So if you don't know in the early history of video games, games were sold as electronic entertainment meant for an entire family but when the video game market crashed in the early 1980s game manufacturers chose to market games as toys in hopes of winning over a new audience. However, with toy isles geared towards boys or girls video game companies had to choose. Sega was the first company that decided to market exclusively for girls but others quickly followed suit and the idea that 'video games are for girls' and later 'video games are for women' grew out of that decision. Only recently have we really seen developers and audiences question this idea. What if video games had been marketed more heavily for boys, as Nintendo was thinking about doing, how would that have changed the industry today.
DBWI: Video games were more heavily marketed for boys.
- Thread starter SeaBos
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This will lead to action RPG catching on earlier. IOTL, it didn't develop until Softmax with war of genesis in 1995. it didn't make it big in USA until 2000s.
I wonder if you still get the explosion in detective-based works that was spurned on by all the early Sega Nancy Drew games? And if we did, maybe we get Dick Tracy and Sherlock Holmes games instead? I could see Sherlock Holmes being one of the big video game heroes of today.
I think the limitations of early gaming are what led to the boom in girl games, because it was easy to do the text-based novel stuff on the Master System. And then Nintendo brought all those Detective Club games over for the NES. The detective game boom I think was more inevitable than the girl game boom, but they both went hand in hand with those mid 80s systems, it was a perfect convergence.
And then it bled over into childrens' books with four straight Newbery winners (from 1989-1992) being girl detective books, but that's neither here nor there.
I think the limitations of early gaming are what led to the boom in girl games, because it was easy to do the text-based novel stuff on the Master System. And then Nintendo brought all those Detective Club games over for the NES. The detective game boom I think was more inevitable than the girl game boom, but they both went hand in hand with those mid 80s systems, it was a perfect convergence.
And then it bled over into childrens' books with four straight Newbery winners (from 1989-1992) being girl detective books, but that's neither here nor there.
I'd hazard a guess that VR technology would get a heavy boost, if that's actually possible (even today, the tech base is somewhat... lacking). We all know boy's toys tend to be a lot more "hands on" and action oriented, so maybe a GI Joe line of wargames where the player is physically (okay with some kind of VR goggles and gloves and etc. but you get the idea) in the thick of the action, or some He Man action adventure quest games. Even with VR though there still needs to be a lot of space, which really defeats the point of video games in general.
Driving games and such might be more feasible (the ones you see in those arcades) But still, how to miniaturized the technology (things like the steering wheel cannot be miniaturized no matter how hard you try)
... yeah I don't see it happening. The technological advancements needed for this to happen was (and still is) simply not there. It's gonna be such a uphill battle to entice the boys away form the outdoors and action figures.
Driving games and such might be more feasible (the ones you see in those arcades) But still, how to miniaturized the technology (things like the steering wheel cannot be miniaturized no matter how hard you try)
... yeah I don't see it happening. The technological advancements needed for this to happen was (and still is) simply not there. It's gonna be such a uphill battle to entice the boys away form the outdoors and action figures.
also, the Perseption towards video game will be less positive as the Video game has been associated with soft nature and calming. if it was action-oriented, it might have been perceived as spreading violence.
Well, they did try to do them, the text-based stuff was fairly easy but you couldn't do a lot of branching paths and the pictures weren't very detailed at all (I remember the very first Nancy Drew game on the SG-1000 looked fairly awful). Then came the Master System with more complex animations and I think 16 different endings in Nancy Drew and the Raven's Claw? That was a classic of the genre. And speaking of genre classics...
That reminds me of some footage from the very first idea for Night Trap back in the 1980s, it was some kind of awful horror schlock thing. When they decided to retool it for the Sega CD, it was reworked into a much more family friendly (and much much much better) kid detective adventure game that became a pioneering genre classic and put the Sega CD on the map. Imagine if that original Night Trap had come out! It would've disgraced the whole medium.
New media has always got the short end of the stick regardless of which gender they're pandering to, until they survive long enough to become old media and then they're forced down the throats of children in schools.
So in a few centuries we'll see teachers assigning the games of today to children, and they'll hate it (just like children today hating classics like Huckleberry Finn, despite the fact that when that was published it was intended for enjoyment by general audiences).
how? it has marketed for girls.. and I couldn't see it getting short end of stick..
Romance literature has gotten the short end of the stick when the first came out, something about corrupting the innocence of young females or some such nonsense.
And have you already forgotten the videogame scare of the 90s when moral guardians claimed that video games will make girls withdrawn from normal social interactions, twist their expectation of society and relationships, and all the other fun things?
*looks at person's age*
Oh I'm so sorry you weren't old enough back then. I keep on assuming that most people are older than I am.
The song and dance have been going on for a heck of a long time, probably as old as complaining about the youth/younger generation being worse in character than those before it.
Sorry if it's not appropriate to ask in this thread, but could somebody explain to me how a "double blind what if" is supposed to work and how it's different from just plain old reality?
In korea, moral guardians started to say that in late 2000s. Which were countered with the fact that korean dramas weren't that different.
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Well, I was talking about the situation in the good old USA, where it was all prophesies of fire and brimstone... in other words Tuesday, just another long line of moral outrage and fear mongering over every new thing. Of course videogames weather through it, just like comic books, TV, movies, and novels before it, but it did went through the baptism of negative publicity like everything else.
Actually, it was an understatement as Due to Lim Sung-han's soap opera being popular despite the fact it had very terrible writing, it lead to backlashes towards korean soap operas, which made video games being vindicated in comparison.
I'm honestly not too familiar with the cultural history and impact of Korean media in the past few decades (or really at any point, I'm just not well verse in the history of that region in general). So could you elaborate on it?
Yeah, but I can't blame you for not knowing about them, the Sega CD only sold a few million units. There were some great visual novels and RPGs on there but it was always just too expensive (and visual novels on the Genesis were fine for their day, you just didn't have the animation and voices). I did like the two Nancy Drew games that ended up on the Sega CD, and there was even a decent Babysitter's Club game (best known for starring a young Jessica Alba as the protagonist).