to hear a guy say it lol.
But whenever I hear “there’s just not a market for it!” Whenever it relates to women for video games or even anime theres always huge examples proving that wrong with examples for when someone actually tried to make a it for women/girls. It can be a huge market but only if you actually freaking make something for that audience!!!
These comments are the first time I hear that people are saying there isn't a market for anime for women. Like Shoujo, Josei, Yaoi and shoujo aI, Yuri hime have been there right alongside shounen, seinen, Yuri all this time. Is this a specific bunch of current idiots propaganda?
Genshin Impact has a 45% female playerbase. And let me tell you, Hoyo knows what they're doing. Final Fantasy has a huge female playerbase too.
As a woman, I think we have a lots of choices. In most RPG's, and MMoRPG's you can make your own adventure, can play the game the way you want. You can customize your character's every detail. For ex, BDO's character creation is insane. ESO's, and GW2's endgame is literally fashion. XD
There are an insane amount of games which appeals to woman.
Visual novels, and otome (story based video game) are very popular among women, millions of female players play those games.
I think part of the reason why people rarely speak up for it is because, when a "girl game" is good, it will be played by both genders, thereby erasing any meaning behind the term. So the only thing that's left is that a game can be identified as a girl game when its part of a franchise that's associated exclusively with girls (e.g. Barbie).
As a man, I have played almost all of the games the video mentioned in its list, except for things like Barbie games. But I've never heard a single person in my life refer to Stardew Valley as "girl game". I've also never met a guy who tried it and didn't like it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: The term "girl game" would mainly be used by people who are entrenched in toxic gender stereotypes, so any discussion where it comes up would end up with negative remarks about them. Whereas anyone who would talk positively about these games doesn't view them as gendered in the first place.
@@Louigi36 Also, I'v never seen any game promoted as a boy/male game. Growing up we played Mario, Tomb Raider, Assassins creed together with boys. I've never felt that we were excluded (as a girl).
@@Louigi36 I actually see this more in reverse that when video game that was meant to be more for the boy market gets popular it loses its association for being just for men (shonen anime as a whole is a good example) while I’ve seen quite a lot of people say games that are more associated with girls are not “real or good” games such as animal crossing, sims (which I guess people associate more with girls) and yes even stardewvalley but I agree that only people who are very deep into toxic gender ideals are the ones that think that
Thank you for this video! I am sad that girl/woman gamers are highly underrated target group in this industry and we get mocked about it too. I myself have always preferred games that are fairly easy to learn and have lots of things to see, not forgetting well written story. As kid I loved Commander Keen and Jazz the Jackrabbit, Mario and Zelda games and when Final Fantasy VII was launched on PS1 I was sold and have been a Final Fantasy fangirl ever since. I love games where main purpose isn't fighting but exploring and adventuring, learning new skills and interacting with other characters. If fighting system is too complicated or fighting takes too much time in game I lose interest quickly. And I have to admit that graphics and drawing style play high role here; I like more of a soft, cartoonish style than realistic and edgy.
I'm more than happy about the rise of the cozy games like Stardew Valley and Slime Rancher and I think the most important thing in gaming isn't winning or being the best, but having fun and enjoying the game itself.
Thanks for making a video on a potentially controversial topic and bringing this to light! Its very true, just make good games and don't worry about overgendering them.
Im a woman gamer since the 90s and I actually had never heard of pretty much all of these games 😂 I played a lot of city builder esque games like Age of Empires 2, Pharaoh, SIM Safari (and Ant, Farm, and Earth but actually not Sims) and then Assassin's Ceeed, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Dark Souls, etc. My favorite shooters were Golden Eye, COD Zombies, and PUBG.
The classic Lara Croft / Tomb Raider games never appealed to me UNTIL Square Enix released their version and I ate it up. I had actually always played as male characters when given the choice in games, but when I played as Lara in Square Enix's Tomb Raider I felt like a badass and not hyper sexualized. It was neat to actually experience a strong female character. And in Mass Effect ofc I was Fem Shep 😏
Although seeing a game in pink is an instant turn off because I don't enjoy the old stereotype of "girly", ill be dammed if horses arent universally enjoyed by women 😂
You're not the only one, I haven't played those games either and this list angered me (something that rarely happens), so your calmness impresses me!
I think Moon does not comprehend/paint the "female" gamer experience well. But I guess that it's hard to grasp when you've not been through it.
Even so, a lot of this reinforces gender stereotypes, one of the things that are the most harmful to video games in my opinion.
So I'm feeling pretty frustrated right now
@@wjsa4l941 I understand your frustration-I myself am a big CRPG- and indie-head who played maybe just 2 games off that list-but the list was never meant to be exhaustive (and Moon even specifies that he's listing games explicitly targeted towards women-"explicitly targeted towards" being the operative words here, not "women"). Women aren't a monolith, so for every person who feels represented by the list, there are others who don't-and that's ok. The existence of one doesn't preclude the other. And I personally think we gotta move past the whole second-wave thing where we try to distance ourselves from feminine things because we conceive of them as inherently inferior to neuter or masculine things-I get it, it was a survival tactic in a world hostile to us, but we gotta move past it. There's room in the gaming sphere for both enjoyment of stereotypically feminine games and games that reject gendered stereotypes-and if there isn't, we should be making space for it.
Women love aoe2
I'm a woman who has been playing videogames since I was 4 and always felt like something of an outisder in the wider mainstream gaming community, when I found out about otome games and the community of fans surrounding them it was like I finally found a place I actually belonged in, I'm really happy high quality girly games are being made more often nowadays and not treated as jokes so young girls who are just now getting into gaming won't feel excluded like I was
The video was great and probably should've included some research on otome content
@@ollietaro yeah, I feel like they definitely deserved more than just a passing comment, otome games are already an obscure niche inside a niche as it is
MORE OTOME PLZ
otome is a gem genre.
I had a similar experience, I feel this in my soul!!!
Im now convinced that Zelda Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are dress up and explore games that appeals to all audiences. The amount of clothes and customization in those games is truly a force to be reckoned with, on top of the story and amount of stuff you can do.
