Tropes: Gamers, Advertisers, and Poe's Law

Lately I've been seeing these Facebook ads in my side bar:





"Women Love This Game!" Well of course we do. Speaking as an Ovary Owner, I can't think of anything I like more than nurturing baby things. This explains why the fan base for Pokemon and Digimon are composed almost entirely of women. And that's a true fact that I just made up off the top of my head. I'm just sad that there's not yet a Facebook game that revolves around me making men sammiches. Then my online life would be complete.

(Note: That's "me making sammiches for men" and not "me making sammiches of men".)

Actually, after pressing F5 several times to collect these babies (as well as raiding Google for a couple because Facebook was being stubborn), I also saw these:


A more cynical person than I might speculate that the Facebook ad programmers are selling the same ad copy over and over to the game makers, but when I poked around on the Facebook ad page, I saw that the advertisers apparently write their own copy, which means this meme is apparently self-propagating at this point. How confusing and/or depressing if true.

Is the "Women Love This Game!" an attempt to bring in women gamers and reproduce the powerful force that is/was Farmville? Is the idea that casual Facebook game players are composed mostly of women and that therefore the ads need to cater to women? If that's the case, I guess that's a good thing... maybe? I mean, it's nice to see women getting props for being a powerful consumer base, particularly in something like gaming, even if this instance just reinforces the meme that women are casual gamers only and can this meme please die now. But pro-tip for Facebook game advertisers, this marketing campaign doesn't make me think, Really?? I'm a woman! I might like that too! If you want to market to women, you do kind of need to market to women. Putting up a big sign saying WOMEN LIKEY isn't really going to peak my interest enough to try out your product.

I mean, when was the last time something saying "Men Like This Thing!" made you want to buy it? You're an advertiser; don't you need a little more to convince you to part with your hard-earned cash and/or free time?

(Note: I will, apparently, give you free advertising with a blog post, though, so I suppose that's something. Enjoy.)

The alternative is that with this "Women Love This Game!" concept, the advertisers hope to slyly bring in the male gamers, a la Ladies-Night-At-The-Bar advertising. The problem with this, though, is that you're using the presence of women as bait in order to bring in men and this is problematic for a variety of reasons. It reinforces a cultural narrative that men are largely driven by a search for sex. It reinforces a cultural narrative that women are objects to be pursued by men. It reinforces a cultural narrative that oh my god you don't care about your women customers except insomuch as they bring in the "real" clientele.

Seriously, advertisers? Do not use women as bait. Even if you don't mind insulting men and woman with this tactic (which, I would remind you, is a large portion of your consumer base), using women as bait reinforces the cultural narrative that your product has no other redeeming features. Do you really want to put that in your ad copy? "Our product is such crap that the only way you'd be tempted to try it is in the hope that you might meet someone nice who was equally suckered in to our crap product?"

Moving on. Did you know that if you type facebook "women love this game" dragons in Google, you may find this page: “Straight Male Gamer” told to ‘get over it’ by BioWare. My favorite part is the quoted complaint:

To summarize, in the case of Dragon Age 2, BioWare neglected their main demographic: The Straight Male Gamer.

I don't think many would argue with the fact that the overwhelming majority of RPG gamers are indeed straight and male. Sure, there are a substantial amount of women who play video games, but they're usually gamers who play games like The Sims, rather than games like Dragon Age. That's not to say there isn’t a significant number of women who play Dragon Age and that BioWare should forgo the option of playing as a women altogether, but there should have been much more focus in on making sure us male gamers were happy.

Now immediately I’m sure that some male gamers are going to be like "YOU DON'T SPEAK FOR ME! I LOVE DRAGON AGE 2!", but you have to understand, the Straight Male Gamer, cannot be just lumped into a single category.

Its ridiculous that I even have to use a term like Straight Male Gamer, when in the past I would only have to say fans...

In the absence of evidence otherwise, I'm calling Poe's Law on this, but it's such a wonderful example that I couldn't not share. I love the idea that Straight Male Gamers "cannot be just lumped into a single category" but apparently Women Gamers can because we all play The Sims AND NOTHING ELSE. My other favorite part is that I've been playing RPGs since I was a wee lass and I thought I was a "fan" all this time, but turns out I have never been a "fan" because that term was reserved for STRAIGHT! MALE! GAMERS!, at least until the liberal-homosexual-feminist gaming upheaval of 2008. That was a good year.

