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• 2009/6/14 - Given that blog.carlsensei.com has all of the content that this site used to have, I’m considering redirecting this domain to deadhobosociety.carlsensei.com and archiving it, unless there’s a contingent that would prefer to keep the two separate…
• 2009/2/9 - MuxOpentape from DJ BoxCarl
• 2008/5/14 - Master’s culminating examination papers (PDF)
• 2008/5/14 - The Social Ontology Implicit in Wittgenstein (PDF)
• 2008/5/14 - The Allure of Fundamentalisms in East Asian Buddhism and Its Scholarship (PDF)
• 2008/5/14 - Heidegger, Hermeneutics, and Hagiography (PDF)
• 2008/5/14 - Daoism and Computation (PDF)
• 2008/5/14 - The Presocratics and the Limits of Knowledge (PDF)
• 2008/4/3 - Muxtape from DJ BoxCarl
• 2007/10/5 - Evaluating Pythagorean Mathematical Realism.
• 2007/9/21 - Views of Anaximander and the ἄπειρον.
• 2007/8/4 - A teaser for The Legend of Hermeneutics, available in bookstores soon…
• 2007/5/7 - Like Wu-Tang, P4C Is Fo’ The Children.
• 2007/5/2 - Did Descartes Chuck a Dummy?
• 2007/5/2 - I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me.
• 2007/2/24 - Does “Everybody” Vote?
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As regular readers of Dead Hobo Society may be aware, for the past several years Nintendo has been scheming on a plan to make ordinary, non-geeky people become addicted to videogames. Their first step in slow unfolding of this plan was the Nintendo DS, a handheld system which, for no apparent reason, has two screens. While the DS was initially mocked by hardcore gamers everywhere, over time its extensive library of hit games like Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros. allowed it to crush its rival the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) in sales.

However, it was not Nintendo’s aim to merely defeat Sony on the merits of their appeal to existing gamers. Instead, they attempted to reach out to non-gamers by employing the DS’s touch screen and microphone to create a new kind of gaming experience, in which the traditional skills of gamers would be of no use. One example of this new kind of game is Nintendogs, a non-game in which one plays with a CG puppy by patting its head on the screen and giving it voice commands with the microphone such as “sit” and “shake.” Another example of Nintendo’s new strategy is Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, a game with the outrageous marketing claim that by regularly playing the game (and thus keeping one’s brain active), one can stave off age related dementia. Also along these lines is Animal Crossing: Wild World, a remake of an existing GameCube game in which one lives in a virtual town and spends time decorating one’s house and buying new outfits. All three games became huge hits in Japan, creating a strong demand for DSes that persists to this day^{1, 2}. To a large extent, this success at bringing in new gamers was made possible by reaching out to girl gamers (or to use a term less indicative of the stereotypical age of gamers, female gamers) without pandering. Each of these games can be just as interesting to male gamers, yet unlike traditional skill based games, they don’t demand the mastery of complex but meaningless tasks that seems to appeal most to adolescent males.

In late November of 2006, Nintendo launched its Wii console, which like the DS broke new ground by featuring a radically new system of input. The Wii is controlled by what looks like an ordinary remote control, which houses motion detecting sensors that allow it to detect its position in space. Using these capabilities, the remote can be swung like a tennis racket or pointed at a TV screen like a laser pointer. (There is also a so-called “nunchuck” attachment to allow for more traditional means of moving onscreen characters.) Packed in with every American Wii is a copy of Wii Sports, a game meant to show non-gamers that the stereotypical image of the overweigh, sedentary gamer will no longer be Nintendo’s focus by allowing users to play tennis, bowl, bat, and golf by physically moving the Wii remote control. Again, the aim of the game (and the system) is to reach out to old and female gamers without pandering to them.

The Wii also has the capability to display several virtual “channels” meant to remind non-gamers of traditional (non-threatening) television channels while also acclimating them to the use of the Wii remote. Since the release of the Wii, Nintendo has been slowly adding new channels. Among the current channels are a global weather channel (so you know if it’s raining in Shanghai), a photo channel (so you can show off your cats on the Wii), and a news channel (because using a TV to read the news rather than watch it totally makes sense?). One of the core Wii channels is the “Mii channel,” which besides being a cute pun, is centered around creating stylized caricatures of oneself, one’s friends, and one’s friends for use in Wii Sports and other games.

Recently, Nintendo launched a channel called “the Everybody Votes channel.” This channel is truly bizarre.

(Above: This question reveals something about people you might otherwise never know.)

