Study About 'Sexist Games' is Severely Flawed

[Areloch]

You have utterly missed my point. The point is, a fashion game is INCREDIBLY niche.

Like, you seem to not realize how fast sales on games dwindle when they're not a major AAA title and also an established franchise. It's why when Ubisoft or EA gets around to actually launching a new franchise and it does well, people are kinda blown away.

But you step outside of that small, consistent bubble of primary interests that make up the majority of "Dudebro games"(As an aside, I'd thank you not to presume that girls don't have power fantasies about mindlessly mowing down thousands of aliens just as much as boys do) and the sales dwindle rapidly.

The more niche the genre, the faster those sales dry up, and producing a game, even a relatively simple one requires a lot of man-hours to produce, which means a lot of money invested up-front before the game even sells. If it sells poorly, they WASTED money - potentially millions of dollars.

Creating and selling a game unfortunately comes down to pragmatic arithmetic. Do you actually believe that if Ubisoft or EA made a fashion game, it would sell as well as a Call of Duty game? Because I don't, at all.

The gameplay alone is drastically different from the mass market appeal, and both boys AND girls would look at that kind of gameplay(just as we already see with other non-standard games like walking simulators) and go "that looks boring/stupid" and they don't buy it.

So if the likelyhood of getting a large return is minimal purely due to how many people would even find it interesting(because again, it'd be a niche product) then it's VERY difficult to justify 1 or 2 years and potentially millions of dollars into a product that may only sell a few thousand copies.

So again, point blank: Do you honestly believe that if a AAA studio produced and marketed a fashion game, it would reach the same sales numbers as a Call of Duty game?

Yes, yes it would.

Case in point: LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY THE TWILIGHT SAGA MADE, BUDDY.

Case in point: LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY CANDY CRUSH MADE, BUDDY.

Case in point: LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY HANNAH MONTANA MADE, BUDDY.

Case in point: LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY COOKING MAMA MADE, BUDDY.

And I could go on.


Please, step back and realize that the stance you have taken in your post is this: "girls like shooting things but men don't like fashion. Things are fine as they are because girls can adapt to dudebro stuff but boys should never adapt to cutesy stuff".

Also keep in mind that I am a woman but I have never liked stuff like Twilight or Cooking Mama and I prefer shooting things. That does NOT mean I have the arrogance of thinking everyone should have my tastes, and while I know many girls who like shooting things, I know many girls who instead like fashion and cooking.

(Edit: That was a serious attempt at some levity, by the way. Wasn't trying to be a sarcastic douche there)

One, it's becoming increasingly grating for you to keep referring to action-y style games as 'dudebro'. LOTS of girls enjoy those kinds of games, and not because they're "adapting", because they actually legitimately like them. The fact that you keep delegating those types of games as purely male interests is pretty insulting and frankly floating into actual sexism territory if you think that girls only like that kind of thing because they're "adapting" and not out of any genuine interest on their own accord.

Similarly, guys obviously have no problems "adapting"(heugh) to cutesy stuff. See the internet implosion-explosion that was My Little Pony.

Next, it's generally not compatible to compare sales of entirely different mediums, because of different pricing architectures and different appeal/consumption rates. Most namely, you bringing up Twilight, which has only existed in film and books, both of which have much broader appeal and consumption than games do.

So lets use the more direct comparison. The entire franchise of Cooking Mama, which you used as one of the examples, has earned 12 million units in sales: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/09/mama-franchise-reaches-12-million-sales-worldwide-8-5-million/

So the ENTIRE franchise of Cooking Mama managed to match up to a single Call of Duty game.

But honestly this is derailing a little bit from my original question which you hadn't answered yet:

Do you feel developers and publishers should be obligated to take tens millions of dollars in financial risks to appeal to relatively niche genres of games?

 

[Areloch]

AARRRRGGH!!!!!!!! I had written a LONG answer and I got a "captcha error" and it disappeared!!!!

Sorry man, you'll have to deal with the short version then.

Do you feel developers and publishers should be obligated to take tens millions of dollars in financial risks to appeal to relatively niche genres of games?

Nooo. They should keep making videogames with white straight male protagonists, possibly with shaved hair and American heritage, and have them shoot bad guys.

After all, videogames are totally not like movies or books. Videogames are mostly for males. We all know that. There's no way you'd profit out of the other 50% of the human population, when it comes to videogames. That's just NICHE.

Sucks about the captcha error, but I see you opted for sarcasm and falling back into sexist categorizing rather than actually answering my question.

