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Gaming Magazine Ads: Failing the Female Market
Anonymous Coward writes "Just saw an article titled Gaming Magazine Ads: Failing the Female Market. Thought you might find it interesting." The question which I've always had is, what is cause and what is effect? We know that games (and ads, naturally) appeal to men primarily; we know that male gamers are in the majority (though not by as much as I thought; see the article). But do the games/ads actually turn women away, or are they just catering to the pre-existing audience?
I guess the real question is, does the advertising attarct the market or does the market attract the advertising??
The rule is they wouldn't do it if it didn't sell
Do you remember the kind of sexism that existed it beer ads in the recent past? It's largely been removed through activism, but beer sales have NOT declined. The sexism in current computer gaming ads is not driven by increased sales, but by sexist attitudes on the part of the advertisers, just as it was in the past in countless other markets.
As for the fact that the people who buy games are for the most part male, this is not caused by females not being able to enjoy the same type of games. It's a matter of inaccesability. There's thousands of excellent hard-core female Quake players, who are perfectly normal people. That provides a sufficient counter-example to the argument that games and girls just don't mix.
Computer gaming is just another "old boys club". Over and over we've heard the same talk about why women aren't interested in or can't do something. And every time it's BS.
Now this is, of course, merely my speculation, but doesn't it make sense that, rather than being a huge paternistic conspiracy to keep women out of technology, it is simply another odd effect of an animal who's instincts translate into his more advanced culture?
It's well known that men are more likely to engage in life-threatening situations than women, biologically. We don't carry children, our bodies are generally built better for such activities, we were the primary hunters (a dangerous sport when your only weapon is your bare hands or a sharpened bone), etc.
Women are, genetically speaking, both more fragile and more valuable individually. A woman who is pregnant should be kept out of as much dangerous activity as possible to have the best chance of carrying the child to term, and so is not as inclined to take risks that could endanger her blood line.
"Violent" games excite us, and perhaps deliver to us some of the brain candy that we're genetically programmed to seek out.
And as for technology in general, men tend to be much more problem and goal oriented, whereas women tend to be more socially oriented. Men are generally more comfortable forming a system to solve problems and sticking to it, whereas a group of women will generally want to discuss the issue, and utilize the experience as a way to come together socially.
Computers are rife with problems waiting to be solved. No social interaction needed, just the individual and the challenge. Perhaps this is why we see so many more male programmers than female ones. Its just not in line with what a woman, genetically, wants.
I'm expecting to get flamed on this by at least one person who takes exception to my differentiating between the sexes this way. I'll just state my feelings outright. Men and women are DIFFERENT. Our brains do NOT work the same way, and for good reason. Certainly, as citizens of the earth we are equal, but to pretend that we are the same is sacrificing truth on the altar of political correctness. Neither sex is, IMO, "better" as a whole, but certainly one sex will be better adapted to certain situations than the other.
--mrex, posting anonymously because he forgot his passwd
Nope, I'm saying it's a viscous cycle. A self reinforcing loop of our society. One of the major reasons that there are very few women who get engineering degrees is the fact that the classrooms are virtually all male. But the REAL reason isn't that one. If you had read my post more carefully, you would have noticed that I point out that is societal brainwashing that is the underlying cause. This is not done on purpose, it is a result of the same stereotypes having occured in the parents lives. This stereotype is then passed on to the children. The thing that makes these stereotypes so sinister is that no one notices they are reinforcing them. It is clear that no one believes me by the score on my previous post. Too bad. Looks like there will be another 100 years of backwards thinking holding our society back.
There are women with high level of testosterone. They ARE interested in technical stuff just like males.
Testosterone -> interest in technical stuff.
Also the story "we dont give them construction toys" is just pure crap. There were many families that TRIED to put the same toys to boys and girls from the age of 1. The result? The boys played with guns and tech toys and girls played with barbies, houses etc. The girls showed NO INTEREST in tech toys (and there is nothing wrong with that). THEY MADE THE SELECTION WITHOUT ANY SOCIAL PRESSURE. When will world come to the conclusion that woman differs substantially from man? I dont want to see a male-only world. Women are beautiful because they are women! The two genders exist to complement each other, not to become one (male).
>attitude seems to be the sort that causes the problems she is discussing.
Yes, I did read the rest of the examples. The other cases did seem to indicate sexist advertising, but the joystick issue (listed last...) seemed to be a tenuous link at best -- without actually viewing the advert.
Apparently she hasn't browsed any of those womens magazines that you find the local grocery counter. Some of these magazines show women in a much more revealing nature than any of these game magazines!
Somebody moderate this up, up, please! Not only is this a clever rebuttal to the original article, but it caused me to involuntarily inhale an unhealthy amount of Mountain Dew.
frag n.,v.
[from Vietnam-era U.S. military slang via the games Doom and Quake] 1. To kill another player's avatar in a multiuser game. "I hold the office Quake record with 40 frags." 2. To completely ruin something. "Forget that power supply, the lightning strike fragged it.
/joeyo
2^5
I'd say there's a simple solution to this problem. Start a new gaming magazine which is geared towards a different kind of audience. It could step in and capture the parts of the gaming market that all other gaming mags are ignoring, and that refers to more than just women. I know that I stopped reading game magazines some years ago for much the same reasons that this article describes: all of the articles and especially the ads seem geared towards explositions, gore, sex, or any other quick attention-grabber, carefully avoiding any use of sophistication or subtlety. (If you don't think that advertising can be sophisticated or subtle, think of iMac, Infinity, or Volkswagon Bettle capagins.)
Another amusing over-the-top gaming ad ancedote: my girlfriend and I attended CGDC last year. Microsoft poored some serious money into advertising there; you couldn't look in any direction without seeing a Microsoft-funded ad. Anyways, one of the advertising sets was a series of banners mounted in one of the halls connecting two of the largest rooms; all of them featured the words "Bring It On!" along with some sort of "extreme" picture, like a guy's head on fire or something. One of them was a picture of...sperm. Needless to say, we were laughing so hard we almost hurt ourselves. Of course, I suppose the sad thing is that this sort of advertising must be working on *someone*, or else it wouldn't be so prevelant...
I would think RPGs would be better suited to the female (tm) mentality, but we all remember what the pictures in the D&D books were like.
Well at least over here (Sweden), there's a lot of female roleplayers, specially livers. It took something around 20-25 years for this to come around since the first RPGs came out, so I think we can expect the same trend in computer games. I know a lot more girls play computer games than they used to, so basically I think it's only a matter of time.
I don't have a wife or a girlfriend well color me surprised
And I know all of the things you're going to say
makes them no less true
I think I've figured out about how old you are... it's about six.
I'm old enough to be your daddy O sexless wonder.
--
I think the fact that you are up at 2:32 am EST mocking people on slashdot is very indictive of just how many relationships you have, stud.
Good luck with the ladies.
-[ World domination - rains.net ]-
For starters: this ad is written by "Atari"? Get a new nickname girl, that one is taken by an evil gaming corporation that has sexy game characters like those found in Gauntlet: Legends. The Valkyrie has that phallic sword that she always carries, and her screams are so sexy... Oops, I've been reading that article for too long.
:)
:)
I don't read gaming magazines, but game advertising sucks anyhow. Who wants to be shouted at with "SEGA!". At least "Play-stashion" is a bit more bearable, but... come on. Most of the cool ads I've seen are literally just showing you how cool the game looks (and not really sexist, that I've seen). And really, who reads magazines anymore, when we have the internet?
Well, I tend to like RPGs and pretty games. I don't play that many shooters. I'd rather be playing Angband, Final Fantasy, Ultima, Star Control, Heroes of Might and Magic, (or Masters of Magic! Please make a sequel!) those types of games.
And from my experience with the chicks I know that play games... They tend to play some RPG's, more puzzle games than I do, and more heavy storyline games, some written by women. Some Sierra games come to mind (even sometimes including Leisure Suit Larry -- take that, silly article writer, it's funny stuff!) as well as King's Quest, and also the Gabriel Knight series (GK3 looks pretty cool) and many others...
Of course, my generalizations could be horribly wrong, so please, any geekgrrls who would rather be playing Tomb Raider and Quake 3 please speak up, so we can get your e-m... um... hear your opinions.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Well, it started to be this way for obvious reasons: follow the money.
I know it wasn't this way back when I read "Nintendo Power", yea, when it first came out. You couldn't get offended by the advertising unless you were afraid of fat little Italian men and giant mushrooms.
Before that, there was no problem with Breakout and Pong, I'm pretty sure.
So it's obviously a recent thing, and apparently most of the gamers with the new, fast "gaming computers" are men. Otherwise, the gaming magazines are being pretty stupid. But it'd be worth it to have at least *a* gaming magazine devoted to the latest puzzle games, RPG's, etc., with advertising content to match. Heck, if I bought magazines, I might look at that. That's why I got Nintendo Power, to see what the next Zelda, Megaman, or Final Fantasy game looked like.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Let me be more specific.
Where I come from game magazines gather dust on the shelves more often than not. Where I come from people play games that they have *never* sean adds for. What game adds do is draw attention to particular games but not to gaming as a whole. That's like I said an early childhood or genetic thing.
As to the authors claim that 50% of gamers are female. Where ? Not around these parts. The girls at my nice-in-law's school are really sisterly. They share everything; Romance novels, makeup kits, oddly shaped combs etc...
Video games don't ever seam to come up, except as something we are doing instead of what they want.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
That might be a good read. I figured it's something you learn early on but I didn't know where or how.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Video games appeal to boys more and men more than girls and women.
This has little to do with the adds since most of us start playing games long before we know they have adds for them. The real difference happens either very early in childhood or is hardwired into the geans. I suspect the former based mostly on a child I know ( 12 now ) who would spend hours before the mirror fighting her hair and "simulating" makeup but would also "repair" small appliances. The latter probably has more to do with walking through my "lab" every day.
While there are females who find video games ( even Quake ) appealing and some exist who like to tinker with machines the fact is when it comes to high tech these ladies are the exception rather than the rule. This is part of the problem that makes silicon valley "the largest concentration of millionaire bachelors". It's why your typical tech startup will have 20 boys, 2 girls and 3 old men. Both the girls will likely be in marketing or accounts too.
So my point ? Game producers see no point in targeting the female market since
1. It's extremely tiny to begin with and
2. Those few members will be attracted by most of what catches the eyes of boys.
BTW : Before anyone starts mouthing off about women being offended by pictures of scantily clad females take a look through a few "Women's magazines" sometime. All those lingerie adds are "interesting" and why do you need a nude model to sell lipstick ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Pat Robertson.
I was walking through a local Computer City some time ago, checking out the mice and various controllers. I hit the joystick section, and was trying a few of them out. When I got to the end of the row, I saw this one. It was a Thrustmaster. Understand, this was the first time I had heard/seen the brand name. Even aside from the name, this was the most phallic toy I had ever seen. It was ribbed, and had this swivelling tip. And the sleek styling...
I laughed so hard, I had to go get my friend from another section and point it out. He lost it. To this day, no one can say the word "Thrustmaster" around me without a giggle.
Maybe I'm immature, but it's more fun this way.
Aside from all that, it wouldn't be the first time phallic symbols have been used in advertising. Just look at a cigarette ad sometime. It's not your imagination. Very common technique. It's subtle, and can slide in under most people's radar. I wouldn't even be surprised if product designers take it into account.
Witness this:
http://www.logitech.com/ cf/products/productoverview.cfm/20
It's not just me, either. I have a second opinion. Yeah, you *know* what it looks like. Do the letters ESS mean anything to you? (Johnny Dangerously, not sound card company). Now, the way they seem to have designed this joystick is that the base is a rounded T-shape, with the controls on the long end and the stick at the cross of the T. How they chose to take the picture for this ad is a different story entirely.
--- Phyre
Come on, you're telling me biker doesn't turn you on? :-)
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
When I was younger, and even less enlightened than I am now, I used to think girls didn't like computers because they were something new, and girls just didn't like new things, and that they would grow to like computers too when those things stopped being something new.
How wrong could I be. Now that theres a computer on every desk and in every home, and in every car, park, ocean, mudpool, glacier and soon in every internal organ, girls still don't like computers, and most wouldn't dream of using one for any purpose other than as a tool. Most of them seem to prefer playing with people, and consider playing computer games about as interesting as playing with a hammer or another tool.
I wonder if this difference is culturally defined, or engraved in the human genome. In our particular culture the female 'cool' requires women not to be interested in exact sciences, so woment make up no more than about 10% of all chemistry or physics students, and I'm told women are even rarer at mathmatics and computer science. However, in other cultures I'm told, where science has a higher status, or where it is considered equally uncool for men to be interested in science, the gender difference is much smaller, or even reversed (France, Latin America). I wonder if girls there do like to play with computers.
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On a related note, their sci-fi section is lithe with nothing but the despicable hormonally-crazed Seven Of Nine worship which has completely turned me off on the sci-fi "scene" at large. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they were also into the pointless desparately-waiting-for-Natalie-Portman-to-become- legally-fuckable debacle shortly following Phantom Menace.
It wouldn't surprise me if it were an IGN publication which "Atari" (the author of this well-reasoned article) was mostly talking about, either. They tend to fall into the trap of showing off the "beautiful rendering" of female characters rather than giving useful screenshots.
But hey, I just read it for the articles. And rarely, at that.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a .
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Look, if you want to produce games, EXCITING GAMES, touchy-feely just ain't gonna hack it.
I don't like the gore and blood and all the violence in the games, but we have to face the reality, and the reality is that people's FIRST IMPRESSION on almost _EVERYTHING_ is the way things LOOK, and in the gaming area, it's the GRAPHICS that count.
Touch-feely thingy just don't make GREAT GRAPHICS, sex and violence do.
So there !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Specifically this one, which I have seen at least twice in PC Gamer:
-- QUOTE --
Description: The ad looks back from inside the computer screen out to the room of a teenage boy. A girl who looks like she's 14 years old (definitely not over 16) is draped in a sexy pose over a chair wearing short shorts and a red tube top. The guy is grinning back at the computer screen while gripping his joystick. The caption for this ad reads, "You know you're going to score."
---END QUOTE---
I'm damn offended by that one, and I'm male. I don't care what the justification is for it. The imagery and text strongly imply under-age sex. That's irresponsible. I know it happens. It's still wrong to rub it in people's faces. Not many ads offend me, but this one does.
Also, she's bitching about:
Sadly, there is not one "safe" computer gaming magazine I could recommend to my friends who play games like Simcity, Re-Volt, or Myst. Not only do these magazines alienate women, but they also alienate entire groups of non-combative and non-violent gamers
I have some news for you, lady. The reason why you're never gonna find magazines that talk about those games is that they're FIVE FUCKING YEARS OLD AND NOBODY PLAYS THEM ANY MORE, AND IF THEY DO, THEY ALREADY BOUGHT THE STRATEGY GUIDE WHEN THE GAME WAS ACTUALLY GETTING PRESS COVERAGE!
If all you're playing is Myst and Sim City, you don't NEED gaming magazines, because you wouldn't be interested in the content anyway, no matter what gender it was catered to or written by. And most women I know who play "computer games" just play pansy shit like that (no offense) and Jeopardy and stuff. They never really get into games that much, either. It's like card games for them. Infrequently, and for short periods of time.
Yes, there are exceptions (KillCreek, etc.) who could probably kick my everyloving ass in Quake, but they're few and far between. The point is that women just don't obsess over games like guys do. You'll never hear a woman talking with her friends and saying "Dude, you'll never guess how many frags I got on that new low ping Arena server today! I whooped ass! Oh, and I tweaked my TNT2 drivers and reinstalled a few windows DLLs to pull an extra 12 fps in 1024x768."
No, you'll hear women saying "I got a high score on tetris. So do you like these new panties I got? I went shopping at Wet Seal today. They had the greatest sale. I got all these (pulls three shirts out of her bag) for just $86."
And as for the phallic joystick remark, give me a break. I've never seen a joystick in my life that isn't phallic, get used to it. Hey, how bout the Slashdot crew get together and write a video game just for women. It will come with a specially designed contour-less ultra-phallic joystick with stroke sensors, and the game will train this woman to give good hand jobs, cause she probably doesn't get any sex considering how frigid and whiny she is about being a female.
Well I guess I failed my goal of not sounding like a masoganist. But who cares? <joke> Not like I'd be given a fair trial by those militant dykes anyway :) </joke>
A woman who chooses a mate that can earn enough money to support himself (and maybe her) is smart. A woman who marries someone who si destined for a life of financial uncertainty is in for a world of frustration and conflict.
Now (1) statistics doesn't exclude exceptions to the norm; (2) considering the weight of acquired traits in human behavior, genetics only account for an initial trend, that can be amplified or dampened by social pressure; (3) as computer science/gaming is considered more and more "traditional" and "safe", you can expect women to be more and more into this activity, (4) even if you manage to get a fair ratio of women in CS, then, you'll most likely still be able to feel a neat difference between behavior of male and female computer scientists/gamers (for better and for worse).
-- Faré @ TUNES.org
-- Faré @ TUNES.org
Reflection & Cybernet
I don't think that is a very good statistic. I certainly wasn't polled. Perhaps 50% of the people who actually responded to the poll were female. Just because you don't subscribe to gaming magazines doesn't mean you are not a gamer. I don't think there's any good way to accurately determine the percentages.
Hey, it's better than all uppercase. :)
I've read this kind of statement before in interviews with people who claim to be experts on female gaming, but I have observed just the opposite. Women don't often like games that require a great investment of time just to get started on. The games I've seen women go crazy for are not social simulations, but very abstract games like Tetris or Minesweeper or solitaire.
Anyway, my girlfriend loves Soul Calibur and she can kick my ass at it.
Irregardless of how many women actually are gamers, 50% of *people* are women, and thus 50% of potential gamers are women. Duh.
My girlfriend is an avid gamer. In fact, when she's over at my apartment she probably spends more time gaming than I do (I've got the GeForce, she doesn't *grin*). But she refuses to read gaming magazines and most gaming websites (excepting Blue's News and the non-IGN Asheron's Call sites) because she's sick of the ads. I mean, ShugaShack's "Babe Hunt" is just inexcusable, whether you're male or female.
As a male gamer, I'm SICK of being lumped in with 15-year old 3133t quake hax0rs. I'm SICK of Lara Croft. I'm SICK of IGN's banner ads. Please, gaming magazine editors and gaming website editors, just STOP it. You make us all look like idiots.
bowms
bowms@bowms.org
> Why target a group that makes up less than one percent of your buyers?
What? Can you cite a source for that figure? At every Quake LAN party I had at my college, 20-40% of the people who showed up and played were female. (And one of those women was the best flag defender we had.)Well, in Norwegian, the word for "mouse" is commonly used to refer to the female sexual organs - what is your hand resting on right now? :-)
Sometimes a joystick is just a joystick.
Another great article on womengamers.com entitled "Searching for the Techie Woman" has a list of resources for getting women interested in Computer Gaming, and Computer Science as a whole. Here are some of the better ones:
http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/club/girls. html (has a whole lot more links, too)
www.girlgeeks.com
http://www.mystery.com/WAM/index.html
I personally enjoy one female character in StarCraft, the dropship pilot, who is a HUGE rip off of Corporal Ferro from "Aliens".
"In the pipe, five by five...."
Not only that, but the Barbie portion of Mattel represents more than half of their revenue.
Mind you, my information is at least two years old. This is lifted from an article I read about "skydancer" toys. (I think it was in the New York Times) The article was talking about trying to make a successful toy for girls that wasn't Barbie.
As I understand it the "Barbie Dance Studio" video game is actually quite successful.
Thank you for not thinking.
>>Not all gamer chiks are fat, ugly dykes. There are a few of us that are good looking and have brains
:-P
I have a couple of gripes with that statement.
1. You make it sound like fat is *ALWAYS* a bad thing. Moderate plumpness can be quite attractive. Anna Nicole Smith is the perfect example of this, she's on the larger side and along with that size comes big breastedness that works very well for her.
(Many women with small breasts are just as attractive as well, but in HER particular case the extra overall size is quite pleasing to the eye)
2. Some of my most vivid and cherished sexual fantasies involve the women that you call "dykes".
3. Ugly is a very subjective description. (Ally McBeal) is very attractive to some men, but I am overcome by the desire to buy her a steak sandwich every time I see her. She's a goddess to some men, but she's a lollipop in my eyes.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If you want to make this a dick measuring contest, we can go there.
Kempo
Shotokan
Go Ju Do
Jui Jitsu
Isshinryu
These are all martial arts in which I have had formal schooling. I've also read much of the theory behind Judo. Have you had a look at my name Lord "Kano". One of the reasons why I adopted this name is due to my immense respect for Jigoro Kano.
