Reply To: Out of touch view of young gamers

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Ivan, regarding White Wolf’s Vampire, I think it’s an excellent example of what I am talking about.

I know the old WW crowd pretty well. They were a very diverse group, right from the start, even before they were White Wolf in the Lion Rampart days. Women were part of the game writing and creation process and a transwoman was notoriously one of the big movers and shakers in the early company (she later went on to help found Wizards of the Coast, by the way).

In the RPG field, Vampire was seen as a revolutionary gaming system. It really put the last nail in TSR’s coffin and changed role-playing massively. Very much for the better.

There is no doubt in my mind that a large part of this was due to the fact that it was created by a band of people who were much different from your usual gaming nerds. They opened up the hobby, massively, giving it a credibility it had never had before. And they didn’t have to step on anyone’s rights to do it. They simply did something that in retrospect was an obviously winning move: they made games that attracted adults of both sexes and all orientations and genders. They did it by being inclusive and thus having insights and innovations other companies didn’t have.

At the same time, the Word According to TSR was that gaming was for boys and the only way to increase market share was to dumb it down to attract pre-pubescent boys. Do you all remember Dragon Strike, with it’s “revolutionary” how-to-play VHS tape? That, according to our account managers in Lake Geneva, was going to be the game that made us all rich by opening up D&D to the 9 year old penis-waver set.

White Wolf just MASSACRED TSR going the exact opposite direction. And they did it by including women, gays, trans-, black, latino and etc. people in all parts of game creation and testing.

Diversity makes a better product, folks. It’s been proven time and again.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!