Hey,
I seriously think that you might be barking up a completely wrong tree. When targetting things towards women, men have traditionally gotten it mostly, if not completely wrong. Making a game for women is not going to happen by taking some weird 80s stereotype about what women like to do and converting it into a game format. Women are just as diverse a group as men are and some 2 dimentional look at what they are isn't going to start swinging over large groups of them to start gaming.
That said, all 'surveys' asside the thing that people have found of many women is that games (Video games in this case) that are 'Super Mario with Barbi' are dismal failures. Puzzle games tend to do much better. Things like tetris and the like. Those are just 'test' groups as well though. My girlfriend and I spent a weekend beating Gauntlet Legends one weekend.
Also Anectodally, before moving I was co Storyteller for a Vampire LARP(sorry I keep bringing it up, but that's where the majority of my gaming experience lies). It was about 70% women at the time that I moved. Plots tended to be about backstabbing politics. I guess that goes along with the anti-hack'n'slash discussion but I was never a big hack'n'slasher myself.
In the end, I think women want the same things we do out of our games. A good story, to have a fun time, power, killing (Sorry, my gf played a tremere), some mental excercize, and to feel like they haven't just wasted the past 8 hours.
My thoughts, based on my own experiences with women gamers, all opposing and better informed (as in from the women themselves) thoughts are welcome.
-Bill (Who uses too many parenthses because he is very tangental)