The channel works by presenting you with a series of questions with two responses. Each national poll lasts for six days, and three national polls and one international poll are conducted at overlapping times. You select your choice in the poll by clicking on your Mii avatar and dragging it on to either a red or green platform then you predict the outcome for the poll by the same means. After the poll concludes, Nintendo tells you whether you predicted correctly and what percentage of people chose each response.

At first, it’s not entirely clear why this channel exists. Among other questions, the most pertinent seems to be, “Why should we want to use our videogame machine to participate in online polls?” Before the channel was launched, there were rumors among the hardcore gamers of a Demo channel that would allow one to try DS games before buying them. After the channel’s release, a collective cry of “WTF?” could be heard around the ‘net.

(Above: Ackbar’s track record is terrble, because he always predicts that it’s a trap.)

When I first downloaded it, I too was really confused about it. I mean, I know Nintendo is known for being quirky, but this is just odd, you know? What possible purpose could there be in a Wii polling application? Once I played a little with it though, I began to see the genius behind it. By spacing out the polls to one every other day or so, Nintendo ensures that the user plays with the Wii every couple days to check out what the new poll question and to see what one’s results were for predicting the outcome. Each Mii is ranked by its predicting accuracy and told about its “distance from public opinion” and so forth via a snazzy interface. The point is that once Nintendo has users checking the Wii every couple days in order to try the new poll question, see tomorrow’s weather, and read a couple headlines from the AP, users are more likely to think, “Hmm, I guess I should go ahead and get a new game for this thing, since I’m always just fiddling with the channels anyway.”

This is to say nothing of the sheer treasure trove of demographic data Nintendo is getting out of this. Think of it: reportedly, Nintendo has shipped 6 million Wiis world wide. If even 10% of those users voted on the first poll, Nintendo collected 600,000 votes. (Update: Nintendo reports more than 500,000 voters in the first poll.) As time passes from the launch of the channel, a lot of people will stop using it, and it will probably go down to around 1% or less of total Wii owners, but that’s still 60,000 people. In comparison, usually you can get a truly significant poll with a random group of 1,000 people. Of course, Everybody Votes players are not a randomly selected sample, but with 60,000 results, if you ask, “Who do you like better, Mario or Luigi?” the result effectively will predict whether Mario 128 will outsell Luigi’s Mansion 2, non-random sample be damned. Nintendo have come up with an awesome but strange window into the hearts of their demographic.

And, coincidentally Nintendo seems to have give us a window into it, too. When the final results are given for each poll, first the total percentage of users that chose the red option and green option are shown, but by clicking the icons in the corner, the user can get more detailed information about the results of the poll. For the weekly international poll, one can see which what percentage of people in which countries chose what response, and for all the polls one can see a breakdown of choices by gender.

Now, by applying a little elementary algebra, we can say that the Total percentage, T, is equal to the percentage of boys (oops, another age specific stereotype! I mean, males!) involved in the poll, Pm, times the Result for the males, Rm, plus the percentage times result for females, Pf x Rf. Now, since we know that Pf is equal to 1 - Pm (since Nintendo only allows two genders, so the percentage must add up to 100%), we can algebraically rearrange the formula to get: Pm = (T - Rf) ÷ (Rm - Rf). Next we throw all this into Excel, make a table, then convert that to Wiki format:

* International poll results

† On these results, the boys are girls percentages were so close that the ratio is certainly wrong. They were not included when calculating the average.

Now, average the results:

Average Percentage Male Users: 68.6%

Average Percentage Female Users: 31.4%

And just for the last 10 results:

Average Percentage Male Users: 64.2%

Average Percentage Female Users: 35.8%

Now, a grain of salt needs to be taken with these numbers. The percentage male and female breakdowns for the poll are based on the user-selected genders of the Mii characters who vote, but there is no guarantee that this data is accurate. For example, on my own Wii, my fiancée and I have also been allowing the (alas, fictional) Ackbar to vote. Thus, we have been slightly skewing the numbers in the male direction. However, taken as a whole, while not scientifically significant, I think the numbers are roughly accurate. For one thing, Nintendo prevents egregious ballot stuff by limiting each Wii to a maximum of six voting Miis. Additionally, I think that the nature of the Miis as caricatures of people invite users to create and use an accurate approximation of themselves. (My fiancée has in fact criticized my Mii as being too accurate, to the point of being unflattering, but I stand by its resemblance to me.) While it is not uncommon for male gamers to play as female characters in online games, I think that the circumstances that cause this behavior are lacking in this situation. For one thing, none of the female Miis can be made to be particular attractive, so there’s no point for heterosexual male Wii users to use a female Mii as “eye candy.” In addition, there is no true online play involving the Miis yet (not counting the Everybody Votes channel, since the Miis are not shared with strangers), one’s Mii is meant to be used in the social circumstance of a household. In such a situation, a gender accurate self-caricature is called for. It’s more likely that you want to see a cartoon version of yourself bowling on screen than whatever other possibilities.

