What women want.

News & General Discussion
1

The third installment in our gamer girl’s series on what women want in video games. This time, it’s a video. She’s already registered her opinion and point of view, so she put together a panel of other female gamers and asked them their opinions. As it turns out, it may be most of what we think we know about the female segment of the gaming market is wrong.

In the first few minutes of this video the girls introduce themselves. All of them play between 15 (one, on the low end) and 45+ hours a week (on the high end). All of them spend substantial amounts of money on their hardware and the games they play. They play games that are generally considered “hardcore” games such as WoW and Borderlands. However, every one of them self identifies as a casual gamer when asked. By just about any metric used within the industry these girls would be considered hard core gamers, but they don’t see themselves that way. This also means if they were asked to identify themselves on a survey they would have chosen casual gamer as their niche. It makes me wonder just how reliable our data on female gamers really is. And that’s just the first three minutes.

There are some flaws in the methodology of this panel, that I want to point out up front. First, all these gamers are relatively young, in their early twenties. The answers somewhat older women (say thirties) would give to the same questions may be very different. That being the case, we will eventually be putting together a similar panel with older gamers. Also, the audio is a bit crappy, but hey, deal with it. This is the first of three parts that will be posted on this panel.

As I have said before, the big boys really aren’t doing a very good job appealing to this very large segment of the market. The information that comes out in this panel is gold if you want to start expanding your user base with a niche that doesn’t have very much competition at this point. And really, what the ladies are asking for, isn’t hard to give by and large. Hopefully other developers find it as useful and enlightening as we did.

Please, as a matter of courtesy and good form, show respect for the women who participated in this panel in your comments.

http://bit.ly/18qOHFo

2

Why does it matter that they use the “casual” label differently to the industry? The fact that gamers and the industry use labels differently is kind of beside the point. It’s just a label. What matters is the characteristics of the group it’s applied to, and how those characteristics impact what we design for them. The label that gets applied to the groups by either the industry or the audience doesn’t really matter. because it’s just a label.

3

Except if you are motivating the development of casual games for women based on the results of (for example) a survey that shows that 80% of women gamers classify themselves as casual gamers its really, really useful to know that what they mean by casual gamers may be very different to what you expect.

EDIT: Of course if you have details like what kinds of games they play that is more useful, but data about high-level classifications such as “casual” or “hardcore” is much more common.

4

Sure but, as far as I know, well designed surveys should get that high level data about hardcore/casual and so on by finding out hard quantitative facts and using those to assign categories, rather than asking people how they label themselves.

Asking someone how they label themselves helps me very little as a designer. But knowing how they behave, what they want / expect, etc, is very useful. And breaking that down into groups helps me target one (or more) of those groups.

Doing it the other way around would mean that my sister, my girlfriend, her mother, and the girls in the video all went under the same label - which thus doesn’t provide me with any kind of targetable group.

I’m not criticising the video, by the way, haven’t even had a chance to watch it. I just thought the OP’s discussion about labels interesting.

5

Hey Penguin,

Your point is entirely valid and correct. Mine was simply that many of these surveys are not actually very well designed (though some are) and may lead to some unreliable conclusions. Additionally to that, over generalization of the results of even good survey data can lead to faulty conclusions. I think it may be well worth questioning some of the common wisdom out there on this subject.

All that said, the panel is just that, four women with an already acknowledged homogeneity talking about their opinions. I would not represent it as broad based data in any way. However, it does raise some interesting points. Cheers!

6

Thanks for doing this, although I personally didn’t think much of the previous articles, I greatly appreciate the effort you are putting in to at least try to get some quantitative information about female gamers. As such this video (just started watching) is a fascinating insight.

A few comments (i’ll probably add to these as I watch) Like I said I do appreciate the effort you are putting into this and don’t let my comments take away anything from what you have so far achieved. Just if you are going to do this, it would be cool if you can build on the experiences to obtain improved data points in the future.

1. The Production
I know you mentioned the audio has problems, but the constant relatively high pitch whistling sound is so distracting, can you not run it through some filters to minimise it?

