More on the Gamer Personality Survey

Okay, so far some interesting  information is emerging from the gamer personality survey here.

My categories still need  some honing but seeing a lot of overlap in certain areas– for instance as expected, the people who come from Shamus’ site (Shamus regular readers) tend to be similar to him in their  reasons for playing games in general.   This was expected.  A lot more Story/Aesthetics players than I would expect if I  went to the EA games or XBox Live forums and asked them to choose.

The following are the  characteristics that need renamed or broken up based on where I am seeing confusion over terms.  Down the line I want to add higher level categories that combines the more detailed ones so they can be grouped by type.  For right now I am just trying to figure out phrasing and types and make sure I am not missing any.  Also eventually I want all the characteristic titles to line up so you could use them interchangeably in a sentence and have them make sense; i.e. “I play for____ “or “I am a ____ player” or “I love to____”.

I think Goal needs to be divided into designer created goals and personal goals .  Also Goal needs agame breaking added to the explanation because game breaking is a type of internal motivation.

I think Comfort needs to be divided into Nostalgia and Comfort.

Achievement needs a better explanation.  For instance grades in school are achievement based.  So is being on the honor role.  I need to clarify that and make it clear that it is different from goals.  (For example– grades and honor role did nothing for me in school but I made it a goal to read all of the books in the young adult section of our library in a summer and did.)  Maybe just focus on Achievement and Goal with Goal being personal motivation and Acheivement being  the arbitrary?  Not sure about that.) And all of these would be lumped under motivation.  Maybe intrinsic motivation vs external?

I need to rephrase and divide Reflex into Brain related and Physical– probably go with Chris’ Kinesthetic plus something tho imply brain tickling of some sort.  Need to think on that some more.   (Suggestions welcome.)

Explore needs a  better explanation that includes not just exploring a world but also exploring all the possibilities.

Risk needs clarified (and I think rephrased.)  All risk involves some form of gambling (taking a gamble that you won’t fail against some random event) however there are varying levels of risk.  Some people want none at all (i.e. turn off all random events if possible.)  Some prefer a little bit, others prefer full out gambling.

Optimization needs clarifying.  Optimization is almost a subset of goal but is important enough to be on the same tier.  Makes me wonder if Goal needs to be a higher tier description of a group of these, not sure.)  Optimization would include trying to perfect the game play, trying to fill your box in minecraft perfectly, replaying to find all the best solutions, etc.

So that is where I am right now and what I am considering.  Input welcome.  I also plan on going back and recording the results so far so I can see the patterns emerge better.  I need to simplify and clarify the characteristics so far,  read back through the comments I have already and garner more once I have clarified things.  Down the road I want to have a hierarchy if I can see the pattern, and possibly come up with questions to help a gamer decide which elements are key (if the person is the sort who doesn’t naturally analyze things.)

Regardless I think it is a healthy conversation to have and ponder since it reminds all involved that we are all in gaming for a variety of reasons and just because Joe Schmoe next door  doesn’t think story is important doesn’t mean his reason for playing is any less valid.

Real Women Wear Armor

A dear friend of mine (who is geekily awesome despite her hair tossing, unassuming wallflower persona ;)) Cat sent me this comic and website this morning. The comic is hilarious (well it is to me though it might also be my precaffiene inability to think straight doing the laughing). The site, Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor: ladies that actually dress for dealing damage is beyond awesome. It makes me want to get my art on and start doing female characters dressed to suit. Sadly I have 4 boys and a half-orc to draw and paint before I can get anywhere near such a project so instead I will spend my spare time perusing this awesome tumbler site.

The artist behind this is Grace Vibbert (aka Milesent)

Game Genres Don’t Tell the Whole Story

Video games have a different “genre” format than other media and it makes things confusing for both the publishers and the buyers.

In books and movies the genre is based on story type.  Most people prefer one type of story (or several types) and dislike other settings and genres.  Place the story in medieval times and you will make one group of people happy, place it in outer-space and make a different group happy, make it real world, modern times and make a completely different group happy.  Some people love space operas, others love action sci-fi.  Still others love sci-fi mysteries.  For me personally a story can be sci-fi but I prefer fantasy (magic over tech).    The thing the game industry (and gamers) have missed is that those same genres also apply to video games.

I am a sucker for 1940’s mysteries in books, movies, and also in games.  Set pretty much any game in the 1940’s and you have caught my interest.  Even if it is not a type of game I like to play I will still watch someone else play for the sake of the setting.

