Hello Kitty Online and other projects are going after a demographic that has largely been ignored: young females. Richard looks into this in more detail.

This distinction can be rather convenient, but it's artificial and thus only accurate to varying degrees. In the case of HKO, quite a few people automatically classify it as for girls solely on the basis of its brand. With the vast majority of Sanrio's customers and fans being female and young, it would be pretty foolish for the game not to aim for this demographic. However, this is often taken to mean that it's also casual. In reality, as Wei points out, the extent to which this is so primarily depends on its mechanics, not its target audience.

That said, there's no denying HKO is a girl game, which naturally leads to the question of what makes it so. "While many casual games are certainly female friendly," says Wei, "they are not specifically designed for girls." He cites The Sims as a franchise with a predominantly distaff fan base, stating that although it leans in the casual direction and has dollhouse-style play rather than immersive, it wasn't necessarily developed just for this particular audience.

Read it all here.

 "Further, even where small attribute differences do exist, such as one gender (guess which) having slightly higher starting strength and the other a corresponding boost to intelligence..."

Bizarre. Why intelligence, and not dexterity or some such? 

Originally posted by Praetoriani

 "Further, even where small attribute differences do exist, such as one gender (guess which) having slightly higher starting strength and the other a corresponding boost to intelligence..."

Bizarre. Why intelligence, and not dexterity or some such? 

mainly cause numerous stodies have proven men are predisposed to uper body streght while women to mental cognition?

also Hello Kitty Ultimate Battle League would kick so much ass

Originally posted by nekollx

Originally posted by Praetoriani

 "Further, even where small attribute differences do exist, such as one gender (guess which) having slightly higher starting strength and the other a corresponding boost to intelligence..."

Bizarre. Why intelligence, and not dexterity or some such? 

 

mainly cause numerous stodies have proven men are predisposed to uper body streght while women to mental cognition?

That's exactly the thing. The latter is simply not true. Some studies have. Some studies (probably even more) show the opposite. By far most support the null hypothesis and claim there is no statistically significant difference. Most of them have flawed methodology, and some are even biased, nevermind that pretty much every psychologist/neuroscientist has a different idea on what intelligence is. I sincerely wonder if you typed that with a straight face.

Originally posted by nekollx

mainly cause numerous stodies have proven men are predisposed to uper body streght while women to mental cognition?

Actually, it has been shown that men are more likely to be at the extremes (both high and low) of intelligence (more Einsteins and more imbeciles). Men and women have difference areas of intelligence in which they generally excel. Women in linguistic areas, and men in spacial and mathematical areas.

 It's funny that this is a topic when I join the forums... Back in the early days of Beyond Protocol (my favorite game)'s beta, when a player got all upset and threatened to leave, the common reaction was, "well fine, go play Hello Kitty Online!" with a convenient link. 

As for the distinction between girl games and guy games, what I've come to notice in my vast years of scrutinous research (loads of embedded sarcasm) is that guys tend to focus on games which simply allow them to dominate, anything, whether small bipedal mushrooms, or entire solar systems. While women tend to focus more on nurturing and aesthetics, small kittens or strapless tops... Of course, these are just molds which many set out to break. However, games that can incorporate, while not requiring both would be my guess at a common ground for the genders. Young vs Old is another story entirely... and because I don't feel like stating an age that equates to "old" I'm going to choose to ignore it ;)

hahaha, who would have guessed that HKO would have something sexist like that.

though i guess it is just a less-obnoxious more-cute version of the typical GIRLZ LIKE DIZ products

One important thing I think we can do, is consider girl-gamers within popular MMOs that exist today, or has existed in the past. I think that focusing on age (meaning, pre-teen girls) like HKO does, is kinda pointless to this discussion since you don't see many MMOs whose target audience is pre-teen boys. The goal with MMOs is usually to have as broad a target-audience as possible.

To be honest, I don't think I can shed much light on this. But pretty much every MMO has a decent female population nowadays. The only real trend I'm seeing with female gamers in MMOs, is that they seem to play healer archetypes more than males, and more happily than males. I got into a little bit of guild-drama in WoW by describing the healing role as 'healbitch', and the main-healer (who was a female) got upset. Apparently she loves her role...

And I don't buy the whole thing of guys only caring about combat, while girls just want to dress their characters up. I think that guys want to spend hours dressing-up their characters just as much, if not more, than girls. But much like the Action Figure vs Doll labeling system, this one is called Character Customization.

Originally posted by BigJohnny

And I don't buy the whole thing of guys only caring about combat, while girls just want to dress their characters up. I think that guys want to spend hours dressing-up their characters just as much, if not more, than girls. But much like the Action Figure vs Doll labeling system, this one is called Character Customization.

