Genderless Gaming

It isn't new to say that gaming is generally a male dominated hobby and industry. It isn't new to say that more and more girls are becoming interested in gaming. It isn't new to say that some will gladly sit down and play a game of Gears of War 2 while others will poke at their dogs in Nintendogs. And it isn't new to say that some of us get stuck in the middle.

I've been a gamer ever since I was 2 1/2 years old. My parents owned a NES when I was born and one day after seeing someone play it, I tried out Super Mario Bros. With them seeing me enjoying it and with my uncle also being a gamer and living next door, they got me a Genesis and I use to spend my days playing Sonic. (I was pretty damn good for only being three.) As I got older, my gaming interest only grew.

I had a wide variety of handhelds and systems over my life time and can remember spending a few summers at my uncles house sitting at his computer and playing WarCraft II all day long. To me, being a gamer mean nothing. I liked games, my cousins liked games, and my uncles like games. It was just an enjoyable hobby until I started to mingle with a wider community. Then I began to find myself out of place.

Other girls looked at me like I had two heads and a tail because I would sit down with a GameBoy Color over a Barbie doll. While they all became googly-eyed over some pretty boy singers that they'd never met and started whoring themselves out in the 5th grade, I had my GameCube and PS2. I was an "outcast" in their eyes because I wasn't a typical girl. Then most guys mocked me because I was a girl; after all, girls aren't gamers. That was of course until I kicked their asses in a few rounds of Soul Calibur II; then I gained their respect.

Then when I first started posting here, I was getting noticed just because I was girl; not because of the games I liked or the quality of my posts. It took me quite awhile to get people's minds to shift from, "Oh she's a chick! Hot damn!" to "Oh wow! That was an intelligent comment".

All of this brings me to how things are now: separating yourself by gender causes a huge mess. I won't lie, being a minority does suck. I deal with sexism in some form or way almost daily on XBox Live or even just walking about my local game stores. As you just read above, it's not easy to get your foot in the door and be taken seriously, but I always use to ask myself why until I discovered my answer: girl gamer communities.

I don't mind the idea of having communities for specific things; if you feel the need to have a support group, then by all means do it but after some experience with a few of these communities, I realized that they were harming the view of female gamers more than they were helping. Perhaps it is just me, but I don't think the best way to try to include yourself into a group is to separate yourself. If guys don't walk around saying, "Hey, I'm a guy gamer" then why do we need to say, "Hey, I'm a girl gamer"? Is it really necessary? I will admit that I will typically correct someone on the forums if I am called a guy (call it hypocritical if you wish) but the point I try to make when doing so isn't to separate myself; it's to just toss out the idea that regardless of gender, we can all be the same.

It always rubs me the wrong way to see threads asking if any girl (or heaven forbid, gurl gamers- learn to spell) gamers exist here. I never really understood why we would need to draw ourselves out. Just because my chest is natural and not made from Cheeto-generated fat doesn't make me better or worse. At our core, are we really different from our male counterparts? The answer should be no but unfortunately, I see a lot of women saying yes. I suppose it is seen as being a mile stone for the minority when someone like the Frag Dolls wins a tournament but I see it as a step back since the vibe I get from it is that the only purpose they wanted to win was to brag that chicks could do it; not because they liked the game which is what gaming should be about.

I see all these female-only gaming sites or clans; I've even been invited to join one or two. (Naturally I laughed my ass off.) They all want to be taken seriously but aren't because of what they are. In doing some research on a few of the sites, I recall reading one site telling their readers not to go to places like IGN or GameSpot for gaming news just because they weren't designed for girls. I remember reading that, having my mind explode, picking the pieces up, gluing my brain together, and then staring at my screen with a blank look. I suppose IGN's Babe Section turned them off from the site, but it's still a good hub of entertainment news. And I always thought the GameSpot's color scheme and layout was universal for any gender. How can you expect to be taken seriously if you're telling readers not to go to popular news sites just because it isn't designed specifically for females?

Which leads me onto my amazing fight with that one feminist gaming site. (I have long forgotten their name.) The issue that I had with the site and that the site had with me, was the fact that I "criticized" their lack of knowledge and suggested that they double check facts before publishing something on their site. They were doing a 'girl only' Game of the Year nomination in order to show that 'girls know games'. The thing was...In their Game of the Year nominations, they had mislabeled same games by genre as well as had games from a few years ago on the list. It was ridiculous and embarrassing which is why most girls aren't seen as actual gamers. I had commented on it and suggested that they fix the few errors in order to make themselves look better. Needless to say, after about two posts on their forums I was banned.

