Yeah females arn't known to develop all those machismo muscles required for basic adventureing. But if your game doesn't offer gripping, entertaining, and just plain fun alternative activities better suited to your concept of the fairer sex. Then what is the point to playing your gender stat adjusted female characters?
Your the game designer, you have build this complex PHYSICAL biased obstical course for your players to explore. Players have to be strong enough to beat the beasties, even strong enough to open dungeons and withstand magical forces. But then if players choose a female character, thier biggest advantage is then charisma?
WTF?
Can female character have so much charisma that the beasties would rather harm themselves then bare harm to a single hair on the players head?
Can female characters through sheer likeability cause dungeons to spew forth with thier riches? Does being attractive cancel harmful magic?
Of course not. But it should. Then at least charisma would be a USEFUL statistic for the vast majority of the game...And not just used as an occasional key to gain NPC information (that can also be learned by pageing through a game stratigy guide).
RPG human gender differences
Quote:Original post by MSW
But then if players choose a female character, thier biggest advantage is then charisma?
WTF?
Can female character have so much charisma that the beasties would rather harm themselves then bare harm to a single hair on the players head?
Can female characters through sheer likeability cause dungeons to spew forth with thier riches? Does being attractive cancel harmful magic?
Of course not. But it should. Then at least charisma would be a USEFUL statistic for the vast majority of the game...And not just used as an occasional key to gain NPC information (that can also be learned by pageing through a game stratigy guide).
Generally, females prefer to do things that we don't relish as much. Like gaining NPC information. Most of the other violent tasks you mention are "guy things". It's the very reason that gaming is less appealing to most women. Because most games are built entirely around those guy things. The things women are interested in are much more difficult to simulate with computers.
Still, even with an extremely sophisticated dialog and NPC interaction setup for typical females, you'll be missing the flexibility to switch between avatar genders, excluding many people..
- Females that want female characters, but like to fight.
- Males that want male characters, but like diplomacy.
- Females that want male characters, but like diplomacy.
- Males that want female characters, but like to fight.
Quote:Original post by KestQuote:Original post by MSW
But then if players choose a female character, thier biggest advantage is then charisma?
WTF?
Can female character have so much charisma that the beasties would rather harm themselves then bare harm to a single hair on the players head?
Can female characters through sheer likeability cause dungeons to spew forth with thier riches? Does being attractive cancel harmful magic?
Of course not. But it should. Then at least charisma would be a USEFUL statistic for the vast majority of the game...And not just used as an occasional key to gain NPC information (that can also be learned by pageing through a game stratigy guide).
Generally, females prefer to do things that we don't relish as much. Like gaining NPC information. Most of the other violent tasks you mention are "guy things". It's the very reason that gaming is less appealing to most women. Because most games are built entirely around those guy things. The things women are interested in are much more difficult to simulate with computers.
RPGs are developed mostly by guys. RPGs are developed following long standing traditions of useing the same damn combat focus over and over and over again. "Realisam" in RPGs generaly amounts to backpack simulators and anal retentive sword fighting techniques. Its not much more difficult to simulate female intrest with computers. RPG developers are just clueless to what thier intrest is, and how to abstract it for gameplay. This thread is full of proof of that.
Quote:Original post by MSW
RPGs are developed mostly by guys. RPGs are developed following long standing traditions of useing the same damn combat focus over and over and over again.
Yep, and yep. Personally, I don't have a problem with it. But I'm male. I like violence. Or at least artificial violence.
Quote:Its not much more difficult to simulate female intrest with computers.
Yes it is.
Quote:RPG developers are just clueless to what thier intrest is, and how to abstract it for gameplay.
Females are more interested in social activities and deep psychological communication. Such a connection between a human and machine-driven character is practically impossible. It's easy to simulate a realistic and dynamic bullet flying through the air and penetrating flesh. It's a nightmare to simulate realistic and dynamic human emotion and personality. And in many cases, even the best simulation wouldn't work, because the problem is the fact that it's not a real person.
Realism aside, you are making your game so that players can escape into a fantasy world. That is a world that is not exactly the same as reality.
Players will approach your game with a character concept. This will be before they even install the game, they will develop this character concept as soon as they hear about your game (well when they choose to get it).
Now, at this point you have almost no control over what the players will decide on their character concept. The only control you have over this is how you present it (if you show a sword wielding woman on the cover then they will expect that to be a valid an interesting choice they can make). Most of the ideas for the character concept will be directed by the games that player has played previously.
In current games, male and Female characters are usually identical in stats, it is no more than a cosmetic difference. This is what the players are likely to expect.
No, if a player installs your game and begins to make their character (based on their expectations) and then find that that character is not possible (or not effective), this will give them a negative feeling about your game.
We generally make assumptions about a person after about 10 seconds or so after meeting them (even less time). Similarly, we make judgements about a game in a short period of time after running it.
Yes, these initial attitudes can be changed, but not everyone changes, and it takes a lot of effort to do so.