Going to the YMCA for 6 weeks doesn't mean that you've "taken karate".
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
>>So what's the difference between choosing a guy for his earning potential and for the way he looks and/or how she's attracted to him? I don't see much. Just different attributes.
:-)>
I like to think of myself as a fairly handsome man, however I don't want it to be my looks which have attracted my wife to me. I think that she liked the fact that I treated her like an intelligent human being and not just like another pretty blonde.
Instead of "Hi, can I get into your pants?", it ws "Hi, want to hang out?" THEN I got into her pants.
>>I consider my earning potential to be an outward reflection of my intelligence, which is definitely a "good gene". So if someone wants to be attracted to me cause of that... fine.
I have an aunt who is married to a professional athlete. I honestly don't think she would have given him the time of day if he had been te guy working at "Sub Way". Mike Tyson has a higher earning potential than just about anyone in the discussion, is THAT indicative of his intelligence? Of his ability to pass on "good" genes? If a woman only wants to be with me because of my looks of because in 10 years there is a better an 50% chance that I'll be making 100grand per year, she's EXACTLY the type of woman that I don't want to be with.
PS. Do you think that Jennifer Lopez would be caught dead in public with "Puff Daddy" if he wasn't making MANY MANY millions of dollars per year? I don't.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Although I disagree with the way he put it, the AC does raise a valid point in this case.
Do you want a woman who is only with your because of your income or income potential? If a woman "loves" you only for your money, then she most definately is a whore.
Is a trophy bride acceptable to you? It's not to me. If I found out that my wife was only with me for my earning potential, I'd get a divorce TODAY.
I'm not insulting you, I'm just challenging your ideas.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
>>Placing second in tournaments doesn't make you a champion.
It only means that 1 person in my division was better than me.
>>So what you're saying is "I've done many forms of karate but I'm still not able to crack second".
I'm also saying that it's been 9 years since my last tournament.
>> i.e. that your broad-ranging experience still can't outweigh you athletic shortcomings
I'm not an athlete. After 6 matches, I AM tired. I AM slower. I AM NOT as fast or strong as I was in my second match. Maybe that lack of endurance will mean that I lose if I have to fight 6 guys in a row again. I'll take that risk.
>>Japanese judo is still held back by an excessive reliance on kata (which I'm sure you know all about).
That's what I like about traditional Japanese martial arts. (and Kung Fu for that matter) The importance of tradition and history. I remember my sensei telling us the story of Shoto killing a bull with his bare hands. True or not (probably not) the story illustrates the type of focus and dedication that a man can have if he practices enough and believes in himself.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The only games I know of women who plays are tetris and MUDs, the latter being the most popular. And how much of a market is that for gaming companies? Oh, sorry, I may be clueless, but I don't play games at all. I hack. And the girsl I know of either are not into computers at all, or are hackers, some of them MUD wizards...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Nobody will ever see this post, so I can kind of just ramble here...to me, it truly is not whether you win or lose. Shit, everyone dies, so ultimately, it's game over, you lose (though if I remember correctly, you are a religious person and would disagree with my metaphor).
If I may point this out, the idea of relaxing for an entire hour with Quake and THEN move on to other games is totally alien to me -- that's a whole lotta time devoted to competing. And among boys, that's not even close to "obsessive".
No matter what your gender, you rank a game by how much fun it really is. Fun for some is bass fishing, for others it could be barbie makeovers, or late night quake games beating the crap out of buddies, or just exploring alien worlds like Riven...
For me, all I really care about is figuring shit out. I like slurping up a problem and coming up with a solution in a real time. Women are good at that kind of stuff (so are men), but they aren't under the influence of male hormones. I think that is why you see women playing solitaire, tetris, riven, oddworld....it doesn't bother them that they aren't scoring off anyone.
Do you REALLY play a game a few dozen more times once you've finished it? Why? Once you've figured it out, why would you play it again? Maybe you are trying to get your money's worth...but I can't even understand that. Once I know all the secrets, that's it. Shelf time.
Dammit -- now I've blown the secret women's code regarding men -- the real reason why we love 'em and leave 'em. :-)
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"If children weren't copyrighted, no one would have babies." -- Alex Eulenberg
I haven't played video games much since the demise of my family's last Commodore 64 (I spent many an hour playing Montezuma's revenge, jumpman, Pit Stop, MULE, and others) but I did have fun for a time playing Sim City 2000, had a short stint with Myst (was given to me) as well as Star Wars Pod Racer. Just a few weeks ago I got Asheron's Call and have been enjoying the hell out of myself (Porom on Harvestgrain, BTW) (it's got the beat up big monsters thing that generally appeals to males, and the interact with real people thing that generally appeals to females, although I like both aspects)
Other women I know play Hearts and Solitare and such till their mouse clicking fingers will bleed, but unfortunatley those games aren't very profitable to make. However, games like Asheron's Call, EverQuest, Myst, Riven, Sim City, and others CAN be profitable AND can be (IMHO) successfully marketed to women.
Yes, I did. And for the most part I agree with them. Which is completely irrelevent to my post.
But thanks for asking.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
The real question is do game players care that there are sexist ads (and I would distinguish these from ads that merely use sexual imagery - this distinction is admitted in the original article)?
It seems foolish to me for game companies to be alienating a huge market. The female market is a pretty under-developed one at the moment.
I don't understand. What else could it be?
The game sucked, but the ads certainly got attention.
Changing the character would involve new artwork for the sprites and replacing all the player sounds. It would not have been difficult at all, just a little more work.
Something Awful
Question, is this page a funny parody of the sort of things this article is against, or an example?
P.S. My apologies if this was duplicated.
I don't recall ever seeing an advertisement in a better homes and gardens type magazine that any reasonable person would consider degrading to men.
I agree its hard not to describe "any" joystick as phallic. I have not seen the ad in question but how phallic could it be if the stick has been replaced with dynamite?
One more example: my sister. Favourite games AFAIK are Freecell, Tetris and Transport Tycoon. In other words, fundamentally puzzle games with an element of strategy.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
But how do you change the demographics? That's the question. And going one step further, should it be changed? Are the violence oriented games covered by the mags something most females would like if only they were approached in the right way? If you think yes, do you create different ads or do you hope by some miracle the demographics change and then you advertise to them? As I see it the whole point of advertising is to create demand. Some ads are targeted to your "most likely to buy" sector and some are targeted to increasing your market share or expanding into previously untapped markets. Ads targeted to women may get them to take a look, but will they stay? You'll have to ask some women for that answer.
I think it was the term used if if you got killed by someones gernaid in q1
"Subtle Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well NP, is controlled directly by Nintendo Corp of America, so its not going to have any contreverical content, or any advertzing at all, for that matter.
Other mags have to make money. I think it is pretty recent though, actualy... who knows.
"Subtle Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
While the the sexual inuendos were present in q1, there gone now. It says somthing boring now, like 'were blown up by' or whatever.
Anyway, I didn't think they were nesisaraly rape, I mean "eating pinapple"?
"Subtle Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Shouldn't she be able to reprint the ads by permission of Fair Use? Much like news programs being able to re-broadcast campaign advertisements when they do a segment on them.
I've never found a "women gamer" site that I've liked. Then again, I've never found a "guy gamer" site that I've liked - or at all for that matter. The reasoning is pretty simple - I don't like sexism, applied to me or otherwise.
I like network played games like Tribes because it's similar to playing a sport; but wait, that's a 3D shoot-em-up! Obviously I'm a typical male. Never mind that I don't like Quake because of its small, rabid levels and de-emphasis on team play. My girlfriend, by contrast, is a Quake 2 and Thief addict who at no point in her life would have been caught dead playing with a Barbie PC. Is she abnormal? I prefer to think that she's an individual with an individual's tastes. Otherwise, we'll never find a computer game we can play together.
The problem I see with articles like the one in WomenGamers is that it presupposes a stereotype about both male and female gamers. Rather than selling a game based on its brilliant graphics, fast animation, and stimulating gameplay, apparently we should market it by touting its specialization for boys or girls.
So yes, I find "women gamer" sites hostile. I'd find "men gamer" sites the same way, because what I don't like about them is the fact that their complaint is not with sexist marketing or game design, but that the sexism is too much "in favour" of men. It's wrong thinking and it just serves to perpetuate stereotypes, industry bias, and yes, hostility.
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
This is often regarded as a sexist view, but IMO, the major barriers to women's acceptance by certain male-dominated fields, male-targeted media, etc. start very early in life, practically at birth, and continue on through just after adolescence. (Naturally, the mechanisms and forces keep working after that, but there is a point of personal development at which these forces have already had enough of an effect that they are no longer major ones.)
/. know, some people have a greater ability/desire to resist social forces and go against the 'norm' than others. (Ask any gay person about these social forces if you dont believe me.)
From a very young age, we are taught that our physical sexual designation must define our social and personal behaviour. This is perpetuated mostly by familial forces working in a young child's life. The dynamic between young parents and their own older relatives (wanting to impress Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, etc.) ends up putting social pressure on parents to nudge their children towards the traditional roles; ranging from how they dress their children to which relatives and neighborhood kids they are encouraged to play with, to which school and community activities they are enrolled in or encouraged to join. The desire of children to fit in, which is defined by the 'norm', which is in turn defined by the directions their parents led them, then brings peer pressure into the mix of forces working to perpetuate this.
This is why little boys play with GI Joes and girls play with Barbies. This is also why teenage boys fiddle with cars and teenage girls fiddle with makeup kits and various fashion accessories. And this is why young adult males pump iron and young adult females do aerobics.
The fact that these observations are stereotypes and not actual blanket statements shows that there is not really any physical or other predilection towards these sexual roles based on one's physical gender. There are female bodybuilders and male aerobics instructors. Some young girls are tomboys and play cops n' robbers with the boys, and young boys who play house with girls. Queen Elizabeth knows how to fix army trucks and Ralph Lauren knows what fashion accessories go with what dress. The factors at work are purely social, and as most of us on
Especially in the post-liberation era, women have more openly-expressed interest in traditional male activities. (Whether it was always there or not can't be said -- it probably was.) Women/girls are now more into sports, cars, even computers and video games than they might have been say 30 or even 15 years ago. There is, among an aging but younger portion of the population, a female force that says "if they [men] can do it, so can you", which helps this aspect. But this isn't universal, neither genealogically or geographically, and in some respects is even starting to fade.
With all this in mind, I don't quite buy the figures cited by the article. It should be pointed out that the research they cite only takes into account the binary of use or not-use in terms of "who plays", and not the quantitative measure of "how much each plays". The second graph is based on purchase, and not actual use or end ownership (i.e. of course 9/10 of purchasers of game systems are adults, because kids dont normally have the $30-$60 themselves to pick up a Playstation game or whatever -- they have to wait till Xmas or birthdays. And what about rentals?). Plus, women have more purchasing power then they have in the past in _all_ markets, not just video games.
We know that games (and ads, naturally) appeal to men primarily; we know that male gamers are in the majority...
Most of the games themselves, especially the ones we're likely to see take off, usually focus on traditional male things, like karate dudes kicking lots of ass or spacemen with big f'ing guns killing lots of aliens, or the good old standby, gratuitous sex. We're not likely to see games with more sensitive aspects, such as a game where you run away from weddings in order to get Richard Gere to come after you.
I'd say that usually, women play with video games when males are around, e.g. her boyfriend moved in with his Nintendo and she likes to play MarioLand.
Less likely is she to pick up a console system after he leaves her on her own. Partly due to the lingering of the forces I'm talking about -- chances are her go-shopping-with friends are shopping at Ann Taylor and not Circuit City.
But when new boyfriend moves in, she might buy him a system for Xmas, and pick up some games she knows about / has played before as well.
But do the games/ads actually turn women away, or are they just catering to the pre-existing audience?
If the arguments and figures in the article are to be believed, no. The article is upset that video game advertising (not even marketing!) is not trying to to lure women in. (A strange complaint. I'd personally be quite happier if there was much less advertising trying to lure me in.)
The article is making some tired observations, the sort which, if the authors are suggesting that their problems are limited to the field of VG advertising, they are sorely mistaken and perhaps somehow don't see much advertising of other sorts. Complaints like a picture of a joystick being too "phallic" are getting sort of old. (Nowadays I'd expect computing women to be complaining about certain people's pronunciation of 'tty', but most noise is still harping on things like joysticks. I thought joysticks were out and cross-buttons were in anyway.)
Now, if as the magazine states, 50% percent of gamers are women, obviously the lack of female-directed advertising hasn't made a bit of difference. If it were me, I'd be celebrating the fact that my group of people had successfully overcome the lures and traps of advertising and had become a force in the market without that benefit.
Question: Is Lara Croft a good thing for men, or a good thing for women? Is it more significant to say that women are good to look at, or to say that women can raid tombs just as well as Harrison Ford can?
(Is this why I'm single? Cause I call it like I see it?)
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I dunno. My wife likes stuff like Gabriel Knight, but she's also a regular Quake III (Angie[Meep]) and UT (Angielator) player. Of course, I usually kick her butt...(MoronWMachinegun)
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
insidious how it slowly invades the vernacular,
isn't it? Irritating yet oddly amusing -
the way Serdar Argic was amusing (and yes, I do still have my "Sceaming Down the Wires Tour"
T-shirt)
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Hmmm... I really wonder where this "almost half" figure comes from. The reference presents the statistic, but doesn't explain the criteria for being a "gamer." Do people who play tetris count as gamers? If so, this statistic is totally irrelevant to the article.
No matter how much you twist the data, you're not going to convince me that females are anywhere near as interested in the *real* gaming industry as males. Before everyone jumps down my throat on this, let me say that I am female. I play starcraft. With men. I've tried a number of times to get some of my female friends interested without success. I have *never* encountered another female on BattleNet. I do, however, know tons of women who love to play tetris.
There's a reason why there aren't gaming magazines specifically targeted to women... no one wants to read a magazine about games like tetris. Very little strategy is involved in the games that most appeal to women. Those few women who do like gaming are generally the women who can handle seeing those ads without being offended.
Finally, I'd just like to day that I encounter things that are *way* more offensive every day. When I play on BattleNet and someone finds out I'm female, their next comment is usually "No way- what's your bra size?" If you're upset by those ads, you're better off not playing.
-- First post (by a female living in a state that begins with M and does not end in a vowel with a birthday that falls
Why target a group that makes up less than one percent of your buyers?
And why should females use the computer for entertainment? An understandable, but vicious, cycle. Perhaps if society is so concerned about getting females into computers, they need to take a more comprehensive look at what would interest them, instead of guessing that it's Cosmo or Barbie.
The truth is that games are easier to program for boys. We like points, action, motion, and triggers. Women (stereotypically, but also truthfully) like conversations, complex rewards, stories, and ...thinking. My sister, for instance, doesn't see the point of Quake: in her mind, you get killed only to come back again. What's the point of getting killed if there are no repercutions?
I think that you may have oversimplified. Both genders like all of these things (points, (inter)action, motion, complex story, (stimulates) thinking). Some elements may appeal more to men than women or vice versa. A game that possesses all of these is sure winner. As I think about it, that's why I like Myth and Myth II so much. But, many games do not have all of these elements or only have very simplistic beginnings of these elements, but substitute fantastic graphics so that it's a bit more like an interactive movie. To boot, many of the most popular games on the market are just varients on the same engines. It's much easier to wrap an engine in a new skin, maybe add a few new effects/weapons/modes/etc. and resell it (see Unreal or Doom).
Many of these games, perhaps to sell the dangerous adventure aspect, are violent. It seems like the same themes over and over (some war is going on and you have to save the day). For some reason, there are alot of women who are turned off by violence. This isn't to say that the stories that appeal to women must be violence-free, but extraneous and ultra-graphic violence doesn't tend to be appreciated.
For years I've thought about doing a "game for girls" but had no idea what to put into it. I don't have the same interests that most women have and lack the conversation gene. I know what _not_ to put into it and it some of it seems to overlap with edutainment (cute, fluffy, non-confrontational, dumb, narrow focus). Unfortunately, this would be the wrong forum to ask what should go into it.
-Jennifer
I can just see C.Y typing away over this article. I am aware that some female play games, but as far as I am concerned the game industry has never been for female and there are no female audience, the games like barbie crap have been for female, and big flops. general, I think women can enjoy games like 7th guest, sim city and such, but these games are not designed for female audience. If I was in the game industry, I will not be designing for female audience, cuz there is none. females have better things to do than to play games. gee
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Growing up with my brothers we had a Nintendo play system. While they were playing military Rambo games, I was mostly interested in Mario Brothers, Tetris, etc. I enjoyed the racing games too, but didn't see much point in their military games.
Now I own a Playstation and what I like are games like Spyro, Tomba, and Oddworld. I've learned recently that these are puzzle games. Mortal Kombat is okay for awhile, but not something that I would play for a long time.
Hey! You vote:
/. which is also sexist and juvenile?
1) Advertising that's sexist and juvenile?
2) Posting about an article covering #1 in
I found it kinda ironic that this article came out the same day I saw the beanie category for "Best non-gui interface" with the description "A real man can survive quickly and efficiently using nothing but a VT100 terminal." I suppose a real woman would flounder on anything more butch than an IMac?
You have a lot more faith than I do in the gaming industry's ability to directly link an ad with how many games it sells. Companies make a lot of decisions without very much real information. They do this for several reasons... information is expensive and sometimes hard to come by. Also, personality and ego have a lot of impact on corporate decisions. The ads that run in gaming magazines are probably as much targeted at the magazine staff as the readers. After all, the magazine has to agree to run the ad.
Again, the reason the ads are sexist and target teenage boys is that some gaming industry marketing guys think that that will sell more games.
Bolie IV
If I was a guy in a class that was 99% female, I think I'd keep coming back. I'd have to score eventually : )
Listen up, There are a lot of female gamers out there. My friends and I are living proof. Of course I generally prefer N64 or Dreamcast to "computer" games, but I have never played a fighting game where I've lost (against a male) and my friends who are female are pretty damned good too. And don't get me started on "most chiks aren't violent killing types." Most girls I know are vicious, fighting in games and in real life. NOT to say that we are all mean and evil, but don't give me this shit about there being an extreme lack of female gamers and all females are soft gentle types, just because i don't sit around wasting my day on quake and tomb raider (sorry, not into the laura croft thing ;) doesn't mean i'm not (or my friends aren't) into other cool games like soul calibre, power stone, smash brothers etc. I'm definitely not going to limit myself to only fighting games though, I mean look at trick style, F-zero or even older games like metroid and legend of zelda. It's all good. But you know what? I don't want to play games that are solely marketed to males. I figure, if they don't want to waste the time to market to people like me or my friends, then I sure as hell am not going to waste my time on their game (unless of course its pirated :). I like action/fighting games but I also like some puzzle games and I AM NOT ashamed to admit that, because like most people, I have eclectic tastes when it comes to video games. PLease reconsider your view. There is a female gamer market out there and they want the same things in games as most guys, they just aren't encouraged. The first company to realize that there are girls out there who want to play are likely to make a lot of money, because I am sure as hell sick of seeing those damned ads with girls buying their boyfriends consoles. Oh and, I've worked in the "computer industry" too. When I worked as a programmer most of my department was female and now I'm back in school finishing up a degree where I'm seeing a lot of girls in math/comp sci. Think about that.
it would be terribly funny to combat stereotype with stereotype.
let's envision the female-pandering equivalent of lara croft: our character would be a huge, muscle-bound man clad only in a loin-cloth, whose various bits-and-pieces bounce whenever he jumps...
and hell, why not have a keyboard command that makes him kneel and say, 'yes, mistress!'
the advertisement for the game would have the man smiling enticingly, underneath the words, 'Bored at home? Come play with me!'
ok, sorry, fantasizing over.
Men and women are DIFFERENT.
soy. i guess i'll sink my teeth into this one.
i like doritos. my s.o. does not. damn, it must be because i'm female and he's male! and let's not even get started on yogurt! (i hate the stuff.)
be very careful that you aren't assuming things when you start assigning secondary traits to the rubrics 'female' and 'male'.
Actually, they put ads in comic books (some of us "girlies" do read them) computer magazines, and any other magazine directed towards 'young' people. Also there are ads on t.v.
I have to admit, Laura Croft is not really very appealing to me.
Most chicks in video games are kind-of lame characters... I play Star Craft and it doesn't annoy me with stupid stereotypes.
But I definitely boycott any game where, if I wanted to play a girl (and have the choice), I'd have to play a wimp instead of a kick-ass chick.
And why did so many female characters wear pink?
You can't really under-estimate the power of advertising, plus the negative pressure a girl/woman will feel from the gaming community itself.
