Sheri Graner Ray vs Videogames Industry

For some time now, I’ve been less-than-subtly pressuring Sheri Graner Ray into blogging, and this year she has finally thrown her hat into the ring with a new blog, FEM IRL (female in real life). To celebrate, I decided to interview Sheri about her career in videogames, and why the industry is still struggling to understand the benefits of gender-inclusive game design.

Chris Bateman: You've worked for some of the major companies in the games industry, including EA, Origin, and Sony. At some point, you became the de facto spokesperson for women in the games industry – how did that happen?

Sheri Graner Ray: I’ve always like games – both table top and computer games – and I consider myself to be a pretty typical girl. So I didn’t understand why there weren’t more women playing computer games. Out of curiosity I began to do a little research. It quickly became very apparent that as an industry we were making some pretty major mistakes that actively kept women out of our games.

So, thinking the industry would want to know how to make more money, I began to talk about what I’d discovered. Imagine my surprise when, instead of a positive response, I was greeted with derision – one guy actually stood up in the middle of a talk I was giving at GDC (CGDC back then) and started calling me names.

Chris: How rude!

Sheri: Well I guess I’m just stubborn because instead of dissuading me, this behaviour just made me more determined to get the word out. So, I guess basically I’m just a game designer that can’t keep quiet when I think we, as an industry, are making big mistakes!

Chris: Well since then there has been significant progress, hasn’t there? Female players now make up 40% of the market for games, and 25% of the console market. That's a huge step up from where we were, say, ten years ago.

Sheri: Oh please be careful with those numbers! I hear them so often now and usually it’s from publishers patting themselves on the back saying “See? Our game audience is now 40% female. We can relax now and not change a thing!”

Chris: So you don’t think there’s been an improvement?

Sheri: There’s definitely been an improvement, but like most lies, damned lies and statistics, the numbers are very misleading. The reason these numbers look so good is it’s an average – the traditional game market is still less than 20% female. However, the “casual” game market is 70% female. Average those and you get 40% female audience over all. But that does not mean 40% of the players of Gears of War are female!

Chris: But if the casual games market is doing so well courting female players, what’s the problem? 

Sheri: Most of the development capital is still in the traditional titles, and these are still missing out on a huge chunk of the market.

Chris: By traditional titles, do you mean console videogames?

Sheri: Mostly, but don’t forget that MMOs are still focused mostly on the PC market. By the traditional titles, I mean all the big titles – it’s where the money is and where the best jobs can be found. If we continue to keep women out of those titles, we will continue to keep them out of the industry and the industry overall will suffer for it.

Chris: Is there still a fundamental misunderstanding about women gamers, in that people think you need to make games especially for them? I ask, because it's becoming clear that huge brands like Final Fantasy (which has sold 85 million games across all its iterations) and Mario (201 million games) – not to mention The Sims (100 million) – have all succeeded in part because they appeal to both men and women.

Sheri: The game industry has long been looking for the “silver bullet” that one magic title that all women will play. They thought they had it with the “pink” Barbie games. Then they thought they had it with the Sims games. Currently they think they have it with the “casual” online games. Each of these categories of games has made money, but each time it results in the same thing, the entire market of “women” is re-categorized as one genre.

Chris: As if people can’t get their head around the idea that there might be as much diversity among female players as there is in male players… Although sometimes I wonder if the industry has even got their head around the diversity of male players, to be honest!

Sheri: If anyone is familiar with the history of the women’s suffrage movement, you will see some surprising similarities with the way the games industry looks at female players. One of the big “fears” about giving women the right to vote was that they would become one huge homogeneous voting bloc that could, in theory, control the outcome of every single vote. Of course, this proved to be completely untrue as, lo and behold, women did not all believe the same thing, want the same thing, nor vote the same way. Thus, there was no monolithic voting bloc that upset all politics as we know it.

