This has also popped up for me recently because I have declined to join the Starcraft 2 bandwagon, despite the encouragement of my brother and a number of my friends, partly because I really don't want to support Activision these days, and Kotick is a large part of that. While he tries to make the point that Kotick was taken out of context and that what he was saying wasn't as bad as it is made out to be, I'm going to have to disagree and say that the context really doesn't help it all that much.
Let's just take a look at them again and I'll show you what I mean. I encourage everyone to go read Amrich's original article so you get the full context; I'm going to try to summarize it here, but just to make sure you get both sides of the argument you should read the full context.
"Take all the fun out of making video games."
The first quote Amrich goes over is this one:
Jeetil Patel, Deutsche Bank Securities - Analyst
"What do you think the retailers' willingness these days is to hold inventory on the video game side? Are they building positions today or are they still very reluctant and very careful of how they are buying?"Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard, Inc.
"I don't think it is specific to video games. I think that if you look at how much volatility there is in the economy and, dependent upon your view about macroeconomic picture and I think we have a real culture of thrift. And I think the goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks that we brought in to Activision 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.""I think we definitely have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."
Dan tries to point out that this is all about the financial side of the video game business. "Taking the fun out of making video games" was a joke that fell flat and what Kotick really means in this quote is that he wants people to treat the video game business as just that -- a business. That's all well and good, and I agree -- it is a business.
The problem is that the video game industry is not anything like the "packaged goods" business. Video games are not soft drinks or toothpaste. The product they are probably most similar to is movies, as describe in the article at Squaremans, "They Know It Doesn't Work". And, unfortunately, it seems like Kotick is driving video game production to the same place where movies are now (but more on that later).
The second paragraph is really what makes me crazy though. I understand the idea of saving for a rainy day, and sticking to budgets, and remembering that there are always going to be bad times and you need to make sure you are ready for them. That's all well and good, and I can't blame him for that. However, "keeping people focused on the deep depression" and cultivating a culture of skepticism, pessimism, and fear sounds like a good way to make everyone of your employees, especially at the low level, constantly worried that they will lose their job and be cut from the company. From Kotick's point of view, I can see what he thinks -- they'll produce their best work because they're afraid if they don't, they'll get canned.
The problem is, that is a shortsighted strategy (which is the problem I have with Kotick in general). That doesn't make people want to do good work for you -- it makes people want to work just good enough to not get fired, and as soon as a better opportunity comes along, for a company they want to work for, you lose them.
If Kotick wants to keep good talent in the future, he needs to realize that you can't lead by creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt within your own employees, especially in an industry driven by creative talent -- at least not for very long. You certainly can't lead by trying to screw over the people working for you who create the best-selling games of all time. Whether or not the allegations by ex-Infinity Ward employees are true, one thing is clear -- Kotick lost the talent that created games with billions of dollars in sales for Activision. If the allegations of the ex-Infinity Ward employees are true, he actively drove them out of the company by creating a hostile environment; however, even if Activision's claims are true, and West and Zampella were actively trying to break their contract and wiggle away from Activision, Kotick still failed to be a good leader, in convincing them that Activision was the best place for them to be.
Tony Gikas:
"[...] And a second question, if you don't mind, just your comfort level regarding pricing of some of your new games that have some expensive controllers and any feedback that you had from retail as we move through the holidays. Thanks, guys."Mike Griffith:
"[...] On the pricing, we've had for all of our launch titles in the back half of this year, some of which contain peripherals, as you point out, very strong retailer acceptance and support for all parts of our plan, including our merchandising plans, our marketing programs, and our price points."Bobby Kotick:
"And Tony, you know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further."
Amrich points out that from the audio, Kotick is clearly making a joke and laughing at himself -- and goes so far as to admit that it's probably not a very good joke in a recession when people are trying to save money. Okay, fair enough. It's a joke, and a bad joke, and everyone does that from time to time.
