But the target demographic for games doesn't just have to be males. There was a great piece by Tracy Lien detailing the history of video games and how marketing is the direct cause of the stereotype that video games are for males. Video games don't inherently appeal to a specific gender. Indie games, in general, are a great example of how games can have gender inclusive appeal.
Anyways, here is her article. I really enjoyed it and it's a great piece if you want to learn more about video game culture.
Obviously. E.g. The Sims was probably targeted more at girls/women than at boys/men. But that is irrelevant, different games are targeted at different sectors of the market, and some are targeted specifically at men (violent games come to mind).
I would think that the marketing of video games is more connected to the fact that in the beginning, most games were developed by males (simply because most programmers/geeks were men, developing games that they would enjoy themselves).
My point is that games don't have to target a specific gender. Not only does that encourage gender stereotyping, but it limits the games available for either gender. It might be a viable market practice, but it should be criticized for its negative social effect.
Just fyi, but Sims wasn't targeted towards a specific gender. Its marketing was focused on young adults and casual gamers. The Sims is slightly more popular with females, but that doesn't mean it was specifically intended for a certain gender.
In addition, you don't need to speculate on the marketing of video games. The article I linked gives a very thorough walkthrough of its history. The very first games were predominately designed by men, but the content wasn't targeted towards males. For example, Pong, Breakout and Centipede are relatively gender neutral. The extreme marketing bias was introduced after the video game industry crashed in 1983. Companies had to be more careful of the products they created and Nintendo took the lead on the initiative to specifically target males.
Anyways, here is her article. I really enjoyed it and it's a great piece if you want to learn more about video game culture.
http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-a...