We have entered D&D waters... avast.
Can I say something before I start? That thing is that gaming (action, console) is primarily a male domain. because of nature, nurture, or whatever the act of pretend killing things on your electronic toy is PRIMARILY a male recreation. Why? I'm not going to discuss that, but the simple fact remains true.
Fuck off, that's a total copout. Video games started out as a male domain because comp-sci was an historically male-dominated industry and research field, no other reason. There's no inherent reason for games to be Boy Territory, and your flat-out unwillingness to acknowledge that is pretty telling. What, you don't like the thought of cooties on your PS3? Worried that the girls will ruin your fun if they're 'allowed' to participate without harassment? Get stuffed. I like shooting things on a screen. I'm not weird because of it. Neither are the other chicks who post here, and I guarantee there are more than you think. Most of them just aren't willing to let people know their gender here, because of this moronic 'its not for you' crap.
And I know guys who play The Sims. Just adding that it works both ways.
ViolentChemistry on
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PharezonStruggle is an illusion.Victory is in the Qun.Registered Userregular
edited May 2007
Usually PA is the haven for the in/sane asshole. This topic is bringing out the people who remind me of gametrailers. :shock:
Anyway I vote that from now on all characters in video games will either be a hermaphrodite or asexual. THE CONTROVERSY WILL THEREFORE BE QUELLED!
We have entered D&D waters... avast.
Can I say something before I start? That thing is that gaming (action, console) is primarily a male domain. because of nature, nurture, or whatever the act of pretend killing things on your electronic toy is PRIMARILY a male recreation. Why? I'm not going to discuss that, but the simple fact remains true.
Fuck off, that's a total copout. Video games started out as a male domain because comp-sci was an historically male-dominated industry and research field, no other reason. There's no inherent reason for games to be Boy Territory, and your flat-out unwillingness to acknowledge that is pretty telling. What, you don't like the thought of cooties on your PS3? Worried that the girls will ruin your fun if they're 'allowed' to participate without harassment? Get stuffed. I like shooting things on a screen. I'm not weird because of it. Neither are the other chicks who post here, and I guarantee there are more than you think. Most of them just aren't willing to let people know their gender here, because of this moronic 'its not for you' crap.
The point is though, you are weird. You are the minority. My comp subject is 90%+ male. You're perfectly allowed to join in, I'm not trying to protect my hobby from you. I think the more gamers, the better. But you must ackowledge the fact that you are atypical.
Move it to D&D, where it gets locked for helping someone with their homework.
On topic though, Women are depicted in the exact same way in videogames as they are in movies. All sorts of extremes. Every once in awhile you get a normal sort, but normal is boring. Considering the fantastic nature of most videogames, normal is not something one would expect or necessarily want.
That's perfectly fine, but the problem is with guys like dodgeblan insisting that Real Women wear heels everywhere and constantly talk about their feeeeeeeelings and the boooooooooys, and therefore female characters should be like that too. Oh, and girls don't play games. That's really irritating.
Do you understand his point now? They're just not believable women unless they whine about PMS.
Do you understand reality now? Men and women are different. Men and women buy different things. Men and women interact different. Go to H&A. You can tell if I relationship thread is created by a man or a woman, because they will be very different.
but OMG there ARE exceptions, so there must be no tendency at all. I wish I could be so enlightened as you. Because gender is an illusion created by cosmo and sexist advertising! It is an illusion that the vast majority of console owners are men.
Edit 2: Since you probably won't reach a rational conclusion on your own, the point is "of course mostly guys will like it if you go out of your way to refuse to acknowledge women as an audience."
ViolentChemistry on
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PharezonStruggle is an illusion.Victory is in the Qun.Registered Userregular
We have entered D&D waters... avast.
Can I say something before I start? That thing is that gaming (action, console) is primarily a male domain. because of nature, nurture, or whatever the act of pretend killing things on your electronic toy is PRIMARILY a male recreation. Why? I'm not going to discuss that, but the simple fact remains true.
Fuck off, that's a total copout. Video games started out as a male domain because comp-sci was an historically male-dominated industry and research field, no other reason. There's no inherent reason for games to be Boy Territory, and your flat-out unwillingness to acknowledge that is pretty telling. What, you don't like the thought of cooties on your PS3? Worried that the girls will ruin your fun if they're 'allowed' to participate without harassment? Get stuffed. I like shooting things on a screen. I'm not weird because of it. Neither are the other chicks who post here, and I guarantee there are more than you think. Most of them just aren't willing to let people know their gender here, because of this moronic 'its not for you' crap.
The point is though, you are weird. You are the minority. My comp subject is 90%+ male. You're perfectly allowed to join in, I'm not trying to protect my hobby from you. I think the more gamers, the better. But you must ackowledge the fact that you are atypical.
Did anyone else just go what the fuck just now when they read this?
The point is though, you are weird. You are the minority. My comp subject is 90%+ male. You're perfectly allowed to join in, I'm not trying to protect my hobby from you. I think the more gamers, the better. But you must ackowledge the fact that you are atypical.
No, I'm not. More women play online games than men. Different sorts of games, sure - they often play game styles that allow one to come and go from the computer rather than having to set aside a dedicated block of time, but don't go acting like its freakish for women to play games. It flies in the face of basic reality.
