Will Complex Character Dramas Appeal to Female Gamers?
Newsweek has an article about how game developers are focusing more on women and developing games with more of a social and element element to them. Of course, there are amny women that love playing first-person shooters and action video games but this particular Newsweek article focuses on game companies that are trying to develop games for women that aren't already active gamers. The article says some females have been attracted social worlds in games like the Sims. Newsweek says a Sims producer told them that some of the female Sim players are what are known as dollhousers and a few of the men sound like dollhouse ruiners.
Boys and men play, too, but not quite the same way, it seems. "We have what we call our deviant players," says McArthur. "I hate stereotypes, but they're usually male, and they like to create chaos." A favorite trick for deviants: putting Sims families in homes with no doors or windows, where they're bound to die. At the other extreme: "a lot of our women we call 'dollhousers'," says McArthur. "They like to build their dream house." That takes time, but when everything in it is working right, "then they can spend all their time socializing." Which means more woohoo.
The article also says women are drawn to highly interactive MMORPG's like the popular World of Warcraft game. The most interesting part of this article is the discussion of a game called Facade that uses artificial intelligence to simulate real emotions in the game's characters. Facade bills itself as a one-act interactive drama.
So far, only one game has moved into this arena. It's a free download called Facade, which its creators, Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas, call a "prototype research project." Although the file is a huge 800 megabytes and only fast PCs can handle it, Stern says the game has been downloaded 150,000 times since July.
Facade's minimalist graphics are the antithesis of those in most modern electronic games. The personalities are what count. "We're trying to appeal to the non-computer geek," says Stern, "people who are turned off by games because they're not about people's lives." He says at least half the downloads are by women, perhaps more. "The experience is like standing on a stage with two improvisational actors who are trying to make a drama happen," says Stern. They're a man, Trip, and a woman, Grace, whose marriage is coming apart. You hear them arguing through the door, but when you enter, they tell you everything is just fine. Soon, "they're trying to get you to take sides," says Stern. "You can help them, provoke them, flirt. A lot of the humor comes in when a player acts crazy or out of bounds" -- a deviant, no doubt -- and the characters try to keep the drama going."
Facade sounds like it may a little too dramatic for most people but these algorithms used to generate complex character behaviors and emotions will probably be incorporated into many virtual worlds in the future. The more real the non-player characters seem the more interesting the games can become. It will take a lot to pull the daytime Soaps crowd from their television sets but it could happen and the game company that figures it out could bring in huge revenues.
Newsweek has an 
