I came across this post in my internet wanderings while I was trying to find out what percentage of players of The Sims 2 were female (about 60 or 65 percent, by the way), and it got me thinking. What draws the female audience to games like The Sims? What qualities could a game have that attracts women in general?

I’m in agreement with Ms. Knight that games can be made to cater to a wide female audience without having to be “pink” games that nobody with a penis would be caught dead with, and that women who are potential gamers are a market widely untapped by the industry. And the differences in the way these games were made could be a lot more subtle than the hammer-hitting done by the toy industry:

I’ve always been what I consider to be a feminist, but I was turned off to it for a while in high school when I found out that it can also involve a lot of screeching and the annoying denial of any innate differences whatsoever between men and women. A while ago, however, I came back to it, determined to find a more reasonable way to believe in rights and respect for women. My sister, who went through the same process, calls this “born-again feminism.” I think that young women of my generation (and the generations to come) are going to learn to stand up for themselves without being shrill. In many ways, they already have. And hopefully, the games the corporate world is trying to aim at us will highlight the ways men and women can communicate with one another and not rely on further division between us.