Jimquisition: Diversity? LIEversity!

[MEsoJD]

I rarely if ever log in and comment, but sometimes I disagree with Jim. This is one of those times... We don't know for sure if the real reason the developers didn't put a female character was because of lack of resources... The main thing is that the developers should be able to make whatever they want without so much bitching or should I say criticism? Artist' should create whatever they want and let people decide/vote with their wallets. They'll start listening if sales aren't to their satisfaction, but the fact remains that this is a male driven industry whose majority of customers are also male and the sales aren't slowing. That said, there have been games with female protagonist... and while they are not as plentiful as male, is that really a surprise?

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I rarely if ever log in and comment, but sometimes I disagree with Jim. This is one of those times... We don't know for sure if the real reason the developers didn't put a female character was because of lack of resources... The main thing is that the developers should be able to make whatever they want without so much bitching or should I say criticism? Artist' should create whatever they want and let people decide/vote with their wallets. They'll start listening if sales aren't to their satisfaction, but the fact remains that this is a male driven industry whose majority of customers are also male and the sales aren't slowing. That said, there have been games with female protagonist... and while they are not as plentiful as male, is that really a surprise?

Going by what they've told us, yes, lack of resources was the real reason. That and it was "Too hard."
The developers weren't allowed to make what they wanted, a game with playable females, because of a lack of resources. Odds are good they weren't entirely in charge of their resource allotment, so that means someone prevented the devs from making the games they wanted, and I seriously doubt it was the consumer in this case. The argument of "Let the devs make the game they want" isn't a one way street. It can mean that the Devs -wanted- diversity, but were not allowed to have it, too.

The problem with voting with one's wallet is despite it all, they make enough money to stay afloat with the targets they generally keep targeting. Not necessarily all they money they want, or anything, but they make enough for what ever goal, I guess. The non-target demographics probably can't generate enough loss for Ubisoft for them to care.
You basically said as much just after suggesting we vote with our wallets, kinda sinking the whole suggestion you made, IMO.

I'm not really surprised most games are male dominated because the industry is male dominated (not necessarily for all the right reasons, but that's another can of worms), but that does mean anyone has to sit down, and like it.

captcha: Oh Hai.

 

[endplanets]

Its always odd ad annoying when a problem boils down to "they are liars" or "they are idiots" (or both).

Another variant is "they are in on it" or "they are incompetent".

 

[endplanets]

Out of all the games to remove females it is bizarre that AC would do it.
Women seem to make up a large chunk of their fans (all my female friends dig it) and you could just recycle previous game's female animates and assets.
And they already have female voice actors what with the women civilians running around.

 

[endplanets]

I rarely if ever log in and comment, but sometimes I disagree with Jim. This is one of those times... We don't know for sure if the real reason the developers didn't put a female character was because of lack of resources... The main thing is that the developers should be able to make whatever they want without so much bitching or should I say criticism? Artist' should create whatever they want and let people decide/vote with their wallets. They'll start listening if sales aren't to their satisfaction, but the fact remains that this is a male driven industry whose majority of customers are also male and the sales aren't slowing. That said, there have been games with female protagonist... and while they are not as plentiful as male, is that really a surprise?

Alright, so there are two possibilities there. Either they don't have the resources (and are massively incompetent) or they are straight up lying to your face. Or both. Take your pick. Either way Jim's complaint's are valid in that regard.

I agree with "vote with your wallet" but I always find it a bit untenable overall and it only works with huge game elements and long term trends rather than small elements. If sales are good/bad there are too many variables to come up with a good correlation. After all, one could say that since Mass Effect 3 had good sales people must have loved the ending.
General criticism is a better way to make developers listen rather than just looking at sales about (let's make up a number) 70% of the time.

 

[Nion]

I demand gender and race options for Jimquisition. Forcing everyone to watch Jim be a white male every week is offensive.

 

[Apl_J]

This whole thing has been incredibly confusing to me to the point where I think something else must be going on. Not even a few titles ago, the main character of an AC game was not only female, but nonwhite. Every multiplayer AC game has featured female avatars as far as I know (I only played one). The series in general is all about inequality and oppressive powers. So naturally, I'm going to think something else is going on with Ubisoft. Yep, I'm calling benefit of the doubt: we don't know anything about the game besides French Revolution and 4 person co-op. It is 100% possible that women will feature prominently in the narrative.

