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RE: Future MMO Prospects - Flickering Ember - 05-06-2014

(05-06-2014, 09:26 PM)Ashren Snow Wrote:  because lets be honest with ourselves; 90% of the female models you see in a game are played by guys.

You're joking, right?

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Zyrusticae - 05-06-2014

(05-06-2014, 09:26 PM)Ashren Snow Wrote: Group A is offended by the lack of "androgynous female character models" so the developers add them into the game to try to appeal to a wider demographic, however they've now aliented Group B because the idea of a non-standard female body is disgusting, or at least foreign, to their sensibilities so they find the addition offensive and are now in the same situation Group A was in before the addition.
Wut.

This is too weird. Since when has a game ever suffered for being more inclusive? I want examples. This whole hypothetical scenario just sounds incredibly, incredibly silly.

The only thing that I have actually seen being offensive to people is the inclusion of a race like Elin, who are basically weird sexualized child hybrids and the issue with those isn't even their bodies, it's just that a bunch of folks have a difficult time divorcing their appearance from the idea that someone's trying to sexualize children. And even that is only a problem because it's so overt - you don't see anyone tossing a shitfit over the inclusion of Lalafell in FFXIV, do you?

Meanwhile, allowing people the option to create feminine males and masculine females doesn't disgust anyone except for maybe the most extreme individuals (who you likely aren't aiming for anyway) because they don't have any of those connotations. FFXIV, in fact, is pretty much proof positive of this - it's very easy to create a very androgynous female Roegadyn (as noted previously), female bodies in general have subdued assets, and some of the males easily cross the line into bishounen, and the game doesn't suffer for it at all. That's because, unless you do the Elin thing, being inclusive only helps you: it doesn't suddenly preclude a bunch of customers who are suddenly SO OFFENDED that you DARED to cater to those individuals who now have options to represent themselves in-game. Who even are these people? What proof do you have that they exist? Even WoW itself flies in the face of such an assertion considering female Tauren, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Goblins all exist.

Also, your statistic is patently wrong. Female gamers make up a considerably larger portion of the MMORPG market than you might think. Also of interest, among male players in general their preferences vary enormously. By shooting for what you THINK is the primary demographic you can very easily exclude a number of players who are unaccounted for. Just aiming for "the WoW demographic" is incredibly silly and self-defeating considering that not one MMORPG has managed to catch up to its numbers; it is essentially a social phenomenon. Excluding players, intentionally or not, can only serve to shoot yourself in the foot over the long run. And, dare I say it, even WoW itself may have had higher numbers had it a greater variety of character models than what's currently available. Since it doesn't, we just don't know.

And come on, really. There's cynicism out there, I know, but to think that there is honestly a contingent of people who are absolutely disgusted by any depiction of a female that isn't completely, cartoonishly sexualized? Furthermore, that this contingent of people could somehow equal or cancel out all the people who are interested in such characters? Come on, man. There's a limit to how much you can stretch my suspension of disbelief.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Ignacius - 05-07-2014

Let's remember that we also have a tendency to skew our own perspective.  I just dropped in to check the official Wildstar forums.  There is a post on character body types and one on their glamour system, but there seems to be a lot more discussion going on about mounts right now.

Roleplayers might care about very finite details in character creation, but for the most part, we're just not that big of a demographic.  In WoW, I used to wonder why they didn't have more customization options for characters, why we couldn't have more characters per server, why they never seemed to give roleplayers anything we could use.  Turns out that things like the transmog and barber systems were just fine for most players' purposes, and I wasn't aware of just how babied we were as roleplayers.  I haven't seen any other game give us dedicated RP servers except Age of Conan, and their RP server was FFA PVP.

It was only when I looked at the realm list that I realized how few of those servers they actually need to house us roleplayers and those people who play with roleplayers.  I mean, FFXIV doesn't even have dedicated servers for RPers.

Maybe that's the sort of thing I would think should be added later if it can't be added now (as well as a fantasia-potion sort of thing).  That might be a major development, but it might be more understandable.  I guess, stepping back from my narrow RP window view, I could understand a developer wanting to spend their limited time resources elsewhere for launch; obviously they need to make a good video game first because we roleplayers can barely keep a decent book series afloat with sales by ourselves.

