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Wanted: Female Game Testers
BaronVonDuvet writes "The BBC is covering
this story
regarding the lack of female testers for the new Tomb Raider game. Given that there are a number of female gamers (admittedly far fewer than male gamers) why are they having so many problems finding women? Is this a sign that the female gaming market has never really taken off? Is the way men and women approach a game really that different? Are they really interested in finding women testers or is the whole thing a publicity stunt? If you're an interested woman maybe you should get in touch."
I guess women don't find large breasted Animation as exciting as Males?
How do you _really_ know they're female? Isn't that half the problem.. guys play as girls?
It makes you wonder why there aren't more female gamers. Why do they look so derogatory towards video games. The only games that really get girls are Tetris (Dr. Mario) or Sonic the Hedgehog. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't girl gamers that play other games than those, but when you look at the average girl that plays any kind of video game, those two usually come up. Oh, by the way, girl gamers, please show your support. If more girl gamers were honest with this kind of thing, than others wouldn't be reluctant to start. I think all girl gamers should unite (at my house)! We can do stuff... er- play games.
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I'll
There's no game I can think of which has achieved so much notoriety solely for its blatant sexism as Tomb Raider and its sequels. And now they act baffled that the ladies don't want to help make another one?
My deviantArt site
Seriously, most women aren't going to line up to beta test a game which features a chick with boobs so big that you'd swear her implants came with anti-gravity devices.
Let me put it this way: most guys would not jump at the chance to beta test a video game in which the main character was an incredibly ripped half-naked man with thong underwear and an incredibly unrealistic buldge in his crotch clearly outlining every detail of his oversized genitals as they freely bounced around in ancient tombs.
Bad thought huh?
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
If you think I'm flaming, just read one of the hundreds of Venus&Mars books on the shelves nowadays.
-----
For great justice!
For context, go read the real column, and remember all the good times with oldmanmurray. Anyone have any idea what happened to them?
Maybe it's not that there aren't any girl gamers, maybe it's just that Tomb Raider sucks and they don't want to play the next piece of trash they're putting out on that franchise.
I mean, if the games didn't teach them, then certainly the movie would have!
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
- Most (if not all) video games have violence, and some do have "explicit" scenes! (Hmm...) Probably, women dont like to play such games. Probably. - Many video games give a "princess" as the final prize. First, start giving a "prince" as a prize, and see the effect. - Lastly, all video games are developed by males with men in mind. Let a female develop a game.
I mean, I would have been up for being a game tester when I was younger. Now I have a real job though. ;)
:D
But I'm not into Tomb Raider. I tried one of them once, and I thought the controls were horrible. I couldn't get past the first few screens because it made me nuts. I'd rather play something that didn't make me crazy.
And there are plenty of chicks out there who like "boy" games. My husband got tons of adoration from me for getting me Unreal Tournament for christmas last year... and we spent our anniversary taking turns playing Warcraft III.
-A. Aria
I'm thinking no. If it was Harrison Ford, or Mel Gibson, or some well built man running around shooting things and solving puzzles, then you might have a winner. But an exaggerated female? As much as womyn might enjoying having their sex depicted as a main character in a game, I'm not sure they're in to an exaggeration that they don't agree with (most men wouldn't mind being more built, most womyn, I'd presume, are probably not into being considered unattractive because their breasts aren't the size of basketballs).
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Brilliant double-D size breasts must not be that much of a turn on for the women eh?
Seriously though, this has to be one of the more gender biased games out there. Angelina Jolie had to wear a heavily padded bra to get even close to the required size demanded by teen males with raging hormones. Even then she was still one size too small .
There is a lot of information that indicates the opposite to the idea that girls do not play as much as boys, if you are willing to go look for it. This article has some interesting points.
Maybe if they wanted to appeal more to the female audience, they could remove some of the bias, and hey, it may not be dismissed outright by the female community as soft-porn for the male teen masses.
We are two different species. (ok, not really, but close enough) We think differently. Anyone that doesn't realise this has never lived with the opposite sex.
And seeing as how most game developers are male....why should these games appeal to women?
favorite quote:
"A women's mind would bring a different angle to the game."
Maybe women could offer a new perspective on weapons. Things like guilt grenades, verbal tripwires, performance increasing sports bras (those things are huge- any woman will tell you it would hurt to jump around like that), crotch kicks, and keyring stabs would add a new dimension to the game.
Finally, female players would be able to work out their aggressions and live out their fantasies on a level equal to their male counterparts.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
I agree that Tomb Raider is not the most female friendly game out there, but my wife got hooked on it, although this may be because it was the first real game that she got into. It was much harder to wrest my copy of The Sims away from her.
Having said that, maybe women just aren't interested in beta testing games - they can be frustrating enough when they work, but it would be even more annoying if you didn't know whether your failure to progress was because you hadn't worked out the game, or because there was a bug. Maybe the general female mind is less captivated by this kind of problem solving test, and I know that this is a massive generalisation.
The exception to this principle is of course Kim, Mike Doonesbury's girlfriend, but then I sometimes wonder whether she is real or not.
is a stunt by CowboyNeal to scam some geek women!
a ^= b; b ^= a; a ^= b;
Lara doesn't get naked (admittedly, I've only played TR 1, so maybe I'm missing something that occured later in the series), she's not stupid, she routinely guns down bad guys, she's strong, and she's capable.
She does, however, have large breasts, which coincides nicely with the fantasies of 14-18 boys (and 24-38 year old game designers). But some women do in fact have large breasts.
True story: several years ago I bought my then girlfriend a Playstation and Tomb Raider. I didn't see her on weekend afternoons for a few months, because she was always playing Tomb Raider. She loved it. The fact that this woman also had large breasts might have something to do with why she didnt' seem to mind Lara's physique, but it does beg the question: Why does the appearance of a large-breasted woman automatically make something sexist?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
So, wait, let me get this straight. Now, women don't want to help out a game series that treats them as objects? I wonder why...
Have they tried advertising? If so, that's probably the problem: the people who are interested in the low-brow games they produce these days are illiterate.
None of the games they are producing these days are targetted at the market "people who can read".
You want to sell a game to my mother? She plays "Zelda" on her Nintendo; she also played "Pogo Joe", and "Space Invaders".
You want to sell a game to one of my three sisters? Try "Zork", or any of the other text adventure games. Or try "Breakout" or "Arachnoid" or "Ms. Pacman" or an older pinball game. Or, if you want to sell a PC game, try "Sim City" or "Lemmings".
I know that doesn't sound like most of the games they sell these days I guess that's why they don't sell them to women.
-- Terry
The reason women don't want to play Tomb Raider is that Laura makes them feel inadequit (sp?). They end up feeling like their boyfriends would rather be with Laura than them.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
I know of two, in-the-flesh, breasts and all, have real lives EverSmack players. The funny thing is, they play the game and I don't.
One is a college student who gets drunk often, holds excellent dinner parties, and is engaged to one of my best friends. The other is a clinical technician by day and bartender by night, who plays EQ like a maniac.
I also know of several console gaming women, all late 20s, early 30s, who game. They do it not because their husbands/boyfriends want them to, but because they independently enjoy it. While they might not play to the fanatical exclusion of everything else in life like some men, they enjoy games, they buy games, and they don't mind saying so.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...we're just pining for a man who can spell. ;)
- I am made of meat.
"...why are they having so many problems finding women?"
Geeks having problems finding women? You must be joking.
God became man to enable men to become sons of God. -C.S. Lewis
... or Puyo Puyo, or a Final Fantasy game with promotional posters of the villain, chest bared and long sumptuous hair flowing, they'd have to beat the women gamers down with a stick.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Is it because most games are male-oriented? Possibly. Couldn't it just be due to the fact that males and females like doing different things? I saw a video on this when I took some crappy Sex and Society course last year. They gave different toys to different toddlers and observed their reactions. Even from such a young age, little girls preferred to play with the dolls and little boys preferred to play with the cars.
