A question for the female escapists....

[Thebazilly]

I've never really been interested in COD, and the addition of female avatars isn't going to suddenly sway me. I do appreciate the effort, though. I remember being a bit baffled when the female multiplayer characters in Red Dead Redemption had to be unlocked.

 

[LaoJim]

Both Dragon Age and Mass Effect tend to be equally popular among female gamers.

The reasons you give all make perfect sense and I agree with you pretty much everything you say, but how do you know that they are *equally* popular. What I'm getting at is that it's nice to have statistics to back up what we think is happening in gaming. The numbers would either prove us right or show us interesting trends that we are not aware of.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. I'm a member of TrueAchievements and if you go to their list of games, you can sort them by the number of gamers who have played them (got at least one achivement for that game). Now this is not an ideal sample of course because only generally people who are interested in chasing achievements are likely to join, if they are aware of the site, and it probably excludes a huge number of "casual" gamers, but it's still interesting to me.

Some examples:

The first ten or so entries are a solid wall of CoD, Halo and Gears as you might expect. (And Hexic HD which came with the machine) There are about 170,000 gamers on the site, and the numbers range between 157,000 down to 130,000 so nearly everyone has played these games, but Call of Duty 2 and 3 are both significantly less popular with on about 60,000, which makes sense as the CoD crazy really started with Modern Warfare. As for the rest of the popular shooters Borderlands and Bioshock are on about 110,000. (Borderlands is a lot higher than I expected, I knew it had a big following but not that it was so mainstream) Then Left 4 Dead (106,000) and L4D2 (90,000) The first Battlefield on the list (number 3) only has 80,000 players, so less than half of the site has played it.

The original Mass Effect has 107,000 players compared with Dragon Age: Origins 62,000 players. Fallout 3 has 120,000 whereas Skyrim and Oblivion both have 100,000. (Skyrim will probably still grow a bit) New Vegas has 70,000 and Dragon Age II has 35,000. Given that Fallout is similar to the Elder Scrolls, and Mass Effect is similar to Dragon Age it seems like futuristic RPGs are more popular that Tolkieneque ones. If your claim that women like ME and DA equally is literatlly true, then would mean that there are a greater ratio of women:men playing Tolkienesque RPGs than futuristic ones. Actually from my own personal experience I suspect that women like Tolkieneque ones significantly more than futuristic ones, but at the moment I don't have any evidence for this. One last (to me rather shocking) statistic is that Dead Island currently has more players than Mass Effect 3 (66,000 > 64,000)

The numbers for Assassins' Creed are interesting: I = 131,000 II = 125,000 Brotherhood = 91,000 Revelations = 63,000 and III = 62,000. (III has only been out a year so you'd expect that number to rise as more people pick it up second hand. The most played game from last year BlOps 2 only has about 80,000) So that suggests to me that Ubisofts strategy of annualising AC has paid off. Even if the numbers were dropping as they kept reskinning the games they were able to reinvigorate interest by substantially changing the setting for III) On the other hand we have Dead Space I = 76,000 II = 49,000 III = 23,000, which gives good evidence that, as everyone on the forum keeps saying, EA's direction with the franchise is not paying off. (At least with the gamers on the site, maybe the casual numbers are different)

Anyway once I start looking at it I could write a hundred and one other things I find interesting and I've already written a lot more than I was intending to. I think if we were able to break up the numbers into male and female (and idueally have Microsoft's achievement list of everyone on-line) we'd have a lot of good raw data to talk about.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I'm willing to look into it more now that I'm included more. Still, I'm gunna wanna fight bots with close friends more than anything. 'm not a fan of people, the stereotypical community, and such. Not a fan of clans either.

It went from "meh" to "I'm interested" faster than it it took me to open the thread I got the news from. It likely sounds dumb, but it's pretty meaningful to me to see even a female avatar.

 

[Weaver]

I'd honestly be surprised if you find many escapists of any gender who are excited to play the next CoD

 

[SadisticFire]

I used to play a bit of CoD but was pretty rubish with a controller compared to others. It was tolerable when everyone was muted(I was playing on 360). But ever since Modern Warfare 2 I stopped playing it. I like PC gaming much more, and I have plenty of rage inducing FPS's to play. (Three different counter strikes). Much better with Keyboard and Mice, and I prefer TF2 cause' I can play it casually, or seriously.
Also a lot of Pay Day 2.

