Michael Abbot wrote a great summary of the games designed specifically for girls in the past few years.

I found one of these games slightly disturbing - Babies. I personally couldn’t think of anything worse than playing a game based around a crying baby with smelly nappies; but everybody’s different.

It’s a dichotomy; you could say this reinforce gender stereotypes, but on the other hand, the average little girl really does like playing with baby dolls.

Research has shown that whilst there is a growing number of women who enjoy playing the action packed violent games and shoot-em-ups, overall they tend to prefer a different genre of games such as online games, puzzles, card games, trivia, word challenges and action arcade games.

Nintendo has done exceptionally well to target this growing interested group, with the Wii and the Nintendo DS, which have a range of less violent games and challenges. Both come in white, arguably more feminine than the Playstation, and the Wii even has fitness and yoga games.

Keren Kang writes about how Halo 3 could have been modified to appeal more to women gamers. She raises some good points, but doesn’t get the fact that Halo 3 was an international best selling game; you can’t compromise to please everybody and release a generic game for girls and boys with guns, girls and matching handbags.

Games that are primarily aimed at boys tend to be the best sellers and have wider appeal. In general, a game aimed at boys will appeal to both genders, but boys will be put off by games with a more feminine slant.

That’s not to say game producers should not design for women, there’s a lot to be said for niche games, but I’d say Halo is fine as it is.

I’m writing this post with my family hat on, as opposed to my normal Geek beret.

My sister is a picture framer, and she entered a framing competition with the Fine Art Trade Guild at the end of April.

I’m so proud that she won First and Third place for the two projects she put forward in the North West category. She’s now in the national competition, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for her!

This is not my normal choice of topic, but I can crow-bar some technology related things in here though:

• For her first place entry, she scanned the image she was framing and printed an enlarged copy in muted shades. She dry mounted this image to mount card*, and used this for an outer mount.
• And for both projects, she used a computerised mount cutter that she programmed with the shapes and sizes of card she needed.

Here she is with her winning project… she’ll hate me for publishing this!!

*Just a quick translation - in the UK framers use “mount board”, this is known as “mat board” in the US.