In Oz, female gamers represent the largest growing sector of the population, although that's to be expected considering boys' long long history with games and the fact so many titles are written with male players in mind.

The story says that this comes mostly on the back of singing/music games, Wii titles, the Sims (EA says 60 percent of players are female) and games where violence and action is either nonexistent or not realistic. But for games there really isn't much that's comparable to the chick-flick segment in film.

Will that change? As the generation of girls who grew up with games gets older, will we see them eventually making the majority of entertainment choices in a relationship, much as they do with movies or rentals?

Game Girls [Sydney Morning Herald]

"Babysitting Mania brings the fun and excitement of this universal teen occupation to the DS," said Gui Karyo, Executive Vice President of Operations, Majesco "This dynamic task management game will keep even the oldest babysitter on his or her toes."

MAJESCO ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES 'BABYSITTING MANIA' FOR NINTENDO DS™

Popular Online PC Title Coming to Handheld This Fall
EDISON, N.J., March 10, 2008 - The multi-tasking mayhem ensues, as Majesco Entertainment Company (NASDAQ: COOL), an innovative provider of video games for the mass market, and Gogii Games today announced Babysitting Mania for Nintendo DS™. Based on the hit PC simulation, Babysitting Mania challenges players to manage unruly kids, lists of chores and out-of-control houses without losing their cool. The game is also the sequel to the smash success Nanny Mania that has been downloaded more than 7 million times.

"Babysitting Mania brings the fun and excitement of this universal teen occupation to the DS," said Gui Karyo, Executive Vice President of Operations, Majesco "This dynamic task management game will keep even the oldest babysitter on his or her toes."

In Babysitting Mania, players progress through more than 100 levels of fast-paced, overlapping challenges as they feed, entertain and clean up after rambunctious kids in 20 chaotic houses. Players use the Touch Screen to manage every aspect of the household with speed and precision, from strategically employing "timeouts" to overseeing bonus birthday party levels that add neighborhood party guests to the mania. Players must also care for children in various stages of their lives—from babies to toddlers to teens. Only the ultimate babysitter will survive the frenzy!

Babysitting Mania for Nintendo DS is expected to release in Fall 2008. For additional information about Majesco's exciting line of products, please visit the newly relaunched www.majescoentertainment.com.

Jeez, I feel like such a statistic. As a female who is permanently attached to her DS and spends way too many hours playing The Sims, I fit the profile they describe to a T (although accounting for all the DS-playing I do on the bus and Sim playing I do in front of the TV, 7.4 hours is - ahem - a conservative estimate). Does this describe other female gamers, too?

ESA report shows 38% of gamers are female [dbtechno.com, via Gamasutra]

I had no clue they were even doing a Girl Gamer magazine in the United Kingdom, much less one with a pink title and a focus on the Nintendo side of gaming. According to a press release issued by the company, "The debut issue, which was distributed in November proved a fantastic success with readers and software publishers alike". Indeed the launch went so smoothly that we weren't even aware it happened. I am assuming they kept us out of the loop in order to secure valuable girl secrets that we men just couldn't handle.

UK Kotakuites can look forward to seeing the latest Girl Gamer packed in alongside other quality girl publications, such as Panini's Bliss aimed at 12-16 year old girls, and Mizz for the 10-14 set. About the right time for ladies to put aside those hopes and dreams and start picking out baby clothes.

I know what some of you are thinking here. Promoting a game about making babies and being a good mother to children at such a young age in a magazine that tosses around more pink that an explosion at the Pepto factory might give girls a jaded view of the potential they have to do great things in the world. Poppycock I say! What bad could possibly come from teaching young girls about raising babies?

"Female gamers have an incredibly high set of standards when it comes to quality as well as design," said Bob Costlow, director of sales, WOLFKING. "You can't just paint something pink and say it's for girls. The Girl Gamer products give women access to fully functioning, hardcore gaming devices, but with an aesthetic touch."

And that's it. They added pink. This makes it for girls.

