how not to sell a game to me

[meganbmoore]

So, I'm sitting here catching up on my Captain America comics, and I turn to a 2 page spread advertising Fable II.  Normally I'd just skip past it, but there was what appeared to be a pouty nobleman with a vampire lurking behind him, and I was curious.

So, I know nothing about Fable, really.  Either one.  But this ad  features what looks to be a bar full of men from all walks of life.  And no women.  Not even a barmaid.  There could be a plot reason for this.  A good one.  I don't know.  But from the image and description, it seems to be a normal medievaloid fantasy adventure.  Mind you, 27-year-old women aren't exactly the target audience for Captain America in the first place, but my reaction to what appears to be a large, exclusively male, ensemble, is "no thanks," even if a few of them a quite good looking.  Hi there, Mr. Strategically Posed Swordsman and Mr. Hooded Man.

See, if I see one or two men and no one else, or vague background characters, my mind will go "ok, main characters."  If I see a full room, I'm going to take that room as representative of the entire world in the game.  (And yes, even a buxom barmaid in the corner would influence that impression.)

I suppose it's the flipside of things titled Male's Daughter and Male's Wife. (If the title of the work is defining the female by her relation to a male, there better be a pretty good reason.)

Comments

[kakkobean.livejournal.com]

The concept of Fable is that you have one person that can essentially become anything, anyone--so all of those people in the bar are actually representations of the potential future/outlook/growth of the one guy.

There's a female option for this game as well, but video games are still largely advertised for a male audience, so if they wanted to make an ad for the woman's side, the ad would only feature women in it (all representations of possible outcomes/appearances/growth of the one female character).

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It hought it was along those lines based on fandom osmosis, but the ad will largely be for 2 types of pople:

1. Fans of the first game who don't know about the sequel yet/didn't know it was out
2. People who haven't played the games

The former will know what the picure means. The latter, if they don't know that they're all the same person, will see what appears to be an exclusively male world, and react to it based on their opinions of such a thing.

And yeah, games, like comics (and most other things), are targeted towards males. Because, you know, girls who like these things don't exist. Mind you, I'm not into games myself, but I know more women who are into gaming than I do men.

[kakkobean.livejournal.com]

Actually, the game more likely is for the first type of person than the second, because very few gamers will pick up the sequel unless they either a.) played the one before it or b.) know exactly what it's about. Gamers are kind of funky that way *hangs out with tons of gamers, many who don't play the game until they've either hacked a demo or read everything about it on playtest boards*

Gamer culture's complicated =_=

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I cannot speak of game culture at large, but I know that the one who work here will run out to get the first game if the second looks good. But the rest sounds like the ones I know.

[havocthecat]

There's a female option in Fable II? Mr. Havoc tells me the Fable has no female option.

[kakkobean.livejournal.com]

Havoc lied to you. My roommate has been playing the game as a woman the entire time--complete with images of her in a bra and underwear for when you're putting clothes on her.

[havocthecat]

I was told that Fable has no female option. I hadn't heard anything about Fable II. (Also, please don't tell me my husband lied to me. It's neither true, nor amusing.)

[kakkobean.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, I thought you were referring to a game advisory >.>

Yes, Fable II has a female option. The first game doesn't.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Do we see the men in their underwear, too? Otherwise, the slowly rising opinion just dropped.

[kakkobean.livejournal.com]

I would guess so--in the manner of a Ken doll kind of dress-up *nods*

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

Well. Sign me right up, then. Gosh.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Pretty much.

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I have not played Fable or Fable2, but the first one was infamous (for certain values of "infamous") for billing itself as the game where you could be anything you want! Anything! Except female.

I'm given to understand this has been rectified in the second one. I haven't played it because it is new and thus expensive, and it doesn't sound too much like my sort of game.