I'll back you on this one. In  the old SWG, if you asked any Image Designer who their most frequent, most picky, and most exacting customers were- it was the guys. At least it was that way for every one that I knew. Whether it was changing hair color and/or style every 3 days to getting just the right amount of musculature (which might even be 'none at all'), I was frequently told by the Image Designers, who were (in my experience) mainly female, that (to the great surprise of many of them) it was the guys who 'wanted more, more often' than most girls did.

As for me, I would never have played a barbie-doll-dress-up-make-up-cooking-and-clothes-shopping game. I do enjoy my share of 'fluff', but a game that focused on such things? I'd have been absolutely disgusted. I may realize there are plenty of girls thrilled by those things, but I never understood them when I was little and I don't understand them today. I wasn't a tomboy, I just didn't like what I deemed to be 'stupid childish things' (even when I was a little girl).

I think it'll be nice when games spread out a bit more and offer more than they offer today, but I doubt I'm the only one that feels that way, male OR female.

Hee... all this attention by this game focused on the female gender does make me feel good. However, I probably won't be playing this game because just looking at the screenshots, it does look like it's going to give me a headache. All those bright colours... and the pink. I hate pink to a passion. So yeah, I probably won't be playing it. Though I have to admit, I do like the idea of playing a game that is not actually focused on combat.

Maplestory is another one with a somewhat larger female audience

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by nekollx

mainly cause numerous stodies have proven men are predisposed to uper body streght while women to mental cognition?

Actually, it has been shown that men are more likely to be at the extremes (both high and low) of intelligence (more Einsteins and more imbeciles). Men and women have difference areas of intelligence in which they generally excel. Women in linguistic areas, and men in spacial and mathematical areas.

I would have to strongly disagree. Citing historical figures like Einstein doesn't help your case. With extremely few exceptions, women were discouraged or even barred from scientific discussion. And when they did contribute, they were very rarely credited for their own thoughts.

The "linguistics vs mathematics" argument also holds little water. It's based on the outdated "left brain, right brain" principal. Many of the published noteworthy linguists have been male (but that doesn't mean there weren't an equal number of brilliant women who were not published). There is no known genetic predisposition towards either linguistics or mathematics for either sex. And most studies of this fail because they have an insufficient sample size to work with.

Even if you sampled women of all ages throughout the US, your results would be heavily biased by the social norms and values that affect how women are treated and given access to education in comparison to men in this country.

/rant

HKO server broke into the DF server and killed everyone with kindness.

If HKO doesn't have any driving or big words my girlfriend might do well... might.

I could go on all day.

Although girls in the age group 13-16 still seem to adore Hello Kitty the target audience is little children, both boys and girls methinks.

Hm... I can't think of any boys I know who would be interested in Hello Kitty... *remembers the traffic jam that caused me to be an hour late for school because people were queueing up to get Hello Kitty dolls from McDonalds*

Oh wait...

Hm... maybe it would be quite popular in my country after all.

I'm sorta waiting for it to go online and then see the claws come out when the devs inveribly nerf something...

HK fans are VISCIOUS i hear.

You gotta grow up knowing that playing games is OK.

Just like you gotta grow up knowing that working on electronics, riding motorcycles, cooking, and getting your nails done is OK, too.

Then it just doesn't matter so much.

I think a lot of it comes down to what you are taught as a kiddo.

Most females ( I know I was) are tossed dolls and a house to play with, even in today's society where women have all this equality we still toss little girls things that involve cooking, babies, dressing up, etc etc.

Boys are given toys that blow up and such, and video games.

So you end up with adults, young adults, etc, who are defined by the ideas and values placed in their heads as kids.

I have been playing MMOs since like 1993, I was like 10 then......Of course I was raised in a rural area, with a brother, and boys always around thus the influence of "masculine" things like video games, stuff blowing up, etc was far more dominant then the girl things in that household. I wasn't really a tomboy but I definently wasn't girly. Parents gave me a doll house and a couple dolls, but they usually ended up getting blown up by GI Joe somehow.

As far as what do chicks like in game, I like a well rounded game. HOWEVER if there is limited customization I almost definitely will not play it. At least half of the fun in a game to me is the ability to play around with my character and dress her up.

Roles in mmos? I tend to gravitate to support roles. I think it is only natural that women being the caring nurtures (most of them) will gravitate to similar jobs in a game.

Originally posted by Emotlah
I think a lot of it comes down to what you are taught as a kiddo.

 

Most females ( I know I was) are tossed dolls and a house to play with, even in today's society where women have all this equality we still toss little girls things that involve cooking, babies, dressing up, etc etc.

mmmm cooking babies....

Dont forget the 58 year old child molester they are also drawn to Hello kitty mmo's....

Joking aside as much as MMOs in general are for guys those that do appeal to the female market seem to be lacking.

