They tried that. It was called Purple Moon, and it failed miserably. Not merely because their flagship game, Rockett's New School, was a lame game based on stereotypes of schoolgirl popularity politics, but also because those same female politics tore the company apart.
There are lots of games out there that appeal to girls. However the successful ones are not explicitly aimed at girls. Animal Crossing is hugely popular with girls, but it wasn't designed as a "girl game". Same with The Sims and the Harvest Moon series. Make a game that isn't violent and focused on goals, and girls will buy it. Try to "empower girls" and you will fail.
"They'll never admit it because they love to complain about silly stuff like this but girls LIKE being a super sexy big breasted girl."
Right, they like being hot. They don't want other female characters in the game to be hot. That's the issue. Women are competetive and catty. It's not that they don't want to play hot characters, it's that all of the women in games are hot, not just the one they're playing. If you want to attract female gamers, make the player models hot and the NPC models plain.
The Photoshop history dialog is pretty sweet. It lists everything you've done, and you just click on an element to go back to that point. The only thing that annoys me is that ctl-z is a one-level undo unrelated to the history.
There's definitely value in a standard interface, though. Even if there's a bit of a learning curve before people understand what a file menu is and what saving means, once they do learn that they can apply it to all of their applications. That makes the learning curve on a new application much less steep. Even if the only thing on the file menue is "Exit", that's still where 95% of users expect Exit to be, so there's value in putting it there.
Sure, you could design a UI from scratch that is "more intuitive", but that doesn't mean it will be easier for novice users. They will have to un-learn all the stuff they already know about computers. You get that even just with the Mac. I know for a fact that my mom would be way better off with a Mac, but she uses Windows at work and is reasonably comfortable with it. Comfortable enough that she finds the Mac scary and weird.
(Of course, there's also the issue that I don't know enough to provide phone support on OSX.)
I suspect this is more a case that the article is mis-interpretting the results, rather than that the study itself was flawed. For example, it found that gamers showed less reaction to "violent" images. That makes perfect sense to me. I mean, what is Soldier of Fortune 2 except a series of violent images? It's bound to wear out your aversion reflex.
The other part of the study was getting them to play games against people in other rooms and afterward the winner could send a noise to the loser. Sounds like a small-scale model of online gaming to me. In the culture of online games, mocking your victim is pretty much accepted. So it's no surprise the people who are part of that culture would exhibit that behaviour more than people who aren't. Any link between that and other antisocial or aggressive behaviour is pure supposition.
Actually, it's the opposite. The move to HDTV means games have to have higher resolution textures, which takes more time. Higher poly-counts on the models takes more time. Sure, you could write really sloppy, non-optimized code for a SNES game and it would run like buttered lightning on a 360. But it would look like a SNES game. People would not buy that game. If you make a game for the 360, they expect it to look better than the same game on XBox 1. Even if the game itself is identical except for the graphics, it will take longer to make on the 360.
Funny you should mention PGR3. I've been hearing from various people that it actually looks worse than PGR2. Specifically, the trees. Which underscores the point: bigger numbers != better games, or even better looking games. Despite coming out on the lowly GameCube, Resident Evil 4 is far and away the best game of this console generation.
"Also, if you own a computer, patching, getting new drivers, defragging your harddrive, etc. is something you should be doing anyway, whether or not you play games."
Nonsense. I was a PC gamer exclusively for years, now I've mostly gone console. (Ironically, for this thread, the only current gen console I don't own is the XBox.) Since I stopped playing games on my PC I haven't had to upgrade it or update any drivers, and it's been rock solid. Then I played Civ IV and all of a sudden it's crashing to desktop, spontaneously rebooting, hanging, not to mention all the in-game glitches. Two days of trouble-shooting later and I'm able to play, but even with the patch it still crashes every other day or so.
My machine is barely above the minimum requirements for Civ IV. However, it's more than powerful enough to run all my other apps. There's no reason to upgrade for anything other than games. The latest version of InDesign doesn't require a 3GHz processor or a 256MB video card.
