To the guys berating Heather.

While I agree her approach was a little off, her points are solid. Why are you so threatened by games being made that appeal to both sexes instead of purely adolescent males?

Are you that insecure that suddenly no 'guy' games will be made? Ridiculous. We still have 'guy' movies and 'guy' music and we'll always have 'guy' games.

But there's no reason as an industry as a whole we can't move towards games being made for all people instead of aimed squarely at one demographic.

Heavy Rain is probably the game I am most excited about this year, maybe even this entire generation. Especially after I played Fahrenheit a couple of months ago. If Quantic Dream can pull off Heavy Rain like they have promised, it would be a dream come true!

And I am very much looking forwars to Dragon Age, it seems like BioWare took a lesson from The Witcher, and are making the fantasy WRPG of the generation!

Gamerace, no one is threatened here, if some one tries to hit you with a bat, you would normally defend youself, she was swinging for the fences if you follow Montana's posts.

I'm not sure that anybody feels threatened. I've successfully ignored Petz and Babyz and Wii Whatever for some time now. I'm sure I can keep it up.

I think if she had used a different tone but made the same basic points, most people would have yawned and moved on. But she said a lot of abrasive shit based on stereotypes, and that's the sole reason this thread is making you so much VG moneyz.

I get VG$ everytime someone posts in a thread I created?  Really?  ... (checks vg$ total... damn! Starts spamming threads)

I didn't take any of her comments personally or even as a jugdment of the male sex, as I've been saying the same things for quite some time.    I guess the way I was forced to paraphase her comment to make it fit in the thread titles didn't help either now that I think about it from that angle.

Yes, that's why half of the posts on the front page are usually random blogs posted by darthdevidem01.

I think booth Bioshock and Mass Effect are deep experiences that elevate the bar.

I actually don't really mind her tone as she's saying it how she sees it, and there's nothing wrong with that. What offends me is people so concerned with political correctness and not offending anyone that their point is diluted and loses emphasis. That said, her generalizations about men fall into the realm of personal attack and work against her making a clear, concise point.

I personally like a wide variety of games to play, so this generation has been disappointing just because of the large number of derivative FPS games on the x360/ps3. The Wii suffers the same problem but in a slightly different sense. Even though there is so much development resources dedicated to a really narrow scope of games, there still have been some excellent offerings on every system that do not possess the themes she speaks of. She highlights the bad while conveniently overlooking games like Flower, LittleBigPlanet, Mario Kart, Echochrome, Aquaria, Pixeljunk Monsters, Wii Sports, World of Goo and others that are shining examples of games that are very much orientated towards both women and men, all of which have received notoriety and praise to varying extents.

If the aim of the rant was to get people's attention -- then it certainly accomplished that objective.

You cannot get people to think if you cannot get them to hear what you are saying.

And maybe she was saying that if video games ever want to be taken seriously, they need to stop pandering to the lowest common denominator. It would be as if all there were to movies was teen-slasher films. Those exist, but there is so much more.

Right now, if someone tries something different, (i.e., Wii Music) or something that appeals to a different demographic (i.e., some of the Ubisoft software), they are derrided or even told they are "ruining" gaming (i.e., Wii Fit).

So while some might quibble about the forum, this is the place where those who make the decisions about what types of game to develop gather. So where else would someone want to comment on the choices made by the industry.

Video games cannot have it both ways. They cannot make games that predominantly appeal to one demographic and then complain when they are not given universal respect from the general public.

Mike from Morgantown

I loved all the rants, even when I didn't 100% agree.

I love when people don't hold back and demand more.