And I love the idea that the game companies aren't focusing on making male gamers happy. Oh my goodness, I laughed until tears came to my eyes. Yes. Yes, this is the problem the video game industry has today. No one ever looks up in a meeting and says you know, this is great and all, but what will the MALE gamers want? If only the game industry would hire more straight men so that they can get a more diverse viewpoint into their liberal-homosexual-feminist groupthink meetings and brainstorming sessions. Oh, hilarious internet guy, you are a delight. Thank you.

I'm sad he didn't work WHITE! into his rant, though. I guess that's harder to do in a gamer rant, since everyone knows some of the best RPGs come from Japan. Or possibly it's because Dragon Age is so white-centric that your black character's biological family will always be white. And Dragon Age 2 made your character white (and male!) in the opening sequence, after which you were given control of the character editor and allowed to change it after the fact. Because -- and this the real reason, I Swear I Am Not Making This Up -- if people are going to idealize a Hero they've never seen before, they all idealize the Hero as White and Male.

That dev team of liberal-homosexual-feminists sure does send off a lot of mixed signals. *snerk*

38 comments:

Michael Mock said...

To be fair, there is room for games that don't offer a selection of characters. I'm thinking of the Tomb Raider, Soul Reaver, and Resident Evil games as examples where single character design works with the game.

That said, it makes no sense at all to offer a choice of designs, and then not offer as much variety as possible.

Also, for the record, I've seen some examples of the "#1 Game for MEN on Facebook!" and "MEN! Can you even beat level 1?" adverts in my FB sidebar.

Ana Mardoll said...

It would be interesting to know if the actual ad copy is "#1 Game for #GENDER" and Facebook jams the profile gender into the variable.

LKE said...

Off topic, sort of?

Before I realized the ads were talking about a Facebook game, I was wondering when Dragon Cave (http://dragcave.net/) started caring what sex/gender the player identified as. The "raise a dragon from egg to adulthood" is the basic premise of DC, too.

Bificommander said...

I remember seeing reading about that guy on the escapist forum. The general consensus was that the guy could get bend, though the article was mostly about his homophobia, not about his other entitlement issues.

I don't see how much it would've added to change the gender of the Bioshock games. You only ever see your hand. I wouldn't have minded playing a female protagonist in Bioshock 1, but I can understand they didn't feel like making two sets of arms and changing the dialogue about you in the audio logs (I think the guy himself narrates 2 lines in the intro, so those wouldn't have been much work to dub over) to give you choice of gender. I will admit that it'd be fair to have a few more female protagonist of the "She's a girl, deal with it yo." variaty, as Yahtzee put it. So less Lara Croft and more Jade from Beyond Good and Evil.

I also liked the Fallout 3 approach. Especially the detail that your father was siloueted by the light behind him untill you filled in your characters looks, so his looks and etnic background could reflect the choice you made for your character, neatly solving the customized black guy with default white parents problem.

Nathaniel said...

Based on game designer perceptions of the straight male gamer, if they ever did try to cater to women it would be stuff like a hockey game where all the men wear jock straps, or action games where you have to rescue the dumbass prince.

histrogeek said...

Speaking as male, I have seen a lot of "#1 Game for Men" or "The Best Game of Men" type ads on Facebook recently. Like someone got a new macro or something.

Gelliebean said...

"I don't see how much it would've added to change the gender of the Bioshock games. You only ever see your hand."

True, but they make such a big deal about (spoilers?) lbhe punenpgre gheavat vagb n Ovt Qnqql arne gur raq - vs lbh'er va n znffvir, birecbjrerq qvire'f fhvg, qbrf vg znggre gur traqre vafvqr? Zvgvtngrq ol gur snpg gung lbh'er fhccbfrq gb or Elna'f fba,so it's a little less like an avatar of the player and a little more like you're acting a play, sort of. Similiarly for Bioshock 2 since Lbh'er fhccbfrq gb or Ryrnabe'f 'sngure' svther, a character with a pre-defined history and background. It didn't bother me as much in Bioshock as it does in some other games, because you are acting as a character instead of defining a character.... It was just one of those little nagging things. The game itself was incredible, and I re-play it even with the gender constraints.

Will Wildman said...

In the case of Dragon Age 2, you're not stuck with a male at any point, although you are stuck with the box-art version of either the male or female hero (white, blue-eyed, black hair), as the linked blog-post notes. And I was much less troubled by that before, when I thought the in-game storyteller was just doing it to mess with his interrogator's head, rather than the implication from the designer's quote, which is that for some reason the in-world legends about the hero have actually made them white. Argh.

