A cheap and easy way for Bioware to attract new customers

here's how bernie could still win

What'd be nice about choosing either a male or female sibling is that, depending on the sibling you choose, you get a different main questline, possibly including different side quests for each sibling. Kinda like Resident Evil 2.

I disagree. "Pandering" originally referred to the procurement of prostitutes. In current usage it still has derogative connotations of "helping to satisfy the immoral desires, vices, etc. of another." Wanting a clear statement of a core feature so people who want that feature (who I believe to be mainly women) is not pandering because wanting to know about a product before buying it is not immoral. It's reasonable. You may say my argument is biased, as I am assuming that more women than men will turn away from a product for not having that information, and am advocating for providing it to attract them, but it's untrue to say Bioware would be pandering by doing so.

Also, you may be unaware of this, but "Maybe think about how your wording will come across next time, capisce?" comes across as condescending.  You may want to take your own advice, capisce? (See, doesn't feel good, right?)

I think s/he's making the point that we should find ways for Bioware to market to all gamers, not just targeting women. That's a fair point, but I think misses my intent. I don't want Bioware to market to women at the expense of men. I want Bioware to make it easier for people who are not buying the game because of a perceived lack of a feature to be made aware that that feature exists. I am making an assumption based on my personal experience that most of those people are women. If any men would like to step forward and say they didn't buy ME until they found out they could change Shepard's gender I'm open to being wrong.

I do think that female gamers are an untapped market that Bioware is in a good position to sell to and it wouldn't require extravagant gestures. Just changing a few words in their game descriptions would do wonders.

You know what, I have to confess to the same thing. My first BW game was ME1, on recommendation from this guy at GameStop. I was hesitant because of the cover art. It looked like fps, and I just wasn't interested in that at the time. But the guy was like, "trust me". He knew my gaming preferences by then, and it was a used copy so I figured alright.

I confess, even in the CC I didn't pay attention to whatever may have indicated that I could play as a female. Even then the idea was so far from my mind that I was blind to any on screen indicators. ME1 was the first time I played a game where I could customize my character like that, or really at all. I was so accustomed to playing set characters that I just clicked on through the start up menu without even looking.

I went with default Sheploo, that's the character, right? Wait, what? I didn't know about the romances, either. That was a shocker. It was the odd sexual tension I was seeing with Sheploo and Ash that made me think wait a minute, this game is not like others I've played. I better go back to the start up and be more thorough. And, well, I became BW trash.

I didn't know there were origin stories in DAO, either. Don't judge me. At that time of my gaming life, I did not pay much attn to the start ups. DAO threw race choice into the mix after I had just gotten accustomed to playing either gender and changing looks. Now I can change races? I remember thinking, "what's this now? Hmm, uh, okay. I think I'll just go human for now because Idk what's going on, or what I'm committing to here." Loved the game. Got a friend to try it. Went off to do whatever while she made her character and so forth. Come back and she's playing the Dalish origin. I was like, wth is this? This is completely different than my start of the story.

I thought if I played another race, or even mage, it would still take place on and around the Cousland lands. No! It was completely different. Mind blown. I could not believe they went that extra mile like that. Then I became BW trash twice over.

Tl;dr: Yeah, BW has some cool features to which, I suspect, a "casual" gamer may be oblivious. Casual gamers, or really gamers that are simply new to RPG, and BW rpg's specifically. They're different than others. And that difference is what made me BW trash. So, yeah, let 'em, know about All the cool shit on offer. Don't hide your sunshine, Babby.

I don't think it's faulty since I and several other people in this thread stated that it wasn't obvious to us that we could play as a female protagonist, so we didn't buy ME or DA at first. I'm sure many female gamers figured it out for themselves as we did eventually, but why should it be a mystery where we have to put 2 and 2 together? If a piece of marketing is inadvertently not capturing willing consumers, that's the fault of the marketing.

The marketing images on the Origin website for MEA show Scott. (I'm not talking about the things you have to click on, which include the Sara trailer, just the images one sees scrolling down the page.)

Also, speaking to Allan Schumacher on the old BSN, I didn't get the impression that ME2 and DAI used gender neutral terms in a calculated attempt to attract all genders. It seemed to be nothing more than an oversight. I don't know that that is the case, however.

The Amazon page for MEA shows PeeBee at the top, but the images of the "hero" don't obviously show a female protagonist:

I'm not talking about selling to gamers who know Bioware or who watch con footage and trailers. These people will obviously know that Bioware games have customizeable protagonists. I'm talking about new gamers who have never played a Bioware title and who shop by browsing games on Amazon, or by looking at game titles on a shelf at a brick and mortar store. An Amazon page or a game box probably has 20 seconds to interest someone in the game. If it doesn't look like it's for them within that 20 seconds, it's probably not going to get bought. A person should be able to find out information that makes them want to buy the game within 20 seconds. It is a selling point to some female gamers that they can play as a female protagonist. Why wouldn't a company want to put that information on the website or box? Especially when it is a core feature of the game? Unless you're telling me you think adding three words to a game description is going to drive away their other fans.

You say "in reality more males play this game," which is likely true, but for years marketing has gone like this:
1) Game company assumes only white males 18-25 buy games
2) Game company markets only to white males 18-25 years old
3) Only white males 18-25 years old buy the game
The trend continues because that's a self fulfilling prophecy. How much better if the company assumes everyone buys games instead?


The reversible covers didn't show the FemShep side. They were manufactured with the Sheploo side out only. You could only see the FemShep side after opening the case and flipping the cover. But I'm not even talking about investments such as trailers, reversible covers and merchandise. I'm just suggesting a few words get changed on Origin and Amazon.

I agree with you that they should first make a great game.

