Your local Toys R Us has long been divided into pink aisles and blue aisles, but gender-specific games are only now starting to hit the CD-ROM shelves. Purple Moon, a new spin-off from Paul Allen's Interval Research, has announced that it aims to produce CD-ROM titles with "a high cootie factor." "We don't want this to be anything that boys will like," spokeswoman Laura Deyo says. They won't be alone on the girls-only shelves: Recent months have seen a slew of game companies betting on kinder, pinker content to draw a fresh female audience. Philips Media recently released a CD-ROM line based on the popular Baby Sitters Club book series, Mattel is launching a $10 million marketing campaign for its new line of Barbie CD-ROMs, and Her Interactive is preparing to release a vampire series and Nancy Drew series on CD-ROM. Last Christmas, by contrast, there was only one girl-oriented CD-ROM to stuff into stockings: Mackenzie and Co., published by Her Interactive.
The year-end rush aims to fill what producers hope is an open niche in the market. "Almost all the studies have agreed on one thing: Girls use computers more than boys up to age 8 or 10," relates Mauricio Polack of Her Interactive. "But after that age a wall goes up, and while boys' usage goes up, girls' usage goes down - simply because there's no software for them."
Four years of research has convinced Brenda Allen of Purple Moon that girls are looking for something beyond Doom. "They are competitive, but they just don't want to cause physical harm. They want role models, and narrative is important," Deyo says.
Fewer than 2 percent of console game players are female, SIMBA's Game Player Survey reports. And only 3 percent of all females currently play PC games. The remaining 97 percent offers a substantial potential audience: There are six million households in the US with both CD-ROM drives and girls between the ages of 8 and 18, a demographic with a US$45 billion a year purchasing punch.
But there is no proof that CD-ROMs in ribbons will induce a shopping frenzy. The current titles on the market have given a weak showing. "Everyone says the girl games are doing well, but I want to see the numbers," says Cindy Hardgrave, executive producer of family/girl products at SegaSoft and creator of an upcoming product for girls. Though Her Interactive claims that MacKenzie and Co. has been selling steadily since its release a year ago, Hardgrave estimates that they've sold around 30,000 copies - a pittance in the CD-ROM industry.
Indeed, the "cootie" approach which Purple Moon is advocating - producing titles that will actually deter boys - may not be the best route to the bank. "I think that gender-neutral games are the way to go," says Hardgrave. "That's the only way you're going to make money on a female audience. There's a huge problem with distribution, and if boys are buying, why would you want to leave them out?"
The popularity of some gender-neutral games also attests to the creation of girl-friendly, but not necessarily girl-targeted, titles. Games like Tetris, Pine relates, "found an audience with women rather than targeting an audience with women." The gender-neutral Myst has sold 2.5 million copies, with an estimated 40 percent of the users being female, and educational software like Broderbund's popular Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? is selling evenly across the board to girls and boys age 9 and up. Broderbund spokeswoman Dana Henry notes, "We take the gender-neutral approach. We don't want to exclude boys, but we do have strong girl characters."
Pushing girls into their own corner of the stores - and selling them make-up, shopping, interactive diaries, and reformatted girls' books, also moves towards the territory of old-school gender dichotomy. "It's a double-edged sword," says Kate Bornstein, gender expert and author of Gender Outlaws. "It's good that we're looking for something beyond blood-and-guts. But who's judging what the girls want, and why do we have to label that specifically 'girl'?"
