Help Microsoft Move Units Via “Tupperware Parties”
Are you a woman or a teenager who is just a smidge interested in the Xbox 360 but have never been formally introduced to one because of social constraints, empty pockets, or other insipid reasons? Great! You can now attend a party specifically designed to sell you a 360 via house cleaners, guidance counselors, and various other women.
Because Microsoft tends to believe that women are sheep who do not know how to market products to their friends or family (or even strangers) beyond holding pseudo “parties” at their houses, Xbox “Tupperware Parties” have spawned. Oh, dear lord.
Via news-press‘s interview with Heather Snavely, Microsoft’s go-to girl on global entertainment platforms,
“We’ve sold 20 million consoles to date globally since we launched three years ago. In order to get to the next 20 million, we need to get a new audience of women and teens. We’re going after them in ways that are different than ways we’ve done before.”
Different, more ridiculous ways. Women who have named themselves “brand advocates” for Microsoft are being gifted an Xbox 360, microwaveable popcorn, Scene It: Box Office Smash!, a remote, and even 1600 Microsoft Points all to get their friends a-twitter over the system. What I want to know is, where can I sign up? I have a few thousand friends who would use up popcorn and a crappy trivia game, as well as a serious dearth of Microsoft Points.
In all seriousness, though, Microsoft’s campaign to target the “non-gamers” never ceases to elicit a facepalm from me.
I would love to see some actual numbers on how effective this is. Of course those numbers don’t really exist, but it would sure be interesting to see some data on these sorts of campaigns.
Effective or not, it *really* doesn’t help the “gamers are guys” stereotype. I’m sure plenty of those 20 million have been sold to women… the simple truth is, just like men are naturally stronger and women are naturally bitchier, guys just tend to have more interest in gaming. You can’t target an audience that simply doesn’t care.
@timeshifter, i would argue that it’s not a case of a natural preference for gaming amongst men as much as what young men and women are socialised into liking as children. The reason most adult gamers are gamers at all is most likely that they played games as a child. Over time it will become more common for women to have played games as children and acquired the mental vocabulary to appreciate the medium. It’s not a genetic thing, it’s simply a matter of socialisation.
I could go on a huge and incredibly politically correct rant right now but i’m tired. Fuck it.
I’m honestly getting tired of having to be politically correct. When was the last time political correctness actually accomplished anything? PC is why certain parts of the English language are prohibited from mainstream TV, despite the words themselves bearing no offensiveness whatsoever when used properly. PC is responsible for the stupid shit that pisses most gamers off, because real gamers tend to have this silly little thing called “common sense”. That particular attribute left politics years ago, and it sucks. Now, politicians are able to define PC as whatever they want, and they use it as a weapon against people they don’t like. That’s as politically INcorrect as it comes. See the hypocricy?
I could go on a huge rant about accountability and common sense in politics, but I’m working. Fuck it.
(plus, I’ve already done it… check my website if you’re interested)
Don’t get your knickers in a twist timeshifter, go relax with a nice session of domestic abuse. I’m sure an ignorant fuck like you would enjoy that.
I said I hate political correctness, not decent behavior. I have no criminal record, and I’m not even a violent person… somewhat of a pacifist, actually. If you think that me understanding what common sense is makes me ignorant, then you must truly be a blissful person.
I think using my objection to your blatant sexism as an excuse to go on the same tired old anti-PC rant everyone has heard a thousand times before makes you ignorant. The united states and the UK both have massive issues with the way women are perceived. Go on, explain to me why women are naturally bitchy. I’m sure i’d love to hear it.
You are making assumptions about a person you know absolutely nothing about, and for that alone, you lose points. I don’t know why (some) women are naturally bitchy; I’m a programmer, not a psychiatrist. Nor am I sexist in the slightest. I just feel that creating advertising to “target” women IS sexist, because it assumes that women as a whole aren’t of the same gaming caliber as men are. Granted, I haven’t seen many real gamer chicks in my day, but I’m sure they’re out there, and I have a feeling they take offense at this kind of targetting. Advertise the games as they really are, and the people interested will buy them, plain and simple. Advertising doesn’t need to be targeted, it just needs to be DONE.
See, you contradict yourself and thats why i’m so angry. One the one hand we seem to be in total agreement.
“I just feel that creating advertising to ‘target’ women IS sexist” – can’t fault you on that part whatsoever and I couldn’t agree more.
What i object to is your generalisations about women. You didn’t originally qualify your assertion that women are bitchy with ‘some’. You just labelled them all as being inherently prone to being bitchy. Thats what i didn’t like and thats why i tried to counter your argument.
