Technology

"As I'm a woman myself, when I make games, I try not to just have them be male fantasy figures, as people needing to be rescued. I like to make female characters people of both genders can relate to. But we are seeing more strong-willed women in games geared towards female audiences."

"I think girls tend to like RPGs, like Final Fantasy. Girls who play games like that seem to get more of a desire to work in this field. I usually don't think to make games strictly for a female audience, myself, but I think my RPGs attract a larger female audience. Violent, war-themed titles seem to attract an overwhelmingly male audience. I think if companies want to get more girls to play their games, they should keep this in mind."

"We producers don't think that FFVIII is much harder than FFVII! However with FFVIII, we have tried to bring in a mode of play which requires more active thinking from the players. Yes, you can play it all the way through without thinking much about strategy or combination of energies but you have to move very, very slowly. However, if you become more involved with the game and think more 'actively', it's much more fun. The harder you think, the better you play. It's wrong to say simply 'easier' or 'harder'..."

"I played the Mortal Kombat arcade game in their office for half an hour. I turned to [former Midway Games chief] Neil D. Nicastro and I said, “This is Star Wars meets Enter the Dragon. This is not just an arcade game. This is a whole phenomenon.” I said, “If you give me the rights to this, I promise you I will produce this, not just in movies, but in every medium in the world.” He looked at me and said, “You’re full of crap! It’s just an arcade game!” That began a three-month process of me trying to convince them that it was more than just an arcade game. They didn’t believe it… I finally just wore them down and they optioned the rights to me for an insanely short amount of time, which now I would never do, but it was my first deal at my company."

"There seems to be a lot of retro-game nostalgia in recent years. Perhaps it’s because so many gamers have reached that age where they want to look back, or maybe it’s because of how easy it is to tweet out ‘Hey, remember this!?'"

"I think one of the most important attributes a designer can have is…not only the ability, but almost the unconscious constant experience of putting yourself in other people’s heads and watching them as they have an experience. Building an experience through the eyes of someone else is incredibly challenging. I think that’s what makes great designers. A bunch of my meta-points that I’ve drawn out over the last 20 years are about that, how you put yourself in other people’s shoes."

"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games."

"What you have to keep in mind as a collaborator — that’s why we get very uncomfortable when it seems like we’re getting singled out. We as game developers. It seems trite to say so, but it’s a group effort, a team effort. So much of it is being in the right place at the right time with the right people and the right ideas. It seems wrong for any person to be elevated like you’re the author of this thing. You can’t even remember sometimes whose ideas were what, because it’s this big messy wonderful process."

"Once all the bugs have been squashed and the testers are having lots of fun playing the game from beginning to end, the process of submission begins. A strict process of certification must be passed, and when complete, the game is ready for duplication and distribution, on its way to a store near you!"

"Once the technical and artistic vision of the game is planned, people can be brought onboard to start the main production work on the game. Artists build the environments, characters, and objects for the game world, and designers write the dialog and start making things function story-wise. The most difficult part of this stage is that everyone is working with partially complete technology, since the game programmers are also working to create the functionality of the engine and game systems. It's a careful sequencing of work that allows us to complete this stage, similar to trying to film a movie while technicians are still building your lights and cameras. Once the bulk of the work on the game is complete, the bug database starts to take over as the driving force in development. The list of remaining tasks starts to dwindle, and the team works through the enormous task of perfecting the millions of details that will make it a solid game. Quality assurance testers also take center stage, providing valuable feedback about what's fun and what's not, in addition to spotting bugs. Designers work throughout this phase to improve the balancing of the game, making it more fun and exciting with every day."

"Initially, the work centers on the vision of the game, both in terms of the story and the artistic style. Lots of story development meetings take place, and concept artists work to flesh out the designs and environments that will become a living world by the end of development. At the same time, the engine and technology is planned, and early work on the technical design is done."

"But having said that, you know, the premise is this character that we come up with – that we are getting input on – there is what I want to achieve with that character and there is that at the forefront. There is this sort of core thing that we are working towards – that I am driving but I get feedback from the various parts of the business to ensure that it is something that will be done by many."

"In the old days, there wasn’t really like a formal process, but these days when we create a character we ensure to get input from for example SEGA Europe or from the marketing department. We get input from input from various parts of the SEGA business to ensure that this character that we create is something that will be loved by many people."

"And another thing that has influence while creating a character is when I’m creating that character – what I think is cool at the time, of you know, is going around at the time around me in my environment or the industry would have an influence on me and what I think is cool. The overall output of the character design."

"So when creating a character in the fore front of my mind is that this character is linked to the game design. So, you know, unlike the character design for an anime or a film or something – when we create a character it has to tie in with the game-play. So for example, Sonic is invincible while he is jumping. He turns into a ball and has all the spikes around him. So this is a visual representation of what is happening in the game."

"Obviously not all video game players are misogynist harassers, just as not all games are funded by the Pentagon to present tailored narratives about a controversial war. But all video games do present a worldview to the player, whether it is explicit or not, and understanding that world view can help us understand what the players themselves believe. As an inescapable part of public discourse and an enormous media market we ignore at our peril, video games are not just video games: They are the site of political contention, of negotiation over social boundaries, and of free speech itself."

