Warren SpectorWarren Spector's four-part series on the current state and the future of gaming continues, asking "Who are we and who do we want to be?"
Issue 38 - Gaming at the Margins, Part 2
- Thread starter The Escapist Staff
- Start date
Original Comment by: chunter
http://www.xanga.com/chunter
Another great piece.
If you want to improve the video games' industry's growth, you need only do what it did in the first place: capture the current generation of children.
Remember Pokemon? I worked in a toy store when that stuff hit...
What you had was a very simple game that had its own lexicon, and an onslaught of advertising to explain the game and its language so that children around the world could grasp it quickly. In retrospect, a majority of the players were still boys, but there were a lot more girls than what normally appear in a video game phenomenon and I can't think of any particular ethnicity that didn't want to participate.
Trying to explain what's really just a bug collecting game to parents compared to explaining cricket to Americans raised on baseball or NFL Football to English folks. There isn't anything complicated about it, but you have to have a certain kind of open mind to pick up the jargon.
Then again, my generation's video game jargon included the words "kill" and "die" although the words rarely had anything to do with taking a life as much as overcoming an abstract, moving obstacle.
My point is that ex-Pokemon players are now 18 to 27 years of age. Some of them still like video gaming, some of them don't. (Some of them played with dolls and action figures and never bothered with the games, so keep in mind there's more to the revenue stream than selling video game units.)
Now, I suspect Mr. Spector's diversity problem is not talking about the people that play video games, as much as it pertains to people that make them. It is easiest for an artist to create something for an audience most similar to himself (or herself), so the question becomes, do women have particular problems getting computers in their homes? Do they not have access to programming tools, or the ability to sign up for programming courses at a college if necessary? Of course women have computers, as do folks of non-white ethnicity, and if you're just playing around, there are plenty of free and free/libre tools to create a game if you want. Why aren't they inclined to do so?
Sex and violence in video games is not the whole of the legal tension aimed at the video games industry either; much of it is similar to what faces all entertainment industries (eg. parents that do not pay attention to what their children are doing, and then blame media) and a separate, more sensitive problem that even the baby boom generation had to put up with.
I do not know how to name the phenomenon where a black person creates something interesting, a white person approves of it, and then suddenly, so many people of other cultural persuasions end up liking said phenomenon that you forget a black person created it in the first place. Some of these phenomena are more familiar than others: The Blues, Jazz, Rock 'n Roll, Techno, and Hip-hop.
In other words, when lawmakers start talking about ultraviolence in video games, created because it is what the artists creating the game, as well as the audience that play it all like, the issues have more to do with civil control and racism than the depiction of a man taking another man's life.
Sorry that was long, hope it was understood. These articles give a lot to think about.
http://www.xanga.com/chunter
Another great piece.
If you want to improve the video games' industry's growth, you need only do what it did in the first place: capture the current generation of children.
Remember Pokemon? I worked in a toy store when that stuff hit...
What you had was a very simple game that had its own lexicon, and an onslaught of advertising to explain the game and its language so that children around the world could grasp it quickly. In retrospect, a majority of the players were still boys, but there were a lot more girls than what normally appear in a video game phenomenon and I can't think of any particular ethnicity that didn't want to participate.
Trying to explain what's really just a bug collecting game to parents compared to explaining cricket to Americans raised on baseball or NFL Football to English folks. There isn't anything complicated about it, but you have to have a certain kind of open mind to pick up the jargon.
Then again, my generation's video game jargon included the words "kill" and "die" although the words rarely had anything to do with taking a life as much as overcoming an abstract, moving obstacle.
My point is that ex-Pokemon players are now 18 to 27 years of age. Some of them still like video gaming, some of them don't. (Some of them played with dolls and action figures and never bothered with the games, so keep in mind there's more to the revenue stream than selling video game units.)
