[MUD-Dev] Girl appeal (was: Boys and Girls)

[Matt Mihaly]

On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> From: "Freeman, Jeff" <jfreeman at soe.sony.com>
 
>> The consensus seems to be that we know how to make games for
>> boys, but not games for girls.
 
> Well, let's see.

> Every year, hundreds of companies sell millions of games to boys
> just like they expected. The sequels perform comparably.

If they performed as expected, 90% of games wouldn't fail to break
even, because I promise you developers don't start out expecting to
lose money, even if that might be a pretty valid expectation in most
cases.

Further, the fact that they sell millions of games to males means
they know how to sell to male gamers. Without showing that these
male gamers are representative of the male population (they're not),
I don't see how you can draw your conclusion that games companies
know what male gamers want.

>> But considering most of the random folk that I bump into on a
>> daily basis don't play any sorts of games at all (and certainly
>> not MUDs or MMO's), I'm not altogether certain we know what sorts
>> of games boys like either.
 
> I'd chalk that up more to the "when I was a man, I put away
> childish things" problem. That's a whole 'nother issue, though --
> marketing to adults without saying "gazongas" -- and is probably
> best split into a separate thread.

So in other words, "When I got older, my interests changed and the
games companies haven't figured out how to make something I still
want to play."

--matt

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