Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

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mysterialize
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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#2 Post by mysterialize »

Probably due to the VN industry being largely pornographic. While it's certainly not true that girls can't enjoy pornography, there's more of a social stigma on our gender about it, and, simply going by statistics (Which may or may not be true), there is a smaller number of women who enjoy it than men. Thus more hentai games are made for men, rather than women, and those aimed at women are more likely to be BxB.

Not that I'm saying that VNs are purely for hentai. Anything but. It's just that there's more of it than anything else in the category, and as such, makes up a large portion of the numbers.

The other portion is probably the even more stupid assumption that girls don't enjoy computer/video games. Fortunately, that one is quickly going out the window.

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#3 Post by Aleema »

1.) Girls don't game.

2.) Girls have their pick of men in real life.

3.) The female orgasm is a myth.

Or, you know, what mysterialize said. :D

I'm also going to throw in that most game production companies are run by men. Same with movies, TV shows, etc. It's just easier to make what you like. But then, even if they find the statistics to support banking on a "female oriented" game, it's still very much produced by the same people who made "Anime Slutz IV" ...

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#4 Post by Sapphi »

I think it might have something to do with the generalization that women are more attracted to men's personalities and men are more attracted to how a woman looks. (Please nobody jump down my throat for this, I know it's not all there is to it, as a girl who appreciates good-looking men... it's just a generalization)

Because, a visual novel will probably be better at conveying cute appearance of the characters than a super fleshed-out personality. And, girls can be more "iconic" because their appearance is what attracts people, and iconic characters are easier from a marketing point of view.

Also, it might be sexist, but it seems more natural to "collect" girls than boys. The traditional sort of view is that men are supposed to pursue women, like a game, right? So it would make sense for a BxG visual novel to be a more prevalent thing.

Anyway, maybe it just has a lot to do with the fact that designing cute girls seems to be a lot more fun... ^_^;
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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#5 Post by J. Datie »

I think part of it is for the same reason lots of games/movies/ect. have male leads. A lot of people (or at least a lot of people who make these decisions) have decided that "male" is the default gender that everyone can relate to, and "female" is the spin-off gender used for stories that require the main character to be a woman. Of course, nowadays there's more women in creative positions, along with men who realize that women can the the lead in a gender neutral story, so this is happening less and less, but old habits die hard, I guess.

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#6 Post by sayuri »

Because men make the monies and women just cook, clean, and pop out babies. They don't have jobs! That means they have no money, and no money=no game for you! :P

:roll:

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#7 Post by J. Datie »

sayuri wrote:Because men make the monies and women just cook, clean, and pop out babies. They don't have jobs! That means they have no money, and no money=no game for you! :P

:roll:
Hey, that's not true of all families. For example, I've heard stories of some men bringing home "the bacon", in lieu of the monies. I'm guessing these people live in the Republic of Bacon, which appears to be a country in Canada.

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#8 Post by DaFool »

Because there are more girls with actual lives compared to guys, and thus have no need to play these kinds of silly games.

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#9 Post by gekiganwing »

To use a sweeping generalization, the video game industry is dominated by men. This is pretty much true in every nation where electronic games are made. Though I could be wrong...

In North America, the core gamer demographic in terms of video game fans is teen guys and men. There's plenty of articles and data that indicate that it's changing (here's one I just found: http://www.nforcershq.com/gamer-demogra ... 40-female/ ). But like the fandoms of sci-fi, fantasy fiction, and comics, video games are slowly emerging from an era where only kids and fanboys would talk about them.

Also, there's a distressing tendency to associate "games for girls" with low quality licensed games. I can think of far too many DS and PC games that fit this distinction... Seeing them on shelves made me wonder if they had an audience.

Sturgeon's Law is always a problem. For every nine lousy games aimed at male audiences, there's maybe one good one. And since there's not many games aimed at women, there's few worth praising.

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#10 Post by Aleema »

DaFool wrote:Because there are more girls with actual lives compared to guys, and thus have no need to play these kinds of silly games.
There's just a gap between books and games, and people generally think there is no overlapping. The rise of VNs is going to prove this wrong. Romance novels are ridiculously popular, and I personally equate those to women as porn is to men. (Though both genders cross over freely.) You can't go into a gas station without at least a row of trashy Harlequin novels, and there is at least an aisle deep of romance novels in book stores. If the reader of those books could interact with the story, then they could do so within the same amount of time they spent investing in a book. Or the writers of slash fanfiction could play a BxB game in the same amount of time it took to write their latest Naruto fanfic. Girls can have "lives" and still consume this media. Also, girls having lives are not as common as you think. Gotta look closer, and not just at the one with the big boobs.
gekiganwing wrote:Also, there's a distressing tendency to associate "games for girls" with low quality licensed games. I can think of far too many DS and PC games that fit this distinction... Seeing them on shelves made me wonder if they had an audience.
Indeed, I wonder the same thing ... but I think people DO buy them, since they keep making them! I tried my sister's Imagine Teacher or whatever, and it was like a crappy flash game on Newgrounds. Just because Nintendogs work, doesn't mean make eighty Petz games and assume girls will eat them. And for the love of god, when you make the mistake of making a girl gamer magazine, don't feature Cooking Mama as our most favoritest thing evar. There should also be a distinction between games for little girls and games for women. While I believe there are different parts in each gender's brain that want to be tickled (women sometimes favor puzzles, strategy, etc), when comes to a good story we're equal. =P
Last edited by Aleema on Thu Dec 09, 2010 12:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#11 Post by papillon »

OTOH Cooking Mama is at least an example of a decent game, afaik.

