(PA) Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

[chestburster]

Because if the creators of games are of a homogenous demographic, they tend to produce highly homogenous products.

30-year-old childless White nerds tend to like similar things, which is why the games they make are always about space marines, aliens, big-titties, and shooting the Brown people and Russians.

And I wouldn't want it any other way.

Me neither. But this is the "below-30-year-old childless nerd” me speaking. I have a feeling that I'll want to play something different when I'm 65-year-old.

 

[dnf]

You might be more right than you think.

He said "amazing" games, though, so....

San Andreas is awesome, not in the slightest. Provided you don't put gangsta rappers on programming, they can add some useful ideas.

The one time when a game is NOT directed by a 30-year-old White dude, we got Portal (made by a woman), which is vastly different from all the nerd fantasies you listed.

And in contrast, much worse than our nerd fantasies.

chestburster

Now if you look at movies, you can have incredibly diverse genres from "The Seven Samurai" on one end, to "Beasts of the Southern Wild" on other end. The difference between the games you listed, is perhaps as wide as the difference between "Iron Man" and "Transformers." These games are all nerd fantasies. They may be good nerd fantasies compared to the recent decline shits, but they're still homogeneous nerd fantasies.

The point of a game is to be genre specific and not the other way around. Films needs to be transcedent genius ala Lyric Suite in order to be recognized as art. Now, what's the transcedent shit we got in game medium? Limbo? Braid? Today i die? Derp Esther? Don't even get me started on the hybrid aRPGs ou guys so love to hate ...

 

[mondblut]

Because if the creators of games are of a homogenous demographic, they tend to produce highly homogenous products.

30-year-old childless White nerds tend to like similar things, which is why the games they make are always about space marines, aliens, big-titties, and shooting the Brown people and Russians.

And I wouldn't want it any other way.

Me neither. But this is the "below-30-year-old childless nerd” me speaking. I have a feeling that I'll want to play something different when I'm 65-year-old.

I don't think a game realizing a fantasy of stopping wetting one's bed at nights would be particularly exciting. Or a game realizing a fantasy of marrying a superhot, superrich dashing young man who will never cheat on your 40 years old fat black ass with 3 ghetto kids.

Then again, a game realizing a fantasy of gunning down your bitch and her little shits could be pretty fun, so 30 year old White nerds married with children can have their chance of a power fantasy too

 

[Black_Willow]

I cannot into reading

 

[tuluse]

You can if you're real fucking good. But that difference is what makes (good) game design so difficult; you need to manipulate the player into becoming one of the characters, whether they want to or not. You need to affect the player by changing the gameplay, instead of just beating up the puppets on the screen. I might not get angry if my character gets brutally tortured, by if my character gets brutally tortured and permanently loses some precious stat points, you'll probably draw some predictable emotions out of me.

No, you really can't. Players will all experience things differently. In a movie you can just write "Sarah Connor is sad her boyfriend died" but in a game you have no idea if the player will care about said boyfriend. Look at Bioshock Infinite where a number of people were just annoyed by Elizabeth.

Also, you don't need to manipulate the player into LARPing as a character. You just need to make them feel empathy.

I'm not explaining myself very well, but it's basically the same argument as this video about 3D movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQpBZJGoCpU

A game doesn't need or maybe even shouldn't make you personally feel emotions designed by the developer, but it should make you feel for the characters in the game.

 

[chestburster]

Because if the creators of games are of a homogenous demographic, they tend to produce highly homogenous products.

30-year-old childless White nerds tend to like similar things, which is why the games they make are always about space marines, aliens, big-titties, and shooting the Brown people and Russians.

And I wouldn't want it any other way.

Me neither. But this is the "below-30-year-old childless nerd” me speaking. I have a feeling that I'll want to play something different when I'm 65-year-old.

I don't think a game realizing a fantasy of stopping wetting one's bed at nights would be particularly exciting. Or a game realizing a fantasy of marrying a superhot, superrich dashing young man who will never cheat on your 40 years old fat black ass with 3 ghetto kids.

