Games were made for boys because games were sold as toys?

Just wanna play video games every day

A lot of hoopla has been flopping around in recent months about games that focus on boobs. Specifically, some of these games are either not being brought out of Japan, or are having their “boob features” diminished upon release in the U.S. and Europe. This has also happened with a few games that feature crotches, but for the most part, it’s a boob problem.

Games that focus on sex and/or boobs can be great, but it looks like they may be too risky at the moment for Japanese game publishers like Nintendo, Capcom, and Koei Tecmo, all of whom are currently struggling to stay on top in the West. Though there are plenty of men and women in every country who love a bit of cheesecake, it’s also plain to see that if you sex up a game “too much” for your given culture, you’re at risk of shrinking your audience.

In Japan, you can buy sexy dakimakura (love pillows) at the local drug store, while in the U.S., Playboy magazine has decided to stop publishing pictures of naked ladies. Different cultures have different standards for how much sex is “too much,” and fine tuning a game/movie/magazine so that it’s just sexual enough to maximize its marketability in a given region is something AAA publishers spend a lot of time and money on. 

TruTV show Adam Ruins Everything has taken a look at how this brand of finely tuned sex and gender specific marketing has come to define games and gamers in the eyes of many, and why that definition may be changing. It’s far from an extensive look at the topic, but it manages to pack a lot of interesting information and cute jokes into short period of time. If you want to read more about why toys often employ split-gender marketing techniques, this old essay on How To Not Suck At Game Design is a good start.