Why you ask? Not because I was violent in my original post. (You all know how I am with arguments. I use real reasoning.) The reason why I was banned seemed to be because I disagreed with the concept of 'girls are right because we're girls and we need to stick together to overcome boys!' That concept should have died back in Kindergarten...

This then brings me to marketing. As more and more girls start gaming, developers feel the need to market them. You'll see commercials on TV showing women playing sparkled covered DS or playing games with cute animals or pink princesses. Marketing wise, women are being singled out and they are trying to drag more in but in the wrong away, or at least that's how I see it. Remember how I started gaming? I just played Mario. How did some other girls who I know game and are like me start gaming? The same way I did. We didn't have pink, frilly games shoved down our throats instead, games caught our interest because of our taste. So maybe that's the way things should be marketed; look beyond the gender and market the taste.

It is true men and women typically (yes, I say typically because I'd take a gory horror film over some over the top romance any day) have different tastes. I believe some entertainment study said that women prefer films with romance and emotion so why not include that in commercials for games? Let's take a commercial for Gears of War 2 and have it focus on the idea of Dom being dedicate to finding his wife. While some feminists might throw a fit over the idea of a 'woman being weak', most women might be very moved by it, especially since they do tend to like committed relationships.

Though we are starting to see more and more universal gaming commercials that aren't really aimed at any particular gender. Take a look at the Mirror's Edge commercial, it focuses on showing the concept of the game's smooth looking movements and its style. Left 4 Dead focus on pulling in the good ol' zombie love. Perhaps I'll start to see more of what I want: people being interested in a game for what it really is over it being all girlyfied.

Needless to say, I do feel that part of the reason why it is difficult for females to be taken seriously isn't because of their skills with a game. (Sometimes I'm better than my guy friends, other times they are better than me.) I think that the main reason why we're giving such a hard time is because we make it hard. Sure, naturally guys will be attracted to a female gamer because she is engaging in a hobby he likes (but wouldn't anyone like anyone if they had a similar taste as you?). I feel that the best way to get included into the mix is to not separate oneself but, instead, to just prove that we're one in the same.

After all, I'd like to think that I've earned respect for what I've done and for what I've said; not because of my gender.

For Honor or Bragging Rights?

Tonight myself, my boyfriend, and a couple friends all got together on Live to play Call of Duty: World at War. We were playing Team Deathmatch and needless to say, we weren't really playing seriously. Of course we were playing and trying but at the same time, we're cracking jokes and going on random stories; basically just having fun because so what if we win or lose, we still enjoyed the round. However, our fun was ruined by some cheap ass moves from the other team.

Constant camping, shooting rockets in close quarters, walking around with mounted torrents...All of these are, of course, in the game and strategies you can use, but they're pretty cheap. After being mowed down round after round, we became frustrated and pissed. Not because of losing, but because we could hardly even play without being killed within a few seconds of respawning.

None of this is new though to the world of multiplayer gaming. People always find ways to "cheat" by either finding ways to get out of maps or into hard to reach places where its almost impossible to shoot them. Or they use the same cheap fighting move over and over again in a row to win. Or they use the same cheap weapon every time they play. Or they drive around in a vehicle just running people over.

The question I am asking here with this is: Why? Why do people feel the need to be cheap in multiplayer games? Why do people feel the need to cheat? Why do people feel the need to always win and always be the one with the most kills in order to enjoy a game? Why do people become so dedicated to a game? I understand that winning is fun and that doing something first makes you feel special; it's always nice to get a pat on the back for doing something extraordinary or very well but no game should be worth sacrificing fun just so you can feel like a big dog of the pack.

Perhaps they find it to be fun but when in multiplayer you have to remember that everything isn't about you. I don't mean to sound like a sore loser or like I'm bitching that people are better than me because I truly am ok with getting my ass handed to me by someone who's actual good at the game; not someone who thinks they're hot **** for shooting two rockets down a hallway. Cheating and being cheap is, well, rude to others trying to play the game. No matter how many rounds you win, you're not going to get any award or money from it so why ruin other's experiences for your own gain?