Unfortunate.

 

[McElroy]

How is San Andreas even that s- Oooohhh, they made them play that mission for the pimp ("Jizzy"), didn't they? I wasn't even fourteen when I paid my dad to pre-order the PC version of SA. Instead of making me a sexist sociopath (it was already too late, lol) I learned a valuable lesson in life: fuck bitches, get money.

It's my experience with women gamers on average, that they prefer story-driven games and role-playing.

Sounds familiar, but how? Why don't old people play video games? Possibly because they were adults when video games apeared as children's toys. Could you attract them with an engaging story? Hell no, unless the gameplay was no more complicated than turning pages. Games are sensory overload, something that kids want. But then how about girls who know video games and have played them every now and then? They know the harmless games kids play are not for them, but offer them an "adult" story with adult people or a world where you can sink into and it might be a sale. Of course, this will get us the downside of arbitrary gameplay in the eyes of these beginner gamers. For example I have two female friends who play casual free-to-play games but watch LPs of story driven ones because it's free and doesn't waste the time that goes into learning the game.

Can you honestly say you would be jumping to play a game about a female protagonist shopping for clothes, even if it was super hardcore and genuinely challenging? Remember, just because it's a traditionally feminine thing doesn't inherently mean you find it unappealing, it's just very likely that you do.

Hehe, the first challenge is to even come up with a hypothetical example. Some sort of Black Friday simulator is the deepest clothes shopping game I can think of this side of The Sims. However, horses are for girls (here at least - we have no cowboys or manly ranches), but I could see myself enjoying a well-made Olympic Equestrian Game (even if it had Dressage in it) with your own stable and everything. Another point is that "hardcore" already narrows it down a lot. Everyone likes filming, but "Cinematography with Vittorio Storaro" would be a really niche title.

One, it's becoming increasingly grating for you to keep referring to action-y style games as 'dudebro'. LOTS of girls enjoy those kinds of games, and not because they're "adapting", because they actually legitimately like them. The fact that you keep delegating those types of games as purely male interests is pretty insulting and frankly floating into actual sexism territory if you think that girls only like that kind of thing because they're "adapting" and not out of any genuine interest on their own accord.

I say it comes down to how these things are codified in the minds of the public. If the commercials you see are for CoD, GTA, and WoT and people point at those saying: "That's a video game." The chance we end up with a male majority of gamers is 100%. Cooking Mama, The Sims, and that Kardashian game would flip it the other way. The reality is closer to the former but not a whole lot when we start to add in all the rather neutrally appealing games. Another thing is I feel video games are pervasive enough that people are less likely to go "I like X, I wonder if there's a game about X." but "I wonder if there's a game I like. Hey, this one's about X!" The time of the latter is long gone.

I also agree. AAA is about the market they can exploit. It's not that they don't want to cater to a "new" demographic, but they don't think they can include enough of the old one at the same time. The problem is with the juvenile fools who will dismiss everything but their prized triple-A as not worth anyone's time and indeed be the first ones to point at the commercials.

 

[Areloch]

Sucks about the captcha error, but I see you opted for sarcasm and falling back into sexist categorizing rather than actually answering my question.

Unfortunate.

Blame it on captcha error deleting my long and thoughtful response.

So, allow me to ask: why is it ok if girls like shooting stuff but it can't be ok for boys liking cutesy stuff?

You brought MLP as an example: doesn't it, again, demonstrate that videogames do NOT need to always be about buff guys shooting to be liked by boys too?

And you didn't answer my sarcastic reply either. Is it ok for you that developers keep making too many stereotyped-white-males-killing-villains instead of coming up with creativity and variety?

Do you consider videogames to be targeted more at males than females? Are you ok with it and think it's how it should be? Do you honestly believe that not targeting white straight teenagers would suddenly make the game industry collapse?

Answer me.

And keep in mind one thing: I am a woman who likes videogames about shooting stuff. That doesn't mean I don't think that it's usually males who like shooting stuff, and that also doesn't mean I think women who'd rather play cutesy games can't have them and have to deal with shooters and muscles.

Ok, why do you keep falling back on the 'boys don't like cutsey stuff' thing, especially when you acknowledge my example of MLP?

They CAN. Keep in mind, however, that people only have so much time and money. If someone has $60 to spend on a game for the month, and their choice is the new Cooking Mama, or the new Call of Duty and they want both roughly equally, other factors come into play that obviously bias the interest toward Call of Duty.