And as to Ubisoft's PR? Well, I don't expect any game company's PR to give a straight answer. Video Game PR has proven, at least to me, that it is focused on the casual consumer and the layman, not the people who read forums in their free time, know about the 'biz', or what actually goes into making a game. The response they gave to this whole issue says to me that they're placating. 11 pages will tell you their response is bull, but that's their right. I reserve judgement until the game actually releases.

 

[Abnaxis]

So in other words, you won't actually specifically address any points in my argument, you'll just chalk it up as the same tautological category of "feelings," which applies just as much to every statement you have made as mine, because "feelings" are unavoidable when talking about human behavior (like say, the behavior of buying stuff).

Yeah, sure, I'm glad we did this too. Always fun to tousle with a hypocrite with no understanding of reason.

Of course not, it's the same argument with different wording, it's more "I know this is true because feelings". I specifically told you that I would be ignoring arguments that could be summed up as "feelings".
I'm not sure why this has surprised you, but I'm certain that our discourse has come to an end.
I'm not going to stoop to calling you names, that'd be beneath me

Yes, you specifically told me that you would ignore "any argument that could be summed up as 'feelings,'" which is an arbitrary distinction that applies to every statement that could possibly be made pertaining to the subject in this thread, because the thread concerns consumer behavior that is, by definition, "feelings."

Then you set more standards for the only argument you will accept as valid, which are impossible to obtain from a systematic standpoint, before you will budge from your own position, which is just as impossible to justify.

Your arguments are rife with double standards, and whenever I try to point out your hypocrisy and push you to consider my point from an angle that might actually produce some useful debate, you blithely ignore the point I am making. What you call "name calling" is my summary of this behavior. I would actually love it if you returned in kind, because that would mean I might actually be able to see what your actual problem is with my statements, because as it stands your criticisms are impenetrable to me.

 

[Abnaxis]

When have politicians ever said that all games should be banned in response to a shooting?

Also censoring something often isn't always better than not banning it. Especially if something is heavily censored.

My argument is that politicians don't blame all games for shootings, they blame specific types of games for shootings; just like they blame specific types of music for crimes. As a result trying to make other types of games more popular won't stop this.

In terms of tanks you're trying to claim that one type of tank doesn't have a problem by talking about how other tanks don't have this problem. No one is claiming that games such as Skyrim are causing mass shootings, so trying to make Skyrim more popular won't stop people believing that GTA might be causing mass shootings.

ALL games? Never. Blanket bans on sales or financial penalties for "violent" video games, which includes roughly quite often, and quite recently [http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2014.pdf].

Incidentally, Skyrim, as a rated-M game, is one of the games that would be targeted by legislation seeking to tax or to restrict sales on "violent" games.

Games like CoD and Starcraft might be the go-to scapegoats for politicians and "family friendly" interest groups, but when it comes to actual action, their salvos do damage on a much wider scale, and that's when people who think GTA is worthless get involved, because now they're being hurt in the crossfire.

Are you seriously claiming that all the adults who played games as children and teenagers think that video games are just children's toys? Are you also going to claim that these adults will believe that rock and roll causes violence if politicians say that it does?

You're also repeating the false claim that politicians blame all video games for violence. I can't recall anyone politician ever claiming that playing Mario games makes children into psychopaths. Politicians target specific games or genres because it's easier to scapegoat them.

One last thing: Atari started making consoles in 1971, so we can assume that many people who are under the age of 43 knows what video games are.

I'm saying that, by and large, people who are outsiders of the gaming community view gaming enthusiasts and gaming activity in general as immature and shallow. That's why the "video games as art" thing is a debate. That's why I don't share my video gaming hobby with anyone else I work with--because I know (from experience) that people take me less seriously if they know I play games in my off time.

This isn't about knowing what video games are it's about a shared understanding of what video games mean to the people who enjoy them. As far as outsiders are concerned, games are just pretty lights and fun diversions, that nobody but outcasts should take seriously. Of course they know, in a literal sense, what games are, but they are clueless as to the figurative meaning of games.

