ET3D: In what way? How does data that's irrelevant to the research topic help?
That parents and their children have high chances to like entirely different game genres? Such "data" makes the whole research redundant.
ET3D: Can you show me such research?
It is everywhere. I have experienced results of this as a child myself. When adults were convinced that some games, books, whatever are too "complex" (or don't have pictures) and so they were gifting me more "accessible" ones (or not video games at all, and some totally dull toys). I almost gave up on video games until I found out RPGs, which at that time were deemed "too complex for children".
Heck, even in school children are taught things in extremely watered down and wrong forms and then they have to relearn from scratch in university (e.g., you can't substract 5 from 3, or you can't take square root from -1, with all the distorted "simplified" theory behind this).
ET3D: Because they were made for boys, were violent, and were simple. For Doom I'm sure it didn't come from research but from the developers being guys who loved violent, simple games. For Diablo, I can't tell. Possibly it came from similar origins, because gaming research wasn't much used at the time, but I imagine that Blizzard studied the matter more than id did, and got more feedback, which I also imagine came from the male target audience.
You are mistaken. Blizzard weren't social researchers (at that time, but things changed when they merged with Activision). They simply made the game they wanted. And Doom has infinitely less than zero to do with gender, and it didn't have much violence (in comparison to our TV? ha, nowhere near close). I wouldn't say Doom was quite simple either.
What made those games to be so successful, was their gameplay. Which has nothing to do with gender/age or anything of that kind.
What you speak about is making mainstream games - for maximum accessibility or for accessibility within very wide group of players. Market IS over-saturated with such games. Social "stuff" has infinitely less than absolutely nothing to do with good games, it serves only as research tool to assist in making of more sub-mediocrity.
This thread heavily reminds me about
"Shower with your Dad" simulator :))