Now, I suspect Mr. Spector's diversity problem is not talking about the people that play video games, as much as it pertains to people that make them. It is easiest for an artist to create something for an audience most similar to himself (or herself), so the question becomes, do women have particular problems getting computers in their homes? Do they not have access to programming tools, or the ability to sign up for programming courses at a college if necessary? Of course women have computers, as do folks of non-white ethnicity, and if you're just playing around, there are plenty of free and free/libre tools to create a game if you want. Why aren't they inclined to do so?
Sex and violence in video games is not the whole of the legal tension aimed at the video games industry either; much of it is similar to what faces all entertainment industries (eg. parents that do not pay attention to what their children are doing, and then blame media) and a separate, more sensitive problem that even the baby boom generation had to put up with.
I do not know how to name the phenomenon where a black person creates something interesting, a white person approves of it, and then suddenly, so many people of other cultural persuasions end up liking said phenomenon that you forget a black person created it in the first place. Some of these phenomena are more familiar than others: The Blues, Jazz, Rock 'n Roll, Techno, and Hip-hop.
In other words, when lawmakers start talking about ultraviolence in video games, created because it is what the artists creating the game, as well as the audience that play it all like, the issues have more to do with civil control and racism than the depiction of a man taking another man's life.
Sorry that was long, hope it was understood. These articles give a lot to think about.
Original Comment by: John Linnemeier
Just a little historic perspective from a boomer. One thing we all agreed on back then was that when we got in power the first thing we'd do would be to legalize marijuana. Turned out differently.
Just a little historic perspective from a boomer. One thing we all agreed on back then was that when we got in power the first thing we'd do would be to legalize marijuana. Turned out differently.
Original Comment by: Patrick Dugan
http://www.kingludic.blogspot.com
I've thought for quite a while now that female designers are the greatest potential boon the industry stands to engender (pun, eh, maybe not intended). I was pleasantly suprised at the number of women at GDC this year, though most of them were in journalism, academia or PR. The only "game designer" I met who was female was Brenda Braithewaite, and she's been in this industry for over two decades I understand, without having commanded the kind of project authority that somelike like, say, Warren Spector has enjoyed on AAA projects.
As far as expanding the market goes, I'm already on it. My next project is a DS game where one of the two playable characters is a wholly clad, modestly pretty, personally unique young girl. The primary fun of the game will be social, with easy and hard fun supplementing the macroGame, so that both males and females and dig it.
Digital distribution is the future, Storytron in particular offers an interesting take. It has a subscription model, so that a $5-10 a month rate gets you unlimited access to all the storyworlds made with the engine. The tools to build this content are free for anyone to mess with, and royalties are allocated based on what percentage of a monthly player's time goes to your storyworld. Likewise, Manifesto offers an indie option at a bulk purchase model, taking possibly the lowest share (40%) in the history of game publishers. On the corporate side, Xbox Live Arcade offers casual developers excellent conversion rates, and Nintendo will offer, at the least, retro content via its online service.
I'd like to see Manifesto and Nintendo team up, but thats just me.
http://www.kingludic.blogspot.com
I've thought for quite a while now that female designers are the greatest potential boon the industry stands to engender (pun, eh, maybe not intended). I was pleasantly suprised at the number of women at GDC this year, though most of them were in journalism, academia or PR. The only "game designer" I met who was female was Brenda Braithewaite, and she's been in this industry for over two decades I understand, without having commanded the kind of project authority that somelike like, say, Warren Spector has enjoyed on AAA projects.
As far as expanding the market goes, I'm already on it. My next project is a DS game where one of the two playable characters is a wholly clad, modestly pretty, personally unique young girl. The primary fun of the game will be social, with easy and hard fun supplementing the macroGame, so that both males and females and dig it.
Digital distribution is the future, Storytron in particular offers an interesting take. It has a subscription model, so that a $5-10 a month rate gets you unlimited access to all the storyworlds made with the engine. The tools to build this content are free for anyone to mess with, and royalties are allocated based on what percentage of a monthly player's time goes to your storyworld. Likewise, Manifesto offers an indie option at a bulk purchase model, taking possibly the lowest share (40%) in the history of game publishers. On the corporate side, Xbox Live Arcade offers casual developers excellent conversion rates, and Nintendo will offer, at the least, retro content via its online service.
