PC Gaming

As a woman who sews, it's interesting to me that it was made to appeal to women because it touched my soul in a way that no other game had.

I've played all manners of games with vastly different gender compositions of player bases from Tarkov and Wardogs to Stardew Valley and Infinity Nikki. Dressmaker is the first game that I feel is both made with feminine aesthetics and skill expression that isn't gated by preconceptions of what women are capable of. If you go to the dressmaker discord, the dresses there literally have the Mona Lisa painstakingly painted on it using piping.

Most games made primarily with women in mind tend to be simpler because of a circular assumption that women don't play games with high skill expression and so game devs (who are majority male) will make simpler games. Dressmaker proved that skill expression and complexity is possible and desired even for a playerbase that statistically plays more mobile games.

Some of best things I've heard about this game really show how much point A is behind the success of this game: from helping elderly ladies in a nursing home to enjoy the creative process once again to letting someone experience their parent's craft. It made the creative field of dressmaking accessible to those that wouldn't have considered it otherwise, and made it accessible once again to those that could no longer access it.

Translation for old people?

She cant stand his every choice

She might enjoy a streamer called lilsimsie. Lilsimsie does a lot of cozy games and has done a lot of cute stuff in dressmaker.

Smant's chat: "99% quality? Might as well wrap her in a garbage bag lol"

As a guy, other guys acting misogynistic infuriates me. The label incel is also very cringe, almost as cringe as the incels themselves. It is alright to be single okay? Its actually fucking awesome sometimes. Furthermore, some people are not meant for relationships. And guys blaming all women for some unspecified grievance when they themselves won't look three seconds at themselves and their behavior, or somehow deludes themselves into thinking "supermodels should be throwing themselves at me the second I climb out of my basement, and if they don't, it's obviously because of trans/LGBTQ/woke and I just need to double down on being s toxic piece of shit. That surely will make me attractive!". /rant

Yep, it fucking sucks playing shooters online as a woman, you get so much harassment, which sucks because me and my all female friend group really enjoyed valorant.

Like, I'm here for more femme games. And I do think that games need to not treat women as an afterthought, giving us good character options, styles, and romance options for example. But for that, a lot of the industry has accepted that. RPGs for example understand that their audience is largely to majority women. We're past the era of "I suppose you can play as a woman in some games if you want…"

But ultimately what we still see is that "girly games" are much less respected and women are harassed in online and competitive games, as well as we're less respected when we speak on topics of gaming than men. This is especially the case in "gamer" spheres which still maintain a pretty hard-core misogyny problem.

It's not patronizing, nor is it as simple as making games not sexist. There are games that you mentioned target men and women, and there are games that target men, but few games that target just women and treat them as competent players.

I've had a few thousand hours in games with majority male player bases like R6 siege, League, Tarkov, Battlefield, Tekken, CoD, Wardogs, etc. When I play, it always makes me feel like I'm walking into a men's bathroom, like I shouldn't be there even if other guys are okay with it, and most of these player bases are not. Sometimes, it's the edgy aesthetics, or the fan service, or lack of female character options, or the edgy music and sound effects. The rest of the time, it's one guy being sexist while the others stay silent. A lot of these reasons are why women prefer shooters like Overwatch, Valorant, Fortnite more than the above.

The fact is that girls and boys are socialized at a young age to like different things or stay away from them, and that will always produce a skewed gender player base for any game. In games with few women, we rarely get to speak up for each other when male players are being sexist, and men don't often back us up.

Women didn't have the decades of head start in gaming culture, experience, and exposure to be as competitive as men in most multiplayer games. Hell, I wasn't even allowed to play video games as a kid. There isn't enough momentum yet in the gaming world to fix sexism in video games by just making them not sexist.

The solution right now isn't to eliminate games that target men, it's to introduce high-skill expression games that appeal to women. The dresses on the dressmaker discord are insanely intricate and difficult to make, yet all of us feel like we belong as a gamer.

To fix sexism in gaming, women need to have our own gaming culture that goes beyond what a majority male game development world thinks we want and are capable of. We need to catch up on decades of video games and consoles being primarily marketed to men, and stigmatized for women.

I think it's fine to target primary women or primarily men, it's tangential to being sexist or being shitty, you can do both, do neither, or do only one.

It's just that a lot of niches targeting men are already occupied and enjoyed by the players (probably of all genders), because men tended to be considered the main audience, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy as women felt left-out and rightfully.

On the other hand, I'm not a woman and may be completely wrong in my opinion, and would be glad to hear from someone who knows how things are, not how they seem to be

They prefer casual or social games they can fit onto their existing life, like candy crush or farmville.

what even is this take

A woman I work with only plays one game: Call of Duty.

Well said! I think it's a matter of identity too. My mom plays bejeweled and Farmville, and used to play SNES. She didn't like 64, but played Myst and Riven and lots of PC games.

But if you ask her if she's a gamer she'll say no without hesitation.

I remember teaching a young lady, many years ago(30?), to play Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat, took her a week to beat everyone but me, took her a month to be a toss up who would win between us, no one would fight either of us at that point. Had another friend, woman my age, that loved Warcraft 2, Star Craft, and I think it was an isometric Fall out or some other tactical game from 30 years ago. Hell, my gf plays Minecraft and Elder Scrolls Online. She runs 3 or 4 ESO guilds that are mostly capped on players. To me, a "girls" game is any game "girls" enjoy playing period. Personally I enjoy zombie type and extraction/horror games

Why ever would we do that? Binary people make games.

Non-binary people make games, and they use gendered language, too.

It has never been left behind, and it never will be.