Rap is a good metaphor for this phenomenon. To outsiders, rap artists are miscreants, glorifying violence, drugs, and anarchy and coaxing their audience into social delinquency. The actual meaning to people listening to rap is wildly different from this perception, however. The vast majority of the rap audience will never fire a gun and never deal drugs, but the songs represent a power fantasy whereby they can imagine themselves defying established norms and constraints they perceive as placed on them by their social context, so they enjoy rap.

Kinda like how most players of GTA are never going to steal a car, shoot cops, or go cruising for whores, but GTA provides them with a power fantasy wherein they do these things. To an outsider, who knows what a game is in a physical sense, but doesn't understand how video-game power fantasies work because they aren't a gamer, it looks like GTA encourages violence.

Just because more men like shooters, doesn't mean that being a man directly causes your enjoyment while playing a shooter.

I did not mean to suggest that you did. I was trying to put "correlation does not mean causation" into layman's terms. Apologies, for being unclear.

You seem to have no understanding of science. Scientific investigation has found that people with low levels of dopamine are more prone to being thrill seekers because it's they only way they can stimulate dopamine production. It's entirely possible that men enjoy playing shooters or hunting for a similar reason.

You ignored that people who enjoy shooters could have their DNA tested to see if there's a genetic reason why some people prefer shooters to RPGs.

You also ignored that more men enjoy hunting that women because it doesn't fit with your argument that marketing is the sole reason why women don't buy as many shooters as men.

Maybe what actually helps you enjoy it is some other factor, that is also highly correlated with being male--like, from a purely numerical, scientific perspective it would be almost valid for me to say a regular regimen of peeing while standing up increases enjoyment while playing shooters. Maybe peeing standing up from an early age exercises the pre-frontal cortex in a way that makes it more susceptible the the stimulation provided by shooters, and that why all the pee-standers enjoy shooters while the squatters don't?

This statement shows that you have no understanding of science and lack an ability to reason. You've provided no evidence to back up your claim, failed to explain why all men who pee standing up don't enjoy shooters, and you've also shown that you don't understand how the brain works.

You've also ignored that the pre-frontal cortex in men and women is different because of the hormones they're exposed to while in the womb, not because of how they urinate. When you actually do real research, rather than make things up, you learn many useful things.

Just because you don't understand how science works doesn't make this unanswerable. The number of causes is not limitless and the laws of biology allow scientists to narrow it down to a specific gene. That's why scientists are able to create mice that are scared of heights.

Also in what way would the laws of physics be involved in trying to determine why more men than women prefer shooters?

Genetics is based on biology, which is based in chemistry, which is based in physics. For me, "laws of physics" is short hand for "any knowledge we have managed to derive from physical science" because everything traces back to physics.

On topic, I assume you're talking about the number of recent studies, like the one cited in this article [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/neurophilosophy/201305/criminal-genes-and-criminal-brains], that have shown correlations between certain behavior, pre-frontal cortex structure, and genetics?

Unlike the popular conception of genetics, your genetics are not solely determined at birth. For one, only even your base pair sequences do not remain static after birth [http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/epi_learns/], sometimes mutating according to influence from outside environmental factors that are far from fully understood. This is why, say, repeated smoke inhalation (a factor in the environment) causes cancer (a genetic defect).

Every scholar who has released a study similar to the one cited has done so with the caveat that you cannot use their results to predict future behavior of any individual based on a blood test. You don't know what, if any, factors caused a somatic mutation or an epigenomic trigger, or if the genetics associated with pre-frontal structure presented before or after birth. Unless there's a study somewhere I haven't read that delves into this (which I highly doubt, because it would cost a fortune, requiring decades worth of longitudinal data collected under an exceptionally wide berth of conditions), the causal link is not there.

So, in fewer words, "correlation does not equal causation."

As for the mice study, you might be able to point to the study of mice to give evidence of causal effect (in fact, controlled experiments are the only mechanism by which you can show evidence of causality), but now you're running afoul of problems with external validity [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_validity]. You can say, with a high degree of certainty, that mice engineered with allele structure A expressed different brain and behavioral patterns under tightly controlled conditions when compared to mice engineered with allele structure B exposed to the same conditions, but that's a far cry from saying that the video game preference of people under ever-shifting uncontrolled set of influences--which can affect genetic sequences and genetic expression--can be linked to inherited genomic factors.