Here's the problem though; not only does it portray an insensitivity to the penny-pinching consumer, and make him seem like he's completely out-of-touch, it's an example of a guy who just doesn't seem to understand why people think he's horrible for the industry. If it was a one-off joke that went sour, okay. But the problem is that it fits a pattern of behavior where it makes it seem like he's trying to wring every last cent out of consumers with the least cost to himself; this quote came at a time when Modern Warfare 2 was going to be coming out $10 more expensive than the vast majority of other AAA titles (on PC anyway) and even worse if you were in the UK, while dramatically reducing the functionality of the product.
As a CEO, a significant portion of your job responsibility is effective communication -- you are the face of your company for many people. I have to imagine that reinforcing a bad perception is probably not a very good idea -- and I have to wonder if anyone can actually tell Kotick that he might want to be a little more careful with his language in the future.
Bobby Kotick only wants exploitable franchises
This is the quote that bothers me the most:
Jeetil Patel - Deutsche Bank
"[...] Why are you de-emphasizing some of the kind of lesser known brands and focusing on the bigger franchises out there? Is it industry that is causing that or do you think it is more strategy on your part that seems to be [winning] big? I kind of want to understand the dynamics there."
Robert A. Kotick
"With respect to the franchises that don't have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of over time becoming $100 million plus franchises, that's a strategy that has worked very well for us. It's something that we have been very disciplined about and so while there are lots of promises for a lot of these products that we had in the portfolio, I think generally our strategy has been to focus, especially given the increase in development expenditures on the products that have those attributes and characteristics that we know if we release today, we'll be working on 10 years from now. And that has been -- you know, narrow and deep has been essential to our strategy of how you expand operating margins. The difficulty in establishing new franchises or unproven franchises as we have seen over the last 20 years, that is one of the great challenges of the business and I think that you have a less than accepting and tolerant retail environment.
Amrich's response seems to be that "exploit" in this context doesn't mean what people think. Yes, that's probably very true. That's not the problem I have with this quote though. What Kotick is basically saying is that he only wants to spend money on developing "sure things," and then developing them as much as possible.
This takes us back to something I said about the first quote. Video games are not packaged goods. Video games are a creative enterprise where a "franchise" will only get you so far if the game is crap. Once again, I'm going to point back to that Squaremans article: each game eventually has to stand on its own and at the end of the day you can't just say "only make the games that will be blockbuster successes." Eventually, people will get tired -- they will not keep buying every Guitar Hero game that comes out. When the series started, it was a new and inspired idea, and a great party game -- the problem is that if you just keep churning out new games that offer nothing new but more songs, eventually people will decide they have enough songs and just stop buying them. You can already see this trend with Guitar Hero sales.
If Kotick gets his way, he seems to only want Activision to produce games that can be cranked out every year like clockwork. In the short run, I'm sure this will be great for Activision -- Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and other games of that ilk can crank out billions of dollars in sales before they sputter out. Not only does this disappoint me as a consumer though -- I really love seeing games that do new and interesting stuff, like Portal -- in the long run, this is going to hurt Activision. New franchises aren't going to come out of thin air, and your old ones will eventually grow stale, especially when you crank them out every year and seem to chase away the talent that gave you them in the first place. What will Activision do when Guitar Hero and Call of Duty eventually burn out, or get superseded by a product made by a company with a more innovation-friendly development process? It can coast a long time on WoW income, I suppose, but eventually, someday, that will come to an end too.
I suspect Kotick's answer would be that he'll simply buy a studio making another game he can exploit as a profitable franchise -- but after the whole debacle at Infinity Ward, how many studios are going to see Activision's umbrella as a good place to take shelter? Blizzard, I suspect, has been lucky enough to retain a lot of autonomy simply because WoW is such a cash cow -- but when the creators of the #1 selling game of all time can get the shaft, they still have to be a little nervous. I would be, anyway.
I don't want to see the video game industry turn into the parody of the film industry you see in a lot of 80s movies, with "Rocky 17" in the theatres. Unfortunately, with people like Kotick at the helm, it seems like that is likely what we'll end up with -- endless strings of sequels of declining quality. Thankfully, unlike the film industry, the video game industry is not limited by the number of theatres -- bad games can't chase good games out of the market, especially as digital distribution becomes more and more prevalent. That means that it's less likely people will continue to buy sequels just from inertia -- which is a good thing for the industry, but bad for companies that think they can survive by simply milking franchises to death.