Most people are pretty close-minded about girls that game. I can remember my experiences, from the age of twelve, when I first tried to join a D&D group. I was told by the guys that it wasn't a girl thing, and that I couldn't play with them because I would suck.
Or how about when I was 15, and joined a role-playing club, and the DM had a crush on me, and so arranged it that my character always magically survived everything. It pissed me off so much, that I started throwing her at everything in her path, no matter how stupid it was... she never died.
As I got older, the guys got used to me... But I still find them discriminating against me... It's been an uphill battle, and still is, but I really want to play. So I ignore or out-match the people who think I can't play, and laugh at them with the people who respect me for what I am... a pretty good gamer, and not a ditzy female.
Honestly, cutting women out of these things hurts guys just as much... I bet the men who grew up gaming with me are less timid around women than some of your more segregated gamers.
*Ahem* Back ontopic... yes, the ads discourage girls. And so do the games... skimpy clothes,big breasts, rescue the princess, phallic symbols of power.. blahblahblah. If you look for it, you'll find it. I promise.
Oh, and how, exactly, do you limit coverage of war or combat games (incidentally, the popularity of these games is not due to magazine coverage, the coverage is due to their popularity) without alienating people who like them. I'll tell you how, you don't. You lose subscribers in far greater numbers than the ones you alienate by portraying combat oriented games. The safe magazine you are talking about, the way you've described it, wouldn't sell. Now, I think there should be a gaming magazine for pre-teens, I think it would sell (it would also mostly be about Pokemon). But if I read you right, you want a non-violent gaming magazine for adults (your definition of safe.) I hope you have a charitable organization set up to fund it...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
"A "women's magazine" is obviously designed to sell to women, just like how Maxim and Details are geared towards men. There's no problem with this (in relation to your complaint) because the domains of the respective magazines are defined along gender lines. These magazines aren't trying to reach everyone."
;-)
And computer magazines target is teenage guys. If more girls were interested, more magazines would target them. This is kind of like Linux games.. No one was decrying the fact that because there were no comercial games for Linux, that it was driving gamers away, though it certainly was. So?
It's the game magazines job to sell to who will buy. If someone thought they could market a magazine more to girls, they are quite free to do so. I also think that these few examples are not quite what you would see in you average gaming mag either..
As for Tomb raider being exploitive, I have a woman friend who that is the only PC game she will play because she likes the powerful woman premise of the game, and the puzzles are nifty too.. (She is also the only female I know personally who plays anything more then minesweeper.)
In further reference to the "exploitive" issue, would you agree that magazines like "seventeen" and other such teeny-bopper rags are just as exploitive of men? I realize this and other "exploitive" things I can figure out are aimed squarely at girls, but so are the gaming mags aimed at guys. So?
If you don't like the current game rags, don't buy them. Only buy the games you like. There are certainly enough games from any genre out there that there must be SOMETHING you like.
If enough girls want something, the market will provide it, much like the market has begun to provide Linux games. The market owes you nothing.
If you see such a great future in women gaming, go start your own frigging company and provide it like Loki has for linux games. If not, go complain to the people who make the curent ones. Talking to me will help none. (I'm hard headed, if you haven't realized by now
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
The ads in better homes and gardens don't appeal to me.. So?
The articles in "self" and other women oriented magazines have many articles on sex, getting men to do what you want, and so on.. Why is no one decrying this?
I personally haven't seen any "exploitive" ads. Suggestive, yeah. So?
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Though I am usually the only woman there, I enjoy a good LAN party. (Current games we're playing include Q3, Starcraft, and Darkstone.) I used to dig the old school RPGs like DragonWarriorI-IV for Nintendo, Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, etc. But once I learned how to frag with attitude I was hooked. I challenge you all to a good Quaking!!!! :-)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
You can bet the house that gaming companies know the answers to these questions and a LOT more. The point I want to make is that, while "50% of entertainment software users are female" is a nice statistic, it could just as easily be incredibly misleading, as all statistics by themselves without appropriate additional information can be.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
There is a larger problem in the advertising industry. Look at advertisements for other products. There is a large amount of sexism throughout the advertising industry.
On the subtle side, let's look at car ads. When's the last time you saw a woman in the driver's seat when a male and female couple are portrayed in the ad?
On the overt side, let's look at beer ads. How many times does beer ad content concern objectified women, or the pursuit of such women? (Thankfully, they've been getting better about this one).
I'd like to posit that the gaming industry's ads will only improve when ads for other products do.
Thoughts?
Since there are a lot of questions about the statistics, I will restate where I got them from (they are stated at the bottom of the article):
IDSA -- http://www.idsa.com/releases/consumer.ht ml
Quote:
According to the IDSA's fourth annual Video and PC Game Industry Trends Survey, more women are playing games than ever. Thirty five percent of console game players and more than 43 percent of PC gamers are women, a slight increase over last year.
They had other statistics for who buys the games. These were the statistics for who plays them.
You missed my point. In the beginning I discussed how the female market may be getting turned off by the ads. In the second part I talked about how OTHER gamers who prefer non-combative games are also being alienated... not just women or people who are against sexualized ads.
I am a female action gamer. I've played all of id's games and loved them. Violence in games doesn't bother me as long as the game itself is good and solid (like Quake).
What I was trying to get across was that other types of gamers are being ignored. I don't assume to know what all women want, because I believe a lot of them want the same things as men... good gameplay, good graphics, and most importantly variety. I can't speak for every woman because every woman is different, but when it comes to game advertising, they ARE marketing for a certain group and ignoring others.
Companies do market research...it is perfectly plausible that a company would have concrete data supporting a marketing campaign
So what? Nancy Reagan also had "concrete data" from her astrologers telling her how to arrange Ronald's schedule. How are the marketers different from astrologers?
You're impressed by the "concreteness" of marketing data. I'm impressed by the non-scientific nature of it, and by the way it's used to mask what are in fact values-based decisions. For a great example of how this works, see The Corporate Lame Name Game, from the archives.
No one knows what's going to sell, because there's no fact of the matter about what's going to sell. It depends on what people decide to do. This is a frightening truth, so people turn to pseudo-sciences like astrology and marketing so they can pretend they live in a safer, more predictable environment.
How many market researchers saw Open Source coming?
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
This type of message is as bad for men as it is for women. Just because it's legal and economical doesn't make things right. Just because we have a free society doesn't mean we benefit from a complete lack of restraint on sexual advertising.
Regulation would be a cure worse than the disease, of course, but people really should ask themselves - "Is my action causing more problems than benefits?" Unfortunately most such assessments stop with their wallet and do not consider broader social consequences.
You were a moderator with 5 points. You should have read the moderator guidelines before you did any moderating
Hrm. So what might she say about trackballs?
*ducks*
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
This is based on an IDSA study that claims 35-45 (console-pc) percent of game players are women and ~50% of game buyers are women (must be a lot of moms buying games).
Actually, this is likely true. The console market dwarfs the PC market, and is geared towards younger people, hence a lot of moms would probably be purchasing games. I mean, come on...we've all seen the scenes at in December. Lots of moms looking for games to give as presents, since the market penetration of consoles in America, at least, is really high...
The other thing is that the genres that are more prolific on console systems (story-centric RPGs, platformers, etc.) would probably appeal more to women in general than all the first-person shooters that make the PC famous. Consoles are also much easier to "get into" -- you just turn it on and play, unlike the myriad problems a gamer can potentially have with a full-blown computer. I'm not really surprised by this, and I agree with the article's main point that most game advertising is really very sophomoric. I find the ads pandering, and I'm a guy, fer chrissakes...
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
A "women's magazine" is obviously designed to sell to women, just like how Maxim and Details are geared towards men. There's no problem with this (in relation to your complaint) because the domains of the respective magazines are defined along gender lines. These magazines aren't trying to reach everyone.
You don't seem to understand what "exploitative" means -- in the cinema sense, exploitation movies were ones that were based around a single gimmick (teen flicks from the '50s were good examples of this -- monster movies, "beach blanket bingo" films, etc.). Exploitative games would be based around the gimmick of "hot chicks", i.e. Tomb Raider: The Final Implants, etc. And, in light of this definition, I'm sure you will immediately see that a large amount of game advertisements are exploitative.
Gaming is something that does not seem to have any gender "orientation", for lack of a better term. And yet gaming magazines are aligning themselves with male interests (against the simple marketing theory that says you shouldn't alienate potential customers) with the sophomoric ads that fill up every gaming magazine I've seen recently. This doesn't really make sense.
For people who say, "oh, girls don't like games anyway," (never minding the oh-so-subtle distinction between girls who don't like games and manly men who do) well, I have this funny feeling that you'll be the ones left out of the IPO once somebody figures out the games that women want to play, markets them properly, and promptly captures 50% of the gaming population. You have to admit, all concerns aside, that potentially doubling the gaming market has to be at least economically interesting...
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
Tetris implementations are readily available, simple, intuitive, and challenging.
For that matter, a lot of puzzle games fit that criteria.
For another matter, most PC games do not have all three characteristics (simple, intuitive, challenging). A lot of PC games, frankly, suck. Does the fact that I know that from personal experience make me any more of a gamer than someone who likes puzzle games?
And as far as hallucinating after playing a game goes...well, I've never done that before, so I don't know what you're talking about. And if you think I'm not a gamer, then please look at this URL:
http://www.seas.smu.edu/~erik/games_beaten.html
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
"Not being part of a target demographic" may be one of the main points of the article...I mean, we've all sat around the sidelines and said things like, "oh man, I'm an RPG lover, and the PC RPG scene has been dead for years...we want new RPGs!" (personal example from the dark days of PC RPGs) RPG lovers, in this instance, thought that they were being ignored unfairly by the market...
How is that different from saying "jeez, I'm a woman gamer, and I don't really feel like playing yet another game of 'tits in a chainmail bikini'...I want some games that I want to play!"?
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
Duke isn't offensive because he's buff. He's "offensive" (I disagree with that label -- I find it hard to believe people can see him as anything but a humorous caricature of action-movie heroes) because of what he says. :)
"There's nothing you can do about it" has an awfully fatalistic sound to it, for something involving the human brain, which we still don't really understand. I'll just say I politely disagree with your views on that and leave it at that.
Wherever there's a will, there's a motorway.
The metaphor was quite simple. From what I understood he likes hacking code and also like hacking social code; what lies behind society and what we take for granted.
I actually thought the metaphor was quite appropriate.
I was also taught sexism, I don't think you can avoid it, it doesn't mean you can't change.
To add another remark to this, I think it's mostly our own ignorance in this matter that causes most of our social problems.
P.S. The "our" in the last paragraph refer to the social construct generally known as "male"
I used to have a sig but I left it on a bus
Dude. That's only if you get fragged. Just what *IS* a frag anyway? Is that when I'm ramming my phat rox up yo skinny little ass?
I always assumed that it referred to old military slang for getting deliberately shot by your own troops. As in: "This Lieutenant is going to get us all killed. Let's frag his ass."
Does this
A few years ago, AFAIR, an anti-gender stereotype group had broken into a toy store and exchanged all the "speaking-disks" between barbie and ken dolls. The result was that when a parent bought a ken doll for their kid, the ken doll would say "Let's go shopping" in a high-pitched voice and vice-versa for the barbie dolls.
This is to illustrate that gender stereotypes are forced onto kids and fathom them to what society wants. Fortunately many people manage to escape these stereotypes, but it's not easy.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
The author claims nearly 50% of game players are women, which is extremely suspect. This is based on an IDSA study that claims 35-45 (console-pc) percent of game players are women and ~50% of game buyers are women (must be a lot of moms buying games).
I'm very suspicious of these numbers. Having lived in coed college dorms where video/pc games are played a ton and having spent far more time than I would like to admit in the game aisles of computer stores, these numbers are simply ridiculous.
The only thing I can figure is that they're counting things like playing solitaire in the pc game category and sales of MS Windows as game sales.
If they were to chart hours of play in the $40+ game market, I would be surprised if women clock in at over 5-10%, a fact they should be proud of.
With that said, I think this is merely a case of the advertising being targeted to the overwhelming demographic. I have absolutely no problem with it, just as I have no problem with the Dr. Pepper ads that show women ogling a man with a body far better than mine every day at the same time.
Lighten up, babe.
I dunno there were a lot of chicks playing games at the last computer show I was at.
Nothing wrong with gross generalizations - except that the ones you make are incorrect. What data do you base your assertion that Female gamers get hooked on games that they just find lying around, like Solitaire and Tetris on? It takes corporations $$ on market research to determine the methods whereby various consumer groups make purchases.
They enjoy that type of game, which tends to be pure game and not an exciting assault on the senses, nor a simulate fantasy.
This one might be true - but it's a totally different premise from your previous statement about HOW women buy games. Method of shopping not equal to type of purchase.
How could you advertise to a market like that? Why would they exert the effort to look for another game when they've got a perfectly good one in front of them? How could you even describe the added enjoyment without letting them play the game?
It's hard for me to describe how much this statement offends me. Are women incapable of the abstract thought necessary to grasp these concepts? Gee, you mean even though I already own one game, there's another game out there that I might like too? Amazing!!
I see no reason why games - especially the thinking games so many people on this thread assume are what appeals to women (news flash - can't stand 'em myself, and all the people I knew who owned MYST were guys) can't be advertised and marketed to women in the same way as books.
Each genre has its own unique selling point.
I've found if the game is popular, it's only because it is worth the attention. Some games I liked were fairly popular games.
Half-life. Starcraft. Myst. Worms. Wipeout. Etc...
I'm more biased toward less bloody games, philosophy being, if the game needs so much gore to be interesting, it probably sucks.
Many here seem to think girl gamers are anamolies. Yeah, we just don't like to be amused by what technology can offer as much as the next guy.
It's not only the magazines by the way. I was driving on a rather large freeway the other day and saw a billboard of Lara Croft. And don't think it's just the gaming magazine. Take a look at the the PC magazines ads as well. Personally, I think girl-geek-gamer (whatever stereotypical title someone will come up next) needs to be half blind to attempt reading some of the stuff out there without getting offended.
enol misses C8H10N4O2 very much.
That's not bias mispelled by the way although there certainly seems to exist a form of anti-female bias existing in the forum.
Should I be surprised? No. This is probably why the ads will remain in place and continue to exist where they are. The general attitude seems to be, "it's the way it is, and that's way it's going to be"
Whatever.
Take a good look at the magazines. And to those people who say it's because of the target audience, I ask, the last time I checked, EGM stood for electronic gaming monthly (not electronic gaming for men) or gamefan (not gameman) or pcgamer...hmm..are these gender specific?
Justify it all you want. The fact is girls are getting more into computers AND are becoming more technologically savvy. And they like games. Hopefully in the near future we won't be reading such articles because games will be just games, not just a thing for community of typically teenage boys.
And so what if someone likes Myst over Quake. Some people enjoy Deer Hunter. Enough said.
Half of the world's population are women and almost all industries are now trying to be inclusive of them, except maybe the gaming industry. This is just a really dumb move. The gaming industry should seriously wake up.
flamesuit = on;
As sexist as it sounds, the author here must be out of their mind for saying 50% of gamers are girls. I would really say it is more like 20%. There is definately a female segment, however it really is very small. (Guys, how many girls do you know who have ever played quake? I have met maybe 1 in real life). These magazines are also primarily read by teenage gamers. Combine 80% male with mostly teenage and sex just sells.
The other issue is that the "huge market" for girl games was almost a buzzword several years ago. That pretty much died. Why? Try to think of a game that is targetted towards only girls. It's really really hard. The closest you can get is games that have little violence (action) like simcity and myst and are therefore equal before the sexes. When the girl-games idea was beat about a few years back I sat down and tried to brainstorm what a girl would like to play, and I really could not think of a single decent idea. Existing genres are strategy and fighting games... there really is no "dolls" game that wouldn't suck (ooh im going to get flamed for that one, but I'm really talking about the young audience here).
Most girls I know also don't spend the time guys do at gaming. They tend to find more social ways to have fun with a computer, such as chat rooms and message boards, which is why the female to male ratio is much higher in these sections.
flamesuit = off;
check out "Metal Gear Solid"... it's all good up until Meryl gets nailed, but then you've got Sniper Wolf (a female) whooping your ass all over the place :)
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in a world of deceit, open your eyes
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you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
that could be argued both ways. i read slashdot because there's a lot of intelligent content here, and i feel that i learn something new every time i read it, so it's a worthwhile usage of my time. i make time to read it - i don't read it 'cause i have nothing better to do.
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in a world of deceit, open your eyes
--
you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
While women are not the primary money makers it does not mean they are not the ones spending it. Take for example the Olypics. Have you noticed how more and more of Olypic programing focuses on the stories of the atheletes instead of the sports? This is because the networks figured out that the women were controling the remote and thats what they wanted to see. Do a simple test if you are going to watch TV and while you are changing the channels you go past ice skating see if you girlfriend/wife doesn't get you to stop.
The purchasing demographics show that the women are perchasing the games whether or not they are playing. Who makes the money and who spends it are not nessessarly the same.
I don't know whether you are realy female and how old you are! However, for some of us who have been engineers and programmers all our adult lives, I resent you stipulation that women are "not logical enough" and all the rest of the garbage you are dishing out.. SPEAK for yourself! The whole programming industry was started by a woman, General Grace Hopper, before it became the "geek" thing to do for the males. Women flocked to programming back in the seventies.. They established the profession you so much enjoy today and THINK you ARE the chosen minority.. As for your comments on the article editor, I say "trash"...
queenmom
not my girls...they grew up wit h legos and computers.. they are both programmers today..
queenmom
Hey girl, I am with you......
queenmom
Hopper established the proffession in the 60s, well before even IBM focused on programming as proffession (early 70s). And then, they rounded up every female who wanted to go to training school to become a programmer. I agree with you it is about people, however, it does not seize to amaze me when I hear the same old "women are not this or that or the third" things I have heard for over 35 years! give a break this is the the 21st century..
queenmom
I grew up playing "hide and seek" in the streets with both boys and girls. No money for dolls and computers were not around then (shows you my age!). However, I am an engineer and graduated In the 60s as the ONLY female in my class. Lonely! My girls grew up with every game choice in the market from Barbies to legos to computers. They chose the later. Maybe, it's because I was so disinterested with playing "house" with them (I hate housework). I loved taking them to museums and traveling together. Their father had a ball helping them build bridges with legos. We all played Pacman till I could not stand it any more when my 6 year old was beating me to a pulp. They are both grown up now and professionals in the computer industry. They both are avid computer game players (thank God they graduated from Pacman the music of which I still hear in my nightmares). One is an avid Quake player (I tried for years to influence her to stop playing that game and tend to her studies instead, to no avail), the other likes more Myst and other adventure games. They did get fed up with the gaming industry and decided to do something about it. They started their own gaming web site. They are not whiners, or Dykes (what a horrible thing to call anybody) or femintzies (however one spells this word), they are intelligent, young women who believe it or not want to make a difference.
queenmom
Really now! how old ARE you?
queenmom
I don't think that's accurate statistics.. perhaps women cared more to represent themselves in whatever poll these results came from? Just from personal experiance, I don't see a lot of women playing games. There's really no good reason for it, except that that's not what they're 'supposed' to do. A large market for games like Q3A are high-school and college students, I would imagine. Women in high-schools and colleges are not expected to be 'geeky', or sit on computers all day, which is perfectly acceptable for males. There's no good reason for this, it's simply societys fault. Also, a lot of males are very protective of their 'territory'. It's like the clubhouse where no girls are allowed. People like that are sexist, and the main contributors to the problem. If the main audience for gaming magazines was not testosterone-filled males who want to get off and play a game at the same time, then thier ads would not cater to that demographic.
PS - I'm a guy, 18 years old. I think women gamers/geeks are a wonderful thing, and fully support, even help, any girl who wants to learn to use computers better. I agree that gaming magazines are overly sexist. Don't get me wrong - I like pr0n as much as the next guy - but it has it's place, and that's not in a gaming magazine.
-palp
Companies do market research. There are many market research firms out there who are very, very good at answering questions like "what is likely to be popular with our target audience."
Typically what will happen is the company will identify what its target market is. Perhaps in this case, the game maker will tell the market research firm that they are looking for people who spend a certain number of hours per week playing computer games.
Then the market researchers will find people who fit the criteria, form a focus group, ask them lots of questions and analyze the responses, and the company will base marketing decisions on this.
In this case, if most of the people who play games >= x hours a day are male, then the focus group will be predominantly male, and the answers will reflect some degree of (perhaps subconscious)male bias.
In short, it is perfectly plausible that a company would have concrete data supporting a marketing campaign that attracts adolescent boys.
