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OwlFancier posted:I played a couple of the online dressy uppy games with ladyfriends when I was younger. You may just need BETTER dressup games. Some allow a wide selection of single clothing pieces and the ability to change their colors. It's vastly more of a game than having to scrub out some girl's blackheads and pick one of three almost full outfits to stick on her. But most of those are not targeted towards little girls at all.
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Jan 22, 2014 19:54
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Choco1980 posted:I'm not sure how convinced I am that the hidden object games are really "girl" games over that coveted. "Whole family" grabber. From the business side of things, they are intentionally targeting an older female market. They're certainly happy to have other people playing them as well, but that's the visualised consumer used for making decisions, just as "teenage boy" is the primary market of a lot of triple-A gaming. Along with the normal sorts of restrictions on violence/blood/religion that you might expect in a more 'family' market, developers in the casual industry are also specifically advised to avoid themes that are considered bad matches for adult women, which means sports, modern military, and science fiction / robots.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:38
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I've never heard of all these hidden object games! That's interesting. It sounds like the target demographic is older than that of the other Girl Games we've been looking at. I'd like to learn more about them though!
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Jan 22, 2014 20:44
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The talk of hidden object games reminded me of the Nancy Drew games. For the one he reviewed, AxeManiac thought it was a pretty good for the target demographic. I haven't tried it myself, but from the sounds of it, those are Girl Games done right.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:54
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I play hidden objects games on my tablet in the evenings, they are super relaxing. I'm 31 so defiantly the target audience for these things. Anyway, look up Big Fish Hidden Object Games in the App Store, they distribute games from a whole host of developers and the first few hours of each game is free to play so if you like it you can unlock the rest. It's a really nice and free way to test drive the genre to see if you like it. As for recommendations, it's really down to personal taste but I recently played one called Lake House that was pretty neat. 13th Skull is fun, it's got ghost pirates in it, and if you're playing on the PC then try the Ravenhurst series. Since they are free to try just download a bunch and play whatever ones grab you, that's what I do.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:11
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Dr Scoofles posted:I play hidden objects games on my tablet in the evenings, they are super relaxing. I'm 31 so defiantly the target audience for these things. Anyway, look up Big Fish Hidden Object Games in the App Store, they distribute games from a whole host of developers and the first few hours of each game is free to play so if you like it you can unlock the rest. It's a really nice and free way to test drive the genre to see if you like it. Yeah there was a period of a few years where I played a bunch of those hidden object ones. I was gonna suggest Ravenhearst and Big Fish games but the good doctor just did! They're pretty much perfect for tablets though, and casual 20-minute play sessions, so they're well into the mobile market. Hmm, I played one on my Android I liked a good bit but I can't remember the name right now. I'll have to look at my Play store history. You're trying to un-haunt an old hotel and house. There's hidden object puzzles but there's also some point-and-clicky type stuff, and it got to be several hours long. Pretty typical of the medium.
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Jan 22, 2014 22:07
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This is an incredibly fascinating thread and I look forward to all the weird poo poo that will be discovered. This thread reminded of this Rock Paper Shotgun article about a Barbie game where Barbie and three of her friends get trapped by a malevolent GLaDOS inspired robot AI called Closet that lives in Barbies wardrobe, and forces the girls to complete minigames really similar to what we've seen until now in this thread. It's really... something.
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Jan 22, 2014 22:31
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MooCowlian posted:There's a good Extra Credits episode about Hidden Object games. It's kind of interesting how despite being a massive market, it's so well separated from the sort of gaming environment we tend to think of. The video doesn't really say anything groundbreaking, but it might be worth a look if you're interested. Yeah, Extra Credits is what got me to stop being so annoyed when I see those games in the PC section at stores. (I always think it's a more traditional adventure game, and I like those) They're slotted into that minimal violence/story-based gameplay zone that point & clicks used to dominate. You can kind of see the influence in Telltale's last Law & Order game. It's evidence hunt sections are hidden object screens. Yes, I own that game.  It has Detective Briscoe in it.
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Jan 22, 2014 23:50
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GoneWithTheTornado posted:This is an incredibly fascinating thread and I look forward to all the weird poo poo that will be discovered. That game also spawned my second-favorite Giant Bomb Quick Look. (the first is ride to hell)
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Jan 23, 2014 00:05
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There's a Mountains of Madness hidden object game that I actually enjoyed quite a lot. Big Fish Games has about a zillion of them and my mother plays them endlessly.
