COD communicates boys will love this because action and explorations if for some reason they place a fem lead or the option in SP players who want to play main campaign COD as a woman would love that however by not telling them she's even a possibility the to be players might not figure it out because the ads and articles sure won't tell them and pre-launch there isn't word of mouth for a feature the devs aren't highlighting. Then the players who say, " Oh I'd try COD again if it had a woman lead" will definitely not know it got one because they didn't show and tell them that or they'll keep assuming fem characters after ghost are confined to MP that wasn't enough apparently to get them to put down their money but a femlead COD would.Rebel_Raven said:Not necessarily that far, but yeah, I agree that advertisement can often make or break a game. It's not like GTA, CoD, and Battlefield became juggernauts of the gaming industry by not having commercials that are getting bigger and better.white_wolf said:I mean, there's
http://www.themarysue.com/e3-games-female-characters/
that offers a list of 31 games that, at the least, have gender select, and it's not terribly complete, but lemme ask you this, how many have you honestly heard of?
Of that list alone I know: 17
Of those I didn't even know you could play as a woman for 3 of them. Devs however need to stop assuming players will know that you can pick your gender (in SP or MP) games and advertise it on every commercial, article, on their own websites, during interviews potential players can't be expected to figure it out post launch when pre-launch is the place to do that.
Its the reason why in ME you can run into three categories of people 1. ones who never played but say while the commercials looked awesome they didn't want to play as Mshep and are surprised when you say well you could've played as fshep, 2. only know it as the game where you can be a chick in the third game then state they would like to play it but want to do so with her for all three titles and then you have to tell them she was in all three or 3. the ones who play the series and know and love her but wounder why BW's players for fshep were so low yet her popularity so high.
Well for 1. Poor advertising it showed mshep all the time for every product save the last game box art (if retailers switched the jackets) and one internet only ad this type of gamer didn't see. So BW obviously needed to communicate off the internet in commercials, articles, FB, ect 2. These people saw that ad but due to poor advertising of fshep for 2 titles they didn't know she was even available for the trilogy and hence withheld their buy. Again BW can solve this and other companies as well, 3. BW gimped their own numbers they stated they only used XBLGold members to pull those numbers from so XBsilver and no internet users don't get counted. What are those numbers? Well in ME2 she was 20% XBLG players, in ME3 18% XBLG (But wait there's more BW didn't tell us? Why yes there is!) XBLG also customized ME3's fshep 80% to mshep's 42% and a BSN popularity ME3 poll that includes all types of players polled 27% always pick fshep while 25% usually pick her to play as but have played some mshep meaning she's really freaking popular and her add to the game was worth it but if BW doesn't advertise the fem hero for ME4 they will not gain players of the above 1 or 2 because they won't know about her again. They'll only gain players they already had and didn't lose with the endings debacle. On another note retailers also stated if they switched the cover to fshep they could sell the game to women and men who didn't know about her or the game existed! Because she was on the cover of a game they could like! Of course this isn't confined to just BW most co-gendered SP or MP games are failing to tell players about their fem options.
Its a simple fix for the entire industry when at least it comes to SP and MP gender options its so simple just say you've got it and where is it MP only or SP and MP? Players want to know and you need to tell them its the same way you say we've got customization on guns or we've got great weather you need to say you don't have to play a dude! You don't need their own trailers include them in the same one with concept art or a mention or state it when devs say, " Our hero is the monster slayer," this statement just assumes everyone knows what you know and they don't so instead say it as, " Our players can be the male or female monster slaying hero," this communicates simply you can choose! Thats all they need to do.
E3 this year actually tried however if you lived in a area that didn't showcase the event on TV all day long what you got was 4 hours (or so) of TV air time and the rest you had to stream live from the internet which means the first 4 hours had the largest viewing audience convenience wise not many games, interviews, and live demo features showed up with the fem options (or fem leads) during this time they mainly showed up later on the internet meaning if you didn't log on you missed the news and that needs to be worked on. Steps are being taken with last game trilogies but devs all across the genres need to keep making those steps and not stop talking about their women heros or PCs because its a new game of a current gen trilogy.