Now, we all know that despite how the mass media occasionally portrays women, girls have never, ever been nerds. They don't go to San Diego Comic Con, and they don't play videogames. Well, Ubisoft has made one of the first videogames targeted to women, based on the popular and very woman-y Grey's Anatomy TV series, and boy... it's a good thing women aren't nerds, because they'd probably be hideously insulted if they were.
First of all, don't think the above video is supposed to be funny -- it's not a skit, just some folks over at College Humor playing the game. They aren't important. Instead, pay close attention to the gameplay footage, which breaks down human interaction in to either one of two choices, both of which are hilariously absolute, and many of which include flirting, not flirting or just the level of flirting. The other aspect of "gameplay" involves the world's shittiest mini-game where the player moves the Wiimote to collect emotion balls so that their character can... have that emotion. Best of all, sometimes the emotion you need to collect is "anger," because sometimes someone needs a sass-talkin', girlfriend! Woo!
Jesus. Admittedly, I have a penis (it's true!) but I'm appalled on behalf of all you ladies. Shit, I have to imagine those Bratz games whoever-the-hell pumps out have more gameplay value and respect for womankind than this travesty. (Via Warming Glow)
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Hmm this is just demonstrating how crappy the industry can be. If it makes money, they'll make it. I wouldn't say good games are dying out, more like just being drowned in an ocean of crap. Due to supply and demand, crappy games will continue to be made, I mean if people buy them, they continue to make money, ENOUGH people are satisfied. Whatever, no point in complaining further.
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..Is there something wrong with me? I mean, I'm female, and I knit and sew and read (though cooking is iffy), and played Halo while waiting after D&D for a ride back to school where I just finished playing AoE2... Pfft.
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Ugh! If only this had come out 10 years earlier... This would have ROCKED on the Sega (Mc)Dream(y)cast. Obviously the licensing for this game took up so much of the budget that there wasn't anything left for developing game play--a typical complaint of licensed games. Still, I applaud the developers and say, "Mission Accomplished!" Clearly they have distilled the essence of the show into an interactive format: The characters wander about aimlessly making repeated yes-no-yes decisions (all of which yield the same result) and leave the participant (viewer/gamer) with a feeling of being cheated out of their free time. Man, I can't WAIT for the Private Practice game!!!
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... ... My mom likes this show. I'm pretty sure she'd hate this. As for myself, this girl gamer has a sudden craving to log onto WoW, take my undead rogue somewhere crowded, and stab the living crap out of several somethings. Clearly, I have collected too many anger balls.
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Quoted from NameofRain: "And I'm sorry, but the only way I would *ever* play a Twilight game is if they gave me a flamethrower, a serrated knife, and a box of grenades and let me go after the main characters." Hell, yes! I'd totally play that game!
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I am a woman and a gamer and I am appalled (I also hate Grey's Anatomy for the record). And here I thought Final Fantasy X-2 was insulting. Gee, can you tell that they probably don't have women working in their game design department? And I'm sorry, but the only way I would *ever* play a Twilight game is if they gave me a flamethrower, a serrated knife, and a box of grenades and let me go after the main characters.
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Stephen: Dunno if you'll see this now, but I wasn't really a part of the early design stage. I just got to read the giant GDD (Game Design Doc). But as we were a small studio I'm pretty sure there wasn't a focus group. We had a few small ones come in and play test the game later. But early on it was just the designers and producers. I think the Creative Director was the one who ultimately wrote the GDD though, so it might've been his idea. It's just one of those things where a lot of people are putting in thier two cents, and some people's opinions are coming from a business stand-point rather than a gamer one.
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@Bubbles No seriously! Do you know HOW many times people ask ``do you play games?`` I just answer with a ``uhhh yeah of course we play games if we work here``. I don`t know of ANYONE that would want to work in a specialized store like that and not know a THING about the product they are selling (or especially why they would even work there... enough geeks send in resumes on a daily basis).
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I'm a girl, I'm geeky and nerdy, and after watching the video I have to say that yes I find this game very offensive. I also think the show is offensive to women as well. I would rather watch the endless and borring story dialog on Trauma Center instead! (I usually just skip to the operation... lol)
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I'm geeky girl and watching this video I have to that yes I find the Grey's Anatomy game AND TV show very offensive! I rather watch the endless and incredibly boring story dialog on Trauma Center... (I usually just skip and go directly to the operation lol)
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hey, I work at gamestop too and I go to comic-con every year for going on 7 years now. *woo* I totally love videogames, and topless robot and nerdy things. XP *rolls eyes* Silly boys who like to come up and say "so, you work at a gamestore... but do you play videogames..?" are just funny.