Hear me out before you scream. What do they care what women think of the game? Since when was it designed to appeal to women? If they're looking for people to do bug testing, then gender shouldn't matter. IF they're testing the appeak of the game content, then the marketing depertment needs to talk to the folks running the beta-test.
I seriously doubt gender matters in bug testing unless women tend to play games in significantly different ways than men (thus excercising different parts of the codebase). Since Women are obviously going to be such a small segment of the target market for the game, what difference does it make?
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
They should solicit at chat rooms. We all know there are lots of women there.
-Sean
If female testers are so damn hard to find, seems like they should get More pay. Or am I smoking crack?
Thank you. Thank you very much. :)
Plus, Tomb Raider sucks ass. Sims, EQ, UO, SW:GB -- ask me to beta test for them and I'm all for it. I quit playing Anarchy Online because I was tired of run-run-run-shoot something which is basically FPS defined.
I might be convinced to beta a Tomb Raider game if a) it didn't suck as much as the rest of them and b) it wasn't such a teenage wetdream game.
- I am made of meat.
Is this a sign that the female gaming market has never really taken off?
Most of the women I know find the majority of computer gamedom less than interesting. And that's no surprise if you consider that so many of the games out there are designed specifically to take advantage of male fantasies: the player becomes the hero, the conqueror, the savior, the avenger. What's more, the player often achieves victory through violence which becomes more and more graphic and gory as memory gets cheaper and processors become faster. And as others have mentioned, many games are overtly sexist.
The computer games that women seem (to me) to enjoy the most are those that are nonviolent and don't require immersion for long periods to gain proficiency. Puzzle-based games are good bets. The games that the women I know enjoy the most are Tetris, Shanghai, Solitaire, Minesweeper, Pac-Man.
The computer game industry has largely ignored women, and the games that have been hits with women have largely been pleasant surprises for the industry. My guess is that one of the real problems for the industry is that (I presume) there aren't many women designing and writing computer games. I don't think it's impossible for men to design games that women will want to play, but it won't happen on a large scale without some serious market research from the industry, and earnest sensitivity to the results from designers and publishers.
Women represent a huge and largely untapped market for game publishers. It's astonishing that more attention hasn't been paid to women and their awesome purchasing power.
I NEVER noticed how all the guys in the fighting games I play are MUSCLE BOUND!
I am as shocked as you are to find this blanant sexism in Street Fighter, Soulcalibur, Dead or Alive, and others!
Since I, for one, am not a Ninja Master with HUGE MUSCLES, I know I must be as shamed playing these games as the women who do not have huge DDD chests are when playing Tomb Raider! Because video games are meant to remind us of our own painful realities, right?
Guys?
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Game testing is a really really really boring, repetative, shitty job with low pay and many risks like carpletunnel and SLD (social life destruction).
Maybe women are just to smart to do such a job when they have so many other options.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
What kind of "female games" do you have in mind, and what is involved in testing them?
This could be a lot of fun!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I am a bisexual female gamer, and I don't know about other women but the reason I don't play Tomb Raider is because it totaly sucks. I usualy like large breasted game women (I LOVE the Dead or Alive girls, and can't wait for DoA Xtreme Beach Volleyball), but Lara Croft isn't even that hot. Why play Tomb Raider when there's better-looking chicks in less-crappy games? And btw the idea lately that games need to be made more female friendly p!$$es me off... if I wanted to do girly things, I'd go bake and put on make up or some such crap. Dosen't anyone ever think maybe girls play games because they LIKE the male-orientedness??
If female game testers come up with completely different changes to the game, they won't appeal to the male population, which makes up the vast majority. What would be the point?
More likely, female testers won't offer any different criteria than males, since the aspects of the video game (3D shoot em up, or RTS, whatever the case may be) have an across-the-board appeal regardless of gender. If this is true then what is the point?
I don't have any problem with female game testers, I'm just having trouble finding out why it should be a big deal.
Lot's have posters have pointed out that Tomb Raider is a sexist game - Lara Croft's not a realistic representation of a woman etc...
All true - and PLENTY of other games (not to mention Anime or other geek pursuits) are just the same - women with gigantic norks, fsck all clothing, highly sexualised imagery.
But the representations of men are pretty much the same - HUGE chests, massive biceps, chiselled abs.
Is it only because women don't play games as much as guys do that we never hear about male sexist imagery as we do about female?
Because Lara has big tits? So what? Duke Nukem has huge muscles. Is it the clothes? Should Lara wear an evening dress, then? And doesn't Duke walk around with a bare chest for most of the time? So what? Does anyone really buy the games to look at Lara's tits or Duke's biceps?
If anything, Tomb Raider managed to make some male gamers play a female character for the first time in their lives. I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing, now that I think about it.
Anyway, back to the subject: why is it so hard to find women to play Tomb Raider games?
Simple: women and men think in different ways (okay, it hasn't been cientifically proven that women think at all, but let's admit they do).
When women play the game, they're playing a game. When men play the game, they're in the game.
This became clear to me one day when I was playing Tomb Raider and my mother walked by. I showed her a few of Lara's moves and I said "see, I can also jump backwards like this". And she said "you? it's not you, it's her, on the screen". I've seen other women react the same way to similar games. Men never have a problem placing themselves in the game, even if the character is a woman, or a robot, or a mutant slug.
Women find it much harder to picture themselves inside the game world, as opposed to sitting on a chair, playing the game. That's why women prefer games like Solitaire and SimCity and The Sims and other games where the player is clearly "on the outside". Games where they move the pieces but are not one of the pieces.
This has been shown again and again by psychological studies, and is also the reason why most men drive more naturally (ie, without having to concentrate on what they're doing) than most women; men become the car while women try to control the car.
Of course, some women can drive instinctively, and some women play Tomb Raider and Counter-Strike and hate solitaire. But I can't say I've ever met one personally, and I do go out sometimes.
RMN
~~~
Any wonder why so many girls like Vagrant Story? Besides all the slashing and hacking that the boys like too, it's full of half naked pretty boys. What's not for a girl to like? Girls tend to like Japanese RPGs with good stories.
Lara on the other hand is designed for drooling teenage boys who can't get a girlfriend. (Oh god, am I going to regret that comment?)
catgirls and fairies
"A woman's mind would bring a different angle to the game." -Spokesman Gary Reading
Does anybody really believe the guys behind Tomb Raider are interested in a woman's mind?
message boards for japanese RPG video games or anime. Anime fangirls also tend to be game girls. I'm sure there's plenty that would love to test and just don't know about it. Not, me because I pretty much suck at games.
catgirls and fairies
"A little girl on girl action..."
um....that sounds more like it would apeal to anonymous coward males.
catgirls and fairies
I was whining LOUDLY and swearing at the game developers while playing a playstation RPG because they'd constructed the plot so that I had to kill the most kick-ass character in my party. My neighbor (I was in a dorm) nocked on my door and asked if I was ok. I was completely confused about this. I didn't realize it until the next day that she thought I was crying, and then I found it hilarious.
catgirls and fairies
... but in my experience, women tend to have a different approach to technology than guys.
Guys (as a generalisation) love the technology itself. Because of that, beta is cool - getting to see the latest, greatest thing, pushing the technology to its limits.
Girls (as a generalisation) tend to use technology for things they find useful. Technology is a means to and end, not an end in itself.
So, girls want to have fun playing, not testing.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
IMHO I think the reason females don't seem to be as involved in games is because the games are nothing like what they're looking for. In Tomb Raider for example, Lara has to shoot everyone by herself, with not much in the way of storyline. I think games with more interaction (Especially Multiplayer Co Operative games) would be better for women. Also a good storyline is helpful. My sister loves playing Final Fantasy X, which is a great game once you get started. It has a deep storyline, males and females are fairly equal in fighting abilities, and it's not completely mindless.
I personally think games that aren't just look, shoot, shoot again, die, would be more popular among female gamers.
