Game developers too much focussed on "male teenage" target audience?

Elikal

You know, something that circled in my mind for the last two years or so, and which culminated in my view in the last weeks, was this feeling that I as 40 year old man kinda am no longer the main target audience of game developers. Now when I talked about this with friends, one of my friends send me this cartoon, which kinda highlights the issue:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/online_gaming

And he send it to me with the comment, why he stopped playing Online Games. It made me think and discuss with people.

Now if we look at games, online and otherwise, I can't help but notice that games, as a medium of entertainment and it's storytelling, it's visual design and it's marketing all seem to be heavily focussed on one perceived target audience, the kinda nerdy white, male teenager, and it's older Peter-Pan syndrome plagued "I don't want to grow up" 20-something version. You know, those guys who with 29 still dress like with 17, black t-shirt with fandom picture on it included. The kind of puberty boys, who yet haven't experienced a sort of steady life and for whom "girls" (strangely in their vocabulary it's always girls, never women) still are a matter for insecurity snickering. I mean, I don't want to sound too rude and it sure is a bit over-stereotyping here, but if you go to any average games convention... well go figure.

And look at the games itself. There are that issue Sigmund Freud would have his pleasure, with all these "look I have the bigger penis" uber shoulderpads, super sized weapons (Cloud Strife and his super thin arms wearing that SUPER heavy sword) and a sort of overbearing manliness in characters, who naturally are always surrounded by "babes". It all breathes this insecure, oversexualized boasting so typical to young men of a certain age. And what is natural and necessary for them in that phase of life, seems to dominate games now in a way which... well just doesn't really reflect the REAL gamers scene anymore.

One huge part yet not really integrated are female gamers. They either get their personal niche games (Sims, Nancy Drew Adventures) or essentially are ignored. Or they can adapt and be pseudo-men. Just for the MMO: many MMOs have fat male body options, but all female body options are variations of slim. Lesson: female chars are imperative to be beauties while men are allowed to be ugly.

And then the older gamer. WIth age, I realized, two things change. One, you generally have less time. But still, in the case of MMOs, rewarded is grind. Grinding raids, grinding instances, all caters people with LOTS of time. But the generally overlooked issue is: with age change values. While for a male teenage boy it may be fun and ok to spent lots and lots of time with action and killing stuff, as you get older you also value "soft skill things". Take SWG. The entire corpus of non combat activities was SO popular, but mostly with female and older gamers. While the kids went out pew pew the older gamers focussed on more social activities. Sure, there are always exceptions, but that doesn't mean there are no general lines in natural change as you age. And this was entirely dropped. The ENTIRE popular scope of activities OTHER than kill stuff as known from SWG or UO are gone.

Ultima Online is a great example. Everyone remembering the MANY different things you could do in UO and comparing it to the very limited scope of MMOs today will understand what I talk about. It is as if 90% of all UO activities were cut, and only the combat quest stuff remained. And while I have no problem to give "kids" their action pew pew and their over exxagerated macho toys, I have this feeling as if game developer way too much program their games as if that was the ONLY target audience and they entirely forgot to see other target groups which play a greater role today. As older gamer, who has begun to have different values and values softer skill stuff than  KILL KILL KILL, I feel kinda marginalized.

Sulaa

I agree. Even though I am not in my 40 , but rather I am in late 20, I am FED UP with games only providing combat activities and grind. Really. So fed up.

 

Time passes and mmorpg's instead of beign more complex and fun becasue of  better technology , they do get streamlined.

 

I don't mind combat , but I want alot of other things to do as well. Not some half-baked attempts , but full fledged activities.

SWG and Ultima Online are very good examples. Crafting should NOT be , idiotically simple and boring thing that prouces items that are usually next to worthless with few excetions. I want non comabt things , vast world , exploring , housing ,aspects of game that encourage social activities , etc I want mmorpg to be trying to create fictional world with it's own rules and features, and not some linear , simple bad combat simulator.

Supersoups

Can't blame game companies when that is where majority of players come from. Yes there are lots of older gamers but i don't think they even come close to numbers of kids and teens who play online games on PC and consoles. The 12+ ratings of majority of present and upcoming titles shows what demographics companies want to target. 

Fozzik

Video games are created for 12 year old boys (regardless of their age in actual years) and girls who also like boobs.

 

Does't that pretty much cover everyone?

KenFisher

Quality of MMO games went down when they stopped being worlds and started being single player adventures.

 

I'm a bit older than the OP and I sort of feel the same way sometimes.  Where's the BEEF?  *cough* (old person reference)

UknownAspect

Just like real life, the problem is not the game, it's the player.

Most of the MMOs that becamse popular did so because the people who played the games.  Now we hate those very same games because they are saturated with people we hate.

 

Such is life, everything you like is ruined by the next generation.  Now politics makes all sorts of sense.

Laserwolf

Give it a generation. Gamers from the late 80s to the 90s are growing older and having kids. Their love of video games is being taken up but their sons and daughters. I know that if I have a daughter I'm going to make quite an effort to make her into a gamer (at least casually). In ten years we'll have two to three times the number of hardcore female gamers we have now, if not more, and the average age of gamers will continue to increase from where it is now in the early 30s. The market will then adapt accordingly.