We have entered D&D waters... avast.
Can I say something before I start? That thing is that gaming (action, console) is primarily a male domain. because of nature, nurture, or whatever the act of pretend killing things on your electronic toy is PRIMARILY a male recreation. Why? I'm not going to discuss that, but the simple fact remains true.
Fuck off, that's a total copout. Video games started out as a male domain because comp-sci was an historically male-dominated industry and research field, no other reason. There's no inherent reason for games to be Boy Territory, and your flat-out unwillingness to acknowledge that is pretty telling. What, you don't like the thought of cooties on your PS3? Worried that the girls will ruin your fun if they're 'allowed' to participate without harassment? Get stuffed. I like shooting things on a screen. I'm not weird because of it. Neither are the other chicks who post here, and I guarantee there are more than you think. Most of them just aren't willing to let people know their gender here, because of this moronic 'its not for you' crap.
The point is though, you are weird. You are the minority. My comp subject is 90%+ male. You're perfectly allowed to join in, I'm not trying to protect my hobby from you. I think the more gamers, the better. But you must ackowledge the fact that you are atypical.
Did anyone else just go what the fuck just now when they read this?
that's pretty much par for the course at this stage. I'm wondering what the logical connection between this dude's C++ course and a round of CivIV are...
The point is though, you are weird. You are the minority. My comp subject is 90%+ male. You're perfectly allowed to join in, I'm not trying to protect my hobby from you. I think the more gamers, the better. But you must ackowledge the fact that you are atypical.
No, I'm not. More women play online games than men. Different sorts of games, sure - they often play game styles that allow one to come and go from the computer rather than having to set aside a dedicated block of time, but don't go acting like its freakish for women to play games. It flies in the face of basic reality.
Are you suggesting that women tend to play a different type of videogame to men? HERESY! SEXISM!
The point is though, you are weird. You are the minority. My comp subject is 90%+ male. You're perfectly allowed to join in, I'm not trying to protect my hobby from you. I think the more gamers, the better. But you must ackowledge the fact that you are atypical.
No, I'm not. More women play online games than men. Different sorts of games, sure - they often play game styles that allow one to come and go from the computer rather than having to set aside a dedicated block of time, but don't go acting like its freakish for women to play games. It flies in the face of basic reality.
Are you suggesting that women tend to play a different type of videogame to men? HERESY! SEXISM!
You're down to non sequiturs and strawmanning already? Man, I thought I'd get some more out of you than that. C-.
Move it to D&D, where it gets locked for helping someone with their homework.
On topic though, Women are depicted in the exact same way in videogames as they are in movies. All sorts of extremes. Every once in awhile you get a normal sort, but normal is boring. Considering the fantastic nature of most videogames, normal is not something one would expect or necessarily want.
That's perfectly fine, but the problem is with guys like dodgeblan insisting that Real Women wear heels everywhere and constantly talk about their feeeeeeeelings and the boooooooooys, and therefore female characters should be like that too. Oh, and girls don't play games. That's really irritating.
Girls don't actually play that many games; women do. Sure, it might be 85% or more small games or sim clones/ripoffs, but that other percent do in fact play the real manly games, like those JRPGS with the incredibly metrosexual main characters, or the next hyper violent shooter.
The world just isn't that simple anymore, heck if it ever was that simple. I respect the position dodgeblan is taking; women and men are different creatures. We think differently. Its not all cultural either, its something hardwired.
Move it to D&D, where it gets locked for helping someone with their homework.
On topic though, Women are depicted in the exact same way in videogames as they are in movies. All sorts of extremes. Every once in awhile you get a normal sort, but normal is boring. Considering the fantastic nature of most videogames, normal is not something one would expect or necessarily want.
That's perfectly fine, but the problem is with guys like dodgeblan insisting that Real Women wear heels everywhere and constantly talk about their feeeeeeeelings and the boooooooooys, and therefore female characters should be like that too. Oh, and girls don't play games. That's really irritating.
Girls don't actually play that many games; women do. Sure, it might be 85% or more small games or sim clones/ripoffs, but that other percent do in fact play the real manly games, like those JRPGS with the incredibly metrosexual main characters, or the next hyper violent shooter.
The world just isn't that simple anymore, heck if it ever was that simple. I respect the position dodgeblan is taking; women and men are different creatures. We think differently. Its not all cultural either, its something hardwired.
Sure, we're different. Nobody's seriously argued that we aren't since the mid-70's, though - that's a really irritating meme that I wish would die in a fire. However, you'll find from pretty much every piece of research into gender differences that a) variation within gender exceeds variation between genders, and b) what differences do exist are hugely exaggerated by culture. So its really not useful to just say men and women are different and leave it at that. Even aside from the 'cism stuff that pisses me off, it doesn't make economic sense for game makers to de facto or deliberately ignore/marginalise the female demographic. They have a lot of influence over purchasing decisions even when they aren't gamers, and those who are aren't willing to put up with the "gut the game's content and paint the box pink" approach to obtaining their money.
Also, when we're talking about children, most of the reason 'girls don't play games' is because their parents and relatives won't buy them a video game related toy. Toy marketing is incredibly gendered, and a lot of parents are depressingly attached to enforcing gender roles in their kids. Girls miss out because of lack of opportunity, not lack of interest.
