No. This is not a post on how to pick up the cool chick you saw in the Xbox aisle at Best Buy. Gamasutra has a feature up in which mobile gaming content CEO Kristin McDonnell talks about how to attract women players. To date, the company has Girls' Night Out Solitaire and their next title, Word Heaven, will hit in February.

"Our product development team comes out of PC development software," says McDonnell. "The design team had four number one hits in the female demographic before coming on to LimeLife." What's more, McDonnell herself was involved with the first casual games network, Sierra Online's ImagiNation Network. The female audience there was over 50 percent. So, if anyone know what ladies stereotypically like, it should be McDonnell.

"Typically, women in general like puzzle, card and word games," says the CEO. Moreover, women enjoy social interaction and cooperation. For the cell-phone game provider, things like bandwidth and user interaction make that tricky. Hence, Virtual Girlfriends. McDonnell explains, "The Virtual Girlfriends are within the game itself, they're not other players."

These "virtual" gal pals will pop up and make witty or sarcastic remarks. "And you can rename them to have names of real-life friends." Wait, there's more. "And then at the end of the game you can play truth or dare, and that's something where we do encourage that you interact with real friends."

I agree there should be more "female-geared gaming" (what ever that means) and best of luck to CEO McDonnell. But virtual gal pals getting names of actual friends, and women being encouraged to play a real round of truth or dare? Say it ain't so, this can't be the way to attract more female gamers. It just can't.

Full Story [Gamasutra]

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