I was going to go into a lengthy tirade about the differences between girl gamers and guy gamers basically coming down to genitalia and sometimes facial hair, neither of which currently affect your ability to play a video game, but every time I talk about women and men, someone takes it the wrong way and I end up getting lambasted for being some kind of chauvinist. Instead, here's a picture of a pony. His name is Lucky. Incidentally, don't Google Image Search the phrase "lucky pony" without your adult filters firmly in place.

(Update): WOLFKING sent me pictures of the items, seen above. As you can tell it is a more subtle pink. Not sure if that's better or worse.

WOLFKING Creates Line of Custom Designed Gaming Devices

Girl Gamer WARRIOR and TROOPER with Flamingo Pink Accents Available Exclusively Through Dell

(Englewood, NJ) - November 20, 2007 - WolfKing, a world leader in the innovation and creation of gaming input devices, today announced it is customizing its award-winning WARRIOR gaming pad and TROOPER gaming mouse to appeal to female PC gamers. The specially designed gaming devices, which will be sold exclusively through Dell, provide the same high level of quality that consumers have come to expect from WOLFKING.

The Girl Gamer WARRIOR (MSRP: $34.99) features the same 54-key circular layout and USB 2.0 plug-and-play capability as the original WARRIOR, but now features a Flamingo Pink accent gradient on top of a full stealth black matte finish, with polished deep black audio keys. It offers all the functionality of the WARRIOR, but with a feminine touch.

The Girl Gamer Gear TROOPER (MSRP: $39.99) also features the Flamingo Pink accent over a 6.4 megapixels-per-second laser mouse with a dpi range of 800-2200. The sense of style doesn't compromise the high-end gaming mouse functionality gamers expect from the TROOPER.

"Female gamers have an incredibly high set of standards when it comes to quality as well as design," said Bob Costlow, director of sales, WOLFKING. "You can't just paint something pink and say it's for girls. The Girl Gamer products give women access to fully functioning, hardcore gaming devices, but with an aesthetic touch."

Tired of the constant harassment from people like us—you know, misogynistic pig bloggers with leanings toward Taliban-esque oppression—packs of girls have latched onto all-female clans like PMS and GamerchiX, the latter of which writer Louann Brizendine calls "the Xbox version of the girl's bathroom." It's the kind of bathroom that, should you invade, you can expect to get your ass banned from Live.

Based on what I know of female bathroom going habits, there must be some perfumed corner of Xbox Live in which girls powder their noses, discuss handjob techniques and release rose petals from their unmentionable spots that I'm not aware of. That they apparently talk about video games in there is currently blowing my mind.

A refuge for women in a hostile game space [LA Times]

WomenGamers.Com - National Computer Camp [WomenGamers via Gay Gamer]

We are furthering our efforts to bring more awareness of the female gaming community," says Gamer Girls Radio host, Danger Doll, "This is one of many steps we will take to ensure that developers have the information they need from female gamers to help them market to us better."

The nominees seldom stray from the norm, with a few notable exceptions such as Harvest Moon DS in the Sims category. The categories could use some work as well, as evidenced by Raving Rabbids and Elebits being shoehorned in with the platformers.

They also list Age of Conan in the MMO category, despite the game not being released until at least October of this year, but I'm not so unwise as to question the mystical farseeing powers inherent in the female of the species.

Hit the jump for the full nominee list. Michael Fahey

Nominations for The Girl Gamer Awards Announced today!

Houston, Texas (March 28, 2007) Gamergirlsradio.com, Gameinatrix.com and the KRT Ladies have announced the 2006-2007 nominees for the Girl Gamer Awards. The ladies collected nominations from various female hosted sites and forums, such as Xbox's Gamer ChiX, last month. Today the polls open, and will allow female gamers to vote for their favorite game, genre, and console, via Gameinatrix.com. "We are furthering our efforts to bring more awareness of the female gaming community," says Gamer Girls Radio host, Danger Doll, "This is one of many steps we will take to ensure that developers have the information they need from female gamers to help them market to us better."

The polls will remain open for a month, at which time the winners will be presented with a seal stating the game is "Girl Gamer Approved". Gameinatrix.com also plans to make available the number of votes, the ages of the voters and locale. "This data is imperative to anyone trying to figure out how to market to women. Knowing which games women already love and what they are doing right, will hopefully also help them figure out what they are doing wrong."