It’s the same in games. There is no, one monolithic audience called “Women” who all want exactly the same thing in games. It actually is one million markets… each one with its own tastes and wants in entertainment. The only thing these markets share in common is a particular chromosomal make-up! 

Chris: But you’re not saying that you can’t target a specific female demographic?

Sheri: No, of course not – the female market is certainly a valid market for making targeted products for: the romance book market has figured this out, as has Hollywood, with the “chick flicks”. However, you can’t just say “this is for women.” You have to categorize and analyze your target demographic just as you would for any other demographic. You need to say, “this is for women between the ages of 10-18 who like backpacking, camping and other outdoor recreational activities” or you need to say, “This is for men, ages 25-50 who live in suburban areas, are college educated, and own at least one classic car.” 

The better you can define your market, the better you can pinpoint what that market wants, what they need  and how you can the better target your product to them… regardless of gender!  

Chris: We recently processed the data on people's favourite games from our last player study and found that role-playing games are hugely popular with both men and women – 20% of the male players and 20% of the female players surveyed listed RPGs among their three favourite games, more than any other genre. And this wasn't just Final Fantasy but also the Elder Scrolls gamesand even older games like Baldur's Gate – all beloved by both male and female players. Why do you think RPGs have such cross-gender appeal?

Sheri: I think it’s because they provide the more flexible play styles. In other words, they appeal to a broad demographic because more people can find their preferred play style in them.

Chris: Another thing the player study showed up was that while first person shooters were hugely popular among the male gamers (about as popular as RPGs), they didn't interest the female players at all. And in fact, RPGs and RPG-like games that used guns like Deus Ex and Fallout rated okay with male players but not with female players. Do you think there's something about guns that female players find off-putting, or is it just that fantasy settings are generally more appealing to them?

Sheri: Neither. I think you’ll find that the vast majority of female players have never tried a FPS. So to say they inherently don’t like them is a bit like saying female don’t like the food served in strip clubs. How can you know that? Very few women go there!

Chris: But there are women who play and love FPS’s, of course.

Sheri: Well I should give my disclaimer here! When I say something is “female” or “male” I mean it is predominantly a trait of that gender. It is not exclusively that gender. Everything is a bell curve and there are people who fall in all areas of that curve. If you are female and a lover of FPS, then the generalisation is obviously not pertaining to you.

Chris: But you agree there’s a disparity of some kind here.

Sheri: I would say it has nothing to do with the guns or the violence. All research I’ve done has shown that girls have no problem with violence. What they do have a problem with is violence for violence sake. In other words, violence isn’t bad because it’s “icky” but because it’s boring.

Chris: Happy to beat someone up as long as there’s a reason for it!

Sheri: Something like that. I suspect the reason few women play FPS games has less to do with the guns or the violence and more to do with the barriers to access in the titles today. Inherently weak stories (which mean little reason for the violence), male-only avatars or female avatars that are hyper-sexualized, a focus on head-to-head competition, punishment for error models... all these kinds of things are less appealing to most women, and therefore are barriers to access for the titles.

Chris: What about the Grand Theft Auto games? Although these were marginally more popular with male players, an awfully large number of female players rate one of these games as a personal favourite, especially San Andreas. Is part of the appeal here that Rockstar North (I still think of them as DMA design, I confess!) just make really fun virtual worlds to play in?

Sheri: The GTA games are open, virtual worlds thus, much like the RPGs we talked about earlier, appeal to more people because more play styles are able to be expressed. It’s a bit like the difference between a playground and a single theme park ride. You can do what you want in a playground. With a lone themepark ride, it’s a one trick pony.

Chris: It seems to me, looking at the games that have been succeeding in the wake of what you might call "the casual revolution" that part of the success of the casual games movement has been that games are being designed either for female players, or at least in a way that doesn't exclude them. I look at the huge success of hidden object games like Mystery Case Files, for instance, and think: these were made for a female audience!