Then again, a game realizing a fantasy of gunning down your bitch and her little shits could be pretty fun, so 30 year old White nerds married with children can have their chance of a power fantasy too

Why do games have to be "realizing a fantasy" in the first place? I recently re-watched "American Beauty" and "The Wrestler". Those movie are not realizing my fantasy in any sense. Why can't we have a game equivalent of those? A game satirizing my boring shitty life? A game documenting a man's futile struggle in a cruel profession?

--I don't know how they can make such a game, but I sure wish some developers might try.

 

[tuluse]

Why do games have to be "realizing a fantasy" in the first place? I recently re-watched "American Beauty" and "The Wrestler". Those movie are not realizing my fantasy in any sense. Why can't we have a game equivalent of those? A game satirizing my boring shitty life? A game documenting a man's futile struggle in a cruel profession?

--I don't know how they can make such a game, but I sure wish some developers might try.

I think the term "video game" is holding back the medium honestly. By definition a game is supposed to be fun. American Beauty is not fun. Just check out Avellone's retrospective comments about PST, where he thinks they should have focused more on combat to make the game more fun.

There are a bunch of Visual Novels about normal life, they just all suck.

Man I swear I had a point to this post when I started it, but I lost my train of thought.

 

[Cabazone]

I admit that Portal still has a lot of nerd elements (hey, a female can be a nerd too!). But it's probably as far away from the "typical" nerd fantasy you can get nowadays.

You're in denial. The "science is amazing !!!" kind of humor is one of the most nerdy thing out there. In fact, if I have to choose a game which I feel is very nerdy, I would probably take Portal.

A better example of non-nerdy game would be Grim Fandango, or more recently The void and The Stanley Parable. But I guess they are made by a bunch of young childless male.


Also, you don't seem to have played a lot of game. While it isn't the norm (far from it), you still find a lot of game who isn't really about realizing a power fantasy.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You can if you're real fucking good. But that difference is what makes (good) game design so difficult; you need to manipulate the player into becoming one of the characters, whether they want to or not. You need to affect the player by changing the gameplay, instead of just beating up the puppets on the screen. I might not get angry if my character gets brutally tortured, by if my character gets brutally tortured and permanently loses some precious stat points, you'll probably draw some predictable emotions out of me.

No, you really can't. Players will all experience things differently. In a movie you can just write "Sarah Connor is sad her boyfriend died" but in a game you have no idea if the player will care about said boyfriend. Look at Bioshock Infinite where a number of people were just annoyed by Elizabeth.

Bioshock is Doing It Wrong. Of course the player doesn't give a fuck about Elizabeth. She's a useless cunt. Actually, the game is so modern and easy it'd be pretty much impossible to make the player give a fuck about anything that happens.

But when you're playing X-Com, and your highest donating nation gets overrun by aliens forever, especially after you've already lost a few and are low on funds? You give a fuck about that. Sure, a few people might not, but a few people watching movies might be total fucking aspies and miss half the plot. The vast majority of the audience, the ones you design for, are going to have predictable responses to having their favourite gun taken away, to being crippled and forced to move at half speed, or to having their precious loot stolen. But we only use these things in the other direction- we give the player an awesome gun, sprinting powers, double jump, and stashes of secret loot, to build them up endlessly towards god mode. It works in both directions, as long as the player cares about the mechanics you're changing. Having your horse killed in LOLblivion evoked nothing, because it didn't do anything. If having your horse killed meant you could never fast travel ever again, you'd want some fucking revenge on the bastard that killed your horse. You could make an entire plotline out of it. The character cares because the horse was their old companion, while the player cares because it was their magic taxi. And so you write in the script 'Player is sad because his magic taxi broke forever'.

 

[tuluse]

NPC usefulness doesn't mean you can guarantee a response. Tim Cain was surprised the lengths people went to in order to protect dogmeat who was far from useful. While in Halo most players shoot the marines themselves for fun even though they can actually help.

If having your horse killed meant you could never fast travel ever again, you'd want some fucking revenge on the bastard that killed your horse.

Or maybe you'd just be sad, or maybe you wouldn't care about the make believe character in the game that "killed" your horse and you'd be mad at the developer, or maybe you'd just find it so annoying you'd quit the game.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Because if the creators of games are of a homogenous demographic, they tend to produce highly homogenous products.

30-year-old childless White nerds tend to like similar things, which is why the games they make are always about space marines, aliens, big-titties, and shooting the Brown people and Russians.

And I wouldn't want it any other way.

Me neither. But this is the "below-30-year-old childless nerd” me speaking. I have a feeling that I'll want to play something different when I'm 65-year-old.

I don't think a game realizing a fantasy of stopping wetting one's bed at nights would be particularly exciting. Or a game realizing a fantasy of marrying a superhot, superrich dashing young man who will never cheat on your 40 years old fat black ass with 3 ghetto kids.

Then again, a game realizing a fantasy of gunning down your bitch and her little shits could be pretty fun, so 30 year old White nerds married with children can have their chance of a power fantasy too

Why do games have to be "realizing a fantasy" in the first place? I recently re-watched "American Beauty" and "The Wrestler". Those movie are not realizing my fantasy in any sense. Why can't we have a game equivalent of those? A game satirizing my boring shitty life? A game documenting a man's futile struggle in a cruel profession?

--I don't know how they can make such a game, but I sure wish some developers might try.

Could it be that the video game medium isn't a subset of film, and therefore might not be especially well suited to tackling those kinds of themes? Why do games have to do the same shit movies and literature do? A building can't document a man's futile struggle in a cruel profession either, but architecture is an art form nonetheless.

I dearly hope developers won't waste their time trying to do this. Instead, I hope that they focus on greater interactivity, more elaborate system design, and more fulfilling exploration, and let the narrative write itself. Why aren't games like Pathologic, Defcon, or even Crusader Kings 2 prestigious enough? Not enough midlife crisis in them?

 

[Damned Registrations]

And maybe when Sarah Connor meets a man, you storm out of the theatre at the patriarchal proproganda being forcefed to you. But most people are, you know, SANE.

The marines in Halo are worthless shits. You're a walking fucking god. Of course you'll be willing to shoot them for shits and giggles. And I know I never gave a shit about Dogmeat.

You're trying to ascribe some sort of magical unpredictability to humans that doesn't actually exist. People are different from eachother, but they're still people, and they're not THAT hard to manipulate. If they were, fiction wouldn't exist to begin with because people would just behave totally randomly in response to any given story, instead of being sad about a tragedy or amused by a comedy. If you can make a person laugh with a joke, you can make them angry by stealing their shit and portraying the event in a certain light.

 

[Gozma]

I think the term "video game" is holding back the medium honestly. By definition a game is supposed to be fun. American Beauty is not fun. Just check out Avellone's retrospective comments about PST, where he thinks they should have focused more on combat to make the game more fun.

I'd really hate to lose the word "game", because it at least tethers the medium to the concepts of winning and losing, which are more integral to the "game" concept than being amusing.

I think of PS:T as an example of an adventure game that was improved by adding RPG "imperatives" in gameplay to the experience. I will poke around in every corner and find everything, talk to everyone, and grasp the situation - the immediate purpose is just to answer the RPG call to grow in power, even if the ultimate purpose is to roleplay and to experience a narrative. I am completely inert in proper adventure games because I feel zero drive to solve an inventory riddle to get to another inventory riddle.

 

[tuluse]

My point isn't that it's impossible to manipulate people, hell the popularity of Bioshock Infinite shows that it's easy to do. Actually, I don't really have a point, I was just discussing various ways that games could evoke emotions and what benefits and drawbacks they might have.

I do think going for sympathetic emotions is better than going full blown immersion.

 

[mondblut]

Could it be that the video game medium isn't a subset of film, and therefore might not be especially well suited to tackling those kinds of themes? Why do games have to do the same shit movies and literature do? A building can't document a man's futile struggle in a cruel profession either, but architecture is an art form nonetheless.

I dearly hope developers won't waste their time trying to do this. Instead, I hope that they focus on greater interactivity, more elaborate system design, and more fulfilling exploration, and let the narrative write itself. Why aren't games like Pathologic, Defcon, or even Crusader Kings 2 prestigious enough? Not enough midlife crisis in them?