Where this escalated was your attack on political correctness. Frankly, you wouldn’t believe the amount of times i’ve heard someone defend their bigoted opinions against political correctness. Perhaps it’s become a knee jerk reaction at this point but i’m so sick to death of people (not you necessarily) that defend their bigotry on these grounds that i have a habit of flipping out.
At this point, i would like to agree with you about the content of Brittany’s article. On other matters we clearly have drastically different opinions stemming from drastically different lives.
Possibly, but now I’m intrigued. Perhaps I did overgeneralize in my original post; it wasn’t my intent to evoke your reaction, and for that I apologize.
Maybe I’m biased, being myself, but I don’t consider myself a bigot… what I rant against is the bigotry that has become PC. PC says that a 14 year old girl can’t willingly send a revealing picture of herself to a 15 year old boy without the boy being permanently labelled as a sex offender. PC says video games are responsible for kids’ violent behavior, when several scientific studies say literally the opposite. PC is responsible for a 60-year unconstitutional war against pot, despite the unconstitutionality of the whole thing, and again, countless scientific studies that say CAFFEINE is more addictive than pot. PC is responsible (in the USA, anyway) for the steady erradication of our cibil liberties.
To me, THAT is the bigotry that makes up PC, and that’s the reason why I hate it so much. PC has sculpted this country into a land where people are afraid of the government sworn to protect them.
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
~Thomas Jefferson
OOOOOH now we have a debate on our hands.
I would say that political correctness isn’t responsible for any of the things you attribute it to. Just to keep this on topic (gaming site n all that) i’d say that the opposition to video games has come entirely from the right wing of politics, much more so than the left. This may be a cultural issue as i’m british, but it seems that the more politically correct newspapers (just as an example) such as The Guardian tend to be more sympathetic to gaming than the non-pc ones (The Daily Mail, The Telegraph) for example.
Perhaps you can understand why i associate people who object to political correctness with bigotry. In this country it is almost never left wing, PC organisations that oppose civil liberties. I’ve always viewed PC as a defender of those liberties. It is objecting to racist, homophobic and sexist language which makes civil society accessible to all it’s members. By opposing sexist language, you oppose that which creates a barrier to the inclusion of women.
The underlying question is whether someone’s right to speak freely on a given topic can impinge on someone elses right to participate in a given activity. I would argue that your right to say whatever you damn well please is subservient to the rights of women to not be labelled as something they are not. Thats what political correctness is about. It isn’t an attempt to rob anyone of their right to express themselves per se, it is an attempt to make people realise that the language they use affects others around them. Your words are not irrelevant and they don’t exist in isolation from the society that surrounds you. They impact everyone who encounters them. I don’t necessarily like it, but i’ll go along with it for the benefit of others.
“Hell is other people” – Jean-Paul Sartre
Your perception is correct… it is the right that drives the majority of the bigotry around here. I saw an interesting map overlay regarding the 2008 elections… the counties that voted most strongly for McPalin were also the largest producers of cotton back in the day… and the entire cotton industry was driven by slave labor. In general, it seems like the right is so afraid of change that they’ll hang on to completey outdated mindsets just for the peace of mind. They are a true obstruction to advancement in most areas.
My question is, how can me saying something infringe upon your right to an activity? Given that on the large scale, I’m a nobody who just happens to code, I think we can agree that what I say has little, if any, impact on your life. Yet politicians are treated as “higher”, and what they say tends to be accepted as the truth from all the right-wingers. It’s those of us on the left that are saying, “but look at all the evidence that says violent tendencies in kids have DECREASED with the rise of the video game”. Righties are so set on their beliefs that not even scientific proof will sway them, and thus the bigotry perpetuates. It’s an endless cycle, powered exclusively by one class of people, and either they don’t realize it, or they’re proud of it. Either way, they need to grow up.
While words may be capable of affecting those around you, I hesitate to say they inherently do. My roommate and I toss lots of shit at each other and it doesn’t really affect either of us, just because we both understand that it’s meant in jest, with no more purpose than to entertain. Intent when saying something certainly matters, but more importantly I think, is the intent that gets conveyed to the recipient. If Microsoft is specifically trying to get the attention of women and conveys the message of “you’re not like normal gamers, so here’s a special game just for you”, that could come off as pretty sexist. But, if they advertise to the gaming audience as a whole, and just happen to show a woman playing the game and enjoying it, the message might be substantially different. The intent is the same – get the women to buy games. The perception of said intent is what determines if the women actually do buy the game, or gain an even lower opinion of Microsoft.
Is it just me, or do we have multiple debates happening asynchronously?
I think we’re debating on about 19 different levels of the space-time continuum right now.
And I can’t help but find myself enjoying all of them. Initial assumptions aside, you’re a better debater than most, in that you’re willing to actually debate. ‘Tis refreshing to discuss issues like this with someone who doesn’t just blow up and behave like a stupid fanboy.