Factors such as more people like fast paced action games than alternative gameplay, if their friends are getting/have gotten CoD already because it, unlike Cooking Mama, has multiplayer, that will heavily bias the decision, and due to it's design and nature, CoD is designed to be played repetitively for very long periods of time, which gives it an initial impressive of having a greater 'bang for their buck'.

It's a lot more complicated an issue than a person standing in a Matrix-esque whiteroom looking at a video game and going 'Ew, that's for GIRLS'.

As for your question in particular, you used "Too Many" again, which is some utterly arbitrary subjective value. I enjoy derpy action explode-o-thons, as do most of the gamers I know, male and female.

Both of my male and female friends, myself included, also buy non-actiony games when they strike us as interesting and worth playing. So from my personal anecdotal experience, no, I don't see anything wrong with the current situation because both actiony and non-actiony games are produced in numbers and types sufficient to appeal to me and my friends, and are doing well enough that the companies making them can keep making them.

As I said to ThatOtherGirl, the appeal of the non-standard gameplay market has only really started in the pat 2 or 3 years, where people realized that weird, doofy and unique games and gameplay have a broad appeal.

One could make the complaint that AAA relies very heavily on safe momentum and minimizes how much risk they'll take, but I don't find that to be a sexism issue. It just means that the broad appeal of those types of games is JUST now becoming known and AAA will move to target that demographic now that it realizes it's there, but that takes time.

We saw this back in the early console game days, where 90% of games made were platformers, because they sold well, were fun, and were 'safe'. As gaming expanded and technology got better, we saw developers take more attempts and unique gameplay experiences and some worked out and some didn't. It's the same thing here. Actiony games ABSOLUTELY sell, but a fashion game might NOT, so a company that's putting tens of millions of dollars on the line up front is, predictably, going to go with the shrewd business option. That doesn't make it sexist.

Hopefully that answers your question. Could you answer mine now? Do you feel that companies should be obligated to take on tens of millions of dollars of financial risks to target niche demographics?

 

[Jack Action]

When's the last time anyone felt empathy over a nutshot?

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

You have utterly missed my point. The point is, a fashion game is INCREDIBLY niche.

...

So again, point blank: Do you honestly believe that if a AAA studio produced and marketed a fashion game, it would reach the same sales numbers as a Call of Duty game?

If I may interject, I think you are right but only because of a reinforcement loop. Basically, who owns gaming capable hardware right now? The people who play games. Who plays games? The people who enjoy the games currently on the market. What games are on the market? The games you describe.

I think that a sold fashion based game could sell like crazy, if the genre was established enough for there to be a strong audience. But I also think that a budget title in the genre could sell very, very well because it is a severely under served market. And any major company could produce it with little difficulty for fairly cheap. They could take shortcuts to create the game cheaper too, like reusing some of the hundreds of character models they have created for other games. The technology for in engine cut scenes also exists (for the runway/display portion of the game) and simply having models walk and pose is easy compared to the elaborate cut scenes game companies are used to making. It could be very cheap to create.

In fact, we already know of one game series that does this. It is created on a shoe string budget, usually only sells a couple hundred thousand copies per game and still manages to be worth creating: DOAX. Except that isn't a fashion game, unless you are talking about swimsuits.

The funny thing is you wouldn't even have to give up the fanservice aspects of a DOAX game. Fashion is often very sexy, and there is nothing stopping the developer from including a few sets of lingerie or swimsuits for each woman. This is a game that could appeal to a ton of people, it is even a proven concept if you include the fanservice to fall back on, but no one is making it.

But I am getting off topic. The point is that if games like this started to be made then people who enjoy games like this would start gaming, which builds the audience, which makes games like this more lucrative.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Hehe, the first challenge is to even come up with a hypothetical example. Some sort of Black Friday simulator is the deepest clothes shopping game I can think of this side of The Sims.

Well, perhaps that's a failure of imagination.

My point is that we've absorbed the notion that a game about clothes shopping will have boring and shallow gameplay, and I can't help but wonder if that's because we assume that shopping for clothes itself is inherently boring and shallow. I mean, is the gameplay concept of a typical first person shooter terribly deep? Not really. You press buttons to move and you click on people to shoot guns at them. The depth in that case does not come from the fact that shooting guns at people is inherently deeper than shopping for clothes, but rather is a feature of the execution. True, we haven't had many good shopping for clothes games, but maybe that has something to do with the fact that a lot of men will instantly dismiss the concept of shopping for clothes at all as boring and shallow.

Another point is that "hardcore" already narrows it down a lot.