 

[CBanana]

So to expand on a previous question, apparently about 30% of the player base for the Dragon Age series is female.
Reference: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/194571/Video_Sexism_and_sexuality_in_games.php

Meanwhile, 18% of the player base of Mass Effect 3 chose female avatars (at least initially).
Reference (Spoilers for ME3 in the link): http://kotaku.com/5992092/two-thirds-of-you-played-mass-effect-3-as-a-paragon-mostly-as-soldiers

 

[Dragonbums]

Both Dragon Age and Mass Effect tend to be equally popular among female gamers.

The reasons you give all make perfect sense and I agree with you pretty much everything you say, but how do you know that they are *equally* popular. What I'm getting at is that it's nice to have statistics to back up what we think is happening in gaming. The numbers would either prove us right or show us interesting trends that we are not aware of.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. I'm a member of TrueAchievements and if you go to their list of games, you can sort them by the number of gamers who have played them (got at least one achivement for that game). Now this is not an ideal sample of course because only generally people who are interested in chasing achievements are likely to join, if they are aware of the site, and it probably excludes a huge number of "casual" gamers, but it's still interesting to me.

Some examples:

The first ten or so entries are a solid wall of CoD, Halo and Gears as you might expect. (And Hexic HD which came with the machine) There are about 170,000 gamers on the site, and the numbers range between 157,000 down to 130,000 so nearly everyone has played these games, but Call of Duty 2 and 3 are both significantly less popular with on about 60,000, which makes sense as the CoD crazy really started with Modern Warfare. As for the rest of the popular shooters Borderlands and Bioshock are on about 110,000. (Borderlands is a lot higher than I expected, I knew it had a big following but not that it was so mainstream) Then Left 4 Dead (106,000) and L4D2 (90,000) The first Battlefield on the list (number 3) only has 80,000 players, so less than half of the site has played it.

The original Mass Effect has 107,000 players compared with Dragon Age: Origins 62,000 players. Fallout 3 has 120,000 whereas Skyrim and Oblivion both have 100,000. (Skyrim will probably still grow a bit) New Vegas has 70,000 and Dragon Age II has 35,000. Given that Fallout is similar to the Elder Scrolls, and Mass Effect is similar to Dragon Age it seems like futuristic RPGs are more popular that Tolkieneque ones. If your claim that women like ME and DA equally is literatlly true, then would mean that there are a greater ratio of women:men playing Tolkienesque RPGs than futuristic ones. Actually from my own personal experience I suspect that women like Tolkieneque ones significantly more than futuristic ones, but at the moment I don't have any evidence for this. One last (to me rather shocking) statistic is that Dead Island currently has more players than Mass Effect 3 (66,000 > 64,000)

The numbers for Assassins' Creed are interesting: I = 131,000 II = 125,000 Brotherhood = 91,000 Revelations = 63,000 and III = 62,000. (III has only been out a year so you'd expect that number to rise as more people pick it up second hand. The most played game from last year BlOps 2 only has about 80,000) So that suggests to me that Ubisofts strategy of annualising AC has paid off. Even if the numbers were dropping as they kept reskinning the games they were able to reinvigorate interest by substantially changing the setting for III) On the other hand we have Dead Space I = 76,000 II = 49,000 III = 23,000, which gives good evidence that, as everyone on the forum keeps saying, EA's direction with the franchise is not paying off. (At least with the gamers on the site, maybe the casual numbers are different)

Anyway once I start looking at it I could write a hundred and one other things I find interesting and I've already written a lot more than I was intending to. I think if we were able to break up the numbers into male and female (and idueally have Microsoft's achievement list of everyone on-line) we'd have a lot of good raw data to talk about.

Ah, now I see what you mean by that.
Yeah, like I said, some real research needs to be dug into these games specifically in order for us to really understand WHY those games click. And why said games click more than others.

The only thing I can say about Mass Effect being more popular than Dragon Age (to non hardcore Bioware fans) would have to do with how "interesting" the alien designs are.(?)
Fanart can play a big role in peaking interest. I know it worked for me.

If I were to see a Dragon Age art piece I would probably of just pass it off as another fantasy picture.
However when I saw a picture of a Turian( which was apparently Garrus at the time.) The design piqued my interest.
I was curious as to what that was, why does it look cool, what medium is it from, and is the thing it's from interesting.

I mean, this is all really just speculation, and my own experience with how I was introduced and hooked to Mass Effect.

My experience with TF2 was different. I was somewhat aware that the game existed, but never looked much into it. Then my friend Courtney showed me the meet the team videos.
Which also introduced me to the "colorfulness" of the games, and the dynamics and silliness of the characters. Lo and behold I found myself making a Steam account for TF2.

