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Games that have appeal across genders like The Sims do get gender neutral advertising too. So they're already doing that when appropriate.
Jephery on
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I think God of War itself makes women feel unwelcome. All the women in the game exist for the sake of either Kratos saving, sex'ing, killing, or saving, sex'ing, then killing them. Except for Athena, but she gets screwed too.
Its hard to be gender neutral when faced with the fact that its a masculine wet dream.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
When a game genre is first exclusively developed and marketed for men, it should be no surprise when market research shows that the genre "does not appeal to women". Using that result as grounds to continue presenting the genre exclusively for men is just short-sighted. The marketers and developers are willfully trapping themselves into a vicious circle of excluding a potentially significant market.
Sometimes they even do this to franchises that started out relatively gender-neutral, like Prince of Persia.
Even games like World of Warcraft are marketed in a male-centric way. Quite a lot of women play it, but that's despite the marketing, not because of it.
I don't think games need to be developed or marketed for women, or that you need separate advertising strategies for different genders. You just need to use a strategy that doesn't specifically alienate women. I think Bioware is on the right track in making games that are interesting to people in general, and marketing them accordingly, especially with Dragon Age.
I think the problem with this and most in the industry and this discussion is differentiating types of gaming. When I think of gaming, I am thinking of sitting in front of a tv or computer and playing something I purchased or rented or borrowed: God of War, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Civilization, Madden, GTA, etc.
For a lot of women: their idea of gaming is primarily playing Bejewelled or Farmville on Facebook. Or Pogo. Or Popcap games. And by a lot I mean a very significant portion. Yes, there are some women who use my definition and play totally different types of games, but they are the vast minority of women.
Hence when I see a project like this spouting results like this it makes me want to pull my hair out. They need to differentiate between PC/console games and java/flash/browser games. Not to say that the latter are less 'gamey' but you sure as shit market them differently. If my game is the latest and greatest in the God of War series, am I really going to market to women who's idea of gaming is almost completely browser games? Likewise if I have the next viral Facebook game ready to release, chances are I'm not going to spend a multi-million dollar amount on a Superbowl ad when my game creation budget was six figures.
Unless you're a gaming executive who thinks your company is losing money because your games aren't being effectively marketed to women, why is this even an issue?
I find it interesting and a little bit terrible that the most effective marketing for women is Nintendo. With such hits as 'Lose some godamn weight' and 'Look it's pink so it's for you now' - almost literally the exact quote (an advert that got pulled by the ASA for being sexist, this uh, isn't easy to do).
It appears that on consoles, if you want mainstream success with a female audience you need to use heavily gendered an patronising adverts. As deplorable as that is.
It would be interesting if there was a game studio run by mostly women.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Shouldn't the solution be to just stop marketing to men versus women and just market to gamers?
There are plenty of commercials that are pretty gender neutral - off the top of my head, the Ratchet & Clank commercials. They feature guys, iirc, but they are not targeted towards guys. They are targeted towards gamers. I would think this is the model that currently ignored girl-gamers would favor.
Really, the OP seems rather dichotomous. It claims that the industry is shunning women and treating them as if they're different, but then seems to be requesting female-specific marketing. It doesn't really work that way.
I do agree that a lot of commercials are male-targeted, and generally rather toxic. Not sure how to change this from the outside, though. I'm not going to boycott GoW3 because the commercials are retarded, because c'mon - it's GoW3.
ElJeffe on
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I find it interesting and a little bit terrible that the most effective marketing for women is Nintendo. With such hits as 'Lose some godamn weight' and 'Look it's pink so it's for you now' - almost literally the exact quote (an advert that got pulled by the ASA for being sexist, this uh, isn't easy to do).
It appears that on consoles, if you want mainstream success with a female audience you need to use heavily gendered an patronising adverts. As deplorable as that is.
I wonder if the problem isn't that advertising is biased, but that society has trained women to not like the sorts of things that games are about. Blatant sexism aside, showing things like shooting people and stuff blowing up should be completely gender neutral, but it still hits men more than women.
