[MUD-Dev] DGN: Reasons for play [was: Emergent Behaviors spawnedfrom...]

[Sean Howard]

"Michael Sellers" <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:

> But interaction does not necessarily lead to competition;

If the focus group is large enough, it invariably will.

> It's really no surprise that more women don't play games, given
> the narrow, achievement- and aggression-oriented focus we give to
> those that reach the market.

You'll have to do better than that. This has been the popular
opinion in gamedev for years, and somehow, not a damn thing has been
accomplished because of it. None of those Purple Moon-like studios
which were created to bring social gameplay and fashion to gaming to
attract a female audience succeeded.

And your explanation still doesn't explain why my wife LOVES Diablo
2 (which I hate) and I LOVE Planescape:Torment (which she
hates). We're hardly the odd couple either. A friend's girlfriend
prefers to play WoW as a Mage (because that is the highest damaging
class) on PvP servers only, while the friend prefers PvE and playing
support characters like a Priest - and he only started playing WoW
because she made him.

No, the things which stand in the way of female gamers aren't even
the games themselves. Go watch G4tv for 30 seconds and you'll
suddenly be ashamed to be a gamer yourself. Especially watch the
Video Vixen or Gphoria awards. They've turned gaming into a social
subclique. You've got your jocks, emos, and skaters, and now
gamers. This channel (and to a large extent, most game magazines
like Play, PC Gamer, EGM, etc) have comparmentalized gaming into an
exclusionary group. If you don't like Burnout 3 or FFXI, then they
make you feel like there is something wrong with you (while they,
themselves, parade around like complete idiots).

Don't get me started on ludology either. A supposed branch of study
designed to bring credibility to gaming by... explaining the
socioeconomic parallels between the stock market and Chutes and
Ladders?

Gaming is a social stigma right now, more so than something like
going to the movies are. We've got adults who wouldn't be caught
dead reading a comic book or playing a videogame going to see
Spider-man 2 in the theaters multiple times. It's not the subject
matter. It never has been.  It's the image.

Other than the obvious (and, I dare say, arousing) physical
differences between males and females, they aren't mentally
different in ANY WAY. A female non-gamer doesn't have any more
special needs than a male non-gamer... the only difference is that
sports have brought a number of people to gaming who would otherwise
have issues with the stigma, and the sports gamers and the guys who
praise Katamari Damacy aren't exactly in the same social
group. That's what we need to do - create gamers that aren't
soulpatch sporting, flannel wearing slackers or drunk backseat
quarterbacks on a couch. Not everybody thinks Adam Sandler is funny;
we need an environment where both sides can exist peacefully.

> When a game that values relationships or immersion over
> achievement (e.g., The Sims) does hit the market, people are
> astounded at how well it does... and then go back to making what
> they were making before.

The reason the Sims did well was the relationship it had with
SimCity, a game which has had a long standing positive relationship
with non-gamers.  We even played it in math class once in high
school, so people get exposed to that game that don't otherwise play
games. The Sims comes out, works on low end computers (larger
audience), has extensive marketing campaign (including articles in
magazines like People and other non-gamer magazines), and has
extremely good word of mouth. Let's not forget the near infinite
number of expansion packs that guarranteed shelf space for The Sims
long after it should've been forgotten (can anyone remember teh
American Idol or Harry Potter expansions?) The simple fact is, they
made a sequel to SimCity which got a lot of exposure and knew how to
play the audience. Has nothing to do with female players.

I don't have the numbers or anything, but could someone who does let
me know if Sims 2 sold even a fraction of what the first game did?

- Sean Howard
http://gamebastard.blogspot.com
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