| theRepublic said: So you're telling me 18-25 males can't handle intelligent black men or complex stories and characters. I for one, resent this. Developers don't need to focus on games for girls, they just need to stop being covertly racist. That's what everyone needs to do if we are going to move toward that "ideal" world you speak of. |
The average 18-25 male in the US doesn't read much beyond sports magazines. This is why the American Booksellers Association has retargeted most of their adult-fiction shelf space for female readers starting about 30 years ago. It's an ugly fact, but I can't do anything about that, so this is going to be a factor for any games publisher.
However, just because it's a factor doesn't mean 18-25 year old American men can't appreciate a good story or complex characters, just that a very large percentage also enjoy role-playing as characters that don't reflect their own lives. I've been involved in software design and engineering for the past 28 years... do you really think I want to buy a game where I role-play a character who gets up every morning, drives the kids to school, sits behind a computer screen for 8-10 hours, drives home, eats dinner, etc? Uh, no. I want to be an archer or a swordsman or a government agent on an adventure with no real-life ramifications for my actions in the game, i.e. - if I die in the game I want to be able to reload and try again, not get buried and that to be the end of it. I have to deal with real-life limitations all the time... games are about being able to do things that are very very difficult, rarely available, or impossible in real life.
There's nothing wrong with putting sophisticated, intelligent characters in video games (Mass Effect does this very well), as long as the context allows for it. I thought Gears of War was about hardened soldiers who's natural ability to survive and training allows them to triumph over evil in the end. Would I rather have Cole or a brilliant scientist in the trenches with me in that scenario? What do *you* think? 