So, to bring this all back to Amrich's assertion, that Bobby Kotick is only seen as the bad guy because his quotes have been taken out of context, I have to respectfully disagree. It's not a few verbal gaffs that make people think Kotick is a bad guy, it's his whole style of management and what it means for the hobby as a whole. I can't disagree that he's been great for Activision's bottom line, at least for now, but if he continues down the road he's on, I think our hobby -- and Activision with it -- will suffer.
The basic plot of the movie is relatively straightforward. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, the leader of a team of "dream thieves" that infiltrate the dreams of targets to steal their innermost secrets from their subconscious -- this is "extraction." A Japanese businessman, played by Ken Watanabe, hires him to crack into the mind of a competitor, played by Cillian Murphy, and plant the idea in his mind to break up his father's company -- this is "inception" and it is supposedly impossible, according to Cobb's right hand man Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
The bulk of the movie takes place in dreamspace of one sort or another, where reality is what you make of it. The way this works gives you some amazing visuals (like the city folding in on itself you can see in the trailers), but the way the "outer world" affects the dreamspace is also really well done, translating reality (like getting dunked in a bathtub) into a fantasy (the building you're in getting destroyed in a flood). Most visually inspired scenes are created through this effect; it reminded me a lot of The Matrix in terms of visual spectacle (and considering the premise, perhaps that's not surprising).
In order to plant the idea in the target's mind, without his subconscious rejecting it as someone else's idea, Cobb's team must drill down deep enough to obscure the genesis of the idea. In essence, they must create a triple-layered dream -- a dream within a dream within a dream. This is what creates some of the best visuals of the movie and allows, as my friend Mike at 1000 Monkeys describes, a Return of the Jedi-style intercutting of action scenes, only each scene is on a different level of the dream and therefore slowed down -- dreamtime is a twentieth as fast as real time, and the effect is compounded -- so what takes only ten seconds in the outer world is over three minutes in the next layer, and so on.
Stitched into this fairly straightforward heist plot is a more personal story for Cobb, whose dead wife haunts his dreams and complicates the whole process. Again, if you're looking for a twist here, you are looking in the wrong place -- but the drama of Cobb's struggle with his own demons is compelling, and is tightly interwoven with the rest of the movie.
Inception is a movie that really fires on all cylinders for me. DiCaprio leads an excellent cast of actors, including Nolan veterans Watanabe, Murphy, and Michael Caine, who appears in a small part. It's hard for me to believe I dismissed DiCaprio after he did Titanic; he may be one of the best actors working these days. And if, as rumor has it, Inception was a sort of audition for Joseph Gordon-Levitt to be the Riddler in the next Nolanverse Batman movie, he certainly nails it. After seeing him in Brick and (500) Days of Summer I'm hardly surprised, but his Arthur in this movie is a smart, skilled second to Cobb, and his action scenes are great to watch. Ellen Page, who plays the newest member of the team and is sort of DiCaprio's protege, is sort of the audience stand-in, being the person that gets the "rules" of dreaming explained to her, and does a good job of showing the growing awareness of the new experience without being simply Ms. Exposition. Tom Hardy and Dileep Rao, who I don't think I've seen in anything else and round out Cobb's crew, don't get a huge amount to do, but do well with what they get. Even the bit actors in this movie were good -- a very un-Major League Tom Berenger plays Murphy's "uncle" and one of my favorite character actors, Pete Postlethwaite, plays Murphy's dying father.
The writing is smart and never seems to drag, even when the characters need to give the necessary exposition; Mike complains that the dialogue seemed repetitive, and I never really got that sense. The character do remind each other of the urgency of the situation at times, but it didn't seem like it was out of place (and helped to reinforce the urgency of the situation to the audience too, obviously). I thought Nolan did a good job of showing the concepts the characters were talking about through various visual cues, which made it easy to follow what was going on pretty much all the time.
