LADY GAMER OF THE WEEK

[XGC xVIPERx XI]

Wednesday 08 March 2006​

Sheri Graner Ray
(Game Designer, Sony Online Entertainment)​

Writer and designer Sheri Graner Ray is best known to gamers for her work on the Ultima series. That's only a fraction of her accomplishments though. Sheri has conducted research at Her Interactive; served as President for Sirenia Software (which she also founded); and wrote the book Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market.

Currently she's working at Sony Online Entertainment, and in September she helped bring together the first annual Women's Game Conference.

When asked how to make the perfect game for women, Sheri commented: "Women are not a genre. They're a market. And they've got diverse tastes and interests and wants and desires in their entertainment. So it's really hard to say this is the women's game, or this is the game you want to make when you want to make a game for women."

Sheri says that content barriers are the real issue that needs to be conquered. "It's more important to look at what things we're putting in our games that are barriers to access for the female market. Address those things, and simply make the titles that we're making today more accessible to the female market."

In researching gamers, Sheri uncovered a significant difference in the way boys and girls play.

"Probably the most interesting thing I've found is the difference between young boys and young girls, little children, play. There's a definite break on gender line.

"When boys play in a group, the way they play is each person, each young boy, attempts to dominate the playtime, imposing the way he thinks they should play upon the group. In other words, trying to get the group to play by his rules. Each boy in the group will do this.

"On the other hand, girls will spend more time setting up the rules, working together to come up with a common rule set that they're all going to play by. The girls very often don't actually get around to playing, they spend more time making the rules. Whereas the boys do spend the time playing but are more concerned with trying to make sure it's played their way. I thought that was very interesting."