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Appealing to Female Gamers in First Person Shooter Level Design
By: Jared Merback
Supervisor: Myque Ouellette
Master of Interactive Technology degree conferred May 13, 2011
Thesis / Project completed February 7, 2011
This thesis explores research done on gendered preferences of female gamers, by testing gendered preferences and design practices such as Avatar Selection, Puzzles, Hot Spot gameplay, Realism in Locations and Situations, Failure Repercussions, Engaging Story and NPCs, Indirect Competition, and Cooperation in custom-made levels of the First Person Shooter Left 4 Dead. This thesis does this to explore the concept that, by implementing particular design principles, one can increase the enjoyment a female audience finds in a game without diminishing the enjoyment a male audience finds.
This study asked testers to play one of two levels and recorded their reactions to them, gathering information on whether the aforementioned design practices really do increase the general appeal of a video game and which ones are the better at doing so.
The results suggest that some elements, such as Avatar Selection and Puzzles had the effects on a female audience predicted by other research. Women prefer female avatars they can relate to as a majority chose Zoey the female avatar. Women enjoyed puzzles and puzzle gameplay as they scored puzzle sections highly. They responded positively the hot spot puzzles of the “gnome” puzzle and the “sniper” puzzle. However, females and males both responded positively to a logic puzzle utilizing lights if it occurred earlier in the game, and they both responded negatively if the puzzle occurred later in the game. Surprisingly, contrary to the other research, the results suggest that these elements also had a similar effect on the enjoyment of a male audience. Other elements, such as Realism in Locations and Situations and Hot spot gameplay had the expected results on gendered audiences, as predicted by other research. Women responded very positively to hot spot gameplay and enjoyed the games realistic setting and aesthetic, where men preferred more active gameplay and did not respond as positively the game’s setting or aesthetic.
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