173 réponses à ce sujet

[Lumikki]

What there is to say, it's conflict of two thing. Business vs RPG.

1. It cost a lot to make content for 20% players only.
2. One of basic RPG feature is having genre choise in character creations.

I mean, I play allways female character and if I would not been able to play female character, I don't think I would play Biowares games at all. It's not just about having good game, but allow player to like her/his own character. If I don't like my own character in game, I can't enjoy the game at all.

Modifié par Lumikki, 02 août 2011 - 11:05 .

[PXXL]

 I hope the OP doesn't strap on allot of home made explosives and blow up BioWare... because you sound exactly the same as those extremists.

You actually have the source material, someone explaines to you that they..

Casey Hudson wrote...
COULD HAVE cut out femshep, but they put allot of effort over the course of this series to do a really good job of BOTH the male and female experience as Commander Shepherd

and you CHOSE to be offended/hurt.. Yes that is a choice you make.. and in the back of your mind you know you are wrong.

WOW thats an extreme pov PXXL.. yea its these complaining threads man 

Modifié par PXXL, 02 août 2011 - 11:09 .

[LGTX]

So we're getting offended by the devs having considered but NOT DONE something? I love BSN...

Considering viable options to save development resources IS being a competent developer. I'd be surprised and disappointed if they had NOT thought of something like that.

And to dispel any possible preconceptive replies, I'm not against the female fanbase here, and I don't convey just FemShep in my argument. It's the same ballgame as it was with, let's say, the direct squadmate control which was initially cut out from the first game.

[TheKingOf-Kings]

I really look forward to the day when girl gamers don't have to be all like 'Look at me, I have opinions too, listen to them, they are more important!'

One day all of our opinions will be together in one giant melting pot.

[crimzontearz]

ok, so here's the issue I have with this trend of letting the "collected data" do the talking (and yes I am paraphrasing using the argument of someone much more wise in this subject). This approach gives devs info only on what "is working for the audience now" because it is based on what the public has been given so far. If people relay too much on it the market stagnates because everyone will see that "x" "y" and "z" sell or "work well" so they will keep spoonfeeding that to the audience while "w" (a brand new, innovative game) could have been great but developers (more likely investors) would consider it a risk with no backup data to prove it would sell well.

Let me give you an example. Let's say Portal never existed....someone 4 years from now goes to EA

- developer: guys I have this awesome idea for a game. It's an FPS offshot in which your only weapon is a gun that opens orange and blue portals you can use to move through the levels, avoid danger. solve puzzle and progress forward

- EA:....sure sounds Awesome but do you have any data to proveit would work?

- Developer:...but....it's a brand new concept, no one did it before

-EA: sorry kiddo....too risky, go make us a WW2 shooter, people are playing those a lot now.

[Anacronian Stryx]

Bean counter :" Casey we're using X amount of money on allowing Y amount of player to play as Female according to this poll - it would be more cost effective to only have male gender possible.

Casey :"No."

Apparently this is disregarding the players who wants to play as female... go figure.

[Sidney]

crimzontearz wrote...

ok, so here's the issue I have with this trend of letting the "collected data" do the talking (and yes I am paraphrasing using the argument of someone much more wise in this subject). This approach gives devs info only on what "is working for the audience now" because it is based on what the public has been given so far. If people relay too much on it the market stagnates because everyone will see that "x" "y" and "z" sell or "work well" so they will keep spoonfeeding that to the audience while "w" (a brand new, innovative game) could have been great but developers (more likely investors) would consider it a risk with no backup data to prove it would sell well.

Let me give you an example. Let's say Portal never existed....someone 4 years from now goes to EA

- developer: guys I have this awesome idea for a game. It's an FPS offshot in which your only weapon is a gun that opens orange and blue portals you can use to move through the levels, avoid danger. solve puzzle and progress forward

- EA:....sure sounds Awesome but do you have any data to proveit would work?

- Developer:...but....it's a brand new concept, no one did it before

-EA: sorry kiddo....too risky, go make us a WW2 shooter, people are playing those a lot now.

