It starts out talking about women making inroads into video game programming

quote:

---

AUSTIN, Texas — Jennifer Canada knew she was entering a boy's club when she enrolled in Southern Methodist University in Austin, Texas at the Guildhall school of video game making.

There's one woman besides Canada; the other 98 students were all guys.

She jokes the ratio may be great for dating, but she sometimes got lonely. "It's really different," the 23-year-old Indianapolis native said. "I miss having a lot of women friends."

---

and with the a celebration of the sex and violence inherent in so many games.

quote:

---

Yet the appetite for scantily clad women in games shows no signs of diminishing.

The Guy Game mixes video clips of scantily clad female spring breakers on the beach of South Padre Island, Texas. Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude pits you as a pathetic middle-aged man in a quest for female nudity.

Hugh Hefner and his Playboy empire is getting in on the act in two ways: Playboy: The Mansion debuts in November. And the magazine plans a special pictorial featuring the pixelated flesh of video game vixens such as the red-haired vampire BloodRayne.

"Let's just face it, violence and sex are things that sell," Raad said.

---

If 40% of women are gamers then why not start making games that are more attractive to women?

"If 40% of women are gamers then why not start making games that are more attractive to women?"

420 million people on this continent, 210 million of them are male. Those numbers, you are bound to find a few hundred thousand who think pixelated flesh is sexy. However, many of the rest of us prefer real flesh, and like a challenge in a video game.

quote:

---

They haven't been putting huge breasted and or scantily clad women wallpaper in some games just for a few thousand people.

---

From a marketing point of view, why not? If you have a few hundred thousand people who think that video game characters are "hot", and a few million who are more interested in the strategy or the action or the plot and don't notice either way, you put in the chesty sprites. It's only if these characters actually turned away more prospective buyers than they attracted that companies would have to make hard decisions.

quote:

---

Originally posted by arborman:
Let's not lump all 'guys' who like video games into the same category as people who like video games produced by Playboy, please.

420 million people on this continent, 210 million of them are male. Those numbers, you are bound to find a few hundred thousand who think pixelated flesh is sexy. However, many of the rest of us prefer real flesh, and like a challenge in a video game.

Ditto the violence assumption.

---

quote:

---

Yeah, I prefer real violence too.

---

Yeah, I think the character look is secondary to the gameplay. If some people like the character design-its a bonus. If not, they'll probably overlook it. But if it becomes part of the gameplay,(like that dead or alive beach volleyball game) then I don't think you're trying for as wide an audience as possible.

quote:

---

It's only if these characters actually turned away more prospective buyers than they attracted that companies would have to make hard decisions.

---

How would anyone know the percentage of people that considered a game but didn't purchase it?

I'd love to see an original game type appear, with challenges that don't center around killing/shooting/warring with everyone and everything else. Alternatively, I an do without games like the Sims, which strike me as appallingly boring and parochial.