More about the lady

Quick gamer demographics. I'm female, 40+ and willing to spend money on things that interest me. This probably means that I'm an outlying point on the charts of who buys games and what they buy. I've had contact with older gamers and contrary to game developer beliefs, there are women who like and play computer games. Now we would like to see a few games developed with female lead characters!

I think it's fairly obvious that I love adventure and role playing games. I like puzzle solving in general. The other thing I find important for any game is the level of involvement you feel when playing it. If the game doesn't have you wanting to go on, what is the point of playing it more? Plot is most important, but sometimes sheer atmosphere can make things interesting (Myst and Jewels of the Oracle have wonderful atmosphere but plot is not their strong point.) This also makes recommending games tricky, certainly not every gamer would agree with the idea that atmosphere can make things interesting.

At some future date, I may try to classify the games as having a goal, a story-line and a plot. Goal simply means that there is some objective to playing this game: save the world, find all the treasure, or something like that. Story-line has a bit more organisation, certain events happen at certain times but it isn't a very tight organisation. Plot is a game that is strongly driven by the player actions and certain other time events. Examples, Wizardry 1 has a goal (defeat the evil Werdna.) 7th Guest has a story-line, as does Shivers. Games with real plots are those like Gabriel Knight where everything the player does pushes the story along.

The primary thing I dislike about games you buy these days is opening the package to find a little card that says for a mere $20 (add more for shipping and handling) you can have the book that gives all the secrets away. If I've bought the game new and spent $70-$99 Australian on it, I am not going to want to spend more for the book. Additionally, I hate walk-throughs which many of those books are. It becomes *much* too easy to look up the answer instead of working it out for yourself. It's a major drawback with the setup of the Zork Anthology book. Trying to look up the answer to a puzzle frequently gets you at least one more answer you didn't need yet.

I wonder how many of those who complain on the network about "how easy current games are" use either walk-throughs or hint lists.

I would like to see books on specific "how we built Under a Killing Moon" or other unusual games. You can sometimes find these in-depth articles other places (Interactivity magazine has had a few good ones) but I might buy extra books if I *knew* such information was included too.

I am more likely to buy a game if I can first find a *working* demo of it. Rolling demos (those that show many screen shots) do *not* give a user a feel for how the game will play. I am not likely to be that impressed by a bunch of pretty pictures. Show me that I like how the game feels and I might pay more attention.

I do hope that as the gaming industry gets more involved in interactive movies, that both the companies and actors realise what potential there is in such products. A movie generally lasts from 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Most computer games take days if not weeks (or rarely longer) to solve. After a fortnight of solidly playing Under a Killing Moon, I felt as though I had been living with Tex Murphy. A different game left me feeling like I had definitely not been paying enough attention to one actor. Well done interactive games are very powerful and can let you feel like a part of the action so much more so than any movie.