122 réponses à ce sujet

[Shinobu]

Try google instead of being condescending, and yes people say that. Ive seen a lot of posts from the tumblr lgbt crowd and there have been many posts I've seen in the last several months to that effect. Of course saying you are going to buy something and buying it are 2 different things. I can't speak to if a stranger on the internet was lying or not.

 

Her post wasn't condescending. Can everyone just cool their jets?

 

The two reasons I can think of to explain doing something you 97% don't particularly care for would be that the remaining 3% is SO enjoyable that it makes the rest worthwhile, OR you want to encourage more media portrayals like those seen in Bioware games and are voting with your wallet.

[Ryzaki]

There is a difference between only liking 1% of a game, and having the other 99% of the game enhanced by how important that 1% is to you.

 

I joke about how I'm just here for the romance, but that doesn't mean I don't also enjoy things like a good combat system.  But generally, if I'm not engaged by the story, setting, or characters, then good combat is not enough motivation to even pick up a game, let alone play it to the end.  For me, emotional engagement is just a basic prerequisite for enjoying most games (other than, you know, basic arcade games), so if I don't think a game is going to appeal to me emotionally, I don't see myself investing the time and money into it.  

 

Same.

 

Now I usually will play a game with fun combat and a crappy story if I find the main PC attractive enough. But that's just me and my tolerance levels. But a game with good combat (not great) but everything else is bleh? I'll probably play it for a few hours, and then shelve it never to look at it again.

[Puppy Love]

No offense intended, but I've never understood this sentiment. It's not just you, I've heard several other people on the forums say they don't really play video games, or enjoy RPG's or whatever, but they play Bioware games because they get to play as a homosexual or a female. But the thing is, Dragon Age has almost nothing to do with being gay or a women. In fact, I bet only like 3% of the game, max, changes based on your sexuality or gender. The rest is a mix of killing people and taking their stuff and an epic fantasy story about saving the world from *insert cataclysm here*. I mean, would people really play a 50 hour game that's 35 hours of combat they slog through and 14 hours of story they aren't interested in for the one hour when the world recognizes they are gay?

 

Of course, I'm a straight male, so maybe this is just my privilege talking, but I never understood it.

 

Another consideration is, not everyone buys a lot of games.  Let's say you are a gay male, let's also say you buy one game a year, you play pretty casually.  Now there's a whole bunch of games where you can play a straight male hero, but one game where you can play a gay male hero.  Throughout most of your life you've been stuck playing straight male hero's, you dealt with it because you like gaming.  Now a company has come along and let's the hero be a gay male, no longer does the player need to help straight males be the hero time and time again, no longer is every romance between a guy and girl, finally the hero is someone like you the player.

 

Now why in the world would you as a gay male gamer, spend your money on your one game a year supporting the tired over done straight male protagonist when instead there's a game that puts you and people like you in the hero seat for once.  Who would you rather support and lend your money to?

[aTigerslunch]

Here, an example of a game that puts the 1% in perspective.  Destiny, a hard to see story if don't pay attention according to couple posters, pretty much non-existent for most. I am not saying its bad nor am I saying its good. It is a great example to put that perspective to those that don't see an issue that LGBT have or women have.

 

Now say that "1%" of the game is missing doesn't matter.

 

 

Forgot another, Shadowrun, its good shooting and race picking and such, but nothing of a story period, Its just an arena shooter. Many preferred something that was missing.

[Shinobu]

So, Bioware, please mention being able to customize the sex of the Inquisitor on the Amazon website for DA:I. It could just be as simple as "Take the role of the Inquisitor as he or she..." or "fully customize your Inquisitor's race, sex, class and abilities."

[AlanC9]

The upshot of this is that I've got a whole stack of games I've played for a few hours before getting bored.  I'm nearly 40 and frankly I don't have the time or the energy to research every game that comes out.  I've also been burned a few times by misleading and otherwise obfuscated marketing that doesn't tell me what I need to know before I hand over my money.  At the moment I'm in the position of having money to spend on games but only Bioware and Bethesda seem to be making ones I like.  And neither of them have done a stellar job of advertising the fact I can role a female character.

You could probably save some of that time and energy by not paying attention to game marketing in the first place. It doesn't seem to be working for you anyway.

[aTigerslunch]

Actually, game marketing is what works. A trailer that shows what is liked or wanted is a big deal. A game company WANTS to sell their product, and NOT dismiss anyone. Which is a failure to sell products if they literally go out and dismiss players. I wont give an example of current issues to poke fun at certain companies, that would be uncalled for as I do like some of their games. At the same time, they ruined more than one buyer's perception of its company. As I said, I am generalizing on purpose. Cause I still like a few games from that company.   

 

 

(I love all BW games, fyi.)

[AlanC9]

I meant that paying attention to marketing wasn't working for tirnoney in particular. (It doesn't work for me either.) I'm sure marketing works on some folks, and for the devs.