Sheri: I agree. However, please be careful by calling them “female games.” As I mentioned before, there are as many different wants and needs in games as there are women, so we must be careful categorizing anything as “for a female audience” Note that we don’t call regular games “for a young male audience.” We say the “Traditional” audience and all assume it’s young males ages 12-21. We need to come up with terms that are more specific to the demographic than “female audience” if we want to avoid the problems the “pink games” had back in the 90’s.

Chris: Is this perhaps the secret to Nintendo’s recent success? When I look at the games that Nintendo have been selling in huge numbers, it seems clear that female consumers are part of the equation – I'm thinking specifically of Nintendogs (22 million), Brain Age (17 million), Wii Fit (14 million) and Animal Crossing (11 million). None of these games appeal solely to women, but it's hard not to imagine that a large number of women have bought them, and Nintendo's marketing reinforces that impression.

Sheri: Yes! These games are successful because they target other demographics beyond the “traditional” game demographic. It is about time the game industry figured out they can make games for other demographics and be successful.

Chris: Do you think we're heading for parity in the market – an even split between male and female players?

Sheri: I hope so. We aren’t there yet. As stated above, the “40% of gamers are female” number is quite misleading. We still put the majority of our money into developing titles for that one single demographic: young white males. And, with the exception of the Wii, most console titles are still aimed squarely at that market. The game industry has to come to realize two things. Firstly, the female market is not a single monolithic market and secondly, they can access a huge number of new players by addressing barriers in their current titles. If both these problems can be overcome then we will begin to see parity.

Chris: Even though the female players are only 25% of the PS3 and Xbox 360 market, that's still more than 12 million players. When you think that selling a million is still considered a success in our industry, doesn't it seem like there's a lost opportunity here?

Sheri: Of course. The industry needs to look at their titles and address barriers to access and they can begin to reach more players. And not just female players, either but other minorities as well. There is still a huge untapped market out there. We’re effectively throwing money away!

Chris: Why do you think the console market has a smaller share of female players?

Sheri: For two reasons. Firstly, they are risk adverse. Come on now, if your job depended on selling 2 million units of a game, which would you want? A game that is just like the last game you sold 2 million units of – that you are comfortable with the concepts, the channels, the retail strategy for? Or some new game that you don’t really understand, don’t necessarily know the channel for and can’t really put numbers to. Obviously, you are going to go with what you know. However, that’s leaving a huge amount of money on the table.

Chris: And secondly?

Sheri: The industry continues to produce games without thought to barriers to access. Because some of the current games are selling in good numbers, few people think to look at what might be built into the games that might be keeping other markets from interacting with the product. The bikini-clad, heavy bosomed woman on the cover sells to that post-pubescent boy… marketing departments don’t even consider the fact that if a woman isn’t going to want to pick up the box, she isn’t going to buy the game for herself.

Chris: I think most marketing departments fear that changing the appeal of the box designs to allow for a female audience will weaken the appeal to the young male audience they are so intently focussed upon.

Sheri: So in the name of “it’s worked before", the industry as a whole continues to slam the door in the face of a number of markets that are tech savvy and have large amounts of disposable income to spend.

Chris: Well it’s clearly not a clever strategy, but it’s safe, and large corporations come to rely upon the safe options.

Sheri: Right up to the point they declare bankruptcy because some more agile competitor beat them to the punch on a new opportunity!

Chris: It’s a crazy business! If you could change one aspect of the games industry's development culture to make it easier for companies to profit from this large pool of female players with a love of games and money to spend, what would it be?

Sheri: The recruiting attitude and hiring practices of the industry, definitely. This sounds very strange, I know, but our industry has terrible hiring habits. We put ads in places only game industry folks will see, thus we advertise to the same people again and again. We refuse to consider skill sets, only experience, so, once again, we only hire from those who have been hired before,  and when we interview, we send the candidate through a full round of interviews with each team member, telling the team “tell us if you like this person” – which translates to “is this person just like you?” 