Female authors feel the sting of this issue big-time. There's a reason Harry Potter's author's name is written as "JK Rowling" on the cover and not "Joanne Rowling", and it's not to give that "air of fantasy author", let me tell you.
Not to derail this thread or anything, but I really feel the need to respond to this comment from page 2. If there's a problem with female writers getting into the fantasy genre then it's entirely the fault of the female authors who came before them with trashy romance novels in a fantasy setting. I was unaware that this was a real issue until your comment, but looking at my own preferences I realize that, actually, I do tend to be skeptical of the quality of a female author's work - but I arrived at this point from experience.
The state of vampire fiction should make this pretty clear, and no I'm not even talking about Twilight. Ignoring the stuff that is obviously romance novel nonsense (predominantly female authors there btw) I've personally been burned twice here. The premise behind Linda Hamilton's Anita Blake series is that the protagonist is a Necromancer Federal Marshal in a modern fantasy setting with vampires and a whole menagerie of were-animals. That sounds awesome, right? When I was looking for something modern fantasy and heard that description I was very intrigued and happy with the first few. Too bad by book 10 it develops into a soap opera plot where the protagonist is sleeping around with men with ever larger penises (to insane lengths, I'm talking 2 liter soda bottle size dicks). The second time was Anne Rice obviously. Everyone loves Interview with the Vampire but it's only book one of ten and the later books, holy shit.
Furthermore, this extends to science fiction as well. Browsing my local Barnes and Noble one day I came across the Star Doc books. Doctor with mysterious past runs clinic for aliens, alright sign me up. Over the next few books her exploits and the general plot twists necessary to support them become so ridiculous I end up feeling outright insulted by the author. Something that only Brian Herbert has managed in the past.
I mean, what the fuck is with this bait and switch? This isn't a case of "oh book #x isn't that great" or "the writing gets worse after book #Y", I can generally forgive that. But a goddamn change in genre? Why do these women do this? I don't believe that they just can't help it, do they somehow mid-series realize that men aren't their target audience or something?
I don't think I'm being sexist when my current buying habits are based on direct prior experience. It got the point that when I was reading Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series and the female protagonist gets involved in a love triangle that turns into a 3 way marriage I was thinking "oh fuck, not again", but thankfully things stay on track. That series is incredible btw, well written and continuously more and more over the top, it starts with the premise of "secret agent cyborg is bodyguard to international rock star elf" and goes from there.
I wonder if the problem isn't that advertising is biased, but that society has trained women to not like the sorts of things that games are about. Blatant sexism aside, showing things like shooting people and stuff blowing up should be completely gender neutral, but it still hits men more than women.
Well yes. I'd take the rather extreme position that gendered advertising is symbolic of gender equality, but eh. Even then, in advertising it's almost universally the case that those aimed at men are offered more freedom and generally less stereotypical (like less mind you, it's still one of the most toxic industries in regards to attitudes all round).
This is ignoring the feedback loop present in which advrtising defines what women/men are interested in, which is far more prevelant and insidious then we give it credit for. Ask any five year old in even the most liberal household or areas and they'll already have an idea of what's 'for' girls/boys. Which they then impose upon each other.
Lanlaorn, the problem isn't that the women writers suck it's that you're buying and reading shitty books.
Get some fucking taste and read some Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, James Tiptree Jnr (Alice Sheldon writing under a pen name), Lois McMaster Bujold, Joanna Russ, Mary Gentle, etc. Your argument is terrible and you should feel bad.
I find it interesting and a little bit terrible that the most effective marketing for women is Nintendo. With such hits as 'Lose some godamn weight' and 'Look it's pink so it's for you now' - almost literally the exact quote (an advert that got pulled by the ASA for being sexist, this uh, isn't easy to do).
It appears that on consoles, if you want mainstream success with a female audience you need to use heavily gendered an patronising adverts. As deplorable as that is.
I wonder if the problem isn't that advertising is biased, but that society has trained women to not like the sorts of things that games are about. Blatant sexism aside, showing things like shooting people and stuff blowing up should be completely gender neutral, but it still hits men more than women.
Young males are built for shooting people and blowing stuff up, or equivalent forms of violence. The biggest demographic for any revolving around gratuitous violence will, I think, always be young men. If advertisers decide they'll get more bang for their buck by solely targeting their largest demographic, I have trouble finding a cogent argument against that.
The thing is that not all games are about shooting/explosions. In fact, most of my favourite games don't involve more than marginal shooting and teeny weeny explosions at best, and those games it seems to me should be equally marketable to both sexes. I think you're right; there is a certain amount of social conditioning going on that's driving women away from games by implying they're "for men", but I think that social pressure is coming from the advertising and games themselves. Marketers sell games designed for and advertised towards young men, who as a result are their biggest demographic; because young men are their biggest demographic, they continue to sell exlusively to them; and the whole process continues to propogate the idea that games are solely for men.
Not to derail this thread or anything, but I really feel the need to respond to this comment from page 2. If there's a problem with female writers getting into the fantasy genre then it's entirely the fault of the female authors who came before them with trashy romance novels in a fantasy setting. I was unaware that this was a real issue until your comment, but looking at my own preferences I realize that, actually, I do tend to be skeptical of the quality of a female author's work - but I arrived at this point from experience.
Shouldn't the solution be to just stop marketing to men versus women and just market to gamers?
Except, that's not the way marketing works for most products. Sure, there are some products that are pretty neutral, demographically (diet sodas, say), but most products are, for whatever reason, more or less attractive to different demographic groups. Advertising is pretty tightly targeted based on market surveys of who is the likely buyer.
If your market research shows that Madden football is attractive to guys between the ages of 18-39, you're going to target your marketing to media that also attracts that demographic and you're going to use ads that have been heavily focus-grouped to be appeal to that demographic. If you can pick up buyers outside of that demographic, great, but you're going to use your ad dollars to get the most bang for the buck.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
Not to derail this thread or anything, but I really feel the need to respond to this comment from page 2. If there's a problem with female writers getting into the fantasy genre then it's entirely the fault of the female authors who came before them with trashy romance novels in a fantasy setting. I was unaware that this was a real issue until your comment, but looking at my own preferences I realize that, actually, I do tend to be skeptical of the quality of a female author's work - but I arrived at this point from experience.
This could be/should be its own thread.
No it shouldn't. Saying "Annita Blake and Ann Rice write ungodly piece of shit" == "women tend to write sub-par fantasy books" is a terrible, terrible argument that should never be uttered again.
I think its more that marketers ghettoise women's products because they think men won't want to view anything with even a hint of femininity in it. I can't help but think that this sells men short.
Holy crap is this annoying.
It's like marketers assume everyone on the planet never grew out of the "Girls have cooties" phase.
Young males are built for shooting people and blowing stuff up, or equivalent forms of violence. The biggest demographic for any revolving around gratuitous violence will, I think, always be young men. If advertisers decide they'll get more bang for their buck by solely targeting their largest demographic, I have trouble finding a cogent argument against that.
I find it interesting and a little bit terrible that the most effective marketing for women is Nintendo. With such hits as 'Lose some godamn weight' and 'Look it's pink so it's for you now' - almost literally the exact quote (an advert that got pulled by the ASA for being sexist, this uh, isn't easy to do).
It appears that on consoles, if you want mainstream success with a female audience you need to use heavily gendered an patronising adverts. As deplorable as that is.
I wonder if the problem isn't that advertising is biased, but that society has trained women to not like the sorts of things that games are about. Blatant sexism aside, showing things like shooting people and stuff blowing up should be completely gender neutral, but it still hits men more than women.
Young males are built for shooting people and blowing stuff up, or equivalent forms of violence. The biggest demographic for any revolving around gratuitous violence will, I think, always be young men. If advertisers decide they'll get more bang for their buck by solely targeting their largest demographic, I have trouble finding a cogent argument against that.
