8 Bit Mind: I'm here with Josh Allen, who is the Editor-in-chief of gaming blog "Gamenikki In Exile"... and we're just having a chat on the news of the week. We're saving the big one for the last question, so hold on for that.
Question One: Feminism, Sexism and Video Games:
8bitmind: Anita Sarkessian, a blogger who writes on issues of feminism and the like in the tech industry, went on twitter during E3 to strike a note of concern about the fact that there was very little positive information for women in video games. Not only were there no real female leads to be found, during a demo of Killer Instinct, a joke was made that the female developer should just "close their eyes, it would be over soon". These alone, were worthy of comment, but then the assorted masses of Twitter attacked her with some of the most misogynist, hateful, sexist posts I've ever seen. Did Anita have a point with her comments, and considering the response to the comments she made, and does the twitter response to it show that the video game public have a problem with sexism and misogny?
Josh Allen: That's...a landmine of a question.
She had a point with her comments. The industry has come a long way - witness Tiger Woods 14 including the LPGA for the first time ever - but it has a long way to go.
8bitmind: Agreed, and for a current view of the industry,, look at the history of the game "Remember Me", where according to the developer, several publishers turned it down because it had a female lead.
Josh Allen: It's still very much a "boys' club," and comments like that in what are effectively public venues don't do anything to make the industry female-friendly for young women who might be considering a career in game design.
On the other hand, I don't think the reaction to Anita's comment is necessarily illustrative of sexism and misogyny so much as complementary of other examples which have been around forever. Many of the same people slamming her in the Twitterverse will be people engaging in sexually loaded trash talk on Xbox Live and comparable services. This isn't something that's coming out of nowhere, in other words; it's just a much higher-profile example of the behavior.
8bitmind: How does the industry fight this kind of thing.. it seems like it's locked into a cycle where people buy "dudebro" games, so companies make "dudebro games", and it's forever perpetuating this view?
Josh Allen:I think the biggest way is with a focus on youth games. Nintendo has historically had the most success with female gamers, and that's because they don't target their core games at specifically male or specifically female audiences. Mario is a brand that has resonated with both boys and girls over the years, and that leads to a situation where 60% of Wii owners are/were female. You can't change the culture overnight with games aimed at older audiences.
"Dudebro" sells because the Tuesday game buyers are dudebros.
What you need to do is start building a gaming culture with the younger gamers who will be your future customers and perhaps your future employees and make games that both can enjoy, rather than dudebro-lite for little boys and Barbie Horse Adventures for little girls. That's not to say there isn't a place for the latter in the market, but up to now, games designed with girls in mind have almost exclusively occupied the horses-makeup-and-boys space.
Basically, it's not an overnight change. They need to start policing themselves better in terms of what they say and do in public, and if there's a desire to get women greater involvement in the industry going forward, that foundation has to be laid with the games that are made today.
Otherwise you'll continue to have a male-dominated space that insists that women who intrude have to "close their eyes and let it happen."
8bitmind: Agreed. The video game industry has a problem, they KNOW they have a problem, and now it comes down to how they deal with the problem.
Question Two: Sony, Microsoft and Independent Games
8bitmind: Independent games (that is, games without a publisher) were already a part of both systems, but with the next generation of consoles months away, it was interesting to see how the two consoles deal with Independent game makers.
Microsoft requires independent publishers to either use the Xbox authoring engine for their game (and to be stuck in the little-used Indie Games sub-area), or to acquire a publisher to be listed in the Xbox Live Arcade.
Sony seems to be more embracing of independent games, featuring them heavily in their E3 presentation, and in more than a few cases, waiving the requirement of $20,000 to release a patch.
How do you see the two behemoths of this generation of consoles handing independent games, and does it supply an advantage due to one or the other?
Josh Allen: I don't think there's a huge advantage inherent. I think Sony featured indies more heavily in their E3 presentation because they didn't have as much in the way of exclusive AAA titles to tout. It's a matter of if you can't have the one you love, love the one you're with.