We never hire outside our comfort zone. Thus, we end up a very homogeneous work place. We are an industry of young white guys making games for… surprise! Young white guys! 

Chris: But it has to change at some point. Every other successful industry eventually hurdled these kinds of barriers.

Sheri: I think the biggest change will come from diversifying our work force. To do this, we have to actively recruit in non-traditional places, be willing to look at skill sets rather than explicit experience, and support those organizations that do outreach and mentoring for minority groups in the industry. If we want to build diverse products that reach broad, diverse audiences, then our workforce has to reflect that.

You can read more of Sheri’s unique perspective at her new blog, FEM IRL, and also in her chapter on designing for female players in Beyond Game Design. Spread the word!

Comments

[Katherine]

Interesting read. Unfortunately I do all my blog reading during my lunch break at work, and Livejournal is blocked, so I can't read more of Sheri’s unique perspective at her new blog, FEM IRL.
:(

[Sirc]

Haha, that's hilarious that someone actually stood up in the conference and started flinging insults. I wouldn't have the balls to be a real life troll.

Also, you don't need a reason to beat someone up! I doubt anyone would care if Street Fighter suddenly had no story :D (it barely has any as it is)

[Chris]

"...you don't need a reason to beat someone up!"

Speak for yourself! :p Personally, I do need a reason, and Sheri is claiming a lot of female players do as well. It's one of many reasons I find fighting games unengaging. But wrap it all up in a context (Three Kingdoms, for instance) and suddenly I'm completely into it.

[Sirc]

Seriously? That's like saying you need a reason to play basketball with someone, or to play chess with someone, or even to do a crossword puzzle. It's the same thing. Why would you need a reason for any of this other than the intrinsic fun/reward of the game?

I think the problem here is what Sheri says "Violence for violence's sake is boring". To think that people play games for the violence and that for others violence is "boring" is incorrect. Why not think that perhaps these games might have good gameplay and violence has nothing to do with it? Yes, some games may be violence for violence's sake (Mortal Kombat is notorious for excessive violence and relatively shallow gameplay) and a few people might play them for that. But if you look at a game like Street Fighter II, people don't play it because "it's violent". They play it because it has excellent gameplay.

It's ironic. She says women don't have a problem with violence, and that they just find it boring. But her inability to see past the violence and see that there just might be good gameplay in there leads me to believe that she does indeed find it "icky".

[Chris]

Sirc: I suspect you're misreading this part of the discussion.

There has been a long standing assumption that violence in videogames is off-putting to a female audience. Sheri is claiming that, on the contrary, the violence isn't necessarily offputting, but it isn't necessarily interesting either.

(Personally, I'm not wholly convinced here - I think there are players, male and female, for whom the violence is strictly off-putting, but I trust Sheri's research into the female audience in general).

And I don't buy your claim that the violence is simply a gloss and one must look beyond it to the game mechanics... I accept that there are people, such as yourself, who enjoy fighting games, but to enjoy a fighting game you must either be neutral to the aesthetic of one-on-one combat the game takes place in, or enjoy it.

To take another instance, you can't seriously claim that the enjoyment most players get from a rampage in a GTA game is a result of the game mechanics and not the indulgence in violence, surely? This is a game which gets it's broad appeal from the fantasy it is selling, and not strictly or wholly from its mechanics.

It seems to me that you are too ready to dismiss the violence as an irrelevance, and too keen to turn to the game mechanics. Are you sure this doesn't just show up your own bias in preference for the game mechanics? Not everyone shares this interest.

Your turning to the Street Fighter franchise for your point of reference is slightly strange to me, as part of what we are talking about here is not necessarily violence-as-conflict, per se, but rather gore, and Street Fighter has none of this element to it.

In the case of Street Fighter, the issue I would single out would not be violence (I don't personally consider it to be very violent at all) but the direct competition - in order to enjoy games such as Street Fighter you must have excellent reflexes, an appreciation for the kind of "move state space" game mechanics these games rely upon, and a desire to engage in direct competition with an opponent.

