Prices

[soc_puppet]

So, um. This year, I think I may give in and go for NaNo. I have a plot, I have characters, I have vague worldbuilding-ish, I may even make it to fifty thousand words. Not necessarily all in November, and it will likely be quite hard to tell anyway, what with me planning on writing by hand anyhow, but. It's possible! I acknowledge it! (Someone gab at me about this more, I need more info :|a)

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Dude, cheap stuff. I love getting stuff cheap. Even if it's crap, I like paying less for it! Deep discounts? Awesome. Quite possibly the only thing better than cheap stuff is cheap stuff that comes with free stuff (or, rather, Bonus Content At No Extra Charge). The only thing that's better than that is actually free stuff, and the only thing that's better than free stuff is stuff they pay you to take, but I digress.

I loooove cheap stuff, especially if it comes with bonuses-at-no-extra-charge. Which is why I just picked up (the?) two "Zenses" DS games from K-Mart (Ocean and Rainforest if there's more than two, which there may be, given that they've got rocks with console buttons on the side, and one has Square and one has Circle).

Are they any good? Who knows! I've heard diddly squat about them. They're described as six addicting puzzle games/brain challenges set to relaxing music, which seems like a contradiction to me (how are you supposed to relax while playing addicting puzzle games with fifty levels, I ask you), but wev. They were only five bucks apiece, and for a new DS game, that's a pretty good deal. (Incidentally, the price is a good argument against their being good, but it also lowers my expectations considerably. Something can be five dollars' worth of good a lot more easily than, oh, thirty dollars' worth of good.)

In any case, if I end up thinking they're crap, I can always sell them at Half Price Books.

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I think I might have had more, but if I did, it escapes me for the moment. Hopefully I will be able to re-capture any elusive information later.

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Edit: Can't believe I'm editing already, but. Found information on Zenses. Most importantly:

Target Age: Females 25+

Seriously? Seriously? Wow, no wonder I haven't heard of it before. If there's one surefire way to make sure that no big gaming magazine is going to pick up a copy to review, it's to blatantly market a game towards women.

From the web site: "Zenses Ocean is the first in a series of games targeting one of the fastest growing segments of the videogames industry - 25+ females. [...] The result? A brand new and totally fresh gaming experience for the modern woman, offering spa-like escapism in your handbag!"

Wow. Wow. Has it occurred to them at all, I wonder, that women twenty-five and older are perhaps the same women who liked to play video games before they were twenty-five, and liked the games available already (except for the over-the-top misogyny, etc)?

Still, the web site has pretty enough graphics, I guess. Although, for a game aimed at women, they could be quoting more from us in the "Words of Wisdom" section. And while I find the picture of the Spa Attendee playing the game more than a little amusing, it is rather telling that she is quite white and thin. Criticism (mostly) revoked? There's a woman of color pictured on the page that offers free downloads of the soundtrack, and she's actually more clothed than the white woman. They're both still thin, but. One step at a time, I guess.

Comments

[branewurms]

wowwwwwww of course women will like games better if we make them "spa-like" and "relaxing"! The huge contingent of female WoW players will obviously like this even better, since it's full of "girly stuff".

[soc_puppet]

Granted, the huge contingent of Moms-that-took-over-the-PS2-to-play-Katamari might like it, but. They designers probably could've pulled that off just as easily without the "Relaxing Spa-Like" angle. Coincidentally, this also would have increased their target audience, possibly earning them more money. (Gasp!)

[meigui]

:/

I am so tired of this weird pervasive idea that women are, like, space aliens or something relative to men, seriously. Seriously! Women's brains are not that exotic, people!

[soc_puppet]

I know, right? It's like, augh!

Dear Game Companies,

Since you seem to be having trouble with it, I am sending you a short list of three easy steps on how to make games for women and girls.

1) Make a regular game
2) Remove the horrible misogyny
3) Profit!

Note that, in number two, if the game is pretty much non-existent without horrible misogyny, perhaps you shouldn't have made it in the first place.

Cheers!
A woman who games casually

[meigui]

I think this is another unfortunate corollary to the sad lack of audience-identity characters who aren't white and male, because implicit is the assumption that everything that isn't specifically marketed to some other demographic is assumed to be, by default, white and male, so from that comes the idea that white males can't identify with anyone who isn't also white and male. Which is. Completely preposterous. Women do it all the time! People of color do it all the time! White dudes are perfectly capable of doing it, too, it's just people have so little faith in the intelligence and humanity of the power demographic that no one thinks to offer them anything else. And then when something is made to appeal to a fringe demographic, the same (totally spurious) assumptions are grafted onto those cases as well, which makes it difficult for anyone to identify because it's. So fucking asinine and limited. Argh. FAILURE ALL AROUND >:(

[meigui]

...wow uh this comment has some really circuitous language. LOL SORRY

[soc_puppet]

XD Well, considering the logic they use in the first place is incredibly circular, I'm not too surprised how trying to explain it turned out. Inertia: the system has it!

On a more positive note! Deirdra Kiai Productions :) I haven't actually played any of these (yet), but they were made by a women (possibly also of color! I am not going to paste an identity onto her, though), with socially conscious ideals in mind, so they're already a step up from, what. 90% of what's out there? Go, go Sturgeon's Law!

[crescendo]

I AM NOT YET OVER 25 BUT WHATEVER. I STILL FEEL THAT I CAN STILL SAY LOL CLEARLY ALL WOMEN OVER 25 WANT IN A VIDEO GAME IS TO FEEL RELAXED WHIE DOING PUZZLES




no thank you, i want to blow shit up. :|b

[soc_puppet]

I KNOW, RIGHT? I mean, clearly there is a market, what with crossword puzzles and stuff, but that's why newspapers have not yet died out completely, and also what random internet flash games are for. And I would hope to listen to more interesting music while solving/playing any of those, thank you!


Blowing shit up = good fun times! Also fun: catching 'em all.

[dogmatix]

Right. Because I'm going to shell out $40 for a game where I don't kill anything, there's no demons/monsters/creatures to kill/eat/recruit, I don't blow stuff up, and I don't fight any HOSHIT'MGONNADIE bossfights.

....yyyyyeeeahno.

As a Female Over Twenty-Five, I can confidently say that I'm 100% more likely to buy, say, FFXIII or Persona than anything involving a spa. (Unless there's also crosdressing invovled, or possibly nekkid Yakuza that you have to buddy up to *coffDevilSummonercoff*)

[soc_puppet]

Thankfully, they were DS games marked down to $5.00 each, which was a more realistic prediction of their quality =_=

I am not yet twenty-five, and yet I cannot imagine I would change very much in the next twenty-six months or so, and I agree completely. Hell, anything alive in these games would've made them more interesting!