The thing is that not all games are about shooting/explosions. In fact, most of my favourite games don't involve more than marginal shooting and teeny weeny explosions at best, and those games it seems to me should be equally marketable to both sexes. I think you're right; there is a certain amount of social conditioning going on that's driving women away from games by implying they're "for men", but I think that social pressure is coming from the advertising and games themselves. Marketers sell games designed for and advertised towards young men, who as a result are their biggest demographic; because young men are their biggest demographic, they continue to sell exlusively to them; and the whole process continues to propogate the idea that games are solely for men.
However, if designing a game for a demographic makes them like it better, and women tend to not be interested in the games that developers are making in general, then why is it worth it sabotage your appeal to your usual customers by going for something more universal? The people who usually buy your games will be less interested, and the market you're trying to gain will also see that the game isn't designed for them either and continue to stay away.
Young males are built for shooting people and blowing stuff up, or equivalent forms of violence. The biggest demographic for any revolving around gratuitous violence will, I think, always be young men. If advertisers decide they'll get more bang for their buck by solely targeting their largest demographic, I have trouble finding a cogent argument against that.
I think its more that marketers ghettoise women's products because they think men won't want to view anything with even a hint of femininity in it. I can't help but think that this sells men short.
Holy crap is this annoying.
It's like marketers assume everyone on the planet never grew out of the "Girls have cooties" phase.
God damn, you guys really don't know shit about marketing.
You think some pansy Dove ultra moisturizing age defying fresh fragrance body lotion commercial is going to be more effective and memorable toward men on average than some Old Spice commercial with a dude on a horse? Christ.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
Your basis for this being?
High levels of aggression in young males is pretty much a universal.
Young males are built for shooting people and blowing stuff up, or equivalent forms of violence. The biggest demographic for any revolving around gratuitous violence will, I think, always be young men. If advertisers decide they'll get more bang for their buck by solely targeting their largest demographic, I have trouble finding a cogent argument against that.
Your basis for this being?
Males, especially young males, are predisposed towards violent aggression when compared with females. I don't understand this to be a controversial opinion.
High levels of aggression in young males is pretty much a universal.
Remind me. Who is more involved in violent criminal acts. Your average Japanese man, or British woman? And we're ignoring the fact that social indoctrination of the sexes begins literally from day one. Oh if only Mengele was here.
Young males are built for shooting people and blowing stuff up, or equivalent forms of violence. The biggest demographic for any revolving around gratuitous violence will, I think, always be young men. If advertisers decide they'll get more bang for their buck by solely targeting their largest demographic, I have trouble finding a cogent argument against that.
You think some pansy Dove ultra moisturizing age defying fresh fragrance body lotion commercial is going to be more effective and memorable toward men on average than some Old Spice commercial with a dude on a horse? Christ.
High levels of aggression in young males is pretty much a universal.
Remind me. Who is more involved in violent criminal acts. Your average Japanese man, or British woman? And we're ignoring the fact that social indoctrination of the sexes begins literally from day one. Oh if only Mengele was here.
You're not comparing like to like. Culture certainly plays a role, but in both the UK and Japan, men (especially young men) are more likely to engage in violence than women.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
The funny thing is that would still be a better ad. Not a good one, just not terrible by every metric. I mean when did we stop advertising video games like movies - you know, by actually talking about the game and it's content?
Well, it's the third (fourth if you count the PSP one) in a highly popular franchise, so I guess they don't really need to advertise it, do they? It'd be like heavy advertising for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm or Half Life 2: Episode 3; expanding your playerbase is always a good idea, but you already know that these things are going to sell like survival rations before a catastrophic storm.
Don't get me wrong; I entirely agree that it's a bad ad, and that games aren't advertised based on their merits nearly enough anymore. Sony seems to be particularly bad about this; it's not awesome because of X, Y or Z, it's awesome because it's fucking _______ so it's fucking awesome, bitches!
As to the OP, I can't argue that the gaming industry and marketing thereof is highly male dominated, and I think Pony's explained at length what's wrong and what needs to be done to rectify the matter.
Seeing more women in the industry and thus having a more balanced approach to game creation and marketing would be a damned start, but that's going to take time.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
Remind me. Who is more involved in violent criminal acts. Your average Japanese man, or British woman? And we're ignoring the fact that social indoctrination of the sexes begins literally from day one. Oh if only Mengele was here.