Now that I think about it, gathering all the armor sets is my main motivation to play Tears of the Kingdom
you don't need to look far to see how on point that is.
we all had a big smile when we got the Ice Dress in TotK. lol
+ horse mechanics + the representation of incredibly strong, relatable, and fleshed out female characters!!
omg and don't even get me started on the gerudo and link cross dressing to blend in and just the overall lack of gender-defining characteristics that link has. paired with fantastic mechanics, tight combat, and a beautiful environment ughh
Mario Odyssey is also a dress-up game.
My first game as a “girl gamer” was Myst. The graphics were basically powerpoint slides but the puzzles and cerebral nature was top tier.
Another woman of culture
I didn't know you were a law channel! This video and the japanese history lesson through the lens of video game analysis were so fantastic, I'm not sure I'm even interested in videos about law so I hope you keep doing stuff like this too.
It feels very nice to have a man acknowledge that a lot of other men see games made for women as “lesser”. It is something that I have experienced my entire life: being laughed at by men for my hobbies. Anything that women are interested in is seen as less valuable, superficial or dumb. Think of horse riding or liking certain music. It really shows how ingrained sexism is.
it's the same reason female dominated industries have lower paid jobs - women's work is seen as "lesser" too
I think the reason they may define it as "lesser" is because they place value in competitive games and since girls (on average) aren't rly into them it's bound to happen. I don't know how that is a form of sexism, the real discussion that ought to be had is the fact that the games that girls play shouldn't be viewed as inferior because they have different priorities in their needs from a game, cause men and women are different temperamentally. I don't think that horse riding is frowned upon by society (but I haven't seen extensive discussions on horse riding either other than the regular mention of it among rare hobbies(it's rare in my country) so I may be wrong). As for music I also haven't encountered at least in my social surroundings sexism towards music that girls hear
@@miss_jess No, it is because employees in female dominated industries are easier to come by because men are less picky about what they will do for money. Supply and demand.
@@leyteristhomas6994 This isn't the main reason. I place value on lots of things but I don't consider the alternatives to be lesser. I could be indifferent to them. If I devalue something or scorn it, which men certainly do for most female interests, then there's a different reason. And yes that reason is just misogyny. Plain and simple.
You can tell it's misogyny because we actually have a great deal of examples where the hobby/industry changed from being primarily male to primarily female or vice versa and the surrounding social narrative changed too. In the mid twentieth century programming and coding was female dominated. It was called a pink collar job. It we was seen as mechanical and menial and not something men bothered with. The men came up with the visions and the women did the grunt work of making it happen. Fast forward to today and most people would be blown away to find this out. Those women were paid peanuts. They contributed hugely to all sorts of important break throughs. No credit given. Nowadays programming is seen as highly skilled crucial labour. Someone doing programming work on an important project or discovery will be very well paid and credited in the fields that give individual credit. Nowadays programming is male dominated. This is not a coincidence.
Another example is teaching. Historically teaching as a private tutor of the wealthy was male dominated. Yes you did have governesses but serious teaching for advanced skills was male. It was respected and well paid. Once it became public school and women began to dominate it became seen as a lesser profession. A hobby for women to earn their pin money. Wages have been in free fall for decades.
There are many more examples I can't remember. The key factor is which sex does the work. It doesn't matter what the work or hobby is, what matters is the perceived relationship to the sex that does it the most.
Edit: as for music and book, you have to be joking if you haven't seen people pour scorn on things girls like. Twilight was silly YA books and got regularly torn apart by adult men seemingly for no reason. Musicians that girls like get shit on even if they're not girls e.g. Justin Bieber. Again, it's not about the actual content, it's about women liking it and therefore men feeling the need to ACTIVELY distance themselves from it by publicly disparaging it.
@@IshtarNike the type of programming done today is more analogous to the electrical engineers designing the machines then. Comparing two different jobs with the same name and going "OH LOOK THEYRE DIFFERENT" lol
As a horsegirl, I want to add the Bella Sara DS game and Howrse. Hundreds of hours for both of those (though it didnt take long to finish Bella Sara)
BELLA SARA oh my god i almost forgot! those books were everything to me as a child, along with the game of course!
@@alwayscommentrarelyreply right i have SUCH nostalgia for the original browser game
3:00 i feel blessed to be so old. Some of my first games were Final Fantasy VI and Ogre Battle for the SNES.
Both games had female fighters and mages who were just as formidable as the male characters.
Also Ayla from Chrono Trigger was iconic. Sexy, leader of her tribe, and capable of tearing dinosaurs apart with her bare hands.
For DOS there was also Castle of the Winds, King's Quest IV and VII, and Laura Bow I and II.
"Maybe it's a problem, Sherry, that little girls DON'T like to play games that slaughter entire planets" has the same energy as Yahtzee Croshaw's "What is it with you and NOT stabbing people?"
I know right? What a bizarre statement. Like story telling and character driven narrative is bad? Hope they’ve seen the game undertale by now.
@@twocents7509 ?
Seriously. Maybe the problem was the industry insisting on games where you slaughter entire planets?
@@domesticcat1725 ???
@@willferrous8677 I just wanted to comment here to say I see you.
I don't get their responses either.
The entire point was maybe the problem is girls are too passive
Here are some other girls games that werent mentioned: Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters, Slime Rancher, Alice Madness Returns, Hello Kitty Roller Rescue, Singstar, Just Dance, Animal Jam, Movie Star Planet, Stardoll, Cooking Mama, Love Test simulators.
Just off the top of my head that I remember from childhood and this probably isnt a universal experience but these were all popular when I was a kid.
MOSHI MONSTERS
Club Penguin!! I adore it.
Fantage and secret builders too- and yes I agree more than half of those I played
MOVIE STAR PLANET... you just unlocked a memory for me, thank you haha! I was also a huge fan of Webkinz. I wasn't really a gamer as a kid, because there weren't a lot of games that I actually enjoyed. But Movie Star Planet was definitely one I willingly & enjoyably lost weeks of my life to lmao
First time I see Club Penguin mentioned as a girl game. :o
In my elementary school boys played it as well.