So you're saying that Firefly failed because it was marketed to an action audience when it wasn't an action series, yet you want shooters to be made more diverse in order to appeal to an audience that doesn't like shooters. Can you not see the contradiction in your reasoning? The fact that shooters are making billions indicates that they're being marketed to the right audience.

Regarding Planescape: Torment I didn't buy it because I heard that you had to be online in order to play it. The box art wasn't a major factor because it was made by a company that had produced other games I liked (such as Baldur's Gate).

Your argument only explains why specific TV series and games failed. If someone is interested in a genre of games, such as RPGs or war games, while bad marketing may put them off some games it won't put they off all games. If women want to play shooters they'll buy the one that looks the least bad, not buy a game from a different genre.

Are you serious asking me how I know the preferences of people I know in real life? I asked them what sort of games they liked and they told me. One woman I know has a DS yet she uses it for simple games such as Scribblenauts and struggles with things such as Bowser's Inside Story. She will never enjoy a triple A game because she doesn't like games where you constantly have to press buttons in a short period time.

I'm trying to illustrate the point that there exist conditions under which people who would truly enjoy a work of art will not buy it because of ill-conceived demographic targeting. This is in direct response to the notion that "as long as females will enjoy a game, the way it's targeted doesn't matter." I'm not trying to say that marketing is the only thing that matters, just that there is empirical evidence that it *could* matter, and so we can't dismiss the notion that current marketing is having an effect out-of-hand. Further, we can't can we say, with certainty, that women categorically do not want to play shooters as much as men on the basis that there are few women buying shooters (anecdotal evidence notwithstanding).

Why do you believe that triple A games are the biggest point of contact with outsiders? Wouldn't outsiders, especially adult outsiders, be more likely to shun triple A games which require a large capital investment (such as a console and games) in favour of free games available on Facebook?

My definition for "point of contact" is "structure which enables an outsider to come in contact with gaming media, members of the gaming community, or presentations representative of the gaming hobby." That includes trying MafiaWars on Facebook, but that also includes listening to a radio host talk about gaming in relation to mass shootings, or seeing a commercial for a game on television. Basically, anything that gives an individual outside of the gaming community a basis to form an opinion about gaming.

From this perspective, I think AAA publishers are the biggest point of contact that the gaming community commands. They are the only ones releasing commercials on conventional media like television, which has a much higher penetration than Facebook. They are the ones with brick and mortar storefront advertising in shopping centers where gaming outsiders can walk past. They are the ones that receive the most attention from journalists off all ilks. You might be right, that economics might make it so that free Facebook games are more influential in converting non-gamers to gamers, but when it comes to forming public opinion at large about gaming, AAA publishers seem to wield much more power in my eyes.

 

[hydrolythe]

I do quite understand Ubisoft though.

It is true that it is a huge AAA developer and can develop lots of content, but when I hear about how expensive the game engines (They have the Mango engine, an engine which costs around 16 million US$. Since Ubisoft did not have enough money to buy those engines they had to use bank money and now they are in deep debts.) are they rely on I do not find their statements all that suprizing. Imagine just you being a game developer which has one of the world's moist developed game engines but has to pay ridiculously expensive fees in order to continue utilize it and let your industry keep being a game industry. I am pretty sure that most would want to market the game for the audiences that are the widest and already established and market the game by saying that your game engine is so powerful that it allows for a huger high-quality experience than the other games on the market and shy away from anything risky (like making a game in any genre that is not an FPS, TPS, Action-Adventure, WRPG, sports game or racing game in the Western world or anything that is not a JRPG, 2D-shooter, Visual Novel, baseball game or racing game in Japan for instance). The fact that that particular audience does not allow stuff like sponsorship (Do you as a gamer want advertising in your game?) and that there is a huge amount of competition for having the game with 'the highest sales' only helps the matter.