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So what's with the whole "girls don't play video games" thing? I'm youngish (25) so maybe it has something to do with when I grew up, but I've always known girls to play video games. The girls I knew growing up might not have been as vocal about it as the guys and might have been better at having lives beyond video games, but they still played. Come to think of it, I spent more time playing video games over girls' houses/dorms than at my own during high school and college and routinely got my ass kicked in those games. As for the Grey's Anatomy game, it might suck, but from what I've seen of the show, it seems to have the right level of complexity, reality, and emotional depth.
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So all those "women" dressed as Supergirl, Catwoman, and Sailor Moon at the San Diego Comic Con are really men dressed as women? When I went to the one in New York City, I had thought I had seen hundreds of young girls reading manga and one young girl dressed as Supergirl. Had to be boys.
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I like how the UNBELIEVABLY socially inept dorky-in-a-bad-way skinny guy from College Humor inches closer and closer to the large-breasted girl as the video progresses, until he is practically in her lap.
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What's a Grey's Anatomy? Sorry, there had to at least one post saying this.
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Tongue-in-cheekness aside, What's more patronising to women: Making a lame video game out of Grey's Anatomy or announcing that you're offended on behalf women because they can't be nerds and therefore can't appreciate how lame this game is? PS, I watched the video before I read the post, and thought it was a piss-take because I saw the College Humour mention. Good god. I still can't believe it's real.
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It is funny to watch them marvel at the wtf'ness of it all, but I just don't even know what to say to that really. Even though I pretty much despise the series, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume most of the fan base is female. Couldn't they have maybe had one woman present while developing this? Just one? A man with some common sense even?
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There's no emotion ball big enough to hold the amount of loathing I have for what I've just seen....
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Wow I seriuosly need to go collect some blue emotion balls now since this game is making me angry -_-
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Wow, of course it makes sense... women only care about emotions so this game is excellent for us!! And of course, men don't have emotions so they just care about shooting crap so I don't know why they waste time developing stories for games.
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That, without a doubt, looks like the stupidest game I have ever seen. Where's my copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum so I can use it to smash this game to pieces? When Guitar Hero 3 came out, I had a copy reserved at a Game Stop and a group of guys in the store literally stopped in their tracks to gawk at me, as if they'd never seen a girl buy a video game before. And that was only Guitar Hero! What would they have thought if I was picking up Left4Dead or Call of Duty? Silver: Where I get that Twilight game. Sounds amazing!
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Ugh! God, if they actually think that game is going to be a best seller i am ashamed. Girls cant play... GIRLS cant play???? the what the hell am i???? Am i a dude that got his balls removed and tits made? fuck you stupid greys anatomy game >_> and ubisoft and your stupid idea -_- its like saying we can only play a sex and the fucking city videogame. And just for the record i know a lot of freaking girls that love to play things such as God of war, Bioshock, Silent hill, and games like that! so up yours!!!
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But then again it had to have been an uphill battle anyway to find the venn diagram that includes those who love Grey's Anatomy, would purchase a @40 product because it has the casts faces in it (when they can watch it on tv for free), own a wii, and have the free-time and know-how to use one. So they found that one lady and just based it off what she wanted to do. And she's having a blast. I'm a girl gamer and I never got this "for females" game structure. I'm not sure I've ever played a game targeted for "females only". Boobies do not keep us from wanting to pistol whip a zombie. I promise.
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Wait, so you have to collect blue balls to be calm?
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I'm sorry, women don't game? Oh rly, I spent Friday night in high heels and make up playing Left4dead before hitting the clubs. We CAN play real games and STILL be feminine!!!! urgh I hate how its either girly girl and retarded games, or that girl who tries to be boy who plays properly :(
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That makes me want to go there and make them eat their balls. And kick all the dumbass girls that will buy this shity game and make the company think they did good. Arrrgh! The thought that someone WILL buy it angers me more!
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I'd buy a Twilight game if it was done like Punchout and you could smack the characters around. It'd be ten times better than this game, which manages to not only be insulting but looks dreadfully boring as well.