There's probably less excuse for games like WoW to not have better customization except that they'll probably try to replace the entire game in a few years.  But given how fast they have to get these games out, get them hyped, and get them recognized before they get the big FAILURE stamp, I can easily see why variable shoulder breadth isn't the highest on their list of priorities.  Outside of this forum, I've never heard of a game succeeding or failing due solely to character customization.

And like I said, as a roleplayer, it's not even top of my list of priorities.  I'd much rather have WoW's limited character generator and an RP server than having all these customization options but not having a place to go where I know I'll find RP.  If I was going to pick my battle, I'd say dedicated RP servers are the ground I'd like to win and hold.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Ashren Dotharl - 05-07-2014

(05-06-2014, 10:59 PM)Flickering Ember Wrote:
(05-06-2014, 09:26 PM)Ashren Snow Wrote:  because lets be honest with ourselves; 90% of the female models you see in a game are played by guys.

You're joking, right?
I would never joke about anything as serious as this.

@Zyrusticae, my whole example about people being offended by a non-standard female body type was not anything to be taken literal, it was a relevant example of two different sides of an argument based on the conversation at hand. You could easily replace it by saying that there were one group of people who were offended by the lack of green colored people, so the developed add them, and then there would be a group of people who are offended by the addition of green colored people. In either case they're both a minority compared to the enormous amount of people in group 3, the don'tgivafucks. Most players are perfectly content with just taking what they are given when it comes to character creation, only a vocal few will cause a stink over it.

Most developers will cater to group c because group a will huff and puff but eventually join group c anyways for the most part, which means group b will never come into being. The people in group a who don't join group c will probably never play passed the first free month anyways so there's no real loss there either.

As for the ratio of female to male gamers in MMOs, you also have to consider how many female players also play male avatars. My FC is actually a pretty even split between male and female players, but amusingly enough most of the females playe male avatars and as my previous post would suggest, most of the males play female avatars. Regarding your article however, I can't honestly take anything seriously that uses EQII as its case study and assumes that is the standard to be set for the entire gaming community. It states they looked at more than 2,400 people playing EQII, I don't even think there are more than 2,400 people who still play that game. All joking aside, your article doesn't really have much ground to stand on.

tl;dr: people who make a fuss over this type of thing are sadly a single grain of sand on a big beach filled with no fucks given. From a business stand point, would you spend more time, money, and resources to cater to that single grain of sand when the rest of the beach is satisfied with what you already have? Nope, don't think so.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Naunet - 05-07-2014

(05-07-2014, 11:12 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote: As for the ratio of female to male gamers in MMOs, you also have to consider how many female players also play male avatars. My FC is actually a pretty even split between male and female players, but amusingly enough most of the females playe male avatars 

This is in no way a common thing across MMOs and has more to do with FFXIV's male models not all being steroid beefcakes - the same reason a lot of women play male high elves or male castanics in TERA.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - allgivenover - 05-07-2014

(05-07-2014, 08:48 AM)Ignacius Wrote: I mean, FFXIV doesn't even have dedicated servers for RPers.

Maybe that's the sort of thing I would think should be added later if it can't be added now (as well as a fantasia-potion sort of thing).

While fantasia potions are a safe bet at this point dedicated RP servers are never going to happen. This style of role-play that we enjoy is an entirely western cultural meme - one that's very niche in the west even and always has been - that is virtually absent in east asian cultures. It ain't happening.

Fortunately after having spent so much time in Japanese and Korean MMOs I long ago figured out that the lack of dedicated RP servers doesn't inhibit role-play in any noticeable way beyond causing tiresome arguments around launch time regarding which server to mark as the unofficial RP server.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - allgivenover - 05-07-2014

(05-07-2014, 11:12 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote: As for the ratio of female to male gamers in MMOs, you also have to consider how many female players also play male avatars. My FC is actually a pretty even split between male and female players, but amusingly enough most of the females playe male avatars 

A counterpoint: my coil static is an even split and all of the females play female characters. This is a great demonstration of anecdotes not being evidence in action.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Ashren Dotharl - 05-07-2014