Move it to D&D, where it gets locked for helping someone with their homework.
On topic though, Women are depicted in the exact same way in videogames as they are in movies. All sorts of extremes. Every once in awhile you get a normal sort, but normal is boring. Considering the fantastic nature of most videogames, normal is not something one would expect or necessarily want.
That's perfectly fine, but the problem is with guys like dodgeblan insisting that Real Women wear heels everywhere and constantly talk about their feeeeeeeelings and the boooooooooys, and therefore female characters should be like that too. Oh, and girls don't play games. That's really irritating.
Girls don't actually play that many games; women do. Sure, it might be 85% or more small games or sim clones/ripoffs, but that other percent do in fact play the real manly games, like those JRPGS with the incredibly metrosexual main characters, or the next hyper violent shooter.
The world just isn't that simple anymore, heck if it ever was that simple. I respect the position dodgeblan is taking; women and men are different creatures. We think differently. Its not all cultural either, its something hardwired.
Sure, we're different. Nobody's seriously argued that we aren't since the mid-70's, though - that's a really irritating meme that I wish would die in a fire. However, you'll find from pretty much every piece of research into gender differences that a) variation within gender exceeds variation between genders, and b) what differences do exist are hugely exaggerated by culture. So its really not useful to just say men and women are different and leave it at that. Even aside from the 'cism stuff that pisses me off, it doesn't make economic sense for game makers to de facto or deliberately ignore/marginalise the female demographic. They have a lot of influence over purchasing decisions even when they aren't gamers, and those who are aren't willing to put up with the "gut the game's content and paint the box pink" approach to obtaining their money.
But, The Cat, they had Super Princess Peach. Surely a girl's game about a blonde chick in a pink dress who solves puzzles by crying on things is a step forward!
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Move it to D&D, where it gets locked for helping someone with their homework.
On topic though, Women are depicted in the exact same way in videogames as they are in movies. All sorts of extremes. Every once in awhile you get a normal sort, but normal is boring. Considering the fantastic nature of most videogames, normal is not something one would expect or necessarily want.
That's perfectly fine, but the problem is with guys like dodgeblan insisting that Real Women wear heels everywhere and constantly talk about their feeeeeeeelings and the boooooooooys, and therefore female characters should be like that too. Oh, and girls don't play games. That's really irritating.
Girls don't actually play that many games; women do. Sure, it might be 85% or more small games or sim clones/ripoffs, but that other percent do in fact play the real manly games, like those JRPGS with the incredibly metrosexual main characters, or the next hyper violent shooter.
The world just isn't that simple anymore, heck if it ever was that simple. I respect the position dodgeblan is taking; women and men are different creatures. We think differently. Its not all cultural either, its something hardwired.
Sure, we're different. Nobody's seriously argued that we aren't since the mid-70's, though - that's a really irritating meme that I wish would die in a fire. However, you'll find from pretty much every piece of research into gender differences that a) variation within gender exceeds variation between genders, and b) what differences do exist are hugely exaggerated by culture. So its really not useful to just say men and women are different and leave it at that. Even aside from the 'cism stuff that pisses me off, it doesn't make economic sense for game makers to de facto or deliberately ignore/marginalise the female demographic. They have a lot of influence over purchasing decisions even when they aren't gamers, and those who are aren't willing to put up with the "gut the game's content and paint the box pink" approach to obtaining their money.
Sales pretty much pan that out. The barbie games do ok numbers, but the games that really interest women but don't pander do truckloads of sales, see the Sims, Tetris, Brain Age, and others for proof.
When I was hooked on WoW, I ended up playing mainly during the early morning because of my job. I was amazed at the number of housewifes that were in my guild. Seriously, none of this "LoL every grrrl on the intertrons is a dude!!!" as I talked to most of them over Vent.
Women/Girls are the final frontier of game marketing. The Wii is doing its part, hilariously enough. More women have been interested in my Wii since last November...
Maybe games would stop being male-dominated if they stopped catering to only male gamers. It's a self fulfilling prophesy.
I'm a woman and I've been playing games since I was 6 years old when my brothers bought an Atari. I've never stopped being irritated at the lack of female characters I can identify with. I even wrote a letter to Nintendo Power about this when I was 12 (they wrote back some crap about the mages from Final Fantasy).
It's funny you mentioned The Boss, because I just beat that game today and I was thinking how cool it would be to play a game with her instead.
t feral don't get me started on that piece of shit >_<
The Cat on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited May 2007
I am extremely scared of this thread, but on the voice over talky helper Gears of War, Halo thing and the helpers being female, its because both men and women respond more calmly and are more apt to listen to a non neutral female voice. These kinds of voices are common in military voice speaking systems and pas and things for that reason, because you want your soldiers to listen to announcements and so on. So it makes it sound authentic.
The characterisation of them I don't want to get into at all.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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PharezonStruggle is an illusion.Victory is in the Qun.Registered Userregular
I had an assault rifle blaster in COH named Hermaphrochrist. Does that count?
-Feral
Are these two the only ones paying attention to my perfect solution?
I will now go kill more Duty members in STALKER with my Desert eagle. DOESN'T ANYONE CARE ABOUT DUTY?
I had an assault rifle blaster in COH named Hermaphrochrist. Does that count?