When did competitive gaming go from being who is best to who can find the cheapest trick the fastest? This brings up the question as to where is the line drawn. Of course the developers put those weapons in the game and of course they designed those levels to allow for sniper camping. So naturally, we're allowed to use it and are encouraged to use. However, there seems to no longer be a universal understanding as to doing what in a game is considered 'wrong' and what is considered 'right'.

I can recall from my earlier online days where if people felt someone was being cheap, they'd call them out on it or ask them to take it easy, but that quickly went away as the community seemed more acceptant of cheapness. It seem everyone's minds shifted from "Oh, that's not cool" to "Well, everyone does it so I will too". I know that I stopped playing Halo 3 because of all the corners people would cut just to get kills. I got sick of all the rockets or people hiding in corners with the Gravity Hammer and then slamming anyone who walked by. I got sick of people not playing the game.

I know that there's no solution to this. No matter how many times or how many people shake their fingers and say, "You should be ashamed of yourself" isn't going to change anything since this generation has a 'well F you then' attitude. So I'm not asking people to stop, even though I would love to be able to play a round without cheapness, but what I really want you to do is answer my question: Why? Why do you do it? What do you gain from it?

Which brings me to another similar topic: being first.

Earlier tonight, before playing Call of Duty, when I was hoping back and forth between my Rogue and Death Knight, I saw that the Achievement thing popped up congratulating a player in hitting level 80- the game has been out since Thursday. I did /whos 80 to see the list of other level 80s and there turned out to be about ten of them with the first person hitting level 80 in less than 27 hours of Lich King's release. It takes enough experience to get from level 60 to 61 to make me roll my eyes and my level 70 guild members have been complaining about the experience needed to get past level 70. They've been playing pretty regularly and have only hit maybe level 72.

While the person hitting level 80 way before I ever do doesn't affect my game, I (and other people in my realm) couldn't help but have WTF looks on our faces. I really want to know...Was it worth it? I can only imagine how much time they had to spend at their PCs (and I'm sure that some bot might have been used too- again which brings me back to the topic of cheating the system) to hit the maximum level so quickly. But in a game that tries to encourage doing things as a group, was it really worth running out in from of the pack for? Was it worth giving up the sleep or possibly doing something with someone just so a little message saying you were the first whatever-race-class to hit Level 80? What do you gain from it?

But my thoughts don't end with WoW, what about other games? Just how many times to people rush through games quickly beat them within the first day or so that its released and then go onto forums or blogs or sites and spoil it. Is it worth hurrying through a game, possibly missing details or not getting full enjoyment out of it for yourself, just so you can brag that you beat it? And then possibly completely ruin it for someone else? What do you gain from it?

I'd like to think that no one's life is so pathetically depressing that they always need to be the top player or the first to complete something just to make themselves feel better. It wouldn't strike me odd if the first level 80 was reached within a week or two of regular playing. It wouldn't bother me if I was dying constantly because someone was really good at a game. But what do you gain from cheating or from ruining a game for someone else?

I'd really like to know.

Used Game Sales = Money Flies out Windows for the Developer?

Yesterday I came across a fairly interesting thread asking: Do used games hurt developers? I wrote a nice, long answer in it but I figured I would share it with those who might not have seen it.

I feel that saying that developers are hurt by used games is like saying the agricultural market is being hurt by you growing your own tomatoes in your backyard.

Is it true that developer lose money if you buy a used game? Yes, they do lose a bit because instead of gaining a profit percentage from someone buying a new copy but yet they still gained money from the original copy bought.

Is it enough to harm them? No and here's why:

Used games only exist if people buy new copies. The developers gain money from those new copies and a vast majority of the time, the developer gains enough money from the first round of new copies to cover the costs of the game's development, printing, shipping, etc...and still walk away with enough of a profit to expand their company.

While it is true that some people do buy newly released games, from experience I've mainly see people buy used games that are older titles with a lot of them being games that are no longer in print new. You mean to tell me that a developer is going to constantly printing new copies of a five year old game so I can buy it new? The answer is simply no because the developer would lose more money from reprinting than they do from me buying their five year old game (which by that time is probably worth 75% less than when it was first released).