Ok so you only had a single camera, but I couldn’t help laughing when you cut to the host asking questions. It seemed so obvious that it was done at a later stage and they were trying to ‘act’ the question. Unfortunately for me it was really distracting as it just didn’t come across as being genuine ‘in the moment’ and brought down the quality of the production.

Actually the whole production really lets this down, with off-camera interruptions, the position of the host, with her back to the camera, the ‘crossing the line’, when switching from the viewing the panel to see the host. The poor framing, audio quality , its almost impossible to hear some of the answers.

I know it s a bit picky, we should just deal with it, but honestly you’re doing good work here, don’t let it down with poor production. Hopefully this is an area that you can improve over time. Indeed I even wonder if its worth investing in a kickstarter or similar to get some funding to do all this properly. I’d be far more interested in funding an unbiased, detail examination of what women gamers what from gaming than the gender war stuff that has been on Kickstarter recently.

2. Data Points
About 5 minutes into the discussion I realised that whilst it was interesting to listen too I wasn’t absorbing the details that the women were coming out with. I didn’t know who was who, who liked what type of games, and lost many other interesting comments they came out with (such as one dual screening games/other stuff on PC). It would be really useful to have some document breakdown of the key points they brought up.

3. People are often poor at providing impartial information about themselves.
This is a really big issue during the interview stage, though one which I’ll admit is difficult to address and most likely will take you some time to work out how to address in terms of obtaining ‘reliable’ data. Its also very likely that this simply wasn’t a concern at this stage, but it is going to be vital in the future.

The problem is of course is that it can screw up the results and data you get. What makes it harder is sometimes it done at a concious level, other times subconsciously. For example a number of the women featured seemed highly nervous during the interview stage (not unexpected, I would be too in front of a camera), some looked as though they were in front of a firing squad or back at school and that giving the ‘wrong answer’ would make everyone laugh at them. So much so that I had to wonder about some of the answers as to the ‘truth’ of them. That perhaps they were adjusting their answers to fit in with expectations, such as how long they played (either saying more or less hours than they actually did) or their use of defining themselves as a ‘casual gamer’. I’m not saying they out-right lied about anything, just in life I think we all ‘massage’ certain data to fit in with expectations. Neither is it as simple as saying they all under-estimated or over-estimated their game playing time, it varies from person to person, their current state of mind, the current environment etc.

I know this sounds overly critical and it is meant to be, but only in terms of wondering how one might get more ‘reliable’ data in the future. Its just something to consider, though I suspect getting such reliable data may be out of the scope of both what you are trying to achieve and what you are able to achieve within your means. Its the sort of thing you really need to find experts in regard to extracting reliable information from people and that’s not cheap.

4. Leading questions
A couple of times the host interjected and appear to be ‘leading’ the person talking. E.g. When talking about what they don’t like, and repetitive, they interject ‘you mean like FPS’.

Interesting Discussion Points

1. Definition of ‘causal’
Interesting how they keep describing themselves as ‘causal gamers’ especially as the other information some of them give are at odds to such a label. What would have been interesting (maybe you do this later) is to have asked them what they define or understand to be a ‘casual gamer’. Better yet ask them why they consider themselves to be a causal gamer.

2. The Depiction of Women in Games
I thought it was interesting that when discussing ‘damsel in distress’ the conversation quickly turned to unrealistic depictions of women in games, but it was really hard to know if it was a ‘big’ issue or not as it was coloured with (nervous?) laughing and they ridiculed it rather than put it out as say offensive’. But then one women mentioned that she was increasingly becoming annoyed with the move to make women in games shorter, because she was 6’ 1" in real life.

It was kinda strange, none of the women seemed adversely offended with the depiction of women in games, yes they identified scantily clad females as being silly, but it was the inability to have a realistically tall women that ended up annoying one of them. Its just odd that she picked out that feature over any other and the question might be is it a problem with not being able to embody certain of your own physical traits in the character you are playing?

It does come up again later though, where they do wish that they could create characters that aren’t as overtly sexualised. Though I’m really questioning exactly what they do want here. They mention realism several times, but do gamers really want to play boring, dull, looking avatars? Is it something that women want but men don’t?