Not necessarily. Many games are marketed and find great success on the premise of being "hardcore". What I mean is a game which adheres to the highly competitive, highly challenging, "git gud scrub", time-intensive, genre-based model which male gamers often claim is absent from typical games designed for female audiences, which indeed are often considerably easier to play, lack the highly competitive element, are often abstract games rather than simulations and often don't rely heavily on metagame knowledge or skills (there is a reason why all FPS games have the same control setup).

So my point is really, what if someone designed a game to reflect the core engagement mechanics generally preferred by a male dominated audience, but whose subject matter depicted something not traditionally enjoyed by a male audience. Would male gamers play it? I would say the answer is probably no, which is why such games do not exist.

Women play FPS games, strategy games, action-RPGs, MMOs and other typically "male dominated" genres, sure, but is that because the subject matter of these games is gender neutral and equally catering to both men and women, or is it because those games are the only ones on the market catering to that particular engagement style?

 

[McElroy]

If I may interject, I think you are right but only because of a reinforcement loop. Basically, who owns gaming capable hardware right now? The people who play games. Who plays games? The people who enjoy the games currently on the market. What games are on the market? The games you describe.

I think that a sold fashion based game could sell like crazy, if the genre was established enough for there to be a strong audience. But I also think that a budget title in the genre could sell very, very well because it is a severely under served market. And any major company could produce it with little difficulty for fairly cheap. They could take shortcuts to create the game cheaper too, like reusing some of the hundreds of character models they have created for other games. The technology for in engine cut scenes also exists (for the runway/display portion of the game) and simply having models walk and pose is easy compared to the elaborate cut scenes game companies are used to making. It could be very cheap to create.

I dunno why I'm talking about a hypothetical fashion video game, but whatever . Anyone can whip up a dress up game. If one wants to dress up things, there are lots of games around. LOTS. Video game wise there isn't much more to add except a bigger budget (famous designers, models, other celebrities) or it becomes a pimped out Sims. If you don't get that... are people satisfied with dressing up an interactive mannequin with clothes that don't exist outside the game? What I mean is it seems that a possible fashion-centered game would be most profitable as a casual game by a fair margin.

snip

I'm just hung up on this fashion game, as seen above. I simply can't imagine a legit attempt. A Punch Club -style "Fashion Model Club" would work, but that's still a small game in scale. And of course you could always replace the aesthetics with stuff clearly aimed at girls, but nobody would take that seriously. Okay, maybe a game about girl bonding in which you have a bajillion story branches based on how you interpret you friends' moods? These ideas become so weird I don't wonder why they haven't been made. A game in which you control a teenage girl trying to get popular in social media? That's just disgusting; nobody likes an attention whore after all.

Or actually... An action-adventure game set in an alternate world where people solve conflicts with dancing instead of violence. There it is, folks. A male gamer repellent of the highest order no matter how well done the mechanics are. (I'd still probably play it. I like dancing.)

 

[wulf3n]

- Little Big Planet
- Dragon Age: Origins
- Saints Row The Third
- Beyond: Two Souls
- Heroes Of The Storm
- Skullgirls
- The Cave
- The Sims
- Mirror's Edge (I guess: haven't played it)
- Latest Final Fantasy games

Oh whoops those are all games that sold a lot of copies and were well received.

Depends on how you define sold a lot of copies, for the ones I could find [http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/]:

- Dragon Age: Origins (global, all platforms: 4.90m)
- Saints Row The Third (global, all platforms: 5.60m)
- Beyond: Two Souls (global, ps3: 1.78m)
- The Sims 4 (global, pc: 2.93m)
- The Sims 3 (global, all platforms: 13.6m)
- Mirror's Edge (global, all platforms: 2.36m)

Compare that to the cookie cutter shooter with generic grizzled white male protagonist:
- Battlefield 4 (global, all platforms: 13.75m)
- Battlefield 3 (global, all platforms: 17.32m)
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (global, all platforms: 21.64m)
- Call of Duty: Ghosts (global, all platforms: 27.55m)

And open world shooter with with generic grizzled white male protagonists (and one black male protagonist)
- Grant Theft Auto 5 (global, all platforms: 53.52m)

 

[Therumancer]

The problem with this study as I see it is there is no way to guarantee the people involved with "blank slates" beforehand, and what's more the belief that only one or two play sessions of specific missions could have any kind of lasting impact on the people involved. It's like saying that the oftentimes graphic depictions of sexual abuse in shows like "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" would turn the viewers into sociopathic molestation bombs ready to go off at any second. Even if you focus entirely on the "intense bits" devoid of context, which is one of the problems with the study not requiring these games to be played as a whole and just focusing on "relevant missions" I doubt that's going to have any noteworthy effect.