Hans Zimmer's soundtrack also deserves special mention. I've always really liked his soundtracks, even though they aren't as distinctive as say, Vangelis' Blade Runner score; he definitely has a more generic style that isn't likely to blow your mind even if you really like it. However, what he did in Inception is pretty cool, and you can read about it in this article; he's basically taken the main theme from music the "thieves" use to warn each other that they are running out of time and slowed it down to use as the theme for his soundtrack, and it works great. The music really helps to drive the action and keep it flowing during the climax of the movie. You can sample it at this website, if you want to get a taste of it.
Is Inception going to change the way you think about movies and blow your mind? No, it's not. Is it a great movie? Yes, and it's well worth seeing on the big screen for its visuals, unless you happen to have a 60-inch TV to watch it on when it comes out in Blu-Ray. I suspect it will end up being the best movie I see this year; it was definitely better than Iron Man 2, and the only other movie I'm super-psyched about seeing in a theater this year is Tron: Legacy, which, while it looks like it will be a lot of fun, will have a hard time topping this.
He moved to Montana when I wasn't much older; I won't pretend to know why exactly, but after that I saw him less, when he would come to visit or on the rare occasion of a family gathering. I would talk to him on the phone, I always intended to go visit him sometime once I started working but somehow it never worked out; the idea of going to see him without my dad always seemed awkward, and how many people in their 20s want to go hang out with their grandparents? I always thought there would be time later anyway -- the mortality of Grandpa Hilberg never really set in for me.
When my mom's dad died on Christmas 2003, I seemed to make it through almost unfazed. Maybe it was because I had just changed my name and his funeral would be the first time I would meet my mom's family as I am now, and selfishly I was more worried about their reactions to that than grieving over his death. I hadn't spent as much time with Grandpa Schroedter either, since he lived further away. For some reason, I feel like he had reach his time -- he had done what he set out to do and now he was done, and maybe felt a bit at a loss with what he was supposed to do now.
Grandpa Hilberg was different; there was always something childlike about him to me. He seemed to have few regrets about his life and despite the fact that I don't think he ever really had a comfortable or successful career, he never seemed bitter or upset by that. It seemed like every time I talked to him, whether in person or on the phone, he had some story to tell about his friends or his family, and nearly every single one ended with his laugh. I don't think I ever heard him to tell a story with a sad ending.
For someone like me, who has felt world-weary and cynical since I was in my teens, there's something fascinating about a person like Grandpa Hilberg who could maintain that kind of point of view and outlook on the world for so long. I never really thought about his mortality, I guess, because it felt like he would never really go -- how can someone like that die? I figured when you see death coming that has to be the ultimate downer -- when the end is near how can you maintain that kind of outlook?
Yesterday, my dad called me as I was leaving lunch and told me that Grandpa Hilberg had died that morning. He'd been in the hospital, and I knew he was sick, but still, I never thought he would actually die -- it just didn't even strike me a possibility. I don't think it really settled in until last night, but for the first time, I think, I'm actually feeling a strong sense of grief over someone's passing in a way I've never felt it before. Maybe it's the fact that I'm getting older, and my parents are getting older too; for the first time I am really thinking about what it will be like when they die and realizing what that will mean.
I'm filled with regrets now, about my grandfather. I always told him I'd come visit, but I never did. He wrote me after the first time I went to Iceland, including an article he'd read on the place, and I don't think I ever wrote back. I talked to him on the phone, sure, but now...I was his oldest grandchild, and I think he was trying to reach out to me, and I wasn't there. I was always going to see or talk to him later, and now there's never going to be a later.
That is always going to haunt me I think, especially when I look at how his kids turned out -- seven boys and girls who managed to turn out to be pretty great people, one of whom I'm happy to call my dad. Whatever he and my grandmother did to raise them, they seem to have done it pretty well, and they managed to pass those lessons on to their kids, because I don't think I could have asked for a better dad than I am lucky enough to have. After all he's been through -- with me and my brothers, with my mom and everything else life has thrown at him, he's always been there for me. And when I think of that, I wonder if that's how my dad feels about his dad, and I wish I understood that more. I can't help but feel a bit of guilt that I am never going to have kids of my own so that I can pass those lessons on too -- and part of me wonders if I could have, even if it weren't no physically impossible. I can't imagine it was easy for him or for my parents to raise their kids as well as they did.