Zelda, Pikmin's World, Harvest Moon, Vagrant Story, Lunar, Final Fantasy...
catgirls and fairies
Don't forget liberal amount of pretty boy angst!
catgirls and fairies
tried playing non-violent quake. she would run around the baddies instead of mowing them down. my brain would have never thought of that. it doesn't work, by the way. but it will get you into heaven.
laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank
I remember reading that the female brain is wired somewhat differently to that of the male.
Supposedly they have (generally) less capacity for spacial awareness*, but higher ability in problem solving and organisational skills. Hence, women (again, generally**) prefer games like Tetris and, say, The Sims. (And I'm sure we all remember the study that women were more open to arousal after playing Tetris...)
With the current trend in gaming going towards more and more 3D-based gaming, it puts those with lesser spacial awareness at a disadvantage.
So if gaming companies want women to play their games, then they are simply going to have to be more original in their ideas, instead of churning out stuff like Quake 497 and 3D-car-racing-deathfuck 2010.
Of course, as a man, I'm quite happy to buy some of these last examples.
* - <sexism> Most women can't read maps.</sexism>
** - I say generally - my girlfriend hates Tetris.
Of course not.
Women arn't offended by thin big-chested women in the magainzes they read, I can't see how they'd be offended by thin, big-chested women in the games they play either. (And come to think of it, arn't most of the women in chick-geared comics asthetically well above par as well?)
paintball
Damn where is the spectacled geek model in Doom?
Those dumb games are a waste of time! We need more, serious coders, not mp3 traders.
Admittedly I don't know any other female gamers myself, but I don't know too many gamers in general. I do know that I've never had a hard time putting myself in the game. Back when I had a Playstation, one of my favourite games was Spyro the Dragon (I had both of them), and you have no idea how many times I caught myself physically readjusting my position trying to see around corners and stuff. I'm just glad no one was watching. I probably looked pretty silly trying to see around the corners inside a television set. :)
The reason I've never played Tomb Raider or Duke Nukem is that I'm not really attracted to games with lots of guns in them. I like racing games, though. Maybe the subject matter has more to do with why less females play, than the actual style of gameplay or way of thinking.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
I had to traverse nearly 75% of the page before discovering the one Slashdotter who recognized the fact that no female gamers wanted to play Tomb Raider was because it sucked. This should have been pointed out long ago, and then we could have all moved on.
Isn't this more of a marketing thing? There are more male gamers than female because the adds are aimed squarely at the "White Male (18-35)" demographic.
Although maybe game companies could tweek existing games to cater for the "fairer" sex:
Score: If you don't know how many frags you have, I'm not going to tell you
I am a Karma Library.
Trust me.
They just want to find dates. They figure if it worked for 'everybody's favourite guy'(TM) John Romero it might work for them too! All they need now are chicks who are kinda sorta a little ugly and with all the money they make from the Tomb Rader franchise they can build themselves a new and improved girlfriend too!
-- -=innocent ramblings from the mind of an insomniatic programmer=-
Its a fallicy to assume that the group of women who read Cosmo are even close to the group of women who are gamers. Generally, those who read Cosmo are not the "liberated woman" type. Not to say that I've never read Cosmo, but only for pure entertainment at laughing at the articles.
Magazines like Cosmo, as well as Britney Spears and games like Tomb Raider give women, and especially young girls, the expectation that to be beautiful, they have to be tall, skinny, and large chested. And Lara Croft and Barbie are not only unfair beauty standards, but also unrealistic. If I had boobs like them, I'd fall over!
Tomb Raider is such a clear example of women being used as sex objects. Since gamers tend to be the liberated, educated women, of course they are not interested in testing it.
Personally, the only "womens" magazine I read is Ms. (which does not objectify women) and I listen to Ani Difranco (the epitomy of a liberated woman).
And instead of arguing this in private, I figured I might as well stand up for woman-kind.
Chris, hon, you gotta think twice before posting that type thing and telling your feminist, small-chested girlfriend about it!
~Sara
No, no, he's in Half-Life!
Tomb Raider is one of the games women actually *like* to play!
... and it makes for the player to see those cool Animations of Lara Croft which make up allmost half of the game. The riddles built in are also the more challenging sort of game women like - unlike the reflexive, no-brainer 'aim-twitching' you have to practice for hours on end before you can last longer than 30 seconds in an online game of UT2003 CTF and finally can start careing about getting the flag and sorts.
While most of the 'girls' shun FPS like UT2003 as to fast, violent and competetive, it's Lara Croft - once they discovered how fun it actually is to play the game, that makes them agree to invest on an 'also-gaming-computer'.
Tomb Raider is actually a visually diverse game with good animation and a third person perspective that is not just as emerging as an FPS
The problem with getting female testers is that you really have to take them and put them in front of the box until they say: "Ok, it actually isn't that much of a waste of time as I thought."
But having them go out and say: "Hey, I dig sitting in front of a dead, rather uncommunicative box striking my lone wolf ego - I have some time to spare for gametesting."? No way.
Are you really suprised that PC-game testing usually isn't a womens pasttime???
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Tomb Raider sucks big time. It's squarely aimed at 14-25 yrs old males. I wouldn't playtest it for money.
Given the chance, women will play like anyone else. My wife plays UT, WC3 and spent nights playing the Baldur series, Dungeon Siege and NWN. Now, she probably prefers games with a storyline like Baldur to the likes of Tomb Raider; but certainly enjoys some good frags on UT.
After the story on 30+ gamers, I am appalled by the single mindedness of many of the posts here.
Yes 30+ people play games. Yes, women do play games too. Guess what? There are even 30+ women who play!
It's a big world. You're not alone. Probably not even the best. Get over it. There's room for diversity, and you may learn a thing or two.
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
For the readership at large, I'd like to point out that that's extremely hot, feminist girlfriend.
And who says female gamers tend to be liberated, educated women? Wouldn't liberated, educated woman have better things to do with their time than play computer games?
Like posting comments on their boyfriend's preferred geek news site making them look bad?
paintball
Computer games appeal to some people. Some of these people are women and some are men. Why there are more men who like playing computer games than women is extremly complicated issue that spands to culture, expectations for different genders and far beyond. Here's a woman who likes computer games and has always liked them. Not only Tetris or Sims or other "female" games, but Doom, Quake and many other first person shooter games. I've spent hours and hours playing Starcraft, Warcraft, Max Payne and State of Emergency with my boyfriend and other male friends. How many of you who are saying stupid things like "women are different species" or "they don't have instict for violence" have actually showed a computer game to a woman? Well, I have. Many of my female friends, who are not into computers, have been horrified in the beginning (like any healthy person not being exposed to ultra violence before), but after a while have really got into it. It's all between your ears, in your attitude. There was one time working in otherwise all-male environment. Guys were having game nights, playing networking games, never inviting me, although they were asking most of the other ones to join. I was very good terms with them so that wasn't the case. I put up that for a while, until seemingly offended asked that why am I not ever invited, and the response was something along lines "but you are a girl and girls can't be interested in computer games". I bet there are plenty of women like me, who do find computer games interesting, but can't express their interest because then they wouldn't be "real women". Sorry for the long rant. Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.
90% of the "womens" magazines I see on the news stand seem to be adorned with artificial looking females. Not that I'm complaining, it just seems odd how involved women are with their own objectification.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
While all this talk about sexisim in games is very interesting, The article is about finding software testers for a game company. This isn't playing games, and its not beta testing. You don't go and get a job with a company just because you like playing their games. (It would be nice if that was the qualification that they hired on.)
I'm a programmer who works on writing games and has applied for jobs at game companies. It's HARD to get a job in the game industry. A software tester is often someone with a bit of programming experience, and a lot of attention to detail.
How many little girls these days are saying, "Boy, when I grow up, I sure want to be a softtware tester!". I don't think it has anything to do with Laura's bust size. You don't see that many female auto mechanics, either. The job probably just doesn't appeal that much to women.