I suppose if you took the most intense moments of video games and TV shows and whatnot and used them as part of a brain washing regimin over a long period of time you might see people's attitudes begin to change, but you'd probably also need to feed them a steady diet of drugs and reinforcement torture. I mean it's possible to turn someone into a damaged sociopath, but it's not going to happen because of a few missions in "M" rated video games.

Besides which I'd also point out that half the point of those "M" rated Grand Theft Auto games is how "wrong" they are, which is why they are supposed to be for mature audiences. Overall context also matters, since both of the games they picked from the GTA series were ones that set out to be intentionally absurd, coming from the time before GTA decided to be the more "serious" open world crime simulator compared to "Saints Row" which took the absurdity to all new levels.

 

[Areloch]

You have utterly missed my point. The point is, a fashion game is INCREDIBLY niche.

...

So again, point blank: Do you honestly believe that if a AAA studio produced and marketed a fashion game, it would reach the same sales numbers as a Call of Duty game?

If I may interject, I think you are right but only because of a reinforcement loop. Basically, who owns gaming capable hardware right now? The people who play games. Who plays games? The people who enjoy the games currently on the market. What games are on the market? The games you describe.

I think that a sold fashion based game could sell like crazy, if the genre was established enough for there to be a strong audience. But I also think that a budget title in the genre could sell very, very well because it is a severely under served market. And any major company could produce it with little difficulty for fairly cheap. They could take shortcuts to create the game cheaper too, like reusing some of the hundreds of character models they have created for other games. The technology for in engine cut scenes also exists (for the runway/display portion of the game) and simply having models walk and pose is easy compared to the elaborate cut scenes game companies are used to making. It could be very cheap to create.

In fact, we already know of one game series that does this. It is created on a shoe string budget, usually only sells a couple hundred thousand copies per game and still manages to be worth creating: DOAX. Except that isn't a fashion game, unless you are talking about swimsuits.

The funny thing is you wouldn't even have to give up the fanservice aspects of a DOAX game. Fashion is often very sexy, and there is nothing stopping the developer from including a few sets of lingerie or swimsuits for each woman. This is a game that could appeal to a ton of people, it is even a proven concept if you include the fanservice to fall back on, but no one is making it.

But I am getting off topic. The point is that if games like this started to be made then people who enjoy games like this would start gaming, which builds the audience, which makes games like this more lucrative.

Oh, sure, but that's why I've been asking Wyvern if she feels that companies should be forced to try and target those niche genre demographics at the risk of tens of millions of dollars.

We know that those non-standard styles of games have the potential to sell really well if they're done well as covered in my comments before, but it's far from a guarantee, and mistakes at the AAA level are ludicrously costly. So the two approachers are slowly get a feel for those genres as indies explore them and the 'safe' formula is secured, or require them to risk tens of millions of dollars to attempt to drive a shift immediately.

My point is, there's nothing inherently WRONG with the current industry, but it could be made even better with more gameplay options. However, one either needs to accept a slower, steady progression as this stuff takes hold and is felt out over time, or somehow obligate companies to accept severe financial risks.

Hopefully that answers your question.

What I really got from your answer is that you think the current situation is fine, you think there aren't too many shooters and white male protagonists (possibly Americans and with shaved hair) on the market, and you think that shooters and such games are so much the norm that if you create an exception it's going to be "quirky, casual, silly".

I'll give you some names of those that you define "quirky, casual, silly" games:

What on earth are you on about? I never said 'quirky, casual or silly'. You literally just made up an interpretation of what I said and put the words in my mouth and then tried to counter-point it, right in the same post.

- Little Big Planet
- Dragon Age: Origins
- Saints Row The Third
- Beyond: Two Souls
- Heroes Of The Storm
- Skullgirls
- The Cave
- The Sims
- Mirror's Edge (I guess: haven't played it)
- Latest Final Fantasy games

Oh whoops those are all games that sold a lot of copies and were well received.

As @wulf3n pointed out, all of those games, while not unsuccessful, still sold at 10-30% of the generic action shooter games. So that only serves to reinforce my point that clearly more people like action games than less standard, more niche ones. Which is kind of what niche means.

And yes, we also have the good ol'casuals:

- Angry Birds
- Candy Crush

Oh whoops they're games so popular that they're also played by those who don't normally play videogames. Filthy casuals!