So, this weekend, I guess, I say goodbye to Grandpa Hilberg, and sorry for putting off what is now never going to happen. I hope that he passed peacefully and as without regret as he seemed, and I hope he knew how much he meant to those of us he leaves behind.
The movie picks up six months after the last movie, with the US government trying to get a handle on the Iron Man issue. Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), a competing arms manufacturer, is doing his part to try and bring Stark down (and develop something to compare with Iron Man), and Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) is plotting his revenge, as Stark's father destroyed Vanko's father during the cold war. Meanwhile, SHIELD is still trying to deal with Stark and the emerging Avenger Initiative as well; Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury has a bigger part, as well as Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson.
The big difference between this movie and the original is that while the first Iron Man was more of a character piece, with Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark going through an introspective journey for the first two (or maybe three, depending on how to divide it) acts, Iron Man 2 is, by and large, a more conventional action movie, which is somewhat of a disappointment after three much more interesting superhero movies of the last two years (the original Iron Man, The Dark Knight, and Watchmen). While there's definitely some good character moments for Robert Downey Jr. in the movie, there's not nearly as much development, and that makes the resolution at the end seem a bit empty to me. While the dialogue is, for the most part, very good, I think the script is just missing the character scenes that made the first one so good -- Downey's strength is that kind of acting, and if you don't give him that, you're wasting him to some extent. I think the improv style of the first one probably made it a lot stronger.
I certainly can't fault the acting; all of the principals are top notch, and even with as many characters are crammed into the movie, it did not feel like they'd been wedged in for no reason. They have a natural presence in the movie, but they also don't get a lot of time to shine. Aside from Downey, Sam Rockwell does an amazing job portraying Hammer; you can tell that Hammer desperately wants to be Tony Stark, but can't quite pull it off. Rockwell gets just the right amount of empty swagger to his step.
Rourke also manages to pull of "bruiser Russian physicist," which I'm surprised as anyone actually works. His opening scenes are very reminiscent of Stark in the cave in the first movie (which I'm sure was intentional) and his opening confrontation with Stark (and the monologue he gives) drips with menace. Later, however, he managed to portray just the right kind of "focused gearhead" kind of personality coming through his gruff exterior.
The other supporting characters work very well (including director Favreau, whose Happy Hogan gets a bigger part in this movie, but not annoyingly so), but none of them quite measure up to the level of the three principals. Considering that they may be three of the best actors working today though, that's hardly a slight. Don Cheadle does an excellent job filling in for Terrence Howard as Rhodey/War Machine, although I think Howard may have had slightly better chemistry with Downey in the first movie. This could just be a symptom of the movie's action focus rather than character focus though -- there's no good scenes where we get to see the two of them just kicking back together like the scene in the first Iron Man on the plane. Scarlett Johansson does a fine job as Black Widow, but only really gets two scenes to show her stuff. She's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not sure that any other reasonably competent actress couldn't have pulled off the role.
The action scenes were pretty good, though I don't think any of them really knocked my socks off; I think part of the problem was that there was just less investment in them than there was in the first movie, where there was a much stronger personal stake in each of them. The first confrontation between Vanko and Stark was probably the best, and the finale, while showy and pretty cool to watch, just didn't have the same weight to it.
On a minor note, the soundtrack for Iron Man seems to basically be AC/DC's greatest hits, and I was kind of disappointed that the score, which I actually liked in the first one, seemed to be missing. I was waiting for the Iron Man theme to start up a few times and I never really heard it (maybe I just missed it though).