Occasionally they will release reprints of games via 'Greatest Hits' releases. While the value of the game has dropped, the developer still earns some money from these sales and in a way, we can interrupt 'Greatest Hits' titles as the developer saying, "Here's your last chance to buy it now, other wise we don't care." After all, by this time the developer has often moved onto other, larger projects that will probably bring in a bigger profit than their 'Greatest Hits' titles- even if consumers buy them all.

Used games have been around for over a decade and we have yet to see any company go bankrupt because of used game sales. So far, the main reason why we've seen a company fold was due to law suits, mergers, or their games just losing quality or not holding gamers' interests to even make them by them in the first place. (I miss you so much, Clover...)

Hell, used game sales can even help increase new sales for a developer. Say you buy a used copy of 'This Game'. You played it, loved it, and then shortly after beating it you found out that the developer is going to be releasing a sequel or a game with similar gameplay. Chances are your interest in the game is going to be so great that you're going to rush out and buy a new copy of the new game.

If you don't believe me, let me give you an example: The Grand Theft Auto games are a popular series for people to buy used, yet, the Grand Theft Auto IV walked away with selling 3.6 million copies on their first day gaining (roughly $216 million on its first day); they had sold 10 million copies a few months after the game's release. All those copies were new. Since then, people have bought used copies of Grand Theft Auto IV and will continue to buy them, yet there is no news anywhere about RockStar going bankrupt due to low game sales.

But of course sales don't end with used copies. There is no law preventing you from buying a thousand new games and then reselling them even though you never opened them. Just look at eBay auctions will people will sell 'brand new, in mint condition, never been played!' copies of rare games and makes more of a profit than the developer does from its sale since the consumer who is reselling it doesn't have to pay a development team or printing costs or even the shipping costs since they charge whatever they want for 'shipping and handling'. You mean to tell me that reselling new games is different than selling used games? The only difference is one copy is still in the original packaging while the other as been played. It's still the same thing: a game being sold by someone other than the developer who gains a profit from it while the developer doesn't.

The fact of the matter is: people will always buy new games. The desire to have a brand copy the day of its release is too great for most people to pass up. Why it isn't uncommon for people to just buy new copies over used copies because they feel that saving $5 isn't worth having a copy that might not have a manual with it. People will always buy used games because not everyone can afford a new game or because the game might not even exist in new copies. And people will always sell games they buy regardless if they played it or not just to earn a couple bucks.

Yet, developers will continue to make money and will be able to continue to support themselves. Especially with the growing market of microtransactions. So what if someone buys a used copy of Halo 3? Bungie still makes money off of the buyer buying the maps. And the income doesn't stop with game content. Every t-shirt, hat, wallet or item you buy that is tied to a game, the company still gets a small profit from it due to them owning the rights.

Cutting out the Middle Man: Nay or Yay?

Digital distribution sounds great on paper. The idea of cutting out the middle man sound convenient.

There's a slight chance that games could be cheaper since developers wouldn't have to pay artists to design box out, then wouldn't have to pay to print it, then wouldn't have to pay for packaging, and wouldn't have to pay for shipping. (Though I'm sure games would still be charged at full price in order to cover "server and bandwidth costs".) It's also nice thinking that people wouldn't have so many games cluttering their houses. (I know that with me right now, you barely tap one of my shelves and games just fall all over the place.)

And, of course, this would be mean that games would always be available as long as the developer chooses to host it. (Like the XBox Originals on Live where you can now download some 'harder to find' XBox games or Steam or the Virtual Console or places like GameTap with games from years ago.)

Though there's a lot of issues that need to be worked out before we jump completely from discs to folders on our PCs.

The first big issue that needs to be settled is piracy. I read an extremely interesting article last night about how anti-piracy movements hurt games a bit more than piracy does itself; and while I do agree with what the author said in his article, I feel that developers aren't going to just say, "Oh ok. No problem." to it.

I suppose the main "fear" (if you even want to call it that) I have with digital distribution is how developers are going to handle the idea of all their games being available virtual. I will admit that I don't know exactly all the technical stuff about game codes but with PC games being pirated already from people hacking into developer data bases or getting the code from where...Just imagine the increase in that if every game was available from an online data base. I guess you could say that I feel that we'd see an increase in titles getting hit with DRM or other forms of anti-piracy or just developers being more strict than they are now.