In gaming people use the word “genre” for mechanics instead of story type and setting.  We already have  book genres and  movie genres that are very similar and give the  consumer a sense of whether this book or that movie suits their taste.   We are missing the fact that people play video games not only for mechanics (video game genres) but also for the style/aesthetics/story.  So essentially people who enjoy space drama in books and movies will move towards  space drama in video games.  People who prefer epic fantasy in books will enjoy the same in a game.  I personally love tower defense games but I love sci-fi and fantasy and hate war stories– guess which tower defense games I am not interested in.

Instead of just assuming someone will like a game based on the video game genre  I think we need to include setting/story type and possibly art type (like movies do) because games are more complex than movies and books.  We need to use the preexisting media genres, or at least a close proximity, to define setting in a way that will actually describe the game so people will know whether it is what they are looking for.  For instance:  Mass Effect is  sci fi, WoW is fantasy, L.A. Noire is mystery.  Then take the preexisting game genres and add those for game mechanics.  Instead of just “first person shooter” we would have “fantasy first person shooter set in Victorian London”, instead of  “RPG” we would have “anime fantasy RPG set in an alternate world”,  and instead of “life simulation” we would have  “real world life simulation set in modern time”.  Sure it makes the explanation longer but it gives a much clearer picture of what the game is.  There is a huge difference between a FPS set in outer space, a FPS set in the Korean War, and an FPS set in Middle Earth.  

Now someone needs to make an FPS set in Middle Earth because I would be all over that.

Sim vs. Sim

The girls and I have fallen into the Sim trap.  I’ve  been there before (way back in the early 90’s) but this is their first real foray into the mind numbing riptide of Simmese.  That said this has prompted much discussion about the Sims and what the makers could have done better.

In the past we have loved several Sim-like games including all of the Animal Crossings, all of the My Sims games, and several Harvest Moons  and while we are enjoying The Sims 3 it is missing something that those games have.  In fact recently I was playing Walk It Out and realized what it was that was missing.

style.

The Sims is lovely in the same way school pictures are lovely.  It is missing  panache, character, that extra something.  Sure the Simmese language and their little mannerisms are cute but artistically speaking the game is boring.  The characters could easily fit in the stands of one of EA’s sports games without a hitch (how dull is that, really?)

This:

Or this:

While I enjoy playing The Sims I LOVED playing My Sims.  The adorableness of the characters drew me in (plus building things was fun.)  If they made The Sims using the My Sims characeters I would spend most of my free time playing.  Maybe that would be a bad thing.  No, EA definitely shouldn’t do that.

The same is true of  Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon.   I have never deliberately deleted a character in any of those games and I have already deleted several Sims because they were getting on my nerves.  (I have however deleted several by mistake due to Harvest Moon’s sometimes stupid saving interface.  In fact I mistakenly saved over my 50 note, pregnant character with my daughter’s 15 music note character in Magical melody. ARRGGGHHH )  Both of those series have gotten tons of play by all of us and are ones we go back to again and again.  We go back because they are fun to play and interesting with tons of variety in game play,  and are fun to look at.  The Sims brings us back because we are obsessing, not because it is necessarily “fun” and definitely not because of the style.

If you remember, back at the beginning, I mentioned that Walk It Out was what drove the point home for me.  I realized while walking my 3rd mile (because there was this one section that I HAD. TO. FILL. IN. that I would LOVE to play a Sims like game using the Walk It Out world and characters.  I adore the blue haired chick that does my walking for me.  The island itself is cute and interesting even though the styling is much more realistic than the characters.  There is plenty of variety to keep me coming back.  If The Sims were more like that, more adorable and more stylized I would certainly enjoy it more.  Frankly, even if they just made the same basic game but using the My Sims world I would lose a lot more of my day to the game (and the kids would get a lot less turns– go play outside, it’s Mom’s turn at the computer).

Little Girls on Female Characters: Essie’s Turn

The original, grown up version of the Females on Female Characters panel at PAX East(from which I pulled most of the questions I asked my girls, thanks Susan for sending me the original questions) has been posted in video form here (may be NSFW)– Essie’s responses to the questions wil be below the videos:

Again, let me remind you that both girls have been exposed to a wide variety of games. They have played mostly Wii/Gamecube games with some PS2 games as well as those on games on Shamus’ Steam account thrown in. That said they have watched Shamus play a much wider variety of games (practically everything he has ever written about aside from a few that he only played while they were sleeping) including but not limited to all of the  GTA, Mass Effect, Fallout, FFX,games out there. This means they likely have had a much broader exposure to females in games than the typical 11 and 13 year old girl. I interviewed them separately and at different times and neither knew what the other would answer. I also want to note that we have never really discussed female characters in games and neither girl has seen the video of the panel, which made it especially interesting to see how much their answers lined up with what the panel had to say.