To cast your vote please visit www.gameinatrix.com.

And the Nominees are:

Fighter
Fight Night Round 3
Tekken: Dark Resurrection

Platformer
New Super Mario Brothers
Loco Roco
Elebits
Yoshi's Island
Rayman Raving Rabbids

Racing
Burnout: Revenge
Need for Speed:Carbon
Mario Kart

RPG/Action/Adventure
Zelda:Twilight Princess
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
Oblivion:Elder Scrolls

MMO
Worlds of Warcraft
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Arch Lords
City of Villains
City of Heroes
Eve-Online
Dungeons and Dragons Online

FPS
Gears of War
Rainbow 6 Vegas
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare
Call of Duty 3

Sims
The Sims 2
Harvest Moon DS
Viva Pinata
Animal Crossing Wild Wild World
Guitar Hero 2

Sports
Wii Sports
Madden 07
Blitz the League 360
Rockstar Table Tennis 2
Top Spin 2

RTS
Age of Empires III
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle EarthII
Company of Heroes
Supreme commander

Game of the Year
Viva Pinata
The Sims 2
Gears of War
Rainbow 6:Vegas
Ghost Recon Advance Warfare

About Gamer Girls Radio
Gamer Girls Radio, calling itself the "voice" of the female gamer community, originally aired on Gameshout in 2006, gaining an underground following in the gaming community, and have since moved to www.gamergirlsradio.com. Gamer Girls Radio is the first ever of it's kind all female hosted gaming podcasts. New podcasts are aired every Monday. For more information on Gamer Girls Radio contact webmaster@gamergirlsradio.com or visit www.gamergirlsradio.com.

About Gameinatrix.com
Established in 2004, Gameinatrix.com is the internets leading female oriented, gaming reviews and news portal. Gameinatrix.com strives to bridge the gap between developers and gamers. Contact webmaster@gameinatrix.com or visit www.gameinatrix.com for more information.

About KRT Ladies
KRT Ladies is the female division of the KRT Professional gaming clan. KRT Ladies also provides a safe and friendly environment for female gamers. For more information regarding the KRT Ladies, please visit http://knightshome.org .

Why aren't there more female gaming bloggers?

Don't get me wrong, I know they're out there and most of the ones I know of are quite good. My favorite, by far, is probably Alice Taylor who McWhertor and I are constantly browbeating into posting on Kotaku despite her busy schedule with the BBC and her own blog Wonderland.

And there's, quite famously, Jane Pinckard once from 1Up now with the GDC folks, who I wish would do more stuff on her blog, and Brenda Braithwaite, who's work in the game development community, as a professor and her blog on gaming and sex keeps her quite busy.

So I know they're out there, but why aren't there more of them out there, or more specifically, why aren't they, you know, more out there.

While I think that strong woman writers who cover gaming are not proportional to the number of women playing games, the bigger issue it seems is that there aren't a whole lot of immediately recognizable female writers on the net. I think the ones out there now need to be more vocal perhaps, or maybe I'm just not reading the right sites.

I have, for the past month or so, been trolling around on the net to find a woman to write for Kotaku because I feel very strongly about having a diverse group of writers. I know that people with different ethnic, gender and social backgrounds can offer different perspective; and perspective, insightful perspective is where it's at in blogs.

But despite my digging around and my somewhat overt nosing around at GDC, I was hard-pressed to find the same sort of, for lack of a better term, job pool that I usually find with male writers.

Why is that?

If you're a woman and a gamer, get out there and blog. Raise the flag, let the industry know what you want from games. It's up to you to help change perceptions, because god knows we've had enough Barbie Adventures for a lifetime. Brian Crecente

Aw, Bill. Why'd you have to go and further emasculate the tens of thousands of male teens and twenty-somethings who own Viva Pi ata? I knew there was a reason I didn't buy this game. I'm neither young nor female nor do I garden. Michael McWhertor

Amy "Valkyrie" Brady, Emily "Seppuku" Ong, Nelly"Psyche" Morel and Alyson "Calyber" Craghead won after taking down the previously undefeated team The Unknown.