And?
Do you seriously think I think that all the variation is due to inherent factors?
ceteris paribus, young males are more aggressive than young females. The fact that social effects are involved doesn't mean that there isn't an underlying good reason for the general trend.
Actually I have a question related to this topic: How popular is the Metroid series among women? Samus is ass-kicking and a women, and as unsexualized as you can expect a female protagonist to be.
I know I'm still early in the thread and catching up, but this really isn't the case. In the first game, the big reveal takes place by showing her in panties and a bra (or a bikini, it's so hard to tell with 8-bit graphcis). As graphics became more advanced, it's only become more blatant, and now you've started seeing her in the Zero suit, at times almost exclusively.
Remind me. Who is more involved in violent criminal acts. Your average Japanese man, or British woman? And we're ignoring the fact that social indoctrination of the sexes begins literally from day one. Oh if only Mengele was here.
And?
Do you seriously think I think that all the variation is due to inherent factors?
ceteris paribus, young males are more aggressive than young females. The fact that social effects are involved doesn't mean that there isn't an underlying good reason for the general trend.
We have a wealth of evidence that levels of violence are tremendously influenced by culture. More so then could be accounted for by any minute differences in gender. Which after all are at best vague trends, one would imagine that variance within the genders would be greater then between, yet we clearly don't see that represented. Anyway, there are plenty of sociological reasons one could think of that would lead to us seeing the overwhleming majority of cultures indoctrinating young men into being more violent.
Young males take more risks but are not necessarily more aggressive. Are we making terrible male-driven evopsych statements in here, because I am willing to dissolve all of them within the next day.
I'll start with: testosterone is in no way linked with increased aggression.
Remind me. Who is more involved in violent criminal acts. Your average Japanese man, or British woman? And we're ignoring the fact that social indoctrination of the sexes begins literally from day one. Oh if only Mengele was here.
And?
Do you seriously think I think that all the variation is due to inherent factors?
ceteris paribus, young males are more aggressive than young females. The fact that social effects are involved doesn't mean that there isn't an underlying good reason for the general trend.
We have a wealth of evidence that levels of violence are tremendously influenced by culture. More so then could be accounted for by any minute differences in gender. Which after all are at best vague trends, one would imagine that variance within the genders would be greater then between, yet we clearly don't see that represented. Anyway, there are plenty of sociological reasons one could think of that would lead to us seeing the overwhleming majority of cultures indoctrinating young men into being more violent.
Thats all great, but lets restrict ourselves to the culture they are trying to sell their product into shell we? Seems more relevant than the culture of a tribe of cattle herders in Africa.
There are two prongs to the "well videogames are violent and young men are violent therefore" argument.
Prong 1.) Videogames are violent. Yes, they are. But that has little if anything to do with my enjoyment, or the format. I've never really understood this. I like solving puzzles. Puzzles are frequently presented as "move from A to B while dispatching X with a hail of Y" but that structure is in no way endemic to the format. One of the most beloved games among super-dorks I've heard of is Settlers, a game in which competition is more sheep-based than violent.
In the 1960's, most television shows were game shows. The fact that most television consisted of game shows did not prove that television was inherently suited for game shows in the 1960's, or that it would be in 2010.
2.) Little boys are violent, therefore they track closely to a violent activity. There are multiple reasons to suspect the premise and the conclusion of this. Not only that, but it would be weird to suggest that a culture that began with Pong is inherently driven by bloodlust.
I suppose you could just say boys are just inherently more competitive but that would require somehow never having met a human.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
We have a wealth of evidence that levels of violence are tremendously influenced by culture. More so then could be accounted for by any minute differences in gender. Which after all are at best vague trends, one would imagine that variance within the genders would be greater then between, yet we clearly don't see that represented.
I don't see why this follows.
You would expect cultural reasons to absolutely dominate any inherent effect, especially if you're measuring in absolute rates (which are largely determined by things like level of development etc), even if it was a very very strong effect.
The meaningful statistic here is to what degree the difference between males and females is in some sense biological, which you would have to use some kind of socialisation factor for (which I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole).