Speaking for myself, I have none of these things any more. :p

I believe those of us (and I include myself) with an appreciation for game mechanics are sometimes too quick to reduce all games to their mechanics. The aesthetic elements are just as important for the majority of players.

Thanks for the comment!

[Sirc]

"There has been a long standing assumption that violence in videogames is off-putting to a female audience. Sheri is claiming that, on the contrary, the violence isn't necessarily offputting, but it isn't necessarily interesting either."

I see, I see. She is saying that females are not put off by the violence or the guns, but rather by "Inherently weak stories (which mean little reason for the violence), male-only avatars or female avatars that are hyper-sexualized, a focus on head-to-head competition, punishment for error models..."

Now let's look at the games that were mentioned: Deus Ex, and Fallout.

Let's put Fallout to this test and see why females find it unappealing:

1)Inherently weak stories (which mean little reason for the violence)

I think you could do a lot worse than Fallout when it comes to story, wouldn't you agree?

2)male-only avatars or female avatars that are hyper-sexualized

You can choose whether to be male or female in Fallout, so this is out.

3)a focus on head-to-head competition

There is none.

4)punishment for error models

Not only is Fallout not a particularly difficult game, but it's much less punishing than, say, a GTA game which notoriously makes you have to drive all the way back to a mission every time you fail it (though most of GTA's "difficulty" comes from its awful gameplay)

So it doesn't seem to me like any of these reasons work when trying to explain why women don't like this game. Any ideas?

"And I don't buy your claim that the violence is simply a gloss and one must look beyond it to the game mechanics... I accept that there are people, such as yourself, who enjoy fighting games, but to enjoy a fighting game you must either be neutral to the aesthetic of one-on-one combat the game takes place in, or enjoy it."

But that is exactly what Sheri is saying! She is saying that female gamers are neutral to this aesthetic, and simply don't find it interesting in itself.

"To take another instance, you can't seriously claim that the enjoyment most players get from a rampage in a GTA game is a result of the game mechanics and not the indulgence in violence, surely?"

And yet GTA is popular with females. Wouldn't this be an argument against females not finding violence interesting? I suppose you could claim that female players don't go on rampages when they play it?

As an aside, I want to say that GTA are awful games. And probably the single series least deserving of its success. They have horrible controls and terrible gameplay. I have never been able to understand the appeal of going on rampages (which you mentioned). Sure, they can be funny for a few minutes, but that's about it.

"It seems to me that you are too ready to dismiss the violence as an irrelevance, and too keen to turn to the game mechanics. Are you sure this doesn't just show up your own bias in preference for the game mechanics? Not everyone shares this interest."

But Sheri was the one who dismissed violence as an irrelevance in the first place.

She said, and I quote, "All research I’ve done has shown that girls have no problem with violence."

Yes, I am biased towards game mechanics and find violence to be irrelevant. But according to Sheri, girls also find violence irrelevant. And this is the premise I was using.
Plus, as I've said above, the other reasons she mentioned don't really explain the discrepancy either.

"Your turning to the Street Fighter franchise for your point of reference is slightly strange to me, as part of what we are talking about here is not necessarily violence-as-conflict, per se, but rather gore, and Street Fighter has none of this element to it."

Maybe it might seem less strange if we look at the comment progression? :)
You made an offhand comment about needing a reason to beat people up, I made an offhand comment about not needing a reason to beat people up in Street Fighter, and I think it went from there :D

Besides, I don't think SF is just about conflict. You have people "beating each other up", as you put it. I think that counts as violence even if there is no gore involved.

"In the case of Street Fighter, the issue I would single out would not be violence (I don't personally consider it to be very violent at all) but the direct competition - in order to enjoy games such as Street Fighter you must have excellent reflexes, an appreciation for the kind of "move state space" game mechanics these games rely upon, and a desire to engage in direct competition with an opponent."