It's not just women that they are ignoring. With few exceptions (the Wing Commander series), I have no interest in action games, especially the FPS's that are so common nowadays. Yet, I have lots of money to spend on games, and, until about five years ago, used to buy about one $50 game per month. Now, most of my purchases are old RPG and adventure games from the $5 bargain bins and the used-software store.
I was taught sexism, and I was taught DOS. I learned UNIX and I learned true equality.
While I totally agree with your comments on the values that children learn, I can't really see what open source has to do with this at all. Skepticism has nothing to do with whether you like to have the source code for your current operating system / application. I'm sorry, but it really doesn't follow that enjoying hacking around with source code makes you some kind of social guru.
P.S. Don't take this as a flame - the rest ofyour comment was well thought out.
Now, granted, Mist and Riven were nice games and all, but they hardly make up the majority of the market, and just don't hold most gamer's attention.
Ummm, no. IIRC Myst is one of the best-selling games ever and still sells today. Other best-selling games include Sim City, Civilisation and Command & Conquer - all of which require more thought than "oh look there's the other player - shoot him!" Personally I can't be bothered to play Quake or its many derivatives - I'd rather play Civ or Alpha Centauri any day where I have to think rather than twitch :) Oh and I'm a 22 year old male FYI.
The marketing decisions are typically based on "What has selled before" as opposed to "What would sell"
Sad but true
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I am a woman and a geek and I have managed to never play a computer game in the ~17 years I have been working/using/ computers. IMHO learning and playing computer games is no different than learning and using WordPerfect (or some other application). All one learns is how to use an app but one gains no real knowledge. Might as well be a secretary :>
Ads for games or anything are targeted for the largest demographic. The folks who design ads are not stupid - they know their markets. Young boys like to look at women/girls with big tits, few clothes and no thoughts. That combination can sell almost anything. SEX SELLS!
Although, if gaming companies wanted to tap a new market, you would think they would not want to offend that market. Try to design ads that would attract grown-up women and men and not just boys.
If I am offended by an ad for any product that I use or would use, I either stop buying the product, do not buy it in the first place and I usually send a letter or e-mail expressing my opinion. And I do not care about ads for products I don't use.
The advertising for the games is really not operating on this level - not saying it's better, just saying it's different. Nudity is generally not a problem for the people complaining about this; it's the placement and nuances. Why is this person naked, particularly if it has nothing to do with the game?
It's amazing to me, actually, that sex still sells. If I'm going to buy a game, I read reviews, talk to people, look at screenshots, so on. I'm not sure the thought process that goes from "hot chick" to "I must have this game" - I expect nerds to have a higher IQ than your average American.
Personally, I think the whole topic is moot because I know *VERY* few girls who even read video game magazines. Yeah they might play every once in a while, but they don't get into it as a hobby, at least not as much as the guys do. I don't think these ads really turn girls away from video games, because the girls just aren't seeing them. ZP
Got Rhinos?
If you don't believe this, ask yourself why no game development house or designer has been able to produce an unbroken string of commercial successes (and, like they taught us in school, if people aren't willing to pay for something, then they don't really want it) and only a handful have been able to produce more than one or two really successful products.
So, speculating about what sorts of games will be successful in general, let alone what sorts of games will appeal to a subgroup (i.e. women) is a tremendous waste of time. And asking women what kind of games they want to play, coupled with a notion that responses should be acted upon, is a sure way to lose lots of money.
For instance: How many responses of 'Barbie stuff' do you think you'll get in answer to the preceeding question? But that franchise was, to the consternation of feminists everywhere, a big seller. Us game developers hated that fact as well....developing crap like that is not a good way to spend your life.
No one wants to sell games to girls/women more than the developers. The failure to do so is more likely to indicate the shocking fact that girls/women don't much like games than anything else. That's not to say there aren't a lot of exceptions, but the tacit assumption of womengamers.com that all the industry needs is a little advice from women is simply too stupid to be believed. If that were the case, whither Purple Moon and all the other attempts to make non-franchised girl/women friendly games?
On the other hand, it seems that the article is asking Playboy to show naked men. If the editors like games with hot women, it's their problem, it's their magazine..
It's also easy to find commercials for men advertising products for woman. For ex.: a commercial of a naked woman taking a shower, that sells some shampoo or body oil for women. Or vice versa; a man with big musles using a deodorant for men. I change channels because I like ladies.
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
If Barbie were her own toy corporation, she would be the largest toy corporation in the world.
Interesting; I didn't know that. So what you're saying is actually two things:
1. Mattel is the largest toy corporation in the world.
2. The Barbie portion of Mattel alone is still larger than the second-largest toy corporation in the world.
Did I understand you right?
begin 644
Look, Folks... I'm a geek. I'm proud of it. I play D&D, and Vampire, Chess, computer games, blah, blah, blah. I think that the observations about advertising targets are right on. They are sexist. They might even alienate women gamers. The true question here should be "So?" If any of you have ever been to GenCon, or to Origins, or a computer show with a big game tournament section, and I know you have, you KNOW that these events are dominated by young men, ages 15-30+. Its not that no women attend, but the population is heavily weighted toward the male side. The game companies know this and that's a big part of how they determine their target markets. I suppose being a geek that has worked in the Advertising industry for 7+ years might give me a unique perspective here, but I would think this would be easy to see. Those stats on what percentage of gamers are women are BOGUS. It is easy to do a study and come up with the results you want to come up with. It happens all the time. Someone wants to prove red wine is good for you, they will. Someone wants to prove it has harmful effects, they will. If you want to make a point about almost anything, you can come up with a lucid argument from some weird angle. I once had an assignment in a Dale Carnagie course to convince a room full of people that I knew that we should abolish men's and ladies public restrooms in favor of coed restrooms. I got most of them to vote in my favor. Truthfully, I would never want that, but I could argue it. To any women reading this...please realize that the companies aren't trying to alienate you. They are competeing for the limited resources of what their core market is. Young men with little to no money. It takes persuasiveness to make someone buy a game just from an ad, and the only thing more likely to persuade these young men than the games themselves is the prospect of you.
each time this argument is rehashed, a number of software manufacturers develop some titles that might attract more female gamers.
Opinion: The problem i see is as follows. Analysts and marketers assume that female gamers do not care for the same style of game as the male ones. Females are thought to only concern themselves with puzzle games, card games and fashion oriented games. I personally think this is an outrage and wonder why more women dont stand up and tell the marketers what they think of them. I think the better distinction should be between those of us who would prefer to frag one another (boys and girls alike) as opposed to the milder set who want something more mellow like myst (which i personally consider evil.)
What it comes down to is marketing.. and the marketing dollar works the same way as any business venture. It goes to the market with the highest return. Without regard to gender, action games are more popular and tend ( except in the case of *yuck* myst ) to have much higher monetary returns. I know my fair share of people on both sides of this issue and dont mind a game of computer hearts now and then, but Im not about to buy the software in a store when I can play it free on a number of online services.
Action sells just as sex does in advertising.
I would be happy to see a magazine devoted to more though oriented/puzzle type games, but Im sure its circulation might not be as big.
LW
This has been a test of the opinion broadcast system.
Don't spend too much on that little bump.
Learning the right touch is important. Over stimulation can short-circuit a mouse's building energy. Remember that it is not just the bump, but both the left and right buttons are extremely sensitive.
cheers,
I couldn't use that stick. It might arouse some latent tendancies that I just don't want to deal with.
cheers,
I worked with Richard Garriott at Origin back in the halcyon Apple ][ days (was lead programmer on Ultima V, actually), and I remember grousing about the androgynous white guy on the U4 box cover. The official Origin position, established by no less a personage than L.B. Himself, was that they didn't want to alienate anyone. They wanted any Ultima player, male or female, buff or otherwise, to be able to see him/herself in the Avatar's guise.
:-)
My argument was that by going with the long-haired epicene dweeb look, they were actually guaranteeing that practically no one would identify with the character.
So in a sense, I guess I'm putting my 2 cents in favor of portraying player-character figures as heroic, sensual archetypes, of one gender or the other. Of course, I lost this argument back in '87, and I fully expect to lose it now.
-- jm
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
I don't think I quite get (or mabye just believe) this. From what I inferred, these people are complaining because they're *not* being pounded on with advertisements? Either that, or they just seem to be offended by the adverts that are out there.
:). Seeing that I *am* a guy, that would imply that I'm much more likely to buy some new joystick or violent game (joystick for the combat flight sims) than a girl who thoroughly enjoyed Myst and Riven. Now, granted, Mist and Riven were nice games and all, but they hardly make up the majority of the market, and just don't hold most gamer's attention. "I want blood, I want gore, and I want it fast" is the general attitude of most (and yes, I mean most) gamers. The simple fact that nicely rendered gibbles sell better than sleep depraving puzzles is usually reason enough for the companies to target men. Puzzle games are fun and all, but nothing beats nailing someone in the head with a railgun from across the map - or so is the mentality of most game buyers. It's not that women are being discriminated against somehow, it's just a matter of who spends more money. If (many) women started becoming hardcore deathmatchers, there'd be more adverts w/ burly men in speedos draping over the chick gibbing in UT.
Personally, as a guy, I laughed out loud at one or two of the described ads (the first one especially
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
I totally agree! The teasing seductions of skimpily clad synthetic women should be abolished! Seriously, if they're going to have the hot girl, she might as well be *completely* nude right? (and none of this poorly rendered stuff... I want at LEAST 10,000 triangles!)
I vow, from now till I die, to not buy a product with an attractive woman unless she's bare assed naked (or actually flashing her genetalia.. no more of this teasing!).
Thank you for showing me the light.
SaintAlex
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
Just because women deal with the fact that the gaming ads are full of scantily clad women, doesn't mean it is a good idea... just means women deal with it because that is the way it is... if you want to read the articles in the magazine, you want to find out the best hints to play a game or find out which new games are hot or which ones not to waste your money on, you read the magazines... and maybe women haven't been that vocal about how annoying it is to have uncreative and annoying ads, but that still doesn't make it a good thing. Just because it the accepted way to market a game at this point in history, doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed and possibly changed in the future.
Just for reference I'm a female who plays the games... and the gaming magazine sub is in my name.. and my husband and i fight over who gets to read it first. I hate the demeaning ads... but i ignore them... but truthfully I'd rather I didn't have to, as I don't feel comfortable letting my little girl see it.
Wasn't that what one woman said in one of those PC Gamers ads?
They're literally creating the impression that women hate gaming and males who are gamers, but the sad part is it's true. In high school we used to be into that stuff and I found this to be true, the hard way.
So honestly if the female market is being failed it is probably because they're making it known that, aside from 400 some odd women gamers, they don't want anything to do with it or the guys who are into it. This to me is a feedback loop.
Not that I'm trying to troll or feed the open source natalie b.s. crowd more fuel. The women who are into gaming also run into hostility and unwanted sexual attention, and that's something the geeks can do something about in order to put some good karma into this pathetic and sorry situation. Not that anyone'll see this some 400 articles down, but I can still wish
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
she made a valid point you stupid troll.
there. I feel MUCH better!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
All I want for christmas is:
A relationship with one geek gamer girl. But I won't be trolling the gaming chatrooms or the deathmatches any time soon. Where do ya meet 'em without coming off as a jerk?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
'or somthing barbie related' pft!
Now there is a 'head' most WOMEN would not be opposed to seeing blown off!
perhaps a combat game for woman where all the targets are unrealistic plastic barbie types and advertising executives. We could vent all OUR hostility.
ah! the internet!! we may still screw up the world but NEVER again will we be able to claim IGNORANCE
I couldn't agree more with your post. As another female gamer, I'm more than a tad annoyed at some of the male comments in the response threads to this article. The sexist ads aren't the problem for most female gamers. (I for one could really care less about how much clothing Lara Croft is or is not wearing.) The problem is not with what's there, but with what's missing. Female gamers aren't targeted and there's definitely room for improvement. While many female gamers may not be into playing first person shooters and strategy games, many do like action/adventure games and RPGS (amongst other things) --- but the advertising for those types of games is just as atrocious. The advertising assumes that the demographics are the same for every type of game. (And for those of you that think Barbie and other similar crap-consumer products are a viable substitute are welcome to more than a few choice remarks.) What's needed is a more accurate marketing approach that targets the right audiences for the right games, not just a bunch of ads made by guys for the sake of their libidos. And this does not mean trimming the ads with lace and fuscia, it means finding out what female gamers really want - and its definitely not what stereotypes assume, b/c being a female gamer means being well outside of the traditional (uptight/Puritan) gender role of being a female (i.e. being interested in technology and high-end entertainment).
"Linux is free only if your time is worthless."
Perhaps this takes a little bit of cultural rewind, though - dating back to the heyday of Commodore and Atari, the primary market segment has always been adolescent males. When I was growing up, Star Raiders and Missle Command were the hot games. . . and since then, a plethora of games imitating the formula of other successful games has taken place.
The fact is, American companies hate taking risks, since if you take a risk you might lose everything... Some of the SIM games that appealed to a largely female audience flopped miserably. Unfortunately, the one leading the fray for the 'female game' is Hasbro with its crop of incredibly bad Barbie games - no WONDER the young girls won't play them.
However, the Japanese games that appeal to both genders equally have met to great success here in the States. One needs merely look at the sales track record of SquareSoft to prove those numbers.
Perhaps if marketeers would take a second look at the new generation of simulation games coming out of Japan they would find more women entering the fray. Some of the most popular genres of simulation games there include 'dating sims' which are heavily plot based (Thousand Arms, Todomechi Memorial), 'decision sims' where the decisions you make determine the course and development of the game (Princess Maker).
We need more Roller Coaster Tycoons, and far less Doom-clones.
amen, sister.
once all the little boys out there open their eyes and TAKE A LOOK, they will notice that there are more women geeks out there than they thought, and we are taking their jobs and kicking ass while they are whining.
ha.
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if i had meant to say "Goddess of Hellfire", don't you think i would have put it there???
How can she be naked at the same time as she's wearing a halter-top?
--- "When you're strange"
......IIRC, the original Lara model WAS designed to cater for both genders. If you look *closely* at the model in the ORIGINAL release of TR1, you'll find her features quite tame. Any graphic artist/game designer worth his salt would know that a pair of balloon-sized mammaries would impede movement and make the game unrealistic. The original Lara model was designed by one man at Core, and the marketing department ordered the ad-men to enlarge her figure. REAL (male and female) gamers couldn't give a stuff about the physical stats of the character they play with (unless playing an RPG). The only arseholes in this particular case are the computer mag journalists who wish they were writing for FHM, and the maketing/ad company who directed the Tomb Raider ads straight at the FHM market, when the game itself was much more wide-ranging.
*RANT MODE OFF*
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
Once again, the male thing comes into play. The article stated that almost half of gamers are women, but everything is targeted to men. The original poster who said geeks/gamers are fat and ugly was assuming the geeks/gamers were men! (as evidenced by his comment that geeks don't appeal to women.) So gothchik, I don't think he (or she??) meant at all to say you are fat and ugly, but that male gamers are fat and ugly.
I can see ugly and smell funny, but my image of the stereotypical geek/gamer is a skinny guy who is so involved in gaming/hacking/pick-your-computer-pursuit that he forgets to eat.
I am another female gamer who feels she must reply to this article. I generally do not like games like Quake and Doom. I also do not like puzzle games very much (although my father-in-law wrote a very excellent one called Morpheous). The games I do like are usually colorful and include: * Starcraft and Warcraft * Civilization * Legend of Zelda series I subscribed to Nintendo Power a long long time ago and loved it. I have not subscribed to a gaming magazine in a long long time. Before reading the article, I would have agreed that the magazines target guys because guys buy games. But now it seems that there could be a significant market sector being completely ignored by the existing 'zines. And if the magazines gave us women the info on games that fit OUR interests, we might buy more of them, then people would make more of them, etc, etc.
What fun is being "cool" if you can't wear a sombrero? (Hobbes of Calvin & Hobbes)
While women are not the primary money makers it does not mean they are not the ones spending it.
I don't think the original post was talking about which gender makes more, only which gender offers the game companies higher returns. Even if my S.O. buys me a game, she's going to go with the games that I've expressed interest in, not games that she would find interesting.
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It's not the rambling I object to, so much as the mumbled incoherancies...
So OT.
A woman who chooses "to earn enough money to support herself" so she can marry whoever the h*ll she likes has a happier marriage for herself
and her husband.
A woman who chooses a mate that can earn enough money to support her is destined for a life of financial uncertainty whenever her walking bank account gets bored of her, and in a world of frustration and conflict knowing that the "importance" of his job and his life subjugates hers.
(i.e., honey, i'm busy. okay, money bags, i need to leave you alone so I can have lots of money.)
:)
That is the point of rant.
/. for science, math, nuclear physics, HW, open source, coding.
/. is geek haven, where "mainstream tastes" do not need to apply.
/. reader.
I intentionally *don't* read cosmo and home and gardens.
I intentionally *code* at 3DR.
I intentionally *come* to
I submit several "hard math" or "hard science" news and none of them get on. (There is some great cryptology breakthroughs in mathematics BTW. But it is important to know that chicks don't like games.)
Other people submit "hard math", "hard science", "open source projects" don't get on.
And anything that says "chick" gets on?
If I want news like that, I would subscribe to Home and Garden, not Linux Magazine.
P.S. And yes, I am pissed "those women" (plus all the people who think Titanic is a good movie) ruined the demographics, and thus popularity of things I enjoy, for me.
I thought
I did say I am a minority, but I thought I "belong" to the same geek minority as the
Challenging my ideas is welcome... Just cause I'm not an old geezer doesn't mean I can't tell the difference between insults and a debate...
So what's the difference between choosing a guy for his earning potential and for the way he looks and/or how she's attracted to him? I don't see much. Just different attributes.
Anyway, at this point, I really don't care... I consider my earning potential to be an outward reflection of my intelligence, which is definitely a "good gene". So if someone wants to be attracted to me cause of that... fine. I've never been in much of a position to complain. Of course, if she doesn't love me as well, you might as well forget it. I'm no gigolo.
Thanks for talking about this MATURELY, rather than the other guy...
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Being a 24 year old male, this is probably not typical for people of my age/demographic group (mammarically challenged) but...
I went in with the attitude of "so what?"... but when I read the examples and realized exactly what was being depicted... I think they're right. The magazines and games need to be boycotted. I mean, I like sex as much as the next guy, but there's a such thing as going too far... and a such thing as being demeaning to women. Now if they'd have some ads targeting women, too... well, I'd think differently.
-shamless plug- I believe women should be treated as people and not objects for our pleasure... /shameless plug
Then again, as we speak, I'm watching the "Bikini Car Wash Company II", so I'm something of a hypocrite... or maybe I'm just weak.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
I can see how that could be true for gamers... at least the ones who spend all their time playing games and not doing anything productive. But not necessarily for geeks... after all, most of us, at this point, have a phenomenal earning potential...
And I may be ugly, but I'm absolutely not fat... ok, I'm not ugly, but sometimes I think I am...
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Nice try. I don't have a wife or a girlfriend. And I know all of the things you're going to say... forget it. I think I've figured out about how old you are... it's about six. And I'm being generous.
Really, can't you figure out better things to do than insult people facelessly? Too cowardly to come out and face me like a... ummm, I was going to say "man", but...
Oh well. Enough of this waste of time.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Then you should be mature enough to know better.
Consider this conversation closed. You're not worth my time.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
I interviewed Miss UK for PC Format magazine for a feature, and got her to play Mary King's Riding Star and other girly games. She was less than impressed.
Given all this nature vs nuture crap, upbringing, envrionment, blah blah blah, wait about 20 years, and we'll see what happens.
My daughter is 2 years old, and she watches me play computer games, has her own keyboard and mouse, likes to chase me around, and be chased by me, with nerf guns, but also likes to play with her big-ass doll house, her tea set, and all that stuff. I'm just as likely to read to her from a C programming guide as I am from 3 Little Pigs, and she knows exactly how her DVD of A Bug's Life works.