"Today, the global video game industry is one of the world’s largest culture industries. According to market research firm IDC, the global video game market topped $179 billion in revenue in 2020, making it larger than the global film industry ($100 billion) and North American professional sports (around $75 billion) combined. Video games’ cultural impact skews young: According to the Entertainment Software Association, 70% of people under the age of 18 regularly play video games. Younger players also tend to be male: According to a Pew survey, almost twice as many young men regularly play games as young women. That doesn’t mean all players are young; 64% of players are between 18 and 54 years old—prime voting age."

"By the ’80s, the early pioneering work done by female programmers had mostly been forgotten. In contrast, Hollywood was putting out precisely the opposite image: Computers were a male domain. In hit movies like “Revenge of the Nerds,” “Weird Science,” “Tron,” “WarGames” and others, the computer nerds were nearly always young white men. Video games, a significant gateway activity that led to an interest in computers, were pitched far more often at boys, as research in 1985 by Sara Kiesler, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, found. “In the culture, it became something that guys do and are good at,” says Kiesler, who is also a program manager at the National Science Foundation. “There were all kinds of things signaling that if you don’t have the right genes, you’re not welcome.”"

"I have very strong opinions on that, and it's kind of my area of expertise. The reason why I got out of video games, or am at least leaning away from video games (I just contract for them,) is really that a video game is a terrible place to tell a story. It's really because the reason we go to a game is different from the reason why we go to a more passive form of entertainment. And really a great story can be there, but it's optional. What must be there is good gameplay. And that's why at its core, I think it's inaccurate to call it some kind of sequential storytelling medium when, at its core, it's not necessary. If you get a guy who just good at drawing wacky cartoons, you've probably got in the wrong guy if your next game is going to see some Gothic horror. Yeah, I think in a way video games have gotten a really bad start with how expensive it became to develop in such a short amount of time. You know if you look at the budgets of what it cost to make a film in the first year that film was invented versus the fifth year or the 10th year the budgets didn’t go up astronomically. But if you look at video games, they went nuts and the original developers were working with this primitive technology and most games were done with under eight people in under a year for three quarters of a million dollars if you were lucky."

"Work hard. That’s the thing that most people who love games and animation may not realize about what they’re seeing. It requires an ugly amount of work. You have to dedicate your life to it, but I believe almost anyone can learn how to make games and animate at a competent level. I don’t believe in following your dreams and going into too much fairy dust about the arts. Sure, it’s fun, but there are many times it’s not fun and you still have to do it."

"It feels like the gamers are finally in charge of our games. I like that. I trust that crowd so much just because of our Kickstarter campaign. We never approached our audience this way. Usually we make a game and it’s like we gift it to the players. But this time the players gifted us with the ability to make the game. And like all of my successes, PencilTest and the Kickstarter backers lifted the ceiling off of me. I hope I’ve done everyone right. I really want to honor the investment people have made in this game. It’s important that it succeed and it’s important that this model work for other games and developers too."

"Unlike novels or movies, video games are an interactive medium where the player's actions drive the story forward, so I had actually wanted to allow players to manipulate the evidence themselves earlier on in the series."

"Games can be art, and they can be significant and all the glorified things that we want them to be,” Swift said. “But if you ask a kid if their toys are important, they’ll say yes, and please don’t take them away."

"What’s great about games in particular is that it’s a socially acceptable way for adults to imagine. Take for example a fantasy that has you as a big, burly weapons expert. You run through buildings gunning down bad guys, saving the day and becoming a hero. “If you start telling all your coworkers that you just imagined that, they’d think you were certifiable."

"Playing video games is like playing tennis or running or traveling. It’s an interest. When a couple participates in a hobby together it’s exciting. The more a couple has in common, the more validated they feel by one another."

"Of course another layer of challenge came from the fact that, like most other developers at that time, we were still feeling our way with 3D. Things like camera and character control presented a lot of interesting new challenges and required us to try out a number of approaches before we settled on solutions that seemed to work."

"Video games are a prevalent and increasingly expressive medium within modern society. In the forty years since the introduction of the first home video game, the field has attracted exceptional artistic talent. An amalgam of traditional art forms—painting, writing, sculpture, music, storytelling, cinematography—video games offer artists a previously unprecedented method of communicating with and engaging audiences."

"Show me your children’s games, and I will show you the next hundred years."

"This industry has some profound issues in the way it treats women."

"Many studies show the link between playing ultra-violent video games and violent behavior. We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions."

"Past video game play in excess of 3 h/wk correlated with 37% fewer errors (P<.02) and 27% faster completion (P<.03). Overall Top Gun score (time and errors) was 33% better (P<.005) for video game players and 42% better (P<.01) if they played more than 3 h/wk. Current video game players made 32% fewer errors (P=.04), performed 24% faster (P<.04), and scored 26% better overall (time and errors) (P<.005) than their nonplaying colleagues. When comparing demonstrated video gaming skills, those in the top tertile made 47% fewer errors, performed 39% faster, and scored 41% better (P<.001 for all) on the overall Top Gun score. Regression analysis also indicated that video game skill and past video game experience are significant predictors of demonstrated laparoscopic skills."