This. A thousand times this. These words should be carved with a rusty fork on a snout of every artfag who goes babbling on how the vidyagaems owe it to him to leave that immature and redundant "game" part behind and become derp esthers fulltime.

 

[DeepOcean]

Making a plot involving some kinda of power fantasy allow for flexibility. Power open possibilities. If Garret wasn't a master thief capable of entering in every place he wanted, but just a regular thug, all the possibilities of gameplay from Thief are closed. Story should be secondary priority, the only thing needed from the story is to not be awful shit, the priority should be gameplay. If I want to explore a mansion and steal all the goodies that are inside, I shouldn't be stopped by the plot, the story is just the excuse for that. There are certain things that video games aren't going to do as good as movies. Why make a 10 hour long movie full of filler (like most modern videogames) where you repeat the mind numbing, repetitive activities of Bob boring life or play Sarah Connor running for hours, if it is best to just not waste time and watch a 2 hour long movie that gets to the point quick? I sleep from boredom while watching any superhero, power fantasy, movie or Transformers movie because the plot generally is very cliche, stupid or childsh but while playing a game I don't care about alot of things in terms of plot (the story only need to not be offensively stupid) if the gameplay is good.

 

[Kirtai]

I think the term "video game" is holding back the medium honestly.

I think it's just an overly broad term, like "moving pictures" or "written works". Some more specific terms would be nice but then we get back to the "what's an RPG?" hell.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Why are you assuming that you need power to make things interesting? This is just retardedly narrowminded. Not being an invincible uberhero means you can get caught, rescued, plot revenge, make allies, flee, negotiate... all sorts of cool shit. Being too powerful means none of that is relevant, since you can just force your way through anything. And all the things I just mentioned can make for very interesting gameplay opportunities, if they aren't played down as trivial minigames or automatic railroaded plot points.

Regarding sympathetic emotions vs immersion, the two are linked. The problem most games have is they try to jump straight to the latter. Having the character feel the same things as the player is the hook that makes you identify with the character. Once you've done that, just making the character feel something will affect the player as well. But it takes time, you can't just do shit to a character you met an hour ago in the intro and expect the player to give a fuck about them, even if it is their avatar. And you have to maintain it too. If you bond the player to the PC in one scene, and then throw it out in the next by making the PC start bawling over an NPC the player doesn't give 2 shits about, the player is going to stop caring about the PC as well because he just seems like an alien figure, and a whiny one at that.

And then of course, this shit goes to a whole other level when there is no PC, and you're trying to get the player to care about something abstract like an entire empire.

 

[J1M]

The one time when a game is NOT directed by a 30-year-old White dude, we got Portal (made by a woman), which is vastly different from all the nerd fantasies you listed.

Let's back up a little. Portal was created because Gabe hired an entire team of students who made Narbacular Drop. Having seen how those sorts of group projects are done, I'm not willing to ascribe full credit for the idea or design of portal to any one individual.

Judge her based on Quantum Conundrum. The game she made after using her fame to leave Valve and be completely in charge of her own game design. Supposedly she presented 4 game concepts to the team and as a group they decided to work on what became Quantum Conundrum.

I find it lacking.

 

[chestburster]

I admit that Portal still has a lot of nerd elements (hey, a female can be a nerd too!). But it's probably as far away from the "typical" nerd fantasy you can get nowadays.

You're in denial. The "science is amazing !!!" kind of humor is one of the most nerdy thing out there. In fact, if I have to choose a game which I feel is very nerdy, I would probably take Portal.

A better example of non-nerdy game would be Grim Fandango, or more recently The void and The Stanley Parable. But I guess they are made by a bunch of young childless male.


Also, you don't seem to have played a lot of game. While it isn't the norm (far from it), you still find a lot of game who isn't really about realizing a power fantasy.

I'm not trying to defend Portal or anything. But the only game made under the heavy influence of a female "developer" (as opposed to Jade Raymond the poster babe) that I know of, is Portal, which is quite different from the USUAL shoot-some-aliens FPS nerd fantasy. You might argue that it's still nerdy because it involves sci-fi, which I agree, but nonetheless it's not the usual cliched "realizing your fantasy" stuff.