(As a side note, my girlfriend loves playing Diablo2 and other fantasy games. Quake style violence dosen't bother her, in fact she loves big guns in games and blowing the snot out of anything that moves. I think she just never learned to +Mlook very well, and FPS requires you to have the controls down in order not to have your ass blown off in an internet CTF game.)
My 11-year old daughter can play The sims for hours. Essentially she does nothing... She just redecorates, plants anew tree, creates a new family in the neighborhood etc. I mean, it doesn't even have a BFG! Girls are weird.
First, I'm not condemning Tomb Raider. Game makers have no obligation to cater to women, who in any event will not buy many games.
Having said that, there are fairly clear reasons why many women would not enjoy Tomb Raider, and I think the inability to grasp these reasons reflects badly on the maturity, sensitivity and empathy of some of the posters here.
First, game characters have personas which players are invited to identify with or work alongside. This is true although the player controls the character's actions. For example, Pacman is an opportunistic, greedy, but essentially nonviolent character. He is not paranoid or vengeful, but believes that "turnabout is fair play". Since he's constantly in motion, we can't tell if he's utterly relaxed or utterly frantic. When Pacman eats a ghost the result is a non-lethal stay in the "penalty box". Likewise, when Pacman is "tagged" by a ghost only one of three pacmans is consumed, like a pinball falling off the board. These softened deaths imply that the interaction between Pacman and his pursuers is merely a game, not a life and death struggle. Pacman is one of the few games that appealed to females.
The typical first person shooter projects a somewhat different character. Although he rarely appears on screen, his persona is clear. A ruthless killer hunted by ruthless adversaries, he is skilled in handling a variety of firearms. His body is a killing machine, not a sex object. He is not on display.
Consider Lara Croft in light of the above. She has the persona, in a way, of a young man - aggressive, exploratory, self-contained. But she has the body of an attractive young woman, complete with a tiny waist and large breasts. And that is also part of her persona - the panting after exertion that emphasizes her breasts. Lara is an attractive woman who is inherently amenable to a masculine style of thinking and action. To understand why this could irritate some women, consider her opposite number: the male hero of romance novels or of soap operas. If you're a man, don't you feel a kind of gut hatred for the blow-dried, earnest, wide-eyed soap character who makes heartfelt speeches about his feelings?
I think the reason is that he's a gender traitor, a man with the soul of a woman. Superficially masculine, he is overly melodramatic and concerned with relationships. Most of all, he hits the spot for millions of women who would like the men in their lives to be like that - handsome, well groomed, full of deep emotional conflicts that he's happy to air.
Lara, of course, is a male fantasy. She has, from our viewpoint, all the desirable characteristics of a woman with none of the unpleasant baggage. It's hard to imagine her asking if you think she's fat. In fact, it's hard to imagine her caring about your opinion at all.
Others in this thread have wondered how there can be any objection to Lara's breasts when male action heroes sport gigantic muscles which could also be considered sexy.
First of all, Lara is eroticized, placed on display for the player's enjoyment, in a way I haven't seen any male game character presented. Admittedly, I haven't played many games recently. I do agree with the feminists, however, that our cultural presentation of females as erotic objects is so ingrained that it's hard to notice. Can you imagine our musclebound action hero filmed from the side, panting in that delightful way Lara has? We simply don't detail, illuminate and present male bodies as we do female bodies.
Second, the muscles of a male hero are assets in his adventures. If combatting a city full of evil aliens, I'd like someone built like Duke Nukem to help. But if I had to pick a woman to help me raid a dangerous tomb, I'd rather have one of those granite-faced female Sherrif's deputies you see in L.A. than a slender, busty model. Lara isn't really built to fight - she's built to titillate.
Lastly, it's interesting to note that Lara, like many heroines designed to appeal to men, is quite a loner. She doesn't seem to have parents or siblings or a boyfriend or husband - any of the emotional connections that would be interesting to women, but a turnoff to men.
there are 3 kinds of people who call tomb raider sexist:
1) insecure chicks.
2) geeks who never got laid and who will never get laid.
3) people who really have *so* little else to worry about in their pathetic meaningless existences.
really. who gives a shit. WAKE UP: TITS SELL.
shit if i'm playing a game whose main character is a chick that kicks ass, she might as well have big titz. why the fuck not. All video games that feature chicks are like that. The same way dudes are ribbed and feature washboard abs. Look at Tekken. Is that sexist? NO. it just appeals to primal instincts while escaping from reality. AGAIN PEOPLE THIS IS NOT REAL.
is Lara my type? HELL NO, you see she ... *IS NOT REAL*. chicks with half a brain understand that.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Here is some thoroughly unresearched anecdotal evidence: some of the girls I know like playing 'Puzzle Bobble' - basically an arcade/puzzle game with a high cuteness factor and nice colors but definitely no social-like interactions. This might mean something. Or it might not. Go figure.
I think it's the essentialist ones that peeve me the most. Take it from someone who has studied a good deal of evolutionary psych; there is not a whole lot of evidence that there are personality differences between men and women which cannot be accounted for by environment . In essence, the only real difference you're looking at is in naughty bits. There is nothing, nothing about having female naughty bits that means that you don't like to play video games but do like to make cookies and shop. If you don't believe me, say to yourself, "Women don't like video games because they have vaginas" and realize how ridiculous that sounds.
I am a female gamer (my current obsession is Morrowind, for the curious; I spent money I didn't really have to get a Geforce 3, *just* to have the advanced water effects). Furthermore, I know, plenty, plenty of female gamers. No dearth of them; from my housemate who stays up until 3 AM playing Okage, to my Soul Caliber ass-kicking close friend. I don't know where you're looking if you can't find female gamers. (I suspect the answer involves parents' houses and subterranean areas). Go to a convention, for chrissakes!
Admittedly, there probably are more male gamers than female (I base that on environmental, not biological factors), but I suspect that the reason they're suffering such a dearth of play testers is that well, many women gamers have distinguishing taste in games, and let's face it, Tomb Raider suffers in originality. For example, I don't tend to play many FPSes because I don't think they're very interesting. It's not that I'm not "competitive" or don't like violence or don't "want to be feel powerful"--everyone wants to feel powerful!--but that they tend to be ugly and monotonous to me after a while. I much prefer strategy games, especially ones like Alpha Centauri or Civ III which have an endless amount of possible endings, or games that have been well-crafted (hence the Morrowind obsession) to suck you into the experience (so much for the "theory" posited above that women don't like to enter into the world of the game). I think a lot of distinguishing gamers, male and female, would agree with me on this.
Please think before you make generalizations about what women like and don't like. Don't tell me I don't like to be competitive, don't tell me I don't like to feel powerful, because it's a lie. And for goodness sakes, quit reading the John Gray, it's bad for you.
Actually, since large breasted laura is designed to appeal to males, her exact opposite would naturally appeal to females. The difference is not the increased size of genitalia, but in sex appeal. Therefore, instead of increased bulge, the appeal would be more like a tall, ripped, heroic figure: Duke Nukem anyone?
-blar
hmmm...so you've met a lot of "females" online that say they're lesbian, and others seem rather a lot like males to you...
and you believe them?
You're either very gullible, or very....
no wait, you're gullible...
Advanced users are users too!
..And I don't think that would interest most females either.
Think of it this way, most females would stare for at least a second if they were walking at the beach and another female accidentally lost top half of her bikini to a large wave.
But if there would some big sweaty guy playing volleyball in shorts that were too short, and one of his hairy nuts was hanging out, most everyone would look away in disgust.
..she's be substantially redesigned from the previous games. She's still generously proportioned.. but the designs seem to be a little more sophisticated than previous versions. Before you're critical, please:
Look here or here.
"I am female. blah blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.blah blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.blah blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.blah blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."
Just kidding. But seriously, if they started making these games more girl-friendly, would guys want to play it?
I don't really think girl's minds work that differently than guys. Its just that popular games tend to go extreme in that corner of the mind where they are different. There are all sorts of possibilities with regard to gaming, why do games have to be predictible? Do all guys really want to be a badass all the fucking time?
