Wired.com’s game|life blog does a feature where they ask someone from the gaming community two questions, one about the gaming industry, and one about something that’s completely random.
Do you think it is possible
videogames will ever achieve the sort of widespread and universal
acceptance of movies? What has to happen in order for a game console to
become as commonplace as a DVD player in the average home?Wheaton: I think the greatest barrier that
videogames need to overcome is the cost. Anyone can get into a movie
for under $20. However, to play a videogame, you need to invest
hundreds of dollars in the system and anywhere from $20 to $60 for the
game. It’s a trade off, of course, because most movies are around 90 to
120 minutes while the games with great narrative storylines (Bioshock, GTA: San Andreas, Mass Effect) can last between 90 and 120 hours, and can be replayed differently many times.There is also a fundamental difference between the movie and
videogame experience that can’t be overlooked. Movies are very passive
experiences: we sit down and hand over control to the filmmakers for a
little while. We have no say over what happens, and not a whole lot
more at stake than our money and our time.Videogames, on the other hand, are by their very nature interactive
experiences that, among other things, test our reflexes and
problem-solving skills. With the advent of sandbox games, we can
explore entire worlds in ways that simply aren’t possible in movies,
and a good game gives us the opportunity to invest a great deal of time
and energy into it. I personally love that, but it’s clearly not for
everyone.
There’s more at game|life. If you check it out, I’d love to know what you think.
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Very astute comments Wil, but then we expect nothing less from you. I guess the one thing you left out (not that you aren’t aware) is the rising popularity of casual games, music/rhythm games and the Wii. Women and seniors playing video games? Whatever shall we geeks do? Seriously though, I’m surprised by how many coworkers and people I meet who talk about said rhythm/music game or thier Mii’s. Agreed, no matter how much the general public comes to accept gaming and gamers, it is not likely to replace movies as entertainment for the masses. But, the children are our future and it certainly seems that each generation is progressivly more plugged in than the last.
That was a cool response, and you’re absolutely right about cost being the greatest barrier. It’s a serious investment in money — and it’s also a serious investment in time.
IMHO, gender’s also a factor, and something I notice a lot, as a geek grrl. I’m not sure how to phrase this without looking like I’m climbing on a soapbox and waving my NOW card around — but that’s a big thing for me, and for my girlfriends. Gender’s a factor in the type of games we generally prefer to play, and in the way we sit down to play them.
That’s oversimplifying, for sure. But I’ve been a lifelong geek — a gamer, game tester, and MUD admin (man, I’m dating myself), and it’s something I definitely notice.
Want to make videogames more widespread? Start seriously appealing to women and girls. And not just making games for the Barbie-ghetto, but changing the packaging, advertising, and in-game storylines to make them gender-neutral. Or at least, not exclusionary.
Heh, this could be an essay/rant all on its own.
Just give it time. As our generation ages, we’ll still be accepting of the games, and less and less of those who “don’t get it” will be around.
Nearly everyone in first and second world countries born after 1985 doesn’t know a world without the Internet, video games etc.
Just give it time.
I’d like to address the comments made by VT up above me… as a nongaming gal myself, I’m wondering what ideas she (and you our blog host here) have to make video games more interesting to females. I’ve tried my hand at certain games on different systems, and perhaps I’m just not wired for gaming, but the Wii was most interesting to me for the very reasons she suggests– the games were a little more gender neutral. However, that didn’t stop me from putting down the console after about 20 minutes and never thinking of it again. Then again maybe gaming is something you have to start into at a young age. I had an original Nintendo in my youth, but couldn’t get excited about any of the later generations. I wonder what else, if anything, could be done to entice girls into the gaming world, as it CAN BE a medium that challenges the brain in fabulous ways.
I wonder if video games are, in a way, more like reading books than watching movies. When I’m reading a good book, I feel much more engaged in the process than when I’m watching a movie (whether it’s the physical ack of flipping pages, or the fact that all the images are being rendered in my brain, I’m not sure). Also, there is a lot more detail and nuance in a book than the average movie. Both of those factors are things that hold true when comparing gaming to movies.
Maybe games end up landing somewhere in between movies and books in the whole scheme of things.
That was most excellent Wil! You really hit the nail on the head.