Again it goes to the issue that quite often gamers/people will ask for one thing, but actually want or do something completely different, that people can be poor judge of what they really want. That they want choice, but in the end never actually choose those choices. It also ties into choice and consequence that is brought up, yet frequently gamers will simply reload if they view the consequence as being bad, so in lieu of preventing user saves to avoid this (which can be bad on many levels), the gamer normally changes any game consequences to their desired outcome.

It also brings up a bigger issue as although this is sometimes discussed in the context of games that allow character customisation, it appears at times they want this for all games, but that it hugely problematic as if they also want strong storylines, changing the appearance of a character could seriously cause a disconnect between the character and the story.

Violence ok depending upon setting
Strange that two of the women felt that violence was only acceptable if it happened in a fantasy world as opposed to a realistic world (GTA was given as an example). Not that I think this is a gender difference at all, just odd that people can justify violence based on the setting and that it should be removed from any resembles to real-life.

Flipping the main/side kick role
20 mins in and this is as far as I can tell the only really unique insight into what women want in a game that isn’t also desired by men and even here its questionable. I know I wouldn’t care about the gender roles I play in a game, if they were swapped or not. Though I can appreciate that the abundance of main=male, sidekick=female games may be grating after a while for women gamers. That it could certainly be felt like it was side-lining their gender.

Summary
Ok this is what I don’t get. You claim it was ‘enlightening’, that

Yet apart from a couple of very minor points some of which I highlighted above, there is not a single thing to have come out of part one that these women gamers want that male gamers don’t want. The vast bulk of their replies from wanting dynamic storyline’s, more choice, less repetitive games are frequently and loudly asked by male gamers too.

What’s worse is that these aspects are being delivered already, just not in the typical AAA market, so its not that they aren’t being explored, just that without effort on the part of the gamer, you will not discover them. Sure it would be great if AAA could also make this jump, but as astutely pointed out by one of the gamers on the panel, they can’t afford to take that risk.

There was only one aspect in this first 30 minutes that had any affect by gender and that is the treatment of women gamers in MP chat. Though it should be noted that they aren’t not exclusively singled out, dicks will be dicks to both men and women.

So in conclusion, i’m rather disappointed with this first part. Hopefully the next two parts will bring some new valid information, but at present it just confirms my opinion that want men and women want in games isn’t that different. Just that the current market forces tend to focus on AAA and those games simply don’t present the broader horizons that both genders would like to see.

However having said that i’m also not sure that asking gamers what they want is the best way forward as it often seems to be based or worse entrenched on previous knowledge. That is there may be really interesting gaming concepts that aren’t even on anyone’s radar, because they are so far out of the scope of what we consider games they can’t even be conceptualised. Whether these ‘future’ games will have more of a gender split is unknowable, we’ll just have to wait for the evolution of gaming to get there.

7

While i’d agree the definition as to where these panellists fit within gaming should be achieved through pertinent questions and analysis of the response, it is vitally important to understand why they have described themselves as something at odds with the standard definitions. That in itself could be high enlightening information.

8

Don’t forget that video is only 4 people opinion.

I target female 40+ audience.
I’ve been doing casual games for them for the last 8 years.
I try to read all reviews and there are hundreds of them, but mainly I focus on the negative ones.

What I found is that no matter how cool your game is the sales can vary.
Some crappy games sell real well and some really good games don’t. It’s always 50*50 of any game to succeed.

It’s all a mess: some players don’t like puzzles some do, some players find games too difficult some like more challenging.
Some don’t care about the graphics some do, some like a good storyline some don’t - just want to pass time.

9

I agree for the most part. Based solely on watching TED talks it seems to be pretty well known that humans do not ever know what will make them happy, and that what they want before they have it and what they want after they have it are often really different. So rather than asking people to answer questions which I more or less know that they can’t usefully answer, I prefer to prototype things and see their reactions. While individuals are pretty different to one another, if you put something in front of enough people you’ll still get a pretty good feel for what overall impressions are (hence focus testing being so successful).