Here's an idea, when making a game for the 14-18 range, make the character a 15 year old. Let the character be male or female and you're not going to have problems like overdeveloped breasts or bulging muscles.
And most definitely, appeal to the casual gamer. Lets face it, the being glued to the computer from mid-afternoon to four o'clock the next morning is definitely a guy thing.
But can we keep the huge breasts?
She's still pretty young but my daughter loves to play Q3A with me and my son. She basically likes to play anything we want to play. She gets very picky about the models used and wants one that is a "pretty girl" like her. At some point in her life I'm sure she'll have a boyfriend who she regularly beats in whatever FPS is around at the time.
The funny thing is that she will also play on the barbie website for hours. My son won't go near it.
So maybe someone should try and figure out why boys don't want to play barbie.
I wonder if Core's 5 females out of 85 employees happen to be receptionist 1, receptionist 2, human resources manager, accounts, and CEO's PA? (like here, but we have a female artist too, woah!)
in the arcades: Dance Dance Revolution. In arcades you see girls dancing on the machines in pairs (even if it is in one-player mode). Sometimes there are three dancing in line (when there are only two pads). Methinks social interaction plays a part there.
Well, I happen to know a few female gamers. The problem is that Tomb Raider doesn't interest them because it resembles a FPS (first-person shooter) game.
The consensus that I get from most of them is that they prefer simulation/construction games (The Sims, the Tycoon series of games, etc.), and puzzle games (Tetris). I've also managed to get a few of them hooked on RTS and turn based strategy games (Diablo 2, Heroes of Might and Magic, etc.) but that is usually the extent of what most of them will play.
Female FPS gamers are quite rare. Tomb Raider somewhat fits the FPS-style game, so they are trying to get the proverbial 'needle in the haystack'.
but I can't find many games to play. I don't care for the fps, because I have no interest in running around with a gun shooting things. I don't much care for the rpg either, because it, too, seems to come down to combat.
What am I left with? I live for the Civ series. I like the Sims, but it's not nearly as fun as Civ2, never mind Civ3. I like Age of Empires, Stronghold, Tropico, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Pharoah, etc.
I am actively looking for a new "type" of game to play besides building things. I can't find it. One of the best games I ever played was a multi-user game on (early!) Prodigy called CEO. Each game ran 2 weeks, and you made your daily moves. I would love to find something like that.
I always wanted a job in which I could be really agressive.
When you intersect this article with the previous one (The aging Gamer) you see that what this headline should really read is "Wanted: SOccer Mom Game Testers"
Men are very competitive creatures, always tending to look to see where they stand in a hierarchy. Watch two guys meeting for the first time - they'll "tomcat" around each other, trying to sort out who knows more than the other in what area. That's why guys love to give advice; it sets the giver of it above the receiver.
Women tend to be less competitive, so they lack the same drivers for competitive games. Look at the world of non-competitive adventure/puzzle/interactive fiction games to see more women players.
Women aren't dumb enough to work 12-16 hours a day playing the same game over and over and over again until they're sick to death of it and never want to see it again, in return for tiny amounts of pay, with no creative input or influence, only - perhaps - a token mention on the back page of the manual.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
My boyfriend pointed me to this site; I've been gaming for several years now. I notice lots of people mention that women may not want to play a female char that's exaggerated in proportions.
Personally, appearances never bothered me. Heck, I like to feel 'sexy' as my character. In fact, I would even wager that women gear towards playing more attractive avatars. How many RL women play trolls in EQ? Looking at http://nickyee.com/eqt/metachar.html, 0.0% do; same with ogres. Women choose Elves, Humans. My sister is an EQ'er and she in fact chose a male avatar because she 'didn't like the way the females looked'. My race choices are based on the same thing...I just don't like the way some look. I play Dark Age of Camelot and refuse to be Saracen...the women just don't appeal to me. Sexier races draw me in.
As for Lara Croft, I'm just not into FPS. I prefer a little more strategy and interaction in my games...time to think, rather than just shoot stuff up.
Crucini said: "First, I'm not condemning Tomb Raider. Game makers have no obligation to cater to women, who in any event will not buy many games."
;)
:P
Can I say two words? The Sims.
Oh, wait a sec. I want to add a third word if you don't mind: Myst.
Women WILL buy games. We will buy them by the truckload, and we won't flinch at popping out the plastic for the lame, overpriced expansion packs. You know, the one that lets the characters go on dates, then the one that lets them go on vacation, then the one that lets them have pets... ad nauseum.
I don't have statistics, but I'd be willing to bet more than a handful of women also bought the first Tomb Raider game. Why? Because it wasn't all about shooting and gore. It was basically a puzzle game. It had cool (for the time) graphics and a female main character. Oh, yeah, and Lara's breasts were a more manageable size back then.
What we don't buy, no matter how many times you guys remake basically the SAME FRIGGIN' GAME, is an FPS where the whole point is to run around fragging (or for most of us, being repetitively fragged by) 14-year-old hormone spouting boys pretending to be big macho men. Ugh. In what way is that supposed to appeal to us? Well, ok, the thing about getting to take out some of our aggressions by blowing away a few testosterone OD cases does have a certain appeal, but you have to practice WAY too much to become good enough to do that. Meanwhile you have to be humiliated over and over again by swaggering male figures... and basically, we get enough of that in real life.
So look, what I'm trying to say here is, game companies could make a lot more money if they would make games that appeal to men and women both. Sure, they could just keep doing what they're doing and marketing to the pubescent males, but the real money comes when you create a game that appeals to both sexes. Of course, the game would have to have a PLOT, and CHARACTER INTERACTION (spraying the other person's brains all over a brick wall does NOT count), and interesting SITUATIONS or PUZZLES to solve... oooh that's just too much work. It's probably a lot easier to just make another FPS with, I dunno... bigger guns or something. Or more realistic gore. Yeah that's it! More gore!
I'm an incredibly huge fan of the Tombraider games, and I'm a woman. I'm also NOT lesbian, before you use that as an excuse. I'm not a big gamer - so far there are only a few games I like: Neverwinter Nights, Tony Hawks Skateboarding, Tetris style games, and the Tombraider games. What's more.. I LOVE Lara. I have posters of her on my walls, I had her calendar, her mousemat, and I totally adored the film. Given the chance, I'd playtest the games in an instance - but guaranteed I wouldn't have the qualifications, and I'm also incredibly bad at the games, so I wouldn't be able to help much.
;) It's true there are much less female gameplayers (although I know a lot, most of whom like Tombraider), and out of those that do play, I'd imagine very few read whatever magazines advertise for testers, I certainly don't. And yes, female players are more likely to enjoy games such as The Sims and Everquest and NWN, because they are more strategy based - they make you think more - and women don't tend to like games that you just play without much thought. That said, I know lots of women who are exceptions to this rule. I was playing "Halo" with a female friend just the other night.. she absolutely loved the game (I found it mindless, boring and really hard to play). Another friend is more interested in Spyro and Diablo.
So why do I like the games? Well, firstly I'm a big Indiana Jones fan so I love the "plots" of the games. I find the puzzles interesting, if incredibly hard. Despite the relatively poor graphics (compared to NWN at least) I love the how the game looks, some of the levels are fantastically interesting (if a little square). I find the games incredibly playable, and can lose myself quite easily in them - except when I'm dying because I'm so bad at them.
People say the games are sexist. Maybe they are, but I don't care because I'm not a feminist, and I'm sexist about men all the time
So yes, a lot of the reasons stated in other comments for women not playing Tombraider are definitely true. But I think it being sexist is only a reason for those incredibly extreme feminists (who should, quite frankly, be shot). But there are also a helluva lot of women out there who love Lara (they also tend to be programming geeks and roleplayers - but lets not stereotype here).
And if someone wants me to playtest the first level of the new Tombraider game (unless you can wait a few thousand years for me to finish it) then contact me!!