So the way I see it, adding a gender difference can only be justified if the gameplay that that gender difference add to the game can over come the negative impact of having them, and you can afford to loose a few who don't want to (or can't) change their initial impressions. If the difference adds that much to the game experience, then include it, other wise you are making it harder for your game to succeed.
Players will approach your game with a character concept. This will be before they even install the game, they will develop this character concept as soon as they hear about your game (well when they choose to get it).
Now, at this point you have almost no control over what the players will decide on their character concept. The only control you have over this is how you present it (if you show a sword wielding woman on the cover then they will expect that to be a valid an interesting choice they can make). Most of the ideas for the character concept will be directed by the games that player has played previously.
In current games, male and Female characters are usually identical in stats, it is no more than a cosmetic difference. This is what the players are likely to expect.
No, if a player installs your game and begins to make their character (based on their expectations) and then find that that character is not possible (or not effective), this will give them a negative feeling about your game.
We generally make assumptions about a person after about 10 seconds or so after meeting them (even less time). Similarly, we make judgements about a game in a short period of time after running it.
Yes, these initial attitudes can be changed, but not everyone changes, and it takes a lot of effort to do so.
So the way I see it, adding a gender difference can only be justified if the gameplay that that gender difference add to the game can over come the negative impact of having them, and you can afford to loose a few who don't want to (or can't) change their initial impressions. If the difference adds that much to the game experience, then include it, other wise you are making it harder for your game to succeed.
Quote:Original post by Kest
Females are more interested in social activities and deep psychological communication. Such a connection between a human and machine-driven character is practically impossible. It's easy to simulate a realistic and dynamic bullet flying through the air and penetrating flesh. It's a nightmare to simulate realistic and dynamic human emotion and personality. And in many cases, even the best simulation wouldn't work, because the problem is the fact that it's not a real person.
[sarcasm]
That must be why the SIMs failed so hard. Players just couldn't relate to thier SIMs iconic vocabulary and actions.
[/sarcasm]
Here is an idea. If most of your RPG involves combat, then make EVERY stat count for something. If you can't do that then you have no buisness calling yourself a game designer.
Quote:Original post by MSW
[sarcasm]
That must be why the SIMs failed so hard. Players just couldn't relate to thier SIMs iconic vocabulary and actions.
[/sarcasm]
That's a joke. It has one of the most mechanical character systems in the history of gaming. I've played action RPGs that had more depth in character personality. It may be somewhat appealing to females, but the social interaction aspect still doesn't come close to approaching the level of fun that modern action games find for males.
The only real advantage it probably has in the eyes of females over typical games is that it doesn't require them to go out goblin hunting in between the peaceful elements.
Quote:Original post by Kest
but the social interaction aspect still doesn't come close to approaching the level of fun that modern action games find for males.
Using the metric of sales are proportional to fun (also assuming you mean shooters and violent action, not action as in Prince of Persia, if not then i've just made your point for you [smile]), market data would like to differ with you. The Sims2 game and it's expansions have collectively sold more copies (to both women and men) than any other game (perhaps now surpassed by WoW which, incidentally, doesn't qualify as an action game).
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=1230 (data from 2003 so numbers are likely much larger now as it's still EA's best selling series)
you'll also find that shooters account for only ~11% each of the console and PC markets. The action category in the data is games like Prince of Persia & other platformers and such.
http://www.theesa.com/facts/sales_genre_data.php
http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php
You'll also notice that on the top sales chart there are only a handful of shooters. Sports and Sims dominate the individual game sales charts:
http://www.theesa.com/archives/files/Essential%20Facts%202006.pdf
They may be more fun for you, or more fun for _young_ males, but not males in general.
Please post actual data or references you have that support your theory.
-me
[Edited by - Palidine on October 5, 2007 8:56:49 PM]
Quote:Original post by PalidineQuote:Original post by Kest
but the social interaction aspect still doesn't come close to approaching the level of fun that modern action games find for males.
Market data would like to differ with you. The Sims2 game and it's expansions have collectively sold more copies (to both women and men) than any other game (perhaps now surpassed by WoW which, incidentally, doesn't qualify as an action game).
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=1230 (data from 2003 so numbers are likely much larger now as it's still EA's best selling series)
you'll also find that shooters account for only ~11% each of the console and PC markets. The action category in the data is games like Prince of Persia & other platformers and such.
http://www.theesa.com/facts/sales_genre_data.php
http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php
You'll also notice that on the top sales chart there are only a handful of shooters. Sports and Sims dominate the individual game sales charts:
http://www.theesa.com/archives/files/Essential%20Facts%202006.pdf
They may be more fun for you, or more fun for _young_ males, but not males in general.
Please post actual data or references you have that support your theory.
-me
can we all not get along?
Yes I've had a few beers, yes i've gotnone left and am looking for something to distarct me this evening. But lets all be friends? PS I can't belive this post made three pages. Over 13? No, no gender differences. Under 13? Come back later.
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