So, what conclusions can we draw from these numbers? Well, bearing in mind that it is still early in the lifecycle of the console, we can nevertheless say that Nintendo has made some progress but not enough in closing the gender gap. If there are three boys who use the Wii regularly for every girl who does, then Nintendo’s strategy has not yet reached fruition. Nevertheless, we can still commend Nintendo for its admirable goal of expanding gaming to reach “Everybody” — male or female, young and old — without pandering to specific audiences (making the game pink and throwing in ponies) but by producing games that everyone can enjoy.

When the GameCube, Nintendo’s previous console, was new, there was a lot of chatter about how the PlayStation 2 had a DVD drive, but it didn’t. Nintendo’s response was that they weren’t interested in making a “multimedia home center” or some such device, but they wanted to make a true videogame machine since they were a videogame company. Now, this response may have been somewhat self-serving, and one is perfectly justified in asking how the “videogame company” of the last generation has now decided to show its commitment to games by making a console without a DVD drive (still!) but with a dedicated weather channel. Surely since the consumer can already do online polls without the Wii, Nintendo’s time is better spent developing new games than in churning out oddities like Everybody Votes, one may quite fairly ask. However, it is my belief that the Everybody Votes channel is in the spirit of Nintendo’s previous commitments. Everybody Votes is, as the name says, aimed at everybody, and Nintendo’s goal of involving everybody in games. Of course, as a public company, Nintendo’s motives are not pure. Nintendo does have goals besides their oft stated commitment to “fun.” But, in making a system which potentially anyone can find entertaining and interesting, there is a chance that Nintendo will be able to make life more enjoyable for millions of people, and that’s a worthy goal.

I applaud Nintendo’s efforts so far, and I encourage them to keep working until the day when by running the numbers we find that everybody, male and female, votes, 50–50.

[Everybody Votes channel review: ★★ out of ★★]

(PS If anyone can figure out the ratio of countries in the international polls by counting pixels on screen, working out some kind of multivalue algebra, and putting it on the ‘net, more power to them. Also good is to figure out the comparative contributions of US regions by comparing shades of green and pink.)

—earthbound kid

Cross link

• We get love from GoNintendo
• “Everyone Votes by Gender Lines” at Heroine Sheik

Personally, I’m almost more interested in looking at this data in terms of Mii demographics, not player demographics. On our system, our Miis are pretty evenly split male to female, but I know our Mii parade is predominantly male. Is that because we like to make Miis that look like ourselves, and most Wii players are male? Or because male Mii’s look better? True, it’s hard to make a beautiful Mii, but what’s the point if you can’t turn someone you love, someone attractive, into a super-deformed lego figurine?

• The Developers Talk About the Everybody Votes Channel

We also gave a lot of thought into the Channel’s name. At first, it was called the “Questionnaire Channel”, but it sounded like the Channel would be there to just collect and research data. There was also one called “Citizens Votes Channel”, but that sounded a little too square. Eventually, we put the word “Everybody” taken from the concept of how we wanted everybody in the family to have fun to the beginning of the name, and it became the “Everybody Votes Channel”.

• Casual Gamers Predominantly Female (But the overall gamescape is still a man’s world).

According to a recent study commissioned by PopCap Games, one of the most popular casual gaming portals, casual games are being played by three times as many female gamers as male. PopCap’s user base is 76% percent female and 24% male.

Ouch. Nintendo’s numbers are the exact opposite of those. Even worse:

While casual games may be the domain of ladies, male gamers still make up the majority of the entire videogame space. A study commissioned by the Entertainment Software Association in May 2006 reveals that videogame players in general are 62% male and 38% female.

Nintendo’s not even up to the industry average! ☹

• Everybody Votes suddenly smelling like market research.

I fully expected Everybody Votes to be used for polling that might influence Nintendo’s future Wii Channels releases and the like, but this is the first one that seems to directly point in that direction. Could a large response of “Download” encourage a music download channel? I can’t imagine Nintendo inventing a music store of their own, but iTunes on the Wii is not impossible.

• Everybody Votes: A Blog On The Results From The Popular Voting Channel For The Nintendo Wii

In epistemology the prefix meta- is used to mean about (its own category). For example, metadata is data about data (who has produced it, when, what format the data is in and so on). Similarly, meta-memory in psychology means an individual’s intuition about whether or not they would remember something if they concentrated on recalling it. Any subject can be said to have a meta-theory, which is the theoretical consideration of its foundations and methods.

Metaphotos: