Girls Want to Build - Guys Want to Destroy

It has been proven, since... humans started walking on two feet, that men like the action, while women love more delicate and complex activities that involve creating, rather than destroying; plus, they all love to tease us with their luscious bodies, knowing that one way or another we'll have to roll out the cash to get a little piece of that "action" - since we guys love it so much...

The same rule applies today, and especially for the gamer population, which includes both women and men. According to an Entertainment Software Association report, some 38 percent of video-game players are female. Most of the industry, however, doesn't know or care what women want in their video games.

"'The Sims' is often cited as a game girls like, because it involves nurturing your character rather than giving her a machine gun," says the report. A good example is also 'Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey' (Disney, for the Wii, $39.99; PlayStation 2, $29.99). "For this foray into girl games, Disney has trotted out its biggest female stars: Snow White, Cinderella, Jasmine ('Aladdin') and Ariel ('The Little Mermaid')."

Other great girl titles include Imagine Babyz (Ubisoft, for the DS, $29.99) and Hannah Montana Music Jam (Disney, for the DS, $29.99). While Imagine Babyz doesn't give you the full spectrum of child-rearing chaos, your character is just a baby-sitter, so you only have to keep kids out of harm's way for short periods of time. Also, gamers need to feed them, entertain them or change their diapers, as all are presented as relatively easy minigames.

Music Jam on the other hand does a nifty job at simulating a guitar on the DS. Basically, you select a chord with the directional pad and strum the strings with the stylus. Girl gamers can also create lead, rhythm and bass guitar tracks, add a drumbeat and then edit them all together and save the result, as the same report mentions.

So as you can see, there are plenty of games suitable for the respective gamer population (the report only mentions a few), yet there are few who promote them as girl-titles, this being the case of Rock Band or the Guitar Hero series. Sure enough, as there are more male gamers than female gamers out there, we're going to see the same huge array of blow 'em up titles being released every year, while the casual games market and life-sim franchises are going to keep their girly status.