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Jan 23, 2014 01:17
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GoneWithTheTornado posted:This thread reminded of this Rock Paper Shotgun article about a Barbie game where Barbie and three of her friends get trapped by a malevolent GLaDOS inspired robot AI called Closet that lives in Barbies wardrobe, and forces the girls to complete minigames really similar to what we've seen until now in this thread. It's really... something. The barbie webisode featuring the evil closet is actually surprisingly funny and full of geek references. (I got linked to it when the game launched on Steam.) Sounds like the game isn't anywhere near as entertaining, though. If they'd released the game on Steam at a much lower pricepoint it would have been snapped up by two different groups of people, one just expecting it to be terrible so they could gag-gift their friends, and one expecting it to be intentionally subversive.
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Jan 23, 2014 01:38
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Jessica is pressured by here boyfriend Soul Patch Adams to make out with him in class and she doesn't mind doing so because she has low self-esteem issues due to having hooves, but she can't let Principal Hitler or Flipper-Baby Susan in the back row find her out, lest she be branded a slut. This game perfectly captures what it is like to be teen girl in today's American society.
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Jan 23, 2014 02:41
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This game already exists. It's called The Sims. Or possible Animal Crossing. But seriously, I guess if I had the unlimited funds and talent to make a game aimed at younger girls, it's probably be an unholy fusion of Animal Crossing, Myst, Harvest Moon, Pokemon, and the Elder Scrolls minus all the gritty elements...after customizing the hell out of your character and their outfit, you'd ride around an extremely detailed, extremely pretty and colorful fantasy world (god do I hate the greys and browns everywhere in triple A titles...), and then you'd find hidden treasures and new accessories, solve puzzles, get to know townspeople and help them with their problems and compete against them in minigame contests and maybe date them too, collect pets, learn magic, then buy a house and maybe a mine and a farm or something and decorate it and then craft craft craft. There'd have to be combat of some sort so you'd have a use for fancy swords and diamond encrusted bows and mithril armor engraved with unicorns or whatever, but it'd be cutesy old school Zelda type stuff. Also a brushing/feeding/breeding minigame for your horse with some sort of spergy way to wind up with a pegasus or unicorn would be mandatory. Zoe fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 03:40
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Color Printer posted:That game also spawned my second-favorite Giant Bomb Quick Look. (the first is ride to hell) loving hell, that was a thing. You can just feel the endless amounts of rage behind those expressions. And the pout to win game cutscene thing at the start. Just wow. Holy poo poo.
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Jan 23, 2014 05:05
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Zoe posted:But seriously, I guess if I had the unlimited funds and talent to make a game aimed at younger girls, it's probably be an unholy fusion of Animal Crossing, Myst, Harvest Moon, Pokemon, and the Elder Scrolls minus all the gritty elements... That reminds me, there's a few of the Harvest Moon games specifically aimed at girls. I played Another Wonderful Life back when it came out and it was essentially the same game as the "boys" version, which I thought was pretty good.
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Jan 23, 2014 05:06
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chocolatekake posted:That reminds me, there's a few of the Harvest Moon games specifically aimed at girls. I played Another Wonderful Life back when it came out and it was essentially the same game as the "boys" version, which I thought was pretty good. Of course these days it's usually a choice in the same game, not a separate game entirely.
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Jan 23, 2014 05:15
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As far as hidden object games go, my step-mom was playing some time ago this really good one with a headless horseman plot, that had a lot more to do to solve the puzzles, so it kinda almost morphed into a point-and-click adventure over a hidden picture. Also, the other big brand to look for is the Mystery Case Files line of games. They're big and challenging, with you being a detective solving crimes (mostly murders) in creepy places by finding the hidden items, and periodically doing mini-games. They even made one for the Nintendo DS that's pretty darn good.
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Jan 23, 2014 05:17
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While we're on the topic of dress-up games and casual gaming, my significant other has been pouring hours upon hours of time into something called JoJo's Fashion Show. From a glance, it looks to be some weird hybrid of a dress-up toy and a time-management game, as the goal is to dress up an army of identically-shaped women of varying skin tones to fit a nebulous in-game theme (winter wear, sporty apparel, and such forth) within a time limit. So for those of you out there looking for something like those dress up flashes without being quite so pointless, maybe give it a look? It's like a fifty part series now, as is the typical business model for casual games.