So, in 20 years, when she's as old as I am now, she either will play VGs, because she learned it from Daddy, or she won't, because her personal temperment or her female temperment doesn't jive with it.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
and ill tell you why, at the risk of few karma points.
certain products are designed for certain people, BY certain people. example, the head programmer at id is a man. a heterosexual man. he likes women. he probably likes women with large breasts. and i would bet that he likes to see women with large breasts wearing next to nothing. he also makes video games. hey, why not put some attractive large breasted women wearing next to nothing in my video game ?
im betting that when someone makes a product like this, or playboy, or maxim, they have a certain demographic in mind.
if im the editor or Black Hair magazine (it exists), what do i care what white people think ? white people arent buying the magazine. now lets say i own BET and put a commercial on the air for black hair magazine. would white people call up and complain ? probably not. and if they did, would i really give a shit ? nope
i should write an article about how 'Womens World' isnt sensitive enough to my masculine needs. maybe ill send a nasty letter to the Advocate for not having enough straight issues in the pages. maybe ill even call up BET.
the point is, game makers are usually heterosexual males. and heterosexual males like big breasted nekkid chix. if you want a chick game, either make one or pay someone to make one.
companies arent as stupid as youd like to think. they spend lots o cash studying who buys their games, who reads their magazines, who watches their channel.
and about the magazines for people who like to play sim city or myst; i can tell you right now why you wont see it any time soon. because it wont sell. why should i read a magazine about old games i dont even play any more ? what is so fucking special about myst that it should get its own monthly book ?
i WANT to see naked chicks.
i WANT to see gibs.
i WANT to know where i can find a skin of hunter topless.
and i want a magazine that can tell me where and how.
my five bucks is my vote
im not homophobic, mysogynistic(oh god did i spell that right ?!), etc.
:)
simply making a point.
oh and by the way my spelling/punctuation is due to laziness, not illiteracy(better check that one too)
most of my friends are gay. i do rocky horror on weekends
I don't get it. Duke Nukem is advertised with a hugely-muscled bloke. Tomb Raider is advertised with an attractive woman. Both are offensive to women. So what are we supposed to advertise with?!?!?!? It has always been something I wondered about, that women's underwear has picturs of attractive women, and men's underwear has pictures of well-endowed men. Surely if sex sells, they reverse them? ;-)
...." shite - just cos it's discriminating against men instead of women doesn't make it right!
On a more serious note, there is a general tendency for women to head for the nurturing stereotype and men to head for the hunter/gatherer stereotype. It's instinctive, so there's nothing you can do about it. If women want to head for other stuff (female hackers and Quake players, etc), then equal opportunities says you let them. But it doesn't mean that all women have to like that stuff, any more than it means all men have to become nursery teachers. And don't give me any "encouraging women into
As other folk have said, men generally go for one style of games, and women go for another. More men play games, cos that's how the male mind's set up, hence there's more games aimed at men. That's all there is to it.
Grab.
The new female characters in the Starcraft Expansion Set:Brood Wars (the Medic and Valkyrie units), are problematic in some respects. Their utterances seem more like sexual innuendos than any of the other units. It's like the folks at Blizzard took 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Not bright.
Hmmm...I'm wondering how this reader feels about NWA's role in promoting and promulgating misogynistic thoughts and actions. I seem to recall a fondness for the terms ho and bitch used in lieu of more respectful names for women. Perhaps they are adding to this detremental social programming?
i think you should seek help
i sense you have too much spare time on your hands
I've seen that most of the responses to this article have been from guys, so I thought I'd add another female voice.
I'm a female geek and I have the CS degree to prove it. I enjoy playing computer games. I actually subscribe to a computer game magazine. I ignore the ads that rely on sex to sell. Those ads don't give me any reason to check out the game. The computer game magazines aren't the ones to blame for the sexual content of their ads, they just print what the game companys submit. I subscribe for the reviews and such, not the ads anyway. The magazines are responsible for their actual articles however, and I will never be subscribing to a magazine like PC Accelerator. They blatantly use sexy women in their articles. That does not appeal to me, and thus they don't get my business.
I'm an avid Q3A player, and my boyfriend and I love to play computer games over our home network. Actually a lot of my favorite computer games are sports games! Strategy games, flight sims, rpgs, adventure games, I've played all the genres. I realize that I may not be typical, but I thought that I would speak up, and be counted.
I can't argue that the current mode of advertising is making the developer's money. However, I seriously believe that game developers are leaving a lot of money on the table by designing ads aimed solely at the hormonal male.
I've been making a pretty good living selling shareware role-playing games for the last 5 years. One thing I have always done is been very PC about my design. Half the available characters are female. Strong female NPCs. Minimal cheesecake.
I think I've been rewarded for this quite handsomely. I have a strong female fan-base. When I got two calls from southern housewives with several kids addicted to my games, _in_the_same_day_, it was very satisfying. Especially when they gave me their credit card numbers.
Women like computer games just as much as men. When they're given the chance. Anyone in this biz who dismisses this market by saying "Oh, well tits are just what sells." is missing out.
- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software, Inc.
We make cool games.
- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software
Fantasy RPGs for Mac and Windows.
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com
Finally a guy who has a clue.
The problem is, as you stated, with society in general. Society teaches us to discriminate based on culture, religion, sexual orientation, and gender (among a huge list of others...).
YES women have come a long way in the last 50 years. 50 years ago, a woman would make about 20 cents
on the dollar to a man doing the exact same job. Today that figure is at about 73 cents to the dollar. That's great.
I can't tell you how many times I've been told, "you should be happy, look how great it is for women now..."
Well, shoot me if I'm wrong, but I will not be happy untill women make 100 cents to the dollar for the same work as men.
What's the solution?? how do we get there....
well, we can start by having each of us make a personal effort to not discriminate. Eventually such attitudes become ingrained in society, and society standards will change. it just takes a long time =(.
The point is, the number of women interested in science / engineering / computer science is growing. And with proper nurturing, will continue to grow. But discrimination will not go away without a consious effort to make it go away.
As the number of women in the techinical industry grow, so will their buying power, and marketing value. Maybe then we will start to see games and marketing targeted for the female consumer.
just my $0.02 worth
or for you men ($0.0146 worth)
=)
It's more than just an issue of targeting. It's one thing to notice that males play a certain type of game and go after them in your ads. It's another to craft a type of ad that panders to men while degrading or insulting women. There are plenty of male dominated markets (like technology products in general) that don't do that (at least not so often). It's not hard to see that Laura Croft is pretty demeaning. In any case, it becomes a positive feedback loop. If you target men in that way, you tend to edge some of the females out. Then you have a greater percentage of males in the audience and the tendencies increase. The other possibility to consider is that the types of games females typically play, just don't lend themselves to in depth coverage in gaming magazines. I have no idea if this is true but it's a possibility. It just amazes me that game manufacturers don't try to go after the female market more. If the advertising and catering is really so strongly geared towards males, and if females really do constitute 50 percent of the gaming market, it's the perfect opportunity to create and games and forums that appeal more directly to them.
I cam into this first thing in the morning - I really wish I hadn't.
For all those reasonable people who were disputing the fact that people are dicriminated against online in other articles, please scroll back to see the subject line "Golddigging sluts".
Yes - Women are accepted in technology - I mean, look at Lara Croft, right?
BTW - I'm another woman who likes to game, both with computer games and RPG's. I loved Resident Evil 2. I like shooting things once in awhile. But to be honest, I'd rather play FF 8 and kill things with a gunblade.
Gross Generalizations. Jerks.
-Noiz.
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I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Reading the majority of replies thus far, it appears to me that many gamers enjoy the fact that the industry's primary consumers are males under 30. This is far more disturbing than anything in the article. Homogeny leads to stagnation. One of the reasons I stopped investing time and money in gaming was the fact that every hot game boiled down to-"retrieve this", "defeat that", and/or "conquer them". Everything seemed far too singular in goals to remain interesting. Perhaps it is best that video games remain a "boys club", it will give women (and men with better things to do) oppertunities for more intellectually stimulating experiences.
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
haha, I'd have to say the only guy that looks presentable in q3a is the one with the blue breathing mask thing on his face. (Cyborg maybe, haven't looked close enough, he's usually bloody bits before I get a chance.) And you know, there's always been naked chick skins, why not naked men? I don't think I'd mind. :>
"Just because I'm moody, doesn't mean you're not irritating."
This reminds me of another discussion regarding women in technical fields. I have a physics degree, so I am experienced in another aspect of North American (probably world) culture where there is a larger percentage of men then there are women.
Studies have been done in physics asking "Why are there so few women? Is it because women aren't 'naturally' technical/math oriented?". This is essentially the same question we are talking about in the computer gaming culture as well. The answer to the physics question seems like it would also apply here: "There are so few new women in the culture (read physics or gaming geek) because there are so few current women in the culture." Basically, while 'old school' men are running most aspects of the gaming industry, any women who try to enter into programming games, writing for gaming magazines, talking with fellow gamers about things they like, etc., will be immediately marginalized. I know many women who have technical skills and are really interested in computers and gaming, who can't enter the culture because every time they try they are told things like, "Girls don't like first-person shooter games", and "Girls wouldn't buy that anyway, even if the ad wasn't digital porn (as in Lara Croft selling Tomb Raider)".
Even if it is only the idiots who say things like that, think back to when you started playing. When you got killed repeatedly in your first networked game of Quake, did you hear something like this, "Ya gotta be faster, punk!", or something like this, "You keep getting killed because you're a girl, and girls suck at these games." The first option includes you, and challenges you to do better. The second option has no humour in it, and no challenge. There is no room to improve: the judgement has already been made that you will never be on par with those already in the game.
That's a surefire way to make sure that women don't join the culture, be it a technical field such as physics, software or hardware development, auto mechanics, etc., or gaming.
Bravo!! Huzzah!! I agree and then some. Don't tell me what my fantasies are, you snot nosed kid (nothing against snot though), people like L33tboi here are the spawn of homophobia and intollerance. Any gaming company / mag. should realize quite quickly that by seizing the female market they are bound to make more money, and thats the name of the game isn't it? Not *uake, not h*alf-life, but $Money$. Just my wooden Nickle.
so you're saying that all men ander twenty are inherently sexist, despite any sort of experiences that we (the obviously uneducated, backwards, totally-produced-by-social-forces, unable-to-make-a-rational-decision youth) might have had that differ from your exalted person's. consider, perhaps, that your life is not the precise model for every member of your sex (or gender, if you prefer). at least don't declaim your opinions as if they were straight from the mouth of god.
As a chick who spends way to much time playing FF7, Half Life, ADOM, and anything by Sierra, I avoid games like QuakeX and LAN parties and that whole scene not because of the violence, but because of the explicit sexualization of the violence. While I really honestly enjoy watching someone's head blow up in HL, I DON'T enjoy the rape imagery implicit in Quake, from "riding rockets" to the players referring to a bad loss in a match as being raped.
OK, this is my first post here, be patient. To figure out the specific elements of games that attract buyers (which is what most of you have been trying to do), you must understand why ppl START playing games in the first place. Generalizations are rather faulty in this case due to severally radically disproportionate scenarious that can ALL be stereotyped. Teenagers, which happen to constitute a large proportion of the game buyers, are varied, at times complex, and often times undecided characters. Most, due to parental restrictions, play games as a vice to avoid work, and because they really have nothing else (or are allowed nothing else) to do. I may interject here that there are several elements that are intertwined between these scenarios. One of which is boredom. Everyone is attracted by whatever is new (and I don't want to get into what is "trendy" or not). Kids or adults that frequent bars oftentimes DO get bored of getting wasted weekend after weekend. Games present an alternative. This leads to their own (mis?)conceptions of their personality. Some feel a stimulus of power when ripping apart someone in a 3D shoot-em-up (and this is USUALLY because they really never had any experience related to a bloodfight EVER). The same idea can be applied for all other cases. Mostly, men have an attraction to these games because deep in their subsconscious (or maybe not so deep), they have idols to emulate, or military figureheads to follow. So it's no suprise that thousands of buyers are closet Napoleons (and a simple reason that there are LESS girls who play these games, is frankly, because most girls do not want to be men--and in no way am I trying to be sexist). Game developers and companies KNOW that men have this admiration for military figures, and come up with cyberheroes such as Duke Nukem to incarnate the fantasies. Game developers ALSO know that girls do NOT want to become DUke Nuke, (altho they know that girls don't have anything against being buff, hence the series "Xena, Warrior Princess" So, weird as this sounds, games (and sex roles) have SOME form of a connection with history. So go to school and learn something in class. find my ICQ at 2988 1384
Heh. You didn't play arcade games as a kid?
Remember those "ball-on-a-metal-stick" joysticks? Yeah. Like that. I think those are about as phallic as the tires on your car. (although, around here, you'll see a lot of macho men with really big tires on their pickup trucks...)
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I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Hey idiot boy...take a look at my web page and tell me I'm a fat ugly chik. I'm not. I personally can take care of myself and I'm a computer geek and a major gamer. I'm thinking I could kick your ass anyday in Half Life or Quake kiddo. Not all gamer chiks are fat, ugly dykes. There are a few of us that are good looking and have brains
Goth Chik
All right, ENOUGH already! I am thouroughly exasperated with my gender at this moment, and seriously wondering if I could create a new gender, entitled "quasi-female," for those of us who do not have this seemingly gender-specific, obscurely psychological obsession to find grievances committed against women. I can sum up the entire article in two words: GROSS EXAGGERATION. I do not disagree that sex is used often to sell..well, a lot of things. That's correct. But why oh WHY do so many women choose to make such an issue of it?! I don't have the patience to point out all of the incorrect observations in the article, so I am going to focus only on the implication that somehow women are 'driven away,' as it were, from gaming magazines by the sexist ads. I have yet to hurl a magazine to the floor in disgust in response to an ad featuring a scantily-clad, volumptuous woman. A lot of women consider pictures of this kind degrading, and for some reason we blame men for it. Why? I mean, more often than not, when a game ad features an impossibly beautiful, sexy woman character, it also includes a male character with huge, grossly overdeveloped muscles wielding an enormous...ah, WEAPON...who looks like he could take out an entire city with one blast. I have yet to hear any guy complain that he is degraded by this image of male-ness. And I have yet to meet a woman who would't stop to gaze at such a vision. Let's face it, girls, we accuse, but we are just as guilty, so why don't you just drop it and enjoy being human, for a change? Most of us would not simply stop reading a magazine due to sexist ads, and to put it quite frankly, any girl who would has serious issues. I recommend counseling. IMMEDIATELY.
I agree with phwiff, but I don't mind it too too much. Yes, it's sexist. Yes, it's stupid. But the problem is, it works.
If it didn't, would the magazines sell as well? If it didn't, would advertisers from all different fields use sex to sell? I don't think so. The problem lies not with the gaming mags, but everywhere a picture of a scantily-clad woman can be slapped up to help sell something. Companies have been using sex to see for aeons, although it's more obvious to us now because cultural mores allow for much more skin to be shown/flaunted than ever before.
So yes, gaming magazines do have a big problem with it (as shown by the rather superfluous "Ten Ways to Get the Girl" article in the most recent incite PC gaming, featuring plenty of pictures of actress Kobe Tai). So do beer commercials. And car commercials. And just about everything else under the sun.
If there's to be a revolution, though, the gaming magazines would be a fine place to start.
Ian
Inventor of the WeaselBot 5000
If you walk into a store selling games, the vast majority are targetting the "Hey, it moved. Kill it! Whoa cool explosions!" market, which is predominantly male. Anyone who prefers games which involve more thought than reflexes is largely ignored, regardless of gender. There really aren't many games which rise above the twitch-fest level. When this changes, I think we'll see more gamers overall.
I can't argue that they aren't bad, but they seem to be selling. "Barbie Generation Girl Gotta Groove" is number 5 on PC Data's Top Ten list for December '99. Check it out.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Are you saying that significantly more women would buy Unreal Tournament if it was marketed differently? It's still the same game. The object is still primarily to annihilate the other players. How would different advertising make it appeal to people that aren't already interested in that type of game?
In other words, does Unreal Tournament, as a game, appeal to people who are offended by the ads?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I've talked (online) to girls that play Quake too, but they represent a tiny fraction of the total FPS market. I don't think that that's because of the advertising alone. In fact, I think advertising is only a very minor contributing factor. I think the main reason is that girls grow up being pushed in a completely different direction. They shouldn't bother with computers. That's guy stuff. If they're going to play games, they should be playing nice games like Tetris.. on Gameboy.
If more girls were encouraged to get into computers, there would be more female programmers. At least some of these female programmers would get into creating games. These games would probably attract a larger female following than games made by guys for other guys like themselves.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The implication behind your satire is that games aren't for girls. Full stop.
That's not the way I understood it at all. I think the implication was that some types of entertainment simply don't appeal to some types of people. Therefore, there's no sense in trying to market to those people.
Now, if there is an adolescent boy somewhere trying to figure out what FPS game is cool to buy, then the advertising might influence him. It appeals to him. Since the advertising appeals to (or at least doesn't offend) the majority of the people that are interested in FPS games like Unreal Tournament or QuakeIII, they are getting the best return for their advertising dollar. If their ad can sway some people to buy UT instead of Q3, then they've done their job. If you only like games like Bomberman and Mario Kart, then you aren't likely to purchase Unreal Tournament, no matter what kind of ads they use, simply because the game itself doesn't appeal to you and the marketing isn't aimed at you.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Larger market segments get more magazines targeting them. You happen to be part of a smaller segment with fewer magazines competing for fewer dollars.
I get most of my gaming info from Computer Games: Strategy Plus, various gaming websites, and a little from Maximum PC.
If you don't like mags like Incite or PC Accelerator, don't buy them. There are obviously plenty of people who do like them though, and I think that that's fine too. To each his/her own. You can't expect every gaming mag to be aimed at people like you. There probably are some out there that appeal to you, you just have to look for them.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Where are the female coders? Why don't they write some games for female gamers? We've got a ton of guys coding games for guys, what the women need is for women to start writing games for them. Why? I'll tell ya why... err no.. you already said it:
This crud is selling because girls are growing up pushed towards this stuff. It is a symptom of a much larger problem. ... Whole generations of women have been growing up under this brainwashing. No /wonder/ we have so few women in science and technology.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Well, it's funny and everything, but why must you assume that you have to be sex-starved to enjoy porn?
The implication behind your satire is that games aren't for girls. Full stop. That's bollocks. My girlfriend routinely thrashes me at Mario Kart, Tekken, Bomberman and Puzzle Fighter. I bought her two Playstation games for her birthday, and she was grateful. She can't be unique in that respect (I, lucky, but not *that* lucky...)
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Those really are gross generalisations. They're about as gross as saying "Black consumers only buy branded hip-hop style sportswear. Advertising suits to blacks is a waste of time", or something crass like that.
If you can market cars at women, then you can market games at them.
We should be careful not to confuse women with non-gamers. Since most of the women you meet are non-gamers (either because they never will be, or because nobody's managed to market to them properly yet, so the bug hasn't bitten), it's easy to confuse the two. How do you market Quake III to someone who *hasn't* graduated from Doom (etc), regardless of whether they're male or female.
The adverts in question here aren't trying to reach non-gamers. They're aiming for established gamers, and since so many of them are 15-25 yr old men, they go for the sex angle.
--
There are a lot more female Slashdot readers here than I ever thought. And yes, I know it feels like we're always shouting into the wind trying to be heard, but most never seem to.
;)
Me? I played with Legos growing up, have had one computer or another since I was 8, freelance programmer and HTML coder, sys admin in training, and gamer (I played the *original* Wolfenstein, pre-3D). I'm the official geek in the family - my husband is "only" a draftsman (sorry, hon ). He games too, and some of our tastes overlap. Starcraft is his big one, and I like it OK, but I tend to prefer the C&C engine. Old as it is (::taps foot at Blizzard::) I like Diablo, a lot. And one of the character choices is (an albeit scantily clat) female. TR is OK - she's an intelligent female character, even if I wish she'd wear a bit more, and the gameplay's somewhat fun. And yes, I like SimCity - I want 3000 desperately - and related games, like Civ, Alpha Centauri, etc. I often multitask a SC2K game when I'm doing my homework. Helps me focus better. I use Win95 at home, because the stuff I need doesn't work well under WINE (yet), and my Linux box isn't up and running at the moment. I donated the monitor to my mother-in-law to replace her dead one, so she can still EM and keep up with her kids. And play Solitaire.
Side note, to whoever couldn't find Myth2 games online? Check out Kali. Yes, to get a regular account, you do have to pay, but it's a one-time fee, and I've yet to find any game that's capable of being networked that you *can't* play over there. I also tend to run into fewer PKs and jerks over there.
- Corrinne Yu:
Look, lady, Better Homes and Gardens outsells Penthouse and Playboy combined while Ms. and Working Woman struggle for subscriptions. Women did that. Cosmopolitan sells millions of issues without a single article on programming. Women buy it.[I'm in the 99.9999 percentile. Nothing you say applies to me. Stop it!]
When you get to the fringes of the culture, generalizations cease to apply. Still, there's no point in pretending, that these generalizations are invented. They're not; they are based on observating the mass of people who inhabit the center of the bell curve.
It's obvious that a lot of guys on Slashdot have never actually spoken to a typical American woman. I wonder if you have, either.