(05-07-2014, 11:23 AM)Naunet Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 11:12 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote: As for the ratio of female to male gamers in MMOs, you also have to consider how many female players also play male avatars. My FC is actually a pretty even split between male and female players, but amusingly enough most of the females playe male avatars 

This is in no way a common thing across MMOs and has more to do with FFXIV's male models not all being steroid beefcakes - the same reason a lot of women play male high elves or male castanics in TERA.
Oh don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. I was pointing out that most female characters are played by guys, and the counter point to that was how there were so many more female players than I was giving credit to, so I countered that with the fact that many female players also play male characters (for much the same reason most guys play girls). More often than not it has nothing to do with gender identity (not to say that this isn't the case some of the time) but more to do with liking the way dem pixels come together.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Flickering Ember - 05-07-2014

(05-07-2014, 11:33 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 11:23 AM)Naunet Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 11:12 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote: As for the ratio of female to male gamers in MMOs, you also have to consider how many female players also play male avatars. My FC is actually a pretty even split between male and female players, but amusingly enough most of the females playe male avatars 

This is in no way a common thing across MMOs and has more to do with FFXIV's male models not all being steroid beefcakes - the same reason a lot of women play male high elves or male castanics in TERA.
Oh don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. I was pointing out that most female characters are played by guys, and the counter point to that was how there were
so many more female players than I was giving credit to, so I countered that with the fact that many female players also play male characters (for much the same reason most guys play girls). More often than not it has nothing to do with gender identity (not to say that this isn't the case some of the time) but more to do with liking the way dem pixels come together.
 Most female characters aren't played by male characters though. As 'allgivenover' 
mentioned, this is all anecdotal. But recent research has shown the idea that there are 'no girls on the internet' is a very outdated belief. In your experience, most female avatars are played by men. Your experiences differ from others' experiences as well as the various censi lying around. That does not mean your experiences actually pull weight in a discussion.

Additionally, it is rather foolish for businesses to ignore minority demographics. The differenceis that there is a vicious cycle in society that places white straight men as default human beings. This means that not only can straight whit men relate to their own demographics but minorities can too. Businesses do regard minorities and are foolish should they choose not to. They just don't put as much effort into targeting minorities because it is presumed that while minorities can relate to straight white men, straight white men can't relate or respect minorities...according to marketers.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Ignacius - 05-07-2014

(05-07-2014, 11:24 AM)allgivenover Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 08:48 AM)Ignacius Wrote: I mean, FFXIV doesn't even have dedicated servers for RPers.

Maybe that's the sort of thing I would think should be added later if it can't be added now (as well as a fantasia-potion sort of thing).

While fantasia potions are a safe bet at this point dedicated RP servers are never going to happen. This style of role-play that we enjoy is an entirely western cultural meme - one that's very niche in the west even and always has been - that is virtually absent in east asian cultures. It ain't happening.

Fortunately after having spent so much time in Japanese and Korean MMOs I long ago figured out that the lack of dedicated RP servers doesn't inhibit role-play in any noticeable way beyond causing tiresome arguments around launch time regarding which server to mark as the unofficial RP server.

It very much inhibits it.  On Moon Guard on WoW, especially back in its heyday, I could literally do a bar crawl around the bars in the major Alliance towns to see what was going down.  Everyone was RPing because we all knew where to start our characters and what forums to go to.  We could also report people for griefing us (and yes, I have actually gotten tells from people whose friends I got banned for dancing naked on tables, so Blizzard really does do something about griefers sometimes) and I knew that, even if people on those servers weren't RPers, they were on our territory, not on theirs.

That's probably a major reason why I'm still RPing in WoW, still going to play it when the new expack comes out, and don't know that I'm really that impressed by RP options elsewhere.  In WoW, we have a place to go that I know, for sure, will be inundated with potential random RP, especially when people have addons like MRP advertising them as roleplayers.  You can't make that assumption about everyone on Balmung or Gilgamesh.  It's almost Yahoo IM Forum-like.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Ashren Dotharl - 05-07-2014

(05-07-2014, 01:03 PM)Flickering Ember Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 11:33 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 11:23 AM)Naunet Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 11:12 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote: As for the ratio of female to male gamers in MMOs, you also have to consider how many female players also play male avatars. My FC is actually a pretty even split between male and female players, but amusingly enough most of the females playe male avatars 

