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Forums - Microsoft - 'Women are the new core,' says Microsoft narrative designer

KHlover on 30 March 2013

Another mutilation of the word "Core-Gamer"...



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Darth Tigris on 30 March 2013

So I'd imagine this will be interpreted by the less mature males here as "MS doesn't want to appeal to me anymore". *sigh*



D-Joe on 30 March 2013
VGKing said:
D-Joe said:
VGKing said:
D-Joe said:
VGKing said:
D-Joe said:
VGKing said:
Can't say I'm surprised Microsoft thinks this way. There is a flaw is this logic though. Even IF women are the new core.....what makes you think they like to play Kinect? I've met some "girl gamers" and they play the same games I do.

Other than OP's picture(and it's not even from the article),this wirter never talked about Kinect

"Women are the new core"

This implies that they'll be focusing even more on Kinect and getting new episodes of Desperate Housewives on Xbox live. That's what it means. 

http://asia.gamespot.com/news/women-are-the-new-core-says-microsoft-narrative-designer-6406037

"A narrative writer for Microsoft Studios has said that "women are the new core" and that creating more diverse stories, including more female characters and ethnicities, will make for better games."

A writer talk about Kinect game?lol

Where is Kinect in the article?well of course,you WANT only read the title because people can start shit on MS as usual

And woman=Kinect sounds so stupid for me since my ex-gf love diablo 2 and play diablo 2 better than me,it also make me never play any diablo anymore

So only women can enjoy female lead characters? That doesn't make sense. Taking a look at Microsofts strategies these past few years, combined with this article(which I read in full before commenting) only leads me to conclude that this is their reason for including Kinect 2 with every Xbox 720. 

If women are the new core, that doesn't mean you need to create new experiences for women since the "girl gamer" out there is happy enjoying Bioshock Infinite or Gears of War just like the rest of us. 

Woman are new core=male are not core anymore?And take a look what's his job:writer,write a story,why would that automatically mean Kinect games?the fact it's it means every type games,that's why the article using Bioshock picture not some Kinect pictures

"If women are the new core, that doesn't mean you need to create new experiences" Oh so while you guys always love to bashing MS only make same shooters,right now you want them only make same shooters?wtf is that?when new experiences=change the controller type?

"Including Kinect 2 with every Xbox 720."

Well maybe according to rumors,but what's the point to bring this in here?including Kinect 2 with every Xbox 720=every game will required use Kinect to play?

 

He just said the audience got wider,not thinner

 

"Abernathy also said that more diverse games would be good for the business of the games industry, because more diversity would bring in a wider audience and therefore generate more money. "But you need to persuade people that it's OK, and won't hurt sales but might help them," he said.

 

"Nobody in the room admits to being against making characters female or nonwhite," he added. "But they're scared because they don't know how to defend that choice to their bosses."

 

"Our industry, our art, and our business stand to gain in every sense simply by holding a mirror up to our audience and reflecting their diversity in what we produce," Abernathy said."

 

 

Btw,for people believe MS will ONLY make Kinect games

http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=511206&page=28

Yes. That's how it works. The core gamer is defined by those gamers that make up the early adopters, the ones that buy more than just the yearly Call of Duty. If women are the new core that means that males aren't. Now, if he said that the core gamers are composed of more than just your average male, then that would make more sense, but he didn't say that. He said women are the new core. 

HIs job position is irrelevant as stories are gender neutral. So unless they are planning on making more romantic video games......maybe a sex simulator?

10 hours+ later and you just give me this?

"but he didn't say that."wat?wtf you saying?"Abernathy also said that more diverse games would be good for the business of the games industry, because more diversity would bring in a wider audience and therefore generate more money. "But you need to persuade people that it's OK, and won't hurt sales but might help them," he said.

And i'm telling you is your replies means:Why don't you just say whatever MS do whatever MS said it must be wrong?

AND WHERE IS KINECT IN THE ARTICLE,huh?WHERE?because OP post a Kinect picture to mislead people?



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Machiavellian on 30 March 2013
rutea7 said:
Machiavellian said:
rutea7 said:
enrageorange said:
rutea7 said:
Funny... Women have been accounted as core market in Asian countries since like always. There hasn't been exactly a lack of strong female leads. There could be more but I don't feel there's a lack.
Ubisoft did great with Aveline in ACIII: Liberation, Lara Croft just got "reborn", Lightning is a strong character and there's plenty more.

Is Microsoft just opening up to this? Maybe they have a new IP with a female protagonist. Let's hope its not kinect yoga.

