Blue world
Everyone doesn’t really want games that appeal to women. Everyone really just wants women to play their games. Otherwise, wouldn’t everyone be specifically looking to hire females to be on the design team, or to take more chances when it comes to design? — Xanthippe, on f13.net.
Once upon a time there was a world where half of the population couldn’t see the color blue. Painters got very frustrated when people kept asking them to paint their house the color of the sky, or of water, because they couldn’t see blue, most of them, and they didn’t know what was being asked for.
The painter’s union started having seminars on blue. “Sort of greenish, but with less yellow in it.”
The painter trade association was very surprised when something sort of purplish sold very well, and immediately started measuring the red quotient in it.
A lot of fans of painting said that it didn’t matter, because blue was sissy anyway, and not real painting.
But the people who could see blue kept insisting that blue was all around them, if only they would look and see.
So a few of the painter companies tried hiring some of the folks who could see blue. They quickly complained that other workers were painting over their blue all the time, because they couldn’t see it. “Outline it in yellow?” they were told. Or, “Are you sure there’s really blue out there? Because we see no evidence of it, and market research says that there aren’t any blue paintings that sell.” A lot of them never got hired, because it was figured that if they were crazy enough to want to paint with blue, they’d probably make bad employees.
A lot of the folks who could see blue ended up doing other things with paint instead–calligraphy, or graphic design. Nobody really noticed that they used blue like crazy, so it was only the painting industry that had a limited market.
Eventually, though, it was noticed that over time, everyone gets to see blue–the folks who didn’t see it tended to start seeing it as they got older. But then they had trouble working in the painting industry too, because they were too old, and their paintings didn’t have enough red and yellow in them, and were “too subdued for the market.”
In the end, the anti-blue brigades even got the industry to the point where the top sellers were only certain shades of yellow and red and green.
The conclusion, of course, was inevitable. Painting was probably inherently incompatible with blue. There was never a market for blue. Those blue-seers who worked with paints adapted in order to make a living.
And that’s why in that world there tend to be very few seascapes or pictures of puffy clouds.
17 Responses to “Blue world”
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gaming forums, he was kind of a regular at the now defunct Grimwell Online, and good to discuss with. So his blog might be a good place to be. One nice example of his writing is his parable on why there are so few games designed for women, called Blue World . – posted by Tobold @ 4:48 PM Permanent Link (0) comments
Blogroll Joel on SoftwareRaph Koster Sunny Walker Thoughts for Now Sex, Lies and Advertising
Bartle?s 5 most important folks in virtual worlds [IMG] Posted by Raph’s Website [HTML][XML][PERM] on Fri, 20 Jul 2007 03:12:38 +0000
The lesson to be learned here can only be discerned if the author lets the reader know if he sees blue or what he thinks is blue. To put a differently way; the reader needs to know what color the sky is in the writer’s world. 🙂
[…] Raph has offered his explanation as to why more games aren’t made for women, via parable of people who can’t see blue. • • • […]
I like Jeff Hickman better:
“We go out and say, ‘’you know what, we want more of those players, we want that 3.5 million from that game over there.’ So instead of sticking to the thing that our players really love, we start changing it. And now we’re alienating the players playing our game, losing our subscribers. The 3.5 million who are over there playing that game, they’re happy. They’re playing that game already. We’re not attracting them – or, it’s very difficult to attract them. So the chance that you’re taking as a developer making those changes is so huge. And you see it happen all the time. If you look at the games out there, there’s not many big games – or small games that have not made that error. So, that’s my rant.”
I love this parable (which can be applied to many circumstances). However, the entities who should most be affected by it probably don’t possess sufficient insight.
(i.e. If one doesn’t “get it,” then he or she is not part of the problem.)
Tige, one might also think they see blue, but be mistaking some other color for it. There really isn’t any way to know!
So, I THINK I see blue, but I could be completely wrong.
Oof, this just got picked up by NextGen.biz.
A couple points I think this parable misses.
The current painters got into painting because they liked red, yellow, etc. They want to paint what they enjoy, so they continue to use red, yellow, etc. and to some extent, aren’t concerned about those that see blue. Sure that’s a lot of people that aren’t being served, but they enjoy what they’re doing so why should they have to change. If they can make a living at what they enjoy, who can blame them.
Those that see blue need to quit whining about those that can’t see it. Just start painting in blue and let people know your doing it. This Internet thing is pretty good at getting the word out especially these things with tails that are long. The non-blue painting industry didn’t popup overnight. It’s gone through many ups and downs. It’s time for the blue painters to go out and create.
I remain bothered by the idea that there is something distinctly womany that would bring women to gaming. I think there are specifically anti-female things that games do (Male avatars, everything from DOA Beach Volleyball), but I don’t know that there are specifically female things – that there is actually a blue to see. That the problem is trying to divide it into blue and not blue in the first place.
I think that there is something distinctly personal that each individual brings to their job. It’s an amalgamation of personal experience, opinions, personalities, skills, talents, and social network. The more diverse your employees, the greater the breadth of knowledge and experience you have access to.
What is needed is not just the perspective of women, but the perspectives of people who aren’t deeply immersed in geek culture. It’s not even that games are made by geeks, it’s that games are made by twenty-something middle-class college-educated white male geeks.
A good example of another kind of “blue”: Western vs. Asian gamers. No one would deny that there are clearly differences, even though there are games that have strong crossover appeal to both audiences. Culture, and the way it shapes thoughts, desires, playstyles, etc., lies at the heart of those differences.
I believe there are things that would bring a different audience to gaming, among them women. Dance Dance Revolution, Karaoke Revolution, and Katamari Damacy are great examples. In addition to having an appeal different than other games, they also have a variety of characteristics that specifically make them appealing to women.
I think it’s sort of ironic that the very first time I ever visit your blog, the first post is about Women In Games. It’s nice to see that you haven’t given up on us.
Janey.
well, the problem is not binary. it is not that some people can’t see blue, its more like they don’t know about any of the colors from (0,0,125) to (0,255,255) and also never heard of CMYK printing.
The biggest non-blue out there is the ‘kill one billion foozles to advance’ shade. It’s often mixed with shades of ‘badges, ranks and loot’ and ‘i r teh pwn j00’. This is of course only indirectly related to girls and boys and western stereotypes, but the people who like a bit of blue are getting royally pissed off with having to use exceedingly non-blue mechanics to even get to the tiny bit of blue included in the games.
[…] Zen of Design: A Parable In Blue […]
[…] Sorry, that came across badly – I don’t doubt there are still issues, but I haven’t seen any yet. They have a forum for bug reports…Still, it’s way more fun that I thought it would be based on the initial description.It perhaps especially struck a chord with me due to this post by Ralph Koster about women in games “Once upon a time there was a world where half of the population couldn�t see the color blue…. …And that�s why in that world there tend to be very few seascapes or pictures of puffy clouds.” […]
[…] a long way since then. Do we have a long way to go? Sure. But progress is progress. (10 Comments |Comment on this)12:15pm […]