Devs Had to Demand Female Focus Testers for The Last of Us

[MikeWehner]

Devs Had to Demand Female Focus Testers for The Last of Us

Naughty Dog refused to let The Last of Us be focus tested on only male players.

With the role of women in videogames coming under increasing scrutiny in recent years, it is more important now than ever before for developers to reexamine the perceived audience of their games. But while there are encouraging signs that the tide is beginning to turn - a strong-willed, sensibly rendered version of Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider reboot, for example - there are other aspects to game development that are less visible, and thus remain stuck in the past. As we learned from an interview with Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann - which we'll be publishing more of shortly - the idea of focus testing remains firmly rooted in a "girls don't play videogames" mindset.

According to Druckmann, when the unnamed research firm that was handling the focus groups for The Last of Us began their work, the idea of polling female gamers was nowhere on the table. "Another aspect that influences how a game is promoted is focus-testing. Players are rounded up and are asked to view materials and answer some quantitative and qualitative questions about it," he explains. "My big surprise during this process is that the research group wasn't planning on focus-testing female gamers - it's something we had to specifically request. I hope this is a relic of the past that will soon go away."

Yes, you read that correctly. The research firm that was gathering opinions of a game about a man, Joel, and a teenage girl, Ellie, wasn't planning on seeing how actual living, breathing female gamers felt.

With this type of bias in place, it should come as no surprise that the marketing firm eventually decided that Ellie should be moved to the back of the box art. However, thanks to Naughty Dog, that advice fell on deaf ears and the company refused to put Ellie anywhere other than on the front where she belongs.

Kudos to Naughty Dog for standing strong for gamer equality, and refusing to let antiquated systems determine what is best for a game that is clearly designed to be thrilling for everyone, regardless of their sex.

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[Musette]

Wow, I never thought about the demographics for focus testing, but I probably shouldn't be as surprised as I am that they wouldn't have female testers.

Also, the whole "let's only put the male lead character on the front of the box" concept is getting pretty annoying, so I'm glad Naughty Dog is fighting that as well as trying to get the female testers.

 

[Sicram]

Cheers for ND! Too bad that it's a PS3 exclusive :/

 

[zz_]

Honestly is this really that suprising? I mean considering that the gender ratio of people who buy any given game is probably something like 9:1 in favor of males, is it really surprising that a market research firm decided to go with the (vastly) larger audience? They're hired to gauge sales potential, after all, not uphold gender equality.

 

[Able Seacat]

Wish I had a PS3 as I'm really interested in this game, it looks great. Kudos to Naughty Dog!!!

 

[Helen Jones]

Female here, not sure I understand the problem. Why do they need to specifically find out what women think, they're not specifically finding out what men think of the game, are they?
Surely they were going to get a random sample of gamers to beta test the game and give feedback which, being from a random sample, would include female gamers views.

 

[Blunderboy]

Shouldn't this be the normal?
Surely by now we should be at a point were play testers are randomly assigned, with no thought to gender and the like?

 

[Proverbial Jon]

I love and respect you greatly for this Naughty Dog. In fact my love for you is unconditional and as strong as the love between two men. Two very gay men. What I'm saying here is that all over game devs should take a leaf out of your book... and learn to love.

If only Irrational had taken the same stance of their box art for Bioshock Infinite. Booker is nothing without Elizabeth.

 

[teebeeohh]

While i am looking forward to this and like ND and very much support them trying to push the role of females in games, why does every news article to read about this game have a connection to the whole Women in gaming debate?

 

[TomWest]

For people who claim that misogyny and white-washing are simply catering to what the market wants, this is a beautiful example that corporate processes can easily take small factors and without realizing that they're ever doing so, exaggerate them, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As one gets older, one sees how often we take small correlations and do our best to turn them into "laws of nature". It's amazing how often "the median of group A is somewhat higher than group B" becomes "All A are higher than all B" in the minds of even well-educated people.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Good on Naughty Dog on fighting these things.

With everything I've heard about them having to fight for what they want, I hope they are rewarded with the success they deserve (provided the game itself is good - although it is Naughty Dog so I'm pretty sure it will be).

And maybe with the success of Tomb Raider and hopefully this and Remember Me, it signals a shift away from some of the more "traditional" attitudes in gaming.

 

[Excludos]

who are these testers who apparently refuse to have girls on the front of the cover of a game? Do they only test males 10-12?

 

[TomWest]

Surely they were going to get a random sample of gamers to beta test the game and give feedback which, being from a random sample, would include female gamers views.

Actually, you choose a random sample from what you believe your target market to be. If you assume your target market is 14-39 year old male hard-core gamers, it's quite possible (since it's quite costly to find members and get useful feedback from them) that the polling firm would restrict itself to gamers in that demographic. No use polling Tetris players as to what they think if they're irrelevant to your actual buyers.

It's just an example of how prejudices self-reinforce without anyone realizing ("We've spent $100,000 on polling and we can prove that potential customers don't care about ").

 

[nathan-dts]

Honestly is this really that suprising? I mean considering that the gender ratio of people who buy any given game is probably something like 9:1 in favor of males, is it really surprising that a market research firm decided to go with the (vastly) larger audience? They're hired to gauge sales potential, after all, not uphold gender equality.

Is it surprising that gender disparity exists with the mentality of the people involved is rooted in this?

 

[nathan-dts]

That box art thing just angers me.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Yeah, research and QA seems to be one of the lesser-developed portions of game development right now. It looks like VG research aims to gather way too much information in urban areas, and not in suburban or rural areas, leaving out a major portion of gamers as a result. And heaven forbid if you tried to gather information on gaming preferences and habits online!

AS for QA, as if it wasn't suffering enough, development teams has to assume that the QA team will represent what the fanbase wants and likes - And often that ends up not being the case. And with the bad rep floating around QA, do you think people are going to see it as a worthwhile way to get into the games industry? Indie gaming looks more plausible as an entry point than QA testing right now. However, if Steam's Early Access program works well enough, perhaps we'll see an upward trend in quality again because A)early access means that the people interested in your game can immediately share their suggestions and impressions, thus you don't have to blindly predict what they will like and won't like anymore, and B) with early access, people can buy into testing the game, which in turn means less need for a QA team and lesser costs in order to get the game running in a desirable final state that can meet player expectations.