You  named 3 female lead games. Now think of all the male lead games. I could name 10 new games that came out in just the last 2 weeks. Obviously we can't expect an even 50/50 ratio. That simply isn't the ratio of core female gamers vs male gamers. But it needs to be better than 95/5 which it currently is.

No it doesnt cause women dont need to play female characters just like men dont need to play only male characters.

I would counter your point in stating that only playing male and white male characters limits the creative story parts of games and make them very stereotypical.  I would believe that women would like to see portrayals of women with strong leads that express a women point of view instead of a character swap where you could put a male character in the same role and you would not know the difference.  

Case in point would be a game like God of War.  How exactly would a game like that be made if the lead was a women.  How would the story change and plot points.  It would actually be very interesting if we could see such a game.  There are a lot of very good women writters who I believe would love a chance to create such a character in a game but the chances are slim the way the industry is right now.  Thank goodness CD made Tomb Raider lead a women but even they still protray the character mostly male, at least the previous games I have not played the latest one to make a determination on that one.

I think i know better than you what women want to play, whether the main role is female or male doesn't matter as long as its a good story with an appealing character, good story/character development.

That being said strong female leads are always welcome.

To be honest you know what you want to play as I doubt you speak for all women gamers.  Also my reply is not stated in a vacuum as I have asked this question before.  The medium cannot grow if the majority of games center on a very limited set of stereotypes.  Any way I believe we are talking about the same thing as I believe story and characters can be done better when the industry embrace the fact there are diverse gamers.



Marucha on 30 March 2013
Machiavellian said:
Marucha said:
pokoko said:
rutea7 said:
Also I don't own the system cause I chose not to and as a female gamer should have a say in this. I want to play good games and like jay said its not about playing a female, I love my oldschool ff games where the protagonists are male. Cloud, squall, zidane. As long as its a good story I'm in.

That's what I think.  A lot of what I'm reading from people in the industry sounds artificial, like these developers and publishers are looking at the demographics and then rushing out to force in more female characters for the sake of appealing to female gamers.  It comes across as really contrived.  If your writers bring you a good story with a good main character, then go with it; don't try to change it into a female OR male for the sake of marketing.  As a consumer, that feels insulting.

When I read a novel, I'm not worrying about what gender the main character is.  When I watch a new series, I'm not throwing it aside if it's not a male hero.  Why do they think games should be any different?  It should be what fits the concept.  The quality is the important part.

I think there have been more than enough successful female characters for people to finally stop worrying about a female lead being bad for sales.  


That's part of why I did not bother to make any real comment because the original commentary in the article seemed too artificial to take seriously. It's like feel good commentary, but virtually no substance.

Hey, I would not mind more female leads in games, sure... but it's not like we are in shortage of games to play or diversity in gaming. I would care more if the experiences end up being more cookie cutter, which I feel like it has really become that way in the industry.. they are right that they do need to adjust more to change and fast. Having female leads and bringing about more unexpected things would help all fronts... but honestly, it's not 'necessary' to engineer stuff so that we cater to only specific demographics or broaden out to expand to another base... we already have a demographic, it's called gamers.

How many games can you tell me that released in the last 5 years featured a character that was not white.  Hell, I cannot remember the last game that featured a charater that was black or latino.  You can even get rarer if you go for Black Women or Latino women.  You can find tons of books, movies, TV shows, shorts that have a very diverse cast of leading women and ethic groups but it sure is hard to find that with games.  What the article seems to suggest is that its pretty obvious that any gender besides male and white is a rarity in games and thus so are the stories created for those games.

I wonder how well would Uncharted would have sold if the character was a Latino woman.  It definitely would be a lot more interesting story wise if the character was written by a latino women who could bring the character out.  Of course that character would never get a green light.


Sorry, I do not always reply immediately. I do not think there is a HUGE amount of diversity, but I think there has been milestones in gaming like in many media. That's why I said there is no real shortage. I agree with you about needing more ethnic perspectives in gaming. There is a huge growing Hispanic population in this country for example and yet we don't see strides to cater to that demographic for example just like women are a huge chunk of it. I'm going to assume it's taboo because of the whole immigration controversy... I mean, we don't want to cater to them, they should act more "American" (read: white) and blend in with the culture amiright?

But I'm like rutea7, I'm a female gamer... this doesn't stop me completely from enjoying games. I can still enjoy them. My biggest beef is that we get to the point where characters and mantras in gaming become almost too much the same-y or "cookie cutter". Much more diversity would help that, but again, a different story, different context and other things could be done to that as well... that's why when I said 'diversity', it was much broader than just ethnicity and the womenz, because a lot of influences and ideas are considered when making or designing a video game. A good example would be Guild Wars... the concept artists used different ethnics/cultures to design characters there and the game does not read "white people" to me as a result.