It could almost be a kind of commentary on ethnocentrism (if you've never heard anything about this legendary figure's appearance, what will you assume they look like? I pictured Angelina Johnson from Harry Potter as white by default until corrected in the fourth book) but that angle could only work for a white player who would subsequently be presented automatically with a darker-skinned Real Hero.

Alternatively, they could have made it even more blatant, with the lying narrator being asked to describe the hero and saying to his interrogator "Oh, you know, our great champion looked a lot like you - pale skin, dark hair, that type of thing, very intimidating and attractive..." Except that the interrogator isn't exceptionally pale; she's sort of in the mid-range of human melanin variation.

It's occurring to me as well that none of the rest of the party (or any particularly significant characters I've seen) have darker skin either. There's one guy who's kind of tan - everyone else is trending towards pasty. Even the Welsh elf, despite elves being one of the less-often-pale peoples in the region.

---

The companies are in it for the money. They have already got your money but there is a market out there to be tapped. The companies aren't making those games for the love of that poster -- they are doing it for profit. Period. Get over it. They have been monetizing you. Now they are trying to monetize all those other people.

Yup. As I understand it, the single fastest-growing market for video games is women aged 30+. And a fair number of women aged 30-60 that I know are big fans of this genre. I see them on facebook discussing which Skyrim quests they've just finished, who they've married their latest warrior elf to, and why they have a hardline principle of killing questgivers who try to force them to kill someone else.

Redwood Rhiadra said...

I suspect all the ads shown are actually for the same game - so it's not really a meme, just one company flooding FB with a lot of very similar ads. I see that kind of campaign fairly frequently.

depizan said...

Game companies are being dragged (kicking and screaming, possibly) towards greater equality, largely because so many women are gaming now. And the not-white -straight -male gamers are working very hard at calling out the problems with aiming games at only the WSM gamers. I just wish the whole thing would happen a little faster. Okay, a lot faster.

Star Wars: The Old Republic will - they say - have same sex romance options added after launch. Why it couldn't be launching with them, I don't know. Why the body-type options for female characters are thin, slightly less thin, tall, and maybe-supposed-to-be-slightly-chubby when the male character options are thin, muscular, very muscular, and fat (rather in the linebacker sense, but still, genuinely big) is another very good question. But at least there's a range of skin color and face options and it will be more inclusive, once the same sex romance options launch. I'll take what I can get.

I still look forward to the days when MMOs and other games have options to create characters of every race and body-type and no one can imagine why it would be different. And all games with romance options included the vast range of romantic options (be straight, be gay, be by, be poly amorous, be Captain Jack Harkness and be everything-amorous).

Will Wildman said...

I didn't even realise that SWTOR had romance options, but I guess that's in keeping with all their past work.

I'm still in the midst of my prolonged distancing from Warcraft, but their total failure to do anything outside of a straight-male-intensive mindset is doing nothing to coax me back. It's in everything from the way their (few) female characters exist only in relation to male characters (except for the Banshee Queen, who is of course considered a 'crazy b****') to their continued treatment of male as normal and female as variant - spells that turn you into the 'Son of [Bear God]' which I suggested on their forums should perhaps include the spell text "Transformation lasts 30 seconds. Leaves you vaguely uncomfortably about enforced binary gender dynamics for up to 45 minutes."

One of the things I liked about Dragon Age 2 was that no one seemed to think same-gender attraction was remotely strange (which is only sensible from the designers' point of view, since it would take extra coding and recording time to add any such commentary) or have any clear gender roles. I think that was a useful reference to have in mind going into my NaNovel.

Rakka said...

One more reason to play just Roguelikes. Besides nymphs charming/seducing depending on character's sex, you there's no difference at all between playing male or female character, and you can picture the little highlighted @ looking anything you want it to look like. (What graphics option? ASCII for me, please. At least the letters are identifiable.) And the more I see about gaming community the less inclined I am to shell out for the equipment to play them... although Katamari Damacy almost made me consider.

Silver Adept said...

I will put in a plug for Katamari Damacy - in addition to the simple, yet compelling, gameplay, theere are a wide range of "cousins" to collect that are variously shaped and named - they confer no change in gameplay, but the cousins do allow for the playing of the game from any gender (or lack thereof) character that anyone would like.

On the broader point of women picking up not just casual games but the kind that take a commitment to the grinds, and the paucity of protagonists that are female or can be played female with positive consequences, I'm all for more people experiencing good games and being able to complain about bad ones, from whatever design failures there are in the game. It only forces game companies to produce better and more complex products. I always thought it a good sign that Rare made Perfect Dark after they'd made the game of the Goldeneye franchise. Female protagonist, just as good an agent as 007.