I'd like to see Manifesto and Nintendo team up, but thats just me.
Original Comment by: Mark
I think there's a bit of a catch-22 here, as long as video games are a business. You have to break outside the male 17-24 demographic to be able to sell niche titles at a profit, and you have to break outside the adolescent power fantasy to attrack broader demographics. As it stands now, the market is so small that only a one or two artistically meritorious games can expect success in any given year. The risk involved is so great that the only way they can be marketed is through word-of-mouth, which is only going to come from the really, really hardcore gamers (not Counter-Strike addict hardcore, but hardcore as in the people who actually care enough about video games to read, for example, The Escapist). That market segment alone cannot make a big-budget game profitable, but everyone they know probably already plays video games, and is either a member of that segment or refuses to buy games that aren't adolescent power fantasies.
It's quite a puzzle, really, and the only way I can see to break out of it is for somebody to risk taking a major loss by making really serious gaming (gaming more substantial than, say, Bejeweled or The Sims - no disrespect to either of those titles, but the way the market works, they're not going to funnel money toward the creation of artistic games. Bejeweled funds the creation of more casual Flash games and The Sims pays for EA's tremendous marketing budget) appeal in ways other than the adolescent power fantasy - not only by creating more meritorious games (call them literary, artistic, nontraditional, womens' games, whatever you want - games whose appeal does not involve the adolescent power fantasy, but does not alienate too great a chunk of the male 17-24 demographic, who own the gaming press, which is quintessential in this plan) but by marketing them effectively as well. Nintendo seems to have done a good job of this in Japan, but the same cultural issues that Mr. Spector's article addresses make a similar process far more difficult in North America. Still, Nintendo will be the one to do it if it can be done.
I think there's a bit of a catch-22 here, as long as video games are a business. You have to break outside the male 17-24 demographic to be able to sell niche titles at a profit, and you have to break outside the adolescent power fantasy to attrack broader demographics. As it stands now, the market is so small that only a one or two artistically meritorious games can expect success in any given year. The risk involved is so great that the only way they can be marketed is through word-of-mouth, which is only going to come from the really, really hardcore gamers (not Counter-Strike addict hardcore, but hardcore as in the people who actually care enough about video games to read, for example, The Escapist). That market segment alone cannot make a big-budget game profitable, but everyone they know probably already plays video games, and is either a member of that segment or refuses to buy games that aren't adolescent power fantasies.
It's quite a puzzle, really, and the only way I can see to break out of it is for somebody to risk taking a major loss by making really serious gaming (gaming more substantial than, say, Bejeweled or The Sims - no disrespect to either of those titles, but the way the market works, they're not going to funnel money toward the creation of artistic games. Bejeweled funds the creation of more casual Flash games and The Sims pays for EA's tremendous marketing budget) appeal in ways other than the adolescent power fantasy - not only by creating more meritorious games (call them literary, artistic, nontraditional, womens' games, whatever you want - games whose appeal does not involve the adolescent power fantasy, but does not alienate too great a chunk of the male 17-24 demographic, who own the gaming press, which is quintessential in this plan) but by marketing them effectively as well. Nintendo seems to have done a good job of this in Japan, but the same cultural issues that Mr. Spector's article addresses make a similar process far more difficult in North America. Still, Nintendo will be the one to do it if it can be done.
Original Comment by: Adriana Aires
It's interesting to hear people talking about what a great resource women designers would be for the gaming industry. I can't help to wonder, what it's meant by it, and in which way, because in my ears it sounds a bit weird. What do all of you mean? That with women creating games then there'll be better games? Or that women designers know something that will then help the companies to catch those young girls?
I've recently started my "carrier" in the gaming industry and one thing that strikes me is: Why is everyone pointing at me and stating: "She is a woman!"? And they all want to ask me how are we going to get girls to start playing computer games? Like if I knew how people (non-gamers), that are complately different from me, think. Like if I could talk for all the females in the world.