I must say I agree with the general tone of the article. Many of the ads I've seen in gaming magazines, and even in game developer magazines, are simply tasteless.
There are two ads in particular which come to mind: One by ATI, showing nothing but a synthetic woman (evidently from some published game) with an almost unlawfully short skirt clutching an Uzi to her chest; and another for TrueMotion 2X, which has another synthetic woman in a pose about two pixels away from flashing her genitalia. The recent ads for LightWave 6 aren't much better, which feature two synthetic females in the foreground who are all cheesecake and no art. (And then there's the ads for Ventriloquist, which aren't offensive, just disturbing.)
I admit this is all very subjective; some of the stuff I find interesting would probably have some of you on the phone to the authorities. So I would encourage the marketroids at game companies -- and other companies as well -- to avoid stuff that's crass and exploitive. It's too easy, and suggests laziness in your creative department. Try to be more original and artful.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Well, if that's so, I must be some kinda freak then. :) Or a gay transsexual trapped in a woman's body but I just don't know it. ;)
I never played with Barbies except to shave off all their hair and mark them up and attempt to surgically "alter" them...my parents ended up buying me Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars along with Tinkertoys and Lego sets, because I had (and still have) an irresistable urge to take things apart to see how the hell they're put together. "Traditional girl toys" like baby dolls and such bored the absolute HELL out of me--I had much more fun playing with little highway sets I made for my Hot Wheels cars, or playing with GI Joes or Transformers (back in the good old days before they bastardised them to hell and back)...or playing "war" with my neighbourhood friends (who were mostly boys)...or making my own toys out of pipe-cleaners and playing with them (mostly furries, at that...surprise, surprise). I honestly thought at first Lord Kano got his name from Kano in Mortal Kombat rather than the actual martial arts person. :) Most of my favourite Playstation games tend to be Namco fighters, and my husband refuses to play Soul Edge with me anymore because of one too many times when I had Sophitia repeatedly knee Mitsurugi AND his gonads to death :) (ok, so I LIKE Sophitia, damnit!) and came very close to doing the same thing with me and Lilith in Darkstalkers 3, or Sakura in ANY Capcom game in which she appears :) (ok, so I go for the Kawaii Factor :). I have to have my husband remind me that we are not buying a Dreamcast for the sole purpose of playing Soul Calibur and allowing Sophitia to repeatedly knee Rock to death. The three big hobbies I've had are electronics construction, radio, and computer stuffle (ranging from building my own boxen for fun, to proving that PPP CAN work on an old 8086 box, to messing about with fractals, to messing about with Linux, to messing about with computer graphics--and it was the combination of fractals fascinating the hell out of me and having crazy dreams of working for Industrial Light and Magic someday what got me into taking what is known now as Computer Engineering and Computer Science, despite the high school counselor trying to steer me into essentially taking crafts...). I also have an unhealthy interest in special effects, especially on miniaturisation and costuming (I'd love one day to learn how to make my own fursuits, and I read Fangoria as a teen both for stuff on horror flicks and on costuming technique). I think Warhammer 40K is the bee's knees (and have on occasion attempted to pester the hubby, who owns Chaos Gate, to get Rites of War so that certain of us who like Eldar [aka Elves...in...spaaaaace...] can get Equal Time :). I usually don't just play with soldiers, but with Eldar and Orks (!). In my house it's my hubby who's the good cook, and I'm the all-around fix-it bitch :). I spent an unhealthy amount of time as a kid reading "Home Mechanix", and spend an unhealthy amount of time now reading the Physician's Desk Reference for fun as well as watching "New Yankee Workshop" and wishing I had the space and money to afford a workshop like Norm. :) I still think it hilarious that every woman who has EVER been on "Hometime", including Joanne Liebler (the once and future fix-it-lady), has succeeded in making Dean look so incompetent that they have eventually been forced off the show and started their OWN shows. :) I always preferred sci-fi and fantasy, and Harlequin novels bore me to absolute tears. I don't even like to wear dresses all that much because they're too damned drafty. :)
Obviously, I skew the whole works all to hell and back. :) I'm also a woman and straight; last I checked, I didn't have an extra Y chromosome hiding around (then again, I also don't know my own blood type...yeah, real smart, I know). Given a choice between the Lego blocks and the Barbies, I'd take the Legos any day :)
So, am I really that much of a freak? ;)
(BTW, I can't say that the Natalie Portman crap really offends me that much. Kinda wish they'd stop posting it in every single thread on Slashdot, and I wish they'd quit posting it in triplicate, but I can't say it offends my sensibilities as a woman. I just wish they'd vary it...like, oh, hell, I dunno, Zelgadis Greywards naked (those of us who watch Slayers already know he's petrified, so no worries on that)...and people think I'm odd because I like Zelgadis. *shrugs*)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
What's the point of getting killed if there are no repercutions?
;-)
Hey, that's not true! You lose all your weapons!
It's latin, meaning break. Like _frag_ile and _frag_ment.
The issue about gaming magazines geared toward male readers is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to marketing computers to women.
For example, I heard a report on the radio yesterday that the "Mattel" computers built by Patriot Computers had a big problem, namely that the "Hot Wheels" computer had more in the way of productivity tools than the "Barbie" computer. That raised the hackles of several feminist groups, who wants to make sure the next software bundle that comes with the "Barbie" computer does include more productivity tools.
What is very interesting is that if you look at the ads in Computer Shopper magazine, they're mostly geared towards male readership anyways, with heavy emphasis on specifications, the latest hardware, etc. I have this feeling that Gateway--with its more "soft sell" attitude--is selling a lot more computers to female computer users than normal.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I've pursued a similar tactic in hardware sales. When buying my first PC, Mesh [check the link, they're as good at server admin as at marketing :) ] were on my shortlist, but had bikini-clad women draped over all their press ads ... I called the marketing dept. & told them they'd lost a sale on the basis of their terrible advertising. Flame me as PC if you want, but I did what I thought was right.
Perhaps this approach could/should be taken with games ads -- insofar as any gamers in /.land care about such things ...
--
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
So what? Nancy Reagan also had "concrete data" from her astrologers telling her how to arrange Ronald's schedule. How are the marketers different from astrologers?
Statistical analysis is a powerful tool. If used properly, they can give you both an answer and an error range for any probability-related question you care to ask (like "will this advertisement appeal to X audience?" or "what do most members of X audience want in a game?").
Unfortunately, most people don't understand how to properly produce statistics. This means that the average person cannot tell whether a statistic is valid or not. Marketing departments have taken advantage of this, and rolled out reams of questionable statistics for the masses. The end result of this is that a large chunk of the population considers statistics to be worthless, because marketing has inundated them with bogus ones.
The only solution that I can see to this is education. Learn what statistics _are_. Learn how to produce them, and how to tell how reliable they are or aren't in a given situation.
Statistics are just about the only tool that _can_ be used to determine market appeal. Applied properly, they can accurately answer most questions you care to ask about your market. They will also tell you what questions they _can't_ accurately answer.
If you see a bogus statistic, attack the methods of the people who produced it. Don't attack statistics in general, without learning about it first.
Well if she does go home with Eggbert, they'll go to a nice big house in the suburbs and make sweet love in the hot tub, which she and Eggbert were able afford because of Eggberts career as a MCSE, CNE, and linux guru.
If she goes home with Russ, they'll be going home to a trailer because between shifts at the local gas station Russ knocked her up and she had to leave school to care for her baby.
Russ can't buy her a single red rose, while Eggbert can shower her with a dozen black roses per week.
The REAL world is much different than high school.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
>>b) All "if"s aside, she's still going home with Russ. And if she doesn't, Russ is going to hunt Eggbert down and kill him. Because he can
You're forgetting that since Eggbert is a geek he'll have the sweetest in personal protection technology available to him. AND he'll know how to implement it. So when he approaches Eggbert will know about it and he then will open up Russ's forhead with a small round piece of copper jacketed steel.
>>c) Russ can go to MCSE boot camp, and get his MCSE in two weeks. He can then rise up the corporate ladder (which is easy to do if you're
Gas station attendants don't have enough money to do that.
>>6'6"), become Eggbert's boss, fire him for using linux (or playing quake) at work, and then steal
Could only happen at Microsoft, where no self-respecting geek would ever work in the first place.
>>the wife, GothChik, of the poor unemployed Eggbert. And then have hot uninhibited sex with GothChik every night.
In the world of make believe where you apparantly reside, Russ's number one goal is to get sloppy seconds *AFTER* Eggbert is done?
Sux to be you.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm a game-playing geek and I just happen to be married to a hot blonde. I also have trophies for the karate tournaments that I've been in. (I never won first, Second is the best I ever placed) I also have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. She's safer with me than she would be with her own father.
I was a fat kid, I'm still about 15 pounds overweight as an adult, but I'm working on that. Ugly? Not in the least, I'm not supermodel material but definately a handsome man.
All of this and I'm a geek. I'm an avid gamer. I was a founding member of this area's (South western pennsylvania) largest LAN gaming group.
I'd spank your ass at Q2 or UT and if you don't like it, I could kick your ass on the street. When I go home tonight I'm going to score with that hot blonde that I married.
Hot chick at home, and an Übergamer to boot. Read it and weep.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyatch!
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"A very phallic joystick fills up this page, and the stick is replaced with a stick of dynamite..."
Methinks she might be reading into this a bit too much.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
Atari hit it right on the money when saying alot of magazines don't appeal to people who don't like exclusively violent games male or female.
Game magazines are today basically made for teenage boys. Just go look and read the content in any game magazine. They looks like they were written by teenage boys (no offense to teenage boys).
My question is, when can we get a decent magazine that DOESN'T have all the latest crap to pander to the lowest common denominator? When will there be a game mag for geeks who have been playing video games for over 20 years (like myself)? Next Generation used to be really good, but they've gone the way of Wired. Right now I feel that if I want to be informed I gotta weed through about 5 pages of "hottest big breasted women ever" and "35 new fraggled tips to Quake 3". Ugh.
Actually, most guys do, too, come to think of it.
I think this is silly. Women arn't stupid, weak little flowers that we need to be delicet with. Most of the girls I know are just as ranuchy in there talk as the guys I know, and there probably worse when there alone together.
Most women Are not emotionaly immature idiots who can't stand the idea of sex. Pictures of scantily clad women arn't going to make them feel uncomfortable for the most part, especialy the ones who are going to be reading game mags anyway.
I'm not saying that women arn't going to be offended by someone cat-calling them or whatever, but A guy would be as well. but an image in a magazine just is not going to bother many people.
I don't see whats so hard to understand about this. Women arn't stupid, they can handle this. Sure, there not going to want to run out and buy the game. But not being part of a target demographic isn't discrimination...
"Subtle Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
When I play on BattleNet and someone finds out I'm female, their next comment is usually
"No way- what's your bra size?"
And then you wonder why you`ve never encountered another female. *sigh*
(warning, gross generalizations ahead! when I talk about women in general I mean the way 90% of them usually behave)
Male gamers go around looking for the best new toys. While they enjoy playing a game while they have it, they are eager to leave it in the dust as soon as something better comes along. We hunt relentlessly for new and more exciting experiences.
Female gamers get hooked on games that they just find lying around, like Solitaire and Tetris. They enjoy that type of game, which tends to be pure game and not an exciting assault on the senses, nor a simulate fantasy. They are reluctant to leave a game unless they truly master it and become bored with it.
How could you advertise to a market like that? Why would they exert the effort to look for another game when they've got a perfectly good one in front of them? How could you even describe the added enjoyment without letting them play the game?
Male-oriented games are easy to advertise, because you can hype the graphics or sound, or hype the incredible AI that will hunt you down like a psychotic genius, or the babes in skimpy outfits, or the realistic flight model, or the perfectly rendered gobbets of flesh that fly when you hit the target. They're not just games, but immersive experiences, and you can tell men just why yours is better than everyone else's.
The only effective game advertising for females is something like the Barbie horse ranch game, because children of either sex are suckers for merchandising.
Rott had selectable characters of differing
origins. So it is not that hard. The hard part is convincing the geek programers on superiority fantasy that people might acctually want to assume the role of someone not white male.
And actually an interesting site, it goes in
my bookmarks. The author also states that
(I assume) she canceled her subscription to the
gaming mag. Can't blame her, lame is lame.
Being male I can't really speak to the female
market aspect but a mag with tons of ads that
speak to 12 year old boys and only 12 year old
boys sounds like a waste of time (unless you
are a 12 year old boy in which case it's maybe
Hot Grits)
If these folks want to extend their market
beyond little boys they are going to have to do better than this.
And that's all I have to say about that.
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
) I think this is nothing but an attack from an uber-nich-feminazi organization against a group that has no reason to market to them
sorry. Read, for instance, their TR4 review. If they had the agenda you ascribe they would just flamed it and not actually reviewed the game. they seem to understand that it's fiction and that all game characters are characitures.
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Quakers don't dress funny (that's Puritans) or abhor sex (that's Shakers, and strangely they all died out). Quakerism is just another protestant sect (though in my unbiased opinion the coolest one - they have a real concern for equality and social justice).
I know some pretty randy quakers, but AFAIK there aren't too many Puritans left around these days.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
That's where it comes from. It's short for Fragmentation Grenade, AFAIK. I believe if originates around the time of the Korean War, or possibly Vietnam.
dave
Be glad you're unique.
I would never have even considered buying one of those magazines. They strike me as aimed at teenagers, let alone just men.
Bingo. This is the point she missed. As more marketers realize this untapped resource of adult computer gamers, we'll see more appropriate magazines emerge. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we had a business magazine take up the slack.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
i wrote a nice long reply, then netscape crashes, so:
ya, society that's what i meant
yes, i'm a bit ignorant (stuck in high school and all) but i certainly am not sexist, of course i believe women have just as much potential as men, but based on my own experiences, i have yet to see a girl play quake (even among the geeky girls at school - they are science/math geeks, not computer geeks)
re: ps - I have female friends, they dont play computer games all that much, thus i dont really talk to them about it (although now i will just to get an answer) and getting a GF is a great idea, if I can just stop being shy!
_______________________________________________
There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
this is just how i see it:
a lot of women likes things stable while men oftentimes like to explore and tinker. this is why males like things such as engineering, technology, and gadgets more than women. This is true in the classroom where a lot more males take eecs classes (or just look at the male:female ratio in silicon valley) or in the car shop where you are going to see guys working on cars rather than gals. so basicly men are more into technology (yes i know there are lots of gal chicks out there who dig linux =) but in general, there are more guys on the computer than girls. also, guys tend to like violent games like first action shooters or your favorite real time strategy game. gals on the other hand... are generally more into less violent games (arcade, that barbie crap - please don't flame me for this, i'm a guy clueless about girls and i have no idea what kind of games girls play, i could be wrong, but i have not seen any girls at my school play quake, so based on personal experience, i can only imagine gals playing arcade games or something barbie related) but looking at the male:female ratio when it comes to games, there's a much bigger male market than female market. that's why female oriented gaming advertising has failed, because of the smaller market... also, the programmers developing games are usually guys, they really don't have the insight into what girls want...
I think more females need to get into computer, games, and technology. there's a huge market for games that girls would like, and i think it can boom as soon as something think of a killerapp for girls + computer + games, something along the lines of guy + k7 800 + quake 3, except it's girl-oriented.
_______________________________________________
There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
//the below is lighthearted teasing
forgive a girl for pointing out the obvious, but it's hillarious to watch y'all turn the thought-provoking post above into a discussion of the origin of the word 'frag', complete with a smack-talking taunt involving anal rape by large weapon...
i know that people gravitate to the area of their comfort, and i also know that pissed-off women are hardly as fun or interesting as killing other men, but come on...
//the above was lighthearted teasing
Let me tell you, they're failing males too. The average game magazine is targeted at spotty pre-teens and teens who have such varied interests as Star Trek, Pokemon, and comic books. That's how they've been for ten years or more, with a slight pardon given to Next Generation. What's happening now is that lots of people are getting into games, but aren't liking the existing game communities at all. I can't say I blame them.
yes, i'm a bit ignorant (stuck in high school and all) but i certainly am not sexist
Yes, you are sexist. I don't mean that offensively; I was sexist in high school too. American (and I believe other nationalities too) males have about a 0% chance of not becoming sexist. Study psycology. It is possible to socialize males to identify with (traditionally) female gender traits, and the opposite is true. Anecdotal evidence that you have picked up falls through when you realize that your "objective" observations are influenced by the system you are judging.
As far as learning goes... you wouldn't expect a windows user to understand the beauty of command line without having it all explianed to them would you? I don't expect you to understand just how much of your male gender identity has been spoon fed to you by the world that shaped you. We all see how Microsoft's advertising FUD can affect completly "rational" people.
You may respond, "But there has to be a reason that it is like this! I mean it diddn't just randomly develop this way".
However, I think most
when it comes to believing what is handed to them without examining the source code. Well, here the source code is a culture, and most people think that the reason they like barbie doll figures is due to genetic makeup. A quick stroll through the Metropolitan Museum of Art should indicate that it hasn't always been that way. =)
So, I enjoy hacking on our culture. I get the same pleasure out of knowing that I have decided on an OS that suits my needs after seeing the alternatives, as well as a social stance against sexism. I was taught sexism, and I was taught DOS. I learned UNIX and I learned true equality. I am a happy man on both counts.
I will show you some places to look if you have the desire to learn more about this system. RTFM if you will. First, talk to the experts. (women) If you don't have a girlfriend or female friends, talk to your mother, sister, or family. Understand that the might not even be aware of how they are affected. Try to see all of the differences in treatment and try to reason if they are really justified or just FUD.
- pos
P.S. Just to staighten everyone out: Gender is a social construct and sex refers to a person's "equipment".
The truth is more important than the facts.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Here's the reason...
Male gamers go around looking for the best new toys. While they enjoy playing a game while they have it, they are eager to leave it in the dust as soon as something better comes along. We hunt relentlessly for new and more exciting experiences.
A little noun/pronoun replacement gives us another seemingly true statement:
Male gamers go around looking for the best new [women]. While they enjoy [censored] a [woman] while they have [her], they are eager to leave [her] in the dust as soon as some[one] better comes along. We hunt relentlessly for new and more exciting experiences.
And people say women aren't treated like objects in this society. I just thought that was interesting.
By the way... part of the reason there are so many male gamers is because there are so many males with computers. Part of the reason there are so many males with computers is because parents are more likely to buy a computer for their son than their daughter. (I do not want to hear lots of replies about how you know a girl with a computer and that's why this statement is false. I am talking statistics here, and I know how they can be skewed too =) I know a lot of you probably felt an irrational flash of anger when you read that (because I did too) but if you think about it, it does kinda make sense.
flame on.
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
The real difference happens either very early in childhood or is hardwired into the geans. I suspect the former based mostly on a child I know ( 12 now ) who would spend hours before the mirror fighting her hair and "simulating" makeup but would also "repair" small appliances. The latter probably has more to do with walking through my "lab" every day.
It is not hardwired. If you want to know why... I suggest you read the following:
The Body Project is basically about how our culture teaches women that their time should be spent preening, losing (or gaining) weight, putting on makeup, etc... Self image is warped.
It's a pretty cheap book and it will definitly change they way you view the world. If any of you are parents or soon to be parents, I suggest you read it. It will help you understand what the world will teach your daughters.
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
flamebait, offtopic alert: Quake? To me it's a yawner -- if I want network play, I'd rather exercise my napoleonic tendencies in Myth II; learning to flank works the mind a little harder.
Quake (all versions) is a great stress reliever if you're good at it (Good enough to place in the top 3 consistently on any server) but it can really stress you out if you suck. I tend to play it for about an hour when I get home from work then move on to Master of Orion 2 or Myth 2. The problem with Myth 2 is that the computer is rediculously easy to beat except in the cases where they overwhelm through sheer numbers, in the vicinity of 15 to 1 odds tends to do me in. And I can't find anyone to play against online. There are all of these communities and server lists for things like Quake, but I can never find a place to play any of my strategy games, and whipping the computers ass just gets boring after a few dozen times of beating a game on 'Impossibly Nightmarishly Difficult'.
So I think the answer to the problems of the Strategy gamer is community, our community doesn't play together....
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Nobody will ever see this post, so I can kind of just ramble here...to me, it truly is not whether you win or lose. Shit, everyone dies, so ultimately, it's game over, you lose (though if I remember correctly, you are a religious person and would disagree with my metaphor).
If I may point this out, the idea of relaxing for an entire hour with Quake and THEN move on to other games is totally alien to me -- that's a whole lotta time devoted to competing. And among boys, that's not even close to "obsessive".