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Jan 23, 2014 08:39
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I only discovered hidden object games in the last few years sometime... and then got sick of them pretty quickly, BUT! I did quite enjoy The Clockwork Man. I'm a bit of a sucker for Victorian and steampunk art though, so it's maybe not surprising. It fits the pattern of "female protagonist getting poo poo done" too, so that's cool. There is a sequel, but I didn't like it so much; it went too far in the point-and-click adventure game puzzles direction for me. Never liked those games.
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Jan 23, 2014 09:01
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I've always imagined RPG's serve as pretty good genre to indoctrinate both genders to games, but they tend to be very text-heavy and still marketed to men more often with a focus on combat and violence. I wonder how well a pure role-playing RPG would do.
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Jan 23, 2014 09:58
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Midnight Voyager posted:You may just need BETTER dressup games. Some allow a wide selection of single clothing pieces and the ability to change their colors. It's vastly more of a game than having to scrub out some girl's blackheads and pick one of three almost full outfits to stick on her. Maybe? But the ones I played had that and they still weren't too great, because you can't do anything with the result. The point of action figures of any sort is you make up stuff to do with them after you attach all their swords/fashion accessories (same thing really) and you can't do that with a sprite on a flash dressup game. That's why I say RPGs are the real dressup games. Frankly I think the perfect girl game in that sense would be Skyrim if they added back in the armor system from Morrowind. Because you see I need to be able to mismatch my pauldrons because there is a reason my character would do that, I can't attend the emperor's cousin's wedding wearing matching greaves and no pantaloons underneath.
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Jan 23, 2014 10:54
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OwlFancier posted:That's why I say RPGs are the real dressup games. I'd agree except in 99% of RPGs, you won't be able to wear what you want because it'll be weaker than something else. There should really be a system where you can wear the textures from whatever armor you've ever acquired instead of the actual armor you have.
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Jan 23, 2014 11:02
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Gyre posted:I'd agree except in 99% of RPGs, you won't be able to wear what you want because it'll be weaker than something else. There should really be a system where you can wear the textures from whatever armor you've ever acquired instead of the actual armor you have. Oh yeah, that's a point, Dark Souls does that quite well. So, we need a... not less violent, but 'also with things other than violence' Skyrim, with Dark Souls item modification and armor listings, Morrowind armor complexity, and maybe motion control as an option because that's fun for a lot of folks. Then we have the perfect gender nonspecific game. Kinda sounds like a pretty great game generally actually.
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Jan 23, 2014 11:05
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OwlFancier posted:Because you see I need to be able to mismatch my pauldrons because there is a reason my character would do that, I can't attend the emperor's cousin's wedding wearing matching greaves and no pantaloons underneath. Oh, and we need an option to add embroidery to the gear in those RPGs, to keep a kill tally, or to stitch in quest reminders, because the automatic journals are poo poo. I want to be able to look at the underpants in my house and go nostalgic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ3Y7acYBnk We need the freedom of Way of the Samurai 2 & 3, and money making options of the Magic Candle, Darklands and Steambot Chronicles to give the player a good non-murderous cash flow.
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Jan 23, 2014 11:11
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Mordaedil posted:I've always imagined RPG's serve as pretty good genre to indoctrinate both genders to games, but they tend to be very text-heavy and still marketed to men more often with a focus on combat and violence. Given that Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines is considered a pretty great game despite the combat rather than because of it, I think there'd certainly be a market there if someone went for it. OwlFancier posted:Maybe? But the ones I played had that and they still weren't too great, because you can't do anything with the result. I think you just don't like dress-up games. I don't know that I've ever in my life actually played any sort of game with a customisable doll or toy beyond simply customising it. Maybe staging a scene. But then I'd undo it all and start again, because it was about making it look cool, that was the whole point. I didn't set them up to do something with. Even now, I can have a lot of fun playing with dress-up games, or stuff like that Hero Maker thing that someone mentioned earlier. Sometimes I load up the Saints Row 3 or 4 stand-alone character generators (Initiation Station and Inauguration Station) just to make a character that I'll never use in the actual game. I don't even bother saving them.
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Jan 23, 2014 12:08
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Hmm, maybe? But yeah I suppose I wouldn't enjoy just dressing up a character because I had action figures when I was little. I've never had to be limited to just dressing up the character. It's certainly fun to make your character look cool, but I do expect to be able to play a game with it afterwards. In contrast, I'll spend hours shopping for my character in saints row 2, but I want to be able to do missions with them afterwards.
