Cooperative casual gaming
C-Net's got an article up on Winster, a new startup focusing on co-operative casual play, aimed at the older, female audience.
What were the females in your family tree doing? Probably chewing on a mastodon hide together or helping each other sort acorns.
Still are, aren't we?
That, in part, is the theory behind Winster an online gaming start-up created by Jerry Kaplan. The site is developing games targeted at middle aged women. The games are based around the concept of reciprocal altruism. That is, rather than try to kill each other--the main purpose of several shoot-em-up games targeted at teen boys--the participants try to help each other solve puzzles or gain points.
How polite! And civilised. Apparently this chap's been reading up on evolution:
"There are historic roots of behavior for different demographics," he said.
At the time, he also noticed how casual online games were popular with women. His own wife, in fact, wore out a mouse.
Snort!
Seriously though, he's suggesting co-operative poker. I'm not sure this will work. People underestimate the competitiveness of the ladies; the cribbage and bridge nights of the previous generations were quite the bloodthirsty affair, I've been told.
O well, good luck to 'em. I'm prepared to be proven wrong. What do you think? The site needs a redesign, whatever, it's in medical-waiting-room colours which is never a good idea.
An interesting idea. I'm not sure altruism is a workable concept without the option to behave otherwise.
Posted by: David Hayward | February 10, 2007 at 12:14
Quite. Like in Diplomacy-the-boardgame.
Posted by: Alice | February 10, 2007 at 14:19
I think people should stop referencing evolutionary psychology until they actually know something about it, is what I think. This is the second time I've seen it (mis-)applied to (mis-)understand gender differences in regards to gaming, and both times were utter nonsense. That doesn't bode well for Winster, if that's the premise.
I do think the *idea* of cooperative casual gaming is solid- I played a board game ("Arkham Horror") recently that relied on cooperative play and was great fun. It would make a perfect online game. I'm just not so sure about the particular implementations at Winster, though.
Posted by: bob | February 10, 2007 at 18:38
Apparently women know how to accept misconfigured security certificates too.
I helped build something similar with chickstop.com, and in my experience it's better to build *games* for women than it is websites.
Posted by: Duncan Gough | February 10, 2007 at 21:29
They aren't the only ones doing this. I just saw that www.iVillage.com has a gaming part of their website called Pogo. You should check it out.
Posted by: gamer1345 | February 28, 2007 at 16:26