275 réponses à ce sujet

[Squeelookle]

I noticed those subtle changes myself... and the slight fact that there's a Males Only Aeducan quest, IIRC.

Simple Economics here: a reversable cover would keep everyone happy, just so long as they don't change any other art than Hawke's gender on the flipside. I may be mistaken, but I think people just wanted it changed without offering ideas. This way, they could keep the current art AS WELL AS providing an alternative.

[Tarahiro]

MoogleNut wrote...

I didn't even know I could play as Femshep when I first bought Mass Effect. I'd simply heard it was an amazing game and was, infact the sole reason I wanted an Xbox.
As a lesbian gamer I was pretty much resigned to playing straight men or even worse over-sexualised women, so imagine my surprise to find that not only could I create a character who not only looks like me, but is as strong a personality as the male version, and is treated the same in-game as her male counterpart. (The overwhelming ickiness of the Jacob thing not withstanding)
Even better when a certain blue lady started chatting her up...needless to say i've been hooked on Bioware ever since.
Yes, it would be amazing for LadyHawke to have even a quarter of the publicity MaleHawke gets, but we all know it's not going to happen. Even so, the fact that Bioware at least lets me play as not only a strong woman, but a lesbian more than makes up for it.

^ What this user said. Exactly that.

[Cutlasskiwi]

I would love to see Lady Hawke on the cover but I don' see that happening. I think they should market the female characters more over all though. I didn't have the opportunity to follow ME closely during its development and by watching the trailers I had no idea you could play as a female.

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

Squeelookle wrote...

I noticed those subtle changes myself... and the slight fact that there's a Males Only Aeducan quest, IIRC.
Simple Economics here: a reversable cover would keep everyone happy, just so long as they don't change any other art than Hawke's gender on the flipside. I may be mistaken, but I think people just wanted it changed without offering ideas. This way, they could keep the current art AS WELL AS providing an alternative.

Male only quest? Are you sure you aren't thinking of the noble hunters? I'll have to play it again and see.

[DanaScu]

JConst wrote...

Actually, I'm a guy and I prefer Lady Hawke on box cover.
I don't know where did this assumption, that men prefers man on cover or playing only as male character,
come from, but it is so wrong. I mean, look at Tomb Rider, Bayonetta, Heavenly Sword etc. Who do you think play it? Girls only? 
Truth is, people, both genders, love female lead characters. And marketing folks should definitely use this love against us, average mindless players.
 

The first thing mentioned about Lara is how well animated the shooting is, right? And Bayonetta, the first things noticed about that character are the spectacular shoes, wonderfully developed facial features and realistic action, right? And Heavenly Sword has great armor detail in that bikini.

I don't think so.

How many games are marketed with realistic female leads? [not counting Samus, since, iirc, no one knew in the beginning that she was a female]

On the other hand; have you noticed the "What's up with guys that play female characters?" and "lol, my friend is freakin' weird, he plays Female Shepard/Warden" threads that have been on these forums? The less mature tending toward flame-baiting thread starters imply the males playing female characters are gay or something along those lines. Others are honestly asking, because they don't understand why a male would ever play a "realistic" female character.

So yes, a lot of players like eye candy. That doesn't mean they would play a game that had no other choice than a FemShep or FemWarden.

I like a choice simply because for so long there wasn't one. If I wanted to play a game, I ended up with the default male. I loved NWN for that reason; I could recreate my D&D characters and actually play them in a game instead of exclusively male fighter, mage, whatever.

[apologies if the formatting is strange]

Modifié par DanaScu, 11 décembre 2010 - 02:59 .

[JConst]

GodWood wrote...

The three game's you used as examples are overly sexualized cover females.

This games also arent RPG's. That's not the case.

I meant, you can put a female on cover and successfully sell a game to male player. C.O. 

And I don't think it necessarily must be overly sexualized female.

[rabbitchannel]

How well did Mirror's Edge do? I think it was pretty popular. Faith was not overly sexualized at all.

[MoogleNut]

Just a thought...perhaps Bioware could design a LadyHawke alternate cover for us to download and print ourselves? Thereby making us a little happier and saving on productions costs in the process?

Yes, I realise we could do that ourselves, but it would be a nice little nod from them to us.

[JConst]

DanaScu wrote...

How many games are marketed with realistic female leads?

Someone should create a precedent. Why not Bioware?

DanaScu wrote...
On the other hand; have you noticed the "What's up with guys that play female characters?" and "lol, my friend is freakin' weird, he plays Female Shepard/Warden" threads that have been on these forums? 

No, cause I don't care about such threads. Who does?

DanaScu wrote...
So yes, a lot of players like eye candy. That doesn't mean they would play a game that had no other choice than a FemShep or FemWarden. 

Of course there must be a choice, but we talk about equal promotion of Male and Female Hawkes. 

[Gabey5]

That will never happen. For many reasons

[ErichHartmann]

Pfft....Bioware can't even acknowledge Marian Hawke on their website. Do we really need 4 desktop backgrounds with Garrett?

[SelectMongoose]

This is exactly what I hate about marketing. The whole 'If guys see a woman on the cover they'll run in the opposite direction, unless she's hot.'



And then when somebody points out that maybe they could advertise both leads. 'Oh no consumers are dumb and easily confused. If they see Lady Hawk they'll think that there are two Hawks because as we all know consumers are illiterate and therefore incapable of reading the information provided.'

[JConst]

SelectMongoose wrote...
The whole 'If guys see a woman on the cover they'll run in the opposite direction, unless she's hot.'