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Jan 23, 2014 12:12
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OwlFancier posted:Hmm, maybe? But yeah I suppose I wouldn't enjoy just dressing up a character because I had action figures when I was little. I've never had to be limited to just dressing up the character. I wasn't limited to that, that's just what I find fun. You make it sound like I have some sort of toy-based Stockholm syndrome.
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Jan 23, 2014 12:18
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Tiggum posted:I wasn't limited to that, that's just what I find fun. You make it sound like I have some sort of toy-based Stockholm syndrome. That's not my intent, sorry if I come across like that. I'm more comparing the functionality of the two as toys, if you get me. What you want to do with an action figure is up to you, but it can do both dressing up and, well, actions. Dress up games can't, and I'd consider that a little bit of a failing of the game. Generally I expect videogames to exceed physical toys in some ways. Obviously physical toys have greater variety but if you take say, an action videogame, it seriously expands and improves on what you can achieve by throwing action figures at each other, at least in some ways, obviously your imagination may vary. But even stuff like the saints row customiser aren't that much of an improvement on the dressing up part of having a dolly or an action man or whatever. They have a good few outfits but it's still more or less the same thing. As a complete game I'd say it improves on it because it combines a solid customisation mechanic as well as a solid action mechanic. I've never seen or played a pure dress-up game which improves on what you can achieve with a dolly, basically.
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Jan 23, 2014 12:33
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OwlFancier posted:Frankly I think the perfect girl game in that sense would be Skyrim if they added back in the armor system from Morrowind. Because you see I need to be able to mismatch my pauldrons because there is a reason my character would do that, I can't attend the emperor's cousin's wedding wearing matching greaves and no pantaloons underneath. This absolutely. Did anyone ever manage to mod in something like this? In Morrowind I had my fancy clothes for shopping and talking to NPCs, my casual adventuring outfits, and my Serious Business gear with glorious mismatched pauldrons. And a vital part of all the armor sets was the way they looked layered over specific clothes! And dammit Oblivion and Skyrim, don't you know you can't wear armor over bare skin, it will chafe! 
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Jan 23, 2014 14:44
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I'm so glad I'm not the only one who'd accessorize the hell out of myself in Morrowind. I would have an entire wardrobe in my mansion, one set out on display and another set in storages so that I can pick out what I want to wear and put away what I've gotten tired of. I remember having the hardest time having a full getup match with the egg hat with the white trim.
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Jan 23, 2014 14:52
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chocolatekake posted:That reminds me, there's a few of the Harvest Moon games specifically aimed at girls. I played Another Wonderful Life back when it came out and it was essentially the same game as the "boys" version, which I thought was pretty good. I heard someone complaining the other day that for the DS Harvest Moon Cute, they didn't actually bother to add any new male characters save for one rear end in a top hat, so all the guys you date are like 50 years old. I thought it was pretty funny.
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Jan 23, 2014 15:45
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I once paid the subscription fee and game price of Champions Online just so I could make characters using their pretty great creator. I never really played any of the content. I've been meaning to play EVE as well exclusively to try out its supposedly unparalleled character customization. Playing with dolls definitely has a wide and strong appeal.
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Jan 23, 2014 16:07
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EVE did have pretty amazing character customisation. Followed by your ships being super-generic mass produced clones, which was a bit odd. This was a few years ago, so they might've updated ship cosmetics since I played. Or well, mostly face creation now that I think on it. Veloxyll fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 16:11
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There is a guy version of the kissing game. Depending on how manly you are it's either "cheat off other students to pass the class" or "Beat up the classroom nerd". However, both involve arrow keys and movement. I can get some links if you'd like, but I want the girl game thread to remain pure.
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Jan 23, 2014 16:12
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Veloxyll posted:EVE did have pretty amazing character customisation. Followed by your ships being super-generic mass produced clones, which was a bit odd. This was a few years ago, so they might've updated ship cosmetics since I played. Nah, now you create full bodies for your character and can dress them up with one of the best creators and engines I've seen... but you'll only see the character instead of the ship in your single-room Captain's Quarters. If I recall, they made the engine for a World of Darkness (vampires) MMO that got scrapped. Also cosmetic items can easily cost as much as capital ships, making it all a bit surreal in a game that is otherwise an economic spreadsheet simulator.
