At our last meeting, Women Wise President and IGDA Toronto Steering Committee member Anne-Marie Hurre led a discussion on "What Women Want." 

We know this business can be just a little heavy on the Y chromosome side--the majority of game developers are males making games for other males.  But teenage girls alone spend $45 billion annually on CDs, entertainment, food, clothes... It might not be a bad idea to get a bigger cut of that money going into buying games.  The console market in particular could benefit from this: according figures presented by Anne-Marie, 90% of most consoles players are men.  The PC market is a little more balanced, largely because of online community games like EverQuest and Ultima Online.  According to Anne-Marie, working women alone spend more than 14 hours a week online, and women love games that provide a sense of community.

Getting to a female audience will mean changing our thinking a little.  Anne-Marie says that women learn, socialize, and form opinions differently from men, so the same marketing tricks won't work on them.  For example, she said men tend to focus on individual facts, while women look at the larger picture.  We also need more female game developers, but before we do that, we need more women in schools taking technical subjects.  Only 1 in every 10 Computer Science degrees belongs to a woman.  Women in the IT sector account for only 16% of the work force.  A potential solution to this lies in women-only technical programs. Anne-Marie mentioned a study that women do better in maths and sciences when placed in all-female classes (interestingly, the opposite is true of men placed in all-male classes).

Getting to a female audience is not an impossible task.  To do it, Anne-Marie's advice was simple.  Start by asking what women want.  Anne-Marie said that women tend to be very loyal, so if you the gamesmaker can hook them on one of your games, you'll probably get them buying your next.  She also said that there is one thing women and men have in common--they're gamers too, and so regardless of anything else they want to play good games.

You can see Anne-Marie's full presentation here.

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