From what I remember of my behavioural genetics, aggression is relatively genetic (as measured fairly consistently by twin studies), and there are pretty good reasons to believe that sex-linked differences in things such as amygdala development are not without their behavioural side-effects. Now, the size of the effect is another matter - I have no idea - but the detail that relative aggression levels should be expected to be higher is hardly mad, and is consistent with almost every society we've ever observed. It's also consistent with most of our animal models.
Edit: There are also fairly good reasons to suspect that the fairly systematised nature of most games makes them marginally more appealing to neurotypical males than neurotypical females.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Its hard to be gender neutral when faced with the fact that its a masculine wet dream.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Sometimes they even do this to franchises that started out relatively gender-neutral, like Prince of Persia.
Even games like World of Warcraft are marketed in a male-centric way. Quite a lot of women play it, but that's despite the marketing, not because of it.
I don't think games need to be developed or marketed for women, or that you need separate advertising strategies for different genders. You just need to use a strategy that doesn't specifically alienate women. I think Bioware is on the right track in making games that are interesting to people in general, and marketing them accordingly, especially with Dragon Age.
I think the problem with this and most in the industry and this discussion is differentiating types of gaming. When I think of gaming, I am thinking of sitting in front of a tv or computer and playing something I purchased or rented or borrowed: God of War, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Civilization, Madden, GTA, etc.
For a lot of women: their idea of gaming is primarily playing Bejewelled or Farmville on Facebook. Or Pogo. Or Popcap games. And by a lot I mean a very significant portion. Yes, there are some women who use my definition and play totally different types of games, but they are the vast minority of women.
Hence when I see a project like this spouting results like this it makes me want to pull my hair out. They need to differentiate between PC/console games and java/flash/browser games. Not to say that the latter are less 'gamey' but you sure as shit market them differently. If my game is the latest and greatest in the God of War series, am I really going to market to women who's idea of gaming is almost completely browser games? Likewise if I have the next viral Facebook game ready to release, chances are I'm not going to spend a multi-million dollar amount on a Superbowl ad when my game creation budget was six figures.
It appears that on consoles, if you want mainstream success with a female audience you need to use heavily gendered an patronising adverts. As deplorable as that is.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
There are plenty of commercials that are pretty gender neutral - off the top of my head, the Ratchet & Clank commercials. They feature guys, iirc, but they are not targeted towards guys. They are targeted towards gamers. I would think this is the model that currently ignored girl-gamers would favor.
Really, the OP seems rather dichotomous. It claims that the industry is shunning women and treating them as if they're different, but then seems to be requesting female-specific marketing. It doesn't really work that way.
I do agree that a lot of commercials are male-targeted, and generally rather toxic. Not sure how to change this from the outside, though. I'm not going to boycott GoW3 because the commercials are retarded, because c'mon - it's GoW3.
I wonder if the problem isn't that advertising is biased, but that society has trained women to not like the sorts of things that games are about. Blatant sexism aside, showing things like shooting people and stuff blowing up should be completely gender neutral, but it still hits men more than women.
Not to derail this thread or anything, but I really feel the need to respond to this comment from page 2. If there's a problem with female writers getting into the fantasy genre then it's entirely the fault of the female authors who came before them with trashy romance novels in a fantasy setting. I was unaware that this was a real issue until your comment, but looking at my own preferences I realize that, actually, I do tend to be skeptical of the quality of a female author's work - but I arrived at this point from experience.
The state of vampire fiction should make this pretty clear, and no I'm not even talking about Twilight. Ignoring the stuff that is obviously romance novel nonsense (predominantly female authors there btw) I've personally been burned twice here. The premise behind Linda Hamilton's Anita Blake series is that the protagonist is a Necromancer Federal Marshal in a modern fantasy setting with vampires and a whole menagerie of were-animals. That sounds awesome, right? When I was looking for something modern fantasy and heard that description I was very intrigued and happy with the first few. Too bad by book 10 it develops into a soap opera plot where the protagonist is sleeping around with men with ever larger penises (to insane lengths, I'm talking 2 liter soda bottle size dicks). The second time was Anne Rice obviously. Everyone loves Interview with the Vampire but it's only book one of ten and the later books, holy shit.