Agreed.

"I believe those of us (and I include myself) with an appreciation for game mechanics are sometimes too quick to reduce all games to their mechanics. The aesthetic elements are just as important for the majority of players."

So basically what you're saying here is that Sheri is wrong and aesthetic elements are indeed important to females?

[Chris]

Sirc: wow, a lot of points. I'll try and focus on the key ones.

"Not only is Fallout not a particularly difficult game, but it's much less punishing than, say, a GTA game which notoriously makes you have to drive all the way back to a mission every time you fail it (though most of GTA's "difficulty" comes from its awful gameplay)"

Okay, clearly you like Fallout and dislike GTA, so you have some bias here. :p I appreciate that GTA doesn't push your buttons, but these are very cleverly constructed games, with a solid design that appeals to a wide number of players of many diverse play styles. That you dislike it doesn't make them "awful games", except of course, for you personally. I have great respect for the GTAs, although I largely hated Vice City. I don't have to enjoy a game personally to respect it as a piece of work.

(Incidentally, GTA4 removes the problem you talk of in terms of driving back to the mission by allowing taxis to take you there directly, although this is a minor point.)

The thing with GTA is that it is only punishing *if you play on the spine quests*. A great many players of these games just mess around in the world. Plus, I must say, San Andreas - by far the biggest seller in the franchise and coming up on 20 million units I think - was a very easy game, with only a couple of biting points.

I have no idea whether any of the Fallouts are difficult games because I haven't played them, but I think I can say with some confidence why this is not popular with female players. The answer in my opinion is aesthetics:

1. Fallout is science fiction, a genre with an apparent inherent bias towards males for reasons not yet established. (Possibly this is simply a long standing gender bias that has become self-fullfilling).
2. Fallout 3 is *grey*. I can't vouch for anyone else, but I like to play games in which I am running around an attractive environment. The world of Fallout 3 bores me, and I know it would bore my wife. I would like to extrapolate this and say that anyone for whom aesthetic issues were a factor - which would include both women and men - would be somewhat put off by this ugly grey world.
3. Fallout has guns and gore. I confess, seeing Fallout 3 demoed at Leipzig convinced me I had no interest in playing it. And even though Sheri says women as a whole have no issue with gore, this is presumably at a statistical level - there are people of both genders who *do* have an issue, and I am one of them.

"And yet GTA is popular with females. Wouldn't this be an argument against females not finding violence interesting? I suppose you could claim that female players don't go on rampages when they play it?"

Perhaps another aesthetic distinction should be made here. Until GTA4, the GTA games were decidedly cartoon in their representation. I personally find myself willing and able to enjoy carnage in this kind of representation, and rather more reluctant to pursue it when it is "realistic" and gory. I suspect this is true of a lot of female players as well, but I'm only speculating.

I notice that you often dismiss things as only briefly amusing, presumably because they only briefly amuse you. Is it possible that you 'suffer' from high standards when it comes to amusement? :D The masses are, on the whole, very easily amused, as any flick through the TV channels at prime time will convince you.

"She said, and I quote, 'All research I’ve done has shown that girls have no problem with violence.'"

Statistically speaking. There is always a danger in reasoning from the general to the specific. That as a whole girls have no problem with violence does not mean "no girls have a problem with violence". And this statement says nothing about gore.

"You have people 'beating each other up', as you put it. I think that counts as violence even if there is no gore involved."

Sure, but this "violence versus gore" issue is key, I think. Because Sheri is saying they have no problem with the violence, but I'm not sure where she stands on the gore. The gore, again, strikes me as an aesthetic issue.

"So basically what you're saying here is that Sheri is wrong and aesthetic elements are indeed important to females?"

I'm pretty sure Sheri never said that aesthetic elements weren't important to females! In Gender-Inclusive Game Design she certainly argues the converse in places.

