"Women are the new core" • Gaming • General Gaming • Eurogamer.net

Jazzy_Geoff 30 Mar 2013 23:31:42 8,068 posts
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"The world is changing, it has already changed, and we have not been doing a very good job of keeping up with it," says Tom Abernathy.
A narrative writer for Microsoft Studios has said that "women are the new core" and that creating more diverse stories, including more female characters and ethnicities, will make for better games.

Speaking as part of a presentation at GDC 2013 (written up by GamesIndustry and Polygon), Tom Abernathy--who has worked on Halo: Reach, The Saboteur, and Destroy All Humans--said the games industry hasn't kept up with today's social culture and that the market for video games is changing at a pace that developers and publishers aren't keeping up with.

"Our audience is leaving us behind," Abernathy said. "The world is changing, it has already changed, and we have not been doing a very good job of keeping up with it."

Abernathy pointed to various studies that show the diverse makeup of modern gamers, including research by the Entertainment Software Association and casual game developer PopCap which states that adult women now make up 30 per cent of US gamers.

"Women are not a small special market on the fringe of the core," Abernathy said. "Women are the new core."

Abernathy also said that more diverse games would be good for the business of the games industry, because more diversity would bring in a wider audience and therefore generate more money. "But you need to persuade people that it's OK, and won't hurt sales but might help them," he said.

"Nobody in the room admits to being against making characters female or nonwhite," he added. "But they're scared because they don't know how to defend that choice to their bosses."

"Our industry, our art, and our business stand to gain in every sense simply by holding a mirror up to our audience and reflecting their diversity in what we produce," Abernathy said.

Bollocks

mal 31 Mar 2013 00:15:10 29,326 posts
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'The core' and 'core gamers' were a bollocks made up definition from the start. Much else of what she says makes sense to me.

DrStrangelove 31 Mar 2013 00:23:24 12,326 posts
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I think so-called "core gaming", for what it's worth, will remain dominated by male teenagers. "Including more female characters and ethnicities" would be very welcome though. I'm tired of all the pubescent testosterone and would appreciate more grown-up stuff.

b0rk 31 Mar 2013 00:31:09 7,655 posts
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The so-called "core" gamer is a thing of the past anyway. Games are not made for gamers anymore and are just made for the broadest possible audience. Just look at what Tomb Raider has become for example and even Bioshock isn't immune from the dumbing down of seemingly every genre of gaming.

bobdebob 31 Mar 2013 00:40:42 601 posts
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mal wrote:
'The core' and 'core gamers' were a bollocks made up definition from the start. Much else of what she says makes sense to me.

I think 'Casual' and 'Hardcore' labels are bullshit as well. A lot of the games on iOS and Android etc are tagged as casual by internet forums, even though many of them are reminiscent of retro games on the Master System, NES etc.

DrStrangelove 31 Mar 2013 00:47:29 12,326 posts
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@B0rked_Gamer

I think it's time for naming a new genre, one that I'd call "cinematic game". In the past, we had a genre of interactive movies like Star Wars: Rebel Assault. Many of today's blockbusters (Uncharted, God of War, Call of Duty, newer Mass Effect, etc.) are more cinematic spectacle than actual games. Just the stuff to entertain most people by making their plasma screens display Hollywood stuff.

I have a plasma screen too, but I don't like all that shit, instead I'm playing Pixeljunk Eden or Skyrim.

I don't know if that makes me a core gamer, but I don't care anyway. If playing CoD is core gaming, then probably anything is.

Psychotext 31 Mar 2013 00:47:53 62,882 posts
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All these labels have changed many times since the PS1 days. No use getting hung up over all of it. I remember when your average Madden / CoD gamer was a casual... now, apparently they're proper gamers.

DrStrangelove 31 Mar 2013 00:53:23 12,326 posts
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@Psychotext

Being a Counter-Strike veteran, I have to strongly object the notion of Madden or CoD players being proper gamers.

Those fucking noobs are so far from being 1337.

PazJohnMitch 31 Mar 2013 00:55:28 13,439 posts
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i was under the impression that Skies of Arcadia was made by a predominantly female team. It is one of the best JRPGs ever made! One of the reasons is because the characters are better than almost every other game.

King_Edward 31 Mar 2013 00:57:23 11,470 posts
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Ignoring the stupid defining core gamers problem, he's basically saying� that girls play games. Perhaps this means that in Halo 5 Cortana's boobs will finally have stopped expanding.

b0rk 31 Mar 2013 00:57:28 7,655 posts
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DrStrangelove wrote:
@B0rked_Gamer

I think it's time for naming a new genre, one that I'd call "cinematic game". In the past, we had a genre of interactive movies like Star Wars: Rebel Assault. Many of today's blockbusters (Uncharted, God of War, Call of Duty, newer Mass Effect, etc.) are more cinematic spectacle than actual games. Just the stuff to entertain most people by making their plasma screens display Hollywood stuff.