I would add to the list the Final Fantasy series, which I was a huge fan of in my teenage years (FFVI even had a female protagonist which was unheard of to me at the time!). A little later on I also loved Knights of the Old Republic, as a precursor to Mass Effect. I appreciated being able to make my PC female (which also made the big twist in that game even more effective). In general though, I didn't play the games you list because I hadn't even heard of them because nobody in gaming spaces ever talked about them. I mostly played the "boy games" but felt kind of alienated by a lot of them. Starcraft rules though.
FF X-2 is 100% a girly game and generally thought to be better than X.
What a fantastic video. Well researched with great presentation. Hope to see more from you
I am a Japanese girl and Japan provided a lot of quality 3DS game for female players.
I recommend you to play 'Girls Mode -Star Stylist' and 'Pripara'..etc. It's cartoon-ish because we're Japanese. But they're amazing.
I adore pripara
Is it cartoonish because youre japanese or are you Japanese because its cartoonish?
@@genocidehero9687 Everyone knows that Japan didn't exist before Walt Disney invented cartoons in 1927
@@genocidehero9687nah, i’d win
Unfortunately, not all great girl games were translated from japan. Like FABSTYLE. Fan translations all but stopped online.
As a woman gamer who was a kid in the 2000s and grew up on all the girly-game shovelware you can think of, I was completely oblivious to the fact that they were mostly “low quality” games (sans nancy drew and even some barbie games that I still consider to be good quality bcuz they focused on storytelling, world-building, character development, problem solving and receiving rewards). For me, the “emptiness” of certain games created the necessity for me to use my imagination (whether that was the intent of the developers or not lol), and the act of imagining excited me more than anything as a kid. There was nothing I loved more tbh. But I feel where the big disconnect between young girls and older women’s interests lie is that when people age (men or women), we use our imagination less, we are less excited by the idea of imagining things. We want the real thing & we are more aware of the quality of things, whereas kids compromise with what is given & learn to enjoy what’s given to them. As I got older, I shifted towards the more “masculine games” despite not having a competitive bone or thirst for “conquering” in my body. The reality is I would love to stick to playing “girly games”, that aesthetically oriented/pretty/cute, without much pressure, violence & competitiveness (not that I necessarily dislike those things), but there aren’t very many of them that exist with the depth and meaning I crave. I want world-building, good character development and story-telling, wrapped up in a cutely designed world, that has a lot of casual gameplay and isn’t pressuring in a negative way, but still challenging, fun & intellectually + EMOTIONALLY engaging, whatever those emotions are, doesn’t necessarily always have to be happy. I love harvest moon bcuz even tho it’s wrapped in a cute & happy package, it still has depth. Some of the games really cover themes of life really well like grief & loss, importance of community, friendship, etc. I love games that have humanity injected in to them, & make me feel more connected to my own humanity. I think that’s what it comes down to. I want my games to be either a piece of peace, or a revelation to me, or both. Maybe bcuz my mind is already stressed as it is in the real world lol. Many women want an escape, and not more chaos.
I just realized I wrote a lot…
Longer comments like this one are always both wonderful and welcome. It is an opportunity for me to read your story and learn from you, too!
This is why i fell in absolute LOVE with mario odyssey. If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them!
It may not be a "girly" game but if you haven't played it I recommend rdr2. As a girl I really loved how in depth some elements like fashion, interaction with characters, horse bonding were. And I really loved exploring. I loved how you can choose haircuts for Arthur:)
ah the emotional investement that you describe is why i keep returning to Deltarune (despite there being only two chapters yet and i know them by heart by now) i read your comment and all made me think of deltarune fondly, i really relate to your statements :')
This was incredibly validating for someone like me who has loved games since a young age! My favorites were Tomb Raider and The Sims and Skyrim and, of course, I enjoyed playing with Barbies in general! And you can see the similarities between them! I understand that Tomb Raider was originally targeted towards boys, but for me, it was a game mostly for girls. In Tomb Raider, I could have everything I wanted. Lara was an independent girl doing what she liked, exploring contemplative and silent places, and having a beautiful home to return to. She was smart, could solve riddles, and protect herself - a truly revolutionary game that, in my opinion, should have been marketed more towards girls than boys. It's disheartening that Lara's image took a different turn in marketing campaigns.
Lately, I've been feeling this way a lot. While I do enjoy games specifically targeted at males, I also desire something less combative - a game where I can relax, enjoy exploration, and immerse myself in the world. I would love an outstanding sci-fi game without combat. I don't understand why every sci-fi game has to involve war in the story. Can't we just chill? Can't I have a beautiful house in a futuristic space colony? You're absolutely right; many of the best "girl" games come from indie developers. There's one in development called LOFTIA, a cyberpunk + cottagecore Animal Crossing-The Sims-type game, and I'm eagerly looking forward to it! While I appreciate shooting and fighting games, sometimes I just want to chill. Unfortunately, there aren't many games like that, apart from The Sims. Even the Tomb Raider reboots seemed to shift towards being more targeted at boys again, and that turned me off from them. I'm just saddened that the industry doesn't produce games like this. Apologies for the rant, and thank you so much for creating this video!
So you just want a game you can be immersed in thats sci-fi and not action oriented?
What's the most fun, or value, that you think you should get out of a game and for what reason? I'm doing a little research, and I wanted to have some anecdotes
@@c.dl.4274 My ideal game would be a Sims-like experience with realistic graphics set in fantasy worlds, such as Skyrim or futuristic settings. For example, imagine a futuristic fantasy game where you reside in a space colony. You engage in various life simulation activities, like living in a house, interacting with people and animals, and working (the Sims aspect). Simultaneously, there's a storyline you can follow at your discretion (Skyrim aspect), featuring action, adventure, and riddles. While Skyrim was almost the perfect game for me, the absence of the life simulation aspect left me yearning for a more immersive experience in that world.
So this is the second Moon Channel video I've watched that left me with stories to tell and thoughts to think (takes that I might or might not elaborate on).
