Did you know that now 38% of all gamers are female? Chalk it up to MMOs and the Nintendo DS. So now we're seeing publishers try to cater to them with... uh, slightly mixed results. Take, for instance, Boogie Superstar, a game set to be more aggressively targeted toward girl gamers than the original, more family-oriented title.
"We knew this was an amazing audience to go after and to take what (tween girls) love - fashion, music, dancing - and create a video game for these girls to show their self-expression," said John Buchanan, marketing director for EA's Casual Entertainment division.
Also mentioned is Ubisoft's well-intentioned but basically awful Imagine line, and Cake Mania, which may be traditional girl stuff but dammit, it's fun. The article seems unhappy about all the traditional "girls only" pursuits in these games, but personally I'm more pissed that almost all of these titles are basically shovelware. Make a slick, polished game for girls and then I'll buy that tween girls aren't just second-class citizens to the likes of EA and Ubisoft.