Do you want women in the industry to create so called girl games? Will there be an own section with female designers, female managers, female marketing people? Why not do the same for black people? Or hispanics? Or arabs? Why not have an own homo-section!
I think that women should be recruited to the industry, valued by their companies, supported and so on, because discrimination of any kind is wrong. It is not necessary to point out why that would be of benefit for the company or the industry.
It's interesting to hear people talking about what a great resource women designers would be for the gaming industry. I can't help to wonder, what it's meant by it, and in which way, because in my ears it sounds a bit weird. What do all of you mean? That with women creating games then there'll be better games? Or that women designers know something that will then help the companies to catch those young girls?
I've recently started my "carrier" in the gaming industry and one thing that strikes me is: Why is everyone pointing at me and stating: "She is a woman!"? And they all want to ask me how are we going to get girls to start playing computer games? Like if I knew how people (non-gamers), that are complately different from me, think. Like if I could talk for all the females in the world.
Do you want women in the industry to create so called girl games? Will there be an own section with female designers, female managers, female marketing people? Why not do the same for black people? Or hispanics? Or arabs? Why not have an own homo-section!
I think that women should be recruited to the industry, valued by their companies, supported and so on, because discrimination of any kind is wrong. It is not necessary to point out why that would be of benefit for the company or the industry.
Original Comment by: Patrick Dugan
http://www.kingludic.blogspot.com
I agree that trying to desing "girl games" is problematic for the categorical reasons you outline, and I've recently wised up to the fact that women don't like to be singled out in gaming companies for their gender.
However, what I suspect female game designers could bring to the table is an insight into designing social challenge and more emotionally relevant decisions. Two women in particular that have been great inspiration for me in this regard are Nicole Lazarro and Katherine Isbister, Lazarro's research into different types of play and "fun" demonstrates that there are other sorts of challenge besides the hardcore, and that we can appeal to a broader marker, not just women but men AND women, by designing games which appeal to a wider variety of play styles. Dr. Isbister's work, on the other hand, delves into why characters are so essential in games, grounding social dynamics with material constraints made of representative PEOPLE, rather than mere things.
That said, I'm male and I'm diving head first into social challenge. The other people doing the foremost implementation in this regard all happen to be male as well, the makers of Facade and Storytron and Utopia. My current project, which I can't talk about in detail as of yet, will have characters and social expression as its core loop. I am, however, very glad to be working with a female artist, as her second opinion gives me a good outside perspective on if my design decisions are in synch or just plain weird. I'm curious as to what a woman would do in the lead design position I occupy, and hope to see such products in the not-too-distant-future.
http://www.kingludic.blogspot.com
I agree that trying to desing "girl games" is problematic for the categorical reasons you outline, and I've recently wised up to the fact that women don't like to be singled out in gaming companies for their gender.
However, what I suspect female game designers could bring to the table is an insight into designing social challenge and more emotionally relevant decisions. Two women in particular that have been great inspiration for me in this regard are Nicole Lazarro and Katherine Isbister, Lazarro's research into different types of play and "fun" demonstrates that there are other sorts of challenge besides the hardcore, and that we can appeal to a broader marker, not just women but men AND women, by designing games which appeal to a wider variety of play styles. Dr. Isbister's work, on the other hand, delves into why characters are so essential in games, grounding social dynamics with material constraints made of representative PEOPLE, rather than mere things.
That said, I'm male and I'm diving head first into social challenge. The other people doing the foremost implementation in this regard all happen to be male as well, the makers of Facade and Storytron and Utopia. My current project, which I can't talk about in detail as of yet, will have characters and social expression as its core loop. I am, however, very glad to be working with a female artist, as her second opinion gives me a good outside perspective on if my design decisions are in synch or just plain weird. I'm curious as to what a woman would do in the lead design position I occupy, and hope to see such products in the not-too-distant-future.
Original Comment by: Adriana Aires
Patrick:
I hear you!