VooDoo_Papa

heh  that cartoon is hilarious  

 

and desribes me perfectly

Kuinn

Originally posted by Sulaa

I agree. Even though I am not in my 40 , but rather I am in late 20, I am FED UP with games only providing combat activities and grind. Really. So fed up.

 

Yes, I like combat obviously but why is there only two things how to interact with the game world: 1.) Combat. 2.) Gather mats. Themepark or not, there could be so many more ways to spend time and interact with the world, mmorpgs always was to me a genre where I have a world that I can interact with, even themeparks should look at it like this and not just give a huge area to kill anything that moves, there's plenty of pure action games out there already. Mix things up a bit more in modern mmo's.

Tylerbrown13

Originally posted by Elikal

You know, something that circled in my mind for the last two years or so, and which culminated in my view in the last weeks, was this feeling that I as 40 year old man kinda am no longer the main target audience of game developers. Now when I talked about this with friends, one of my friends send me this cartoon, which kinda highlights the issue:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/online_gaming

And he send it to me with the comment, why he stopped playing Online Games. It made me think and discuss with people.

Now if we look at games, online and otherwise, I can't help but notice that games, as a medium of entertainment and it's storytelling, it's visual design and it's marketing all seem to be heavily focussed on one perceived target audience, the kinda nerdy white, male teenager, and it's older Peter-Pan syndrome plagued "I don't want to grow up" 20-something version. You know, those guys who with 29 still dress like with 17, black t-shirt with fandom picture on it included. The kind of puberty boys, who yet haven't experienced a sort of steady life and for whom "girls" (strangely in their vocabulary it's always girls, never women) still are a matter for insecurity snickering. I mean, I don't want to sound too rude and it sure is a bit over-stereotyping here, but if you go to any average games convention... well go figure.

And look at the games itself. There are that issue Sigmund Freud would have his pleasure, with all these "look I have the bigger penis" uber shoulderpads, super sized weapons (Cloud Strife and his super thin arms wearing that SUPER heavy sword) and a sort of overbearing manliness in characters, who naturally are always surrounded by "babes". It all breathes this insecure, oversexualized boasting so typical to young men of a certain age. And what is natural and necessary for them in that phase of life, seems to dominate games now in a way which... well just doesn't really reflect the REAL gamers scene anymore.

One huge part yet not really integrated are female gamers. They either get their personal niche games (Sims, Nancy Drew Adventures) or essentially are ignored. Or they can adapt and be pseudo-men. Just for the MMO: many MMOs have fat male body options, but all female body options are variations of slim. Lesson: female chars are imperative to be beauties while men are allowed to be ugly.

And then the older gamer. WIth age, I realized, two things change. One, you generally have less time. But still, in the case of MMOs, rewarded is grind. Grinding raids, grinding instances, all caters people with LOTS of time. But the generally overlooked issue is: with age change values. While for a male teenage boy it may be fun and ok to spent lots and lots of time with action and killing stuff, as you get older you also value "soft skill things". Take SWG. The entire corpus of non combat activities was SO popular, but mostly with female and older gamers. While the kids went out pew pew the older gamers focussed on more social activities. Sure, there are always exceptions, but that doesn't mean there are no general lines in natural change as you age. And this was entirely dropped. The ENTIRE popular scope of activities OTHER than kill stuff as known from SWG or UO are gone.

Ultima Online is a great example. Everyone remembering the MANY different things you could do in UO and comparing it to the very limited scope of MMOs today will understand what I talk about. It is as if 90% of all UO activities were cut, and only the combat quest stuff remained. And while I have no problem to give "kids" their action pew pew and their over exxagerated macho toys, I have this feeling as if game developer way too much program their games as if that was the ONLY target audience and they entirely forgot to see other target groups which play a greater role today. As older gamer, who has begun to have different values and values softer skill stuff than  KILL KILL KILL, I feel kinda marginalized.

Why blame them? Of course gaming companies are going to focus on pleasing the majority of the market, they don't please 14 year olds because they want to (I know that sounded a little off...) but they do it because they are going to play it the most, and there is the most of them.

Gaming companies, or most of them, don't care about the consumer, they just want there money. As long as the best way to get money is pleasing the majority of the market, and the majority of the market being teenagers, this isn't going to change.

Although it might change in 10-20 years, because this generation is full of hardcore gamers, where some of the previous ones had a very small number of gamers.

Hope this opened your eyes alittle to why they did this.

 

From a 14 year old child.

Goatgod76

Originally posted by Elikal

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/online_gaming

ROFLMAO! SO true!

Goatgod76

Originally posted by UknownAspect

Just like real life, the problem is not the game, it's the player.

Most of the MMOs that becamse popular did so because the people who played the games.  Now we hate those very same games because they are saturated with people we hate.

 

Such is life, everything you like is ruined by the next generation.  Now politics makes all sorts of sense.

Agree completely.

Biggus99

Originally posted by Fozzik

Video games are created for 12 year old boys (regardless of their age in actual years) and girls who also like boobs.

 

Does't that pretty much cover everyone?

 

You forgot middle-aged geek-men who've never been laid, or middle-aged men who use the games to get away from their nagging wives and girlfriends for a few hours every day.