Girls like ‘Girls’: Why 2/3 of ‘Next Door’s’ audience is women

No one has yet been able to explain why the hit show “The Girls Next Door” — about a group of Playboy models who live together and act as Hugh Hefner’s “girlfriends” — has way more women watching than men.

Defying all expectations of a show about nude models, two-thirds of the show’s weekly audience of 2 million viewers is female, according to Nielsen.

As for the main argument, I’m not really sure MMOs are failing to attract women. Nielsen isn’t really all that reliable a source of info. I’d need to see more studies done, and it would be nice if more MMO companies were willing to release sub data.

Super heroes are more popular with women than sci-fi or fantasy.

But I think in general, ruling stuff out “women don’t like that genre” is relatively incorrect. The WAY people do things in the genre is sometimes, but that’s the problem.

On the other hand, look at books. (I’m not entirely convinced about TV either — there’s Heroes and …? Compare with any soap opera ever.) I will stand by classic costumed superheroes just not being big with a female audience. I mean even with films, compare Superman with Twilight or Titanic.

Also, super heroes are quite popular with women. It is a far more mainstream genre than fantasy. Just look at movies and television for example.

Serith78: You are very right that the free-to-play games seem to make an effort to appeal to a broader base. Perhaps it is because they have a financial motive and necessity to do so. Also, many women really get into collecting and showing off things (both can be very social behaviors). Cash shops work very nicely in those scenarios.

Quoth nugget: “For this girlynugget at least, what Muckbeast says it’s true. It’s not about whether or not the chick is hawt! I love it when my virtual Barbies are hawt! it’s about whether or not the chick has power.”

Thank you for adding that nugget. That has been my experience when talking to female gamers. I think I speak with some degree of experience here, since my wife is a gamer, half of my staff are women, and half of my customers are women.

…it’s about whether or not the chick has power.

I’m fine with the slave-girl look as an outfit if said slave-girl outfitted hawt-chick also projects power and self-reliance. If she doesn’t (hello Evony ads! though those have gotten so over the top they’re comedy to me now), THAT is when I start to find things offensive.

In short I guess I don’t see the big deal…there’s a market for bloody action games with sluts around every corner waiting to be rescued…and there’s a market for more socially focused collaborative games. I think game publishers are making both types of games, it’s just a case of looking beyond subscription MMOs.

But what about vampires/ dark fantasy, what about historical romance, what about other genres that may appeal more to a female playerbase? We know they are there, they are playing a lot of social casual games right now.

Women don’t want to see female characters depicted as total whore sluts who exist only to pleasure men (like a lot of the early quests in AoC, as you mention). But there is a huge difference between that and being hot and sexy.

And just so you know, the picture used in this post is a Champions Online character avatar designed by my wife. She likes it quite a bit. I do too.

P.S. Not every post! What about the Pikachu and Charmander picture from 2 or 3 posts before this one!

Outsider: I imagine many of those “women” were not women.