After years of mindful neglect, the computer-software industry is finally paying attention to girls. This fall a handful of companies are releasing PC games and multimedia entertainment products aimed specifically at females 8 and older, the rough equivalent to the Nintendo crowd. it’s a huge untapped market. According to one estimate, by the end of this year, 6 million U.S. households with girls 8 to 18 win be equipped with multimedia PCs. Big companies like Philips Media and Mattel figure that there’s money to be made giving those girls something fun to do on all those computers. Smaller companies like Girl Games and Her Interactive are using the business opportunity to help make sure girls stay interested in technology. “It’s quite obvious that this is the time when we lose them,” says Girl Games president Laura Groppe. Either way, come Christmas there will be more “just for girls” software to choose from than ever before.
Until now, the pickings have been slim, largely because software designers are still mostly men. Mattel Media president Doug Glen says this is because the interactive entertainment business sprang from the computer labs at technical universities like MIT, Stanford and Cal Tech. Computer-science majors, who then almost male, made games for themselves in their free time. “So they made boy toys,” says Glen, who himself went to MIT and then to work at Sega and LucasArts.
Back then, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, programmers created what are by today’s standards primitive science-fiction adventures, sports simulations, “wizards and warriors” role-playing games. Today those same games–only now with 3-D graphics and stereo sound-make up the vast majority of available entertainment software. “Which,” says Glen, “is perfect for the boys market.” Years of research into gender differences in play patterns show that boys, in general, like competitive win-lose situations, high scores and body counts. It’s almost the opposite for girls.
It’s no wonder, then, that parents can’t find anything for their daughters when they go software shopping. In fact Mattel’s research shows that for every four software programs parents buy for sons, they buy only one for daughters-even though girls and boys ages 6 to 10 spend the same amount of hours on computers. Programs like Broderbund’s powerful but utilitarian Print Shop stationery maker and gender-neutral educational fare like Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail rank high with girls. But studies are showing that these aren’t enough: around the age of 10, girls’ usage of computers falls off, just when boys are developing serious relationships with their Doom avatars. Play, as parents and educators know, is an important way for kids to get familiar with things in the adult world. Boys, who have loads of appealing software that turns Dad’s boring Packard Bell into a great game machine, would seem to have an advantage when it comes to computers.
New entrants to the field hope to even out those odds. Girl Games’ Let’s Talk About ME! published by Simon & Schuster Interactive, gives adolescent girls a variety of self-exploration tools like the diary, personality quizzes and honest girlfriend advice on their changing bodies. Philips Media has made productivity software that spins off Ann M. Martin’s hugely popular book series “The Baby-sitters Club.” It includes a calendar, stationery maker, address book and babysitter to-do checklists. Her Interactive continues to sell McKenzie & Co., a pioneering if controversial “90210”-type role-playing game for teens and will release The Vampire Diaries romance mystery next month. Mattel Media has three CD-ROMs based on Barbie. Barbie Fashion Designer lets girls design outfits for their dolls on-screen and then actually make them on a home printer. Even though Barbie may not be your favorite role model, each company’s extensive focus-group testing shows, as Philips Media Home president Sarina Simon puts it, “this is what girls want.”
Educators give mixed reviews to what Maria Klawe, an expert on gender and computers at the University of British Columbia, calls “pink software.” “[It’s] not my favorite choice,” she says, “but I’d much rather see someone shop than play with machine guns.” Klawe has been working with Electronic Arts, an established purveyor of shoot-’em-ups, to develop a gender-neutral game for kids who are in the 10-to-14 age group. After testing the game, which is called Phoenix Quest, on about 300 Klawe they’ve struck the right balance between what boys and girls want. “The thing that really appeals to girls is when they feel they’re accomplishing something,” says Klawe, who has been studying gender play patterns for the past three years. “Girls view computers as something to learn with.”
Gender-neutral games may be ideal, but there’s certainly room for ones–like Let’s Talk About ME!–that don’t include boys at all. Morgan, for one, seems to be responding favorably to having software that she can call her own. Her dad, Jeff, reports that Morgan doesn’t let Christian hog the computer as much as he used to. Lately they’ve been getting into fights over the family Macintosh. “They each now get a half-hour and then they switch,” says Raun. It looks like the odds are evening out already.