Taking a page from HAWP, I found my desire for dress-up in the _Saints Row_ series. There's a false (erroneous?) game tip that explains you get Respect (the game's generic score value) for changing outfits, and I took that to heart. It was important to look the part, whether meeting a rival gang in full regalia at a boulevard summit, or lunching with the accountants while discussing next years budget or even hopping out on a scooter to grap a pack of smokes at the corner mart. I made sure I was color-coordinated for all occasions.
the fact that you listed every single game I played and some of my present day faves in the first minutes means I am legally obligated to share this with all my friends lmao
Any civilization builder game is just "House" on a grander scale.
umm.... what about animal crossing?
@@Whimsykit yeah I think that counts
Dwarf Fortress?
@@chaotickreg7024 my girlfriend bought dwarf fortress when it released on steam in december. combined we have put ~335 hours into the game so far. dwarf fortress is a girl game!
@@ellasorellabrella omfg I put in almost 200 in the first couple weeks. I guess gender is a spectrum or something or whatever.
There was a great horse game when I was driving over the road, in which you bred and raced thoroughbreds. This was an arcade style game, found in numerous truck stops--and hubby and I had a complete stable, where we were actually breeding for better stats. Since most drivers are male, horse games also appeal to men.
Also, The Sims 3, with horses, as well as dogs and cats, and an "open world" format, rocks.
What game was this?? It might be the reason why Rival Stars was so surprised to have a mostly feminine player base
@@loveeevee396 I don't remember the name of it; I haven't seen it in probably 20 years
Oh. Oh. OH. This was fabulous, this was my experience as a kid in the 90s. I'm still a huge fan (Huge) of the Nancy Drew games by Her Interactive, and another series I loved was the Rockett series by Purple Moon. It was about a teen girl named Rockett going to school and having adventures. It was kind of like an interactive story mixed with adventure game. I loved Rockett's New School and Rockett's Adventure Maker.
When you listed off the "games you may have played as a girl" I felt like you literally picked up my brain and put it into that section haha
OMG me too! I just got to that part and I literally gasped. It was too real.
THANK YOU for the compassionate way you talk about little girls and their interests.
I was a little girl once who liked video games and almost gave up on it completely because of all the toxicity and bullying. I grew up with a twin brother, so the „boys‘ things are much more important than your silly little girl interests and either you quit the girliness or you can‘t do boy things“ was pretty much the sound of my childhood.
I‘m only a young adult now, but when I look back I often see that to this day, little girls or female teenagers are interestingly pushed towards stereotypically feminine by culture, marketing, parents and so on quite a lot - but on the other hand, very frequently ridiculed and shamed for actually enjoying „frivolous girly things“.
When I was a kid, no one asked what I liked when I said that I was looking for my first games to play, they just told me what they thought i SHOULD like.
Hearing a grown man talk about girls and their interests as a demographic with nothing but respect for both the people and the things… it genuinely makes me happy. Without people like you, I never would have had the courage to pursue my interest in games all the way into adulthood.
I highly doubt you experienced any bullying for your interest in video games since boys/men don't care about the gender of gamers, that said I suspect you're just looking for sympathy. Also it's the fault of girls women for being interested in stereotypically feminine things, stereotypes exist for a reason you know.
@@MetaKnight964
It‘s a little sad that people still tell me „oh the bullying was your fault since you also liked girly things, pick a side“. I was eight. No eight year old deserves to have friends or family or teachers tell them to quit their favourite hobby. That, obviously, includes all the little boys who get bullied or reprimanded or ridiculed for „girl“ interests, too.
Well, a world we live in. I hope you have a nice day.
@@MetaKnight964wow, it’s so cool that you know this person’s life better than she does! That’s wild, are you a psychic or something?
(Oh, and, P.S., as another female gamer, I can assure you that she is completely correct and guy gamers do care about gender and can be really shitty about it)
@@ally939 He said "I doubt", meaning he's doubting the interpretation.
Maybe he thought the word "bullying" was exaggerated.
Sadly because of Twitt*r's crazy people everyone is questioning people's intentions and suspecting it's for attention only.
Anyway sure in online lobbies with teenagers they could get too much excited and say nonsense if they hear a girl's voice but like in school or anything ? Never heard about such situations, but again I don't remember that many girls openly playing video games
@@MetaKnight964I can’t take even take your comment seriously.
I remember absolutely loving decorating games for rooms and even games with customizable characters like animal jam. Now I’m playing hollow knight and splatoon lol. I chose it for the nice looks and customization and now I love the adrenaline within it.
what a stellar first minute and a half. also I love it when anything comes close to talking about the aspects of certain games as "puppetry" as well, even though that's not a topic of this video.
I stopped a third of the way in to say "THANK YOU" for acknowledging that progress most often comes in incremental steps, and a lot of early works may look "cringe" or worse by today's standards, but those works are still important, because they form the foundation for future improvements. This is true in so many things, both social and more concrete, but with how fast the world has changed in the last hundred years compared to the overwhelming majority of human history, it seems many are quick to forget, and dismiss anything that isn't/wasn't EXACTLY their end goal.
See also Dumbo.
I love BioWare so much because DA and Mass Effect are the only AAA games that make me feel like I'm part of their demographic and not just an after-thought
The dragon age series is very similar. It was written for both male, and female protagonist in mind. Also, most MMORPGS are similar. You can create whatever character you want, and can make your own adventure.
@Weyland Punani It's not about being upset about how not everything's for "me", it's disappointment on the fact NOTHING is. I'm not saying I don't enjoy male-centric games, I'm just saying that I congratulate BioWare for thinking of more diverse stories that see me as an equal consumer. I'm not whining at all, but I guess you can't relate
@Weyland Punani sounds like a crybaby man. Now go back into your mothers basement
@@powdermonkey9300 trust me i feel that trying to have long hair as a male in a game OMG it is SO hard so so so few games have long hair options
Purple Moon games were some of my favorites to play when I was around 10. I liked Secret Paths so much I still have my copy in my collection, along with AoE Age of Mythology, Pokemon Crystal, and Dragon Warrior M2 Tara's Adventure. I'll never replicate how fun it was to play games as it was at that age.
This video is very touching actually 😭 I teared up at a few parts. Thank you for making this. 💜
I am girl, late millennial , and I was determined that you wouldn't have predicted my gaming history, but alas you were pretty accurate, especially with targeting specifically Windwaker. The nail in the coffin was Phoenix Wright and my favorite character being Edgeworth.... I have never been more called out in my life with that one..... :/
Haven’t even seen he video yet, and from these comments, I gather they already know my taste male characters.