Overall, Iron Man 2 is definitely worth seeing; however, be prepared to be at least a little disappointed if you're expecting the same kind of character-focused piece that we had the first time around. It's not a bad movie to be sure, however, and you'll probably enjoy it just for Downey, Rockwell, and Rourke's performances. Hopefully, though, Iron Man 3 will be a return to the first movie's strengths.
This topic is a difficult one for me. I've thought about it in regard to gaming in general, and generally I'm of the opinion that far too many people at least in the game-playing community, if not the game-making community, think that women will only be attracted to games which are stereotypically "girly." Things like the Sims, Barbie games, or Bella Sera. It's not a very helpful angle from which to come at the question of "how can an existing game increase its appeal to female gamers?" Maybe Eve Online would get more female players if it was focused around who can dress their avatar up prettier, but that wouldn't really be anything like the current game.
Mostly, though, I think that's a load of crap. Yes, there's some things that women like more than guys and vice versa, but I think a large part of why women don't like certain games has little to do with the gameplay or the number of pink horses in them -- it has to do with how these games are made and marketed, and I think that's partly because of the fact that game development is still such a male-dominated field.
In my experience, one of the ways games can expand their appeal among women gamers is by focusing on "soft" game design issues -- specifically, increasing the strength of story and social elements in gaming, two things that Eve has a good head start on, but still has problems with.
Making the Emotional Connection
Why is storyline important? Because it adds emotional depth to your reasons for playing the game. This is something that I think all gamers appreciate on some level, but with women I think it can be a major draw to the game. I have a friend who does not really enjoy playing a lot of "hardcore" games for the most part, but who loves to watch her husband play pretty much every kind of game out there and go through the narrative of the game. The games outside the casual model that she enjoys playing tend to be those with interesting stories (especially adventure games) and those she can play cooperatively with her husband (like Civilization, for instance).
Eve already has a story which, when it comes to games, is fairly decent (and I think getting better most of the time). However, currently the storyline is rather detached from what the players actually do -- characters can't really interact with the storyline in very many ways, and generally just have to sit back and watch things unfold. Then the question becomes, what do I get from playing the game as opposed to watching the game? If CCP wants to attract people (including women) into playing the game with the story, they need to make that story part of your experience as a player.
The old AURORA events were one way this sort of connection could be made, but I don't think something like that is necessarily needed. The recent appearance of Ishukone and Mordu's Legion ships in Intaki, for instance, is one way to show this, although optimally, you want it to allow active participation, not just passive. Making the economy fluctuate in regions based on storyline activity, incorporating current events into missions...making the world feel more alive and increasing the verisimilitude, basically. I think this is a good thing for games in general (as I'm sure anyone who's read my articles on storyline and metaplot before is aware), but I think it's definitely something that women tend to find more interesting than the visceral thrill of blowing someone up. They want the emotional context that the story can provide, in order to pull them through the gameplay they might not enjoy at first glance.
The Booby Trap
However, Eve's specific storyline does have its weaknesses when it comes to women. Those of you who have read my review of The Empyrean Age can already guess where I'm going -- and to be fair, this is hardly a problem that Eve alone falls victim to. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of strong female characters in the Eve storyline. Newsflash, gentlemen. Most women do not want to play tarted-up sexpots that need a big, strong man to save them all the time. What does Eve have?
- Jamyl Sarum, gets half a page devoted to her in the novel talking about how sexy she is and then at the end her suppressed "real" self begs for help from Falek Grange, a man she is hinted at having a sexual relationship with in the past. Her "strong" self is evidently an alternate personality or some sort of possession.
- Haatakan Oiritsuu, CEO of the largest Caldari megacorporation, gives up her position to Tibus Heth without a fight and can't seem to find bodyguards who are loyal enough to protect her. Since then, she's been co-opted by the same man that forced her out of her position (which, to be fair, could be an improvement).
- Karin Midular throws a tantrum in a government meeting and nearly gets raped by (yet another) poorly-chosen bodyguard, only to be saved by Shakor.
- Mila Gariushi (aka Kinachi Hepimeki) runs off after her brother is killed and lets the man that stands for everything her brother hated push Ishukone (and the State) around with nary a peep, despite being his heir apparent.