The problem we have here is that you and I have moved the discussion into the space of aesthetics, yet the original discussion here offers nothing tangible in this regard. Now I could ask Sheri to rejoin the discussion, but that seems absurd when it's just you and I talking! :)

My suspicion is that gore is offputting to people of both gender - I base this on the fact that gory horror movies are generally a niche market. So perhaps this aspect has little to do with gender and more with the aesthetic tastes of people irrespective of gender.

Which brings me to another issue: we don't get much chatter here on ihobo except when the busloads of tourists come by. I wonder why this might be...? I worry that people are intimidated by this being a company blog. But in fact, more people currently read and comment at Only a Game than here at ihobo, so the former is a more public forum than the latter! *shrugs*

Thanks for the discussion! Glad to have someone to chat with here, and you always have some strong opinions to share! :)

[Sirc]

"I appreciate that GTA doesn't push your buttons, but these are very cleverly constructed games, with a solid design that appeals to a wide number of players of many diverse play styles."

True. I suppose they are admirable games in the same way that Brain Age is admirable. (selling well despite being terrible :D)

"That you dislike it doesn't make them "awful games", except of course, for you personally."

Well y'know. When I say something, I tend to leave the "in my opinion" part as implicit :)

"Incidentally, GTA4 removes the problem you talk of in terms of driving back to the mission by allowing taxis to take you there directly, although this is a minor point.)"

Ha, true. Though even getting a cab can be annoying, as it seemed to take a bit of work to get one to stop for you. Some even ignored your shouts outright! Plus, a lot of missions involved driving to a certain place to get to the meat of it, while in the mission, so even if you took a cab to the spot, you still had to drive to some other place afterwards.
(usually taking some people with you, with their chatter making it entertaining, but not so much after having to do it several times)

"The thing with GTA is that it is only punishing *if you play on the spine quests*. A great many players of these games just mess around in the world."

Also true. But just messing around in the world is boring (not that the missions were that much more fun). There are no explicit goals. There is no success and there is no failure. It's akin to playing with a toy. (then again, I guess that's what people seem to like.)

Just for the record, I don't consider Fallout 3 to be a good game. It's ok, but not good. Fallout 1 is better, even though it was made a decade earlier!

"Fallout 3 is *grey*. I can't vouch for anyone else, but I like to play games in which I am running around an attractive environment."

Haha, this is an issue for me as well, but in a different way. I'm tired of playing RPGs that take place in a medieval-type environment (such as FFIX or Oblivion) because it's so overdone. Meanwhile, I like stuff like gritty industrial-type environments (the first part of FFVII)
and contemporary settings (Persona).

"The world of Fallout 3 bores me, and I know it would bore my wife."

The world of Fallout 3 bores me too, but for the same reason the world of any GTA bores me: it's just a bunch of space with nothing worthwhile going on.

I actually wrote what I thought about Fallout 3 in a post on my personal website back in november :)
http://scathingaccuracy.com/article.asp?review/2008.11.23-S.A._Renegade
(disclaimer: don't read anything there if you're easily offended)

"I would like to extrapolate this and say that anyone for whom aesthetic issues were a factor - which would include both women and men - would be somewhat put off by this ugly grey world."

But remember that we're talking about how Fallout ranked low with females. If the ugliness of the world is indeed a factor, would that mean that pretty visuals are more important for women than for men? If so, that would be pretty interesting.

"And even though Sheri says women as a whole have no issue with gore, this is presumably at a statistical level - there are people of both genders who *do* have an issue, and I am one of them."

Well yes, but women rating Fallout low is also at a statistical level, isn't it? So yes, there are some people who do have an issue with guns and gore, just as there are some women who do like Fallout. But according to the statistics we're working with (if we are to believe them), most do not.

"I notice that you often dismiss things as only briefly amusing, presumably because they only briefly amuse you. Is it possible that you 'suffer' from high standards when it comes to amusement? :D"

Haha, perhaps :) I like to think of it as having a critical eye ;)

"The masses are, on the whole, very easily amused, as any flick through the TV channels at prime time will convince you."

