No Penis? Please Fuck Off. kthxbai!

As much as I do love my angry rants (and I did set up a dedicated category for ranting on this very blog), tonight I’m just sad at the current state of affairs when it comes to including women. Not one, but TWO massive games houses have proven today that the female demographic is nothing more than an afterthought.

First up this morning was Activision. Lauren Wainwright of Daily Girl Attack Panic Super HD Remix queued outside GAME in Oxford Street for the midnight launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Here’s Lauren’s take:

“It wasn’t until I got home that I just got pissed off. The main reason people go to midnight launches is the extra goodies they pick up along the way. I did well, grabbing t-shirts, bags and posters to decorate my life in. It’s silly that I like these things. I opened up a rather sweet looking booklet to find a CD with some extra goodies on, a see-through poster and a downloadable code for your avatar. Sweet! I love avatar stuff and some exclusive Black Ops clothing would do quite nicely. Well no… it won’t because it’s for blokes only.”

Yup, if you’re a lady who likes Black Ops, then STFU and use a male avatar LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO.

Would it have been so hard to provide male and female avatar codes? It couldn’t cost them any significant amount even if people did give the unwanted codes to their friends. Certainly not in comparison to the amount spent on the Battersea CODBLOPS launch event.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I found out earlier this evening that Sony put out a call for gamers to playtest and provide feedback on the new MotorStorm, with a £200 cash incentive. The kicker? You need to be male, aged 18-35 (because that’s not already a saturated demographic, right?) and British. Jennifer Allen posting this to Twitter . There’s also another take on this issue over at BeefJack

I’ve highlighted the key points but here they are for those of you who can’t be arsed to load the image:

“This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in gaming on any level.”

Good start.

“Please note: WE ARE LOOKING FOR A BROAD RANGE OF GAMING EXPERIENCE HERE”

Excellent.

“I confirm that neither I nor any of my close family or friends work in market research, marketing, public relations, journalism or anything related to the computer games industry; also that I am male aged 18-35 and either a British national or medium term (10yr+ or since 10 years old) resident. Yes/No”

I understand that focus groups like to target specific types of users but how the fuck is British males aged 18-35 a broad range of gaming experience?

Hey, I guess I am angry after all… -.-

Related posts: Cover Art and X-Blades: Now Featuring Almost-Porn

Update 1: Seems like Activision may be trying to make amends, via Paranerd. Efforts much appreciated by this female gamer.

Update 2: And Sony have changed the survey. Hooray! Sad that it ever happened in the first place but if this is how the industry needs to finally learn its lessons, so be it. Of course, you still need to be British or a longtime resident for some reason.

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