"There were a few good teams that we were worried about especially with the team compete team but we were confident about our team work," said Nelly Morel "Psyche." "It was a very long tournament that started at 7:00 p.m. and ended at 1:00 a.m.. I kept counting down the clock, we were up by a good amount of kills and after we won it was such a relief - it was an amazing feeling."

Team captain Morgan "Rhoulette" Romine said the team has been playing Vegas up to 12 hours a day since it came out.

"We have been getting more experience with competition and playing under pressure by playing in pro-circuit tournaments like MLG and WSVG over the past year," she said. " Being able to come here to play Rainbow, always our favorite multiplayer series, and bring our experience with both online and live event competition made for an ideal combination. We played as a team, communicated well, stuck to our strategies and won."

That's it, Team Kotaku totally has to get their asses kicked by the Frag Dolls, it's written in the stars. Brian Crecente

Germany is getting a new gaming magazine next year targeted at the casual girl gamer. Called Play Vanilla, the magazine will focus on gaming articles with a more feminine flair and tackle important female gaming topics. I can only imagine what these topics will be, outside of "Better Than the Guys" articles and possibly "The Effects of Gaming on your Vagina," which my girlfriend assures me are negligible.

"Play vanilla will be serving an interest group that has so far been woefully neglected, a group with enormous potential and specific requirements," explains Petra Fr hlich, Editor-in-Chief of play vanilla and PC Games. "Women want to play too, but are quite different from men in the demands they place on a game. A magazine like play vanilla is inevitable with the increasing numbers of female gamers and games with specifically female appeal."

German girl gamers play vanilla [Destructoid - Thanks Jane!]

Let's make a girl gamer calendar. OK, what do we need, let me think. Girl in white teddy: Check. Girl with battle axe: Check. Girl with whip: Check. Girl dressed up as a devl: Check. Girl with a gun: Check. Girl doing anything even remotely gaming related: Naw.

For future reference, throw at least a generic controller in there for one photo if you're making a "gamer" calendar, otherwise just call it what it is a girly calendar. Brian Crecente

Gorgeous Gamers

A vast armada of women has invaded gaming. Where once we heard over Teamspeak the confident bluster of the male warrior, now our ears are assailed by the shrill whinging of a female in the midst of her monthly ovum flushing. Where once we casually discussed in guild chat bitch fucking and the worldwide conspiracy against women, now we pretend to have "feelings" because we are cuckolded for being "insensitive."

And it's getting worse! With great smugness, Jane over at Chilly Hollow wrote us, linking us this article that states that women are the dominant online gamers. "Eliza and I outnumber you," she wrote.

Well, first of all, at five bills, Eliza outnumbers most solar systems. Second of all, it appears that you only outnumber men if you count endless hours spent on the free Flash version of Bejeweled as "online gaming." Thirdly: we don't care if you outnumber us as long as you're not adverse to taking off your top. And finally: you count Faith Naked amongst your numbers, which pretty much drops your numeric and intellectual superiority a few dozen percentile points.

So don't get too smug, ladies. As Sean Connery famously slurred, "Shometimesh a woman jush needsh a little shlap." And my aching hand is poised. Florian 'Just Kidding, Ladies!' Eckhardt

Women outnumber men in online games, survey finds [MSN]

Wired's Joel Johnson writes:

You have to lambast this:

http://flickr.com/photos/femalethatlovestech/sets/72057594072372309/

So I will. The lithe, sultry minx, on all fours above? A shameful disgrace to female gamers. If she was a real girl gamer, she'd have a 36 inch plasma screen balanced on the top of her head, thus allowing me to fulfill both of my life's primary functions simultaneously. Florian Eckhardt

See that girl on the right? That's the trailer park scowl of a woman trying to keep a loose belt around her torso using only her nipples. You have to cinch it more than that, lady.

The one on the left is, I discovered, a pornlet known as Mia Rose, and has a charming interview over on Gram Ponante. My favorite bit is when she says her alt is a "druid priest", but this is pretty good too:

Have you ever met any one from WOW in person? I haven't met anyone from the game, but I play with people I know in real life...lol. But I have met people off of another online game.. Halo 2... why? Cause I'm a nerd like that. w00t

Captivating. Score one for girl gamers, Mia.

There's a link from the interview to a gallery of her photos, completely NSFW, featuring all the squinting, squatting, ingrown hairs and Filter>Distort>Diffuse Glow you've come to expect. Whores of Warcraft's first patch will be the Razorburn Crusade. Eliza Gauger

Interview with Mia Rose [Gram Ponante, via digg]

Faith Naked, the girl behind the Top 10 Hottest Guys in Gaming List, was interviewed over at Destructoid, one of our favorite sites. This is not news. But I found this quote from Faith disingenuous enough to comment upon:

Fronz: Speaking of embrace, readers want to know if you embrace the "girl gamer" status/stereotype, or would you rather be known as simply a "gamer?" There seems to be a divide between those who would rather be anonymous and those who embrace their minority, sometimes pretty vehemently. How do you feel about this digi-feminism, and which camp do you find yourself in, if any?

Faith Naked: Hey, I'm a girl and I can't change that. I want people to treat me as a normal gamer, but as long as there are guys who are going to send you Myspace messages like "Hey, you wanna play with my joystick?", my status as a girl gamer will always stand out.

You know, that's an interesting thing for a girl who sprang upon the 'scene' at the tip of the quivering, dew-tipped erection of gamers' collective desperation to say.

Look, I have nothing against Faith Naked. She seems nice. She posts cool things. Her writing is passable... more than we can say about most game writers. She doesn't take herself too seriously. She sends us tips! And hell, I'm apparently inadvertently responsible for her newfound "fame", being the Kotaku staffer who posted her Top 10 Hottest Guys in Gaming List in the first place, which was consequently picked up by Attack of the Show.

But doesn't this sort of statement ring completely hollow when she first became noticed for posing almost entirely naked for Destructoid, with the exception of some game controllers covering her vagina with the exception of a Gabecube hovering over her pudenda and a diaphonous bra? Or when almost all of her mentions on Destructoid are accompanied by a picture of her similarly disrobed? And when I discovered her 'Top 10 List of Hot Gaming Guys', even I was following a link from Destructoid to see if I couldn't figure out what she looked like pubically.

If Faith really wanted to be treated as "just a gamer" (and, presumably, as "just a game writer")... why all the nudity? Because she doesn't want to be just a gamer or just a writer... she wants to be that hot girl gamer. That hot, naked writer.

To be clear, what bothers me is not that Faith Naked shakes it for attention. Hey, you got it? Flaunt it, baby. I just hate the entire "I just want to be treated the same as everyone who isn't a hot, half-naked gamer/stripper" disingenuousness.

There's nothing wrong with hot girls getting attention for being hot girls, or using their personal attractiveness to draw attention to what they are saying. Sex is marketing. But either be unapologetic about using sex as marketing or don't use sex to sell yourself at all.

For example, consider our own Eliza Gauger. When Eliza posts, we don't accompany it with a picture of her naked. Part of that is because she is morbidly obese; sort of the estrogen-saturated, anthropomorphic equivalent of Goatse.cx's gaping, flabby anus, and just as attractive. But the larger reason is that Eliza's a quick enough wit, a clever enough writer and has interesting enough things to say that her writing really speaks for itself. And while I am less talented than Eliza, the reasons there aren't naked pictures of my godlike genitalia on Kotaku's front page are similar.

This isn't really meant as an attack on Faith, but it's obvious why a lot of gamers are paying attention to her all of a sudden, and denying it makes her less credible, not more so. Despite what she says, she doesn't really want to be treated as a gamer... instead, she realizes the practicality of marketing her writing with her body and she's using that fact to further her career. And that's fair enough: writers are a dime a dozen, and you need any edge you can get. If Faith's talented, then people will keep paying attention. If she isn't, people will get bored and move on.