"I know that MS lost 4 billion over the life of the X-Box, I wonder what the fina take will be on the GameCube. Despite being a disappointment for Nintendo (but not for me, I love my GC), I bet it was still made more than X-Box.."
I don't really get what you're wondering about. The XBox lost $4 billion over its life cycle, the Gamecube made money. So yes, it made more than the XBox, because it didn't lose money.
As such I'm not sure that the GameCube was a disappointment for Nintendo. First of all because they have made a profit every single quarter of its release. Secondly, the Gamecube is only about 5% behind the XBox in worldwide install base. XBox is way ahead in North America, but Nintendo is a Japanese company. They are in no way irrelevant or niche, like a NeoGeo or nGage.
Exactly. Games like Grand Theft Auto 3, Mario 64 and Dune 2 are all technically sequels, but they were also revolutionary games which created new genres. Resident Evil 4 and Civilization IV are both sequels, but they're also by far the best games in their respective series and contenders for Game of the Year.
A lot of games take a few iterations to really get everything right. For example: Pikmin 2, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Master of Orion 2 and Space Empires IV. However, what people don't want is a few cosmetic changes and levels with a full-game price tag, like the EA Sports games and Rollercoaster Tycoon 2.
Some of them may not have played Madden, but some of them have played both Madden and the NFL 2K series and know exactly what they're talking about. Specifically, the running game.
Yeah, everyone gets hung up on the fact that Uwe Boll makes crap movies about games, rather than just that he makes crap movies, period. He would fail at any genre he tried. He just chose videogames because, as Tycho of PA posits, he hates them.
There have been games with innovative style. The problem is that gameplay is king, and visuals only add something if the gameplay is good. For example, XIII had fairly stylized graphics, but the game sucked and therefor nobody copies it.
There are already X rated games out there. I think what needs to happen is that the games actually become more adult. Currently, "adult" games are actually very juvenile. There are variations on strip poker like BMX XXX where you play an unrelated minigame to try to see a woman naked. There are CYOA dialog driven games where you try to pick the right thing to say to get women into bed. And then there are the sex simulations games, which if they got realistic enough might work as porn.
What I want to see are RPGs where the main character is an adult, and if you want to romance a woman there's more to it than just repeating the same compliments or giving her cheap trinkets until she gets all weak in the knees. I want the option to be genuinely considerate and build a lasting relationship, or to lie about myself and have a series of one-night stands. And if I choose the latter, I want to have a psycho ex stalk me and torch my car.
Based on your comments, I would guess you're ignoring Nintendo. You're hamstringing yourself by doing so. The Revolution controller will create entire new genres of games that we've never played before, and add new twists to existing genres. It will likely lead to RTS's being viable on a console for the first time ever.
Obviously, Nintendo is not the market leader and doesn't really want to be. The success of the Revolution will not stop the crash if the PS3 and 360 both tank. Which could very well happen, because I completely agree with you that there has never been a less compelling next generation. That's just the business side. For gamers, the future isn't that dim. There are a lot of neat things emerging on the DS, and I expect the same to happen with the Revolution. Sure, Madden '06 isn't worth buying, but if you want to play football just load up 2K5. That's what I do.
The XBox and PS lines are going to suffer from the same thing that's killing PC gaming: genre fatigue. The latest iterations in established genres are going to become less and less compelling. That doesn't mean gaming is dying. It just means you need to try out something new.
You're being glib about it, but I really think this is where television needs to go. Why should I have to set my Tivo or computer to "record" a show onto my harddrive at a specific time? The shows are floating around on the net in near-DVD quality with no commercials. I don't need something that records off my analog cable signal, I just need something that downloads and plays.