The men are just going to have to get used to women existing in the spheres they thought they could retreat to and get away from women.

Dav said...

This is one of the reasons I will continue to buy from Bioware, despite the deep, burning hatred I hold for Dragon Age 2. I wish I could believe SMG was trolling, but there's enough guys just like him that it's sort of a moot point whether he's actually a Poe or not.

So many straight, white male gamers feel horrifically alienated every time there's something that's not totally fitted for their self-image. (I also have a theory that this group does less role-playing - they see their character as an extension of themselves, so having hot!male!elf flirt with them is hugely offensive. (Because having a guy flirt with you is the worst. thing. ever. or something. I dunno.)

I'm not entirely thrilled with some of the choices Bioware makes. In fact, some of them piss me off. But at least I feel like someone is paying attention to this stuff.

Rikalous said...

In Nethack, a female character is the slightly better choice (at least as far as I've gotten), because they can lay eggs that hatch into pets if they've been polymorphed into certain kinds of critters. Squadron of loyal pyrolisks? Yes please!

Fourthage said...

It's occurring to me as well that none of the rest of the party (or any particularly significant characters I've seen) have darker skin either. There's one guy who's kind of tan - everyone else is trending towards pasty. Even the Welsh elf, despite elves being one of the less-often-pale peoples in the region.

Uh, Isabela? She's Rivaini and naturally dark-skinned. There was a moderate shitstorm because one fan came out with a mod that lightened her skin.

Steph said...

It's really not that hard to handle character creation well -- Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2, Skyrim all had good character creator screens (though they pretty much always start with a default male -- it only takes a second to change, but it's moderately irritating that it's like that in EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.)

I tend not to like playing generic male characters (I'm genderqueer leaning transfemaleish so I'm plenty sick of driving around a guy-looking avatar in real life, thanks) but it doesn't bother me to play a male character who's actually a character, like Raz, or Ratchet, or William Marston -- basically anyone who has a voice of their own, rather than being a vessel for the player.

Regarding the ad, I wonder if the next step is a shirtless guy with bulging pecs telling you to "PLAY NOW, MY LADY!"

depizan said...

I suggested on their forums should perhaps include the spell text "Transformation lasts 30 seconds. Leaves you vaguely uncomfortably about enforced binary gender dynamics for up to 45 minutes."

I love this!

And I've been somewhat tempted to try RPGs - like BioWare's other games, but non MMOs tend to require more skill than I have.

Ana Mardoll said...

I love gaming but CANNOT AIM AT THINGS. I've had very pleasant experiences with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age Origins (once I downloaded a patch to make the team less death-prone).

depizan said...

Ah, so there's hope!

chris the cynic said...

I think I would have the same thing going on if not for the fact that my reaction time is slow enough that I'm not sure my lack to aiming ability really matters. So I cheat. Cheating is a perfectly legitimate option.

Of course it only works in single player games, but I think my tastes would skew to single player anyway.

Ana Mardoll said...

Most definitely there is hope! I also enjoy Morrowind, though I've not played any of those games since Morrowind.

KOTOR and DAO are practically one-click combat, not unlike MMOs. No aiming required.

I will also plug the Avernum games by Spiderweb Software here, for no better reason than I love the plot, I love the company, and I love the games. Not the same genre AT ALL, but I like to bring them up as awesome. And actually pretty dang progressive -- the Avernum games are about an oppressive society throwing people down into a cave-prison for petty crimes, and one of the first fellow-prisoners you meet was pretty clearly thrown down for being a lesbian.

And the game population is pretty 50/50 male/female, I think! (I no longer trust my own judgment on this.)

http://www.avernum.com/avernum/

Ana Mardoll said...

and why they have a hardline principle of killing questgivers who try to force them to kill someone else.

Will, if I haven't told you today that your posts are like rainbows shooting directly into my eyes, I'll take a moment to say so now. This was hilarious, thank you.

Pthalo said...

Speaking of Facebook, does anyone play BushWhacker?

Will Wildman said...

Uh, Isabela? She's Rivaini and naturally dark-skinned. There was a moderate shitstorm because one fan came out with a mod that lightened her skin.

You're right and I feel properly silly for forgetting her. There is one dark-skinned party member. The hypersexualised, untrustworthy one. Well, I suppose most of the party is a bit untrustworthy, what with Fenris the Doombrooder and Merril the Woobie Destroyer of Worlds and Che "Anders" Guevara.

