Naughty Dog insisted on female testers for The Last of Us

Nice misleading article title.

have ellie change her clothes and shower , then she's in !

Well, the public's always been guys mostly. Once this is accepted, people will stop making so much drama out of things

If they think girls aren't interested in playing video games - and I mean the ones that guys enjoy too - they will be missing out on a lot of customers. I actually find The Last of Us to be very interesting and definitely something I would play... but I don't have a PS3 xD Oh well, I'll be getting Infinite soon xD

Aside from the marketing strategy to lure the female gamers to try this game, I don't see anywhere mention of how they had the female gamer in mind when they developed the game itself. Sorry Naughty Dog, I don't think this is going to be enough to get my wife or daughter to play this game; My son and me? that's something else entirely.

I can't believe why there's no ideal games coming out. I like a new game called Age of Wushu, something like a fancy and real action Kung Fu movie. It's the innovative combat system made the game.

Quite frankly, if they payed the firm to give them sound financial advice, then the firm was doing their job. I see no wrong committed by the firm in this case; it would be far worse had they payed the firm for sound financial advice and the firm demanded they engage in potentially financially-damaging practices (do not get me wrong here; the status quo does indeed need to change, but it is not the place of a business firm to bring such a change). So while I applaud Naughty Dog for their actions here, I do not take offense to the firm's suggestions by any means.

"We fought to have the female character in the front i the boxart and have more females focus testing our games"

Main character is still a brown haired white dude, like in every other game.

Very brave Naughty Dog, you're doing nothing and still managed to look good.

As a female gamer, I know we are heavily in the minority (or at least it feels like it most days). So it always makes me happy to see companies pushing to include us in their numbers and keep an eye out for our interest in games. Thank you Naughty Dog.

While I disagree with the marketing firm, they are a marketing firm. They very well might be reporting 100% factual information to the company. Regardless of the increasing female gaming market, the market is most definitely predominantly male, especially in this type of genre. Now do I agree with the firm? Hell no. If developers only cared about pleasing a majority nothing would ever change. I applaud Naughty Dog in its attempt to blur the line between male and female into the name of gamer. Lets hope more companies follow suit and try to break the bounds of whats most "acceptable". Its clear from the other comments here that we arent all intolerant males. Lets keep moving that forward, games can only get better when we as a collective society accept everything/everyone and leave nothing out to bigotry. Good storytelling doesnt come from genders it comes from perspective, more perspectives equals more varied stories. I dont know about all you but I dont want to still be playing as a dudebro in "insert sandy country" with no other motivation than "they is bad I is good" storytelling 20 years from now. And I apologize for that wall of text.

I've always respected Naughty Dog, and respect them even more now for standing up for people like myself. Gaming is something that should be made accessible for anyone to enjoy, no matter their gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. If you love games then you should be able to test them & help dev improve/give other gamers the best quality games they could ask for.

I'm a proud female gamer and would love to be part of focus testing for this game, already got it preordered actually. :)

Sweet God, can we please cut the crap with the Gender Barrier already? We're fucking human beings, not creatures from a separate dimension!

I sure hope this game does record sales so we don't have to listen about any sad stories !

C'mon EVERYBODY PLEASE PURCHASE THIS GAME !

@PSBEATSALLDEAL Seriously though, F*** you and your ridiculous generalizations!

Another BS article pushing a feminist agenda.

Could it be that the marketing company knows it's business of marketing? No feminist bloggers know how to do that. Silly Naughty dog should have asked them for advice.

"The oversight came not from the studio creating the game, but rather from a seemingly "girls don't play video games" attitude from an unnamed research firm given the job of managing focus testing during development."

Well, **** YOU TOO, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I know personally atleast a handful of female gamers and not-so-surprisingly I happen to be one myself, and then seeing marketing research firms come with bullshit like this is like a slap in the face! I'd love to know exactly what firm we're talking about so I could send them a box full of my "deepest appreciation."

Thank god Naughty Dog - folks have more sense, I really appreciate them insisting on this. I think I'll write them an e-mail just to thank them for being sensible.

Respect to Naughty Dog to not conforming by putting Ellie on the back! Bioshock Infinite moved Elizabeth to the back as it was considered that would sell better! Do guys actually buy a game because there's a generic brown haired guy on the cover?

It would be funny if the testing group is all female Koreans, Japanese and chinese. Well, Asians have a special part of my heart.

Focus testing doesn't equate to much of anything. Often times, people are just doing it to get paid or for free swag.

This would probably have been best left unreported or just ignored altogether. It won't affect anything the game has to offer or how much it's going to sell. ND doesn't need to explain anything because they seem to be a good company with of course a good track record.