Funny you should mention griefing, since the only thing I really know about Eve is that it provided the backdrop for the greatest scam ever in a MMOG. ALso, I think something you implied but should be spelled out is that the game doesn't just emphasise PvP, but unbalanced PvP. The reason the game is unfun isn't that there's a lot of PvP, it's that the outcome of most PvP battles are predetermined based on the skills of the character and the ship they own. It may be realistic, but it's not fun.
Yup. It's all well and good to have variable "weights" to the keys, but at the end of the day it's a blank keyboard that is kinda neat, but not 2.5x-the-price neat.
There have been games in the recent generation that had system requirements: Crystal Chronicles and the GBA/link cable, various online games that required a network adapter and in some cases an external harddrive. Any of the EyeToy games.
I doubt that a lot of games will require the HDD, and certainly nobody is going to require the headset. More likely games will work on both systems but it will run faster (with caching) or have free updates if you have a HDD.
Slashdot Mirror
Beyond Good & Evil.
They tried that. It was called Purple Moon, and it failed miserably. Not merely because their flagship game, Rockett's New School, was a lame game based on stereotypes of schoolgirl popularity politics, but also because those same female politics tore the company apart.
There are lots of games out there that appeal to girls. However the successful ones are not explicitly aimed at girls. Animal Crossing is hugely popular with girls, but it wasn't designed as a "girl game". Same with The Sims and the Harvest Moon series. Make a game that isn't violent and focused on goals, and girls will buy it. Try to "empower girls" and you will fail.
That article appears to have been written before the PSP was released. IE before the DS trounced the PSP in total sales.
The Photoshop history dialog is pretty sweet. It lists everything you've done, and you just click on an element to go back to that point. The only thing that annoys me is that ctl-z is a one-level undo unrelated to the history.
There's definitely value in a standard interface, though. Even if there's a bit of a learning curve before people understand what a file menu is and what saving means, once they do learn that they can apply it to all of their applications. That makes the learning curve on a new application much less steep. Even if the only thing on the file menue is "Exit", that's still where 95% of users expect Exit to be, so there's value in putting it there.
Sure, you could design a UI from scratch that is "more intuitive", but that doesn't mean it will be easier for novice users. They will have to un-learn all the stuff they already know about computers. You get that even just with the Mac. I know for a fact that my mom would be way better off with a Mac, but she uses Windows at work and is reasonably comfortable with it. Comfortable enough that she finds the Mac scary and weird.
(Of course, there's also the issue that I don't know enough to provide phone support on OSX.)
I suspect this is more a case that the article is mis-interpretting the results, rather than that the study itself was flawed. For example, it found that gamers showed less reaction to "violent" images. That makes perfect sense to me. I mean, what is Soldier of Fortune 2 except a series of violent images? It's bound to wear out your aversion reflex.
The other part of the study was getting them to play games against people in other rooms and afterward the winner could send a noise to the loser. Sounds like a small-scale model of online gaming to me. In the culture of online games, mocking your victim is pretty much accepted. So it's no surprise the people who are part of that culture would exhibit that behaviour more than people who aren't. Any link between that and other antisocial or aggressive behaviour is pure supposition.
Actually, it's the opposite. The move to HDTV means games have to have higher resolution textures, which takes more time. Higher poly-counts on the models takes more time. Sure, you could write really sloppy, non-optimized code for a SNES game and it would run like buttered lightning on a 360. But it would look like a SNES game. People would not buy that game. If you make a game for the 360, they expect it to look better than the same game on XBox 1. Even if the game itself is identical except for the graphics, it will take longer to make on the 360.
Funny you should mention PGR3. I've been hearing from various people that it actually looks worse than PGR2. Specifically, the trees. Which underscores the point: bigger numbers != better games, or even better looking games. Despite coming out on the lowly GameCube, Resident Evil 4 is far and away the best game of this console generation.
Right, because it's the victims who will gang up.
My machine is barely above the minimum requirements for Civ IV. However, it's more than powerful enough to run all my other apps. There's no reason to upgrade for anything other than games. The latest version of InDesign doesn't require a 3GHz processor or a 256MB video card.