And those are completely and utterly different types of games from AAA games. There actually ARE a bunch of fashion games and the like on mobile. So if you're going to pull out more casual mobile gameplay experiences, then the discussion is already over because there's plenty of games for girls to play there, right?

Could you answer mine now? Do you feel that companies should be obligated to take on tens of millions of dollars of financial risks to target niche demographics?

Didn't I answer it right above here?

Imagine if the guys behind Little Big Planet or The Sims had made a generic shooter with a grizzled male protagonist instead.

But sure, more than 50% of the potential buyers is a niche demographic anyway.

Well, no, you didn't answer my question at all, actually.

So here is again, do you feel that companies should be forced/obligated to take on extreme financial risks to appeal to a niche market that MIGHT sell well?

 

[Silvanus]

Oh, sure, but that's why I've been asking Wyvern if she feels that companies should be forced to try and target those niche genre demographics at the risk of tens of millions of dollars.

Any time a game is made, it's a risk on some level, with the lowest level of risk being in a game that apes a tried-and-tested formula with as little innovation as possible. Of course, while that's the lowest level of risk, it's also a terrible model for us to encourage in the industry: the less innovation we have, the more homogeneity, derivative work, and bland repetition. Little-to-no risk, and we have a stagnant industry, especially in the arts.

So, sure, what Wyvern is suggesting is a risk to the bottom dollar. So is every innovation, and innovation is vital if we want anything other than what we've had before, repackaged, and an industry in decline.

As @wulf3n pointed out, all of those games, while not unsuccessful, still sold at 10-30% of the generic action shooter games. So that only serves to reinforce my point that clearly more people like action games than less standard, more niche ones. Which is kind of what niche means.

Must every game be a colossal financial success? Is moderate success not fine? Plenty of creators are happy with moderate success, if they get to actually create something new. This is art, after all.

 

[Silvanus]

For AAA games, yes. This is why all the soul was sucked out of both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises as they became more popular. It's why the DLC for Fallout 4 is a mirror copy of the DLC for Skyrim.

Right; you're saying much the same as me, that that "huge success only" attitude has, in fact, had a deleterious impact on the games themselves.

Just because the studios operate under that apprehension does not mean they must. It is their choice. Either way, any non-AAA studio (or even non-main-IP design team within an AAA studio) still has greater the freedom to innovate.

 

[Areloch]

Oh, sure, but that's why I've been asking Wyvern if she feels that companies should be forced to try and target those niche genre demographics at the risk of tens of millions of dollars.

Any time a game is made, it's a risk on some level, with the lowest level of risk being in a game that apes a tried-and-tested formula with as little innovation as possible. Of course, while that's the lowest level of risk, it's also a terrible model for us to encourage in the industry: the less innovation we have, the more homogeneity, derivative work, and bland repetition. Little-to-no risk, and we have a stagnant industry, especially in the arts.

So, sure, what Wyvern is suggesting is a risk to the bottom dollar. So is every innovation, and innovation is vital if we want anything other than what we've had before, repackaged, and an industry in decline.

Well, lets be honest. EVERYONE wants to take as few financial risks as possible. The point behind my inquiry is that does she feel that it's right to force companies to take risks that no one would reasonably want to take to satisfy some kind of social obligation or subjective personal ideology.

Besides, companies that do well often do branch out and try to innovate on their own, without having a boot to their throat. Which is where my perplexion of Wyvern's insistence of sticking to there being "Too Many" "dudebro action boy-things" games comes from.

And I don't know that it's a terrible model to encourage. I see it as how people have a day job that brings home the bacon, but work on their real interest in the hope of success on the side. Those safe, stable form-games give the companies enough resources that, as mentioned above, they often branch out and try unique games on a smaller scale as well, because they can afford the risk at that point.

Obligating companies to consistently take on financial risks strikes me as less feasible than that in the long run.

That, and obviously the safe, formulaic games are obviously what consumers want to some degree as long as they're done well, otherwise they wouldn't be selling. So forcing companies to make other types of games would be removing products from those customers that are happy with the games being sold as-is, which as also covered before, clearly are the majority.

As @wulf3n pointed out, all of those games, while not unsuccessful, still sold at 10-30% of the generic action shooter games. So that only serves to reinforce my point that clearly more people like action games than less standard, more niche ones. Which is kind of what niche means.

Must every game be a colossal financial success? Is moderate success not fine? Plenty of creators are happy with moderate success, if they get to actually create something new. This is art, after all.