I do hope to see more women in better positions. I guess for me it's more that I see that the world is divided into (more or less) two groups, not women and men, but the conservatives (holding on to old standards and old social structures) and the ones that are pro-change (that want to challange the way of life and the way we socialize). I want to belong to the second group (the smallest one), and as I see it there are both women and men in both groups. What I want to say by this is: I don't see that my perticular needs/ideas will be fulfilled/supported by a woman (just because we share gender), but by a "pro-change" person (because we share a way of thinking).
Well, the reason why I want to work within the game industry is because I see narrowmindness and shallowness in games, which is something that I want to change. I want also to feel represented by the game-heroes, I want more viraity so that more people will be feeling themselves represented. And also, I want games to teach us, that anything is possible, that the only thing that is holding us back is our own incapacity to change (and not the games rules).
hmm? this got a bit longer than I thought....
Patrick:
I hear you!
I do hope to see more women in better positions. I guess for me it's more that I see that the world is divided into (more or less) two groups, not women and men, but the conservatives (holding on to old standards and old social structures) and the ones that are pro-change (that want to challange the way of life and the way we socialize). I want to belong to the second group (the smallest one), and as I see it there are both women and men in both groups. What I want to say by this is: I don't see that my perticular needs/ideas will be fulfilled/supported by a woman (just because we share gender), but by a "pro-change" person (because we share a way of thinking).
Well, the reason why I want to work within the game industry is because I see narrowmindness and shallowness in games, which is something that I want to change. I want also to feel represented by the game-heroes, I want more viraity so that more people will be feeling themselves represented. And also, I want games to teach us, that anything is possible, that the only thing that is holding us back is our own incapacity to change (and not the games rules).
hmm? this got a bit longer than I thought....
Original Comment by: Lee Delarm
http://www.visionsofdarkness.net
I'm wondering how you mistakingly missed the entire genre of games while summing up points to establish a "new" gaming genre that wouldn't disturb the mothers against violence type of folks.
For one, these people are not concerned about the quality of choices in games and how they reward you for killing people or smacking your hooker. Their underlying reasoning is based on a direct assault on things such as their faith, their upbringing and their inbred moral code. These are things you will be hard pressed to change even with a pyschologist.
They take offense to everything even remotlely representing a medium counter to that which they were brought up in. One of these reasons is because they were not introduced to counter points to the above forementioned unless it was in a context which termed that point as "evil" or counter-intuitive and never pictured in a positive light. Having grown up like this for their entire life, they immediately reject things that do not fit in their nice little bubble of life. We will not make a dent in those who do not want a dent made, it's not possible. The most you can hope for is to alter those who are slightly susceptible to such things, who may have encountered something earlier on that could be similar to a repressed memory that would crack their shell. But then again, your not really cracking them, it was already there and you just opened it up. Everyone is not so willing to let you have a go at it.
The second point, is that RPGs already offer many of the things you were convinced would open up this gap between cultures. They offer non-white, female characters as strong ideological role-models and most nowadays even make the player think about their actions of killing that shop owner for his fancy weapons behind the case. They introduce content not to prevent these things like older games but to introduce social concepts into games, such as a "friendly" level of NPCs depending on your previous actions in society and even sometimes the ability to gain access to areas only assecisble by social interaction, not just kill X NPC and you get a penny.
Lastly, you are perhaps missing an important point in some gaming genres. Some people don't WANT social interaction. I know when I logon my FPS games I could care less if the people on my team had a good day at work, or how much they like me. I will mute everyone if need be and play the game with only their physical interaction and press on just fine. I need to feel the freedom of not having to care if I haplessly kill a hundred pedestrians with my car, just because it gives me a thrill of having scored a +1000 bonus on a bloody "artistic impression". Anotherwords, I believe you have entirely skipped over gaming as a stress reducer.
Ironically, those stress reducing games are the same games politicians get stressed over. There is no happy medium here, which for a lot of people who are not introduced to games at all as a medium for fun, is the sole "game" in their mind. You couldn't tell these people "Barbie Ranch" even existed much less there were actual games that did more than splatter things on walls.
