Atomic Space Vixen

So much, so little time (I'm at work and will be leaving soon), so I will address this... 40% of PC gamers are female. That's been established, like it or not. That's not an insignificant drop in the bucket and it's been explained to you again and again why it's good business to address that market, but you don't seem to understand this. That's over one third. Almost one half. In other words, THE MARKET IS THERE WAITING TO BE ADDRESSED! How is this not getting through? Let's look at it this way. Take just the 60% of males who constitute gamers. There is no game that is played by 100% of them. Many men can't stand RPG's, just as many of them get bored playing an FPS or fighting games. Not to mention RTS or any of the sim games. Each of these is a smaller segment of the total players, but developers don't look at the numbers and thing, "Hmmm, only 25% of male gamers play RTS games, so we won't make them." No, even 25% of the market is a LARGE number of players. The same goes for female gamers. Between PC and console games, we make up about a third of all players. You're stuck thinking of percentages and not of total numbers. That still signifies a very large number of players and hundreds of millions of dollars. In other words, it makes financial sense to go after female gamers. And never, ever in this conversation, and this has been pointed out a few times already, has anyone suggested this means at the expense of male gamers. It's like saying making chick flicks there will be no action movies being made. That's crap. Studios know they have to go after as much of the potential audience that they can. One more quick thing that's been bugging me. You've emphasized a few times how MEN want STORY-DRIVEN games. Have you ever even met a woman that you think story-driven games mean nothing to us?

<looks around and up and down to see where the hell we were only talking about shooters/sports games and not RPG's and where the hell I asked for a WNBA game> Strawman argument. Look it up.

It's like talking to a wall, so I'm going to leave tonight addressing this last sentence... Duh. Except for one thing. Judging from the missing content from KOTOR II, the female PC would have had the far more satisfying storyline. But I refer you back to the above quote from Jenna Chalmers who works in the industry, what she had to say about stereotypes. LucasArts would do well to listen to her.

<sigh> I really should give up, I need to get up for work in the morning, but there is still so much to address... You are REALLY hung up on this sports crap, so let's try to put it in those terms for you... No, it's like saying that 40% of the people who watch sports are women, so they should advertise tennis, golf, and soccer more (to use your example). It's like five years ago, only 20% of sports fans were women, now it's about 40%. But some are little girls who like figure skating, and some are grandmothers who like watching the luge competitions, so it doesn't really count! And none of the males are little boys who enjoy watching polo or grandfathers who enjoy watching whack-a-mole! So the number of female fans aren't really growing so the networks would be stupid to waste their money airing tennis, golf, and soccer! And even though the number of female fans aren't really growing, the numbers that are growing are all little girls and grandmothers who hate football because girls don't like to watch football! Jenna Chalmers, a video game designer at software company Electronic Arts, says the video-game industry was not marketing its products to women based on stereotypes. You can think it's stupid and a waste of money for developers, but Electronic Freakin' Arts disagrees with you.

I quoted statistics from three different sources and I've argued over why they aren't pointless. Besides which, I've yet to see you provide anything other than useless comparisons and "because I know so." I don't get how NCAA Women's Basketball and it's popularity or lack of has anything to do with RPG's that can appeal equally to both sexes. I'd say a better comparison would be movies, but then your "men prefer a compelling story" arguement would go out the window (my apologies to men who prefer a compelling story in their movies). There are movies that appeal more to men that make a lot of money, there are movies that appeal more to women that make a lot of money, and there are movies that appeal to both sexes that make huge friggin' fortunes. Once more, my arguement is that game developers would be stupid to ignore a growing female market. I don't know why this bothers some of you guys so much (or how you figure that numbers that show a growing female market somehow don't show a growing female market and how you know better than people who have actually looked into this stuff). You seem almost panicky over the whole thing. I don't want the gaming industry to appeal solely to women now. Why is this getting to you?