Right now, piracy seems to be something that only PC developers are facing. (Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's ways to copy console games or be able to pirate those too; I just don't know how.) But that's not really the point I'm trying to make...My point is that as we stand with physical copies, piracy is something that we truly can just brush off our shoulders because most developers can sit comfortably knowing that their disc-copy games are pretty much guaranteed buys. (Does what I'm trying to say make sense?) Of course, this is just speculation and just me kind of guessing what might happen but with DRM already being a hot issues and with some developers already saying they aren't planning on making PC versions in fear of it being pirated, I don't think my guess is too far off from what could really happen.

If anti-piracy and restrictions do end up being worse than they are now, I foresee a lot of problems within the consumer base. Admit it, just how many of you are truly ok with the idea of DRM as it stands now? Would you still be ok with it if they became stricter? How many of you really like the idea of being restricted to only doing so much with a game you purchased? And how many of you can truly say that you'd still buy a game with strict DRM via digital distribution if pirates (the real people stealing it- not you since you actually bought the game) get free passes to do whatever they want with the game and that you wouldn't switch over to pirating it so you could too?

When you take away the item we hold, the real concept of ownership changes. If a developer is hosting the game and uses DRM and says, "You can install it onto three computers", then let me ask you this: who really owns it? Do you own it since you bought it or are you really just "renting" the game from them by downloading it? It's an already hot controversy that I could see only getting worse with digital distribution; I'm not saying that digital distribution is a bad thing, I'm just saying I really would want this issues to be resolved before the only way for me to buy a game is to download it directly from the developer.

Another issue that I think someone brought up is storage. Technically, that isn't a huge issue. With the way the Virtual Console and I believe the Live Arcade is, your games are tied into your account, not really your system. This means that once you buy a game, it shows up in your account as you purchasing it even if you delete it from your system. (The same goes for games on Steam. I either buy a copy in the store or I can download it from them and still uninstall it without worrying about having to rebuy it if I ever want it on my PC again.) At least that would work as long as developers don't throw in something like DRM where you can only redownload a game X amount of times before having to rebuy it...But anyway, this means that they would just need a storage system and that's another issues I see arising. Who's going to make it?

Right now you can download old XBox games on to the XBox360. Ok, that makes sense since it is Microsoft's systems. Right now you can download old PSOne games and PSP games on to your PS3 and PSP. Ok again, that makes sense since it's Sony's systems. Right now you can download variety of older Nintendo games and older games in general onto the Wii and again, it makes sense. But now let's pretend that a brand new game is going to be available via download only and it's being developed by a third-party developer who has no ties to any of the three. What are they going to do with their game?

Are we still going to have Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo making systems with certain specs and still compete with each other for rights as to who gets to let their buyers download a game? And if so...Then shouldn't we all just switch to gaming PCs since that's basically what consoles will become....? I suppose you could argue that consoles are already "gaming PCs that aren't PCs" so maybe it would be true that each company would release their own version of a system for people to download games onto but I would predict that exclusives wouldn't exist in digital distribution since, well, of piracy again. A developer might say, "This game will be available for the Sony Downloading Station only!" but who's to say that no one would steal the code and pirate it if they didn't have Sony's station?

This then brings up the question about retail. If we take away what stores sell, then what would they have to sell? I would imagine that retail chains wouldn't completely vanish; after all, people would need to buy hardware, accessories, and be able to replace parts for upkeep but I would imagine that major electronic retail chains would be the ones to take that over or game-related retail chains might close down a large amount of stores but keep a few open for such a reason.

One thing I don't think people see when they talk about digital distribution is that it also doesn't work economically. Imagine if all gaming retail stores (both local and worldwide) went out of business...That's a lot of people without jobs but it doesn't stop there. Printing companies might have huge lay offs because developers wouldn't need manuals or cover art. Shipping companies might have lay offs since they wouldn't have as many products to ship. (Sure there's always things to be shipped but imagine if you removed an entire market from existence. There would be some consequences.) Developers might have lay offs since they wouldn't need as many people to design cover art, packaging, and to run everything behind the scenes.

The bottom line is...Just because it sounds nice doesn't mean it really is. Could we eventually switch to digital distribution? Possibly. Would it be anytime soon? Probably not.