Interesting exchange in a Rock, Paper, Shotgun interview with Dragon Age III writer David Gaider,
RPS: Did you see the recent thing about Remember Me, and the fact that the developer had to shop it around a bunch simply because their main character was female?
Gaider: Yeah, I find it interesting. I call it “accepted industry wisdom.” The thing about accepted industry wisdom is that you can’t question it. Everyone just agrees. It’s weird. The things that the industry decides are treated as incontrovertibly true until someone else comes along and proves them definitively wrong in a way that we cannot ignore. Then, of course, everyone jumps on it.
It’s like back when EverQuest was at its height. I think it had about 800,000 subscribers. At the time, accepted industry wisdom said, “Okay, some other MMOs have tried to come out and jump on EverQuest’s bandwagon and couldn’t do it. Obviously 800,000 subscribers is the MMO market. That’s capped out.” It was accepted. You couldn’t get more than that. Those were the only people who were interested in playing MMOs. Then World of Warcraft came out and it was a game-changer. Everyone said, “Oh, I guess we were wrong.
My hypothesis: the same idiots who are saying “a game with a female lead will never sell” are probably the same morons who are saying “players will love our always-on DRM.”
