Marketing strategies: aimed at men or women?

[Renee]

Do you feel that marketing campaigns for both consoles as games are aimed mainly at women or men? What (if anything) should change?


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[qwertitus]

How many times have you seen scantily clad men in games/advertisement as compared to scantily clad women?

[dragon wench]

FYI,
There have been some discussions here at Game Banshee on gender and gaming. I can't quite recall in which forums they occurred, but if you do a search they should come up.

Personally, I think most game marketing is focused on men. Specifically, men in the 18-35 demographic. In addition to the scantily clad women portrayed in visuals, there is also a fairly heavy emphasis on gore. I don't like to draw stereotypes on whether or not men are more inclined towards gore than women, because I think that is highly debatable. However, I have every suspician that the industry and those doing the marketing perceive that men are drawn to lavish images of blood and guts.

[Hill-Shatar]

Here is the said thread above.

[Aegis]

Definitly towards men. There is a long standing, traditional idea of which of the two genders play video games, in which the male sex is often thought of. With this mindset, it only makes sense that the majority of publishers would focus their advertising campaigns on the same group of people.

This is easily seen through the classic image of the impressive, heroic male figure accompanied by the shapely heroic woman wearing armour that would be completely useless in combat. Essentially, game advertisers sell sex appeal, much in the same way that sex appeal is sold in most other lines of product.

Additionally, for a long time there has been the notion of the male being the princible wage earner, and thus the one with the disposable income. Granted, within the past couple of decades those borders have been broken down quite substantially, advertisers have yet to move out of that mind set. This is another cause for the aiming towards males for game advertisements. It is just the way to advertise, much like is done with beer and car commercials. Even much of the lingerie ads you see seem to be geared more for men, then women, enticing men to buy it for their significant others.

[Xandax]

I'm moving this thread to SYM, seeing as it would be more appropiate in that forum, instead of the discussion about GameBanshee forum.


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[Luis Antonio]

Turned to men. Due to the simple fact that the gaming market always had more success into seducing men than women. The only problem I see there is that it is hard to find a girl who actually likes the same games we boys do.

[ik911]

I'd have to say equal. There seem to me more games for men, since gaming and computers are still stereotypically for men, but I think the marketing strategies are currently aimed at getting women to play games too and they are steadily becoming a more serious goal for game-developers.

I think the problem is mainly getting women to play games. That is why developers are currently making girly girl games (source: planetgamecube). If more women (girls become women over time) play games, the stereotypical "Games=Men" will be broken.

So, in conclusion, I think that at the moment, there's different strategies for men and women. Men have to buy more games. Women have to start playing games.

[C Elegans]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renee Do you feel that marketing campaigns for both consoles as games are aimed mainly at women or men? What (if anything) should change?

In the Western world, it seems like games are still marketed mainly for teenage boys. Gender differences in game playing are decreasing according to statistics, but I don't know about age differences. The big-boobies-falling-out-of-a-bikini-chainmail-marketing may be unattractive to large groups of consumers.

In Asia, girls play more video games than boys, and this is also visible in the marketing of games. In China for instance, there are much more games around that have female action- and warriors as protagonists in the game, than in Europe.

[Aegis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by C Elegans In Asia, girls play more video games than boys, and this is also visible in the marketing of games. In China for instance, there are much more games around that have female action- and warriors as protagonists in the game, than in Europe.

I would definitly argue that as a point for attracting female gamers. If anything, I would say that does more to advertise to male gamers, especially when considering the image and appearance of these femme fatales. Though they may be wearing more clothing than the typical female video game personality if they are the hero, they are more often than not still shapely, and oozing of attempted sex appeal. A classic example is Tomb Raider. Eido's said that Lara Croft was a female hero which girls and women could probably feel more connected with because of the gender. Yet, Lara Craft has become a sex symbol in gaming.

The same became true with Draken, and to a lesser extent, the recently released PErfect Dark: Zero for the Xbox 360. Even in games in which you can choose gender (I'll mostly cite the star wars games), how often to do you hear about players choosing the female skin because they 'like the view'. Hell, I've even seen Fable make similar, albeit more veiled, comments of that nature in regards to the female characters of games, and he's probably one of the more gender neutral people around on these boards.

You see the same thing arise in MMO's in which male players will play a female character, for both visual, and gameplay bonus's they say.

The only game advertising I ever see geared towards the female gender are often games like that would never appeal to the male gamer in the least. Everything else oozes too much sex appeal for it to not be geared for the male audience.

[dragon wench]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aegis I would definitly argue that as a point for attracting female gamers. If anything, I would say that does more to advertise to male gamers, especially when considering the image and appearance of these femme fatales.

I think this may well be the case in some instances, but in others I am not entirely sure. What I mean is, a lot of the Asian marketing for games I have seen projects very "cutesy," almost child-like images of girl heroes...
Admittedly, given my gender, I am not really in a position to comment on how attractive this might be to the male gamer...... but "sex appeal," is not a phrase that comes to my mind.
And if it does attract male gamers on that level.. Then... *shudder* But that is a whole different discussion.

I entirely agree, though, with regard to Lara Craft and her clones.
I also know numerous male gamers who will play female characters, especially in online games, because of the onscreen visual appeal.

[C Elegans]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aegis I would definitly argue that as a point for attracting female gamers. If anything, I would say that does more to advertise to male gamers, especially when considering the image and appearance of these femme fatales. Though they may be wearing more clothing than the typical female video game personality if they are the hero, they are more often than not still shapely, and oozing of attempted sex appeal. A classic example is Tomb Raider.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragon wench I think this may well be the case in some instances, but in others I am not entirely sure. What I mean is, a lot of the Asian marketing for games I have seen projects very "cutesy," almost child-like images of girl heroes...

I have to agree with DW here, that it varies, partly depending probably on cultural differences and partly depending on what games we are referring to.

Polls and "market surveys" show that more girls than boys play video games in several Asian countries, so there must be something in the game marketing and/or game culture, that attracts at least as many girls as boys. However, I have not seen any surveys for Asia where the games are split according to genre. For instance, I read a market survey from the US that said boys tend to play more action games (they used "Grand auto theft or whatever it was called as example) whereas girls and boys played The Sims equally.

In Asia, I don't know if gender distribution varies from game genre to game genre, but something I noticed when I was in China last year was that there was a lot of marketing for action games with girls as protagonists. These were not games like Tombrider, one of the games I saw most advertising for featured a young girl going around on skateboard in city-environment. Whether this game attracted more girls than boys I do not know, it is pure speculation from my part that there might be a connection between marketing of certain game types and more girls playing. There are many games in Asia that are not released on the European or North American market. But who knows, maybe all the girls in China were playing CS?

[Aegis]

Because of me being embroiled in the midst of exam season, I haven't much time to properly expand on my posts, so this will be brief.

There is a difference between the final product (the released game) and the amount of advertising that goes towards pushing sales and hype of such a game. The amount of advertising that pushes towards the male audience far outwieghs the advertising towards females. You don't need a scientific poll and study to see that, you just need to open up a gaming magizine, or look at the majority of websites. The same images are shown time and again, quite often those being the heroic male figure, of the shapely, suggestively clothed heroine.

Again, when speaking of advertising, you look at more than just the product, but how all products are being pushed, ratios of adverts geared towards certain demographics, and the effort placed into it by publishers.