The popular videogame retail outlet’s website is helping female gamers get their parties started.
Gamestop’s “Girls Night In” program hosts web pages for games targeted at getting girls into gaming through the wild world of Wii parties.
Madden NFL 09: All-Play, a Wii port of the popular football franchise featuring simpler motion controls than the button-heavy 360 and PS3 versions, is the first title to receive its own “Girls Night In” site where it teaches women how to play the game, the basics of football and some “touchdown recipes” to get the party popping.
“Madden is such an incredibly huge game for us, and what happens to females during the winter months is that they become football widows,” explained Betty Shock, regional vice president of Gamestop. “So what better opportunity to start the website and really get females to begin interacting with football?”
The hope is that women will visit the site to answer their gaming questions, as opposed to turning towards their gaming companions.
“The website is an area for [women] to go to where it’s not intimidating,” Shock said. “They can learn information on their own versus asking questions to maybe some of the guys that they hang out with and play with.”
Gamestop chose to use Wii Madden because the unique controls were more inviting to newcomers.
“If you look at the Wii ‘All-Play’ version it is a lot less intimidating for females because of the controller,” explained Shock. “If [women] are just starting out playing the game, this will help them because if you’re not a huge core gamer, [the Xbox 360 and the PS3] controllers can be pretty intimidating. You have to learn which buttons to push at which times, and for the Wii you don’t really have to do that.”
Although the idea of attracting girls to host digital football-centric fiestas is a tough sell, female managers and executives within Gamestop are brainstorming future female-friendly games to add to the “Girls Night In” hub.
Shock concluded, “I know that we have a lot of big games coming out in the fall, and we”ll probably start putting some additional games on [a website] in terms of things like tips.”
Source: MTV Multiplayer