My problem with the OP is mainly those commentaries come off as not being really genuine and more like a CYA comment... someone mentioned they are covering up the fact they want to go more casual and just saying it's about women, when in fact it's about casual gaming... I almost wanna agree with that because that's just how it seemed to me.



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D-Joe on 30 March 2013

Yeah they're going casual
http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=511206&page=28
Oh wait



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theRepublic on 31 March 2013
Goatseye said:
VGKing said:

I don't know about that. Call of Duty 2 sold pretty well and it encouraged sequels which in then turned this franchise into the biggest video game this generation. No, shooters aren't the exeption to the rule. Perfect Dark Zero is a shooter and that failed to break 1m sales. There can only be 1 reason why Perfect Dark and Kameo both flopped. The lead characters are women.

Perfect Dark is not in the same category as COD. It's an action adventure game. It's problem is that it was ported from N64 and most of the gamers back then still had N64 and their PD and Goldeneye. Nobody gives a damn about a lead character in my opinion. Look at ME3 where most of the videos on youtube feature female Shep. I just won't buy a female character on Gears of War unless they make her look just like Marcus Phoenix or Cole Train. People are taking this discussion way out of the context.

Perfect Dark(2000) and Perfect Dark Zero(2005) are both first-person shooters.  Perfect Dark Zero was not a port of the N64 game.  Why would you port a game from two generations previous to the 360?  Perfect Dark Zero was a completely new game, and a prequel to Perfect Dark.  It was a huge disappointment after GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark were such amazing games.  It just didn't live up to the pedigree.

Five years after Perfect Dark Zero was released as a launch game for the 360, Perfect Dark was ported to XBLA (2010).

Despite VGC's numbers, the game did apparently break 1 million back in 2006.  http://www.ign.com/articles/2006/10/30/perfect-dark-even-more-perfect



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D-Joe on 31 March 2013

Oh well,guess that's what everything from

Dontnod: Publishers said you can't have a female character
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-19-dontnod-publishers-said-you-cant-have-a-female-character



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Porcupine_I on 31 March 2013

Every dev should cater to women, they are practically a micro transacions gold mine, they already love to buy stuff that becomes obsolete after a little while.



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

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rutea7 on 31 March 2013
Machiavellian said:
rutea7 said:
Machiavellian said:
rutea7 said:
enrageorange said:
rutea7 said:
Funny... Women have been accounted as core market in Asian countries since like always. There hasn't been exactly a lack of strong female leads. There could be more but I don't feel there's a lack.
Ubisoft did great with Aveline in ACIII: Liberation, Lara Croft just got "reborn", Lightning is a strong character and there's plenty more.

Is Microsoft just opening up to this? Maybe they have a new IP with a female protagonist. Let's hope its not kinect yoga.

You  named 3 female lead games. Now think of all the male lead games. I could name 10 new games that came out in just the last 2 weeks. Obviously we can't expect an even 50/50 ratio. That simply isn't the ratio of core female gamers vs male gamers. But it needs to be better than 95/5 which it currently is.

No it doesnt cause women dont need to play female characters just like men dont need to play only male characters.

I would counter your point in stating that only playing male and white male characters limits the creative story parts of games and make them very stereotypical.  I would believe that women would like to see portrayals of women with strong leads that express a women point of view instead of a character swap where you could put a male character in the same role and you would not know the difference.  

Case in point would be a game like God of War.  How exactly would a game like that be made if the lead was a women.  How would the story change and plot points.  It would actually be very interesting if we could see such a game.  There are a lot of very good women writters who I believe would love a chance to create such a character in a game but the chances are slim the way the industry is right now.  Thank goodness CD made Tomb Raider lead a women but even they still protray the character mostly male, at least the previous games I have not played the latest one to make a determination on that one.

I think i know better than you what women want to play, whether the main role is female or male doesn't matter as long as its a good story with an appealing character, good story/character development.

That being said strong female leads are always welcome.

To be honest you know what you want to play as I doubt you speak for all women gamers.  Also my reply is not stated in a vacuum as I have asked this question before.  The medium cannot grow if the majority of games center on a very limited set of stereotypes.  Any way I believe we are talking about the same thing as I believe story and characters can be done better when the industry embrace the fact there are diverse gamers.


I have my opinion and that of female gamers I know with different tastes than mine, just like some people mentioned they know female gamers, you have not mentioned so, but yes I believe our opinions are similar.