Fourthage said...

Oh dear. I'm afraid we have vastly divergent interpretations of Isabela. I think she has one of the most positive depictions of female sexuality that's come out of the gaming world. (It's also worth noting that she was just as sexual in her brief appearance Origins and was much lighter skinned there than she is in DA2.)

Loquat said...

Holy crap, there be some racists on the Bioware forums. Admittedly, quite a few of the posts telling the OP, "Nobody cares but you, get over it" are in the same vein as the "Nobody else cares about this incredibly trivial flaw" posts you'll tend to see on any thread that complains about a problem on a game forum, but dang. It's like they don't even realize that remembering the existence of non-white humans is one of those basic things one should do to not be a racist.

My current MMO, Rift, has a mixed record so far on gender issues. Armor designs for female characters are about evenly split between practical and revealing, and there are cosmetic armor slots available so you're never stuck with a look you hate. (Oddly, many of the revealing armor designs are in fact ugly as hell. This awful thing here, for example.) Many female NPCs are scantily clad, including the leader of the Defiant faction, but they did just add a new tropical zone with lots of scantily clad NPCs of both genders. And the NPC storylines tend to be pretty good about having women be actors in their own right, with their own interests, rather than just auxiliaries of men - on the Defiant side, there is even an achievement for completing all the quests that track the story of two female NPCs and their developing friendship.

Izzy said...

Haven't played DA2 yet--I am ludicrously behind the curve and still making my way through the "oh my God why is everything COVERED IN FLESH" underground city part of Awakening--but I also liked Isabella in Origins. Sexuality + competence + not evil=good. And rare.

That said, a greater variety of dark-skinned party members would be good.

Amaryllis said...

Sexuality + competence + not evil=good. And rare.
I don't play RPGs, but I read books. I'm currently savoring Steven Brust's "Khaavren Romances," so I submit the following exchange between two young girls, one of whom has just had a mortal duel fought over her:

"A soldier made certain suggestions that another found offensive, and so they had a discussion, the results of which you can even now observe."
"And did the offender triumph, of the defender?"
"The defender."
"That is but just...But tell me, what is it like to have men fight over you?"
"I don't care for it."
"I had wondered. I believed it was better to do the fighting."

Or, two young men are preparing for a possible battle:

"You see, if there was an army, there must necessarily be spectators to watch it."
"And then?"
"Well, some of them will certainly be girls."
"That is true, And we can watch to see which of the girls are the bravest, and pick them to have conversation with."
"Well, there is some justice in what you say, only I had thought of it more in the sense of the reverse."
"How, pick the least brave?"
"No, no. I had referred to permitting them to see us being brave, so they could choose to have conversations with us."
"I see, I see. Yes, that would be a fine thing as well."

Hee.

Will Wildman said...

I like Isabela as a character; there's nothing inherently wrong with her (and I cheered when I found that I had earned her loyalty well enough that she did come back to help us instead of run off), I'm just not sure that she'a great exhibit A for BioWare's racial enlightenment. Lustiest, greediest, weakest moral code, darkest skin - what could possibly go wrong with that combination? (The only other notably dark-skinned character who comes to mind is a quest NPC who is also defined mostly by greed and a lack of moral hindrance - the DA2 wiki reminds me his name is Hubert.)

Fourthage said...

I suppose Isabela's flexible morals bother me less than they might in other characters because they're explicitly a result of her life experiences. She's not presented as someone with a weak moral code because she's from Rivain and that's just how Rivaini are, but someone who values independence (even from conventional morality) because she was sold into marriage early in her life. It's not that I don't understand the problems with your listed combination of characteristics with the darkest skinned member of the party, but it is nice to see an openly sexual (dark-skinned) woman who isn't punished or looked down on by the narrative for those qualities.

Kish said...

I also blink at the inclusion of "weakest moral code." From a certain point of view--in that Isabela tries to avoid taking a stance on moral issues--her moral code is weaker than, say, Fenris's, but I'd still choose her sense of morality over Fenris's (or Aveline's or Merrill's, for that matter). And even if all you look at is "how strong is her moral code," not "how valid is her moral code," she still doesn't have the weakest moral code; that honor goes to Varric (or, depending on how you look at it, Sebastian, who seems to have a strong moral code which he is utterly incapable of following for two minutes if it inconveniences him).

Izzy said...

Yeah, for myself I don't mind, but might be a good idea for others.

V unir n ybg yrff bs n ceboyrz jvgu Vfnoryyn'f zbeny pbqr va QNVV guna V qb jvgu Naqref'f. From what I know.