AAA developers have it hard these days. The best thing we can do for them is saying that their games do not need to have a powerful physics engine behind them in order to be great so that they can keep with the engines they already have and actually regain what they lost on game engines that they thought would make us happy (which will, thanks to the cool engine demo's engine creators unleash upon the mass market, never happen. As a lot of people (or at least that is what the people who make those engines want the AAA market to believe) will look at them and say: "Now every game I will buy will be made by this game engine. Any game made with another engine is crap that I should stay well away from."

This is why I think that it is a terrible idea to force the AAA industry to do something that will cost them extra money on top of the ultra-expensive games they already make, as it will eventually backfire with an even more restraint view of thinking.

 

[Abnaxis]

Strictly speaking someone could simply say they find option A easier (men find it easier to write male characters than female ones) and will only do option B if there's evidence that it will make more money. In this case you would need to prove that B was more profitable.

Using logic I could say that movies, TV shows, books, and games into his genre tend to use option A because option A is better than option B. In this case you'd need to explain why option A is so much more prevalent if option B is just as good.

See? This, right here, is what I'm asking for. A concise argument, with basis on actual reasoning and logic, with which I can engage. This can actually be the basis of productive debate.

Regarding the actual point you bring up, the problem I see is that we are not talking about pushing a single artist out of their comfort zone by making them create content for option B versus option A, we are talking about presenting either option A or option B to multiple teams consisting of tens to hundreds of artists, and requiring that they conform to whichever option is chosen. Regardless of which option you pick, those artists are collectively going to have to make thousands of compromises and create content outside of the scope of what individuals within the collective consider "easy," and in terms of actual cost involved, you are not going to see a significant difference between option A or option B in terms of return on investment.

There certainly WILL be a cost increase--this is part of the reason why having more diversity among developers would be beneficial, because it would decrease cost differentials like these and increase developer flexibility--but compared to say, the cost of full motion capture or quality control testing (i.e. fixed costs), we're talking about very different orders of magnitude in terms of price.

This is, of course, up for debate either way whether that is enough justification, but I don't think there is compelling evidence to show that option B is "harder" enough to accept A as the default course of action.

 

[Mathalor]

I rather like the social justice episodes, especially anything dealing with gender issues. I don't really follow the internet jabber that follows them. Do these apologies and assurances that this isn't a social justice episode mean that there will be no more of these episodes that I like?

 

[IrisNetwork]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I'm playing a game from Ubisoft with a female protagonist.
Its called Beyond Good and Evil.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

People who are clamoring that publishers are right to forget about female protagonists because of marketing results are just digging themselves into self-fulfilling prophecy loopholes.

First off, marketing departments should not be actively developing games, they should be frekking SELLING the games made by actually creative minds. Otherwise you end up with the same old regurgitated crap all over the place, because according to marketing teams, those trends are what sells a game.
Ironically this is exactly what has been happening for years with many game formulas.

When marketeers claim that having a female protagonist means that the game won't sell well, then proceed to ban all female protagonists from the big titles that receive all the advertising, instead delegating them to niche titles. Only to afterwards use the fact that those big titles, which received the entire bulk of the marketing campaign, sold more units per game to justify your own strategy. Well, that's bullshit.

If that line of thought had been followed in early game development, we wouldn't have many of the games that we have today. Heck, Westwood studios was ridiculed when they brought out the first real RTS games in the Dune series. Right now it's pretty much a national sport in South-Korea and a fully fledged genre.

Some time ago I found an article on destructoid where the faces of protagonists from a whole lot of big titles were layered on top of each other. Result? There was almost no difference whatsoever, you just ended up with the same generic white protagonist male.
I can't seem to locate the article again, but it spoke volumes about the need for more diversity. Both in male and female protagonists.

For one, I refuse to play another game with a white male protagonist (and even worse: one with a troubled dark past) in the lead. It just bores me senseless.

 

[Crazie_Guy]

Considering how many people I've seen here and elsewhere buy into Ubisoft's ridiculous excuses and even re-iterate them to defend the company, I'm afraid they were absolutely right about some of us being stupid.

 

[Abnaxis]

Genetics is a part of biology, biology is not based on chemistry, and chemistry is not based on physics. While these 3 sciences do overlap they're concerned with very different things. As a result being a physicist doesn't make you a biologist and vice versa.

