The Baker and I spent the weekend in Seattle, holding hands with Lenin, eating delicious donuts, and not buying any of the chittering horde of Forks, WA-themed Twilight merchandise currently swarming across the touristy parts of Seattle. Oh hell no, they have no shame about that shit; Twilight is the biggest thing to hit Washington state tourism since Bigfoot. You can buy Twilight shirts (pick a team! Go Edward! Go, um, Cody or whatever his name is!), mugs, chocolate, tampons, training bras, the whole nine dismal yards. Just about the only thing you won’t find available for purchase in Seattle’s finer schlock-pits is a crap-ass Twilight video game, thank Christ.
In an odd coincidence (see what I did there?) MCV reports that analyst Nick Gibson is wondering why nobody has licensed out a crap-ass Twilight video game yet:
With the franchise yet to penetrate the games market, Games Investor Consulting analyst Nick Gibson has told MCV that publishers are missing out one of the most lucrative properties available.
“Given how hot a property it is, Twilight could easily present a seven-figure exploitation opportunity, especially if publishers look at taking it beyond retail gaming and considers network gaming,” he told us.
[…]
“It may well be that the rights holders aren’t aware of the potential benefits as they haven’t explored the games market before,” he said.
“It’s not unheard of – although it is increasingly unusual in this day and age.”
The analyst predicts that a Twilight game would have to be targeted carefully in order to be successful, rather than rolled out to the typical gaming audience. But he claims there is still a huge potential market out there.
“Given the demographic Twilight appeals to, there probably isn’t a huge crossover between them and Xbox 360 or PS3 fans,” said Gibson.
“The brand’s appeal could actually extend significantly beyond the expected teen girl market and into the 20- to 30-year-old female market, which has a very substantial crossover into gaming.
So at least he has the good sense to know that a Twilight console title would be laughed off of the shelves and into the bargain bin within mere minutes. And indeed, social network gaming a la Farmville certainly lacks the pubescent, testosterone-fumed treehouse atmosphere of your average video game retail shop. I’d go so far as to say that if one wanted to leverage the Twilight brand into the video game medium, soaking Twilight fans for their lipgloss money on Facebook would probably be the route least likely to fail.Come to think of it, I’m surprised there aren’t more licensed games on Facebook. There are thinly-veiled knockoffs of other franchises and generic taps into the pop culture zeitgeist, but I can’t really name any big licensed properties that have a Facebook gaming tie-in or what-have-you. It seems to me that it would be easy enough to bash out a Flash-based grind-fest a la every Zynga game ever with minimal effort; perhaps that wave is still just gathering force.
The future’s looking so bright you gotta wear shades, eh?
[h/t Edge Online]
The thing that really bothers me is the gaming industries attempt to market games to “female gamers” and those games are all horrible “play with dolls” type games. When you look at games for kids below the age of 9 on DS, its clear that there are titles specifically aimed at girls. These games are typically sorely lacking in imagination and sadly reinforce gender specific stereotypes. Look at the “imagine” series, you too can have a future in modeling, babysitting, fashion design, salon, boutique owner.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=nintendo%20ds%20Imagine
How about “Imagine: Astronaut”, “Imagine: CEO”, “Imagine: Video Game Designer”, something that is awesome and that can actually inspire young girls. Of course though, if you want to inspire maybe a video game isn’t the best idea, but we do start to learn these things at a young age. Breaking some of these stereotypes and making games that are good for gamers of all genders should be what the market is concentrating on.
Miah, you’re totally right. The industry seems to think that in order to attract female gamers or get parents to buy a game for their female child they need to be targeted female products. How about just making mainstream titles less misogynistic? It doesn’t have to be all pink ribbons and rainbows and heteronormativity, make big ticket titles that don’t hate women. This is why I like Mass Effect (in theory) because the player can choose to be a female Shepherd. Or Mercenaries to a certain extent because Jennifer Mui is just as capable as the other two playable options and she isn’t hypersexualized.