BaseDeltaZero said...

[BLOCKQUOTE]
It's occurring to me as well that none of the rest of the party (or any particularly significant characters I've seen) have darker skin either. There's one guy who's kind of tan - everyone else is trending towards pasty. Even the Welsh elf, despite elves being one of the less-often-pale peoples in the region.
[/BLOCKQUOTE]

Perhaps the climate is relatively cold? I've heard that skin color will actually change over generations, quite independent of genes, perse.

Then again, the percentage of bisexuals in the world isn't '100', so that's not exactly an excuse in this case.

[BLOCKQUOTE]
I didn't even realise that SWTOR had romance options, but I guess that's in keeping with all their past work.
[/BLOCKQUOTE]
I'm not sure *why* it would have romance options. It's an MMO... you really can't take it entirely seriously. Romance and dramatic stories are all well and good in video games, but not when it's repeated by you and ten million of your closest friends. Just get on with the next raid.

[BLOCKQUOTE]
Besides nymphs charming/seducing depending on character's sex, you there's no difference at all between playing male or female character, and you can picture the little highlighted @ looking anything you want it to look like.
[/BLOCKQUOTE]
'Cept of course I don't know any off the top of my head where that seducing isn't consistently heterosexual.

[BLOCKQUOTE]
"Transformation lasts 30 seconds. Leaves you vaguely uncomfortably about enforced binary gender dynamics for up to 45 minutes."
[/BLOCKQUOTE]
Unless there's some particular reason they can't call up the same #GENDER tag they use for dialog in spell text, they could do that too. This is Blizzard, though, so I suspect they'll go with the first. Because it's hilarious.

[BLOCKQUOTE]
Armor designs for female characters are about evenly split between practical and revealing, and there are cosmetic armor slots available so you're never stuck with a look you hate. (Oddly, many of the revealing armor designs are in fact ugly as hell. This awful thing here, for example.)
[/BLOCKQUOTE]
The male version of that design, at least, is about equally revealing. This doesn't seem to be the case in WoW...

I tried playing Rifts once, but the trial wouldn't work. I was sad.

Brin Bellway said...

'Cept of course I don't know any off the top of my head where that seducing isn't consistently heterosexual. And I'm willing to bet there are roguelikes with different stats.

I'm told the incubi and succubi themselves are bisexual. If true, this could be useful if you get lucky with (or more likely, can control) shapeshifting magic.
(Not that this in any way mitigates the heteronormativity. I'm just nitpicking at "consistent"/Nethack-geeking.)

Crawl doesn't even ask you for a gender. Name, species, class*, starting weapon if there's multiple options for the selected class (and I think they're working on eliminating that one). That's it.

*This affects only starting skill levels and equipment. It (helps) determine where you start, not where you go.

J. Random Scribbler said...

I mean, when was the last time something saying "Men Like This Thing!" made you want to buy it? You're an advertiser; don't you need a little more to convince you to part with your hard-earned cash and/or free time?

Actually, in my experience, quite a lot of advertising aimed at men is pretty much saying just that. It's not as blatantly spelled out as in the ads you posted, but when you boil it down, the idea seems to be "Men like this thing! Therefore if you buy it, everyone will think you are a Real Man!"

I see your point, though, because ads aimed at men wouldn't work if they were like the examples in the post, any more than those examples work on women. You'd think advertisers would realize this.

Brin Bellway said...

It took me a few seconds to figure out how this made any sort of sense. Then I realized I was thinking of every 'succubus' type creature since the Middle Ages, where they do the seduction/feed on energy/etc thing, rather than some bizarre kind of infernal sperm donor program. But yeah, I suppose in that context it doesn't make sense.

The likelihood of positive vs. negative effects depends on stats. By late-mid game (at least if you play my usual elven wizards*), your stats are high enough that the chance of negative effect is zero.
(It is all rather weird, yes.)

*Admittedly, they're probably the best race/class combo for exploiting this. They tend to have high Intelligence and Charisma, which is what the likelihood of a good effect depends on.

mmy said...

Ana -- here is my answer to the male gamer worried about why the gaming companies are trying to make the games more attractive to women -- to quote the worried gamer: I don't think many would argue with the fact that the overwhelming majority of RPG gamers are indeed straight and male. .

The companies are in it for the money. They have already got your money but there is a market out there to be tapped. The companies aren't making those games for the love of that poster -- they are doing it for profit. Period. Get over it. They have been monetizing you. Now they are trying to monetize all those other people.

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