Talk about misleading numbers. It's nice that you highlighted the percentages, but didn't bother to disclose the "fine print". For instance, link one and their 41% number. You touched on it, but didn't bother to actually give a number for console percentage. That drops to 28% of consoles are bought by women. Not quite as big a percentage eh? But yeah, despite the fact that CONSOLE games are bigger selling, lets focus on the one that helps our argument and post the 41% computer game statistic. Then link two, here's an excerpt that kind of disproves that the 40% actually represents those who would play RPGs or FPS. "This includes everyone from little girls enjoying Barbie games and grandmothers playing online bridge to the growing number of female gamers who go head-to-head with their male counterparts in the current best sellers." Basically, your precious 40% number, which is supposed to prove some kind of point, includes GRANDMOTHERS and LITTLE GIRLS who only have interest in specific types of games. Somehow, I can't see my grandma tossing in PS:T and having a go at it. But again, you post the numbers without actually posting the "fine print" that shows those numbers are grossly misleading. And finally, article 3 proves that you once again didn't bother to either read the entire article, or just posted the part that helps your argument. But I'll do you a favor and quote yet another interesting piece of information written in the article. "One does a double take when one sees that more women buy computer games that men, but note that these figures are related to purchase

Popular within gaming cliques. Are there really non-gamers who care about that? I quoted three different numbers that were all within 3% of each other, and none of them can be skewed by voting machines with no paper trails and more votes than voters. Figuring out target markets is far more dispassionate than doing political polling. There's that little clause again. It's the equivalent of saying 40% of sports athletes are women so NCAA Women's Basketball should have more publicity, when in reality Tennis and Soccer are the major Women's Sports. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You realize that also means that the 60% of male players includes little boys playing Tonka games and grandfathers playing Minesweeper. You'll have to do better than that.

Please spend the money you get back on a dictionary. The friggin' word is "losing" for crying out loud! How is it possible that so many friggin' people get that wrong? Sorry. Pet peeve.

Don't you just love circular logic? "Most gamers are male so they make games targeted to them and so what if potential female gamers are turned off of the games they won't make games to try to attract them because most gamers are male." And men still have the nerve to say women aren't logical. Anyway, if the logic of trying to attract female gamers to increase sales is a little over your head, let's go after some of the other nonsense with a few numbers... 41.9 % of computer gamers are women. There's that pesky 40-odd percentage again! Not all games are purchased in specialty stores, 57% of computer games are purchased by women. This one has the number of players at 39%, but it's still in the same area. Granted, the numbers are smaller for console games, but they are growing too (I greatly enjoy Amped and the Tony Hawk games, and Jet Set Radio Future). So there you go, a definite and growing market that developers would be very stupid to ignore. But never mind me. Feel free to yammer on about "...the mere fact that it's not changing indicates that, while there may or may not be more female gamers, it's still not enough of a change to make decent money off it," or "...that there are about 9 out of 10 male customers in a PC game store, is representative the market's composition, if only because we see that example repeatedly, if only because it is widely recognised. I have no official numbers to back up my claim either... we are not trying to prove something here, it isn't bigotry or an attack on the female gaming population, it is the farthest thing from it, it is simply a fact," or "Why should a company like Lucasarts (since this is a TSL forum) put up $20 million or so (or whatever the cost of production) on the ASSUMPTION that there MAY be a market among female gamers, instead on concentrating on the existing KNOWN market of male gamers?" After all, I'm sure you did the appropriate research.

More and more women are playing these games, and developers would have to be complete idiots to ignore us. There's nothing like pissing a potential market off to do wonders for sales. We want more than Barbie's 3D Shopping Adventure, and giving us choices as to the gender of the protragonist in RPG's helps (not giving us weaker PC's or fewer and crappier romance options would help too). So imagine how it feels for this growing gaming segment to invest so much time into our characters, our female Revans and Exiles, only to hear, "Sorry, it doesn't really count officially as they are officially male." There are guys here who get it, and they're great, but read through this thread and see how many men still buy into the "you're male so you're the best!" crap they've been fed all their lives. Misogyny is alive and well, so I hope you can understand why we would like the time and money we put into our games could be taken a little more seriously by having no official sex for Revan or the Exile. Or if there really, REALLY has to be official sexes, then at least have one of them male and one of them female. It's really not asking too much. It would help though to have more women working in the industries. I can just picture male developers feeling all "icky" about writing romances with a male NPC, or at the very least designing games with themselves in mind with no clue how to target the other 51% of the population as potential consumers. Doubling the market. What a freaky concept...

Your grasp of history, society, and oppression is flawless! I am awed by your awesomeness and bow to your masculine greatness. I've seen the light and will now admit that Revan is male, but all curvy with boobs.

I saw it and I loved it. The Doctor himself is fun, and the series looks like it's going to have just the right amount of cheese (dang it, I don't want flawless special effects and realistic stories in Dr. Who).

Actually, I didn't know you could have romances until after my last game of KOTOR, and before then I kept switching NPC's in and out of my party. Next time I won't let him out of my sight.