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Jan 23, 2014 17:02
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Spudd mentioned World of Warcraft as a dress-up game some pages ago but he didn't really get into the depths of it. When it launched, WoW had limited character customization and no way to change even things like hair color in-game. The basic customization options improved (but slowly; it was just short of four years after launch that they added the ability to change your hairstyle and color) but the real character customization has always been in the form of changing your gear. Back when I was playing I had something like a hundred bank slots dedicated to various pieces of purely cosmetic (ie, not useful in raiding) gear, and that didn't include things like mounts that don't take up a slot. Essentially anyone who plays WoW seems to end up accumulating dress-up gear. This is where my skepticism about developers who say "people don't use character customization" comes from; Blizzard had people doing absurd grinds (in one case, one that literally took a real-world year) for purely cosmetic items and they did, in extraordinary numbers. You can even buy licensed 3D figures of your characters with their equipment, and people do.
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Jan 23, 2014 17:05
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Veloxyll posted:EVE did have pretty amazing character customisation. Followed by your ships being super-generic mass produced clones, which was a bit odd. This was a few years ago, so they might've updated ship cosmetics since I played. Not really. They're just spaceships. I signed back up for a trial after not playing for years, spent hours posing and dressing my character, and was amazed to see it wasn't just limited to a portrait now. You can leave your ship when docked at space stations... And just walk around your tiny quarters, look out the window, or watch a news feed. But dress up! I think I heard they were charging ridiculous real money prices for items like sunglasses, and people paid.
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Jan 23, 2014 17:06
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DecayDJK posted:This is where my skepticism about developers who say "people don't use character customization" comes from; Blizzard had people doing absurd grinds (in one case, one that literally took a real-world year) for purely cosmetic items and they did, in extraordinary numbers. You can even buy licensed 3D figures of your characters with their equipment, and people do. In Mass Effect 3 or Saint's Row, either very few or zero people are going to see your character, and there's no effort required beyond adjusting some sliders or whatever.
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Jan 23, 2014 17:15
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Gaz-L posted:Yeah, Extra Credits is what got me to stop being so annoyed when I see those games in the PC section at stores. (I always think it's a more traditional adventure game, and I like those) They're slotted into that minimal violence/story-based gameplay zone that point & clicks used to dominate. You can kind of see the influence in Telltale's last Law & Order game. It's evidence hunt sections are hidden object screens. I don't know if you've heard of Her Interactive but they're the maker of the Nancy Drew games (all 30 of them). According to the NPD, they actually have some of the most consistent sales on PC retail next to Blizzard and Valve. It's why you keep seeing the Nancy Drew games on store shelves. I actually got to visit them once and they have a really nice building. They had a lot of funny stories to tell as well. One time, Microsoft (whose HQ is near them) tried to poach some of their employees because HI did so well in retail when stores were contracting their PC Software lineups. They were going to triple their salaries but nobody wanted to work at Microsoft. Back in mid-2009, they were heavily courted by Valve to enter Steam. I think Doug Lombardi was personally involved in the deal. Valve was trying to diversify Steam's catalog because they didn't want to Steam to be known for just violent games.
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Jan 23, 2014 17:21
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Zoe posted:This absolutely. Did anyone ever manage to mod in something like this? In Morrowind I had my fancy clothes for shopping and talking to NPCs, my casual adventuring outfits, and my Serious Business gear with glorious mismatched pauldrons. And a vital part of all the armor sets was the way they looked layered over specific clothes! And dammit Oblivion and Skyrim, don't you know you can't wear armor over bare skin, it will chafe! If they did, I'm sadly not aware of it. The closest I know is the pouches and bags mod which adds a set of craftable 90's comic book pouches for you to stick all over your character. Morrowind was an utterly amazing dress up simulator. I can wear a dozen pieces of armor and clothes underneath and robes on top. I really wish they'd kept that, I know it added very little to the game (and made enchanted gear incredibly broken because of how much of it you could stack) but I too enjoy roleplaying as the most metrosexual adventurer in the universe. Sunning posted:I don't know if you've heard of Her Interactive but they're the maker of the Nancy Drew games (all 30 of them). According to the NPD, they actually have some of the most consistent sales on PC retail next to Blizzard and Valve. It's why you keep seeing the Nancy Drew games on store shelves. I actually got to visit them once and they have a really nice building. I remember seeing the steam frontpage utterly loaded with Nancy Drew games and I always wondered if they were any good. I don't like adventure games but Nancy Drew was a big thing when I was little, my older cousin had the whole set I think. I was always more Famous Five, but I kinda got the impression they were similar but more girl-themed. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 19:00
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