Bringing more girls in the video game world

As is it this now (altho its changing every year) not many girls play video games. some do and for the most part they are considered "geeky girls" and are often special in their own way, (theres plenty of "normal" girls too, but just not enough yet) The other thing is that they play certain types of games, typically RPG games, sometimes FPS games, and rarely RTS games. RTS games dont appeal to all guys, and it seems understandable that it doesnt appeal to many girls, youre not really a character in a game, but someone dictating the fate of units on the battlefield, kinda like chess, but more starcraft 2. then theres FPS games which are mostly violent and very competitive. theres alot of "owning everybody" and "raping everyone" in these games, which again doesnt appeal to a lot of girls.

lastly theres role playing games which are probably the more popular genre for girls, where youre character is usually involved in a story, and works with others to overcome challenges. and even within RPG's girls often fill stereotypical roles by playing healer classes that are supposed to heal and tend other players. the problem with that is that theres alot of roles that needs to be filled in a group and not every girl is made to be a good healer but thats another story. then in some games like SWG most girls played entertainer classes like dancers, musicians and image designers, because thats girly. and guys that had characters playing these proffesions had em strictly for the utility their provided or to joke around and have funny looking characters.

I also want to clarify that im pointing out the general trend here, theres definitely good RTS and FPS female players, same goes for RPGs, not all girls are healers, (tho I have yet to see a female main tank in any MMORPG)

Then games are mainly designed for guys, with male main characters, usually really badass people (think of Infamous, the force unleashed, Mafia 2, assassin's creed etc etc) girls are rarely the main character, and if they are, they are usually very very sexy, and not necessarly the best type of character for a girl to identify to (think of Lara Croft) in fact, it seems to me that female main characters are generally just to look cool, like a female kicking everybody's ass or using a big gun to destroy things, actually thats how I like to play female characters, unrealistically strong for their size, and just really badass, kinda like all male characters but better looking.

Many girls think these female game characters just look stupid the way that they are arranged to be sexy and have a perfect body and basically dont behave any different than guys as characters.

Now that leads to many questions, how do you design a game that will have credible female characters that are feminine instead of simply looking feminine. and if they are feminine, is everybody gonna cry because the game is too stereotyped. lets say a RPG game wanted to make a realistic female warrior character and for that they had to give her more muscle mass and make her look less feminine. would females and even males be interested in playing such character. ask yourself the opposite, would a male be interested in playing a male character that runs around wearing a bikini. in all games the male game characters are really badass iconic characters that the players kinda want to be, therefore that character has to be a symbol of masculinity to please the male crowd. at the same time, female characters kinda become that perfect woman, tough and rough like a man, but looks like a woman.

To appeal to more girls, there need to be games designed towards them, real games, somehow the industry needs to get a feel of what girls will like and create games accordingly, for example a game that focuses alot on story telling like Heavy Rain couldve been it, but its filled with poorly handled stereotypes and hollywood-like cliches that makes it not a very rich experience. I cant think of other possible avenues for now of games that would interest girls and actually made the brain work to solve problems quickly because...

Games are all about mathematics, the game setting is just a costume to make mathematics more appealing, but its all about numbers and geometry, thats why initially it was only nerdz and geeks playing games, and also mostly guys (the engineering and computer science world is still mostly composed of males). nowadays with games wanting to appeal to a wider audience, and the huge market share of casual games and social games, we have a HUGE portion of the gaming population that doesnt realize that they are doing maths. somehow game developpers needs to make mathematics appealing to girls for them to want to take on challenges we typically get from good games where you have to adapt quickly to a situation and make the best out of whats at your disposal and eventually reach the highest level of competitive play where you play against other human players and where your intelligence is put against the intelligence of other humans. because i think girls are just as competitive as guys, they just demonstrate it differently.