Rach and Essie playing Dance, Dance Revolution as twins.

The following is my interview of Esther, age 11 who spend a great deal of her time creating stories in Garry’s Mod and Minecraft, spends all her spare change on DS and Wii games, and has beat all the Harvest Moon games we own in record time.

Question: In general, what do you think of girl characters in video games?

Essie: Well, I think there are some good ones but usually they are flat, kind of 2 dimensional, like Princess Peach. I mean, she only exists so she can be rescued, which is boring and not at all like a real person.  Meanwhile Zelda is more detailed and has that Sheik, the other side of her personality.  She is very introverted as Sheik but is a nice outward person as Zelda.

Sometimes they can be kind of blank, kind of like Princess Peach.  I think they just try to make women attractive and just plain old whiny jerks.   For instance in GTA San Andreas, they are always calling up and whining about how they want more attention.  They are always wearing teeny tiny skirts and little tops with no covering– partially naked.  It makes me feel insulted, because in reality women are not like that.

Question: When is it okay for a character to be attractive, and when is it over the line? (How much is too much)

Essie: If they are in a game and going out to a really fancy restaurant then it is okay but it is over the line when they wear those clothes all the time.  The really short skirts and really tiny tops, like sports bras all the time– that is too much.  Most main characters it is okay if they wear a crop top or shorts but dressing skimpy all the time is just skanky.  If it is part of their personality and there is a really good reason for it but they would have to have the perfect personality for that to make sense and for it to be all right.

Question: What makes a good female character?
Essie: I feel that a good female character, she has an even balance.  Alex from Halflife is a good female character.  She has a good personality but her little flaw is that she hates being bossed and pushed around and she doesn’t follow orders very well.  It is kind of a flaw but that makes her more realistic, and she is a tomboy and she is just the perfect character. I just get mad because I can’t play her. All the best female characters are just sidekicks like Yuna and Alex.

Question: Why default to male? – Some characters clearly need to be male, based on context, but for those that don’t, why does it always default to male?

Essie:  Some call for that in the storyline, some stories just don’t make sense.  It would just be strange in some games to be a girl, but in Minecraft it wouldn’t hurt if you could play a girl.   I don’t really mind playing boys but I tend to like playing a girl because that is my gender.

Question: What about games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon?

Essie: It is a good idea to have the option of boy or girl and it is sad that Harvest Moon: It’s a Wonderful Life you can’t choose gender.  I also feel that games like that should have different goals, like Harvest Moon Magical Melody because after a while you get sick of collecting notes and feel like you have accomplished everything after you get married and have a kid.

Question: What are your ideal female characters?  You already mentioned Alex.

Essie:  Yuna, from Final Fantasy X.  She is a likable character, she’s not perfect but she is likable.  There is also the first girl from Mass Affect 2, Miranda.  When you first meet her I really like her.  I like her even though she gets bossy and weird later.  I liked how, in the first part she is straight forward and shoots the bad guy.  She is no nonsense.

Little Girls on Female Characters: Rachel’s Take

On Tuesday I was driving with my youngest daughter (Essie, age 11).  The conversation turned to PAX and I asked her opinion about some of the things that were discussed at the Females on Female Characters panel. Upon hearing her answers I decided to ask her older sister (Rach, age 13) the same questions, expecting very different answers.  Despite them both being very much girl gamer geeks they have very different personalities and, usually, very different opinions about games.  Their answers surprised me so much that I wished I had recorded them.  I reinterviewed them so I could record their answers properly but they gave nearly identical answers to what they said the first time I asked.  And this time, Rachel went first.

Our geeklings.

It all started because I still had the panel on the brain and was thinking about this new website and what I planned to write in this space. I had an hour drive with my girlie and so I started asking her questions about female characters in games. I desperately wish I could have recorded her answers. Please keep in mind: both girls have been exposed to a wide variety of games. They have played mostly Wii/Gamecube games with some PS2 games as well as Steam games thrown in. That said they have watched Shamus play a much wider variety of games (practically everything he has ever written about aside from a few that he only played while they were sleeping) including but not limited to all of the  GTA, Mass Effect, Fallout, FFX games that he has played and reviewed. This means they likely have had a much broader exposure to females in games than the typical 11 and 13 year old girl. I interviewed them separately at different times and neither knew what the other would answer.  Each girl also read through the interview after and made sure she was saying exactly what she wanted the way she wanted it said– I did not change their wording at all.