-Feral
Are these two the only ones paying attention to my perfect solution?
I will now go kill more Duty members in STALKER with my Desert eagle. DOESN'T ANYONE CARE ABOUT DUTY?
Zie was Jesus with a big gun, a bandalero, and pink briefs. Zie had the power of God, the power of guns, and the power of gender on zir side. Zie was more man than you'll ever be and more woman than you'll ever get.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I was actually somewhat surprised that whatsherface in Gears of War didn't turn into a love interest. :P But you only saw her for 10 seconds in a scene at the beginning, and then it was all off-screen voiceover.
Echo on
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PharezonStruggle is an illusion.Victory is in the Qun.Registered Userregular
I had an assault rifle blaster in COH named Hermaphrochrist. Does that count?
-Feral
Are these two the only ones paying attention to my perfect solution?
I will now go kill more Duty members in STALKER with my Desert eagle. DOESN'T ANYONE CARE ABOUT DUTY?
Zie was Jesus with a big gun, a bandalero, and pink briefs. Zie had the power of God, the power of guns, and the power of gender on zir side. Zie was more man than you'll ever be and more woman than you'll ever get.
Maybe games would stop being male-dominated if they stopped catering to only male gamers. It's a self fulfilling prophesy.
The tough part about this is that not enough women enter the technical fields. When I was taking lower level Comp Sci courses, the gender ratio wasn't horribly unbalanced. In retrospect, this is probably due in part to the way the university requires everyone to take some lower level tech courses. Higher level CS courses are sausage fests. My software engineering course had only one female in it who was an international student from India.
Now, this course centered around a semester long group project about creating a website that dealt with online book vendors and through a series of events my group wound up trying to make a product that catered to women. We had the one female student in our group but for the most part, we had no solid idea how to really design something for Western women. We were able to shoehorn in some design by deciding we would focus on older women not as familiar with technology (ie, our mothers and older) and thereby working in things into the design that would generally work for members of either gender that aren't computer savvy. By running stuff past female friends (ie, having them give feedback on our interface, images, etc.) we were able to at least make it so that we weren't offending women but even that I think skirted by in some cases.
When it came time to give a demonstration of what we created, we got some criticism from our class members based on some of their perceptions of women which then got shot down a bit by our female group member. So basically no one else in the class really knew how to take women into account either.
This is the generation that will be going into the game industry starting this summer and playing a part in designing games. While the designers and writers do not strictly have to come from technical backgrounds, they still often do. We may be able to avoid offending all the sensibilities of women, but that's not the same as designing good female characters. In our case being able to run our design by women we knew for feedback helped, but in a real situation when creating commercial software it's not something that's going to be efficient as going with what we know and avoiding delays.
Now I'd love to see more games with properly developed female characters. But after going through that project and sometimes butting heads with other group members on aspects of our project based on our experiences with women, it's not something I want to design.
Anyway, to add in some food for thought, from what I've read over the past few years when women do decide to take up firearms and marksmanship they often outperform men for some reason, whether due to psychological or physiological reasons. I've heard that in Olympic marksmanship competitions, there are more restrictions placed on what equipment women are allowed to use to prevent the events from being dominated by the female athletes. It certainly reverses some commonly held perceptions of women and gives feasibility for female action hero type characters despite generally lower muscular strength, as much as action hero characters are feasible to begin with. It also gives a way to write in combat proficiency into a female character without having to make it an all or nothing approach: a female combatant can believably resemble any other female character despite being a good shot.
Some information has forced my to reconsider my position.
But I still think there is an issue here. We've got people saying games pander towards men, and people saying that there isn't anything inherently male about the video game industry. We've got people saying women play just as much video games as men, but we both know the majority of games discussed within this forum don't fall under that category. And yeah, the majority of compsci students are men. The majority of art theory students are women.
I'm talking about gamers. People who know the difference between command and conquer and the legend of zelda. people who know how to use wasd and mouselook to navigate an area. These people are mainly male. Their medium deals mainly with 'male interests'.
But as you've all pointed out, this is largely because of social pressures. Without these pressures, would art theory classes and computer science classes be gender neutral? I don't know. Maybe.
All I was saying was that acknowledgement of gender in video games tends to be incredibly shallow. But who knows? maybe video games are a glimpse of the future- where it doesn't matter whether the badass killing rats in some dudes dungeon is male or female. But video games don't reflect the harsh realities of gender issues and perception. And because they are a male-dominated environment any depiction of gender issues tends to revolve around the male side of things. thats all.
As for what the industry, foreign and domestic, produces, I disagree that it has more to do with developer gender than simply it gives to the market what the market wants. There has been so little momentum because it's a catch 22. There are statistically fewer female gamers because the industry doesn't provide them with things that they want, and the industry doesn't provide things that female gamers want because they are such a statistical minority in the market. The fact that there has been any change at all is somewhat amazing, because it means that the industry is taking more risks and female gamers are making do with less than perfect products just so that they can have some say in the direction of the community and the industry.