I am not saying that you can't have strippers or prostitutes or sex or whatever in Eve -- for the most part, we're all adults here and we can handle adult subjects. But for once, I would like to see a female character get the upper hand in a big way and behave like a strong woman. Recently, I finished watching the Rome TV series. That's a show that takes place in a time where women were legally subordinate to men in almost every way, which was rife with nudity and sex, and yet I still thought that nearly all the main female characters were strong, well-developed people who did not exist simply as things for the men to have sex with or collapse into tears whenever things didn't go their way. They had as much of a role in the events that unfolded as the male characters, even if they did it in different ways. That's the sort of thing that will open up the appeal to women.
Expanding the Social Sphere
This is something that Eve already does well, I think, but maybe doesn't promote as much as it could. I think women gamers tend to be more attracted to "social games," where the game is as much about interacting with other people, often in a cooperative way, as anything else. A lot of the marketing for Eve in the past has focused on the shiny ships, big fleet battles, and its wide-open, often cutthroat nature; for sure, these are things that are definitely strengths of the game, but not necessarily the most appealing to women. However, one of Eve's other big strengths can be the extent to which it encourages cooperative effort; CCP has highlighted this somewhat with their "Butterfly Effect" ad, and it's part of this Goonswarm recruitment poster too, but I'm still not sure it really gets played up as much as it could be.
Incarna may help with this, but it's not going to be the secret key to opening the floodgates to women. Adding some dress-up minigames and social spaces is not going to keep female players, although it may be a good way to get them to dip their toes in the water. In order to retain those gamers they are going to need something more than what they can get from free games or games geared towards that kind of thing more specifically (like Second Life, for instance). Retaining those players will require making those social spaces meaningful within the context of the rest of the game -- something I'm not sure is possible with any sort of game mechanic, but which will only happen if Incarna is seen by the majority of the player base as a valued addition to the game rather than something tacked on or seen a separate game in and of itself.
I also think that Eve's marketing needs to promote stories of cooperative, constructive social play in Eve over the kinds of stories that seem to make Eve's big press -- the GHSC heist, the EIB scandal, and the collapse of BoB and GoonSwarm, for instance. While there's no doubt that those are possibilities that are unique to Eve's single-server universe and they are extremely impressive (and interesting) in their own right, women seem to be much more drawn to constructive, rather than destructive, social events. Things like the ongoing mission of Eve University or the Providence effort (prior to its recent collapse) might be good examples of that. Certainly, to some extent, CCP can't do anything about what outside news organizations choose to cover, but they can at least try to counterbalance it.
The Learning Cliff and Fumbling in the Dark
I think by now everyone has probably seen the Eve "learning cliff" graph. Certainly, Eve has suffered in the past by perhaps not being the most accessible game out there, but they've recently made big strides in revamping the tutorials -- if you haven't seen CCP Eris' presentation from FanFest 2009 about that, it's worth seeing. However, I think Eve is still very intimidating for new players to just be dropped into -- and CCP knows this, which is why when I see them at various gaming conventions they are always trying to get people to start playing with a friend. This is an impediment for getting new players of all stripes, but especially women.
A lot of the material I've read on game design indicates that men and women tend to want different ways to learn new tasks -- men tend to like fumbling around in the dark, so to speak, until they figure them out by doing. Women (including me) tend to like reading the manual, getting coached through things, and then doing them. Eve has come a long way from where it was, but it is still, to some extent, a game where you learn by fumbling around in the dark. The new tutorials and the Evelopedia have done a great job providing documentation for new characters, but the high-level game of Eve is far different from the high-level game of other MMOs. I have never seen the kind of basically scientific research used to determine the boundaries of game mechanics and out-of-the-box thinking for other games that I have seen with Eve; the example that sticks in my mind is the Goonswarm grid manipulation guide.
To some extent, this is never going to really be presented in an easy to learn form (at least, until it is already in wide use). That's something I don't think is likely to change with Eve, especially as CCP often goes back and revises game mechanics fairly often. Personally, I actually see that as a good thing, but this is going to be an impediment as long as things like that exist. Promoting corporations like Eve University is probably the best antidote to this sort of problem, but then CCP gets in the trap of showing favoritism to one alliance. That's a trap they are understandably wary of falling into.