Video game marketing is AWFUL, even for good, non-sexist games. It really does piss me off that for a hobby which is ~50% women, all the marketing is skewed towards horny 18-25 year-old white men. Which is why I pick games based on (1) what my friends say about them, and (2) familiarity with the studio putting the game out, and not on ads.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I honestly spent a couple minutes staring at the image, wondering what was striking me as being so wrong about it, before I realized that I was looking at what appeared to be a standard medievaloid fantasy bar that didn't even have a barmaid. And yes, now I know why, but that doesn't remove the "boy's only" club feel. And if there is a female option, and you can be anything, then wouldn't a wiser marketing ploy to have a page of male versions, and then a mirror page of the female versions?

[admiral]

BUT FABLE IS SO GOOD.

Advertising is crap though. I saw a commercial for Fable II on TV and the whole time I was like "WTF is this for" until the very end where it showed the title and then I figured it out. pffft. good thing they told us what it was or I never would have guessed.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I've been told it'll be an easy game to get into, but no, that isn't good advertising.

[admiral]

I just assumed that people who've played the first game would be too busy going "OMG FABLE II" to scrutinize the advertising technique. xD

[advance.livejournal.com]

Oh dood.. Fable is an awesome game, Fable II is even better, the graphics and the possibilities of the game are almost endless. It's freakin fantastic.

I was a little disappointed that EVERY ad for the game featured no woman and in the second it's finally possible to play a female hero so personally that makes no sense to me [uh dood show us a few woman plzkthx]

I own Fable and am going to buy a 360 so I can own Fable II. ♥

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they aren't helping their case, really.

[advance.livejournal.com]

Yeah but if you put the crappy advertising aside it honestly is a fantastic game. I had been worried but then I played it and guh. Awesome.

<<-- a fangirl.. of course

[tianneh.livejournal.com]

I did not realise how rare someone like me was.

Uh. To be honest, advertising like that actually works for me i.e. all males without females.

If the game had been all females I wouldn't have had much interest, and no, I'm not speaking of games that cater to certain forms of...uh...gratification.

Cultural context (Asian?), perhaps, although I doubt it.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I don't have much interest in much of anything that's exclusive to one gender in terms of cast. There are a few exceptions on both sides, but it's normally an inbalance that I don't find appealing. It's why I'm not big on either kind of harem manga, unless it's things like kyo Kara Maoh or Wallflower where there are major supporting characters that help balance it out. But I tend to need a really good reason if only one gender is well represented.

[tianneh.livejournal.com]

I actually failed at Kyou Kara Maou, although I did try to pick up the novels quite a few times. I even went as far as to give the anime a try before going back to the novels.

I did like Zetsubou Sensei (almost completely female cast with the exception of the main character and a few random appearances), but that doesn't count.

I don't like harem manga at all either. It's either a 100% male cast (hence my fondness for historical series) concentrating on action/friendship/sacrifice etc or a series going the other way and focusing on the female cast with the males being there only to carry on the plot (e.g. Ooku).

Actually, after all the wordiness I think it's just me being averse to explicit romance.

I did like Honou no Mirage, though, but I tend to think of it as historical fiction (it is Shueisha, after all, famed publisher of Jump and other healthy mags).

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The problem I've been having the last year or so is how so much fiction seems to be defaulting to tried and true male archetypes without much to set them apart from the heard. Especially when it comes to angsty backstories. Female characters have the benefit of focus on them being relatively new, as opposed to centuries of primary focus on them being the norm, so even the tried and true archetypes tend to not be as tried and true.

[tianneh.livejournal.com]

Which genre are you referring to in particular? Or is it just a general sense you're getting from fiction? Is there a cultural context to it? I do understand what you're getting at, though, because that's what I feel about most protagonists regardless of gender.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Fiction in general.

[animeshon.livejournal.com]

Ironically enough I played Fable on the weekend. The boys were playing a female character, but the game appeared to be very much a "boys game" to me. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but there was definitely a lot of elements in that would appeal to guys. While I was playing our character got married, had unprotected sex and had a child (about 2 hours of gameplay!)