I'm also not of the opinion that we will simply inherit the earth so to speak because there are too many people in positions of power leaving a legacy trail of children that they raise in the exact manner they were raised, which may leave us no door into the political world until we become big enough to be a lobbying powerhouse unfortunately.
And so the world turns...
http://www.visionsofdarkness.net
I'm wondering how you mistakingly missed the entire genre of games while summing up points to establish a "new" gaming genre that wouldn't disturb the mothers against violence type of folks.
For one, these people are not concerned about the quality of choices in games and how they reward you for killing people or smacking your hooker. Their underlying reasoning is based on a direct assault on things such as their faith, their upbringing and their inbred moral code. These are things you will be hard pressed to change even with a pyschologist.
They take offense to everything even remotlely representing a medium counter to that which they were brought up in. One of these reasons is because they were not introduced to counter points to the above forementioned unless it was in a context which termed that point as "evil" or counter-intuitive and never pictured in a positive light. Having grown up like this for their entire life, they immediately reject things that do not fit in their nice little bubble of life. We will not make a dent in those who do not want a dent made, it's not possible. The most you can hope for is to alter those who are slightly susceptible to such things, who may have encountered something earlier on that could be similar to a repressed memory that would crack their shell. But then again, your not really cracking them, it was already there and you just opened it up. Everyone is not so willing to let you have a go at it.
The second point, is that RPGs already offer many of the things you were convinced would open up this gap between cultures. They offer non-white, female characters as strong ideological role-models and most nowadays even make the player think about their actions of killing that shop owner for his fancy weapons behind the case. They introduce content not to prevent these things like older games but to introduce social concepts into games, such as a "friendly" level of NPCs depending on your previous actions in society and even sometimes the ability to gain access to areas only assecisble by social interaction, not just kill X NPC and you get a penny.
Lastly, you are perhaps missing an important point in some gaming genres. Some people don't WANT social interaction. I know when I logon my FPS games I could care less if the people on my team had a good day at work, or how much they like me. I will mute everyone if need be and play the game with only their physical interaction and press on just fine. I need to feel the freedom of not having to care if I haplessly kill a hundred pedestrians with my car, just because it gives me a thrill of having scored a +1000 bonus on a bloody "artistic impression". Anotherwords, I believe you have entirely skipped over gaming as a stress reducer.
Ironically, those stress reducing games are the same games politicians get stressed over. There is no happy medium here, which for a lot of people who are not introduced to games at all as a medium for fun, is the sole "game" in their mind. You couldn't tell these people "Barbie Ranch" even existed much less there were actual games that did more than splatter things on walls.
I'm also not of the opinion that we will simply inherit the earth so to speak because there are too many people in positions of power leaving a legacy trail of children that they raise in the exact manner they were raised, which may leave us no door into the political world until we become big enough to be a lobbying powerhouse unfortunately.
And so the world turns...
Original Comment by: Mark
I can't imagine that it's possible that any significant demographic has been brought up thinking "Video games = evil." Sure, there are the fringe elements. But nearly all people (among those who have the disposable income for marketing to be worthwhile) know what Tetris is, and that's enough to be able to set the record straight.
I can't imagine that it's possible that any significant demographic has been brought up thinking "Video games = evil." Sure, there are the fringe elements. But nearly all people (among those who have the disposable income for marketing to be worthwhile) know what Tetris is, and that's enough to be able to set the record straight.
Original Comment by: Sam
http://www.murmurband.com
Someone needs to tell Warren that MAVAV.org was a hoax.
http://a.parsons.edu/~dyoo/2002-3/interactivity/mavav/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Videogame_Addiction_and_Violence
http://www.murmurband.com
Someone needs to tell Warren that MAVAV.org was a hoax.
http://a.parsons.edu/~dyoo/2002-3/interactivity/mavav/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Videogame_Addiction_and_Violence