Exactly. These women don't need a support group, they need a hobby.
As such I'm not sure that the GameCube was a disappointment for Nintendo. First of all because they have made a profit every single quarter of its release. Secondly, the Gamecube is only about 5% behind the XBox in worldwide install base. XBox is way ahead in North America, but Nintendo is a Japanese company. They are in no way irrelevant or niche, like a NeoGeo or nGage.
Some of them may not have played Madden, but some of them have played both Madden and the NFL 2K series and know exactly what they're talking about. Specifically, the running game.
Yeah, everyone gets hung up on the fact that Uwe Boll makes crap movies about games, rather than just that he makes crap movies, period. He would fail at any genre he tried. He just chose videogames because, as Tycho of PA posits, he hates them.
If Douglas Adams is so smart, how come he's dead?
There have been games with innovative style. The problem is that gameplay is king, and visuals only add something if the gameplay is good. For example, XIII had fairly stylized graphics, but the game sucked and therefor nobody copies it.
There are already X rated games out there. I think what needs to happen is that the games actually become more adult. Currently, "adult" games are actually very juvenile. There are variations on strip poker like BMX XXX where you play an unrelated minigame to try to see a woman naked. There are CYOA dialog driven games where you try to pick the right thing to say to get women into bed. And then there are the sex simulations games, which if they got realistic enough might work as porn.
What I want to see are RPGs where the main character is an adult, and if you want to romance a woman there's more to it than just repeating the same compliments or giving her cheap trinkets until she gets all weak in the knees. I want the option to be genuinely considerate and build a lasting relationship, or to lie about myself and have a series of one-night stands. And if I choose the latter, I want to have a psycho ex stalk me and torch my car.
Based on your comments, I would guess you're ignoring Nintendo. You're hamstringing yourself by doing so. The Revolution controller will create entire new genres of games that we've never played before, and add new twists to existing genres. It will likely lead to RTS's being viable on a console for the first time ever.
Obviously, Nintendo is not the market leader and doesn't really want to be. The success of the Revolution will not stop the crash if the PS3 and 360 both tank. Which could very well happen, because I completely agree with you that there has never been a less compelling next generation. That's just the business side. For gamers, the future isn't that dim. There are a lot of neat things emerging on the DS, and I expect the same to happen with the Revolution. Sure, Madden '06 isn't worth buying, but if you want to play football just load up 2K5. That's what I do.
The XBox and PS lines are going to suffer from the same thing that's killing PC gaming: genre fatigue. The latest iterations in established genres are going to become less and less compelling. That doesn't mean gaming is dying. It just means you need to try out something new.
You're being glib about it, but I really think this is where television needs to go. Why should I have to set my Tivo or computer to "record" a show onto my harddrive at a specific time? The shows are floating around on the net in near-DVD quality with no commercials. I don't need something that records off my analog cable signal, I just need something that downloads and plays.
Funny you should mention griefing, since the only thing I really know about Eve is that it provided the backdrop for the greatest scam ever in a MMOG. ALso, I think something you implied but should be spelled out is that the game doesn't just emphasise PvP, but unbalanced PvP. The reason the game is unfun isn't that there's a lot of PvP, it's that the outcome of most PvP battles are predetermined based on the skills of the character and the ship they own. It may be realistic, but it's not fun.
Yup. It's all well and good to have variable "weights" to the keys, but at the end of the day it's a blank keyboard that is kinda neat, but not 2.5x-the-price neat.
FPS huh? What a complete waste of the franchise.
There have been games in the recent generation that had system requirements: Crystal Chronicles and the GBA/link cable, various online games that required a network adapter and in some cases an external harddrive. Any of the EyeToy games. I doubt that a lot of games will require the HDD, and certainly nobody is going to require the headset. More likely games will work on both systems but it will run faster (with caching) or have free updates if you have a HDD.