On the same note of the market, I hope that girls' games don't become a crusade (which I know it is for some women). I don't want to see super politically correct games be the only option. I want to be able to have the choice between Civilization ## and Tomb Raider ##. I think we are by human nature doomed to some separation of entertainment based on gender. There will be girl games and guy games and games that will appeal to both. However, I don't want to see guy games watered down so they won't offend girls who weren't supposed to be the target market anyway. Imagine if in some alternate reality most games were made for girls, would you want to see them changed just to be more inclusive to guys? In the end I want to see girls' games and "gender neutral" games added to the market. I don't want to see guys' games subtracted from the market.
Also, DodgeBlan, thank you for narrowing the category of gamers. I'm so sick of how some people will say ooooh but lots of women play games! Yeah, Bejewelled and the Sims, hooray. That's like saying a lot of people play Yatzee, therefore those same people naturally care about the latest super complex Avalon Hill game, because both games are played on tables.
People this can all be fixed by making all past, current, and future video game characters hermaphrodites or asexual. IT'S SIMPLE!
Pharezon, your idea does not go far enough! In order to completely circumvent gender issues associated with in-game characters, said characters should be removed entirely. The ideal standard will, of course, be Tetris, though Qix is also an honorable mention.
Also, DodgeBlan, thank you for narrowing the category of gamers. I'm so sick of how some people will say ooooh but lots of women play games! Yeah, Bejewelled and the Sims, hooray. That's like saying a lot of people play Yatzee, therefore those same people naturally care about the latest super complex Avalon Hill game, because both games are played on tables.
Except that you're both wrong. Also, who the hell ever gave the impression that anyone was fixin' to take your toys away? No-one here is out to ban Leisure Suit Larry. Talk about freakin' paranoid.
Also, DodgeBlan, thank you for narrowing the category of gamers. I'm so sick of how some people will say ooooh but lots of women play games! Yeah, Bejewelled and the Sims, hooray. That's like saying a lot of people play Yatzee, therefore those same people naturally care about the latest super complex Avalon Hill game, because both games are played on tables.
Except that you're both wrong. Also, who the hell ever gave the impression that anyone was fixin' to take your toys away? No-one here is out to ban Leisure Suit Larry. Talk about freakin' paranoid.
Wrong eh? Do you seriously maintain that 50% of players of FPS or RTS or TBS or any genre outside of casual, sim or MMO are female? 40%? 30%? Females probably make up for maybe 10% of players of FPS, maybe a little more for hardcore strategy, sure that's up from 1% some years ago, but statistically still quite a minority. I can't point to a source for this sadly, but it's my experience in the world. If you'd like to cite a source, I'd gladly take it into consideration.
Also the second paragraph is the result of the fact that my post was a barely reworked self-quote from a debate I was in years ago, but I thought it was relevant enough to keep.
Also, DodgeBlan, thank you for narrowing the category of gamers. I'm so sick of how some people will say ooooh but lots of women play games! Yeah, Bejewelled and the Sims, hooray. That's like saying a lot of people play Yatzee, therefore those same people naturally care about the latest super complex Avalon Hill game, because both games are played on tables.
Except that you're both wrong. Also, who the hell ever gave the impression that anyone was fixin' to take your toys away? No-one here is out to ban Leisure Suit Larry. Talk about freakin' paranoid.
Wrong eh? Do you seriously maintain that 50% of players of FPS or RTS or TBS or any genre outside of casual, sim or MMO are female? 40%? 30%? Females probably make up for maybe 10% of players of FPS, maybe a little more for hardcore strategy, sure that's up from 1% some years ago, but statistically still quite a minority. I can't point to a source for this sadly, but it's my experience in the world. If you'd like to cite a source, I'd gladly take it into consideration.
Also the second paragraph is the result of the fact that my post was a barely reworked self-quote from a debate I was in years ago, but I thought it was relevant enough to keep.
Its about 60/40, sometimes closer to 70/30, in just about every recent survey I've ever read, and that is excluding stuff like the Sims (which, by the way? very popular with the menz as well). The only way one gets the numbers you describe is by selectively choosing your games in order to fit a pre-conceived idea of what's out there, which is known in scientific circles as statistical fraud. That's running fairly rampant in this thread, as certain of you scramble desperately to fence off Your Games from Her Games, selecting smaller and smaller subsets of already limited genres and deriding anything perceived as popular among both genders as feminine, and therefore crap. Honestly, its pathetic to watch. What kind of loser really feels threatened by women playing their fave FPS in any more than token numbers?
Also, DodgeBlan, thank you for narrowing the category of gamers. I'm so sick of how some people will say ooooh but lots of women play games! Yeah, Bejewelled and the Sims, hooray. That's like saying a lot of people play Yatzee, therefore those same people naturally care about the latest super complex Avalon Hill game, because both games are played on tables.
Except that you're both wrong. Also, who the hell ever gave the impression that anyone was fixin' to take your toys away? No-one here is out to ban Leisure Suit Larry. Talk about freakin' paranoid.
Wrong eh? Do you seriously maintain that 50% of players of FPS or RTS or TBS or any genre outside of casual, sim or MMO are female? 40%? 30%? Females probably make up for maybe 10% of players of FPS, maybe a little more for hardcore strategy, sure that's up from 1% some years ago, but statistically still quite a minority. I can't point to a source for this sadly, but it's my experience in the world. If you'd like to cite a source, I'd gladly take it into consideration.
Also the second paragraph is the result of the fact that my post was a barely reworked self-quote from a debate I was in years ago, but I thought it was relevant enough to keep.