What I'm often complaining about on my blog is that tends to be zero review coverage of 'girly' games, so it's impossible for people to tell which ones are better than others. That means that a lot of people dismiss anything even slightly girly figuring that it's all crap - and other people who are actually interested in girly games may buy the worst ones by accident and have no idea that anything better exists.

The 'imagine' series isn't a true series in the traditional sense, since they obtained a lot of games from different sources (and a few of them are original) and slapped the same label on them, so even that won't help you tell.

But yeah, that particular magazine cover looks like something to be sold in the supermarket checkout aisle along with the cavalcade of "Lose weight AND cook this delicious dinner at the same time!" and gossip rags. :)

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#12 Post by mysterialize »

I performed an act of charity for the good of female gaming kind. I was in a Gamestop, when a woman walked in, looking for a game for her seven year old daughter. The guy at the counter pointed her to the Imagine games section in the DS aisle. Unable to stand such heresy, I quickly jumped in, and handed the woman a Kirby game. She went for the Kirby game. *Heroic pose* Marketing idiocy has been stopped once again.

Seriously though, I've noticed less of this stupidity in the past few months, but it may be because I've stopped going to GameStop in favor of The Exchange, what with their better selection, and their not being run by complete douchebags. GameStop seems to be one of the main culprits in this madness, as far as I can tell.
Because, a visual novel will probably be better at conveying cute appearance of the characters than a super fleshed-out personality.
Unrelated to the whole female gamers issue, though, I'm going to have to strongly disagree with this. There's no reason why it should be any more difficult to convey deep personalities in a VN than in novel, or anything else of the sort. There's nothing stopping people from making them just as long (If not longer, such as in most Type Moon works) as most books, and the first person angle and focus on characters should actually allow for more character depth.

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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#13 Post by flowerthief »

^
I think you may have misunderstood what she was getting at there. Of course it isn't any more difficult to convey deep personalities in a VN, but the question was why are there more BxG titles out there than GxB. If there's anything to the generalization that men are more attracted to looks than women are--and I think that there is--then that means, for instance, that if you're a BxG VN producer you can put images of the characters from your VN on your website and have potential male customers attracted to them before they've read a single line of text in your VN, and that would have sales/marketing implications, right?

If it's visual, it lends itself to cultivating fanbases out of people who respond to appearances, which I think men do more than women. (Conversely, picture-less romance novels don't seem to get bought very much by men)

Btw, I was clapping out loud when I read your Kirby anecdote :col:
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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#14 Post by Sapphi »

mysterialize wrote:
Because, a visual novel will probably be better at conveying cute appearance of the characters than a super fleshed-out personality.
Unrelated to the whole female gamers issue, though, I'm going to have to strongly disagree with this. There's no reason why it should be any more difficult to convey deep personalities in a VN than in novel, or anything else of the sort. There's nothing stopping people from making them just as long (If not longer, such as in most Type Moon works) as most books, and the first person angle and focus on characters should actually allow for more character depth.
I get what you're saying, but my word choice of "deep" might be different to you than it meant to me when I posted that.

See, I require a ton of that "depth" (I think "humanity" is the better word here) in a relationship before I start to feel really attached to people, which I'm not sure would really be attainable in a dating game, at least on the level that would make me "fall in love" with any character.

That's probably why I go for BxG games more than the other way around, because I am a girl, and am straight, so it's easier to control a faceless male protagonist (acts as a proxy or something) and chase after girls that I personally am not expected or meant to feel a connection to. For me, that makes it really about the two characters in-game, not me and another character. And when it's like that, as it is in most books' or shows' stories, it's easier to admire or have a crush on a character. When they are interacting within the bounds of their world, they seem more human to me. I think it really just comes down to that. I was never the type to "insert" myself into stories by creating original characters based on myself to fall in love with whatever character I admired. I would just think about that character with whatever love interest they had, and that made me happy enough. :mrgreen:

Now.. because of this, and because I am picky, I haven't played many GxB games at all. However, because of that, it's possible that what I just wrote is entirely full of crap and not accurate at all, but I suppose we'll see. lol

edit: I put BxG instead of GxB. gah.. going to bed now. :lol:
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Re: Why are there more BxG games than GxB games?

#15 Post by dstarsboy »

Not sure if this was mentioned already but the REAL reason that there are more BxG games than GxB games is likely because girls are completely fine with playing games where they are a male character pursuing other girls and men are not comfortable with playing a game as a female character pursuing other men. Hence... for the largest target audience, games are made as men pursuing women.
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