Again, as a female, this is entirely my point of view and nothing more.

I really wish I can contribute more. But sadly I can only just give my point of view as a female gamer myself on why THAT game appeals to me, and why CoD doesn't.

 

[LaoJim]

So to expand on a previous question, apparently about 30% of the player base for the Dragon Age series is female.
Reference: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/194571/Video_Sexism_and_sexuality_in_games.php

Meanwhile, 18% of the player base of Mass Effect 3 chose female avatars (at least initially).
Reference (Spoilers for ME3 in the link): http://kotaku.com/5992092/two-thirds-of-you-played-mass-effect-3-as-a-paragon-mostly-as-soldiers

Thanks for the video, it looks interesting, but unfortunately I'm on a slow internet connection at the moment and have only got a few minutes in. Choosing a female avatar is not the same thing as being female, there's a thread running at the moment where lots of guys are talking about if and why they create female characters. I do it myself sometimes.

Y
Ah, now I see what you mean by that.
Yeah, like I said, some real research needs to be dug into these games specifically in order for us to really understand WHY those games click. And why said games click more than others.

Sure, thing is it seems like Microsoft would have those numbers, but I can't see they've shared it with the public anywhere.

The only thing I can say about Mass Effect being more popular than Dragon Age (to non hardcore Bioware fans) would have to do with how "interesting" the alien designs are.(?)
Fanart can play a big role in peaking interest. I know it worked for me.

If I were to see a Dragon Age art piece I would probably of just pass it off as another fantasy picture.
However when I saw a picture of a Turian( which was apparently Garrus at the time.) The design piqued my interest.
I was curious as to what that was, why does it look cool, what medium is it from, and is the thing it's from interesting.
I mean, this is all really just speculation, and my own experience with how I was introduced and hooked to Mass Effect.

That's interesting, I'm not really a follower of fanart, especially for existing series that I don't know. It's good when the effort to make the visual design of a game interesting is rewarded with new players. As you say fantasy games seems to have settled down in to a comfortable routine of Dwarves, Elves and Dragons. I've often thought it would be nice to have a decent game based on Greek myth and have playable Centuars or Minataurs or even something with completely original races.

My experience with TF2 was different. I was somewhat aware that the game existed, but never looked much into it. Then my friend Courtney showed me the meet the team videos.
Which also introduced me to the "colorfulness" of the games, and the dynamics and silliness of the characters. Lo and behold I found myself making a Steam account for TF2.

So would it be fair to say that the visual design of the game is the thing you look for most in a game? At least initially?

Again, as a female, this is entirely my point of view and nothing more.
I really wish I can contribute more. But sadly I can only just give my point of view as a female gamer myself on why THAT game appeals to me, and why CoD doesn't.

Not at all, it's like the difference between quantative and qualitative research. Whenever you're researching something it's one thing to have stats and percentages about who is playing what, but you also need to listen in detail to why people are chosing the games they are, so individual points of view are very important. I feel like we have more and more female gamers talking about their own experiences, especially on this site, which is great we just don't have numbers from publishers.

 

[Gali]

The Modern Warfare franchise is very unappealling to me, though I did enjoy some of the older Call of Duties. Sometimes a friend wants me to check a new CoD out - nope, still not worth buying for me. I find the singleplayer as well as the multiplayer to be a shallow experience, no offense to the fans.
I feel that I do not really need to aim to get a kill, and I hate being told how awesome I am everytime I do so. Also, I don't like their depiction of modern warfare or whatever you call this setting. I prefer a Spec Ops: The Line (when it comes to singleplayer) or some CS:GO instead. Or, speaking about the genre in general, I prefer FPses with a more outlandish setting because imo it opens more possibilities when it comes to gameplay, art style etc. (see TF2, Halo, Shadowrun, Quake...).

 

[CleverCover]

No, no interest in playing it.
The single player doesn't really seem interesting and there doesn't seem to be any point to the multiplayer.
I'll pass.
Besides, watching my brother and cousin play it, it doesn't look like much fun at all, and they're good at the game. Someone like me who needs time and planning to actually succeed who get trampled, eaten up, and spit on without ever achieving a UAV.

 

[Gergar12_v1legacy]

I don't think a lot of female gamers play COD, and I don't know any who do. I do know female gamers who play skyrim, mass effect, fallout, halo, and saints row. COD has gotten bland now, and I am pretty sure even less people will play it. I personally prefer the Battlefield series over COD. It lets you use vechicles, and have large amounts of people In a battle, and the community from what I hear is better than the COD one.