Maybe because few of us can relate to a heroine who has a 46 triple D cup, a 19 inch waist, and lips that look as if they were attacked by a horde of angry wasps.
JoAnn
But still 3D digitally boob based:
My wife routinely kicks my butt at DOA3. And we both routinely pick the female characters as they're the most interesting.
More power than send all of mankind to outerspace dedicated to accurately rendering BoobDynamics(tm)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
She played Tomb Raider a little, but found it too scary (she was less than 10 when she first tried). She plays Tomb Raider today, but not on the computer, but as a pretend-fantasy game with the house and her friends (I had to make her a paper gun, and many objects become "artifacts" that need to be collected, sofa cushions and the space under the table become caves). Very cute...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
The female computer scientist is dead and the supermom is staying at home, expecting male breadwinning results.
There certainly are women gamers; I've met a few in real life. However, the problem is that there aren't many in Derby, England, where Core Designs is located.
Game testers are seldom, if ever, hired from outside a city. Game testing is usually a part-time, low-wage position with no benefits; few QA managers in the gaming industry have the resources, experience, or desire to pursue them as a valuable commodity. Certainly, if they're offering typical game tester wages, they probably won't find many lower-income young female action gamers with plenty of spare time in a rural Midland city.
If they want more female game testers for Tomb Raider, they'll just have to offer more money,
to attract candidates from other cities.
There are actually two distinct points in this pseudo ask (philosophise) slashdot: the classic question of why many games aren't currently appealing to women, and why aren't women being hired for testing work in the US and UK gaming industry. Since so much attention has been focused on the former, I will address the latter.
...after one last round of Tony Hawk.
1. Sports Games. The best selling types of games in america are Sports games, which we develop more of than anywhere else in the world. I would go so far as to theorize that the majority of console - based development in the US is somehow or other related to sports gaming. Whether or not the torrent of football games appeals to the woman gamer is a topic that I have said I would not get into. However, the fact that many testing jobs in the US are directly related to sports cannot make the prospect more appealing to women.
2. A lack of game-related networking. Partly due to the popularity of gaming among men and partly due to the vulnerability men traditionally feel discussing intimate personal details, video games can be a very common bonding thread between men. Many of the testers I know were hired through other testers, which is also true of the one female tester at my place of employment.
3. Game Testing isn't a career option presented to women. You only hear about testing positions through the gaming magazine industry: an industry which isn't known for its liberated prose. Male high school students discuss the posibility of taking this on as a job in a way that just isn't present in the female equvalent.
4. Diversified interests. Put less cryptically (and potentially more dangerously), women are encouraged to get out of the house, look into other things, and are generally subject to more percieved or real structuring of their time. "Boys will be boys," however, and many parents allow their male children to fill every available open second staring at that tube in a way that they wouldn't put up with in their daughters. Gamer boys have allowed gaming to become the exclusive avenue in their lives in a way that protective parents would never allow in women. Of course, it is a short hop from something you do all day to something you do all day and get paid. Certainly, it must be daunting to consider getting a job in an industry not only where you are very much an outsider, but where your competition spends any "free" time they may have obsessively studying the subject.
There are many other reasons I'm sure one could site. The perception of the lonely tester, the horrible hours, the lack of societal benefit... But it is 5:40 AM and I just came back from my testing job - my brain is fizzing. I think it is time to go to sleep...
-C
The ______ Agenda
I worked at EA QA in Chertsey a couple of years ago, and I asked the QA Manager why we didn't have more women working for us (We had one girl, in a department with about 60-70 blokes..) - He said less than 3% of applicants were female, and of those, they rarely ever passed the logic mini-exams that EA use to vet new testers.
Unfortunate, but that's how it is.
-gaff2k
if you stop and ask for directions?
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I guess one place to start would be to figure out what type of computer games women do play. My wife, who is also a quite capable UNIX admin who still enjoys a game of spider , tetris and a few other old-school favorites. I've got a little girl who is bored with flight simulators and such, and prefers puzzle like games where she finds things or builds things.
In other words, from a programmer's perspective perhaps the problem is that games for girls just aren't as sexy or as wham-bam to write as games for guys? Perhaps it isn't as profitable to engage in writing these programs because its hard to dress them up and make them fly?
I mean my wife and I joke about this all the time. Here I want to conquer the world, and there she wants to make it more livable.
--- have you healed your church website?
Most of the posts here are simply a male's opinion about what females like or dislike. No matter how much males believe "women like games like Tetris", it does not get any more truthful.
I like playing almost all genres of games: sports, RPG, strategy, action/adventure, 1st person shooters, etc. I am not turned away from or find it sexist that female game characters have large breasts. A lot of my favorite characters fall into this category (like Lulu from FFX). Is that to say that ALL anime is sexist? IMHO, no; it is simply the drawing style/appeal.You will find that a lot of females loved the Tomb Raider movie as well.
What draws me away from Tomb Raider is its lack of depth for the type of game it is. I feel "dumbed down" when playing it, which has nothing to do with the drawing of the game character. There are a variety of other similar games that offer me a better plot and design layout while giving that "fun" or "achieving" feeling during gameplay.
Cosmo is certainly funny. DOA2, for example, is just as objectifying, with the *bouncebounce* OW don't even want to LOOK at that factor...
>the expectation that to be beautiful, they have to be tall, skinny, and large chested.
the tall part is somewhat debatable, but certainly beauty standards are warped almost beyond recognition, and are given FAR too much importance in contemporary society. there is a lot of sexism around (and a lot less sexism than there was before, don't get me wrong) revealed by the oft-used phrase "I'm not sexist, but..." and its twisted twin "I'm not a feminist", used by women who believe in equality for women. The first indicates that certainly there is more of an expectation for equal treatment and respect, even if it is not always fulfilled, and the second points towards the backlash against feminism (ERA, anyone) led by the religious right.
ok, I'll stop ranting now, I need to review papers.
Lea
Holy shit! Damn damn dammity damn!
I guess it doesn't take much to be good a platformer... no wonder she kicks ass in Crash Bandicoot!
And if she beats me one more time at GT3 I'm gonna have to kill myself (Apparently the dead are just better at video games!)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
My gf loves RPG games. I hate them. She playes text versions, or graphical, doesn't matter. She loves RPGs.
Tomb Raider amuses her, but she dislikes 3D environment games.
One of my sisters on the other hand would probably like TR, but she has other priorities. Games aren't them.
By the way, I dashed off an email asking how I could get one of these jobs, and I got an almost immediate response:
"Sorry to disappoint but the window of opportunity has now closed. Due to our adverts and the BBC coverage, we have had an unbelieveable response. Because of this we are simply unable to accept any more applicants or their Cvs.
Thank you for your interest in Core Design and we wish you all the best for the future.
Gary"
So tell me again about how women don't game... ? I wish they didn't, the tramps. I wanted that job!!!
i write software at a financial services company, and 9 out of our 10 QA Testers are female. hopefully it's just coincidence that they're also not very bright. one woman in particular leaves me completely breathless -- not because she's hot, but because she's just a waste of oxygen that it creates a vacuum around her. fortunately for us, they're all pretty good testers because they think of things that any normal programmer would never due to their own software, like putting in all kinds of nonsense input and whatnot. then again, sometimes they report "bugs" like, "the setup program leaves temp files if the PC is powered off during installation." ay caramba....
"You want a toe? I can get you a toe by three o'clock... with nail polish."
thinly veiled excuse for executive saying "we need more totty in the office" :)
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
As a straight female who plays games, I would have to say that I believe your sexuality does factor into this.
:)
"And btw the idea lately that games need to be made more female friendly p!$$es me off... if I wanted to do girly things, I'd go bake and put on make up or some such crap."
You know, you don't have to put down women just to be accepted in this community. Personally, I think it's incredibly unfair to make such a generalization.
I think the games that "women" like tend to vary quite widely. The reason I put women in quotes is because no one can generalize women as a whole. So, bearing that in mind, here is my experience with what most women like in terms of games.