There are lot's of guys & gals in the game world though

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I wasn't really posting about the game itself, but about the impression of the game's world that's given by the ad.

[animeshon.livejournal.com]

misleading advertising for the win, games are all about boys, except for the "girly" games I wouldn't touch with a barge pole

[archica.livejournal.com]

I haven't played either, but I had heard enough about the first game to know what the basic premise is. I thought the ad was kinda neat (and the text saying something along the lines of "You can become whatever you want. Who will you choose to be?" tipped me off on what it was trying to portray, although if I wasn't aware of the basic idea, I might not have caught it), but I agree a female version would've been a good idea, especially since they've made a big deal out of the fact that you can choose to play a woman this time around. I honestly don't understand why they didn't just make a female version of the ad to begin with instead of the male version. Trust me, male gamers are NOT afraid of a female protagonist. At all. All the Tomb Raiders and Resident Evils and Heavenly Swords are proof of that.

But, it is a fact that most gaming advertisements are aimed at males. There still seems to be the misconception that most girls don't like games, but that IS changing. More and more girls are speaking up about it, and recently I've seen a lot of talk about it, even in major gaming magazines. With all this attention being brought to the issue, hopefully game marketing departments will take notice.

Edited for clarity. XD

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The world in general refuses to accept that girls might be into anything "geeky," and generally seems to think that we have to be "like the boys" if we do care about fiction.

[estara.livejournal.com]

I had the exact same reaction when I had to review Gothic in 2001. And considering my first rpg I ever played was Ultima 7, where you could pick your own gender, heh....

Ah well. I'm fine these days with PS2 Japanese rpgs, when I have the time. Although they have their own female character clichés.

[booster17.livejournal.com]

I've rather enjoyed Fable II myself for the last couple of weeks. Gameplay-wise, it doesn't really seem to make too much of a difference which sex you play, only differing in which sex you're most likely to be able to drag off into a broom cupboard somewhere. *grin*

I suspect the comic advert was more a spin-off from the tv advert, but still doesn't excuse the lack of a female version. And yeah, chalk me up with the horde of people who went "Fable II? It must be mine!!!".

[mycenae.livejournal.com]

The Fable II tv ad I saw perplexed me, since I didn't know anything about Fable. It shows a guy sitting at a table playing that folded paper fortune telling game that I associate with being in 3rd grade writing down boys names to find out who we'd marry. That ad was a big old pile of WHAT. Now that I know the premise of the game, it makes more sense, but it's still somewhat ironic that it shows all these incarnation of macho personas, while he's playing a game associated with 8-year-old-girls. Was that intentional??

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[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

*nods*

As a marketing strategy, it will keep the old customers, but not bring in new ones.

[kingcrankycat.livejournal.com]

I only read a fraction of you post, so apologies if this is covered.

The irony is that Fable 1 had one of the highest attach rates for females for a non-Sims/PopCap game out there, and it looks like Fable 2 is going to surpass that attach rate. I can only think of a few games off-hand that would rival Fable 1 for attach rate (chiefly among them the horrendously awful Final Fantasy 8 (but it's easy to see why, as it caters to the same story/characters that we see a lot in major anime/manga fandoms). World of Warcraft probably does too, but with some obscene number of gamers playing it (11 mil + at last count, I believe) that doesn't actually mean anything...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what "attach rate" is...

I'm assuming it means female fans?

[kingcrankycat.livejournal.com]

Number of people who own a game in relation to something else -- normally in regards to the number of consoles computer owned. In this case simply the percentage of people who own (as opposed to merely rented) that are female.

[havocthecat]

OK, so where are you finding these stats?

[havocthecat]

Fable — the game, not Fables, the comic — has no option to play a female PC. Therefore, it kind of bores me. Ugh.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

According to other comments, the second has a female character option. Which makes me even less impressed with their marketing.