Referring to the laws of physics to talk about biology just makes it should like you have no idea what you're talking about. Especially when the majority of physics isn't governed by the laws of physics.

Metabolism is nothing but the study of how an organism stores and releases energy in chemical bonds. All of material science relating to strength of materials--for instance, bones or skin tissue--relies on information about the molecular formation of covalent bonds and how molecules entangle and interact with one another. Even DNA stands for DeoxyriboNucleic Acid--a chemical. Here's an example picture of its chemical structure [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileNA_chemical_structure.svg].

Further, the entire orbital model of the atom, as it stands today, is derived directly from quantum physics. Laws of conservation of energy and the uncertainty principle tell us the shapes atoms take and how they interact.

Of course, saying that means a physicist knows jack all about biology is like saying an electrician should be able write production code because he understands electricity (a notion anyone who knows many electricians could easily debunk). However, the person that makes semiconductors needs to understand electricity, the person that designs transistors needs to understand semiconductors, the person that designs arithmetic logic units need to understand transistors, the person who designs CPUs needs to understand ALUs, the person who designs computers needs to understand CPUs, and the person who designs software needs to understand computers.

A programmer is fundamentally limited by the laws of Electricity, and how well we understand them, even if they have no business working as an electrician or vice versa. By the same token, a biologist is fundamentally limited by the laws of physics, and how well we understand them--which was my original statement--even though they have no business working as a quantum physicist or vice versa.

Since you didn't understand this article I'll explain it to you. You genetics (DNA) is determined at conception (when the sperm and egg combine). You genetics cannot change unless you DNA mutates.

This article is saying that stem cells in a embryo become different types of cells by prevented 80-90% genes from activating, for example the cells in the eye don't need to use the bone growing genes. While each cell many only use 10% of the available genes in this cell since the DNA of these cells is unchanged the genetics have not changed.

Yes, that is one thing that epigenetics do. However, you conveniently left out the part of the cited article that is actually germane to the discussion, where they talk about how epigenetics also regulate neuron development in general, but especially also during puberty--the phase in life that represents one of the most significant change in brain structure in humans. The article talks about this about sixty percent down the page. This is important because events in our life--like childhood trauma [http://www.genome.gov/27554258], for example, modify the way these genetic markers affect brain development.

So your DNA doesn't change after birth. If your DNA did change then it would be impossible to use DNA testing to convict people because their DNA wouldn't match the DNA from the crime scene.

Firstly scientists do understand which factors can cause mutations. Radiation is one of the main causes of these mutations because it damages the DNA in cells.

Secondly cancer is caused by cells that reproduces uncontrollably. While there is a genetic reason for this genetic defect is normally only applied to conditions that don't spontaneous occur.

What does this have to do with anything you mentioned? You don't test for cancer with a blood test. You don't normally get a sample of a person's DNA from their blood as it's easier to use the cells in their saliva.

Also none of the studies you mentioned had anything to do with a person's behaviour.

The source you provided clearly stated that a person's DNA doesn't change after conception. The fact that you didn't understand what it said won't change this.

Also scientist know of many factors that can cause genetic mutations and can easily test other factors using human cells in a lab.

Okay, here's my non-biologist understanding of genetics. There are two classes of cells--germ cells, the ones that come from mom & pop and never change, and somatic cells, the ones that actually make up specific bits and pieces like brain tissue and eyeballs. The former is what you can get from a cheek swab and do genealogy tests on, the latter is the rubber-meets-the-road place that actually gets the work done of living. It's the latter that they do tests on, see sequence X is associated with brain structure Y which is associated with criminal behavior Z.

That's a *****, because those cells mutate quite a bit--somatic mutations [http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2014/04/02/gr.162131.113] are generally understood to be the root cause for epilepsy and autism, though no-one has quite figure out the prevailing cause for the mutations yet.

Other than that, there has been virtually no science done on healthy people, so we know jack-all about what somatic mutations do to a "normal" person, nor do we have extensive knowledge about what causes them in the real world.

What causal link are you talking about? You didn't provide any studies regarding how the pre-frontal cortex develops or what relevance this part of the brain has to what games people enjoy. Surely what people enjoy is more dependent on the pleasure center of the brain than the part associated with cognitive and social behaviour.