[androniic]

Damn feminists coming to the gamingworld demanding **** ! (im joking)

[RevilFox]

Damn feminists coming to the gamingworld demanding **** ! (im joking)

I'm trying to think of a response of this that doesn't come off as rude and/or mean, and it's pretty tough. 

[Grieving Natashina]

Damn feminists coming to the gamingworld demanding **** ! (im joking)

Such as shame that they are spending money on games and wish to be represented.  Will the horrors of the world never cease?  

 

_{Don't worry, I know you're kidding.}  

[CuriousArtemis]

I'd be fascinated to know if a non-straight male protagonist can drive non-gamers to gaming. I expect marketing would also be ecstatic! Anyone ever see this?

 

Yep, that's what I said earlier (I think). Since buying an xbox in 2011, I have purchased DAO, DA2, ME series, Dragon's Dogma, and Skyrim. I purchased those because I love science fiction and fantasy and I love to play as a male character (why, well, that's personal); I also love romance, and I like boys, and all these games let me play as a male character (yay!) who can fall in love with another man. It's really quite glorious; talk about my sweet and awesome escape after a long week at work.

 

You see I am in my mid-30s, been playing games all my life, usually on male relatives' and friends' consoles. My brother in law was playing DA2 and I was playing it with him. When I learned I could play as a guy and romance another guy, something just struck me; I thought, I don't have to play on other people's consoles. I can go out and buy my own. I really can do this! No one ever told me I could... they said it was a boy thing. No one bought me video games growing up; they gave them to my brother. But damn it, I can do this!

 

So I did it

[PsychoBlonde]

Another consideration is, not everyone buys a lot of games.  Let's say you are a gay male, let's also say you buy one game a year, you play pretty casually.

Not buying a lot of games is not the same thing as playing "casually".  I only buy 2-3 games a year (if that), but I play upwards of 40 hours a week--because I'm a hardcore MMO player.  My housemate is about the same--he usually gets 2-3 new games a year for himself.  We play different games 90% of the time.  He's played The Witcher, for instance.  I watched him play for a while and came to the conclusion I wasn't interested.  (And he didn't finish it, either.)  I played Skyrim--he watched me play for a while and came to the conclusion that he wasn't interested.  We both played Fallout 3.  Why he liked Fallout 3 but not Skyrim I will never know.

I'm not a casual *consumer* of games the way I am of movies or books.  If I'm not super-interested in a movie I'll still watch it on cable and possibly enjoy it.  I've read many books simply because I was bored and one thing about it sparked my interest.  Games not so much.  If something in a game piques my interest, I don't buy it and jump into playing it.  I go to the game website and research it, watch a few videos, look up some reviews, etc.  I have a whole list of desirable qualities:

 

• I want to be able to customize my character's appearance and play as a female

• I don't want to be forced to play in first-person (first person games are my least favorite type)

• I prefer real-time to turn-based

• sword and sorcery fantasy is my preference.  If it's more of a sci-fi thing, I prefer "hard" sci-fi instead of "magic with guns" or "radiation = magic" or some similar deal.

• I have yet to find anything by any Japanese developer that I've actually enjoyed.  It's either appallingly cutesy (which I hate) or appallingly angsty (which I also hate).  Subtlety does not seem to be a quality of Japanese game development.  I can tolerate both in small doses--but small doses are exactly what these games LACK.

• I don't like it when everyone in the game (or all the females, at least) are sexed up to the nth degree.  If I CAN wear a chainmail bikini, that is okay.  If EVERYTHING is a chainmail bikini, forget it.  If the boobs JIGGLE, double forget it.

• I generally prefer games with an exploration element over linear games

• I'd rather play an everyman type of character than The Chosen One

• I don't like it when the game scales to you

• if it has a number in the title and I haven't played and enjoyed the previous games, forget it

 

Lots of stuff.  If it's a property I'm unfamiliar with any one of those can be a complete deal-breaker.  I have things I can do, so I'm rarely so bored that I'll revisit a game if it doesn't grab me on first viewing--that, and there's usually something new coming out soonish that looks better, anyway.  It's not like when I was 18 and the gap between new games coming out that even LOOKED interesting to me could be 2 or more years, so I'd be happy to try stuff from the bargain bin that looked moderately interesting.  Games nowadays basically have one shot to interest me.  If they have features I like, they need to quit burying them under "we must look like every other successful game out there so we don't scare the Call of Duty fans away". 

[Allan Schumacher]

If you were really so obsessed with DAO I'm a little surprised the extent of your DA2 research was "the box and trailers."

 

Jumping into this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay late, but OP mentioned she started gaming in 2012 and DAO was like her first game.  It could simply be that knowing where and how to dig up the information and so forth was something that she wasn't all that familiar with.

 

 

To the OP, thanks for sharing.  There has certainly been a good amount of discussion on it, and BioWare has tried to be much more diverse in the Inquisitor when showing off the games this time around (I was worried we wouldn't be, but I think response to just the snippet at E3 was really positive!).  It's an interesting balance for having recognizable imagery while showing character creation options and whatnot, but I think we've done pretty well with DAI thus far.