I have a plasma screen too, but I don't like all that shit, instead I'm playing Pixeljunk Eden or Skyrim.

I don't know if that makes me a core gamer, but I don't care anyway. If playing CoD is core gaming, then probably anything is.

Perhaps cinematic or what about "Dragon's Lair"? A while back I was watching some of that Warfighter game and the game instructed the player to pick up a RPG. Now if you ignored that and walk forward slightly the game would just kill the player.

I seem to recall in the Eurogamer review of Uncharted 3 that the game would sort of cheat when the player was jumping onto ledges and would help the player out if you didn't quite make the jump? That was enough to put me right off that game. It's actually getting out of hand just how fucking stupid games are getting now.

bobdebob 31 Mar 2013 02:14:48 601 posts
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DrStrangelove wrote:
@Psychotext

Being a Counter-Strike veteran, I have to strongly object the notion of Madden or CoD players being proper gamers.

Those fucking noobs are so far from being 1337.

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

I even find the term 'gamer' kind of jarring. I just play games. I mean, it's their sole purpose, to entertain.

And as for games with many scripted events, although sometimes annoying, I don't think its possible to have those kinds of moments fully controllable.

Edited by bobdebob at 02:18:25 31-03-2013

JinTypeNoir 31 Mar 2013 02:46:38 4,392 posts
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Shoot the core!

Kidding, kidding! Don't shoot me!

DrStrangelove 31 Mar 2013 02:55:19 12,326 posts
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bobdebob wrote:

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

I might have been a bit too dry. Yes, I was.

Deleted user 31 March 2013 03:43:45

Microsoft have finally realised that women play video games!

PazJohnMitch 31 Mar 2013 03:46:22 13,439 posts
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Isn't the lead engineer on the NeXtbox a woman?

Deleted user 31 March 2013 07:28:56

I like the idea of 30% being women but I know zero women who play anything except some Wii games.

When you go into any shop selling games I have never seen a woman buying a game.

On this forum there are about four women compared to over one hundred men.

Of course we play games but it certainly isn't even close to 'the core'. It would be good though as it would likely lead to more women in the industry which could lead to more diversity in the games we play.

b0rk 31 Mar 2013 07:37:25 7,655 posts
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How would it lead to more diversity? Publishers only care about the bottom line and the bottom line isn't diversity, it's "how can we put shooting in this game?".

Deleted user 31 March 2013 08:19:03

Because the people making it are more diverse.

Yeah fps is the biggest seller but good games generally still sell no matter the genre.

b0rk 31 Mar 2013 08:43:44 7,655 posts
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What? Look, just because the people making it are more diverse doesn't mean the games will be any different at all but I do agree that good games can sell well whatever they might be, but that doesn't seem to be enough for most publishers right now.

FartPipe 31 Mar 2013 08:57:22 5,307 posts
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This thread is embarrassing.

Deleted user 31 March 2013 08:57:37

So a game made by 50 white men of thirty years of age would turn out the same as a game made by ten white men of various age, 20 women of all beliefs and ethnicity, 10 black men and ten sixty year old Chinese men?

ZuluHero 31 Mar 2013 09:05:57 6,320 posts
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I think that still thinking and using terms like 'core' shows how old fashioned and out of touch some people are. Ironically.

King_Edward 31 Mar 2013 09:09:47 11,470 posts
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Pepsipop wrote:
So a game made by 50 white men of thirty years of age would turn out the same as a game made by ten white men of various age, 20 women of all beliefs and ethnicity, 10 black men and ten sixty year old Chinese men?

I suppose it depends on the hierarchy. If the 10 white guys are in charge, and everyone else is just a code jockey I don't think it matters much.

Edited by King_Edward at 09:10:13 31-03-2013

b0rk 31 Mar 2013 09:10:19 7,655 posts
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Pepsipop wrote:
So a game made by 50 white men of thirty years of age would turn out the same as a game made by ten white men of various age, 20 women of all beliefs and ethnicity, 10 black men and ten sixty year old Chinese men?

You seem to think it's entirely up to the developer exactly what they put in the game. It would be great if games were made exactly how the dev wanted.

Deleted user 31 March 2013 09:10:42

Not really, core just means the main buying group of a product. Apple has its core customers etc. So most gamers are designed for core gamers, tomb raider, call of duty etc.

Deleted user 31 March 2013 09:11:43

Make like a tree and leaf.

RobTheBuilder 31 Mar 2013 09:20:43 6,976 posts
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True dat.