All compnaies use market research, polls and other forms of data analysis. They have for years and years and years. I mean you'd get calls back in the 70's on market research for products. Depsite that people have made things like Portal so this isn't really all that shocking or bad.

[PSUHammer]

I concur...OP is over-reacting. If they cut it out...moan away. As a business owner, if I was spending 40% of my resources on 20% of my audience, I am not maximizing my energy or value. Bioware is not a non profit enterprise. The fact that they are bucking this trend to cater to that 20% figure (according to their research) is showing they, in fact, DO CARE about the fanbase.

You are fooling yourself when you think they don't have a decent avenue of polling or statistics to determine who their main audience is. That's just smart business.

[matt-bassist]

musicalfrog7 wrote...

One fifth? That cannot be. I was never polled nor asked what shepherd I play. Where does this poll data come from? The website? Video game registration? An educated guess? I feel like that statistic is unfairly wrong and inaccurate to judge on whether or not it's worthwhile to have a female playable character.

I think 1/5th is being generous. When he is talking about that statistic he is including EVERYONE, 80% of Mass Effect players don't read the forums, partake in discussions, or even know the Mass Effect WIKI exists.

And probably 70% of them just hit start and play, with out any real thought going into creating a character. Sure they enjoy the game, but they don't really role play. Its one of those sad truths - many gamers are young kids who don't really play the game because there is a chance of playing as a female character, they play it because they can shoot aliens.

I think players who play Female shepards are just really vocal. Which is why there seems to be so many of them; there aren't REALLY that many, definitely not 50/50 or even 60/40, but definitely more than say, Tali fans, and everyone thinks there are legions of them (there aren't.).

They just shout the loudest.

[littlezack]

Sidney wrote...

 They have for years and years and years. I mean you'd get calls back in the 70's on market research for products.

They still do that crap. The one time I was stupid enough to fall for it, they spent an hour asking me questions, and they'd always string me along saying 'Just a little more'.

[The Twilight God]

CaptREDKangaroo wrote...

The Twilight God wrote...

Mr.Kusy wrote...

99% of female characters in MMO games are played by men. Why would you think it's diffrent with single player games?

The vast majority of men play male characters because they want to identify with the protagonist.  In the case of ME, I suspect more than 1% of the 18% who make up the femsheps are female players. Do you honestly think female players make up only 0.18% of players?

I've seen numbers and that's flat out untrue what Twilight said.

Wait... so you actually think women only make up 0.18% of the ME demographic?


(And, yes, I read all of your post )

[CaptREDKangaroo]

The Twilight God wrote...

CaptREDKangaroo wrote...

The Twilight God wrote...

Mr.Kusy wrote...

99% of female characters in MMO games are played by men. Why would you think it's diffrent with single player games?

The vast majority of men play male characters because they want to identify with the protagonist.  In the case of ME, I suspect more than 1% of the 18% who make up the femsheps are female players. Do you honestly think female players make up only 0.18% of players?

I've seen numbers and that's flat out untrue what Twilight said.

Wait... so you actually think women only make up 0.18% of the ME demographic?


(And, yes, I read all of your post )

Ooops this is embarrassing I referred to the wrong person; meant Mr.Kusy instead of u Twlight and that I agreed with YOU. :innocent: I was arguing against the 1% or less that play MMO's are female and way more than 1% play ME out of the femsheps as I said further in my post.

[Gatt9]

Lumikki wrote...

What there is to say, it's conflict of two thing. Business vs RPG.

1. It cost a lot to make content for 20% players only.
2. One of basic RPG feature is having genre choise in character creations.

I mean, I play allways female character and if I would not been able to play female character, I don't think I would play Biowares games at all. It's not just about having good game, but allow player to like her/his own character. If I don't like my own character in game, I can't enjoy the game at all.

The problem is,  that's a slippery slope (One they're already on TBH)

Only 20% of the people play a female,  so cut it,  gets you to...

only 25% of the people play an adept,  so cut it.  Then with the next game and only 2 classes,  70% of the people play Soldier,  cut Engineer.

You can't necessarily cut features by percentages when it's a reasonably significant percentage,  because doing so will likely lead to another skewed percentage.  Now if something's <10%,  there's not much arguing with that.  But at 20%,  it's statistically significant.