I think Microsoft will probably continue the approach they've used on Xbox 360, and it may hurt their ability to attract indie developers - which is quite a change from where they were just five years ago - but I think their focus right now is on the AAA titles. Games like Journey on PSN are fantastic games, but how many people walk into Best Buy to purchase a PS3 so they can play Journey? I think Microsoft is banking that if they shift units on the strength of AAA titles, indie developers will come to them because that's where the market is.
I think Sony realizes that having indie developers means having things for their users to play - and the PlayStation Vita has shown them the importance of that so far - but isn't necessarily married to indie games as the lifeblood of the console. Just a way to paper over the cracks in the library.
8bitmind: It's still more than a bit unusual to see Sony to be the one embracing the little guy.
Josh Allen: It is. But remember that Sony hasn't been willing to pony up for DLC exclusives the way Microsoft has in the last five years. So where Microsoft's differentiator is getting DLC first on a time-limited exclusive, Sony's differentiator is having a diverse library of independent games that may not be on other platforms.
Question Three: Xbox One changes their DRM
8bitmind: And finally, the big one.. news today that Microsoft is doing a complete and total 180 on the Xbox One. Gone is the every 24 hour DRM check, and limitations on the sharing of games. It's not all good news, as this means you will need to have the disc in the system to play.
First off, have you ever seen such a radical reconfiguration of a system's requirements in the months before release?
Josh Allen: Never.
8bitmind: Microsoft put their hand in the cookie jar, and when it closed upon them like a steel trap, they decided that they didn't want the cookie after all,
Did they think that they could ride out the gamers dislike of the controversial system requirements, and only when it was revealed in the mainstream press, did they realize "No, NOONE thinks this is a good idea?"
Josh Allen: Without trying to get TOO political about this, I think there's a parallel here between Xbox One and "Obamacare." The White House strategy on "Obamacare" has clearly been that whatever the controversy, once things started kicking in and people see what those changes mean, they'd embrace the changes. Likewise, I think Microsoft felt, at least initially, that they could ride out the backlash and once people saw what was being enabled by the restrictions, that the public would drop its objections.
I think what ultimately happened here is the difference between government policy and trying to run a business. The former can say "This is how it is; deal with it," and wait for people to come around, while the latter is still in the business of making and selling widgets, and you generally can't sell widgets to people who don't want to be sold to.
Microsoft realized that they'd be fighting an uphill battle for the next 3-4 months that would completely overshadow everything else they're trying to accomplish with the console, and decided that discretion was the better part of not getting their ass shot off by Sony in the marketplace.
8bitmind: This probably has to annoy developers who designed their games for an always on connection (I've seen mentions elsewhere that to use the cloud properly to enhance graphics, you need a constant 1.5 Mps stream, which many but not all people have).. is this going to have a knock on effect for games that were designed to use the benefits of the console that just aren't there any more?
Josh Allen: I think to a certain extent what's going to happen is that those games are going to be sold as "Xbox Live required" titles. Future development will probably assess the likelihood that the userbase will be part of the "always on" community. The other possibility is that while Xbox One won't require a connection in order to play, we'll start seeing "Better with Live" branding to communicate to people that, hey, if you connect to Live, this game gets even better.
8bitmind: And the important question: How much damage does the recent few weeks do to Microsoft for this console generation? I said when I saw it, "They finally applied rule 1 of getting out of a hole... stop digging!" That being said, they're still in a hole... aren't they?
Josh Allen: In the long term, I think making this change is going to mitigate a lot of the damage that might otherwise have been done. There's a tendency to believe that those of us who read gaming sites and blogs on a regular basis make up the majority of the game-buying public, but that probably isn't true. There's an echo chamber effect, where we're making a big deal about the DRM and everything else, and a large segment of the population is simply unaware of the changes Microsoft had in mind. Had these policies persisted until launch, I think that could have been critically damaging to the business. Making the change now ensures another news cycle or two of bad PR, but by the time launch rolls around, it's going to be largely forgotten - except by families who buy an Xbox One and don't have a broadband connection to download the patch that removes the 24-hour check-in. That's gonna be an interesting Christmas morning.
You can check out more of Josh's work at gamenikkiinexile.com
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