Design Problem Research

Design Problem Research

The original design problem was to create a game for women who play or want to play video games in a teenage and up age group without losing too many male players, but to keep the female main character a positive model for women. It seems that this is not as easy a premise as it sounds to be. 

Here is a personal game collection and it has singled out games played in two categories. 

Games that give a chance of playing a female character:

My games. Photo taken by Stephanie M. 17 March 2013. 

Games that have a female main character:

Final Fantasy 10 game. Photo taken by Stephanie M. 17 March 2013. 

The results were 7 to 1. 

Online research for the concept:

An article by Becky Chambers written in November 2012 titled: "Why Games With Female Protagonists Don't Sell, and What it Says About the Industry." The link to the article can be found here: http://www.themarysue.com/why-games-with-female-protagonists-dont-sell-and-what-it-says-about-the-industry/. According to her, EEDAR (or Electronic and Entertainment Design and Research) conducted a study in 2012 where out of 669 games, 300 gave an option to play a female character and of these games, only 24 games had a female only protagonist. This is shocking, perhaps, but the video game industry feels making female-only games is risky. Chambers writes, "Zatkin found that female-led games received roughly 40 percent of the marketing budget as male-led games." She goes on to reveal the reasoning for this is simply that the game industry is afraid games with female leads will not make a profit.