Oddly enough I was thinking about your picture quite a bit. While it’s a very handsome picture of you, I thought it was quite out of date with the growth of the goatee. Then again you might have shaved it off recently. Not like I’d know the intimate details of your facial hair. ^^; … … Ok I think I’m going to go hide over in a corner and be super embarrassed now.
I would like to play more involved games, but time is a big constraint.
I think you’re right on the money in that video games and movies are just two different mediums and it would be hard for video games to take over. I think they’ll continue to gain popularity but it’s really like comparing apples and oranges. I can throw on a movie while I’m cleaning the house or doing other activities but I have to be totally invested in a video game. Sometimes I just don’t have the time for video games. And sometimes I do just want to sit there like a bump on a log and veg out. (Personally, I tend to both game *and* watch a movie if I’m going to watch a movie. Many a night have been spent watching a Star Wars movie while playing The Sims 2 on my laptop. It’s a pretty easy game for me at this point but still lets me use a small amount of brain power to get all my simulated folks happy. Or I go to the Alamo for a special event movie or just to get good food w/ my movie which makes it more of an event than just something “to do”.) Also, there is just a large group of people who just don’t “get” it because they didn’t grow up doing those sorts of activities.
As for making gaming more appealing to women I think it really comes down to neutral packaging and marketing. I’m sorry, there are games I like and games I don’t and it has *nothing* to do with my sex or gender. But unless it’s Barbie, Brats, or has puppies I see little packaging that has girls on it. I think it’s linked in with changing the image of gamers as foul mouth teens or socially inept miscreants who haven’t learned to put down the Mountain Dew and get some sunlight. We need to change the public image of gaming, period. And, when girls *do* end up gaming I think we need to acknowledge it but stop treating it like it’s the elephant in the room (not in this discussion but in general). I always get the sense that because sometimes we make such a big deal out of the fact that there are girl gamers it actually draws attention to it like it’s weird or aberrant.
Love the fact that you always have paper and a pen on you. I used to carry a notebook reserved just for writing in my backpack a while ago but have gotten out of the habit. 🙂 Nice interview!
Your comment on Gen X made me interested in the “wikipedia” definition for the term. So I looked it up, having always assumed I was Gen X.
It was surprisingly sad how much of what was said applies to me. You’d think trying to be different would mean it’s hard to categorize you, but 85% of the article was right one. So much so that I just posted an entire blog entry about Gen X. Dammit.
I’ll say that as an almost 40-year-old married mom, the kinds of games are the kind I can pick up and put down. Or that I can play with my kids (Bookworm Adventures and Peggle are current favorites.
But the “real” games that people think about just annoy me. Those paddle contraptions confuse me, even though I was ok with most FPSs that you could do on a keyboard. I’m just not convinced I have the time to invest in learning some of the stuff I might have an interest in.
Plus, I want to regulate how much stress I add to my life. Much as I loved Marathon once upon a time, I still played it on the brightest, almost-easiest difficulty. If I’m going to play a game, I want to play, not stress.
And the prude factor. I will not shell out money for Grand Theft Auto, just on principle. I’m not bringing that in my house.
Hey Wil, did you see the Star Trek rumors article on io9…”And Robin Lefler (Ashley Judd) turns up as Wesley Crusher’s wife!” lol
I saw this today and thought of you. Maybe you’ve seen it already, but I thought the prospect of a Death Star BBQ was pretty cool.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/bryantpark/bpp_slideshows/2008/starwarsmerch/publish_to_web/index.html
I saw this story of some people at MIT rolling a huge D20 in memory of Gary Gygax and thought I should send it your way:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/26/mit-students-roll-gi.html
Miss Debater: I’m always happy to froth at the mouth about this topic. 🙂 Keep in mind this is an off-the-top-of-my-head version, complete with sweeping generalizations. I’ll just put on my asbestos gear now, shall I?
Why don’t more women game?
Well, who games in the first place? Let’s look at types of gamers. The seminal work on this is Richard Bartle’s article, “Players Who Suit MUDs,” where he breaks gamers down into four types: achievers, socializers, explorers, and killers. This was written for MUDs, the text-only grandfathers of MMORPGs, but it’s applicable to a lot of types of games. Go read the article real quick, then come back. Not every game out there appeals to all four types of player — and when one does, like World of Warcraft — it sells amazingly well. But The Sims and Second Life are definitely entry-level drugs, attracting many people who would never pick up, say, Halo 3, to gaming — including women.