Edgeworth is the only prosecutor that doesn't get violent, who doesn't like him?
@@LittleSparklingStars Don't slander my boy Klavier like this
Missed out the pre-Nancy Drew point and clicks, like Sherlock Holmes and Beneath a Steel Sky, which still comes back to calm puzzle solving, and the trading simulation games like The Patrician and Machiavelli, but otherwise pretty comprehensive history.
Lmao, it’s ok, I’ll join you in the hot seat down in the comments.🤥
And I call myself a gamer🥹
Can confirm WW was among the games in my formative years. WW the first animal crossing, sonic heroes and it only spiraled form there.
Tho not all of my games he predicted
He left out a key demographic of the ninja gamer girls. I’m talking the ones that were super into Naruto and TMNT and bought anything related to it.
So he hasn’t got all of us just yet at least not the tomboy and emo phased gurls🤘🏼
Confession time: That one Nintendo direct that was like 90% farming sims made me eye-roll and groan almost all the way through. Watching this video made me reflect a bit on why I did that and made me realise that as someone who is very passionate about games, I need to work on becoming more appreciative of the work being put into these types of games despite the fact that they aren’t made for me. Excellent video!
Yes! So good to see people self-reflecting. We all have biases and tendencies that don't lend toward accepting the desires and ideas of others. It's important to remind ourselves that it's not always about us and what we want, and that the goal is for everyone to find enjoyment playing video games. In that same facet of thought... often, it's our mindset that holds us back from experiencing potentially new and wonderful things. Perhaps we just THINK that game/movie/book/food/etc isn't for us, but if we never give it a real chance, how can we really know?
I played all the “proper” games growing up (World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls, Minecraft, CSGO, etc.), and because of that groaning reaction I’d receive from my friends mentioning farming related games, I kept it secret that I played games like Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Sims etc.
I recently found out one of my guy friends played Stardew, it was nice to finally talk about a “girly” game with him.
I think that was more to do with so many of the same style games lol
I have the same reaction to COD games. But I know a lot of people really enjoy them so whatever.
no , if you had that reaction because the quality of those games was bad then it was a valid reaction , farming simulator is a decent genera of game 99% of which is made terribly , so of course a direct that was 90% farming sim was going to generate unpleasant reactions
don't be fooled into thinking you need to change yourself to suit other people's tastes , especially if it tastes like shit , those games were still being marketed towards you , if they appeared to be quality art then you would have automatically been appreciative of them despite you thinking they are not your kind of game
When you mentioned Purple Moon I almost cried. I loved those games so much.
I was so floored you included games like Persona, KH, SMT, and Rune Factory in that extremely thorough list. As someone who mainly plays JRPGs, a lot of the times, it feels like there's two completely different fanbases going on and the ones that become of the overall "public face" are usually the cis dude half. It's so bizarre whenever I run into cis male Persona fans who are adamant that the fanbase is 90% men when meanwhile, the majority of ppl making the fanfics and fan art are either women or queer identifying.
I feel this. Almost all of my friends on Twitter who are interested in JRPGs generally (The only exception I can really think about is one trans woman who roleplays as Edlegard from Fire Emblem: Three Houses) are male. I do have female friends who enjoy JRPGs, but they only tend to like certain series rather than the genre as a whole
he got my ass when he rattled off that SMT, Persona, Layton, Ace Attorney connection. Back when I was active in the SMT non-Persona community especially, the vast sweeping majority of content creators (including myself) were all women or queer. I always found it funny when guys on places like Reddit, who mostly consumed content and didn't create any of their own, insisted it was a fandom of men. Like nope sorry guys it's all fujos and gays.
Anecdotally, I also found just from hanging around that most women were fans of P2 & P3 especially, followed by men enjoying P5 & P4.
@@lizal-fos I've noticed that with P2 and P3 too! I think I read once that the devs decided to add a female protag to P3P specifically cuz they were surprised at how popular it was with girls.
Somehow, I'm not surprised about P4 being more popular with men, lmao. I actually think the love for P5 is pretty evenly split gender wise. A lot of the bigger P5 fans I run into on Twitter are usually queer. And all the screaming I see for Ryuji, Yusuke, and ESPECIALLY Akechi are hard to ignore, lol. I think it being the most popular game in the series at the moment just means that the men who love it and enjoy all the waifu stuff are just more loud about it.
so true! what I love about going to anime conventions as a female jrpg fan is seeing so much art for my favorite games by female/nb/queer artists in the art alleys. when I got into fire emblem awakening + subsequent titles as a teen, I was excited by how large the female fan base was since I wasn't used to being in fandom for video games due to not liking the male spaces lol
I’m a woman working in the games industry and you’ve really opened my eyes to what we can do to make better games for women. My mission up to now has been to bring colourful graphics and quality premium games (not free to play) to the market to prove that there is a place for these games. Perhaps now I’ve received the missing perspective of the puzzle I’ve been trying to solve. Thank you 💜
I would also say you guessed a good majority of girl games that I love! Kingdom Hearts is dah best and most Japanese developers just get it right 💪🏻
Japanese developers really have gotten it right.
Rune Factory! Us girls really like the farming simulators but they also added a battle system so there's action!
I think the things like Nikki series by Papergames and the "otome"/"joseimuke" game genres are a great example of how both the industry and "gamers" need to treats girls' games more seriously, and what happens when they do. It's so cool that when given the proper attention and investment you can have something like the upcoming Infinity Nikki, which by virtue of being an open-world dress-up game feels like it's opening up so many new frontiers for gaming in general.
I hope the success of animal crossing will be teaching everyone a thing or two… All my favorite games have allowed high levels of customization 💗💗💗
I’ll have to check that out!!!