No matter what your gender, you rank a game by how much fun it really is. Fun for some is bass fishing, for others it could be barbie makeovers, or late night quake games beating the crap out of buddies, or just exploring alien worlds like Riven...
For me, all I really care about is figuring shit out. I like slurping up a problem and coming up with a solution in a real time. Women are good at that kind of stuff (so are men), but they aren't under the influence of male hormones. I think that is why you see women playing solitaire, tetris, riven, oddworld....it doesn't bother them that they aren't scoring off anyone.
Do you REALLY play a game a few dozen more times once you've finished it? Why? Once you've figured it out, why would you play it again? Maybe you are trying to get your money's worth...but I can't even understand that. Once I know all the secrets, that's it. Shelf time.
That's just it, to me all of those puzzle games are TOO EASY, there is no challenge and never has been. When I was young intellectual pursuits came easily to me, so I turned to physical pursuits for a challenge, I got so good at things like Chess and Magic: The Gathering that no one would play with me. I'm so good at Myth 2 that no one will play with me, same with MOO, MOO2, and every other strategy game I've ever played. I hold a first degree black belt in Taekwondo and have researched many other martial arts because I need the challenge. I'm currently learning C++, and Delphi because my life is lacking challenges. In games like Quake I have a challenge because there is always someone a little better than I am. Why am I going to pay for a game that I finish in 15 minutes and never play again. I refuse to spend 40$ on 15 minutes of enjoyment. I'd be better off renting games like that. I NEED a human element to the competition because without it the game is too easy. This is kind of rambling, but like you said, no one will read it.>:)
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
It's like the Grits references. Once a troll hits us up for a few thousand mental impressions, it sticks. There are legions of /. patrons that will still associate 'naked' and 'petrified' decades from now.
.sig: Now legally binding!
I don't have to look any further than my suburban white friends who call their girlfriends bitch and ho behind their back in front of others to see the seed of NWA's assault on America. Of course, I also think these kids are kind off stupid for modelling themselves after ghetto youth but that's another discussion. We also have them to thank for starting the revolution that brought the words bitch and ho to TV and radio. That said, I love NWA. Songs like Fuck the Police and Niggaz 4 Life resonate within me and voice feelings that myself and several thousand others feel.
- Why do I call myself a n***** U ask me/ Because the police alway s harrass me
As a young, black male who has been handcuffed in the back of a police car for being in lost in a predominantely white southern U.S. county, been tailed on the interstate several times for no reason by police (I had out of state tags but so what?) and have had police officers write me tickets for paperwork violations before scrutinizing my paperwork (and thus having to rip up tickets) the music of NWA speaks to me of my experiences. I don't listen to most of their other songs but I know for a fact that the scenarios depicted in She Swallowed It and Just Don't Bite It are not unusual in several economically-depressed neighborhoods in America.I guess NWA's main fault is exposing America's rotten underbelly that most middle/upper class American's would rather ignore. Of course, introducing little Johnny to profanity is also another nail in their coffin. I remember when NWA first came out they were trying to make a political statement and in several interviews said "All we're doing is describing our environment.", maybe instead of censuring (this is not a typo) them society should have tried to find out why so many of it's members felt so disenfranchised and should have done something about it.
Want to know why?
We all had the internet.
All of us, the gamers, looked at reviews on the net, because they are free and more likely to be useful. Noone read the game magazines, because when we looked at their reviews for games we already had, they gave good reviews to bad games and bad reviews to Great ones in our opinions. Why read something that you have to pay for and is not targeted at you, when you can get something better for free?
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
Check out Games Domain for Farrah's great series, "The Pink Aisle." She points out quite well just where some of the failings in the current gamers' market are.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
((...they wouldn't do it if it didn't sell. Ads are created to get revenue, and I'm sure companies have found that, bluntly, bigger tits sell more games))
... thinking ))
:)
:)
:( The version that came with the game was complex and looked like fun, but without a manual or prior experience in making my own textures (:P ), I gave up on it.
Correction: Bigger tits sell more games _to_ the people they're _aiming_ for. They sell more games to the teenage (and mentally teenaged) male population. They certainly don't sell more games to females, thank you very much.
((The truth is that games are easier to program for boys.We like points, action, motion, and triggers. Women (stereotypically, but also truthfully) like conversations, complex rewards, stories, and
I would be insulted, but you just shot yourself in the foot. You just implied that men don't like thinking. *snicker*
Actually, I like motion. I like the thinking aspect of games, but sometimes it feels really good to shoot the s--t out of something. Currently I spend a lot of time playing Planescape: Torment. I got it for my birthday, along with a new soundcard (creative live x-gamer in case you want to know). Heh, I didn't sleep all last weekend until I passed out on Sunday because of that damn game.
Intelligence, charisma, for once these things make a difference in a game. The conversations are different, the moves are different. It takes thought, yes. But y'know, lazy programmers do not a good game make. And a bad game might sell to teenage boys, but it won't sell the huge numbers of copies that will be sold by a game which appeals to both genders AND to those who like to think.
((What's the point of getting killed if there are no repercutions? ))
Hey! You don't get repercussions in Torment for dying, and I love that. It's not repercussions... the problem I've had with Quake is that there's _no_point_ to it. You go in, you shoot, you kill, you die. Period. Sure, you can brag to your friends about how many frags you got, or compete with them for numbers. Who cares? I don't need a high frag-count to boost my self-esteem.
Ok, sometimes it's fun to do, but I tend to like sims more for that. Heavy Gear rocked. And yes, to pop the bubble of the males who will raise eyebrows at that, I kicked @$$ at it. I was not-quite-unbeatable. I used NO armor on my mechs (too much weight, can't RUN with armor), and I could - and frequently did - outrun zookfire without problems. And I got a real kick out of kicking the butts of the teenaged idiots who claimed that 'girls don't play 'games like this' '. Or the ones who assumed I was no threat because I was female. Slight revenge, but it was satisfying. It was more fun for me to work WITH people, though. There were a few people I truly enjoyed playing with, people who were both good at the game and accepting of me as a player, and they made the game, for me.
Incidentally, I liked a lot of the pics in D+D books - I just wish the males had been as bare as the females, or maybe built a little less like Bubby the Bodybuilder and a little more like the wiry, strong, slim people they were usually supposed to represent. You don't need bulk to make strength, and you don't need bulging muscles to make a sexy man, although strength (wire, not bulge) does help.
((What games do _you_ want to play?))
Well, Torment is pretty obvious I'd guess.
Heavy Gear 2 is a pretty good bet too, when I get it. Dungeon Keeper was cool, but I want a male monster too. Horny was just too short-lived. Hmm... maybe a slaveboy for the mistresses to play with. Yes, I'm that evil. >:)
I liked Myst enough to play it through once, but it had no replay value for me. Bleh. Same with Jewels of the Oracle. And Hexen. And Warcraft. SimCity was fun, but it got boring. No point to it, the same as Quake etc. I liked Daggerfall, but it was unplayable and annoying. Hmm... Baldur's Gate was fun, but once you played it through it was over, and not really fun to replay. Games I did NOT like include BattleZone (oh, I would have loved it, but the motion made me nauseous), Daggerfall (it was a bug-based love/hate relationship), and any game that puts graphics above gameplay. Quake Arena bores me, did quake already, don't need the multi-only version.
I like editors, actually. I was waiting with baited breath for the Unreal editor to come out in a real form so I could buy it and read the manual and PLAY with it... but it never did
The HOMM editors sucked, but they could be fun - and the game was just silly enough for me to like. Same with warcraft. But with warcraft and homm and things like that, there is this... lack... you go through a level and say 'oh, cool, new creature, neat'....'wow, look what it does'....'ok, now can I move on please? No? *sigh* cleanup phase now... kill all the enemies, build up... *sigh*'. Bah.
Frankly I prefer pencil and paper for RPG's, but good gamers and good DM's are hard to find.
So tell me... since I _do_ like games that have a dark, evil cast to them, along with games that are not typically 'female' in nature, why are there no ads targetting me? None _at_all_? I'm not unusual, you know. I know lots of women who game the way I do - pretty eclectic. Now, while I like the phallic form, that doesn't mean I need to see it on everything. And while I don't mind the female form, I don't need to constantly see it half-naked, standing near fully-clothed males. The implication of female submission there is just not for me.
Publishers, unfortunately, don't go for the idea of a gaming magazine geared to women - and if they did, they'd probably fill it up with fluff and pink-ness, and then claim the supposed lack of female gamers on its failure to capture an audience. *sigh*
Did the gaming industry EVER have common sense?
-Elthia
Yep. I'm a guy.
Hmmm.. (Digging through pile of computer magazine...oh look, Maxim, [toss])Ah. Here's one.
(Shuffle Shuffle Shuffle)
Nope. I can honestly say these ads don't do a thing for me either. About all they're good for is making sure I WON'T buy their game.
Now before we get off on the wrong foot, I'm running a Windows platform just for games. Loki is making it possible for me to run a Linux only PC next year and I'm happy as heck. I go to LAN parties on a regular basis, including a small one last weekend. I'd buy Quake IV based on the name alone and I have to visit Bluesnews on a daily basis. Id, Bungie, and Blizzard are my current favorite companies (Firaxis took a big dive after betatest Centauri).
My point? I'm not surprised that the ad companies, and everyone else seems to have some horrible sterotypical views of females. Their veiws of me as a male computer programmer suck even more.
Off to the gym. Have fun everyone.
-----
Want to reply? Don't know HTML? No problem.
No Zen is good zen
Aw. But please support the chief financial supporter of my beloved 3D engine.
:) Though they would make Duke Nukem "sexier" and more "muscular" to appeal the the gay guy. (Any news sites that dare quote me on that will receive flogging.)
Would it be worth it if I have been petitioning the Duke mappers to put in male homosexual strippers to appeal to the male homo market?
BTW, they won't listen.
I don't know if it is a case of doing your part or not, but it is obvious that many good resources targeted at girls never seem to hit the mark and are very often lost. One of my favorite gaming sites (and it also targets girls) is http://www.gamegirlz.com/ It's run by a girl in NS, Can. and it is an excellent site.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
This "ads follow the demographic" bit is very true. There are ads for "Girl Computer games." You bring up Barbie. You won't see the Barbie Camera CD advertized in the same game magazines. Where are they? Watch Fox Kids! after school! Barbie has computer games, Barbie advertizes computer games, but not to the boys, and not where mostly boys and not the girls they want to suck in are watching. The demographic of afternoon TV is much more mixed, and the ads there reflect that. There are even ads for girl toys during the Batman cartoons! Most girls and boys at the younger ages, where computers are going to stick or not, are not interested in the other gender's stuff. (Boys got cooties!) Effective advertising for girls is not going to be in the mags marketed to boys, where they won't see it, it'll be in Young Miss Magazine, and on Pokemon on WB! I think Pokemon is a very good example, actually, of both-gendered marketing. The initial game that Game Freak designed for gameboy was mostly uglies. They put in Jigglypuff (ig) and others to make it attractive to girls, and it works! The girls AND the boys in the under-12 set at my church all play Pokemon Red and Blue on their Game Boys. They discuss strategy. Pokemon is like Doom in that it wants to be nethack when it grows up, but Pokemon is not packaged with all the ketchup. Heck, I prefer pokemon to doom! (And Descent to both- likewise: No Ketchup splatting all over my screen!)
"Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull some intelligence out of the internet!" "Awwww, that trick never works!"
The interesting fact wedged in there -
50% of gamers are female!
The point of the article is that the women (and the market) are out there - in the cold. If the magazines removed their sexist bias, they could increase their circulation.
A very cool game, and one that appeals to all, is Sonic Adventure. It's for Dreamcast, and manages to be a very fun and interesting combination of rocking 3D graphics, fast play, and adventure playing. I think there's plenty of room for more games like this - the games gets consistently great reviews.
Have fun,
The problem seems to be the attitude of the entire publishing industry.
With the falling cost of technology, magazines can be produced for remarkably little cost. This has allowed a huge selection of magazines with highly specialised subjects. Examples include Pike fishing, and Doll collecting. These magazines are not selling in huge numbers, but the market can sometimes support more than one on each subject.
At the other end of the scale are the mainstream interest magazines. All these magazines want all of their respective market. In an attempt to achieve this, they work out what people are interested in based on the other magazines. This results in each magazine having roughly the same articles as all the others. If you don't believe me, try subscribing to two magazines aimed at the same audience for 6 months. You'll see that most of the articles that appear in one magazine will appear in the other in a modified form within a few months. They wouldn't dare do anything different.
Large publishing companies are never after a small chunk of a large market, and all computer magazines are run by large corporations. They know what the readers want (and they're right as far as this applies to the majority).
This attitude is - in my opinion - stupid. A computer magazine aimed at people who don't like violent games (not just girls/women)would only appeal to (at a wild guess) about 1-10% of the market. The difference is that they would have 100% of 1-10% of the market. The remaining 90-99% has a lot more competition, as well as a lot of loyal readers already reading the existing magazines. 1% of the non-violent games market is not huge, but is probably considerably bigger than the market for Pike fishing.
The only solution I can think of is either to set up my own publishing company or pester the big corporations for a magazine aimed at me.
Got to love games. Tetris? No thanks. Myst? Pretty graphics, I solved the mystery in, like, 45 minutes. Boring.
My game is Soul Calibre. Oh yeah baby! Good old fashioned Violence (capital V intended). Many of my friends love this game, and there isn't a male around that'll play against me any more.
I think the problem here (and as a general rule, everywhere) is that people take things too seriously. It's an ad, for Pete's sake. An ad. Don't like it? Don't look. Although I think the term "feminazi" used by a previous poster is a little harsh, I suspect that the reason many women don't read gaming magazines is more a matter of self-confidence than any political motivations.
I don't feel inadequate looking at those women. I don't feel inadequate watching Lara Croft run around in a bikini.
It's a game, ladies, not the world. It's not some attempt by "male CEO's" to put us down and keep us away from the computer or console.
My $0.02 US ($10,000,000.00 CDN) worth.
Sakhmet.
"When I want to do something mindless to relax, I reinstall Windows 95."
Ban the Nukes! Save the Whales! Screw it. Nuke the Whales!
Well, here goes, my first ever post to Slashdot and it just happens to be on a topic that I spend a lot of time wrestling with. You see I work for a website that reviews games and I am the only woman in the company, so I feel that I have a unique perspective in the company.
We review everything, windows, linux, mac, console games, so I never know what sort of a title will cross my desk. I have been introduced to some very interesting games so far and I have found most of them to be a lot of fun, including car racing, boxing, first person shooters, puzzle games, adventure games, you name it, I've tried it and enjoyed it.
I think the best thing to do is for the marketers to stop saying, well there's the gaming industry and over there is the female gaming industry. They are one and the same thing. I find women generally like all the same sorts of games as men, just sometimes in different proportions. There may be less Quake players, for example, that are women, but they are there.
Personally, my favorite games right now are Half Life: Counterstrike and Railroad Tycoon II. I started gaming on a diet of Amiga adventure games, Doom eventually, and all sorts of others.
Cheers everyone!
A behaviorist is someone who pulls habits out of rats.
If companies target this audience, we'd have bankrupt companies left and right.
Have you seen the top selling games lately? Depending on what you consider "real games", I think at least half of the top ten sellers last month were aimed at the casual gamer.
I doubt anyone would go bankrupt by targeting casual gamers.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Atari hit it right on the money when saying alot of magazines don't appeal to people who don't like exclusively violent games male or female. I think the reason is the magazine editorial staff is predominantly Quake-playing males (not as a slight against anyone mind you) and so they report on the stuff that interests them. One of the reasons ads appeal more to boys than girls is that it's easy to convince most guys of a game's appeal with Lara Croft in a bikini than it would be to entice a girl with some kinda character. Who knows, I'm just guessing.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
If there is any one game characteristic that unifies women gamers, I would say it would have to be problem solving. Games like Myst and Riven, the Oddworld series, and many good action games (the Marathon series comes to mind) feature excellent gameplay that challenges the mind first and foremost; itchy trigger fingers are a secondary skill.
I have high standards for my games. I like screaming graphics just as much as any other geek, but I am easily bored by repetitive shooting sprees.
flamebait, offtopic alert: Quake? To me it's a yawner -- if I want network play, I'd rather exercise my napoleonic tendencies in Myth II; learning to flank works the mind a little harder.
Back to the subject: I'm not trying to imply that teenage boys are poor at problem-solving, or even uninterested. They just have different standards for what qualifies as an un-fscking-believable game.
Please remember, though, that the ads that are the subject of this story target people who buy magazines and NOT people who buy games. Big difference.
I'm not going to go out and buy any game magazines for the same reason I don't buy auto magazines: the signal-to-pr0n ratio is pathetic. I'd rather read womengamers.com for gaming information...and for you boys out there, check it out -- it's not like the reviews are filled with thinly veiled references to vaginas or anything. (Can I even say that on Slashdot?)
I'd like to know if any males find women gamer sites to be particularly hostile to men.
----------
"If children weren't copyrighted, no one would have babies." -- Alex Eulenberg
Remeber that ad with the naked woman holding a Palm V? She was "Kate Hunter, Dancer", and she supposedly used her palm to enter to-do's involving legwarmers. There's a bit of a story about that ad.
The first I heard of that ad was an email to all Palm employees giving us a "heads up" that it would soon be coming out. They told us what publications it would run in (things like "Yahoo: Internet life", "Business Week", and "Golf Digest"; all of them magazines with a more or less male demographic). They also told us what to say if we met someone who was offended by it. Apparently, as employees, we weren't allowed to be offended by it ourselves. We were to say things like "The model wasn't really naked during the photo shoot" (as if a naked woman in a room with a camera is more immoral than running a national ad campaign which objectifies women), "This ad was approved by a team of female executives" (as if women never harm other women), and "The message is the beauty of the female form" (look, girls, it's OK, we're saying that you're pretty. Can you say pretty?).
A lot of people were unhappy with that email. If you're so worried that the ad is going to offend people, why do you run it? People flamed back at whatever marketing stiff sent the email, there was discussion in the hallways.
So marketing spammed us all two more times. They essentially repeated the same points, but they had one new point to make that topped it all: They hadn't meant to give the impression that the naked woman Palm ad was the only ad in this campaign. The Simply Palm campaign is a series of ads. In this ad, there's a naked woman, but in other ads use "other beautiful objects, such as a motorcycle and a designer chair" to sell the palm.
That's right, that's a direct quote: "other beautiful objects".
I guess whoever wrote that email has been in a hole since the 60's, to be so ignorant of feminist thought; they certainly haven't ever heard of the word "objectification".
Then later, of course, there was the "Simply Porn" side of the controversy, where 3Com's bonehead lawyers sent a cease-and-desist to a website that had parodies of the Palm ad.
What does this have to do with gaming ads? Well, for one thing, I think the remarkable idiocy showed by marketing throughout this saga argues against the idea that they have any special handle on what "objectively" sells product. Running sexist ads doesn't make you a capitalist, it makes you a sexist. Second, I think that this shows that the ridiculous sexism and objectification shown in gaming mags really does matter; it has a way of bleeding over into more mainstream ads for technology products.
Disclaimer: I no longer work for 3com as an employee, but this was not the reason I quit. Since Palm has reorganized and is soon splitting off from 3Com, I have no reason to believe that the boneheads responsible for "simply palm" are still around. I'm one of the most boycott-happy people I know, and I wouldn't scruple to buy a Palm V at this point. If you read this and work for Palm, you probably recognize me. If so, please do not forward this comment around within Palm. I'm not ashamed of telling the truth, but if the legal department got word that I'd revealed "company-confidential email", I might get in trouble. Palm marketing might have a few IQ points over 3Com marketing, but lawyers are still lawyers.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
I was kind of interested by the author including the focus of most gaming mags on warlike games as being part of what keeps women out of game magazines. There seem to be two big problems with this, one being that gaming mags tend to support more complicated games that they can write elaborate strategies and level-by-level write ups on. When I used to regularly read gaming mags, I never saw them shy away from writing on games that were primarily strategy, exploration, or puzzles, in fact some of them (i.e, Myst, which was all over the place for a long time after its release) aquire prominent places in mags. But, there is a limit to how much you can write about Tetris, or how much you can reveal about an exploration game without ruining the experience for a gamer. Most big write-ups in mags tend to be large RPG's, action games with a wide number of moves/tools/weapons, and combination action/strategy games. All of these do indeed involve conflict, and frequently battles and violence. But that is what is getting a lot of the market and hype right now (i.e Quake III), and game mags would be foolish to ignore that.