[fchopin]

It is good practise to say that you can play either male or female in advertisement and presentations.
It would also be good if they include if the game is first person or third person or you can play the game in single player as i really have to dig hard to find these points and they do not make it easy for us.

[Tayah]

It is good practise to say that you can play either male or female in advertisement and presentations.
It would also be good if they include if the game is first person or third person or you can play the game in single player as i really have to dig hard to find these points and they do not make it easy for us.

Absolutely agree with this and it would be nice if gender/race/character customisation level/point of view/single player and multi player were mentioned on the box so you can answer those questions in store and then decide if you want to purchase or undertake further research from there. By the time I get home after seeing a few games I think I might like I've forgotten half the titles and have a lot less interest in researching them anyway as I know I won't buy until the next time I visit the neighbouring town which might not be for another week and by then I've long since forgotten what they were. If those things were on the box it would make things a lot easier.

 

Yeah I'm old school, I prefer a disc version. I'm also limited in yearly game budget so if I have to work really hard to even find out the answer to some of these basic questions I'm already viewing the game negatively and far less likely to go for it and more likely to invest in civilisation or strategy games where my gender rarely matters anyway or something unrelated to gaming at all and just replay old games instead. 

[Nayawk]

Right... Skyrim sold 10,000,000 copies in less than year because of this trailer. The power of marketing indeed.

 

I think you are willfully missing the point.

 

No one is saying non-female trailers don't sell games, that would be extremely untrue, they are saying that if you have this fantastic character customisation feature, list it in the release media ie the box/game site blurbs. But I think you knew that.

 

I'd also like to add my "yes please" to the first/3rd person feature listing on box/blurbs, lost count of the number of times I have see an engaging trailer then spent ages trying to find out if it has 3rd person play.

[pengwin21]

I also found The Witcher series did not suit my tastes, not sure if 'straight male protagonist' was the issue or not. I don't mind playing other games that lack character customization (Legend of Zelda, Kingdom Hearts or various other JRPGs etc.)- perhaps it is because I don't expect these games to have significant choices related to the story. I went into The Witcher expecting story choices like Bioware titles, but I guess it all seemed a bit hollow when I had a fixed protagonist- a lot of the choices were already made for me.

[slimgrin]

Me thinks the op has underestimated the power of Google and advertising in general. Female gamers don't live under a patriarchal rock, oblivious to what's happening on the internet. They can, in fact, Google stuff just as effectively as men.

 

*mind boggled*

[Lady Nuggins]

Me thinks the op has underestimated the power of Google and advertising in general. Female gamers don't live under a patriarchal rock, oblivious to what's happening on the internet. They can, in fact, Google stuff just as effectively as men.

 

*mind boggled*

 

The official Dragon Age II website barely makes mention of choosing your gender.  I eventually found it after digging through the FAQ, way down on question 10.

 

10. What will my character be like?

Your character in Dragon Age 2 will be a legendary figure in the history of Thedas. Not only will you hear people respond to your conversations, but your character will also be be fully-voiced. You will play as a human male or female of any class you wish: Warrior, Mage or Rogue.

 

The description of Dragon Age II on the Origin website says nothing about choosing your gender:

 

Choose to battle the Blight as a Rogue, Warrior, or Mage class. With expanded talent trees providing choices to shape your character’s skills, you can customize your hero like never before. Combat is so fast-paced you will find yourself needing to pause for a breath before your team dispenses with the swarms of enemies before you.

 

Combine that with the cover and all marketing materials featuring only male Hawke, and it's not hard to imagine people would make up their minds that this is a male protagonist-only game and not think to continue searching.

 

If she'd looked, she probably would have had better luck on fan-run sites like the Dragon Age Wiki.  But if fans have to turn to other fans to find out this absolutely basic information, I feel that the marketing department has already failed.  We shouldn't have to play detective every time we want to know whether a game includes playable female characters.  

[AlanC9]

If she'd looked, she probably would have had better luck on fan-run sites like the Dragon Age Wiki.  But if fans have to turn to other fans to find out this absolutely basic information, I feel that the marketing department has already failed.  We shouldn't have to play detective every time we want to know whether a game includes playable female characters.

Wouldn't reading a review also work?

[SerTabris]

Wouldn't reading a review also work?

 

I checked, and it seems so: the first two review results for DA2 were from IGN and GameSpot (looking only at the direct links to reviews, ignoring Metacritic and such), and the IGN one mentions it in the first paragraph and the GameSpot one mentions it in the second.  Still, I don't think that companies should be relying on third party reviews to do their marketing either.  From an outside perspective, you're doing essentially the same thing (looking it up on a third party website), though I think reviews are probably a bit more accessible without prior knowledge.

[Shinobu]

Wouldn't reading a review also work?

 

The point is that it should be on the box. Or on Amazon. Which are the first two places many people are going to look. Reviews are great, but basic information about the game should be provided by the publisher. Some people may not bother looking up reviews if the publisher's description doesn't interest them.