Note that I'm not saying women can't figure this stuff out too -- but I think they tend to be a little more intimidated than the guys, especially when you take into account the culture of the player base, which brings me to my next point....
This Place Smells Like A Locker Room
Possibly, at the highest level, the biggest obstacle to getting more women to play Eve is simply that there aren't that many women playing Eve right now, and the culture is a bit on the intimidating side. When you join a Ventrilo server and three guys tell you "pics or stfu," you kinda just want to reach through the internet and punch them in the face, not hop through seventy jumps to blow up the opposing alliance with them. To be fair, a lot of the women I've known in Eve can give as good as they get, but I think that's because we're a self-selected group. I work with a bunch of guys at work and am used to the same sort of attitude (though to be fair, the folks in CAIN have never treated me -- or any of the other women in the corp -- with any less respect than the guys, for which I'm thankful).
It can get tiresome to deal with that kind of crap if you have to put up with it on a regular basis though, and after dealing with guys making dick jokes and remarking on co-eds' boobs all day, I have to say I think I'd rather not deal with it when I'm in my off hours. That sort of attitude can be hard to avoid sometimes, especially if you deal with the bigger alliances. One of the reasons I was happy in a smaller corporation or alliance was because there was a much friendlier (and less anonymous) atmosphere. Guys seem less likely to let out their inner dumbass when they are more familiar with the person whose tits they are demanding to see. :)
However, this is something that's not really anything CCP can control -- aside from doing what they can to encourage women to play in other ways, so that we aren't such a curiosity. That's something the players are going to have to do if they want to see more women in the game -- which, honestly, I'm not sure a lot of them do. I think that by and large, most of them would be happier if more women played, but they don't really have any interest in doing anything to actively promote more women players in Eve.
Does It Really Matter?
In the end though, so what? So Eve's player base is 95% male. Is that actually a problem? In the grand scheme of things, I have to admit it's probably not. Until CCP has 50 million subscribers, there's probably going to be plenty more guys out there to pull into the game that are more likely to enjoy it and stick with it. It's not like "men 18-34" is a small demographic. They can probably survive just fine appealing to that market.
On the other hand, for a woman who does like Eve, it matters a great deal to me. It does get a little lonely out there being the one woman in 20 players. I'm not going to quit Eve because of it, or throw myself a pity party, but it'd sure be nice to go to FanFest and not have it be a total sausage fest. :)
Edit: In the interest of full disclosure, after reading some of the other blogs on this topic, I have to admit that I originally picked Caldari for Svetlana because Civire appeared to have the best hair. However, that is not what kept me in the game for 5 years, nor what inspired me to write so much on Caldari society and history. Cheap tricks to appeal to girls might get them in the door, but it won't keep them here.
Highlights of the Banter so far (according to me):
The Girls Who Fly Spaceships
Space Boobies Are Bad, Mmmkay?
New Eden Doesn't Need To Change For Eve -- Adam Needs To Get Over Himself
Eve Online and Women (sorta)
Think Outside the Spaceship
Don't Change Eve For Me
Where Are The Laydeez of Eve?
Where Are All The Wenches?
Evequality: The Rise of the Female Gamer
Women? IN MY SPACESHIP? Is She From Mars As Well?
The Female of the Species
Eve and the X by X Genetic Succession Unit
Sociability V
What Women Want In Eve
Getting In Touch With Our Feminine Side
It's a Woman's World (They Just Don't Know It Yet)
Women In Eve -- Can It Be Done?
You'd Rather Be Playing The Sims, Right?
Women In Eve
EVE: WTB Girls?
All About Eve
Hell Hath No Fury
The Ladies of New Eden: An Analysis Of How Men Are Not From Mars, and Women Are Not From Venus
The Ladies of New Eden
Eve vs Women
Gender Inclusiveness in CCP's Eve Online