Further compounding the problem is,  that data is coming from who you romanced,  as there's no other way to get it.  Which means that the people who didn't romance anyone don't exist in the number.  They're effectively sexless for that statistic.

Bioware datamines achievements,  but the problem is they keep drawing conclusions the achievements don't necessarily state.  Statistics must be drawn in such a way that each piece of data falls into a catagory,  the way they're doing it,  there's data that doesn't fall into any catagory.  Or,  as in the case of DAO,  there's data that doesn't actually state what they're reading it as.

Meaning,  in DAO,  some high percentage of people never made it past the first act.  What that doesn't tell you is how many were game rentals,  how many were a friend's copy,  how many quit because the first Ogre was too hard  There's alot of interpretations and possibilities other than the one they drew.

Same thing here,  there's data that is ambiguous.

Modifié par Gatt9, 02 août 2011 - 10:28 .

[Thrombin]

It's still possible to be cost effective even if it's a low percentage who benefit. As long as that low percentage is still a large number and brings in more revenue than was spent in supporting them.

[Boiny Bunny]

Actually, with their more recent titles (ME2 and DA2 I if I remember correctly), they get a hell of a lot more data than just which achievements you unlocked. As long as you have the option ticked to allow data to be sent back to them, they get any variable in the game that they want, for every player who has the box ticked.

For example, in DA2, Bioware could tell you (from the large data pool of players who left the box ticked) exactly how many people played as femHawke, exactly how many players romanced each of the options, exactly how many made X choice vs Y choice, etc.

[Bryy_Miller]

TheKingOf-Kings wrote...

I really look forward to the day when girl gamers don't have to be all like 'Look at me, I have opinions too, listen to them, they are more important!'

One day all of our opinions will be together in one giant melting pot.

Oh please. With that attitude, you're just looking for confrontation.

[jamesp81]

I doubt CHud was trying to be sexist. The company has to make a profit to stay in business. Consider, then, that Bioware gave up a great deal of potential profit just to keep femshep as part of the game, as apparently they felt it was important and appropriate to have that option available, even at the cost of what could be argued to be sound business practices.

[Mann42]

musicalfrog7 wrote...

"We find that about one fifth of the players play female characters. You know, we've put a lot of effort over the course of this series to do a really good job of both the male and female experience as Commander Shepherd. And it's something we could've cut a long time ago because it's actually very expensive for us to develop."

I have the exact opposite interpretation of this quote. What I heard was:

"Even though only 20% of our players even play as a female Commander Shepard, we still care about those fans and our female fanbase so much that we spend a disproportionately large amount of money, time, and effort on female Shepard despite the inevitable protests from executives and bean counters."

In fact, my interpretation is supported by the fact that they are now using female Shepard as a marketing tool. I figured one of those bean counters walked in and said "Okay, if we're going to spend this much of the budget on 20% of the fanbase anyway, then lets go all in and see if we can get it to 30 or 40%". 

As for where the 20% and whether it's right, I'm inclined to believe it's true if the data is a very large sample of players with data pulled directly from the game, on all platforms, based on characters the game was completed with. If they don't filter by completions then it's bunk data. If they don't filter by platform, then there will be major demographic holes (more men on 360s, more equal distributions on the PC and PS3). Bioware has always come across as a company that takes and analyzes their metrics, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Modifié par nexworks, 03 août 2011 - 01:03 .

[Bryy_Miller]

nexworks wrote...
"Even though only 20% of our players even play as a female Commander Shepard, we still care about those fans and our female fanbase so much that we spend a disproportionately large amount of money, time, and effort on female Shepard despite the inevitable protests from executives and bean counters."

Do we really need to make this an "Evil Corporations" thing?

[azerSheppard]

*Insert caseys pic*

This is why we CAN have nice things!!!

[sponge56]

This thread is ridiculous. Essentially Casey said 'I could have bombed your unproductive and expensive to run village, but instead I gave you all cake and poured more money into the village!", and the op is moaning that she wasn't included in deciding what cake to have? Crazy, as mr Eddie Izzard once said, 'CAKE OR DEATH!', -no one choses death over cake

ACCEPT YOUR CAKE GRACIOUSLY!