You have to look at the percentage: out of thousands of games made by childless young males, a few are not nerd fantasies; out of a few games not made by childless-young-males, there is Portal. The comparisons between the percentages are pretty telling.

 

[Machocruz]

I prefer the the term 'geek candy' to 'nerd fantasy' to describe the what and the why of the content of most video games. Thief isn't just the tale of a master thief, it's the tale of a master thief with zombies (geek candy). It's that teaspoon of sugar to make the medicine go down the throats of geeks, kids, or people otherwise bored by realism or history. Zombies, aliens, vampires, lasers, space marines, super heroes, space ships, cyborgs, robots, furries, cartoon shit, magic, dragons, elves, etc. are all common seasonings. Portal has geek candy, Terminator has geek candy. A character can be vulnerable, as long as there is a werewolf in there or something. It's the equivalent of flashing lights and explosions to get the attention of the dim and dull, most of the time. At its best, like Terminator, The Odyssey, or Silent Hill 2, geek candy can symbolize, illuminate, or heighten real life culture, customs, nature, human emotion, etc. But adults do that kind of thing, not man-children in the bodies of 31 year olds.

 

[chestburster]

The one time when a game is NOT directed by a 30-year-old White dude, we got Portal (made by a woman), which is vastly different from all the nerd fantasies you listed.

Let's back up a little. Portal was created because Gabe hired an entire team of students who made Narbacular Drop. Having seen how those sorts of group projects are done, I'm not willing to ascribe full credit for the idea or design of portal to any one individual.

Judge her based on Quantum Conundrum. The game she made after using her fame to leave Valve and be completely in charge of her own game design. Supposedly she presented 4 game concepts to the team and as a group they decided to work on what became Quantum Conundrum.

I find it lacking.

I don't like Quantum Conundrum either. But this topic is not about the quality of games, but about different styles of games. Quantum Conundrum with its pink marshmellow alter-verse stuff is not a game that can be made by a typical 30-year-old male. And I find it refreshing amidst all the marines and aliens and zombies and dwarves of other AAA games.

My point is, diversifying the developers' demographic does not automatically solve the homogenization problem of games today, but at least it can only help.

 

[Gozma]

Huh this industry makes a lot of money but has extremely stressful and unsustainable working conditions that favor capital

1930s - "we better form unions"
2013 - "fucking white nerds"

 

[dnf]

I admit that Portal still has a lot of nerd elements (hey, a female can be a nerd too!). But it's probably as far away from the "typical" nerd fantasy you can get nowadays.

You're in denial. The "science is amazing !!!" kind of humor is one of the most nerdy thing out there. In fact, if I have to choose a game which I feel is very nerdy, I would probably take Portal.

A better example of non-nerdy game would be Grim Fandango, or more recently The void and The Stanley Parable. But I guess they are made by a bunch of young childless male.


Also, you don't seem to have played a lot of game. While it isn't the norm (far from it), you still find a lot of game who isn't really about realizing a power fantasy.

I'm not trying to defend Portal or anything. But the only game made under the heavy influence of a female "developer" (as opposed to Jade Raymond the poster babe) that I know of, is Portal, which is quite different from the USUAL shoot-some-aliens FPS nerd fantasy. You might argue that it's still nerdy because it involves sci-fi, which I agree, but nonetheless it's not the usual cliched "realizing your fantasy" stuff.

You have to look at the percentage: out of thousands of games made by childless young males, a few are not nerd fantasies; out of a few games not made by childless-young-males, there is Portal. The comparisons between the percentages are pretty telling.

There is that game genre called puzzle games. Maybe you should check it out the ratio of male-female devs in this genre instead of jumping for conclusions... I think that shitty puzzle platformers Braid and Limbo was made by childless yadayada males no?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Why does the Codex dislike Limbo so much? Sure, Braid is overwritten and pretentious as fuck, the platform/puzzle version of Bioshock: Infinite, but Limbo is pretty nice. The puzzles and the platforming aren't particularly difficult, but everything just fits together so well in that game, not a single element feels out of place. And it manages to tell a non-trivial story without a single line of dialogue and about 10 seconds worth of cutscenes altogether. I wish we had more games with such a well-defined artistic vision and tight production (Hotline Miami comes to mind as well).