But the first step to everyone getting bored? Deluding yourself about your most base and obvious appeal. It's better to just cheerfully admit it and be interesting enough that we keep on listening once we turn our oggling eyes to another lustful female frame. Gaming already has enough Frag Dolls, after all. Florian Eckhardt

Edit: Faith correctly pointed out the original photograph we used of her wasn't her. Apologies for the mistake, but I hope everyone can understand why I confused one red headed, half-naked girl for another.

Weekend Reading: Faith Naked Interview [Destructoid]

I try to avoid "girls in games" articles but this is neat. According to a little study at University of Teesside, girls are apt to dig games with lots of fighting, thinking, and story. In other words, splodey games that aren't stupid.

I think this is something we can all embrace, vagina or no.

Clay used software developed at the University of Teesside in Middlesbrough to analyse the 34 best games as listed by 76 female gamers.

The software, called Strange Analyst, builds a profile of each game by trawling through online reviews and extracting key words. Clay found women prefer games with confrontation and attack, investigations and puzzles - and a good story line.

Unfortunately, the article is extremely short and doesn't mention which keywords were used, etc. Still, this sounds right to me. Eliza Gauger

More here [New Scientist, thanks DB]

GameSetWatch points out that a UK Frag Doll defected to form her own mini-clan.

Siren, the Frag Doll formerly known as Voodoo, posted some interesting thoughts on the whole concept of sponsored girl gamers on her new site, VersuS, in the about section under the subhead Freedom instead of Adverti$ing.

Although we may have strong opinions, you can be sure of one thing; We're not here to endorse any product or sell you anything. If we say it, it's because we mean it, not because it pays our wage. We've both seen the perils and pit falls of "selling out" and have learnt one vital lesson; if you love something then honesty, independence and freedom are the best path to take. We hope that you feel the same and are sick of just how invasive and abundant advertising has become. If so and you are ready to join the resistance, if' you're ready to stick the Vs up to the advertisers... then welcome to VersuS!

On a similar note, we may both be girls who game but we are not here to wave the "girl gamer" flag. We believe that by drawing attention to gender you create a barrier that is otherwise irrelevant. In our experience "promoting girl gamers" can often be used as the cover story of big business trying to widen its market whilst still getting some pretty faces in the Magazines, in other words: Free advertising.

It's a natural progression that more and more women are getting into gaming and of course we fully support that.
However, we don't see any need to define ourselves by gender. We're just two people who love games.

In a pre-emptive strike against the endlessly cynical we want to make it perfectly clear that we have a gallery because we are proud of ourselves, what we do, and what we stand for (and obviously to record our exploits.)

On a completely honest level we enjoy posing and messing around with a camera as much as the next person - so hopefully you can relate to that and share the fun in it. It's all about relaxing and letting go, being comfortable and proud in yourself. Enjoying yourself with your friends. Hopefully our site can help promote and share a little of that fun.

Finally, someone gets it.

Personally, I have nothing against the gamers who make up the Frag Dolls, I'm sure they could handily kick my ass in any game in which we played. My problem is with the idea of using these gifted gamers as walking advertisements for a publisher. Worse still is the notion that perhaps, when Ubisoft is doing a casting call for a new Frag Doll, some Ubi-troll may not be as interesting in their gaming skills as they are in the way the future fragger would look in a newspaper article or on the cover of a magazine.

I don't even think this is just a girl gamer thing, It's a gamer thing. I'm sure that there are sponsors out there who look at guy gamers the same way. They don't want some fat, inarticulate slob representing their brand, they want someone pretty. But pro-gaming shouldn't be about beauty or charisma or speaking skills, it should be about ability. Brian Crecente

Ex-Frag Doll Branches Out, Bits Back [GameSetWatch]

Says the company, presumably in a deep, bowel-quivering baritone:

However, most women have a common concern about the long-lasting existence of "male chauvinism" in the world of online games. In considering this point, Voice Changer Software proves very helpful to solve the problem.

It's only $99.95 (cheap!) and clearly named AV Voice Changer Software Diamond in an effort to attract more girls. Michael McWhertor

Lady gamers get voice changer [Eurogamer]