But… “for the most part”. I once got together with a group of people who had the task to pick a game to make. We’d all had some time to get ideas together individually and then presented them to the group, who voted on one to make. A wide variety of ideas came out of this, but one in particular was really interesting. A girl who’d previously had relatively little gaming experience stood up and described The Sims to us, in quite a reasonable amount of detail. The surprising thing: she’d never played or even heard of The Sims. Of course that small group didn’t have the resources on hand to even scratch the surface of making a Sims clone, but with relatively little gaming experience and zero game design practice this girl essentially designed the most successful gaming franchise ever entirely on her own.

Unfortunately for her, someone had beaten her to it by about 5 years, but it goes to show that people who’ve got little or no experience in the field can have incredibly valuable ideas to contribute, so it’s worth asking even if 99.5% of what you’ll get back is useless.

Back on the labels thing, I agree with you that it’d be cool to know why these people identify themselves as “casual”, but mostly to me that’s a curiosity thing. The thing is that they haven’t “described themselves… at odds with the standard definitions” at all. Their description of themselves was pretty much smack on one of the audience sectors. They just used a different label than the one an analyst would have used, probably because being in gamer culture and watching it externally would lead you to describe things really differently. Take DOTA players for instance - someone who only plays for an hour a night on weekdays and has a 4 hour session on weekends with a mildly competitive attitude is a “filthy casual” to the player community, but 9 hours a week on just one game most likely doesn’t fit the “casual” category at all as far as an analyst is concerned. And to take the example further, if you asked a DOTA player to give an example of a “hardcore” DOTA player they’d probably point to someone who plays 6+ hours a day and has been doing so for months, and approaches the game with an incredibly competitive attitude. Ask them if someone who just plays Angry Birds while commuting is a gamer and they might even say “not really”.

So why did they label themselves differently? My guess: Perspective. Analysts label groups in a context where they’re compared against all people who might potentially play games, where gamers label themselves as in the context of the other people they actively play games with.

10

Cool story. Perhaps this is the key then, ask non-gamers what type of game they want, so as they aren’t unduly influenced by previous experience/knowledge? Could be very interesting, though I might add young children into the mix too, as they can often come up with weird ideas :wink:

Though i take your point, and that context can come into play, one of those on the panel said she played for 4-5 hours weekdays and more at the weekend, pretty close to that ‘hardcore’ definition, yet she still considered herself as a causal gamer.

For me this goes beyond curiosity as it really looks at odds with how most people might define ‘casual’ (though these days causal vs hard-core is seemingly harder to define than it used to be). Is it because they are embarrassed to be considered hard-core games, is it viewed as a negative, do they not understand the traditional definition, has the term been re-defined in their social circle?

11

Absolutely. I think she came up with the idea because she conceptually knew what could be done with video game technology, but had only played a smallish number of really different games. So when she was asked for ideas her mind didn’t immediately go to the known tropes, because she hadn’t seen enough at the time to recognise that they even existed.

12

A quick side note, many non-gamers don’t play games anymore because they lost interest at some point when they were younger, this happens with many hobbies and perhaps it occurs with females more than males. My brother played video games the same as me when we were younger, then when playing a combat simulator match with hard AI on perfect dark, he kept getting blown up by explosives and he got frustrated and quit. After that he didn’t play games anymore, he saw them as a waste of time. Instead he got incredibly fit, is always meeting with girls, plays sports, has tons of friends and money.

He thought it was dumb to stay locked up in one’s own room playing games that you yell at in frustration and basically become antisocial (even though the game he got mad at was co-op by design). Now consider that females tend to be more social than males, or that their social behavior is very different than males. Ask yourself what effect that might have on gaming. All of these games they described (Except curse of monkey island w/e, idk this game) can be social games. Mario cart, guild wars, these they play with people. When social games emerged, many people got into gaming that previously had no interest, I think that’s when a lot of females got into it.

But this is all speculation.

13

There are people who make an exact correlation between what is happening outside of them and what must therefore happen TO them. Such people are essentially victims of the world, are at the effect of events and circumstances, and their experience changes based on what happens. They rely on something outside of them changing in order for them to experience a change in their self. They require that someone else improve their life in order for themselves to have a better experience. When something supposedly bad happens outside of themselves, they have an automatic reaction to it that seems to equate exactly to how upset they should be based on the severity of the event, within their belief/value system. They’ve given the world power over them to make decisions for them, to direct their emotional life, to determine whether they are happy or not, and they live their life from a space of unconscious reactions and automatic responses. These people are, in the extreme, what I would call spiritually asleep.