I showed that your claim that DNA changes throughout a person's life was wrong, so I can say that a person's DNA will influence what games they enjoy.

The causal link I am talking about, is "dopamine receptor gene presentation X, which increases pleasure while playing shooting games, is more prevalent in males than females, therefore males are genetically predisposed toward enjoying video games." You're trying to link video games enjoyment specifically, and cognitive behavior in general, to germ-cell genetics, and that's not a link we can draw yet, for all of the reasons stated above.

I'm saying that if women enjoyed shooters then they'd simply buy the shooter that from their perspective had the least worse marketing. The fact that women are buying far fewer shooters than men, regardless of how they're marketed, indicates that fewer women than men like shooters. So we can say with certainty that women do not want to play shooter as much as men.

What you're trying to do is argue that because you don't like what the evidence shows that the evidence must be wrong. Not being 100% certain about something is no reason to ignore what the evidence is currently showing.

What evidence? do you have the demographic breakdown of which genders are playing what shooter?

And even then, there's what, a whole 10 properties that have marketing open to (never targeted at) females, all released with different marketing and development budgets, on different platforms, at different times, in different markets?

There's no "evidence," because there are so many factors OTHER than marketing, which also matter. We can do statistics and account for all those other factors, but in order to do that you need a large sample size (like, on the order of 20-30 games minimum for each confounding variable you want to try and control for, preferably a lot more since we're talking about time-series data). There's a difference between "ignoring the evidence" and saying "this evidence holds about as much predictive power as anecdotal stories and online surveys--in other words, zero to none."

 

[Abnaxis]

It's difficult for me to understand how you could get this so wrong.

Firstly it's the publisher who gets to decide which games get approved, not the artists.

Secondly it's the developer who decides which character are in the game, not the artists.

Thirdly it's the writer(s) who create these characters, not the artists.


All the artists do is make concept art, they have little control of which characters are chosen. Perhaps you were thinking of modellers who make the in game units or the animators who create the animations, as you'd need hundreds of them to make most games. Though modellers and animators also have little control over what is included in these games.

I might be swing dangerously close to "are video games art?" debate, but I would count every single one of those groups you listed as "artists."

So what I'm saying, is that a set of requirements--either set A or set B--is being passed down to the artists--including writing, modelling, texturing, animating, concept art, etc., etc. they're all frakking "artists"--and that gigantic group of people need to makes something cohesive and appealing for the consumers. That's why I said "multiple teams."

Thus if the publisher wants a male protagonist because they believe the game will sell better with one or the developer wants a male protagonist because they're easier to write then it doesn't matter what the rest of the team feel about this because they can't change these decisions.

Erm....yeah, that's kind of my point. You have hundreds to thousands of people who have no say in what they have to create. They are going to have to make thousands of compromises and work outside their comfort zone no matter what option is picked for them.

Your opinion on this is irrelevant. As long as developers find B to be harder than A they're going to almost always pick A because it will reduce the number of problems they'll have to deal with. The default will always be what is easiest.

You know what's hard, and really, really expensive? Physics simulation. Low-latency mutliplayer. Displacement mapping. Complex lighting, with reflections, subsurface scatter, transparency, and bloom effects. A large selections of weapons, which will need to be balanced in multiplayer.

Compared with these sorts of features, making the writers write for a female instead of a male costs nothing. Ubisoft loses more money every time their CEO is late for an executive meeting because he had to drop a deuce.

Go ahead, show me the conclusive evidence that can prove every single graphical feature--which represents the vast majority of the development budget, by orders of magnitude--included in Assassin's Creed justified its cost, and I'll concede that making the protagonist female would represent some sort of monumental risk in comparison. I'll wait.

 

[Abnaxis]

It is interesting to me that the majority of people making this argument are the ones who are part of the demographic already catered to, players who are not part of the demographic seems to be curiously quiet on the subject, and when they speak up it's usually to point out that they don't really care very much.

I wonder if this has anything to do with it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_complex]

Excellent, excellent use of passive voice and hyperlinking to avoid direct name calling, so you can passive-aggressively throw personal insults without fear of being reported. Hats off to you sir!.