Furthermore, this extends to science fiction as well. Browsing my local Barnes and Noble one day I came across the Star Doc books. Doctor with mysterious past runs clinic for aliens, alright sign me up. Over the next few books her exploits and the general plot twists necessary to support them become so ridiculous I end up feeling outright insulted by the author. Something that only Brian Herbert has managed in the past.
I mean, what the fuck is with this bait and switch? This isn't a case of "oh book #x isn't that great" or "the writing gets worse after book #Y", I can generally forgive that. But a goddamn change in genre? Why do these women do this? I don't believe that they just can't help it, do they somehow mid-series realize that men aren't their target audience or something?
I don't think I'm being sexist when my current buying habits are based on direct prior experience. It got the point that when I was reading Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series and the female protagonist gets involved in a love triangle that turns into a 3 way marriage I was thinking "oh fuck, not again", but thankfully things stay on track. That series is incredible btw, well written and continuously more and more over the top, it starts with the premise of "secret agent cyborg is bodyguard to international rock star elf" and goes from there.
Well yes. I'd take the rather extreme position that gendered advertising is symbolic of gender equality, but eh. Even then, in advertising it's almost universally the case that those aimed at men are offered more freedom and generally less stereotypical (like less mind you, it's still one of the most toxic industries in regards to attitudes all round).
This is ignoring the feedback loop present in which advrtising defines what women/men are interested in, which is far more prevelant and insidious then we give it credit for. Ask any five year old in even the most liberal household or areas and they'll already have an idea of what's 'for' girls/boys. Which they then impose upon each other.
Get some fucking taste and read some Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, James Tiptree Jnr (Alice Sheldon writing under a pen name), Lois McMaster Bujold, Joanna Russ, Mary Gentle, etc. Your argument is terrible and you should feel bad.
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Young males are built for shooting people and blowing stuff up, or equivalent forms of violence. The biggest demographic for any revolving around gratuitous violence will, I think, always be young men. If advertisers decide they'll get more bang for their buck by solely targeting their largest demographic, I have trouble finding a cogent argument against that.
The thing is that not all games are about shooting/explosions. In fact, most of my favourite games don't involve more than marginal shooting and teeny weeny explosions at best, and those games it seems to me should be equally marketable to both sexes. I think you're right; there is a certain amount of social conditioning going on that's driving women away from games by implying they're "for men", but I think that social pressure is coming from the advertising and games themselves. Marketers sell games designed for and advertised towards young men, who as a result are their biggest demographic; because young men are their biggest demographic, they continue to sell exlusively to them; and the whole process continues to propogate the idea that games are solely for men.
If your market research shows that Madden football is attractive to guys between the ages of 18-39, you're going to target your marketing to media that also attracts that demographic and you're going to use ads that have been heavily focus-grouped to be appeal to that demographic. If you can pick up buyers outside of that demographic, great, but you're going to use your ad dollars to get the most bang for the buck.
Rigorous Scholarship
No it shouldn't. Saying "Annita Blake and Ann Rice write ungodly piece of shit" == "women tend to write sub-par fantasy books" is a terrible, terrible argument that should never be uttered again.
Please stop the derailing and continue.
Holy crap is this annoying.
It's like marketers assume everyone on the planet never grew out of the "Girls have cooties" phase.
Your basis for this being?
However, if designing a game for a demographic makes them like it better, and women tend to not be interested in the games that developers are making in general, then why is it worth it sabotage your appeal to your usual customers by going for something more universal? The people who usually buy your games will be less interested, and the market you're trying to gain will also see that the game isn't designed for them either and continue to stay away.
Pretty sure we can take this prima facie.
God damn, you guys really don't know shit about marketing.
You think some pansy Dove ultra moisturizing age defying fresh fragrance body lotion commercial is going to be more effective and memorable toward men on average than some Old Spice commercial with a dude on a horse? Christ.
High levels of aggression in young males is pretty much a universal.
