@hrn212 said:
Hmmmmm...interesting interview all around but...a lot of what Meade is saying seems to rely on a very specific and homogeneous, yet largely undefined, understanding of what a 'real' gamer is. And that's kinda troubling.
Like, for example...he talks about World of Tanks being fantastic and hardcore and then says, "you won't get many wives playing it." As though being a wife and enjoying fantastic hardcore games are mutually exclusive. Or even the less offensive, but still frustrating, comment about folks who only play sports games with their friends being "not-gamer gamers." So on and so forth...I'm not going to pick out all the quotes, don't worry. But, like...he assumes a shared definition of 'gamer' without having ever explicitly stated that definition.
Then later Meade talks about games as art and not wanting to pander to what people expect (which is all great)...but that's after he's made a value judgement based on what he thinks a 'real' gamer is and isn't. So again, kinda troubling.
Anyway, I'll end my rambling there...
As soon as I read that line, I knew that was going to be one of the first things commented on.
And this isn't directly specifically to any one person, but are we not able to make some generalizations without automatically being reminded that there are exceptions?
Yes, being gender positive and everything, I'm sure there are some women, who are also wives, that enjoy World of Tanks. But looking at the factual demographics, they make up a very small percentage of their player base.
And we all know World of Tanks serves as a place-holder for any number of technical or complex games that require a large time investment to enjoy/experience.
It's just a truth. It's not meant to be disparaging any particular subset that makes up what is generally defined as "gamers". And until we can speak honestly about it, we are never going to see those demographics shift, if it is even possible to shift them in the first place.
We all have an idea of what a person is talking about when they refer to Madden 2015 players. Or Call of Duty players. Or Candy Crush players. Generalizations are useful when trying to get a point across. No, that doesn't mean that every Madden 2015 player is a die-hard football fan who almost exclusively plays only that series. Or that no Candy Crush player enjoys playing, say, Castlevania. But demographics are what they are.
The basic functionality of those games do not appeal to a significant majority of females. Or, indeed, people in general. They target a very specific subset of the subset of people who regularly play games with said degrees of complexity. And that subset is, dominantly, males between the ages of 14-35.
I'll leave the why's to marketing firms, statisticians, psychologists, and for arm-chair analysts, but we all know it is what it is.
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