Biowares marketing

[Vault101]

Bioware apears to being doing the same thing with dragon age 2 that they did with mass effect in regards to trailers and promotional material

that is the titular charachter, shepard and hawke in this case have set apearences and genders in trailers and such (now in the case on hawke form what I've read Im pretty sure it can be He/she this is Bioware I;d be seriously surprised if that wasn't the case)

anyway In a way I can see why they do it, they want a face for the game/franchise and most gamers are male so naturally Its going to go that way, but I will admit it dose both me a tiny bit but really I guess its not worth complaining over

So my question is do you think this is really nessicary from an adverting point of veiw? dose it bother anyone else? it makes me think of other games like fallout or even dragn age 1 that remained relitivley ambigious as far as gender went

what about releasing trailers for each gender?

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

I don't see it as much of an issue. In the Mass Effect games, I usually play a woman, but it doesn't bother me that the 'official' Shepard is male.

It probably isn't worth making multiple trailers for each gender. It would be more costly for little payoff, and would probably be a bit of a slippery slope. The same issue could arise with black vs white characters and such. It's a good choice to include a grounding character in the trailers, but in a game where you customize the character they have to come up with some official version, otherwise the variations are simply too numerous to feasibly cater to.

I suppose a compromise would be a fully-armoured character of ambiguous gender, but then you don't get the same connection as with an unmasked character.

 

[Enkidu88]

How about just the Male Shepard in a dress...

Yeah, I think that would be the best commercial for Mass Effect 3.

Or Hawke, but in lingerie since Hawke is obviously the name of a mewling wimp and not a rugged all american hero.

 

[kingcom]

The male and femal fans who like Bioware games probably wont be swayed by the advertising, hence the promotionals will be about attracting other people into playing (they either advertise the rpg aspect for females or the action for the males).

Also, Quarians from Legacy of Kain or Gargoyles? Yea, im fairly sure the concept of a race of beings confined to suits of armour/removed from homeworld is a trope far older than either of those. Im not even understanding how you can relate it to Gargoyles exactly.

 

[Stalk3rchief]

The thing that concerns isn't about male or female ,but the fact that they're completely killing the one thing that drew me into the first Dragon Age; The option to choose your race. Now you HAVE to be a human, and I'm going to miss my dwarf character. =/

 

[Vault101]

The thing that concerns isn't about male or female ,but the fact that they're completely killing the one thing that drew me into the first Dragon Age; The option to choose your race. Now you HAVE to be a human, and I'm going to miss my dwarf character. =/

I can see why that would annoy some people, personally I like this new direction, you get more attachted to a charachter that speaks

 

[Coldie]

Also, Quarians from Legacy of Kain or Gargoyles? Yea, im fairly sure the concept of a race of beings confined to suits of armour/removed from homeworld is a trope far older than either of those. Im not even understanding how you can relate it to Gargoyles exactly.

Qunari, not Quarians. The new Qunari actually do look sort of like Kain and his progeny.

As for the gender problem - seems like this kind of ads is aiming to create a recognizable, canonic character. If there are ads with similar-yet-different versions of the same protagonist, they would only create confusion in the target audience. Mass Effect has the easily recognizable brick-face male Shepard, but Dragon Age 1 didn't focus much on any specific protagonist.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Because the Male gender is usually the default one. Its nothing against woman. That all said, every company uses the male default look for trailers. Bungie did it for Noble 6 in the reach trailers. Even though 6 could be male or female. Fallout devs usually uses a male default look when showing trailers. These are just off the top of my mind, but believe me when I say that Bioware isn't an isolated case.