3 réponses à ce sujet

[JustifiablyDefenestrated]

 Let me first say that I'm a girl. Just in case my avatar didn't clue you in. And I also play video-games. Shocking, I know.

I'm going to be frank here: the marketing for the past dragon age games has been extremely one-sided. The dragon age franchise has, overall, been very inclusive of female gamers. But if you were judging the game based on the ads, you would never know. 

And I do understand why this is. It all comes down to Dogs and Smurfs. 
But I wish it didn't. 

[David Gaider]

I kind of resist the notion that we would have to switch to a female protaganist in the marketing in order to "prove" that our game holds any appeal to female gamers-- particularly for fans who are already on our forums and know very well that's the case. But I guess I would, being a guy, so it's very easy for me to say that this isn't an issue. So that's certainly fair.

From my personal perspective, I wouldn't mind seeing a female protaganist in the marketing just for the sake of having something a little different. I'm a big fan of strong female characters, after all. Whether that's good marketing, however, is quite something else... I'm not sure I actually buy the argument that female characters are somehow less marketable to the mass audience, but then again I'm not their target. I'm already fully-informed and bought-in, so for me it's purely an aesthetic thing-- which, I suspect, is the case for many people here as well.

Even so, it'd be nice. Like some have pointed out, Dragon Age is a pretty female-friendly game (provided you believe that "female-friendly" needn't involve things like puzzles, ponies or lack of combat-- which I certainly do) and it'd be nice to trumpet that more than we currently do.

[David Gaider]

BobSmith101 wrote...
[/b]Marketing is skewed towards men ,because men are the largest market. By Bioware/EA's own metrics it's something like 80/20. Now if you could capture that ultra casual female market I'm sure they would love to sell them the game. But it's not worth the gamble of alienating a large % of the male audience for a potential increase in the female audience.

Couple of comments on this:

1) Across all game types, female gamers make up 42% of the base (you can look at an interesting survey done in 2011 here). Now I'm sure the figures skew differently when looking at different genres, yes, but surely the leap for a gamer from non-RPG-player to RPG-player is shorter than the leap from non-gamer to RPG-player... and perhaps even shorter from MMO-player to RPG-player, since MMO's are one of those genres that everyone seems to agree has a high percentage of female players. Make of that what you will.

2) I'm not sure that having a female protaganist in the marketing actually alienates the male player base... any more than having a male one alienates the female player base currently. Though it seems an odd argument to make when some claim a male protaganist alienates female players but that the reverse wouldn't also be true. Seems to be pretty selective reasoning, if you ask me. But there's a lot of selective reasoning to go around, so why not?

3) The "potential" increase in sales you note is really the truth of the matter, as I see it. While I'm not part of our marketing department, I'd suspect the reason that such marketing tends to follow a common path is because it's seen as less risky. There's a lot of money at stake, and the benefits of targeting the largest demographic are seen as tried and true... while targeting what's seen as a smaller demographic has as much potential for failure as for success. Is that actually the case? I'm not sure-- and personally I'm wondering if there isn't an under-serviced market waiting to be solicited-- but I kind of doubt any marketing person is going to put much stock in marketing advice coming from people whose interest in the marketing has little to do with marketing-- or, rather, who's interest is primarily in how the game is marketed to people who are already invested. Which, I imagine, to your average marketing person, has limited value. But perhaps that's cynical of me.

At any rate, those are my thoughts on the subject-- which, again, aren't worth a lot since my participation in such decisions is really limited. But there you go.

Modifié par David Gaider, 24 avril 2012 - 02:44 .

[John Epler]

And I think we're sufficiently off-topic that we're done here.

In the future, if you aren't well-versed in gender studies and feminist ideas, I'd suggest taking a step back and refraining from posting in regards to them until you've educated yourself a bit. Just a little bit of friendly advice.

Modifié par John Epler, 24 avril 2012 - 04:11 .