This is in no way a common thing across MMOs and has more to do with FFXIV's male models not all being steroid beefcakes - the same reason a lot of women play male high elves or male castanics in TERA.
Oh don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. I was pointing out that most female characters are played by guys, and the counter point to that was how there were
so many more female players than I was giving credit to, so I countered that with the fact that many female players also play male characters (for much the same reason most guys play girls). More often than not it has nothing to do with gender identity (not to say that this isn't the case some of the time) but more to do with liking the way dem pixels come together.
 Most female characters aren't played by male characters though. As 'allgivenover' 
mentioned, this is all anecdotal. But recent research has shown the idea that there are 'no girls on the internet' is a very outdated belief. In your experience, most female avatars are played by men. Your experiences differ from others' experiences as well as the various censi lying around. That does not mean your experiences actually pull weight in a discussion.

Additionally, it is rather foolish for businesses to ignore minority demographics. The differenceis that there is a vicious cycle in society that places white straight men as default human beings. This means that not only can straight whit men relate to their own demographics but minorities can too. Businesses do regard minorities and are foolish should they choose not to. They just don't put as much effort into targeting minorities because it is presumed that while minorities can relate to straight white men, straight white men can't relate or respect minorities...according to marketers.
Woah woah woah now, let's not pull the race card so quickly here. I never said that the targeted demographic had to be a hetero white male, I just stated that companies determine a demographic early on and focus their design decisions based around that demographic. If the targeted demographic were burly homosexual steel mill workers, then you can bet your ass that the game would be heavily focused on burly homosexual men (or women, I'm not here to judge) who were probably blacksmiths or something.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Ignacius - 05-08-2014

(05-07-2014, 06:58 PM)Ashren Snow Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 01:03 PM)Flickering Ember Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 11:33 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 11:23 AM)Naunet Wrote:
(05-07-2014, 11:12 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote: As for the ratio of female to male gamers in MMOs, you also have to consider how many female players also play male avatars. My FC is actually a pretty even split between male and female players, but amusingly enough most of the females playe male avatars 

This is in no way a common thing across MMOs and has more to do with FFXIV's male models not all being steroid beefcakes - the same reason a lot of women play male high elves or male castanics in TERA.
Oh don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. I was pointing out that most female characters are played by guys, and the counter point to that was how there were
so many more female players than I was giving credit to, so I countered that with the fact that many female players also play male characters (for much the same reason most guys play girls). More often than not it has nothing to do with gender identity (not to say that this isn't the case some of the time) but more to do with liking the way dem pixels come together.
 Most female characters aren't played by male characters though. As 'allgivenover' 
mentioned, this is all anecdotal. But recent research has shown the idea that there are 'no girls on the internet' is a very outdated belief. In your experience, most female avatars are played by men. Your experiences differ from others' experiences as well as the various censi lying around. That does not mean your experiences actually pull weight in a discussion.

Additionally, it is rather foolish for businesses to ignore minority demographics. The differenceis that there is a vicious cycle in society that places white straight men as default human beings. This means that not only can straight whit men relate to their own demographics but minorities can too. Businesses do regard minorities and are foolish should they choose not to. They just don't put as much effort into targeting minorities because it is presumed that while minorities can relate to straight white men, straight white men can't relate or respect minorities...according to marketers.
Woah woah woah now, let's not pull the race card so quickly here. I never said that the targeted demographic had to be a hetero white male, I just stated that companies determine a demographic early on and focus their design decisions based around that demographic. If the targeted demographic were burly homosexual steel mill workers, then you can bet your ass that the game would be heavily focused on burly homosexual men (or women, I'm not here to judge) who were probably blacksmiths or something.
Or, to put it another way, just because you don't like it as a principle doesn't mean that companies don't inherently judge us that way.  And I'm hard pressed to say they're always wrong.  When games are "localized" for us from foreign companies, they take the same demographic information they get from our companies.  Which are horribly out of date and not inclusive (I'm assuming the same thing happens in those countries).