Honestly, i found that otome games are interesting also because it seems that to develop a successful one, a company needs to truly UNDERSTAND what girls and women like and cater to it specifically. So many of them have so obvious themes like, self-love, female agency, building relationships, acceptance… i find it baffling how many non-otome game companies struggle to draw female players in, or can‘t write compelling romance or female characters for the life of them. in so many games, romance isn‘t even the main focus, but more of an ongoing side plot, but still people treat he entre like it’s nothing but strange straight women staring at pretty anime boys and nothing else.
no one would treat a game for men like „oh they just want to shoot people and look at hot women“, but with female audiences, they do exactly that and then pretend women just don’t like games when their poorly made games don‘t sell…
Infinity Nikki sounds so neat but it looks kind of bleak in my opinion. Considering all the issues (not only performance ones) all the other Nikki games have I can't really see it happening
Honestly, Yume Nikki is really the only good girl game.
Another great video. I can definitely see your point on how the mechanics from typical girl games exists in the bigger and more popular games. In Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I found joy in picking out the name for my horse(s) and changing their look at the staple. Even though the "dress up/horse" part made up for a very little % of my total play time, I still had fun with it, and it did increase the joy as I explored Hyrule on horseback. The core mechanics are not bad in themselves it truly is about the execution, as you said.
i feel SO SO seen in this video. you talk about the subject very respectfully
It's always been strange to me how long it took for farming sims like Harvest Moon (Story of Seasons) to start catering to women in that you'd actually get to play as a girl and marry a guy rather than the other way around. I wonder if they were more popular with boys initially?
Yes, they are more popular with boys initially. And tbh, even with the release of the female version, many girls I know who played the series were more inclined to play the original, because they're already familiar with the character.
That said, the video glossed over how Japan's media (not just gaming) industry works in general. There will _always_ be good Japanese games that target the female audience. Many of the games he listed in the opening session aren't even considered as "girl games" (I don't know, he did mention global west, so it's possible that they are considered as such strictly in the global west). The Sims and Hamtaro for example. Uma Musume is DEFINITELY not a "girl game", though it has lots of female players.
Harvest moon was initially made for boys but it always had a decent female player population which was at best ignored and at worst despised.
The Harvest Moon series was very sexist in the first years of the franchise, a couple of them when you played as a girl if you ever get married it ends. No joke, once you do is a Game Over, you had to start again or never get married in your playthrought, which the male version never has this issue in the first place. Clearly an shitty double standard.
@@nidohime6233 unfortunately the previous japanese generation still largely expects women to retire to be a full time housewife and child caretaker once you get married. The younger generation is obviously not fullfilling that, because of far more options for women plus that it isn't affordable anymore for most people even if they wanted it.
@@nidohime6233 lmao
One upcoming "girl" game I'm very curious about is called Infinity Nikki. It's based off of a mobile dress-up series for girls, but Infinity in particular looks like a high budget, high effort open world adventure game in the vein of Breath of the Wild, and reportedly even has a long-time game designer from the Zelda series onboard. It doesn't have a release date yet but it's a game I'm keeping an eye on just since it looks so unique, and if it actually turns out good I hope it gets some attention for it.
I remember that trailer! It really caught my attention and I hope it turns out amazing to encourage more games in the genre.
O.O
I've played Shining Nikki, that game is excellent
From Love Nikki? That game is really good, the story is crazy developed and each event only added on to it.
As a Love Nikki player I'm very excited about Infinity Nikki! Looks very beautiful and also very fun!
thank you sooo much for this video it's so incredibly healing and validating of my experience
My family had a tradition that during winter when it started snowing outside, my mom, my sisters and I, the little brother, would all play a new Nancy Drew game on the family desktop. I never gave a single thought to them being "games for girls," because to me, they were just mysterious, fun, and adventurous as all heck. I think I'll buy a Nancy Drew game to relive the good times. Haunted Carousel sounds fun!
One thing I **Love** about the Style Savvy series is that's a high quality dressup game with tens thousands of items, you're allowed to mix and match how you see fit, the characters are always kind to you, and nothing is sexualized. Even the item that is literally just a bikini top? You can just...wear it. Of course its one of the items meant for layering, but you just wear it. And there'd be nothing bad. And I **love** that.
I asked for Fashion Forward as a 9 year old, I got it and was addicted and I still play it occasionally. It’s a really relaxing and pretty game tbh. I thought I was the only person in America who was into it, but here we are!
This video was amazing! that part where you listed all the classic "girly" childhood games was a trip down memory lane 😂 I remember being a part of a conversation online recently about harassment in online gaming, and how women don't feel safe entering those spaces. Someone brought up how there are large, female-dominated gaming spaces online that get left out of the cultural idea of "gamer" completely (the sims, animal crossing, stardew, etc). I find it really interesting how we categorize a "good" or "challenging" gaming experience. Most people view these as "casual" games, but the people who play them are anything but casual. Are animal crossing and the sims "hard" in the way an online FPS game is "hard"? No, but I think they're hard in that they require skills and knowledge that isn't valued by the demographic that values big AAA action games. I can't tell you how many guys I've met who've offered to play animal crossing with me and their island is a mess! 😂 theres nothing wrong with that of course and I'm certainly not trying to make a silly gender essentialist claim that men are predisposed to be bad at decorating. I just see a lot of women and girls in these spaces take aspects like design and aesthetics extremely seriously, and to see those skills lambasted as "lesser" or "casual" really upsets me. Your point at the beginning about how everyone loves to dress up in their own way rings really true, and I wish the skill required to be really good at games that hinge on these aesthetic pursuits was taken just as seriously as how fast you can hit a target or beat a boss. Not all games have to be competitive to be compelling!
I used to play the Love Niki Dress Up Queen mobile game with my youngest sister, on the phone. There's a "Competition" mode where players create outfits based on a theme, and the rest of the players judge which outfit is the best. You get more points if your outfit is judged higher by the general populace.
Anyone who says that aesthetic pursuits are any less challenging or competitive than hitting a target or beating a boss needs to give that a try: my sister smoking me during every competition was proof enough for me that dress-up is not only skill-based, but also extremely complex and compelling!
I'm a man and my animal crossing island is a mess can confirm (But honestly, I just find environment decorating to be boring. I take character design and outfits very seriously though 😩)
I spent months in Animal Crossing NH trying to grow blue roses. I've also done Savage raiding in FFXIV. I still couldn't tell you which was more difficult!