Colossal? I don't think so. But it does have to be a success. AAA games are expensive to make. There's absolutely some bureaucracy-style bloat that drains money needlessly in a production, but it's less than what most people would assume. Half the budget or more for a AAA goes into marketing, but that's because of the frantic need for a success.

While publishers do need to cut out the crap of 'If this doesn't make back 10000% profit, it's a failure', the games do at least need to turn SOME profit. So targeting a genre that has proven to turn back around 10% of what your tried and true games do is unsurprisingly not an appealing endevor.

That said, I think AAA publishers do need to mess around with scaled back developments. We've actually been seeing more and more if it of late, where smaller, bite-sized games are produced from major studios, but ironically BECAUSE they're not the big, shiney bombastic experiences of the main AAA, they also appeal to a smaller audience and thus proportionately less return.

It's exceedingly rare to get a game with low amounts of money funneled into it and get lots amounts of money in return. Minecraft is the mindboggling exception.

Edit: whoops, formatting.

 

[Silvanus]

Well, lets be honest. EVERYONE wants to take as few financial risks as possible. The point behind my inquiry is that does she feel that it's right to force companies to take risks that no one would reasonably want to take to satisfy some kind of social obligation or subjective personal ideology.

Well, I've heard nothing about "forcing". I've heard about criticism, encouragement, blah-de-blah, which is just what consumers should be taking part in.

And I don't know that it's a terrible model to encourage. I see it as how people have a day job that brings home the bacon, but work on their real interest in the hope of success on the side. Those safe, stable form-games give the companies enough resources that, as mentioned above, they often branch out and try unique games on a smaller scale as well, because they can afford the risk at that point.

Do they? Many of them are quite happy not to do so, but merely to pump as much money as possible into the same formula-- making bigger and bigger projects, with bigger outlays and bigger expectation of return-- and then declaring it a failure when demand doesn't increase with supply.

Except they still need to get paid. Indie has the greatest freedom to innovate because for most indie programmers it's not their actual job. As you go up the chain and it becomes their primary source of income, on average in order to succeed they must become risk adverse. Then there's the fact that men and women shop VERY differently. Among other differences on average women are much more flighty with their brand loyalty while men take a much larger marketing campaign to hook. Men and women also, on average, have different tastes in play. The same tendencies have been noticed in chimpanzees in the wild, so any claim that nurture does anything other than reinforce biological constants is a load of bollocks. Thus, those making the game must decide on who they want to primarily aim the content of their game at, and for any larger investment game, males are very much the more lucrative market.

Indeed, but we're not arguing about what the single, top-of-the-market example must target. Market share is never absolute; all companies catering to the same demographic, even if that single demographic is the biggest, is still pissing away potential revenue.

It's perfectly normal (and to be encouraged) for companies to offer different things to different people. They need not abandon the biggest demographic, and nobody is asking them to sacrifice that target for the smaller ones. The request is for a broader net, not just one with different holes; if Wyvern wants a game marketed towards her, then obviously nobody expects a company to forego its other projects; we just want either a different company, or a different team within that company, to fill the gap.

 

[sumanoskae]

Well what a stupid fucking study. There's an age gate on more mature games for a reason. Let's also not forget Jim's video on violent video games. Even though it is mentioned in the video and was originally published on this very website, please keep the warning in mind Jim gives regarding the violent clip. The suicide footage starts at 1:20 and ends at 1:50. Skip this portion if you are not comfortable with it

Anyone who even entertains the idea that violent video games cause violent behavior NEEDS to see this Jimquisition; it perfectly underlines the fundamental fallacy of the argument.

My 2 cents: You're gonna, what, do a survey on somebody and use that as a metric to predict their capacity for sexual violence? You really see no problem with that logic?

Because, you know, the human race is famed for it's lack of hypocrisy and ability to elegantly express it's deep seated emotions. It's not like anybody who has every committed rape has been unwilling to admit it! Right? 8D

There is a hell of a lot more that goes into the psychology of a rapist than spouting off macho bullshit, and there is no way in hell that you can judge someone's ability for empathy by showing them a picture and telling them a story.

Labeling people like that is down right fucking dehumanizing.

 

[wulf3n]

The dumbest lowest common denominator sells more: what a shock!

This just in, Birtney Spears sells a million more copies than the most skilled and amazing jazz performer who wrote and played his own songs.

Is that a reason NOT to make more intelligent or simply diverse things?