This is ridiculous. And rather insulting. Male players aren't animals, we don't need boobs to develop interest in a game. We played Syberia somehow, for gods sake!

[Ziggeh]

I remember reading this article about comic covers in the '60s (might have been earlier, was a while back) and I'm still not sure it wasn't a joke. Someone had discovered that putting a gorilla on the cover increased sales of that comic by quite some margin, so they began contriving reasons to get a gorilla on their every issue. Except they found that if they did it all the time, it didn't work, gorilla saturation one assumes. And so eventually they decided upon a "gorilla ratio", the number of comic covers within a given period upon which you could place a gorilla.

Where was I going with this.....................oh yeah, male hawke. I should preface this by making it clear I'm not going to stand up and say that this is definitely the case, because if anyone tells you they truly understand advertising, they're a liar and things are just more complex than this, but for the purposes of my question: assume that it's true that putting a young white guy on the box cover increases sales. Given that, can you begrudge people for doing so?

I mean, I do believe that people adding to the cultural canon have a moral responsibilty, and there are perpetuation arguments to be made, but primarily their purpose in marketing, their real responsibility is to the shareholders. I guess my question comes down to: do you think they should do what works, even if it's something you yourself might dislike?

Modifié par ziggehunderslash, 11 décembre 2010 - 03:33 .

[GodWood]

DA3: play as a gorilla.

[sidion77]

SelectMongoose wrote...

This is exactly what I hate about marketing. The whole 'If guys see a woman on the cover they'll run in the opposite direction, unless she's hot.'

And then when somebody points out that maybe they could advertise both leads. 'Oh no consumers are dumb and easily confused. If they see Lady Hawk they'll think that there are two Hawks because as we all know consumers are illiterate and therefore incapable of reading the information provided.'

Consumers are really ignorant though...there are lots of fans on these forums, but there are tons more out there that will buy the game without ever knowing much about the game. That's the whole reason for marketing, they aren't targeting those smart enough to research a product or who have a vested interest in the game or developers work because we make marketing redundant. We know that Hawke can be male or female...the rest of masses don't though.

On topic, I think the request could be managed with placing a small female hawke in the bottom corner giving a thumbs up with the caption "You can make a girl character" in REALLY, REALLY BRIGHT BOLDED TEXT. I'd leave the colour option up to the marketing guys though. That's a toughy.

[syllogi]

ErichHartmann wrote...

Pfft....Bioware can't even acknowledge Marian Hawke on their website. Do we really need 4 desktop backgrounds with Garrett?

I don't care about the cover art (as much), but yeah, wallpaper and screenshots on the site would NOT be some horrible pain in the neck to produce, and would go a long way in making female players like me less bitter and cynical about the direction Bioware is taking.

I never even had these thoughts when DA:O was being advertised, despite that there was a male Warden on the Blur commercials, because I saw the awesome wallpapers and trailers that had female versions of the Warden in them, and that was enough for me to not feel marginalized.  Now, I wonder more and more if Bioware is deliberately trying to "shed" the image that made their products attractive to me as a consumer.

[rabbitchannel]

Why not put FemHawke on the Collector's/Signature Edition? I don't think there are a lot of consumers who buy CEs without researching the game first. I assume that most who get CEs are hardcore fans who won't mind at all if FemHawke is on the cover. Those that DO like her, however, will be quite pleased. The regular version can have MaleHawke.

[Annarl]

I would prefer neither character on the box, especially since I can create my own character. Why put a default face on the box? I would prefer a picture from the game or of the villain or even some of the NPCs. But that is just my opinion.

[Thandal N'Lyman]

DanaScu wrote...
How many games are marketed with realistic female leads? [not counting Samus, since, iirc, no one knew in the beginning that she was a female]

Two Words:  April Ryan

Two More Words:  Zoë Castillo

Three Words:  The Longest Journey!

(Oh, and One other Word:  Syberia.)

Modifié par Thandal NLyman, 11 décembre 2010 - 03:46 .

[Darkwingduck]

I would rather not have Marian on the cover than to see her become over sexualized bait. That being said I think it is a bit insulting that they cannot even mention her on their website or use her in marketing. Does bioware marketing really think we're so slow that we cannot associate two faces with Dragon Age 2? I think the fans deserve a bit more credit than that and those who frequent the forums who are in full support of Marian deserve to at least be thrown a bone in the way of I don't know a wallpaper, a 3 second clip of her voice actor? Likely though they're just going to brush her into the corner in favor of a man with an epic beard who they can market more easily...well I suppose I can at least thank Bioware for letting her keep her clothes on.

[Cutlasskiwi]

ErichHartmann wrote...

Pfft....Bioware can't even acknowledge Marian Hawke on their website. Do we really need 4 desktop backgrounds with Garrett?

Yeah.. What's up with that? It would be neat if the backgrounds looked the same just have some with Marian too.

[Maria13]

Who are the publishers, anyway? Perhaps we should email them and say, I'm a female gamer and I'd like a cover with female Hawke... Please....

[Cutlasskiwi]

Maria13 wrote...

Who are the publishers, anyway? Perhaps we should email them and say, I'm a female gamer and I'd like a cover with female Hawke... Please....

EA

[Matchy Pointy]

Maria13 wrote...

Who are the publishers, anyway? Perhaps we should email them and say, I'm a female gamer and I'd like a cover with female Hawke... Please....

Sounds like a great idea, and youa ahve my support. wasn't it enough that the maleShepard stople the ME marketing, will FemHawke have to be pushed to the side as well?