I, for one prefer educational games: don't you think women like you would benefit more from a game like 'Turing Complete' rather than a stereotypical game with no agency?
I don't feel safe producing those on average 70 articles of fast fashion clothing, that women fund with $1000 dollar every year instead of supporting video games. I don't even feel safe trying to sort them in the countries that women use as their personal dumping ground.
You think this might change, if all the "self-partnered" women pick up dress-up games, and stop smearing everybody who plays virtual games as incels? Do we really have to hold your hand into such basic levels of "women's superior ability to show empathy", by having girls do common ground exercises?
Well said! thank you so much for making this. 💖💖💖
ive only just found this channel and man i appreciate this, im a trans guy and im fascinated by girls games ive been DYING for more perspectives like this. not that youtubers who grew up similarly to me dont have good perspectives but id really just like it if this topic was explored more in general but especially outside of spheres that mostly only focus on "pink" content.
Thank you for bringing this topic to light! One game site I remember playing so much on as a kid was the Bella Sara website, which is now shut down. You could care for mythical online horses, and while there was no overarching way to "win," it just felt nice caring for creatures I liked to imagine I owned and loved. I also collected the trading cards that went with the site!
When I was younger, I always fought so hard to not be considered a "girly" girl, and I realize how damaging that sense of masculine/feminine binary and the weak/strong connotations of that binary kept me from just enjoying the things I liked. Now, I just enjoy the things I'm interested in, whether it's marketed to my demographic or not. And I've felt so much more comfortable with myself and my hobbies since. Again, thanks for a great video. Well done.
Thank you for the Super Thanks, Ma! I'm so glad that you enjoyed the video!
It is just as you say: at the end of the day, living into one's fullest self will bring one more inner-peace and comfort than any amount of conforming to the expectations of others. I hope the industry will become slowly more aware of that overtime, as well!
Yeah those sites were the best! I also really enjoyed online avtar type games like animal jam and movie star planet. I supposed they were meant to function more as chat forums rather than games but I mainly enjoyed the mini games and collector aspects of them :)
Ahh I used to love Bella Sara I still remember my old log in :')
Wait... Bella Sara was shuted down? It sucks, i loved it when i was a kid
I'm sure there are plenty of CZcams videos that touch on the female experience, but to find one so eloquently crafted BY A MAN was honestly so refreshing and I feel incredibly seen watching this video. You certainly do your research and it shows in the quality. I love love love your content and can't wait to see what you put out next!
When I was a little girl I liked to play puzzle games - Tetris, dr. Mario, Yoshie Cookie, Snoopy's magic show. I also really loved RPGs, super Mario RPG, chrono trigger, earthbound, golden sun. My sisters and I also played the crap out of all the Mario kart games.
I think you maybe could add fighting games in general to your Girl Game Geneology...Maybe it was just me, but as a young girl, I was attracted to that genre because of the designs of the girl characters, the alt outfits and color schemes, etc. And then, I felt incentivized to get good at those games because I wanted to prove that you could Win with the girly characters, too. Great video!
The design of the female characters was why I didn’t like fighting games as a kid lol. I thought they were too much appealing to what men liked and that made me uncomfortable. The girls never got proper armour, they were in high heels, always skinny and hot, but the male characters were much more varied.
@@rachelcookie321One of the cool things about lesser known fighting games like Primal Rage and Bloody Roar was the variety in how the women characters looked and played. I loved playing as Vertigo and Mitsuko because not only could I win with them but they also looked unique as well.
Mortal Kombat and Eternal Champions were more typical but I thought it was cool to see characters like Jade, Tanya, and Raven Grindar in a time where you rarely saw Black women in games anywhere.
I've often wondered why so many specifically girly games came off as shovelware. I never knew about the history with purple moon or the other studios that Mattel bought out. It really puts the concept of games for girls into a new light.
There's a lot that wasn't touched on here. For instance how many girl games were developed by male developers, and just low budget versions of "boy" games but with a pink coat of paint, very uninspired by people who didn't want to work on them. Rushed copy+paste games. Then there's this idea that girls want the same gameplay as guys, but with mindnumbingly easy difficulty (that's an issue that still plagues today's games, like hello kitty kruisers). The girl games that are actually good were either very serious attempts to really capture what girls wanted.... or they're japanese games localized into english because they've pretty much nailed it.
I really appreciate you talking about feminist issues in the gaming community and delivering it in a way that is so effective on an audience that might be resistant to the idea! I was surprised when I clicked on the video to hear a male voice and talk about the experience of women in games as a genuinely unique and valid experience. I'll definitely be sharing this with all my fellow girl gamers. Thank you
the gaming community doesn't have any feminist issues , except for how feminists keep trying to destroy the gaming community.....
i think feminists caused the colapse of girls games in the 90s.
i don't know if you watched the same video as me but sounded like activists feminists wanted to destroy femininity and girliness like they try to do to this day with all of this girl power BS. insted of doing good games for girls barbie dress up could be the first to alot of games but no... came in the activists so caled feminists saying that femininity and girliness is bad.
@@ArlindoBuriti and of course they were not content with merely destroying girl's games , but all gaming and art as a whole.....
@@ArlindoBuriti So true. As a female gamer I have enough of toxic feminists. We can't even have pretty female protagonists (see Aloy, the new Lara Croft, Black Widow in Avengers game etc), because they believe it will make female players insecure.
I'm so angry, man can have their power fantasy, but I as a woman I can't play as a beautiful sexy woman, because now that is apparently bad.
@@pepita2437 very poignant , which is why im sure your concern will not be considered for the discussion of this propaganda video.....
not only this , but i literally just read someone saying this
"Kyrie Jones 4 days ago Girls don't want to play games that sexualize women"
so not only are you not allowed to play as the sexy woman you want to , this person is invalidating your entire existence by stating that you don't want to play as the thing you want to , all while claiming to be advocating for what you - a woman - wants by addressing this problem which is of pure contrivance
and of course we all know the reason for this bizarre situation is because as i stated in my original comment on this video , our culture is being attacked by political social engineering for the purpose of physiological subversion of not just games but all civilization....