"GamesBeat: Do you like an open world better than a more story-based game? What do you think of those different directions?"

"GamesBeat: What do you think of the first-person shooter genre today?"

"This underrepresentation of women even pervades television commercials, where women not only appear less, but are also more likely to be portrayed as secondary characters supporting a male character when they are present (Ganahl, Prinsen, & Netzley, 2003). The same trend holds true for video games, where female characters are less likely to be heroes or main characters and, when they are included, they tend to dress in a manner consistent with stereotypes (Dietz, 1998). Female (vs. male) video game characters are also more likely to be sexualized and scantily dressed, while male characters tend to be hypermasculine and violent (Dill & Thill, 2007). And, consistent with research on other media effects, sexist content does affect consumers in a content-consistent manner. For example, media consumption in general (Swami et al., 2010) and frequency of playing sexist video games specifically are both associated with greater benevolent sexism (Stermer & Burkley, 2015). In another study, greater video game playing over one's lifetime was found to correlate with hostile sexism (Fox & Potocki, 2016). Together, the research shows that the way gender roles are portrayed in media can influence consumers’ own attitudes."

"I used to go to game events and feel like I was going home ... Now it's just like... are any of the people I'm currently in the room with ones that said they wanted to beat me to death?"

"... if playing ultraviolent video games is one of your great pleasures in life, then virtual mayhem can become even more enjoyable in the wake of a biohappiness revolution – if you so desire. That said, as an embarrassed player of first-person shooters myself, I hope posthumans will do something more edifying."

"We said we’d never make a video game unless we really did it hands-on. We’re both gamers, we both grew up as gamers and we both respect gaming as an art form, just like musical theatre so to us it wasn’t just ‘oh go and do something like that’. Once we’d finished Book of Mormon, South Park: The Stick of Truth really was our other big project, and right now it’s this."

"It ... appears that there is no antisocial theme too base for some in the video-game industry to exploit."

"Gaming culture has been pretty misogynistic for a long time now. There's ample evidence of that over and over again... What we're finally seeing is that it became so egregious that now companies are starting to wake up and say, "We need to stop this. This has got to change."

"That Ender could be tricked into believing a real battle scenario was a game-like video simulation is one of the most believable post-modern twists in modern science fiction, particularly considering how often the difference between our digital and "real" lives is debated and conflated. Ender becomes a "hero" in a supposed video game, something that embodies and magnifies fears about video games, both in 1985 when the book was published and today."

"Much of the conversation—if I can even call it that—has been a toxic sludge of rumor, invective, and gender bias. The irony comes from people who claim to be challenging the ethics of game journalists through patently unethical behavior."

"It was intended to be ironic, to illustrate what I perceived at the time to be an elitist attitude among a certain kind of PC gamer. People who invest in expensive gaming PCs and continually spend money to make sure the tech in their brightly-lit tower cases is up to date. Who actually prefer games that are temperamental to get running and that have complicated keyboard interfaces, just because it discourages new or 'casual' players who will in some way taint the entire community with their presence. I meant it as a dig."

"What quickly becomes obvious is that The Witcher is very much a PC-exclusive game, which are typically designed to be as complex and unintuitive as possible so that those dirty console-playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC-gaming master race."

"For these screen-obsessed teenagers, the researchers say that parents should try to put them in social situations where they have to see other people's perspectives or needs, such as charity work."

"Many teenagers could play these games without any evidence of a change in attitude. And non-violent games seemed to have no adverse effects on "moral reasoning", regardless of time spent. But the problems arose with teenagers who spent more than three hours every day in front of a screen, continuously playing these violent games without any other real-life interaction."

"In-depth research into the behaviour of about 100 13- and 14-year-olds found over-exposure to violent games weakened empathy for others."

"It's almost entirely women being threatened in ."

"Art is subjective; it’s in the eye of the beholder. I think video games can be fun. They can teach eye-hand coordination and strategy and they can introduce children to computer technology. And there is no doubt they are intricate and sophisticated technologically. I’m not in any way trying to do away with video games. I’m strictly concerned with a small subset of games that are harmful to children — those that are excessively violent and sexually explicit. I want to make sure children can’t obtain these games without their parents’ consent."

"We know that violent video games have an impact on children. Just recently there was cutting edge research conducted at Indiana University School of Medicine, which concluded that adolescents with more exposure to violent media were less able to control and to direct their thoughts and behavior, to stay focused on a task, to plan, to screen out distractions, and to use experience to guide inhibitions."

"There have been four decades of research on the effect of media violence on our kids and it all points to the same conclusion -- media violence leads to more aggression, anti-social behavior, and it desensitizes kids to violence. The American Academy of Pediatrics summed up this point in a report entitled Media Exposure Feeding Children's Violent Acts. "Playing violent video games is to an adolescent's violent behavior what smoking tobacco is to lung cancer," it said. This isn't about offending our sensibilities -- it is about protecting our children."