Not a reason to, simply a reason why

 

[Something Amyss]

Honestlyk, to the folks here who keep bringing up Call of Duty:

Do you honestly feel that comparing average games to what is generally considered the high water mark in AAA non-subscription game sales is even remotely honest? Because by that metric, companies shouldn't even take risks on most of the AAA market. Everyone should just make Call of Duty. I think we're better off now that everyone and their mother has stopped trying to make COD killers. And honestly, I thought that was the consensus of these boards: that we'd had enough shitty COD clones and MMSes.

Saints Row The Third was, to that point in their lifespan, THQ's best selling non-licensed game (according to their own financial reports). Should they have not made it or its sequel, the superior Saints Row IV (yeah, they tanked before it came out, I know), simply because they weren't getting COD numbers? THQ considered the game a pretty big success and touted it hard. It was one of the first properties snatched up when they crashed, too.

Hey, remember when everyone was incredulous that Squarenix was disappointed with Hitman, Deus Ex and Tomb Raider for "only" selling 4-6 million a pop? I do. I still think it's absurd that these numbers are considered "bad," but they're not COD numbers. Or remember when people got pissed off that a game that only sells a couple hundred thousand units traditionally wasn't coming to the West at all?

It seems like if we shoot specifically for those numbers and set them as a measure of success, then we're disqualifying most of gaming. Including the games "for guys."

My 2 cents: You're gonna, what, do a survey on somebody and use that as a metric to predict their capacity for sexual violence? You really see no problem with that logic?

Weeeeeeeeell, except that's not what the study said or did.

This is the problem. There's two debates going on. One among academics and one among gamers. Whenever one of these studies comes out, it's a case of gamers and/or the gaming press turning them into "games make you murderers/rapists!" and then railing against that strawman and it never seems to end. No matter how reasonable or uncontroversial such a study is, it sparks "controversy" if it finds anything even potentially negative about gaming.

Which is weird, because we as a whole seem to intuitively understand things like cultivation theory are real when it's media depicting gaming in a negative light. Suddenly, such depictions are biased and poison the mainstream against us. This study and its coverage will probably be used as exactly such an example thousands of times.

There is a hell of a lot more that goes into the psychology of a rapist than spouting off macho bullshit, and there is no way in hell that you can judge someone's ability for empathy by showing them a picture and telling them a story.

And there's a hell of a lot more to these studies than the reductive argument that's being made against them. Hell, I'm not even sure where the "therefore, rapist" mentality comes from. I'm not sure why it's wrong for this hypothetical/fictional other group to overly simplify things, but it's absolutely fine to reduce a study on decreased empathy response among people who view sexualised media (neither new nor controversial in academic or scientific circles) into this crusade against video games. That this specific study charts a correlation between identification with the protagonist and lack of empathy still doesn't even come close to My 2 cents: You're gonna, what, do a survey on somebody and use that as a metric to predict their capacity for sexual violence?

They might full well see a problem with that logic, because it's not theirs. However, that's the problem: since they never said any of this, there's no way to know. And since they're not going to post here, asking loaded questions is even less helpful. They might even agree that there's more to the psychology of a rapist, but then, they never address that issue, either.

I'm wondering how many of the people outraged here have actually read the study. Or so much as looked at the abstract.

Or did they just Listen and Believe when they were told they should be outraged at this study because it says...I don't know, the claims have become so distorted it's hard to keep track.

 

[axlryder]

I have a weird feeling that if this article had been trying to debunk, say, a widely reported study of similar quality whose findings corroborated feminist views regarding representation in video games then the positions would be mysteriously flipped here.

 

[wulf3n]

You honestly need to give producers a reason to finance movies like "The Shining", "Duck You Sucker", "Kwaidan", "Brazil"..... instead of making "40 Shades Of Grey", "Scary Movie 6", "Blockbuster Soulless Superhero Film 10"?

You honestly need to give producers a reason to finance books like "Lord Of The Rings", "Watership Down", "Lord Of The Flies"..... instead of giving money to "Twilight", "Pride And Prejudice And Zombies", "The Story Of The Life Of This Famous Pop Culture Figure, Not Really Written By Themselves Tho"?

You honestly need to give producers a reason to finance songs like "The Unforgiven" instead of "Fuck Me I Am So Hot Lolz"?

If so, there really isn't much I can say.

That's still "a reason to"

The why has no intent, it's not about what should or should not, it just an explanation of what is.

Except maybe one thing: a wise man long time ago said, the majority of people is stupid. You do not want to make something that appeals to the lowest common denominator. Do not trust the intelligence of the masses because it's below zero; trust the intelligence of the individual.

The intelligence of the consumer has little bearing on their ability to consume media. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.