@Moon Channel Fascinating video and given the figures of the nascent industry you reference, it would be a neat follow up if you could do an interview with atleast one of those founders, like of Purple Moon, Her or more recent females in the industry you highlighted later in the video and what their views are of this history and context in the industry.
when the section of listing off the games women primarily played got to ace attorney i already felt attacked but then the final mention of edgeworth being the favorite pounded the final nail in my coffin and slammed said coffin straight into the burial hole
I always wanted to game when I was younger more often, but I found that rarely there were more feminine games that were affordable + on whatever console I had + interesting + could easily teach me how to play. Whereas the boys in my grade had endless options and their brothers taught them how to play! I tried to ask my neighbors, all male, to teach me, but they’d just berate me and take the controller away. It left me feeling isolated! Finally as an adult I have returned to trying to learn how to play, and I’ve gotten pretty good! I learned how to play on games like the uncharted series, and moved onto BOTW and OOT to practice my combat, and now I’m playing skyward sword. I have been also playing overwatch for awhile now, and while I don’t play competitively, I can keep up with really high ranking team members! And it makes me so happy to see so many other women feel included and represented in the newer games. I see a lot more female players now than I ever did in the past. I really enjoyed this video, thanks for sharing!
That makes me glad. I always hated the getting mad when people didn't get it or had a hard time thing. I was raised as a boy so I was able to learn to play games in a better way but still was always drawn to being able to pick the girl characters (as soon as i got over the social pressure from other boys to pick male characters) and loved more girly games too (like nintendogs + cats). Zelda is my favorite by far and even though some see the games start or companions as annoying i do think if you are new to gaming they really help. Its such a shame that such a large part of the population gets excluded.
To try and give a different perspective on your childhood experience:
Most people learn games via trial by fire, even those with older siblings. Teaching someone that doesn't even have the basics is frustrating due to that, and younger gamers will almost invariably express their frustration without thinking and try to teach by showing without asking. That said, some are just dicks and would rather turn the frustrating experience that they don't know how to handle into one that is just fun for themselves. Both are quite inconsiderate, but I'm sure at least some of your neighbors were the former and likely tried to do the right thing in the wrong way.
To elaborate on "even those with older siblings." Older siblings and older gamers in general are more humanoid training wheels and hint books rather than teachers. My older sister, for example, would get me past parts of Yoshi's Island that I just couldn't do, and I could watch her play. My cousins (also girls) taught me about the flute in Mario Bros 3. My grandma showed me how to get to Star Road in Mario World. Otherwise, I was on my own, especially if I was playing an RPG.
Still, that's quite the opposite experience to yours, and maybe that was due to being the youngest of a family that played games or maybe because I was the only boy in a female dominant family. I honestly have no idea which.
Anyways, that doesn't change the isolated feeling you had at the time, and I'm sorry you went through that. Congratulations on the eventual breakthrough into gaming! Nintendo and Naughy Dog were the right choices for learning, and I hope you continue to find more wonderful games and genres that interest you.
I remember being a kid and wanting a Minecraft book that my teacher was giving away (someone had lost it months before and never claimed it). I showed up to shoot my shot at getting the book and was IMMEDIATELY met with protests because "Girls don't play Minecraft!" Teacher took one look at this and gave me the book right there. It definitely got those boys to shut up!
It was so weird to see you sum up me and my friends's gaming experiences as kids. Fun thing is, Barbie Fashion Designer was so formative for me lol. I work as a designer in the fashion industry now because I loved that game so much, and because I discovered I had an eye for colour combinations through that game. I feel so weirdly seen, it's hilarious.
Dang that’s pretty neat how those formative gaming years shape a person. It would be cool to do a deep dive into peoples first games to see what kind of career path they took and see if the games they played had any correlation.
@@dynogamergurl I'd love for someone to do that tbh. It'd be so interesting to see if there's a correlation, and how people's first games shaped them. Personally, I think there's a correlation in a lot of cases, although it might not be obvious at first glance. For example, if someone's first game was Age of Empires II or Civilization or something like that - then perhaps they discovered a talent for strategy and planning, and ended up using that through their job as a teacher, politician, project manager, or developer. The correlation would probably be really obvious if the person became a politician or project manager, and less obvious if they were a teacher.
For me it was Bratz The Movie on PS2. I am a designer now because of the Design a Tshirt and Poster feature in that game, as well as loads of quests that gave me the liberty to come up with makeup, hair and outfits. Games like that one made me really appreciate games and now I'm working in the industry as a character designer!
Haha I took Graphic Design in school and have a love for computers and became a PC gamer because of the Barbie Fashion Design game. I'm calling it a game. ❤❤
@@canhedotricks6078 That's so cool!! Character design really is an art.
Great video, thank you for making this!
I'll always remember Pokemon Crystal as the first game I played as a kid where I could choose to play as a girl character. My mind was blown at the time and even to this day a gender option plays a big role in whether a game appeals to me (not to say boy characters are a negative, I love many male protags and will choose them if gameplay is a factor). My favorite parts of FF7 and FF9 were the parts where the main female character had to be the party lead. It seems like such a little thing to get hung up on, but it makes a big difference to a little kid.
I can relate to this. I feel similarly about protagonists in books. It really does matter.
Yep. I have actually put down games once I realized that of the 21546517290387650123 character creation options, exactly 0 were "female character". Alpha Protocol being the one that comes to mind.
I have also put down, occasionally, games that force you to play a pre-made male character. But this is much rarer. If the character the game hands you is *a character* with all that entails, like motivations and flaws (looking at you Joel!) then I can usually emphasize with them and 'go along for the ride' as it were.
But I just can't stand Geralt! And for that reason I will probably never play the Witcher 3. Sorry fans, not happening. Don't @ me!
... unless someone re-makes the game in such a way that you play as Ciri for the entire game. Then I'll give it a shot.
There are some other examples. Like for example I just have no interest in Metal Gear Solid, for any reason, even if it had a character creator and was written with either gender in mind.
(and before someone asks: Yes, I would PROBABLY put down a game if it featured an unlikable female protagonist. But so far that's never happened. *shrug* )