Males, especially young males, are predisposed towards violent aggression when compared with females. I don't understand this to be a controversial opinion.
Remind me. Who is more involved in violent criminal acts. Your average Japanese man, or British woman? And we're ignoring the fact that social indoctrination of the sexes begins literally from day one. Oh if only Mengele was here.
Are you serious
Rigorous Scholarship
Well, it's the third (fourth if you count the PSP one) in a highly popular franchise, so I guess they don't really need to advertise it, do they? It'd be like heavy advertising for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm or Half Life 2: Episode 3; expanding your playerbase is always a good idea, but you already know that these things are going to sell like survival rations before a catastrophic storm.
Don't get me wrong; I entirely agree that it's a bad ad, and that games aren't advertised based on their merits nearly enough anymore. Sony seems to be particularly bad about this; it's not awesome because of X, Y or Z, it's awesome because it's fucking _______ so it's fucking awesome, bitches!
As to the OP, I can't argue that the gaming industry and marketing thereof is highly male dominated, and I think Pony's explained at length what's wrong and what needs to be done to rectify the matter.
Seeing more women in the industry and thus having a more balanced approach to game creation and marketing would be a damned start, but that's going to take time.
And?
Do you seriously think I think that all the variation is due to inherent factors?
ceteris paribus, young males are more aggressive than young females. The fact that social effects are involved doesn't mean that there isn't an underlying good reason for the general trend.
I know I'm still early in the thread and catching up, but this really isn't the case. In the first game, the big reveal takes place by showing her in panties and a bra (or a bikini, it's so hard to tell with 8-bit graphcis). As graphics became more advanced, it's only become more blatant, and now you've started seeing her in the Zero suit, at times almost exclusively.
We have a wealth of evidence that levels of violence are tremendously influenced by culture. More so then could be accounted for by any minute differences in gender. Which after all are at best vague trends, one would imagine that variance within the genders would be greater then between, yet we clearly don't see that represented. Anyway, there are plenty of sociological reasons one could think of that would lead to us seeing the overwhleming majority of cultures indoctrinating young men into being more violent.
I'll start with: testosterone is in no way linked with increased aggression.
Thats all great, but lets restrict ourselves to the culture they are trying to sell their product into shell we? Seems more relevant than the culture of a tribe of cattle herders in Africa.
Prong 1.) Videogames are violent. Yes, they are. But that has little if anything to do with my enjoyment, or the format. I've never really understood this. I like solving puzzles. Puzzles are frequently presented as "move from A to B while dispatching X with a hail of Y" but that structure is in no way endemic to the format. One of the most beloved games among super-dorks I've heard of is Settlers, a game in which competition is more sheep-based than violent.
In the 1960's, most television shows were game shows. The fact that most television consisted of game shows did not prove that television was inherently suited for game shows in the 1960's, or that it would be in 2010.
2.) Little boys are violent, therefore they track closely to a violent activity. There are multiple reasons to suspect the premise and the conclusion of this. Not only that, but it would be weird to suggest that a culture that began with Pong is inherently driven by bloodlust.
I suppose you could just say boys are just inherently more competitive but that would require somehow never having met a human.
I don't see why this follows.
You would expect cultural reasons to absolutely dominate any inherent effect, especially if you're measuring in absolute rates (which are largely determined by things like level of development etc), even if it was a very very strong effect.
The meaningful statistic here is to what degree the difference between males and females is in some sense biological, which you would have to use some kind of socialisation factor for (which I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole).
From what I remember of my behavioural genetics, aggression is relatively genetic (as measured fairly consistently by twin studies), and there are pretty good reasons to believe that sex-linked differences in things such as amygdala development are not without their behavioural side-effects. Now, the size of the effect is another matter - I have no idea - but the detail that relative aggression levels should be expected to be higher is hardly mad, and is consistent with almost every society we've ever observed. It's also consistent with most of our animal models.
Edit: There are also fairly good reasons to suspect that the fairly systematised nature of most games makes them marginally more appealing to neurotypical males than neurotypical females.
I fail to see how comparing Japanese men to British women isn't a false dichotomy.