Agreed. TV in general seems to be a very big waste of time. That's why I never watch any.

"Statistically speaking. There is always a danger in reasoning from the general to the specific. That as a whole girls have no problem with violence does not mean "no girls have a problem with violence". And this statement says nothing about gore."

Yeah, but what I meant was, if girls as a whole do not have a problem with guns and violence, then it can't be the reason that they, as a whole, reject Fallout. But you are right that gore is not necessarily the same thing.

"I'm pretty sure Sheri never said that aesthetic elements weren't important to females!"

Ah my bad. I equated aesthetics with guns and violence. I thought that's what you meant by it, but I guess you were talking about aesthetic elements in general.

"Now I could ask Sheri to rejoin the discussion, but that seems absurd when it's just you and I talking! :)"

Oh of course not! No need to bother people unnecessarily. After all, we're just playing around here, right? :)

"Which brings me to another issue: we don't get much chatter here on ihobo except when the busloads of tourists come by. I wonder why this might be...? I worry that people are intimidated by this being a company blog. But in fact, more people currently read and comment at Only a Game than here at ihobo, so the former is a more public forum than the latter! *shrugs*"

Yeah, it is strange. Well, for one thing, it's obvious that only a game is the more popular blog. Likely because it's the one you concentrated on the most for so long. So not only is it the more famous one that gets the most hits and publicity (and spam), but also people are more used to it.

People are interested in your posts. But it's only recently that you've started posting your game related ones here. It's going to be a while before ihobo develops the fame Only a Game enjoys :)

Speaking of which, I'm still amazed at how you manage to crank out so many great posts so consistently. And you don't even get payed to do it! You're a machine, man. I could never do something like this.

Also, and here we go back into the realm of aesthetics, to me, the light color scheme of Only a Game is easier on the eyes and more welcoming. These comparatively dark shades of blue seem almost claustrophobic.

Further, unlike Only a Game, ihobo requires an email address to be able to post. Maybe that's not such a big deal, but the more things you require of someone, the less likely it is that they'll post. I know when I'm registering for something, if they suddenly start asking for a whole bunch of information I might be all "Oh screw this. Not worth it."

Finally, ihobo seems to be more fickle. Every single time I've posted something here, I always get the "Sorry, we are unable to accept this data" message. This is fixed by refreshing the page, and trying again, but it's still somewhat annoying.

"Thanks for the discussion! Glad to have someone to chat with here, and you always have some strong opinions to share! :)"

Ahh thanks :)

[Chris]

Sirc: I appreciate you tying up the points in our discussion. I spoke to Sheri, and she was going to post a comment here but I guess it got lost in the shuffle. :)

"Speaking of which, I'm still amazed at how you manage to crank out so many great posts so consistently. And you don't even get payed to do it! You're a machine, man. I could never do something like this."

Well I don't crank them out like I used to - I just do three each week now, and with ample breaks. I used to do five a week - but to be fair, work was going very, very slowly back then and I had the time.

Honestly, writing the posts is perhaps the most relaxing thing I do... I just bury myself in words for a few hours and it's very refreshing. When the posts then generate interesting discussions, it's the icing on the cake.

Before the blog, that time would have been squandered picking through the videogame detritus, playing all sorts of truly rubbish games. On the whole, I'm much happier spending that free time working on the posts. :)

Plus, I pretend it has work value by promoting my name and the company's. :)

Regarding ihobo issues - believe it or not, each is on the same server set up (TypePad) but there are distinctions in the way things are set up (ihobo has a custom template, whereas Only a Game has a default template).

The colours match those on our business cards, so you're probably stuck with those. But I can change the settings on comments to match the Only a Game settings... There. Done. You no longer need an email to post here.

Whether that will clean up the other strangeness when posting comments is hard to say! :)

Best wishes!