Then there are people who have various degrees of spiritual awakening who have come to learn that who they are is not determined by anything outside of them, anything anyone else says or does, or any events that occur. They have a consistent sense of Self and maintain a sense of inner peace and awareness regardless of what happens. They are happy in spite of tragic events, they don’t use the world to upset themselves, and they realize the part that their own choice plays in how they experience life. In other words, they have become aware that instead of trying to change the world to bring themselves happiness, they need to change how they see the world. And that change happens in their minds, completely separate from anything external.

There is a whole spectrum of different degrees of awareness between these two extremes.

The reason I say this is because so many people believe that if you make a game, the game itself contains this tremendous causal power, the power to affect someone, the power to induce in someone a given experience, the power to make someone happy or sad or to do something to them, something that they supposedly want to have done to them to alter their mood or satisfy their desires in a kind of passive way. And we keep giving computer games this same supposed power, as if to say whatever I put into my game, whatever intention I put into its design, whatever effect I want it to have on someone, it will have that affect on them and it will force an experience down the throats of whoever comes into contact with it. And so then we believe that our game is so forcefully powerful at creating an internal experience for the player that it is the game itself that determines the experience, completely ignoring any part that the player’s mind or perceptions or choices or values play in changing how they experience the world - as if the player is completely mindless.

The games that treat people as mindless machines the most tend to be those ones that seek to cause the most impact, be the most intense, the most realistic, the most immersive, the most ego-filled and powerful. We increase the level of this supposed power to effect people hoping that this means it will shove experience down their throat so powerfully that it will overwhelm the player’s own part in the creation of their experience of reality. Or in other words, the game will scream with such ego noise that nobody will be able to resist it’s obvious impressiveness and manipulative presentation and thus all will succumb to its might and prowess. This is all ego posturing of course because the ego doesn’t want people to have a mind of their own.

The fact remains, however, that people are not ego’s, they are spiritual beings with a mind and perspective on reality that THEY choose internally for themselves. They can choose to USE a game in whatever way they see fit. Someone could choose to laugh at a horror game instead of be frightened by it. Someone could choose to hate a cute platform game instead of enjoy it. Someone could choose to see themselves as casual in their laid-back way of experiencing all games, even if the developers of those games created what they thought would be experiences of hard-core intensity. It is up to the player to decide how they will experience a game and there is ultimately absolutely nothing anyone can do to force any experience down anyone’s throat without that person’s mental consent. It is only because so many people are unconsciously consenting to allow things outside of themselves to seem to affect them, that it seems possible at all to entertain anyone or to give them experiences or to sell anything to them. If people were more spiritually aware of their inner truth and were completely unswayed by external stimuli it would be impossible to affect those people in any way that they didn’t choose for themselves, completely disarming all power that the game supposedly has to cause any kind of experience. Ultimately it is up to us as spiritual people to decide what we will use a game for, how we will experience it, what meaning WE will give to it, what WE will see in it, how WE will let it affect us.

So please be aware here that a game, in and of itself, is just a bunch of content and movement on a screen. In and of itself a game is absolutely nothing, has no meaning, no effect, no power. It is entirely up to people in their own minds to choose how and what they will experience when they are exposed to the game, what kind of way of experiencing it they want to have, and therefore what kind of gamer they are. We need to stop thinking that the game itself defines the entire game experience or that you can forcefully make people experience something. All you can do is make an offering and hope that people will decide to use it for a purpose that seems to align with yours, or to see in it something close to what you saw in it. It is purely by accident and agreement that anyone really succeeds in communication at all, given that we each decide our own interpretation of reality. It seems many people have agreed to share enough in common that this can seem to happen, to some extent, but let’s not forget that this is still entirely by optional agreement and not a given. You can never really have a 100% transmission of your original intentions into the minds of those spectators who are looking at your game. You can never speak in a perfect language that everyone will get. You can never please every audience. You simply cannot bypass the fact that we all have our own subjective experience. And you can never encapsulate what belongs in people’s minds into the game itself to do it for them. You can only go half way, present what you hope people will align with and cross your fingers that enough people think the same way for there to be a transfer of meaning.