And, according to the games industry, young men play more video games than women and older men.  Our games industry and localization for us are both geared heavily towards that demographic.  In the end, they may be right, in a way.  As Nintendo proved with their Wii, though, and subsequent phone games, the market is bigger than that.  However, the mega-blockbuster video game (and MMORPGs are generally included in that) bank on the 18-34 year old player demographic.

That's not so say that's a good idea, considering the average age of a modern player is 30, but it's as much of a reality as targeting cleaning products towards married stay-at-home moms.  It seems demeaning that every vacuum seems to be cleaning up after kids midday by some well-made-up married woman in advertisements, especially considering we all own a vacuum, it's just where their advertising bucks can get the most bang.

In video games, it's targeted towards a demographic that hasn't been clinically true for at least a decade or two, but who knows?  They may think that if they target young men, they'll get the most bang for their buck as older men and women will still play, but losing the target demographic would be suicide.  I'm not sure; I'm not a marketing exec.  I have a soul.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Kage - 05-08-2014

Not to derail the subject but it's not just marketing video game executives.

I've heard some awful logic and decision making processes behind the merchandise marketing head honchos for things like cartoons and comics.

I usually don't like io9 but here's what Paul Dini had to say about one of the cancellations of a show he worked on and the WTF-thoughts about it.

It's not just that they think/know that the demographic is what sells. It's that they're not willing to change their mindset about it. They want to sell particular items. They don't want to think about marketing to -include- a different demographic; they want to keep that same demographic no matter what.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Ignacius - 05-08-2014

(05-08-2014, 09:40 AM)ExKage Wrote: Not to derail the subject but it's not just marketing video game executives.

I've heard some awful logic and decision making processes behind the merchandise marketing head honchos for things like cartoons and comics.

I usually don't like io9 but here's what Paul Dini had to say about one of the cancellations of a show he worked on and the WTF-thoughts about it.

It's not just that they think/know that the demographic is what sells. It's that they're not willing to change their mindset about it. They want to sell particular items. They don't want to think about marketing to -include- a different demographic; they want to keep that same demographic no matter what.

There's worse than that.  I used to work at a company that had a contract with Starbucks.  I designed them for overseas, specifically Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (seriously, there's a four story nightclub of a Starbucks in Abdul Amman in Jordan I worked on, coffee is srs bsns out there).

Our branch wasn't run by principle architects, though, they were run by a set of MBAs in the back.  They tried to "streamline" us in two ways.  First, they opened an office in Mumbai to try and handle some of the Revit grunt work on the cheap.  Second, they stripped the team down to one actual architect, the rest were all designers in certification and interior designers.  Third, they started taking on an enormous amount of projects, figuring these things would increase our capacity.

What happened was that the Mumbai office never got anything done.  They couldn't retain staff, what staff they retained was ineffectual.  So they always had half the staff we expected.  So we had to handle everything, and there was only one architect to handle ALL of the official stamping and oversight (we were pushing out five projects PER PERSON one week).  Which meant our huge volume overwhelmed the stripped-down staff.  They immediately put us into mandatory 48 hour a week shifts (which didn't matter, I was doing 60 hours a week just to meet the deadlines I had, and there were people staying longer).

A month or so of that, of missing deadlines because of the Mumbai office and having construction admin issues because of checkset oversights, Starbucks decided to drastically scale back our work.  Dried up overnight.  They decided to start laying off staff.  I was caught up in the second round of that.  In the end, almost the entire team quit and left the firm hanging because they were sick of how it was being run.

Knowing business doesn't mean you should run a business.  Sort of the reason otherwise shockingly good developers like Capcom are in trouble right now.  MBAs that don't know games are running the show.

RE: Future MMO Prospects - Zyrusticae - 05-08-2014

Man, you guys are depressing. Sad

I don't deny the often-cruel realities of business today, but all that just leads me to this question: What about all those games that do make a major point of being inclusive (which, I will note, can simply be a side-effect of giving the player tons of control and options)? What excuses do other publishers/developers have for not following their example?

In the case of Western games I can sort of understand because Western developers tend to be on something of an island in that they don't really pay that much attention to the efforts of Eastern developers, but then you compare what Elder Scrolls Online has for its character creator versus Wildstar and I'm just sort of scratching my head at it all. Such a huge disparity. What's going on here?