Have you read any of the other responses to this thread? Some people said they didn't realize that MET and DA allow you to play as a male or a female when they first learned about the games, and some people have further said that they were actually more interested in MET/DA once they realized that they could customize their protagonist's gender.

Even if it were true that ME "is already well-known enough to gamers" that it isn't necessary to market the fact that protagonist gender is customizable (which I think is debatable given the sort of posts described above), I think the idea in the OP is that BioWare/EA could potentially increase their fanbase very cheaply, whether it is already decent or not.

I may be misunderstanding what point you're trying to make with your first sentence. It seems like you're saying that the majority of ME players are, and will always be, male. So then...what? Are you saying that marketing should target males because more males already play the game? If that is, indeed, what you're saying, then again I think you misunderstood the original post. One of the major goals of marketing is to make people aware of a product's existence, and then to make them want to buy the product. Existing fans (whether male or not) are already aware of the product, and are already quite likely to buy said product. The point of the original post was to discuss a cheap way to market to a larger audience and bring in gamers who are not already fans of the franchise. To expand the fanbase.

The reversible covers were brought up earlier in the thread. I got MET digitally, so I have no idea. But I did buy a "physical" copy of MEA, which was a shrinkwrapped box containing a download code. I would assume that physical copies of ME3 were also shrinkwrapped, so you would have to buy the game in order to flip the cover over to see femshep. This misses the point once again. If someone bought the game, then the marketing was already successful for them. The point was to make a cheap marketing change to bring in more gamers who wouldn't otherwise buy the game. The original post said nothing about focusing on one set of fans.

Again, read some of the other responses All other things being equal, being able to customize your protagonist's gender is a nice perk. Look, let's pretend we've got two new RPGs. Game A is a great game with interesting storylines and characters, but forces the player to play as a fixed gender. Game B is a great game with interesting storylines and characters, and allows the player to play either a male or a female protagonist. Because I'm an ordinary person with a budget and a day job, I can't afford to get both games right now, at full price. I have to choose one now, and get the other much later on a Steam sale. Which game do you think is going to win out?

That's all the OP is saying. Give MEA (or MEA2, or DA4, or Anthem) that little marketing edge over the competition, and maybe they'll win over a few more fans than they would have otherwise.

All the gender revelations in recent years are predominantly an American continent pursuit. I don't know if the rest of the world is ready to follow suit. Some countries will adopt the new values others won't.

If anything Bioware with Anthem seems to indicate to go a different route, more online and RPG lite if you will. Removing themselves more from the old core gamers they once used to cater. I am sure your needs will be met, creating your protagonist that meets your standards of gender identity but the romances intertwined thru their games feels more and more a yesterday thing.

I hope to see another DA game, even MEA/2 old formula = big SP storyline with MP features and a few DLC's but somehow this gaming formula is becoming more and more replaced by something new. To invest in advertising on an old formula does not seem practical. Then again, I could be totally wrong. Until EA/Bioware releases concrete info about either franshise all = speculation.

@dragontatare and Shinobu.....I agree on both fronts. Trying to expand the base and gain more customers in the manner mentioned could bring in more customers in a positive manner. I like the way it was described in how Shinobu would state "You can play as Scott or Sara Ryder" indicating you can play as female or male and offering those perks on the box rather than having them somewhat hidden or unknown through the wrapping of the box as i mentioned in my ME3 example.

It's a perk that the game offers and it should be advertised. And as a company it should be open to all options to increase it's fanbase. For me personally i never worried or was aware of such perks. Games like the "Tomb Raider Reboot" and "Rise of the Tomb Raider?"....I purchased those games because they were good and i didn't think about the lead being a female....or thought "nah it's a female lead..not gonna bother". 

I understand the view you guys are taking to attract more fans tho....choosing genders in this game that also involves romances can also have a bigger impact in attracting more female gamers in seeing that they have that option to play as a female Ryder.

When I ask "What's wrong with marketing to women" that's what I actually mean. Women are just above 50% of the population in North America and close to 50% worldwide. So women should be marketed to because you're talking about half the population. Marketing to half the population is not pandering.

Now, if you want to talk about a specific product like Andromeda, we can do that, but you have to go back a lot farther than their Amazon description. The people you're marketing to are female gamers. (I mean, Tennis McSoccerMom is unlikely to be interested in Mass Effect, but who knows?) Female gamers are more likely to already expect Bioware to have a customizable protagonist. But I don't think that's the real problem. The real problem is how Bioware treats its female protagonist. This was the first marketing image anyone saw for Andromeda:



I have many questions about that image. Are those two supposed to be Scott and Sara? If so, why doesn't Sara look as battle-ready as Scott? Why is she posed that way? I don't know a single woman who stands like that, not to mention that even trying to stand like that (yes, I tried it) is pretty uncomfortable.

Compare that to this:


Nearly identical background, same pose, same equipment. The implication being that you could play as either male or female.

Then we had this:



Now, I do love this trailer, but it took some time for Bioware to state that the N7 in the video is not the protagonist, and I'm not even sure when the general population knew that was supposed to be your father.

So the initial marketing materials were a woman who is supposed to be sexy (I guess?) but most women will not identify with that, and an announcement trailer that featured a male.

I've played Bioware games for awhile so I knew this wasn't the whole story. I would imagine that most female gamers, even if they hadn't played the OT, knew you could play Shepard as male or female. But if you want female gamers to be interested in this game, these can't be the first images they see. In that first marketing piece, the female almost looks like a squad mate. The first images you see of a game define how closely you follow said game. When I was talking about Mass Effect 1, the first images I saw of Commander Shepard were of some dude in a space suit who looked like a bad ass. Great! I wasn't interested in playing that particular protagonist though.

So all that to say that yes, Bioware needs to be better about marketing their games to women, but I don't think the way to do that is the description on Amazon.