Its about 60/40, sometimes closer to 70/30, in just about every recent survey I've ever read, and that is excluding stuff like the Sims (which, by the way? very popular with the menz as well). The only way one gets the numbers you describe is by selectively choosing your games in order to fit a pre-conceived idea of what's out there, which is known in scientific circles as statistical fraud. That's running fairly rampant in this thread, as certain of you scramble desperately to fence off Your Games from Her Games, selecting smaller and smaller subsets of already limited genres and deriding anything perceived as popular among both genders as feminine, and therefore crap. Honestly, its pathetic to watch. What kind of loser really feels threatened by women playing their fave FPS in any more than token numbers?
Well, I for one am terrified by the risk of an armed uprising.
Its about 60/40, sometimes closer to 70/30, in just about every recent survey I've ever read, and that is excluding stuff like the Sims (which, by the way? very popular with the menz as well). The only way one gets the numbers you describe is by selectively choosing your games in order to fit a pre-conceived idea of what's out there, which is known in scientific circles as statistical fraud. That's running fairly rampant in this thread, as certain of you scramble desperately to fence off Your Games from Her Games, selecting smaller and smaller subsets of already limited genres and deriding anything perceived as popular among both genders as feminine, and therefore crap. Honestly, its pathetic to watch. What kind of loser really feels threatened by women playing their fave FPS in any more than token numbers?
You managed to rouse me with mention of "every recent survey" since I didn't think there was much data for this. So, I went a diggin', and boom: headshot!
Quotes from the paper about this survey (which was done in 2006):
"An online survey of users of German computer-game-related websites was conducted. Banners and postings to related chats and newsgroups invited interested Internet users to participate anonymously in the investigation. The questionnaire included items on average frequency of use of different competitive and non-competitive computer game genres."
"In addition to these variables, items about participants' age and gender were included in the online questionnaire. It took participants about 12 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Overall, 795 individuals responded to the questionnaire, among them only 18 females. The small number of female subjects willing to participate in the survey as compared to male subjects further attests to the gender gap in video game involvement among the German population. However, the group of females turned out to be large enough to allow for statistical gender comparisons. On average, respondents were 21 years old "
Wrong eh? Do you seriously maintain that 50% of players of FPS or RTS or TBS or any genre outside of casual, sim or MMO are female? 40%? 30%? Females probably make up for maybe 10% of players of FPS, maybe a little more for hardcore strategy, sure that's up from 1% some years ago, but statistically still quite a minority. I can't point to a source for this sadly, but it's my experience in the world. If you'd like to cite a source, I'd gladly take it into consideration.
It's my experience in the world that girls who play FPS games don't tell you they're girls when you encounter them in game. Because it's their experience in the world that you're going to harrass, taunt and verbally assault them for being a girl who dares to play Counterstrike with the boys rather than just play the game with them. So your experience in the world isn't worth shit. Get actual numbers and stop pointing at your own fecal matter and calling it a statistic.
Also, I don't even have any FPS games installed anymore, even though I'm not a girl, and it's largely because FPS games are for the most part pretty lame.
Edit: A case study involving 17 women and 780 men is your evidence? Wow. Yeah no, 17 actually isn't enough to do statistical analysis of that data, at least not under the assumption that you want your statistical analysis to mean anything at all about the real population values.
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And I know guys who play The Sims. Just adding that it works both ways.
Anyway I vote that from now on all characters in video games will either be a hermaphrodite or asexual. THE CONTROVERSY WILL THEREFORE BE QUELLED!
The point is though, you are weird. You are the minority. My comp subject is 90%+ male. You're perfectly allowed to join in, I'm not trying to protect my hobby from you. I think the more gamers, the better. But you must ackowledge the fact that you are atypical.
https://medium.com/@alascii
That's perfectly fine, but the problem is with guys like dodgeblan insisting that Real Women wear heels everywhere and constantly talk about their feeeeeeeelings and the boooooooooys, and therefore female characters should be like that too. Oh, and girls don't play games. That's really irritating.
http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/
Edit: Just read all of it.
Edit 2: Since you probably won't reach a rational conclusion on your own, the point is "of course mostly guys will like it if you go out of your way to refuse to acknowledge women as an audience."
Did anyone else just go what the fuck just now when they read this?
No, I'm not. More women play online games than men. Different sorts of games, sure - they often play game styles that allow one to come and go from the computer rather than having to set aside a dedicated block of time, but don't go acting like its freakish for women to play games. It flies in the face of basic reality.
that's pretty much par for the course at this stage. I'm wondering what the logical connection between this dude's C++ course and a round of CivIV are...
Are you suggesting that women tend to play a different type of videogame to men? HERESY! SEXISM!
https://medium.com/@alascii
http://www.audioentropy.com/
You're down to non sequiturs and strawmanning already? Man, I thought I'd get some more out of you than that. C-.
Jaheira and Khalid. Isn't that turning the cliche on its head.
Girls don't actually play that many games; women do. Sure, it might be 85% or more small games or sim clones/ripoffs, but that other percent do in fact play the real manly games, like those JRPGS with the incredibly metrosexual main characters, or the next hyper violent shooter.
The world just isn't that simple anymore, heck if it ever was that simple. I respect the position dodgeblan is taking; women and men are different creatures. We think differently. Its not all cultural either, its something hardwired.
