INTERVIEW: PopCap Games

Keen to learn more about the leading developer and publisher’s stance on creating and marketing games for female players, and woman in the industry, CasualGaming.biz sat down with PopCap’s senior director of the Mobile Games Studio, Viktorya Hollings and Cathy Orr, European PR director.

CG.biz: Girl gamers and females working in the industry are a long established force now. Is there still progress to be made with regard to attitudes to females and gaming?

Viktorya Hollings: Entry level roles such as QA, where lots of people get their foot into the door of gaming companies can still seem daunting and unwelcoming for females. Localisation tester roles can help attract a more even balance but there are fewer opportunities with not all companies keeping an extensive team in house. With the dawn of casual games however, gaming has never been about being a male or female pursuit, so the new generation growing up will be less likely to think of gaming as a male dominated world so hopefully barriers will come down naturally and open the industry up for all.
 
Cathy Orr: It’s worth noting that there’s still a bit of a ‘double-standard’ when it comes to how parents view the consumption of video games by boys verses girls. According to a recent survey PopCap conducted, parents and grandparents are 55 per cent more likely to discourage the playing of ‘hardcore’ games by girls aged 14-years-old and under, compared to boys of the same age.”

CG.biz: Has there ever been a conscious attempt at PopCap to target female gamers and/or female non-gamers?

CO: We at PopCap believe that everyone is a potential player of casual games regardless of gender, age – or even, interest in gaming for that matter! We’ve never made a “game for girls” or “game for women” or “game for seniors” – and it’s unlikely that we ever will. Doing so not only limits your potential audience size, it causes you as a developer to take your eyes off the prize: making the game as fun as it can possibly be.
 
We strive to make games that appeal to everyone and anyone - from stay-at-home mothers to hardcore gamers to workaholics.
 
PopCap research has suggested that casual games naturally skew towards an older (89 per cent of players are aged 30-plus), female (76 per cent are female) audience but those are just the people who buy the games on the PC. Many of our games are on Xbox Live Arcade, for example, and are doing well with traditional gamers – while PopCap’s mobile games do very well with younger gamers. Our mission at PopCap is to be innovators of casual games on as many platforms as possible to make our games as accessible to this audience of ‘everyone’ as possible.

CG.biz: Have PopCap games always found favour with a female audience?

CO: Historically, when we looked exclusively at our games on Mac/PC/web, we found our average customer was a 48-year-old woman. However as we discover new genres of casual games and make these playable on new platforms, the PopCap audience likewise continues to expand and diversify.

That said, it is probably still fair to say that casual games attract a higher demographic of female gamers than traditional video games. We’re not entirely sure why this is if we’re honest. PopCap believes women like to play games as much as men, but for decades content has been geared to men. Equally woman can feel insulted and/or repelled by games that have been made ‘for women’ – ‘pink’ games or games about domestic chores such as baking or housecleaning. Hopefully what they want are games that are simply fun - not gender-specific either way – because that’s what PopCap offers.

CG.biz: Both in PopCap and in gaming in general, what do you see as the major milestones of winning over the attentions of female gamers?

CO: Casual gaming has done a lot for the video games market as a whole to open up the industry to new audiences. Consider that traditional video games sell to approximately 13 per cent of the total ‘consumer audience’. The casual games sector currently sells to around 20 per cent of this ‘consumer audience’, but our potential to reach that other 80 per cent is far greater.
 
I think there are notable industry developments, which have helped put gaming on female radars. Between social networking sites and the launch of platforms such as the Nintendo Wii, it became apparent that gaming is no longer an antisocial behaviour – on the contrary, it can be a social activity that brings people together. New technologies such as the iPhone continue to ‘normalise’ gaming and make it another day-to-day lifestyle entertainment option that you can have fun with on the go, like reading a book.
 
It is also worth noting that 20 to 30-year-old women were probably exposed to traditional hardcore games in some form from an early age – whether in arcades or at home (e.g. on their brothers’ consoles) – so to an extent, these women have grown up with hardcore games - rather than getting their first exposure to them as adults. As a result hardcore games aren’t as alien or intimidating to the latest generation of women as they might have been to the mothers of those women 20-25 years old
 
In terms of PopCap milestones, our flagship franchise, Bejeweled reached sales of 25 million last year making it the most popular video game series of the 21st century in terms of total number of people who’ve played the game – we know it made it there by virtue of a fan base that’s comprised mostly of women.

CG.biz: Are there really differences in the gaming tastes of the sexes?

CO: In many instances, no. But I think there is probably some truth in saying that in general (and I use that term loosely) women tend to be a bit more introspective and thoughtful in game playing – they gravitate towards games that focus on cooperation, negotiation, problem solving, and reflection. Men are perhaps more likely to be attracted by explicit content, flashy graphics and immersive pressure-filled, often competitive and/or confrontational environments/situations.
 
CG.biz: Is there a future in continuing to target girls specifically, or is a focus on unisex gaming likely to be more worthwhile?

CO: PopCap will continue to focus on delivering games that are fun and playable by an audience of everyone – not gender-specific in either direction. As mentioned above, we believe it’s a significant misstep to target ‘women gamers’ in particular; you’re simply limiting your game’s potential customer base and losing sight of the single most critical aspect of any game – is it fun??

CG.biz: Do you have any statistics on the male-to-female ratio of the users of PopCap games?

CO: We conducted a survey some time ago that suggested 76 per cent of PopCap players were female but this figure is somewhat out of date. It refers specifically to our Mac/PC/online business and does not account for a plethora of new platforms that PopCap games can now be played on – mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs, retail games, consoles (for example PSN and Xbox), Facebook etc. It would be some research study that would bridge all that.

CG.biz: Is there much that casual gaming companies could teach the console, handheld and PC developers about appealing to a female audience?

CO: I suppose at the end of the day, it’s about prioritising fun. By the fact that so many hardcore gamers also enjoy casual titles from time to time, casual games serve as a reminder that it is possible to build and sell a successful product based on it actually being fun to play - as opposed to depending on a big licence or super-high-end graphics or a €25 million marketing budget.
 
In terms of quality and originality, the hardcore side of the business often relies on movie, TV and comic book tie-ins as well as sequels to existing games, sacrificing core game design and gameplay quality (i.e. truly fun games) for the sake of generating revenues. Now this has ‘worked’ to some degree, but it has also resulted in a lot of “flops” and consumers are in turn more judicious about which hardcore games they buy.

CG.biz: Have you ever felt being a female in the industry has ever been any kind of an issue or had any effect on your career, whether for better for worse?

VH: I have experienced better and worse, all depending on who you work for. When I got my first production manager role I was told by my boss ‘I have never seen a woman in this role’ and was reluctantly given the role as he himself could no longer take on all the work, and had to prove myself constantly. On the other hand, especially as 90% of my team and externals I have worked with have been male, then I find it a lot easier to engage with them, all the bravado seems to drop and so you can get things sorted much quicker.