The debate about gender and game preference is still raging, but in my experience, the two genders tend to prefer different types of games. Not all men love first-person-shooter games and dungeon crawls, and not all women love socially-oriented, puzzle, and soap-opera-type games (I’m looking at you, Stevie Case), but there’s a marked preference.
So let’s say I’m in the market to buy a new game for myself.
–First, I want to find something I like. As angie k rightly points out — there are games I like and games I don’t like, and it’s got nothing to do with my gender, just with the kinds of games I like to play. That said… the gaming industry is almost overwhelmingly male. There are a few brave souls out there in the QA trenches, but design? Art? Concept? Apart from legends like the Intellivision Blue Sky Rangers, the gender mix is sparse at best. I’ll put it this way: when visiting a friend in Blizzard South’s offices one weekend years ago, I had to use the men’s restroom, because the one woman who worked on the art and design floor wasn’t there that Sunday. (See Women in Games International for more reading.) So, with mostly men making games, you’re going to get disproportionately more killers and achievers making games that they would like to play. (This disappoints the male explorers and socializers too, don’t worry.)
-Second, I want to find a game in which I can identify with the protagonist. Female heroines are uncommon, though getting more popular. Non-caricatured female heroines who actually wear clothes and look like real humans? Good luck. It’s definitely getting better than it used to be — Panty Raider‘s a thing of the past (but we still beat up hookers in GTA, which is more funny than sad). It’s a small thing, but when a developer omits the option to make a female avatar, and there’s not a very good story-driven reason to do this (e.g. Planescape: Torment), it turns me off to the game.
Third, I want to find a game that doesn’t insult me right off the bat. Girl-specific games? They blow. They blow rancid donkey balls. Give us more than Barbie Fashion Show as an option, people. While Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress, an attempt to feminize D&D, is actually pretty cool, you’d never know it from its ad, a riff on a Cosmo cover.
Then there’s the game marketing. Dude. If I want to see tits? I’ll just look down. The game magazine ads that promise the potential for scoring with hot chicks, if I only wear AXE body spray and drink enough Mountain Dew. Um… no thanks. (But if you figure out how playing video games will make me irresistible to naked rugby teams, call me.) Could we please, please just have gender-neutral packaging and ads?
Fourth, I want a game I can play either by myself, or with my friends, and not have to constantly deal with asshats. Also known as: the hazards of being the only female gamer in a group of male gamers. Before the advent of LARPs and MMORPGs, gaming was viewed by many women as ‘that thing my boyfriend does with his friends’ — i.e. something well outside the scope of what’s acceptable feminine activity. Then there’s just the general vibe of being a novelty, immortalized in xkcd’s “Pix Pls.”
Women tend to get introduced to gaming as corollaries of the men they’re dating, or male friends. Until you become one of the guys, it’s hard for female gamers to be seen as more than an appendage to the man they came into the group with — or, as a mom. Several times, it’s been blindly assumed that I will handle the food and drinks in a gaming group, with variations on, ‘But you’re the woman!’ given as the reason, followed with genuinely confused looks from the men when I shouted that I didn’t order pizza with my uterus.
After all that, and I’ve found a game I want to buy that meets all of the above criteria —
Fifth, I want to buy the game with a minimum of hassle. It’s irritating when I walk into a gaming store and have to throw down my geek credentials in order to get treated as a human, not as some alien, exotic creature. I could avoid the Geekier Than Thou competition by ordering online, but I don’t want to have to wait days to get it shipped to me, when there’s a game store within walking distance of my office.
Seriously, it’s nuts. I’ve been a gamer since I was nine years old and playtesting for Infocom — I’m used to it, try to have a sense of humor about it, and am willing to endure it in order to play. But I can easily see why a non-gamer/geek woman in their 30s or 40s wouldn’t want to bother with gaming at all.
Miss Debater — my response got so long, that I ended up just posting it on my own blog. If you all are in the mood for a slight bit of ranting, go take a look.