I liked Carth, and the idea of a Jedi/non-Jedi romance appeals to me. However, female players and PC's do get the short end of the stick in these games. Morrowind had a sorta romance for male PC's, Baldur's Gate 2 had one romance option for women, several for men, KOTOR2 seemed to start something with Atton, but it never went anywhere, and my understanding is that even though the romances still sucked for male PC's, they still went further. KOTOR at least developed something almost equal for men and women, with one romance option for each. Game developers better start getting a clue. There are more and more women playing RPG's and the ones that start putting more in for us are going to do a lot better in building fan loyalty.

Actually, on the LucasArts KOTOR2 site, the Chronicles refer to Revan as "he." Too bad for the fans who have only played Revan as female, because I guess gender neutral writing is too much of a pain in the ass.

Which just goes to show how little they care about the fans, and how little they think of women.

It goes both ways. The only movies I can stomach being dubbed into English are Japanese monster movies (Gamera!) and old kung fu movies, because that's half the fun. I tried watching the dubbed verson of Run Lola Run once and it made my brain hurt. Subtitles only. Urgh, the thought of Amelie or Crouching Tiger dubbed... I need to go take a bath.

I still don't get how Peter Noone was involved with any of this, unless Herman's Hermits are providing the music for Episode 3...

Absolutely nothing, it's called Warhammer 40k <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ah. So it's been done. I'm not a big gamer so I've never heard of that game. Is it any good?

is that cheese I smell? " <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I was tired last night, maybe my descriptions were't the best, but [edited out for TOS purposes]. "Asbestos suit" wasn't my best choice of wording ever, but in a world full of fireball tossing mages and dragons lumbering around, fire-retardant materials would be a priority invention. Lasers, phasers, plasters, particle beams, hell, it can be just bullets. What the hell is wrong with taking traditional fantasty elements like elves and orcs and dragons and magic and sticking them in a post-apocalyptic setting? Is there really any need for you to be an ass?

That's the thing, this game would be science fiction and wastelands. It would stick a "traditional" fantasy world into a science fiction setting. Elves with laser rifles driving over glass plains on scavenged rusty motorcycles or in shiny hovercars. Mages finding fireballs useless against asbestos suits, so having to try something different. A complete melding of two very popular genres. Take the familiar and place it somewhere unexpected. The idea of an RPG taking place in the regular world would be interesting, there's lots of room for new and different. I personally would love to see a Clown World RPG (seriously, I've thought about it ("Beware my +3 Seltzer Bottle of Doom!" "No! Not custard cream! I'm blind! BLIND!"), but what seems like just a quip from Hades could be a potentially great game as well.

wait that could be a good idea taking a fantasy setting where magic went dead then advancing it a few thousand years and then doing something with that <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'd be interested in playing that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I really like Hade's idea as well, but I'm not so sure about the "magical apocalypse". In fantasy worlds, not everyone is a magic user so we still see things like bows and arrows, catapults, horses and carts for transportation. It's crude but it's still technology. I see no reason why the technology wouldn't continue to advance because there's still going to be a need for faster travel, indoor plumbing, and warmer homes. Of course it wouldn't advance in exactly the same way as the real world because there is still magic, and why go to a doctor when you can buy a potion to quaff from a mage? So this could all lead to a tremendous clash between magic and advanced technology, bringing about the post-apocalyptic world with elves and such. The PC could be a magic user, a technology user, or someone from a faction that can see the advantages of both. Essentially three possible main quests (or variations on one that would be affected by your choice), maybe have the ability during the game to switch sides. Add in some sort of "alignment" system, but not necessarily "good vs. evil" but maybe choose between someone who really believes in their cause, someone who is just out to gain power in the side that they see has the better advantage, or someone who just wants to survive and will do what they need to do to live another day.

That kind of post is a real brain-teaser. Like, is your apathy so raging that you feel a consuming need to express it, or are you giving a royal edict that says "We (the royal "we" that is) do not care for this game, so thou must not discuss it!" If it's the latter, it must be particularly vexing that the topic has continued.

Except unlike KOTOR2, they are actually adding to the PC version so it may be better. Didn't the guy who headed the development apologize to the players in a letter or something at some point? They could have taken the criticism and improved on the game. Frankly what I played of Fable I enjoyed enough that I think I'll be buying this game for my PC.

I NEED THAT WALLPAPER!!!