Modifié par sponge56, 03 août 2011 - 06:47 .

[Mann42]

Bryy_Miller wrote...

nexworks wrote...
"Even though only 20% of our players even play as a female Commander Shepard, we still care about those fans and our female fanbase so much that we spend a disproportionately large amount of money, time, and effort on female Shepard despite the inevitable protests from executives and bean counters."

Do we really need to make this an "Evil Corporations" thing?

It's not evil. Where did I say it was evil? I was actually commending them for their decision and foresight as a company. 

You apparently think that running a business is evil. I'm a capitalist and a realist; they're doing their jobs. You know, that's what accountants and executives are hired for; to make sure the company and its projects are profitable and provide value to the company and its shareholders. If the cost was high enough for Casey to mention out loud, it means it is something that has been discussed or considered by him, and most likely other executives. Considering that he's the Executive Producer, it makes sense. 

I guess you could construe that I meant Bioware was the only thing stopping 'evil' EA from cutting female Shepard, but that's not what I meant at all. I'm sure they had a lot of discussions about brand loyalty, brand quality, customer expectations, and the inevitable blow back (a pissed off 20% of your community is enough to destroy your franchise), and they never really considered cutting female Shepard. 

I applaud them for coming to the conclusion that they needed to make that 20% bigger and market towards that end. It shows long term thinking, and it's why I don't think there was any malice in his statement. I think it was a truly positive sign that they are thinking of it from multiple angles, and thinking of us, their customers. 

Modifié par nexworks, 05 août 2011 - 12:15 .

[Boiny Bunny]

nexworks wrote...

I guess you could construe that I meant Bioware was the only thing stopping 'evil' EA from cutting female Shepard, but that's not what I meant at all. I'm sure they had a lot of discussions about brand loyalty, brand quality, customer expectations, and the inevitable blow back (a pissed off 20% of your community is enough to destroy your franchise), and they never really considered cutting female Shepard.

I'm not so sure about this.  Casey's statement seems to indicate that from a financial/corporate perspective, putting femShep in the game is not worth it, and causing Bioware/EA to lose money. - but despite that, they are pushing ahead and including femShep (and hopefully female protagonists in future titles) because it's important to them to offer the choice of gender to all players, and they might like to expand that 20% into a larger number (as you've said below).

I applaud them for coming to the conclusion that they needed to make that 20% bigger and market towards that end. It shows long term thinking, and it's why I don't think there was any malice in his statement. I think it was a truly positive sign that they are thinking of it from multiple angles, and thinking of us, their customers. 

If there was even a remote possibility of a 'pissed off 20% of the community' destroying the franchise, his comment would have been very different, and he would have all the EA executives backing him up on including femShep the entire way (it sounds like he's had to fight them to include the option to me )

[rapscallioness]

Clonedzero wrote...

well if female gamers dont buy the game and play it in significant numbers, than they shouldnt cater to them. it makes sense. remember, they are a buisness.

Yes, they are a business so they need to get savvy about a vast untapped market that's out there. They aren't making money from the...30 something female market because they aren't targeting it.

Look at the book publishing industry. They've been floundering all over the place...and scared to death about ebooks, yada, yada. But their rock, their shelter in the storm has been Romance novels. The female market--30 something and up. Action/adventure and romance. The female market gobbles these things up like biscuits and gravy.

ME series is heavier on the action/adventure, but still has a lovely lil romance subplot that they're even tweaking to make it more substantial. And women do love the action adventure, too.

Why they are not actively courting that market is beyond me. There the ones with the friggin' money anyway.  Put it out there. Plaster some stuff that this market will see with a mature looking femshep kicking butt and somehow point out the LI part of the story, and they will come.

I didn't know either. It wasn't a big deal because a girl gets use to playing as a dude the vast majority of time. But it was a squee moment when I found out I could play as female because I rarely get the chance to do that. I almost didn't even get the game because it looked like basic space marine shooter type thing. It was the gamestop guy that said, "Trust me."

And I fell in love with ME. So, the onl;y reason they're not making money off that market is because they're not going after it.