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JPyke: Very interesting. What I'm wondering - and if you weren't privy to this in the design process, it's no big deal - but was there any market research backing up statements like "girls don't want to fail?" While it wouldn't STUN me that a focus group at some point came back with that type of answer - I've heard similar things from various developer friends over the years - I've never actually seen empirical evidence of such a claim. However, at the same time, I don't think going online is the smartest idea for getting input on a game that's obviously targeted at a wider demographic. Even if this Grey's Anatomy game was, say, a SCUMM-based adventure game with a clever plot and Trauma Center-esque surgery segments, while that would appeal to online gamers I question its ability to appeal to the GA audience, which is what a game like this is targeted to. It's a very complex question that I don't think is ever going to be answered. It took a paradigm shift in the form of the DS and Wii to just start thinking about gaming appealing beyond the traditional 14 - 30 year old male audience; I don't know if the change has stuck enough to really start challenging the expanded audience.
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"They don't go to San Diego Comic Con" But they go to Xenacon, Yuricon and most important, Yaoicon. (Shuders) Wait, a Grey's Anatomy videogame? What's next a Twilight one? That's it the world ends this tomorrow.
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When I worked on High School Musical 3: Dance it was kind of the same. It was geared towards little girls, and so the original design of the game was that there was no way you could fail (and to some extent you still can't) just because "girls don't want to fail or be challenged, they just want to play". There was also stuff like the rewards you'd get from playing levels weren't actually going to be rewards because "earning rewards and achievements is something that only appeals to guys". Instead you were going to give and receive gifts to the characters in the game. It was kinda silly. A lot of that fell to the way side. But it certainly shows that the video game developing community doesn't know how to handle the female gamer. I joined some gamer girl forums to get a better idea of what the average girl-gamer wanted out of a game, especially ones geared towards younger girls, and it's pretty much what any gamer wants. A fun game with a good balance of challenge-to-reward. In fact it's really just more insulting to break gamers into gender groups. I think at a VERY young level, you can get away with it (elementary age at most). But really it's not worth the effort. But I think the age of "What!? You're a girl who plays video games!?!?!" is starting to come to a close. I think it's still fairly shocking to many of us, simply because having grown up in the Atari era, I think a lot of us guys assume that only guys play video games, because that's what we did our entire lives, and it's only now (thanks to the internet in large part) that we're all starting to discover that women have been playing this whole time too. Hopefully when that initial shock wears off, and the next generation of gamers comes of age it won't be such a big deal, and game companies won't waste time and money on making shit like Grey's Anatomy the video game. One can hope at least.
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Emotion balls? What thinking went into that programing decision? Is it because women are just soooooo emotional right? Everything about this is insulting and terrible.
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Not even a trauma center surgery kind of aspect? Let's just grab our balls...of emotion and sass talk or trash dr whosawatsit. This game looks as interesting as my left little toe.
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Girls: too dumb to figure out to just buy Trauma Center instead. Thank GOD my girlfriend likes TC already, or else I'd be forced to waste $35 on this pos.
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Any woman who might actually find that enjoyable or interesting would never play a video game, and would probably just watch the show instead.
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Ouch. That is just wrong.
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....let`s just say it`s a piss off when customers would rather ask `the guys` questions in preference to us and/or if they don`t believe us STILL go ask `the guys`. Because you know, they know so much more and we females know NOTHING about games! In fact, we probably get this MORE from women ._. In fact, some women even say: `I`m a women so I don`t know about these things`... *rant* *rant* *rant* :p
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@Shel *cough*FEMINIST*cough*, jking Wow the gameplay looks ridiculously bad and the options certainly are hilarious
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Oh, and whoever at Ubisoft had the idea to make those Imagine games should be shot... we already have 2 of those and 1 from a copycat ``Dreamer`` series in new releases... It`s sad very very sad... and I would burn every last one of them if I could! Too bad even NINTENDO markets DS games in age groups as stereotypical enough. Only boys (aka ``core`` gamers) play Pokemon and only women play Crossword and Brain Age....
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Oh of COURSE girls don't games! How could we do such a nerd-like thing! Now if you EXCUSE ME, I have to go to work at EB Games now, where my OTHER FEMALE COWORKER might be today. I wonder how she`s doing on Fallout?
TotalComments: 39