First of all, most women just generally do not like computers. Or maybe they like computers, but really they like AOL or the Internet or a few web sites. A lot of women just don't seem to be as "into" technology. I don't know if this started because "biggerbetterfaster" tends to inherently appeal to men, or if this is something else completely. Somehow I got the liking-computers gene, but I tell you, even living here in Silicon Valley, there just aren't that many women who enjoy sitting at a computer.
So, of those women who do enjoy sitting at a computer for long periods of time (and I'd say this is maybe 1 or 2 out of every 10 women; I mean, it's rare) the games that I have seen them playing the most are:
1. Solitaire
2. The Sims
Honestly, I pretty much mirror that. I stoppped playing the Sims because I knew it would get addictive. (I got addicted to Sim City 2000 several years ago, and this is worse!) I love old games like Space Invaders or Pacman or Dig Dug. I have all of those arcade games on my computer, and usually on a PDA as well. I played a MUD for a while, but I mostly went there to chat -- playing was a good side effect. I stayed away from Evercrack because I didn't want to get addicted to that, either.
I used to have a Nintendo back in 1987 or whenever that was, and my friends and I would play Mario Bros. for hours. Somehow, since then, games seem to have lost their luster for me. Quake? I find it boring, to be honest. Every time I log on, there are a million players who do nothing but rail me as soon as I spawn. There is little interaction between players besides the inevitable "Ha! 0wned!" when someone gets killed. There seems to be little to work toward -- once you've killed everyone (which I don't find appealing in itself -- I'd rather be hunting for a treasure or building a city) -- then what? You change to another map and kill them again.
Having said that, the Lara Croft games don't appeal to me at all. Your goal is to kill people (not interesting to me) and this is combined with "you" getting to be a big-breasted woman. Okay, so two completely non-appealing things. Thanks, but I'd rather feel like I really acheived something when I finally close the window. Perhaps that's why I miss the days of Mario and the get-togethers that he inspired. I enjoyed sitting in the living room with bunch of other people who had a common goal. I don't enjoy sitting alone at my computer toting a railgun.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
It turns out that the study is completely wrong. After much research it was determined that there actually are quite a large number of females beta testing this game. The reason why it wasn't obvious was because most of them looked like guys!
bada BOOM!
I have a friend that is interested in learning Quake 3 Arena. She doesn't like video games, has a playstation that goes unused... (possible hack target) and hates guns with a passion. I keep telling her that she won't be interested and yet she still hammers me about showing her. The sad thing is when I show her, she's going to recoil in disgust and not want to ever try it again.. (even before I get in the game and slap her character right off the map) The fact of the matter is: Quake3 was designed for men. Guys with testosterone-pumping, kill everything not you, dominate, fight, win attitudes are the target audience. I for one can't say that I know of any women offhand that are like that....
Partnership for an idiot free America!
She gets really violent when I kick her ass in Quake. :(
In particular, I was thinking of an interesting piece of ethology that I read about in a course textbook I had last year, Evolving Brains. It cites some research in simians where the amount of caretaking a father simian does (this depends on the kind of monkey) has a strong affect on the amount of estrogen produced (and as a result, length of lifespan, since estrogen is apparently a useful adaptation to make certain that caretakers live long enough to take care of their children). While we often assume that the connection is the other way around--having hormones makes you want to take care of children--in fact this study suggests that's it the other way around: caretaking leads to having estrogen.
"How about, 'women don't like video games because they have different ratios of hormones which affect their temperments and development than guys do?' "
See above. Estrogen production is an ongoing process, not something determined at birth, as well, and I think various life events can affect that.
"So we've gone from 'Please think before you make generalizations about what women like and don't like' to assuming that all women have good taste in games and 'don't tend to play many FPSes'?"
I said I didn't play FPSes, and stated why, as an illustration. I doubt that applies to all women; it's just why I'm not a fan of such games. I admit, when talking about sex and gender, it is hard to avoid making generalizations; it's hard to make even a positive point about sex or gender without making them, and I know I make them, especially when posting at 4 AM ^_^. That's why I have more patience for this issue than I usually do.I'm not saying differences aren't there; my difference is that I don't attribute them to biology.
More importanly, what I'm saying is that it's dehumanizing to turn individual women into tokens of a type "woman" without regard to their individual interests. (Funny, how so called feminists do this so readily. And they wonder why so many women find them unsympathetic. Internalized oppression, my ass).
I forgot to reply to your last comment:
"I've seen several comments from women who "can't wait to get to the next little bit of plot information or character interaction" [see here [slashdot.org]]. Is this a case of being _in_ the game, or watching the story unfold?"
I can't speak for all women, but the reason, personally, that I enjoy Morrowind, is indeed that I enjoy being in the story. I step into one of the Dwemer ruins (Dwemer are the dwarves of the game, and the ruins are full of lava and clanky metal and ghosts) and I feel immediately like, "Look, I'm in Moria!" Gives me happy little shivers.....
Another interesting thing about "men like stepping into the game and being part of it" theory," I find myself asking myself, re: Tomb Raider: why do so many men want to be Lara Croft? Fascinating question, that.
Being a liberated, educated woman I guess I do have some insight to share on this. For me its an escape, as I'm sure it is for men gamers as well. Being liberated and educated all the time gets tired and boring. Sometimes I just want to go into that part of my head where that dumb blond chick sits waiting.
As far as the other side of the coin. I know some liberated, educated women who aren't into computers and the like and they don't game (I guess it depends on the type of education and it doesn't hurt to hang around gamer guys. Gaming takes up most of their free time so if you like him you learn to share his hobbies). As for the unliberated, uneducated women the same goes for them too. Those who aren't into computers et al don't game.
Kate
... but I don't think they're going to like the feedback they get.
For me the question of sexism is quite simple to determine. If someone can assume that my interest in an object is directed by a shallow interest in seeing girls as opposed to something else, then the perception will be that I'm drawn to the object by the sexual appeal rather than by other interests. If the object is plastered with images of suggestive poses or clothing, other people will think that is why I bought the article. I don't want that. I don't want to have to explain that the object has other merits because no one will believe it. It is like the cliche of reading Playboy for the articles. What I mean by suggestive is that they imply the woman would be interested in quick and easy sex.
I have the same problem with something like Maximum PC magazine. It doesn't matter whether there are breasts visible, etc. It is the context of looking or acting in a suggestive manner, like a playboy bunny, that is the issue. In the case of Lara Croft, she isn't Ms Buttercup from Arkansas but she is more capable, something akin to the women surrounding James Bond. A Sex Object with an active lifestyle is still a Sex Object.
I won't read Maximum PC with covers of poster type girls in public, or around people who don't know me well. I don't want to have to explain that there really is technical content in the magazine and it isn't a men's magazine ala GQ and many other new ones.
I've played Quake as the eyeball with two leg/wheels. I don't care what my character looks like. I suppose it wouldn't be as credible if I were a paper bag or a pig, but getting psyched up by the character has a rather low place in the order of importance for me.
It's awesome your daughter is willing to try and enjoys FPS's like Q3A.
This is a quickie, but I suspect the reason your son doesn't play on the Barbie site is because there are millions of subtle and not so subtle cues in the culture around him that "acting like a girl" just isn't acceptable.
It's both a problem of nature and nurture, and it's a shame that boys are not encouraged to develop "feminine" skills like conversation-based communication, design sense, and emotional expressivity, among the other million things that women tend to better than men. (I said tend.)
Men might find themselves understanding women a whole lot better if they did more of what women liked to do!
blog
It seems to me that a lot of females who haven't played games probably just see them as something idiotic that keeps their boyfriend from spending time with them. In essence, they are jealous of the game.
I've noticed this with my girlfriend, she seems to think that when I want to game every-so-often it indicates that I'd rather do so than spend time with her 24/7 (or at least when she's not busy with female pursuits).