We’re all going around barking our heads off saying “I’m going to create this magical game which has the power to cause people to experience xyz and as soon as people come into contact with it they’re going to have xyz experience instantly and they won’t be able to resist having xyz experience because they have no say in what they experience”. And then we set ourselves up as these game development heros, swooping in to seem to create the illusion of making people have experiences that they seem to want, even though it’s up to them to give themselves whatever experience they want. And this is what the entire game development industry is doing. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge the part that spiritual people play in the game, the freedom they have to choose to use it or ignore it, the freedom they have to not get it in the way you intended, and admit that we really should not be constantly trying to bombard everyone with attention-grabbing have this experience products. People don’t pick and choose experiences off the shelf and sit there in a dumb passive state exposing themselves to it - well, actually it seems that many people do exactly that but really it’s that many people choose to only give themselves such experiences when they have something external to blame for causing it. But we are all really free and have nothing better than a maybe chance of getting anyone to buy into the illusions we keep creating as games. This is what the real game is - the game of transferring ownership of your own self to other people to let them decide for you what you will experience, and then wanting them to come out with the next big wow experience-generator on your behalf. But you can only be happy when you find joy in yourself in spite of the world and in spite of what any developer tries to force down your throat.

So it’s not really surprising that many women think of themselves as having a casual attitude in their way of experiencing games. Their contribution to the game makes up at least 50%, if not 100% of what they experience. Remember how a good fiction book is only good because of what the player brings TO it with their imagination and interpretation. Where is the game? The game is in the mind of the player, not behind the pixels on the screen. The game is not in the game. The game is nothing.

The game is only in the mind of the player!

It’s no wonder that pretty much no game developer really really knows what they are doing, how to really get the audience to respond to their intentions, how to perfectly communicate an intended meaning or experience, how to be sure that the audience will like the game at all, or how to be a successful game developer. We all have this plague of uncertainty and doubt precisely because it’s a goal that can never be achieved. To achieve it would be to strip the mind from the gamer and ask them to be completely passive to your intentions. You don’t want that, they don’t want that, and it will never happen. Not knowing what to create or how to get people’s attention stems entirely from the fact that the whole game of making games is itself founded on a complete farce - the suggestion that you have any say whatsoever in what other people experience. It’s not true. Developers who seem successful are only successful to a degree, and only so far as willing gamers willingly decide to seem to disown their minds and settle for experiences that others then seem to give to them. Only sheep can be herded. If it just so happens that enough people act like sleeping sheep such that they want others to decide their experience for them, which does happen a lot but isn’t guaranteed, then perhaps you can play this game and enjoy some apparent success - being successful at seeming to create experiences that others want you to give them. But you’re only giving it to them because they don’t want to admit that they are giving experiences to themselves and using you to pretend otherwise. That’s the real game, and once people choose to remember this fact about themselves and reclaim ownership of their part in their experience of reality (which is all of it), that’s when it’s game over.

So enjoy it while it lasts, in an insane world where most people are willingly giving away their power and asking to be entertained, and wanting others to create experiences for them so that they themselves don’t have to wake up to the truth. It’s a game of staying asleep and all game developers are designers of the only commodity that anyone seems to buy - dreams of being disempowered and having to fight a made-up fight for some kind of salvation. The fact is, most people don’t want their dream life to end anytime soon - their game life - the game of life. And we developers only get to peddle dreams to others so long as they sleep.

So give up the idea that you can make a game, any game, which has power over people or which contains all of the experiences that the player will have. No game can contain the experiences that need to happen in the mind of the player, and without the player having a mind to experience with there would be no way to play at all. The art here is to stop blasting everyone with attention-grabbing me me me flash and dazzle experiences, but to instead leave room to let the player play, to let them bring themselves to the game, to let them participate and have a space for themselves to express who they are. Why do you think minecraft is so popular? It lets people express their creativity, to interpret a blank canvas how they see fit, and to project whatever meaning they want onto it. There is joy in that. There is no joy in being a passive victim of a gaming nightmare. Step back and rewind what you keep trying to put onto the gamer and let them be the artistic creator. Listen to them. Let them be.

