Heeey! You're cheating! You never once said the word "deep"! You said "super-fleshed out!"Sapphi wrote:I get what you're saying, but my word choice of "deep" might be different to you than it meant to me when I posted that.
See, I require a ton of that "depth" (I think "humanity" is the better word here) in a relationship before I start to feel really attached to people, which I'm not sure would really be attainable in a dating game, at least on the level that would make me "fall in love" with any character.
I'm glad this topic is breached, though, as I have a couple cents to throw in ...
I agree that this format of story-telling has ... less expectation to be deep. We consider novels the highest form of writing, since they allow for endless blocks of descriptive texts, multiple ways to present dialogue, and other good things. Whereas in the VNs, text is presented in short bursts with an emphasis on dialogue, and is commonly only presented in one way (Name: What they said). NVL allows for the most accurate novel experience, but it takes more work than just writing in a word processor, and it covers the whole screen. Even though you can still show backgrounds and sprites under it, I consider it a negative towards the visual experience. So, not counting NVL mode, VNs require bursts of dialogue to convey an entire story. And it blows my mind how well people do with that. There are some games where I have to look back and think "wow, there wasn't a single line of narration in that game," but I didn't realize it right off the bat. Somehow, the author created a story with just people talking to each other, and it wasn't completely shallow. Because, in all honesty, people talking is the most human thing you can have. Okay, my defense out of the way, my offense:
I think there might be some expectation for VNs to be shallow, which does not help our "it's all porn" image, guys. We'll advertise VNs as a story telling medium and then write crap characters, but so long as the character art is purteh our game is good. If games are just about eye candy, which a lot of date sims seem to be, then I question our mental maturity. When we were younger, yeah, sometimes it's just about sex. You have blonde hair, will you make out with me under the bleachers? I wouldn't consider my younger self wiser or better in any way, though. Sexuality was a new thing, and puberty said I must try it. It's just a natural bodily function to where eye-candy might supersede personality, since that's also the age of "can never be alone. ever." I consider those shallow people, and in my more mature state of mind, unattractive. That's not to say that twu wuv wasn't possible in high school or whatever. In fact, it's an excellent place to cultivate love since you're exposed to all kinds of people and learn how to interact with them, etc. But "love" as a teenager is often confused for "my loins tell me you're very pretty."
Date sims, despite often being in the high school setting where shallowness is realistic (or in Japan, where shallowness is prevalent despite age) are more about the gameplay mechanics than the story. Not that I'm saying that stat-raising and story can't coexist, as I've played a few. Tokimeki Memorial, while very much a silly stat-raising game, sometimes surprises me with the depth of its characters, but the occasions are rare and usually for the main ones. Sometimes it's just "glasses guy is nerdy." And that's ...well, almost as shallow as a porn game. Almost.
I would definitely say that is not the "real" reason. The "real" reason is, hands down, that women aren't expected to play video games at all. Followed closely by the video game creators being men. Not that a gender neutral conference was held and it was decided that there is a greater overlap in one or the other. A guy made a video game for other guys. That's really it. It's difficult to even tell accurately the gender of who buys your game, so the number of female players is speculative and, until a few years ago, assumed to be so small it didn't count. Definitely not as a marketable demographic. When asked to Bioware why they never show the female version of the main character, right here and now, they will tell you because it's not financially savvy. They won't even confirm that such a gender option exists until much closer to release, let alone show her, or even conceive of making the canon a woman to begin with. The "well, it turns out women don't mind" aspect is purely frosting on their cake, not the basis. It's also blinding the industry to a demographic that it could get. If Dragon Age was suddenly male-only PC, I'd drop the series so fast your head would spin. If the option was never included in the first place, I'd probably be playing it. There's a certain level of responsibility and respect I would expect. If you treat a game to have an equal audience you will get an equal audience.dstarsboy wrote:Not sure if this was mentioned already but the REAL reason that there are more BxG games than GxB games is likely because girls are completely fine with playing games where they are a male character pursuing other girls and men are not comfortable with playing a game as a female character pursuing other men. Hence... for the largest target audience, games are made as men pursuing women.
While I will happily play a game as a male avatar, it's because I enjoy the game and the story. Not because I want to make out with girls, because all girls are secretly lesbians or something. I don't prefer BxG in any way, since it's often unrealistic portrayals of girls or they're just eye-candy, but I have no problem playing it because that kind of stuff doesn't matter if the game is good. It's still two people in love. And even though I'm making a GxB game, some guys don't seem to mind that at all. So I could argue it goes both way, but when all girls have are BxG games, then that's what they'll play. It's sometimes just about what's available and what's just plain good. We still have sexual preferences, and if given the option we will choose it. Not always the case.
Wait, you weren't even working there? Haha, epic. You were saving her from crappy games. Congrats. I would say a good action game is always better as your first video game experiences anyway. Little girls can play teacher or doctor or whatever on their own. Outside. Making mud pies. Don't try to substitute that with with a crappy Facebook app. At that age, they need to be making this stuff up themselves!mysterialize wrote:I performed an act of charity for the good of female gaming kind. I was in a Gamestop, when a woman walked in, looking for a game for her seven year old daughter. The guy at the counter pointed her to the Imagine games section in the DS aisle. Unable to stand such heresy, I quickly jumped in, and handed the woman a Kirby game. She went for the Kirby game. *Heroic pose* Marketing idiocy has been stopped once again.
My first true video games, outside of educational ones, was Spyro and Final Fantasy. That pretty much set me up for life. I got my action, and I got my strategy. I really, really liked both games. If my dad had gotten me Barbie Horse Adventures instead, I probably would've ... well. Let's just say I would be very different. And I don't necessarily think for the better.
-shot-
