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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?
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.
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"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.