I had an assault rifle blaster in COH named Hermaphrochrist. Does that count?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Sure, we're different. Nobody's seriously argued that we aren't since the mid-70's, though - that's a really irritating meme that I wish would die in a fire. However, you'll find from pretty much every piece of research into gender differences that a) variation within gender exceeds variation between genders, and b) what differences do exist are hugely exaggerated by culture. So its really not useful to just say men and women are different and leave it at that. Even aside from the 'cism stuff that pisses me off, it doesn't make economic sense for game makers to de facto or deliberately ignore/marginalise the female demographic. They have a lot of influence over purchasing decisions even when they aren't gamers, and those who are aren't willing to put up with the "gut the game's content and paint the box pink" approach to obtaining their money.
But, The Cat, they had Super Princess Peach. Surely a girl's game about a blonde chick in a pink dress who solves puzzles by crying on things is a step forward!
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Sales pretty much pan that out. The barbie games do ok numbers, but the games that really interest women but don't pander do truckloads of sales, see the Sims, Tetris, Brain Age, and others for proof.
When I was hooked on WoW, I ended up playing mainly during the early morning because of my job. I was amazed at the number of housewifes that were in my guild. Seriously, none of this "LoL every grrrl on the intertrons is a dude!!!" as I talked to most of them over Vent.
Women/Girls are the final frontier of game marketing. The Wii is doing its part, hilariously enough. More women have been interested in my Wii since last November...
I'm a woman and I've been playing games since I was 6 years old when my brothers bought an Atari. I've never stopped being irritated at the lack of female characters I can identify with. I even wrote a letter to Nintendo Power about this when I was 12 (they wrote back some crap about the mages from Final Fantasy).
It's funny you mentioned The Boss, because I just beat that game today and I was thinking how cool it would be to play a game with her instead.
See my game reviews at: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=strangegamer
t feral don't get me started on that piece of shit >_<
The characterisation of them I don't want to get into at all.
Are these two the only ones paying attention to my perfect solution?
I will now go kill more Duty members in STALKER with my Desert eagle. DOESN'T ANYONE CARE ABOUT DUTY?
Zie was Jesus with a big gun, a bandalero, and pink briefs. Zie had the power of God, the power of guns, and the power of gender on zir side. Zie was more man than you'll ever be and more woman than you'll ever get.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
FUCKING WELL PLAYED ZIE. Well played.
The tough part about this is that not enough women enter the technical fields. When I was taking lower level Comp Sci courses, the gender ratio wasn't horribly unbalanced. In retrospect, this is probably due in part to the way the university requires everyone to take some lower level tech courses. Higher level CS courses are sausage fests. My software engineering course had only one female in it who was an international student from India.
Now, this course centered around a semester long group project about creating a website that dealt with online book vendors and through a series of events my group wound up trying to make a product that catered to women. We had the one female student in our group but for the most part, we had no solid idea how to really design something for Western women. We were able to shoehorn in some design by deciding we would focus on older women not as familiar with technology (ie, our mothers and older) and thereby working in things into the design that would generally work for members of either gender that aren't computer savvy. By running stuff past female friends (ie, having them give feedback on our interface, images, etc.) we were able to at least make it so that we weren't offending women but even that I think skirted by in some cases.
When it came time to give a demonstration of what we created, we got some criticism from our class members based on some of their perceptions of women which then got shot down a bit by our female group member. So basically no one else in the class really knew how to take women into account either.
This is the generation that will be going into the game industry starting this summer and playing a part in designing games. While the designers and writers do not strictly have to come from technical backgrounds, they still often do. We may be able to avoid offending all the sensibilities of women, but that's not the same as designing good female characters. In our case being able to run our design by women we knew for feedback helped, but in a real situation when creating commercial software it's not something that's going to be efficient as going with what we know and avoiding delays.
Now I'd love to see more games with properly developed female characters. But after going through that project and sometimes butting heads with other group members on aspects of our project based on our experiences with women, it's not something I want to design.
Anyway, to add in some food for thought, from what I've read over the past few years when women do decide to take up firearms and marksmanship they often outperform men for some reason, whether due to psychological or physiological reasons. I've heard that in Olympic marksmanship competitions, there are more restrictions placed on what equipment women are allowed to use to prevent the events from being dominated by the female athletes. It certainly reverses some commonly held perceptions of women and gives feasibility for female action hero type characters despite generally lower muscular strength, as much as action hero characters are feasible to begin with. It also gives a way to write in combat proficiency into a female character without having to make it an all or nothing approach: a female combatant can believably resemble any other female character despite being a good shot.
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But I still think there is an issue here. We've got people saying games pander towards men, and people saying that there isn't anything inherently male about the video game industry. We've got people saying women play just as much video games as men, but we both know the majority of games discussed within this forum don't fall under that category. And yeah, the majority of compsci students are men. The majority of art theory students are women.
I'm talking about gamers. People who know the difference between command and conquer and the legend of zelda. people who know how to use wasd and mouselook to navigate an area. These people are mainly male. Their medium deals mainly with 'male interests'.
But as you've all pointed out, this is largely because of social pressures. Without these pressures, would art theory classes and computer science classes be gender neutral? I don't know. Maybe.
