Gaming for girls

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-games-statistics-2010-09



interesting how social games on facebook are sooooooo popular, but more interesting is that 69% of the facebook game gamers are women (and 19% consider themselves addicted). meanwhile when it comes to real games, were not sure, but it doesnt feel like more than 20% of gamers are girls.



id be tempted to guess that theres some kind of desire to game in girls, a similar desire that animates us, guys, and allow us to enjoy video games. but at the same time, most games are directed toward guys, and appeal to that crowd specifically, theres also the socialisation hypothesis, where the way we raise kids, its more socially acceptable for a guy to play video games and less for a girl.



in general girls suck at video games, but it doesnt mean they cant be good, its just that most of em dont play or dont bother to reach the same level of competitiveness of guys. I think if there was games targetted at a girl audience, but not stupid games like some of the games that already exist where you have to do really pointless girly lstuff like put makeup on your character and the only point of the game is to look pretty. but actual good games.

at the same time im not sure if both sex are looking for the same thing in a game. for example we could say that guys like to have puzzles to solves, in a game i want to use to use my logic to overcome challenges i want to be able to adapt to situations really fast and push the use every tool at my disposal to its highest efficiency. the question becomes, does that appeal to girls too? For some of them im sure it does, those represent the pretty big amount of gamer girls in this world, but their are still a minority so I'm really wondering what most girls would be looking for in a game, how would it be played, what would be the goal



heres a real world example: last summer I was playing a card game with 2 friends that are girls. I won the first few games, then one of the girl started winning too, and in the end me and her were pretty much equal while the second girl was annoyed by the fact she always lost and thought that her friend was good in games in general (I didnt get credit but thats another story :P) then her friend said that she counted the cards a little to improve her choice of cards when she played and so did I, because its really easy and its so obvious to me that I couldnt do it otherwise. Because if you always play the best card possible every time you greatly improve your chances of winning than if you do several mistakes in the game, the rest is due to luck and having good cards. so the 2nd girl was surprised that we were doing that, and said she didnt and didnt intend to.
 
I concluded that the 2nd girl in my example would probably suck at most video games unless she really focused on learning, but that would take a moment. but dont get me wrong, i dont think guys are superior than girls in video games or that girls are not capable of being good. its just that some of them either dont want to, or are not socialised in a way to encourage and develop certain skills at a early age, skills that are needed to enjoy video games. I would also like to add that the second girl in my example really liked farmville and tried to get me to play, but after a few levels i just stopped because there was no point in playing for me (earning ribbons? so I can show the world how awesome I am at growing pumpkins?)