Secondly, the author conforms to a very old stereotype by assuming that females won't play and are not interested in these violent games. The article makes it sound like all girls want to do is play nice, clean games like SimCity and Myst, which is extremely rooted in stereotypes and insults female gamers that are not locked inside that stereotype. I've come up against girls (or so they claimed; online isn't always what it seems) that could kick my ass many times over at Quake. Why does the author assume that girls need "safe" mags that don't cover violent content? I can agree with many of the points on the depiction of women and sexuality, but male gamers that prefer SimCity to Unreal Tournament are in no different situation than females. Claiming that a woman can't be interested in "manly" games just dives back into stereotype, and doesn't really help the situation.
By excluding what has the potential to be a significant part of the market (intentionally or no), gaming companies are shooting themselves in the foot. There are *tons* of women out there who like to game. Yet we find ourselves excluded, pushed aside. Everyday we have to deal with the mentality that those with tits can't possibly know computers. Those who cry loudest for female geeks are often the same people who trivialize us. Really. I've been there.
Actually the article seemed to be more about magazines and advertising than the games themselves. I don't read gaming mags anymore so I haven't seen any of the ads the author was describing. From the descriptions they sound cheesy and immature. It seems that their target audience is a bit narrower than the male gender or even male geeks.
The games themselves have come a long way though. Take Unreal TE for example. I'm sure most Unreal fans are guys but they've made the effort to include both male and female players in the game. Yet they haven't compromised the game for its fans by trying to cater to everyone in every way possible.
Yeah it's important to make games and mags as appealing to the largest possible audience. But making them one-size-fits-all will make them dull. WomenGamers.com (the source of this article) is targeted at women. They're going after an unclaimed part of the market--they are "female-focused." This is cool as well as important. More choice is just better.
For me personally, I'd like a gaming mag that was targeted at the 25-35yo nerd crowd (gender-neutral.) In the meantime I'm not going to begrudge anyone having gaming mags/sites that are targeted more directly at them.
Back to the message that this is a reply to: I don't doubt that there are *tons* of women who like to game. OTOH there seem to be a lot less that are as fanatical about it than guys that are fanatical about it. As long as the guys are out in force designing, developing, and writing about the games, the industry will be primarily geared towards them. The same idea works for Slashdot. As long as the contributors are primarily male the site will be geared towards us. Even if we wanted to give female geeks a free ride and we did our best to be female-friendly we probably wouldn't do very well at it anyway.
WorldForge is an open source game that is currently being developed. There are some females involved in the project, but I'm sure that there is room for a lot more and that your involvement will be appreciated. More female involvement will make the game more diverse. But female participation is key--you can't exactly expect a bunch of guys to do it on their own. BTW, I personally am not involved in the WorldForge project but I've been following it and it sounds very interesting. irc.worldforge.org #forge is a good place to get more info about it after you've checked out the web site.
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I don't think there is anything inherently anti-girl about computer games. It's not as if their poor girly minds can't understand computers. It's just that nobody is making games for girls with any brains. Remember the Sierra line of role-playing games? Those were the coolest. I have copies of almost every one. They don't make those games any more. I'm sure girls would like games other than action games if they were just presented. But I don't really see anything like that out there. It's just bone-crushing and flaming-death in 3D or real-time strategy. Not too appealing. Myst had somewhat of a success, but that was banal at best.
Hmmm, I used to have Cranston Manor for my Apple ][+. It was one of the only computer games I actually had to share with my mom and my sister. I never really thought about it until this article, but back then Sierra was a husband and wife team and a couple other friends. Didn't Slashdot link to an article about the wife not long before the holidays? At any rate there was a proportionately large female influence in the creation of the game compared to what you see today. This didn't make it a girlie game. What it did was make it more well-rounded so it appealed to both sexes.
I guess bone-crushing and 3D death is what guys are best at creating. I don't think it's necessarily that the guys writing games for girls are brainless--just probably ill-equipped for the job. Unless there are hordes of brilliant female coders that are dying to write computer games I doubt game companies will be able to produce anything for women on a level with what they produce for guys. Eventually someone will get together enough women to write good games targeted towards women or balanced for both sexes. Then they'll be able to produce something worthy and make some money off of it. Merely having a game designed by women isn't going to be enough. The most talented coders will work on the games that appeal to them. As I see it, it basically boils down to is this: there have to be enough women that want it bad enough to write it themselves. They'll have to dedicate years of their life to it, or their entire careers to writing games that they want. After all, Quake didn't happen because a group of disinterested programmers were paid to create games. Carmack and Romero were probably obessed with creating the ultimate game for themselves.
Show me where there is a team of talented female coders that are obsessed with creating a game that means the world to them and I'll show you the start-up company that will change the future of 'games for girls' as we know them.
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Here goes both my +1 bonus, and all my karma, but someone's gotta say it.
/. is demeaning to women. And exaggerating differences that are eventually minimal. (Legitmate bioneural research debunked most of gender differences as within statistical norms.)
.... you know "news for nerds, stuff that matters" .... if you really want to help women, help this 1 woman nerd with her research and post some math and science!
/. is my favorite place, and the last sanctuary for "intellect" and "geekdom." There is no place else for me to go to get geek news besides here.
/. Hemos stop it already.
1. Women, female, homo sapiens with breasts, are not a different species. They all have their own minds to think for themselves what they like and don't like.
2. More "women like this, men like that" articles on a supposedly intelligent place like
3. 1 woman does not speak for >= 50% of world population. If so, I shall wield my woman power. "Hi. I am female. I know that all women in this world like hot grits poured down a petrified Natalie Portman." Give me karma now. I said I am female and I posted something.
4. The same fallacy is "This is from woman site." "This is written by a woman." This is / must be what all women think.
5. Any time you post an item like this, you are interviewing 1 fewer nuclear physicist, you are reporting on 1 few Open Source project, you are missing out on 1 new mathematical research on encryption
6. Woman? Game? I am a woman. I code for 3D Realms. Enough said about all your generalizations.
7. I want to use my woman telepathy power again. "Hi. I am female. I think all women think your writing this article instead of interviewing Bryce on how to get art and music and content for a free Open Source game offends our entire gender." All women want to share how to get content for games. Really.
8. I shall start the protest of more hard science, more hard math, more hard news, more coding information, more HW information. This is NOT Psychology Today.
9. I only protest strongly because
10. OTOH, if you know of geek inform sites free of this gender - dividing slant, please let me know.
*sigh* I know I am the minority (maybe the only human) in this. I know all you male geeks like this chick topics cuz it causes all the chicks to post. I know all the women like these articles for all the different reasons.
I look forward to the day (apparently really far in the future) when we are all just people.
Go flame. Go take away my karma. If this goes on long enough, I have to stop coming here anyway, so karma won't matter.
Somewhat related topic
What's with gaming magazines no-a-days? They all seem to be pandering to the sexually awkward, identity crisis suffering, snotty nosed 14-year-old. The ones that think "Looking at grrls iz cool" and have the "1.2ghz overclocked athlons", the "l337 h4x0rs" if you will.
Modern gaming magazines like Pc accellerator or Incite promote this rather sexist and immature attitude, which is fine because it targets the gaming audience more accurately, or at least I'd fathom the sales say so. But at the same time it alienates an equal or large audience, Namely ME. I'm talking about the MALE audience that experienced at being in a loving relationship with a female. I can't stand to listen about "How many polygons they added to Laura Croft's chest this time" or "What Seven-of-nine thinks about being a geek object of lust" another time. Don't these dumb-ass marketing people understand that:
- There are geeks that don't associate gaming with sex?
Since when did I ask for a centerfold in a gaming magazine? I want to read about games, new hardware and interviews with people who make either of the two. So maybe they aren't just losing the female gaming market, which does exsist, maybe publishers are also missing the mature market? There's some short-sightedness on behalf of the industry for sure as they've lost me. Am I alone?Trolls, it must be cool to be that bored.
Computing, and the resulting geek lifestyle, has long been thought of as a predominately male field. Yet it doesn't take a brain to realize that female geeks are becoming, by and large, a fairly big part of geek-dom.
By excluding what has the potential to be a significant part of the market (intentionally or no), gaming companies are shooting themselves in the foot. There are *tons* of women out there who like to game. Yet we find ourselves excluded, pushed aside. Everyday we have to deal with the mentality that those with tits can't possibly know computers. Those who cry loudest for female geeks are often the same people who trivialize us. Really. I've been there.
I'm not a prude. I like sex as much as the next geek. I recognize that it sells, and quite effectively at that. But I think that by creating extremely sexist advertising, advertisers are dooming themselves. Advertising can be extremely effective without bringing in a little T&A or cock.
Am I offended? Eh. Not really, because I've just grown so accustomed to it. I'm more likely to get pissed off at Cosmo and the like, since fashion mags do much more damage than some sexist game advertisment ever will. I do wish, however, that gaming companies would realize that there are real women geeks out there -- the kind that like to play Quake and fiddle with their boxes. The kind that thought the only use for Barbie was to torture in all sorts of horrendous ways (*evilcackle*). I'd like the gaming companies to remember us before they turn totally kick-ass female characters into sex objects (a la Lara Croft -- just not my kink, you know?). I'd like them to remember that we're real people too.
And to all the guys who said that female gamers only played Myst or Solitare, a hearty fsck you (meant in the nicest possible way, of course =). Female geeks are real and here to stay.
--
"I don't really love computers, I just say that to get them into bed with me." --Terry Pratchett
From reading the comments on this article it sounds like no one believes women read Slashdot. My boyfriend wishes I didn't, and also wishes I wouldn't talk about the latest techie news when he's trying to get me into bed (and he's an engineer).
I have a degree in Physics, and I've played computer games all my life. I have a linux box. Please don't stereoptype women around me.
As to women and games: My mother has been a compulsive gamer since we got our first computer - and that was an MC-10 my Dad bought in the early 80s. Mum's played more solitaire than you would care to imagine, but that's only because there are no better games for her out there. When we went through a series of Macs, you couldn't get her off Crystal Quest. Last year she played Riven, and when she had finished she asked my brother, with a plaintive, hopeful yet almost fearful tone in her voice, "Are there any more games like *that*? Ones where you don't have to shoot anyone?" And I had the feeling that if there were, she wanted every one of them.
My brother has a playstation, upon which my sister has given her wrists and thumbs a great workout, and so have I. The Japanese know how to make games for women. Let's not forget that. We've wasted many hours and days on tournaments of Bust-a-Move and Bust-a-Groove. Long ago, when my brother used to hire a sega system from the local video store, we all loved Marble Madness.
But if you think all we women like are lame puzzle games, I must tell you, I personally love Warcraft type games, where you manage a society and watch it grow, and warfare has its place alongside hunting, gathering, researching, etc. I also like Caesar II and III. To cap it all, I downloaded the demo for Myth II for my linux box, and I have to say it had an element of appeal (but I'd rather watch my boyfriend play it than do it myself). But I will never enjoy a first person 3D shooter, a side-scrolling action game, or pac man (just cos it's so lame).
As to the magazine advertising - I was shocked and appalled by the descriptions. I would never have even considered buying one of those magazines. They strike me as aimed at teenagers, let alone just men. It wasn't until I read this article that I thought - you know, a gaming magazine for me, that would be a great thing.
AP, Massachussets -- In a landmark study, researchers at MIT have concluded that pornography magazines fail to attract a significant amount of Puritans as subcribers. "The average straight laced Quaker simply will not buy porno, no matter how sexy and hard core the material" claims Dr. Tohtal Klulehs. "We have yet to explain the phenomenon. Hopefully further study will help pornography publishers to penetrate markets traditionally denied them."
"Clearly it is about appealing to a broader range of sexual tastes" said Larry Flynt, publisher of Penthouse and Hustler magazines, "Maybe more pictures of donkeys and ducks, naked and petrified will help spur sales."
The study concludes that pornographers just have not done enough to appeal to people who find public nudity and sex appalling. Critics claim that pornography seems to be primarily, and unfairly, targeted towards horny, sex-starved men. Change, they said, is needed, before the pornography industry collapses completely due to lack of demand.
Actually my girlfriend and I were talking about this after the last slashdot article about the gender divide. We basically agreed that because companies only make "what sells", we see few girl-oriented games, and the ones that /are/ "girl-oriented" are stupid stereotypical bullshit games like "Barbie: Pretty Fantasy Sparkle Love Pony Party Makeover". This crud is selling because girls are growing up pushed towards this stuff. It is a symptom of a much larger problem. How many commercials a day do you see promoting pre-teen girls to use cell-phones, go to parties, use make-up, bake cakes, or try to attract boys? Whole generations of women have been growing up under this brainwashing. No /wonder/ we have so few women in science and technology.
I think we basically decided toys today have gone to shit (as with pop culture). Where the hell are Legos nowadays (well, yeah they are having a comeback with Mindstorms, but those really aren't for "kids"). I am sick of the stupid Radioactive-Space-Cowboy-Time-Traveller themes they have now. Now all you see is Steve-Austin Bash-Em Action figures, and Pokemon.
Same with games. I don't think there is anything inherently anti-girl about computer games. It's not as if their poor girly minds can't understand computers. It's just that nobody is making games for girls with any brains. Remember the Sierra line of role-playing games? Those were the coolest. I have copies of almost every one. They don't make those games any more. I'm sure girls would like games other than action games if they were just presented. But I don't really see anything like that out there. It's just bone-crushing and flaming-death in 3D or real-time strategy. Not too appealing. Myst had somewhat of a success, but that was banal at best.
So girls...what DO you like? It can't be "Barbie: Pretty Fantasy Sparkle Love Pony Party Makeover"... if so I think I've lost all hope for the human race...
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Please. Asking the computer gaming industry to pitch advertising to women is like asking the clothing industry to pitch ads to senior citizens - sure, they represent a significant consumer group, but they are not the primary money makers.
Let me quote the article to illustrate: "Sadly, there is not one "safe" computer gaming magazine I could recommend to my friends who play games like Simcity, Re-Volt, or Myst. Not only do these magazines alienate women, but they also alienate entire groups of non-combative and non-violent gamers."
Which kinds of games create the most profit and have the highest profile? It's not "Casino Hearts" sitting in the bargain basement bin, but rather Quake3 Arena and Unreal Tournament (and their similarly adrenaline- and testosterone-packed counterparts) with their significantly higher price tags and devoted fan bases. Sure, some female gamers enjoy playing these games, but to date they're still a small minority compared to males under 30.
Complaining about the lack of ads geared towards women is not going to change the hard reality that the industry focuses its limited advertising resources to make the most money. Asking any corporation to do otherwise is just plain silly. Change the demographics, and the advertising will change to follow suit.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
...they wouldn't do it if it didn't sell.
Why are you so willing to grant that anyone knows (in any great detail) what sells? There are supposedly "sciences" of marketing, of advertising and of management, and of government, etc..., but none of these is anything remotely like a legitimate science.
How about this: advertising decisions express the values of those who make them. That sounds pretty plausible to me, a lot more plausible than vague appeals to bogus "expert" knowledge about "what sells".
For your consideration: there is no such thing as scientific knowledge in any great detail about what sells (or about anything else that involves humans making free decisions under conditions of scarcity). There are a few interesting and true generalizations about human behavior (such as that they will tend not to make their motivations completely transparent to one another), but that's about it. There's no such thing as genuine knowledge about "what sells", because "what sells" depends on what people freely decide to do.
Organizations which make blanket appeals to "what sells" are typically uninterested in articulating the values which animate their own decisions.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
It isn't human nature because besides a survival instinct there isn't much that is exclusively human nature. Most of the things we assume are human nature are actually the results of generations of cultural programming and nothing else. Currently American society (the media, high school, teenage culture) is intensely anti-intellectual and acts like female intellectual pursuits do not exist. When females have no prominent geek role models, are actively discouraged from being geeky, and are taught to value looks over brains, it is not a surprise that there are few geek grrls out there. My only gripe is that this should not be blamed on something as nebulous as human nature (which is a lie, travel to other countries and you'll rethink several of the concepts you assumed were human nature as American/western nature) but instead the real culprits, the media and society in general.
:)
Blaming human nature keeps us from aknowledging the truth and thus stops us from initiating changes to rectify this imbalance. This will be extremely difficult because it will not only require changes in the current educational system but also changes in the way women are viewed by society in general.
PS: I'm a guy and your post struck me as ignorant and sexist...get a girlfriend or some female friends and gain some perspective.
PPS: Read this article on the women gamers site on why techie women think there are less women in technology than males.
PPPS: I'm listening to old NWA mp3s and they were the bomb...I'm about to go get two of their CDs from CDNow (still boycotting Amazon and they are $1 cheaper)
For example, I think Tomb Raider is a fun game. I like the fact that I can adventure and save the world and not have to be some macho guy who enjoys watching naked women (ala Duke Nukem), but instead someone I can relate to just a little bit better. However, the emphasis in advertising on how hot Lara is, rather than on how fun the game is, almost makes me embarrassed to admit I play it, for fear someone might think I'm a lesbian, or at least associated with the lewd advertising.
It is disappointing when otherwise completely enjoyable games are so obviously geared towards ONLY a male perspective. It's one thing to have a male main character, but it is an entirely different thing to have scantily clad women fawning on you at every move, when such actions may not even be relevant to the plot!
On the other hand, there are some games that do a wonderful job of being widely-appealing, including:
As is shown from these best-selling games, it pays to have a wide appeal. Games appealing only to sex-deprived men just don't sell as well as games that have a wider appeal. -Qirien qirien@earthling.net
This is an autocatalytic effect. The male targeted adds encourage a male demographic. The male demographic encourages male targeted adds. If you are really looking for an original cause, consider how male dominated the entire world of technology has been until recently.
Hopefully, the free market system represents a larger feedback loop that will slowly sap this autocatalisys.
On the other hand, one quick look at the (addmitedly younger) toy market shows a great deal of gender demographic targeting. (If Barbie were her own toy corporation, she would be the largest toy corporation in the world)
Thank you for not thinking.
...they wouldn't do it if it didn't sell. Ads are created to get revenue, and I'm sure companies have found that, bluntly, bigger tits sell more games. It would be interesting to see _what_ games women buy, and how those ads in particular are advertised. For instance, there are no naked chicks in Myst ads, I'm sure. As for action games, the percentage of female gamers is so small as to be considered insigificant to advertisers. Why target a group that makes up less than one percent of your buyers?
... thinking. My sister, for instance, doesn't see the point of Quake: in her mind, you get killed only to come back again. What's the point of getting killed if there are no repercutions?
The truth is that games are easier to program for boys. We like points, action, motion, and triggers. Women (stereotypically, but also truthfully) like conversations, complex rewards, stories, and
I would think RPGs would be better suited to the female (tm) mentality, but we all remember what the pictures in the D&D books were like.
Hey, why don't some women prove Jon Katz wrong and voice their opinions? What games do _you_ want to play?
Here goes both my +1 bonus, and all my karma, but someone's gotta say it.
/. is demeaning to women. And exaggerating differences that are eventually minimal. (Legitmate bioneural research debunked most of gender differences as within statistical norms.)
.... you know "news for nerds, stuff that matters" .... if you really want to help women, help this 1 woman nerd with her research and post some math and science!
/. is my favorite place, and the last sanctuary for "intellect" and "geekdom." There is no place else for me to go to get geek news besides here.
/. Hemos stop it already.
1. Women, female, homo sapiens with breasts, are not a different species. They all have their own minds to think for themselves what they like and don't like.
2. More "women like this, men like that" articles on a supposedly intelligent place like
3. 1 woman does not speak for >= 50% of world population. If so, I shall wield my woman power. "Hi. I am female. I know that all women in this world like hot grits poured down a petrified Natalie Portman." Give me karma now. I said I am female and I posted something.
4. The same fallacy is "This is from woman site." "This is written by a woman." This is / must be what all women think.
5. Any time you post an item like this, you are interviewing 1 fewer nuclear physicist, you are reporting on 1 few Open Source project, you are missing out on 1 new mathematical research on encryption
6. Woman? Game? I am a woman. I code for 3D Realms. Enough said about all your generalizations.
7. I want to use my woman telepathy power again. "Hi. I am female. I think all women think your writing this article instead of interviewing Bryce on how to get art and music and content for a free Open Source game offends our entire gender." All women want to share how to get content for games. Really.
8. I shall start the protest of more hard science, more hard math, more hard news, more coding information, more HW information. This is NOT Psychology Today.
9. I only protest strongly because
10. OTOH, if you know of geek inform sites free of this gender - dividing slant, please let me know.
*sigh* I know I am the minority (maybe the only human) in this. I know all you male geeks like this chick topics cuz it causes all the chicks to post. I know all the women like these articles for all the different reasons.
I look forward to the day (apparently really far in the future) when we are all just people.
Go flame. Go take away my karma. If this goes on long enough, I have to stop coming here anyway, so karma won't matter.