All I was saying was that acknowledgement of gender in video games tends to be incredibly shallow. But who knows? maybe video games are a glimpse of the future- where it doesn't matter whether the badass killing rats in some dudes dungeon is male or female. But video games don't reflect the harsh realities of gender issues and perception. And because they are a male-dominated environment any depiction of gender issues tends to revolve around the male side of things. thats all.
https://medium.com/@alascii
As for what the industry, foreign and domestic, produces, I disagree that it has more to do with developer gender than simply it gives to the market what the market wants. There has been so little momentum because it's a catch 22. There are statistically fewer female gamers because the industry doesn't provide them with things that they want, and the industry doesn't provide things that female gamers want because they are such a statistical minority in the market. The fact that there has been any change at all is somewhat amazing, because it means that the industry is taking more risks and female gamers are making do with less than perfect products just so that they can have some say in the direction of the community and the industry.
On the same note of the market, I hope that girls' games don't become a crusade (which I know it is for some women). I don't want to see super politically correct games be the only option. I want to be able to have the choice between Civilization ## and Tomb Raider ##. I think we are by human nature doomed to some separation of entertainment based on gender. There will be girl games and guy games and games that will appeal to both. However, I don't want to see guy games watered down so they won't offend girls who weren't supposed to be the target market anyway. Imagine if in some alternate reality most games were made for girls, would you want to see them changed just to be more inclusive to guys? In the end I want to see girls' games and "gender neutral" games added to the market. I don't want to see guys' games subtracted from the market.
Also, DodgeBlan, thank you for narrowing the category of gamers. I'm so sick of how some people will say ooooh but lots of women play games! Yeah, Bejewelled and the Sims, hooray. That's like saying a lot of people play Yatzee, therefore those same people naturally care about the latest super complex Avalon Hill game, because both games are played on tables.
Pharezon, your idea does not go far enough! In order to completely circumvent gender issues associated with in-game characters, said characters should be removed entirely. The ideal standard will, of course, be Tetris, though Qix is also an honorable mention.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Except that you're both wrong. Also, who the hell ever gave the impression that anyone was fixin' to take your toys away? No-one here is out to ban Leisure Suit Larry. Talk about freakin' paranoid.
Wrong eh? Do you seriously maintain that 50% of players of FPS or RTS or TBS or any genre outside of casual, sim or MMO are female? 40%? 30%? Females probably make up for maybe 10% of players of FPS, maybe a little more for hardcore strategy, sure that's up from 1% some years ago, but statistically still quite a minority. I can't point to a source for this sadly, but it's my experience in the world. If you'd like to cite a source, I'd gladly take it into consideration.
Also the second paragraph is the result of the fact that my post was a barely reworked self-quote from a debate I was in years ago, but I thought it was relevant enough to keep.
Its about 60/40, sometimes closer to 70/30, in just about every recent survey I've ever read, and that is excluding stuff like the Sims (which, by the way? very popular with the menz as well). The only way one gets the numbers you describe is by selectively choosing your games in order to fit a pre-conceived idea of what's out there, which is known in scientific circles as statistical fraud. That's running fairly rampant in this thread, as certain of you scramble desperately to fence off Your Games from Her Games, selecting smaller and smaller subsets of already limited genres and deriding anything perceived as popular among both genders as feminine, and therefore crap. Honestly, its pathetic to watch. What kind of loser really feels threatened by women playing their fave FPS in any more than token numbers?
Well, I for one am terrified by the risk of an armed uprising.
You managed to rouse me with mention of "every recent survey" since I didn't think there was much data for this. So, I went a diggin', and boom: headshot!
Quotes from the paper about this survey (which was done in 2006):
"An online survey of users of German computer-game-related websites was conducted. Banners and postings to related chats and newsgroups invited interested Internet users to participate anonymously in the investigation. The questionnaire included items on average frequency of use of different competitive and non-competitive computer game genres."
"In addition to these variables, items about participants' age and gender were included in the online questionnaire. It took participants about 12 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Overall, 795 individuals responded to the questionnaire, among them only 18 females. The small number of female subjects willing to participate in the survey as compared to male subjects further attests to the gender gap in video game involvement among the German population. However, the group of females turned out to be large enough to allow for statistical gender comparisons. On average, respondents were 21 years old "
I rest my case.
Although that's not excluding anything, so The Cat might have been referring to a different study.
It's my experience in the world that girls who play FPS games don't tell you they're girls when you encounter them in game. Because it's their experience in the world that you're going to harrass, taunt and verbally assault them for being a girl who dares to play Counterstrike with the boys rather than just play the game with them. So your experience in the world isn't worth shit. Get actual numbers and stop pointing at your own fecal matter and calling it a statistic.
Would the findings of actual research be of any interest? I figure probably not, but might as well offer it. And an abstract of a study you may be able to find through your uni's online journal database. Seems to me the reason more girls don't play FPS games is because they're taught to dislike them from an early age.
Also, I don't even have any FPS games installed anymore, even though I'm not a girl, and it's largely because FPS games are for the most part pretty lame.
Edit: A case study involving 17 women and 780 men is your evidence? Wow. Yeah no, 17 actually isn't enough to do statistical analysis of that data, at least not under the assumption that you want your statistical analysis to mean anything at all about the real population values.