 

[Abnaxis]

I know this isn't an argument, but it's the first thing you've said to me that wasn't "feelings" so I feel inclined to reward good behaviour.

There's nothing personal about it, and the only reason it could be called an insult at all is the fact that the entire concept is immediately and obviously detestable, to be associated with it should be an insult.

Except...I have given the justification, for why companies will make more money if they can attract a more diverse workforce (a workforce they draw from the gaming populace) and why our community would be stronger if we could include a more diverse crowd. Like, with actual numbers and peer-reviewed articles from credible sources.

You keep writing off my arguments as "because feelings," but I, myself, have a shown vested interest in seeing this thing happen. I am not stepping in to save someone else to make myself feel better. "Messiah complex" doesn't remotely characterize my argument, it is a caricature meant to trivialize the attitudes of people who disagree with you, by demeaning any points not made in your favor as invalid through a passive aggressive ad hominem attack. "Messiah complex" being somehow inherently "detestable" has nothing to do with it.

Because it is overwhelmingly white men who are complaining about this, actual women seem mostly unconcerned, and other minority groups seem unconcerned too, I can see how this would be a bitter pill though, as it sort of collapses your whole argument by showing that we know the alleged legions of women/minority groups out there waiting to play games if only the main characters resemble them are either thoroughly disinterested or somewhat less than legion.

Do we know? How? What piece of evidence can you show that backs your claims?

I have asked, multiple times, for you to show actual, conclusive evidence that the current white-male majority audience is the optimum, largest audience possible for that market, but you haven't. Because you can't.

I'm not going to bother to address your reams of "I can read Wikipedia's article on genetics and then do a hilarious amount of wishful thinking" or your conflating development costs with loss of sales, because it's all circling back to your original argument of "feelings" anyway.

You mean my reams of "I understand how statistics works, plus the actual scientists doing the studies--you know, the people most qualified to talk about these things--EXPLICITLY SAY you can't use genetics the way you're trying to apply them"?

But no, let's stick with the "men are predestined to enjoy shooters" schlock that everyone seems to find comforting. We'll just use genetics instead of the Hand of Jim or astrology to justify our "nature of man" arguments now. I guess drawing false conclusions from scientific evidence that doesn't support them is...kinda better than attributing it to magic, right?

I'll quote myself here, because this is still the fatal blow to the entire argument:

You're arguing that we must have diversity and then failing to make a case for diversity.
So long as the majority of gamers are white males, you are going to have to deal with a market catered towards that demographic, if your argument against this is that minority demographics will be put off by a lack of representation, you will have to deal with the fact that this argument works against you, because you're arguing for games to stop representing their main audience.
Either your argument isn't a valid one because players will play the game anyway and thus the requirement to change does not exist, or that argument is valid but cannot be applied because it would alienate the core demographic with no guarantee of recovering the losses with newly catered-to players.

And I'll repeat, once again, that you are comparing apples to oranges. Your argument is pointless, because there are no guarantees either way. Human beings are not finite state machines, that will always react to the same input with the same output.

The point you want to lean on repeatedly--that somehow the market has conclusively proven that men inherently enjoy shooters more than women--relies on the fact that men look at things different than women do, but you completely abandon the notion when you reach this point in your argument where you say "either it doesn't matter, or changing things will have the exact same effect on men as it does on women."

My only point is "there is evidence that the market is narrower than it could be, and both developers and customers are better off if it isn't, and the actual, measurable costs (i.e., not "I'm scared men won't like it, with no evidence beyond 'this is the way we usually do things'") of being more inclusive are rather miniscule, so let's try to counteract the trend."

 

[Something Amyss]

Is it because of the increasing anti-war sentiment in the states that they view them as not deserving anything anymore? Or are they just that cheap and greedy? Like you said, the least they could do is cover the damage done to them. Lying to them about it just scummy.

These sentiments are coming from the conservative groups, the "Republican" party as it were, so I doubt it's that they're anti-war. I think it's more they're anti-entitlement, and entitlement in any form. Remember, entitlement in itself isn't a bad word, and vets should feel entitled to the care they are supposed to get.