Current Ramblings
Monday, September 29, 2008
Target Audiences
It came out during my fortnightly Dungeons & Dragons session that most of the guys who've been playing WoW in the group have jumped ship to Warhammer. They aren't the only people I've known to move to newer MMOs. I inherited my guild from someone who headed for Age of Conan's greener pastures, and another friend who I know from WoW was sucked into Warhammer as well.
This is not an essay on whether or not I agree or disagree that WoW has jumped the shark, that assorted changes have made this or that class unplayable, that the content has been played out, that the lore has or has not been irreparably broken. This is about something else. Because as my friend showed off Warhammer's intro on his big screen HDTV and then all the men in the room giggled about how his goblin squig herder's /special was him "rubbing his ass on the ground", and as they talked about how hilarious it was that the cower animation to drop aggro involved him pissing himself, I realized one very important thing:
I, as a 30-year-old woman, am so not the target audience for these games.
The two other big MMOs that are currently out there, Age of Conan and Warhammer, are both overbearingly masculine in ways that WoW is not, and both try to be mature in ways that just make them appeal to teenage boys and men who never quite got past that level of humor/boobie-gawking/gore. And that pretty much kills it for me before you can even start making arguments about gameplay. WoW almost feels like a game that doesn't have a target audience in mind, and that's what's made it so popular. It's just mature enough to seem normal - some blood, mild swearing, drinking - without being either too clean or feeling like it's trying too hard to be mature. Just as there's something to fit just about every gameplay preference and hardware setting, there are elements of the setting that appeal to most everyone. It's not even strictly heteronormative, like the Valentine's Day stuff being set up to allow you to attract whichever gender you feel like at the moment. I feel like Blizzard made WoW with everyone in mind, men and women alike, without pandering to either. (Unless you count the entire Blood Elf race as pandering to women.) It's like rather than make a game to appeal to a certain group, they simply made a game.
So no, assorted male friends, I'm not going to leave my friends on Thorium Brotherhood to come play Age of Conan or Warhammer with you. I don't think the developers ever invited me to, and I can't say I find either very welcoming.
posted@12:13 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