14

You know, imaginaryhuman, you should consider to become a novelist, or at least a essayist…
Seriously, ever post I seen u wrote its always longer than the book I am reading! :smile:

15

I second that.
No offence, I don’t even read something that big in the forums.
It’s ok if you do a blog though.
But In my opinion in the forums it’s better to keep posts short and to the point.

16

Thank you for your feedback. I am allowed to write as much as I like. Because, you know what, it is through MY writing that I create an experience for myself. I am the audience. We’d all do well to learn that we are our own teachers and to stop looking to get something from other people all the time. I’m not here to give you experiences that you prefer, any more than I expect you to be here to write content that I approve of. If you don’t want to choose to use what I wrote for a purpose you prefer then that is your decision not mine. I think if you would put your preferences aside and read what I wrote you might gain some insight from it. But it’s up to you. This is a discussion about why we don’t understand what people want and I consider myself to have provided some valuable feedback on the subject. I think sometimes people want to hang around making small-talk and casual discussion about things and not really getting close to a real answer, spinning wheels and wanting to just be social. That isn’t my intention. You always have a choice to read or not read, but don’t start trying to think you have any say in what I choose for myself. I’m not the hired entertainment.

btw quoting my entire message and adding a one-liner is pretty annoying :wink:

17

Too big of a paragraph to defend yourself from something no one accused you off. No one said you cant write what you want.

Got to say you rambled a bit too much there (in the long post not this paragraph… not entirely.) Your entire message was lost on almost everyone.

You can write what you want, but you just waste your own time if you do it in a way that will get everyone to just skip it. (And I say this as some one that usually tends to ramble a lot too.) Again: you can write as much as you want, but if you actually want people to read it, you got to do an edit pass and… well get to the point.

18

@Imaginary, I put your long post into word and it was 3 and a half pages at 11pt font. That meets the requirements of a college essay.

This is an intervention.

19

I don’t mind if nobody reads it, but how about I extract some user-friendly points that you can engage with…

a) The real game is one of people giving away what is already theirs (their choice of what they experience) and asking others to do it for them, ie give them experiences.

b) Game developers try to create dreams for sleeping people that supposedly have an affect on people, but it’s up to people how they choose to experience it

c) A game really is nothing but a framework for the player to project/disown their power onto so that they seem to experience something happening to them, which usually plays out in a stereotypical game story of being in a position of disempowerment and fighting someone else’s unwanted willpower in hopes of achieving freedom from the game

d) No game developer knows what gamers want and can never succeed in this because it’s always up to the player to choose what they experience

e) You can’t put all of what the player will experience into the game itself, you have to leave room for at least some participation from their own mind, and preferably lots of room

f) Game designers try to force experiences down people’s throats which denies the fact that people decide in their own mind how they experience and use everything and what they read into/see in things, so you can’t say that someone is an xyz gamer because they play an xyz game - that’s not the game they’re playing in their mind

g) Games don’t really exist but in people’s minds

h) A hardcore game is only hardcore in the mind of a hardcore player who uses the game to give themselves a hardcore experience, and a casual player could just as easily use the same game and have a casual experience

i) Ultimately it is 100% the choice of the player what they experience and has nothing to do with the game developer - it’s only when the player chooses to give the developer power over them, in their own mind, using their own power against themselves, that there is any grounds for selling an experience to the player (and this happens a lot even though it is unnatural)

j) Game developers create dreams for dreaming people, which only works so long as people keep dreaming, and so games are devices that try to keep people from seeing through the game’s lie about who exactly is in charge of their experience, and are used by most developers to try to repress the spiritual awareness of most audiences

20

Why does this strike me as similar to a group of Americans trying to figure out the Japanese market without actually admitting they might need to hire a few Japanese to help them out?

Haha, if anything, this should have pointed out just how large of a gap there is… you are even using the words differently!

I believe great games come from people who love to play that type of game, who intuitively know what they want (because they are the customer), but who can also dream beyond what they have in front of them. Treating this as something as simple as just a few data points and pumping out what a poll says isn’t really going to get you that far (because, well, that has been tried a billion times).

Want to make amazing games for women? …Work with women ~_~