The following is my interview of Rachel, age 13.  Rachel loves pink and is, in all ways, a girly girl except that most of her friends are gamer guys because, as she likes to point out,  girls her age prefer to gossip and talk about makeup, boys, and music and she really just wants to play games.  The questions I used for the interview are mostly those they planned to use for the panel with some slight adjustments to suit their ages or to remind them of things they specifically spoke about the day before when I asked.

Question: In general, what do you think of girl characters in video games?

Rachel: I like them a lot but I wish they would act more like normal girls. A lot of them are either really bossy or incredibly shy. They are always extremes never in between and that always irritates me. I don’t like that a lot of them (Princess Peach, Zelda, Princess Daisy), first thing is that video game designers seem to think that girls only like pink and pastel colors and that they giggle and they always act like teenagers no matter what age they actually are. I wish video games would make their proportions better– they always are either toddlers (like in Harvest Moon Magical Melody the characters, boy and girl, are shaped like toddlers and dressed like toddlers but the girls are the worst) or teenagers, not proportioned like anything older. Either they dress really skimpy or incredibly cutesy.

In grown up games (like Mass Effect, GTA, Prince of Persia) they are always dressed skimpy and they are always perfect, they never have any flaws, and they walk around the game for no reason most of the time, so they are there just to have someone in skimpy clothes.

Question: Sexy vs Sexist – when is it okay for a character to be attractive, and when is it over the line? (How much is too much)

Rachel: If you have a game and every single girl is walking around in a bikini, you have a problem. I guess if you are trying to give the idea that it is part of her personality then it is fine, and if that is so then give her a lot of dialogue so you know it is part of her personality.

Question: What makes a good female character?
Rachel: I like it when they are heroic. All girls aren’t just shy, they aren’t all just giggly teenagers. Heroic is good. Selfless is good. Too often they don’t have good qualities. I don’t like it when a character is totally flawless, they should have at least one main good quality and one bad quality– not all bad character and not all good. In a lot of games, if the girl is the bad guy she has no good qualities. And I always thought it was dumb, they always seem to dress up a bad guy in skimpy clothes: a bad attitude, a bikini, and a gun does not make a bad guy.

Question: Why default to male? – Some characters clearly need to be male, based on context, but for those that don’t, why does it always default to male?

Rachel: I think people assume that males are the ones going to be playing the game. Most guys don’t want play a girl so it defaults to guys. But girls play games too. I personally don’t like playing a guy. Sure I play one when I have to but I like playing a girl, be able to dress her appropriately, and be able to not automatically have to flirt in the dialogue. I think its a big problem that when games give you a dialogue tree as a girl they assume you want to flirt or be a jerk. In a lot of games they just give you those two options. The really bad one here is Mass Effect 2, it only gives you the be kind or selfless option on occasion and when it does, when you click on it, you realize that it doesn’t necessarily come out the way you want it to.

Question: Is this specifically a problem for girls or for characters in general?

Rachel: Yes, it is. I notice that the boy characters get more kindness options. I don’t know why. The guys get to be kinder which ticks me off. What if I want to play a nice girl. They always assume that because I am a girl playing I must want to be a jerk or flirty.

Question: What about games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon?

Rachel: Those are my favorite games, not because they are cute and girly in some cases, but it is because they give you the choice between boy or girl right off, and in the dialogue tree they give you three options. They give you kind, intermediate, and mean. There is no flirting or big consequences because you click the wrong button or this character dies because you click the wrong button. In a lot of games being a jerk means you shoot the guy, which isn’t jerky, that’s just evil.

Question: What are your ideal female characters?

Rachel: Yuna, from Final Fantasy X. She is my favorite but what ticks me off is you can’t play as her. The best characters are always side romances. They are never the main character and when they are the main character you don’t get much dialogue, you pick boy or girl and that affects nothing. The other thing is, the one thing that changes when you are a girl. Say you’re a boy, you change to a girl, it just changes the romance, not much dialogue change. I like Alex (from Half-life) a lot and I wish they came out with a game that you could play as her. I personally don’t care about Chel from Portal because she has no dialogue and you only see her once or twice when you are jumping through portals, and you can hardly get the angle right so you can’t see her face. Princess Peach drives me crazy. Her only uses are getting captured over and over and sending you lives every once in a while. She giggles too much and my eyes hurt because she wears too much pink. Don’t get me wrong, I love pink, but even I have my limits. Princess Daisy, while I am talking about Mario, I have played a ton of Mario games and she has only turned up once or twice, and even then it if for a couple seconds with like three words of dialogue, even Luigi get s more. And they just changed Princess Peach’s clothes and hair color to make her and who the heck is she anyway.