VT I quite like your post. Thank you for sharing! I agree with all of your points. I was going to bring up the avatar point but I was beginning to ramble in my reply.
Cheers!
Wil I love that you mentioned your Moleskine. I’m a geek girl so mine is always in my purse but I couldn’t get along without it. I carry two actually, a small lined notebook and a small weekly moleskine calendar. 🙂
Casual games put the barrier right around 20 bucks…the price-point isn’t too bad but one of the issues I see is that kids don’t have credit cards/paypal accounts, etc., making it difficult to introduce the games to a younger generation. As far as games for women, the casual space seems to cater more to the ladies than the “hard core” companies do. There are many sites out there, check some out. You usually get a trial version of some sort so you can figure out if you like the game enough to drop 20 clams.
DISCLAIMER: I work for a casual games company and we specifically gear our games to women.
Just an FYI to the female posters that male brains are wired to become addicted to video games. Just google “male gamers brains wired” and hit “I’m feeling lucky.” This to a certain extent may explain the demographic differences. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to try to beat 6456 on Desktop Tower Defense…
I think it all boils down to not only how good the “script/story” is but how “immersive” it is.
One of the classic one is the Wing Commander series, I was totally blown away when a certain character became(?) a traitor and it really hit me hard.
Now we have the FPS Bioshock/Half life (1-2+) where you care about the characters and want to be the “hero”.
As for price… in a way I feel that you MUST get an average of 10+ hours per game since the price is 5x higher than a movie.
Side note: Good TV series to watch..BBC Life on Mars(not the planet)
followed by Ashes to Ashes(sequel)
Mars 2seasons
Ashes ending S1
I stumbled onto a nifty remixed image today and thought ya’ll might enjoy it. Elvis Costello, the king of geek rock, strikes a pose just for gaming fans.
I don’t know how many of you will read this, but I wanted to thank you all for your comments and insights. I was working on Ben 10 all day yesterday, and I couldn’t interact, but I read them all when I got home.
Your various insights are very thought-provoking, as are many comments at game|life. They’re so good, in fact, that I could write a whole new column incorporating and discussing them.
And you know what’s so weird and kind of cool? A Fox TV affiliate picked up the story, and quoted some of you on their website. I think that’s the first time it’s ever happened with anything I’ve written.
Wil That is totally cool the a Fox affiliate picked up the story. I’ll tell you, the topic of video games vs. movies and women in gaming got me thinking a lot yesterday. (Not that it’s the first time I’ve thought about it but it’s the first time I found people who were discussing it.)
And I finally saw an episode of Ben 10 the other week — it looked pretty neat. 🙂
I have to say, compared to other sorts of hobbies, gaming is one of the more gender-neutral i’ve encountered. I just think that fewer women participate than men because perhaps games aren’t being marketed to them. I personally am head over heels for M:tG. But I would have never started playing if watching my boyfriend play hadn’t entranced me. There are plenty of games out there for women, or whoever. We just don’t know about them-when was the last time a gaming company had an ad or a review in Vogue?
Wing Commander 2. Wow. Complete storyline. Actual voice talent. So big it took three floppies to install! That was the first game that seemed to pay attention to the gamer. In one of the missions I allowed one of my team members (NPC) to get killed. Then every third mission or so after that another NPC would approach me and either ask sympathetically how I was getting along after the tragedy or else blast me for letting it happen. With many games the actions you take are inconsequential–they’re just pixels moving along mathematical algorithms. That was my first experience with consequences in a richly developed game environment.
[The hard truth is, that particular wingman was an idiot and I shot him myself.] The fact that a character could actually annoy me was, to me, the dawn of interactivity. It was a brilliant touch by the programmers.
Sorry so far off-topic. It’s just been a long time since I’ve thought about that.
Wil Wheaton and Wired TOGETHER?? YAY!
Anyhow, I definately agree with you on the price. As a college student, I have found that I have less time to work in order to afford video games, and much MUCH less time to enjoy them. Right now I have Smash Brothers, Condemned 2, Professor Layton’s Curious Village, etc laying around, and I have NO TIME to play them. I couldn’t afford them either. My mom bought several of them for me for Easter. *blush*
-Ali