Had a friend play the other Hello Kitty game stating that the game was unbalanced, rampant with bugs, and other serious faults. Why make a game for a an audience if all your going to state to this audience is that they dont care enough with the game to make it not crap.

Honestly I still don't think we are at the point where Games in general have really breached into the Female culture enough for an MMO to be based on that market. Given 5-10 years you might have a real hit on your hands but at the moment the current female market of MMO players with A) Play the same games as their male counter part and thus why would they need a game based for them. B) Only play games to play with certain males namely their husbands/boyfriends/ w/e, these people don't really need an mmo for them either just enough of the MMO they are already playing to appeal to them. C) Use MMOs as social forum.

In the end their really isnt an appeal enough to pull on this market, trying to tap into this market as new potential is a good idea but falls short since the majority of Female possible Gamers are not likely to jump to MMOs as their game of choice as their first choice.

Originally posted by Punkre

Dont forget the 58 year old child molester they are also drawn to Hello kitty mmo's....

Joking aside as much as MMOs in general are for guys those that do appeal to the female market seem to be lacking.

Had a friend play the other Hello Kitty game stating that the game was unbalanced, rampant with bugs, and other serious faults. Why make a game for a an audience if all your going to state to this audience is that they dont care enough with the game to make it not crap.

Yeah this realy borthers me.

"lets make a game for kids, we don't have to give a shit about quality, their kids! just use bright colors and they will ignore the massive server instabilites and opver powers classes. Look a rainbow!

 Stereotypes don't come out of nowhere. I can already hear some of you sputter, but bear with me. Studies of very small children (i.e. without significant cultural imprinting) have borne out that boys tend toward toys with moving parts, wheel, and the like - toy cars, in short - while girls tend more toward anthropomorphic toys - dolls. This is a small propensity, mind you. But our ancestors will have noted this propensity, and it got codified into our societal expectations and cultural norms. So girls are now expected to like dolls, and boys are expected to like toy cars. A boy who plays with dolls is derided, and a girl playing with toy cars is seen as unfeminine. This is, of course, a problem.

Boys need the freedom to play with dolls and develop that side of themselves as much as girls need the freedom to play with toy cars. It's actually a feminist thought - why is a boy derided for playing with 'traditionally' feminine toys? Are they bad, somehow? To have equality of the sexes, the roles of the genders need to be considered equal, and they're not. Yet.

Originally posted by Punkre 

Honestly I still don't think we are at the point where Games in general have really breached into the Female culture enough for an MMO to be based on that market.

...

In the end their really isnt an appeal enough to pull on this market, trying to tap into this market as new potential is a good idea but falls short since the majority of Female possible Gamers are not likely to jump to MMOs as their game of choice as their first choice.

This is the wrong kind of thinking. Even if this game isn't a runaway success, it's laying the foundation for better female-targeted that might appear down the road. It's really a chicken and egg problem. We'll never really know when it's the "right point" until we get there, but if we don't make it available we may never no when we've gotten there (or we may never get there at all).

It really doesn't matter if all girls are attracted to the game or not. It just take few trail blazes to inspire the generations that follow them.

Originally posted by Auton

 Stereotypes don't come out of nowhere. I can already hear some of you sputter, but bear with me. Studies of very small children (i.e. without significant cultural imprinting) have borne out that boys tend toward toys with moving parts, wheel, and the like - toy cars, in short - while girls tend more toward anthropomorphic toys - dolls. This is a small propensity, mind you. But our ancestors will have noted this propensity, and it got codified into our societal expectations and cultural norms. So girls are now expected to like dolls, and boys are expected to like toy cars. A boy who plays with dolls is derided, and a girl playing with toy cars is seen as unfeminine. This is, of course, a problem.

Boys need the freedom to play with dolls and develop that side of themselves as much as girls need the freedom to play with toy cars. It's actually a feminist thought - why is a boy derided for playing with 'traditionally' feminine toys? Are they bad, somehow? To have equality of the sexes, the roles of the genders need to be considered equal, and they're not. Yet.

The problem with studies like that is they approach the problem with the assumption that there is a difference. Essentially it's a case of confirmation bias.

How popular were the GI Joe power wheels compared to the Barbie power wheels? I see far more pink ones than green ones.

For that matter, how popular were the GI Joe figurines?  Aren't those essentially the same thing as dolls? 

This is a case of false dichotomy because boys do play with dolls and girls do like toys with moving parts. When we talk about kids, there's such a broad spectrum of interest through both sexes and they majority tend to overlap. The few things that are exclusively for girls or exclusively for boys are only made that way artificially through marketing and social pressures.

In my opinion, more kids should be encouraged to play with toys like LEGO which encourages imagination, creativity and independent thought. If they want a doll, they can make a doll. If they want a car, they can make a car. Both boys and girls enjoy constructionist learning activities.