Several of my friends have had the same issues with their girlfriends, they'd sometimes get ragged on for gaming with friends instead of spending "quality time."
Eventually, somehow, two of these friends managed to get their girlfriends to play Starcraft with them. Now, the girls happily join in, and we can have couple-vs-couple matches.
Perhaps if guys promoted these games as more of a couple's activity then we could see get some more girls to join the LAN-parties.
Something's wrong here. Slashdotters? girlfriends? doh! - phorm
I saw a documentary about it on BBC a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately I can't remember the title. They gave two groups (men and women) a series of tasks and compared the results. Most women were much better at reading other people's faces and body language, they had better visual memory and they were able to do more tasks at the same time without getting confused. Most men were better at orientation (going through mazes, reading maps, moving around with their eyes closed) and abstraction (using machines and tools without having to concentrate so much on what they were doing). Brains scans also showed that the actual brain tissue is different between both sexes.
One of the funniest tests was when they asked the men and women to draw a bicycle, from memory. Most women drew the right parts, but in the wrong places (ie, the bikes wouldn't work). In men's drawings, all the parts were in the right places. Basically this shows that most women tend to keep visual mental images (ie, they are remembering a specific bicycle) while most men have functional, or conceptual mental images (ie, they are remembering the characteristics that make a bike work, and creating the image from that).
A quick search on Google produced a few interesting pages such as this one, this one or this one.
RMN
~~~
...yeah, I wonder why there are so few female game testers in an industry which largely objectifies, sexualizes, and demeans femails...
Oh well, off to murder some prostitutes in GTA...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The same idiots who think that "girls" software has to feature Barbie(tm)?
What does the Tomb Raider game mod that has Lara running around naked tell these bright lights?
Nothing, apparently...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I know lots of women (and girls) who play computer games. But as I said, it's usually the kind of game where you're not actually in the game (board games, card games, puzzle games, some management games, etc.). And they play for hours; much longer than I could play without getting bored.
:-)
There was an article on Slashdot a couple of days ago about a man who died after playing some game for 86 hours. That's nothing. I know a secretary that apparently has been playing Awalé non-stop for six years.
RMN
~~~
We seem to have a very similar taste in games. I also liked Startopia, the Myst series and love Neverwinter Nights. I also play console games - I'm a huge Mario fan - and generally prefer platform games like Spyro, Crash Bandicoot and Rayman although I loved Secret of Mana (SNES). The job is actually not far away from me but I'm not interested in testing - I prefer coding. I think one of the problem I have with finding new games is that I'm not a huge fan of anything 'military-related' or overly violent. Lloer
Two words: Animal Crossing
All of my guy friends, and myself included, played it for like two hours, said "Oh heh, that's cool, whatever." and walked away.
All of our wives/girlfriends (yes, we have those!!) are COMPLETELY addicted. They trade passwords, they run web forums, they spend hour after hour playing the thing... it's like an anthropology study, I swear, how different the attitude is about the game, and how sharply divided it seems to be along the gender line.
Mahnamahna!
Don't fall for it! It's just another trick by dateless geek programmer to get a date. Damm, I should have come up with it first!
;)
agreed, and if they're not solitary, then they're full of people that one wouldn't voluntarily associate with in real life...
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
Having a daughter like that must be awesome! Me and my brother were grown up on FPSes (My dad used to play Doom + Doom2 till 3 am...), and we play them habitually. But, if I had a sister, I'd do my darndest to make sure that she was as big an FPSer as I am... Anyways, *runs off to play QIIIA*
I know a bunch of women who were far more addicted to Diablo II than I ever was. When the DII/LOD expansion came out there were certainly plentiful female beta testers.
I might be persuaded to undergo a sex change just to be able to be a game-tester.
Where do I sign up?
In my unsusbstantiated opinion:
;)
Programming is fun. Testing, however, is boring as hell. Even testing games.
I guess this doesn't explain the existence of male testers though
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
Previous posters here are missing the real issue - they're making another Tomb Raider game. Dear god why? Aren't there like six of them already, that are all pretty much identical? Are they trying to make it into a Mega Man franchise or something?
I reset that game a few times hoping there was a way to avoid that moment.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
It's a backlash against women who call themselves feminists running to the extreme. There's a difference between equal rights feminism and "The world would be a better place without men" feminism. (Not to say the latter category don't have a point, just that it's not likely to be popular. ;))
paintball
So you want more women testers and you're not getting any when you pay them the same as men? Sounds like simple supply and demand--you have to pay women more!
If the company plans on doing this entirely through the Internet whos to say that male gamers won't pass themselves off as female gamers just so they can participate?
grep >= ! == $your
While one shouldn't assume that a woman must have gotten X because she's a woman, it is quite true that there are women who have gotten X because they are women. I know of a few women who passed their CS classes using the "Hey CS boy who has never had a girlfriend, want to help me with my program?" method. I also know a few women who are just straight up geeks too.
Point is, however, if you are a mediocre programmer or engineer and female, it is much easier to pass the class or get a job than if you are a mediocre programmer or engineer and male. In many cases, women have MORE opportunities than men.
Honestly, I think we're getting to the point where in the "real" world women are getting pretty equal - I think most of the damage is done by parents and families and teachers when women are children by pushing them into gender roles the parents/family/teachers are familiar with. We have fewer professional women than men because back in grade school and high school girls are pushed away from those kinds of pursuits.
Garbage in, garbage out. If 90% of the people who apply to engineering programs in college are men, it shouldn't be surpising when 90% of those who graduate are men. (Actually, if you do the statistics, you'd expect more than 90% of those who actually graduate to be male.) If 98% of the people age 50+ in this country with MBAs are men, it shouldn't be surprising that 98% of corporate CEOs are men either.
Anyway, I think what's important is looking at the root cause: Making sure women believe from an early age that there's no such thing as a "gender role". It's kind of like saying we need affirmative action without making any effort to adress the poverty and poor educational opportunities that even make affirmative action appear necessary in the first place.
paintball
I haven't had time to watch television in years. However, I used to find time to play games. (Although I've now run out of time for everything.)
Anyways, I have played TR (the first one). I found it fun for a while, but the game control wasn't as easy as I expected it to be, so I never finished it. I, personally, couldn't care less about how they animate the character. I think that most women are able to see that it's an animation, and as such, is supposed to be fantasy. I seriously doubt that the reason for lack of female testers is because of the animation. I actually EXPECT the female characters to be buxom and thin. I'd be disappointed if they weren't.
That said, I do generally prefer the non-gruesome games. RPGs, and ones like Castlevania (and Tempest!). They do make some shooting games that are for fun as well (Point Blank, Time Crisis isn't actually gruesome either). But in general, I'll play if it's Interesting, Easy to play, and I can Save it. I want a game with a story. I want to find out what happens next. T.R. might have had those attributes, but because the game play was difficult, I had better things to do with my time.
That said, it's very possible that some people like certain types of games that others don't. e.g. I play games much much more than my husband does. But anymore, it's a time issue, and I just don't have the time to play like I did in college.
Actually one of the two level designers (Heather Gibson) was a woman, as was the script writer (Vicky Arnold).
Being a game tester does not mean just sitting around having fund playing a game. It means going through some sections repeatedly trying to find bugs. It means playing the game through beginning to end more than once -- even knowing where every item and enemy will be and the tricks to all the puzzles. It means burning out on the game before it even makes it to market. As to gaming tastes, games "made for girls" or "made for women" assume that gossip and shopping are all women care about. Female gamers are unusual, so why expect their tastes to be usual?
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
I don't totally disagree with you, but I don't buy into the whole idea that boys don't like girly things just because society tells them not to. I didn't like Barbie when I was a kid. Because it was girly. And lame. And I had no interest in it. I didn't need society to tell me this.
I think a lot of things like Barbie involve marketing people who have figured out how to market things to specific groups of children, rather than, as you are saying, society somehow brainwashing people into accepting that Barbie = for girls and Trucks = for boys.
Picture a roomful of teenage boys breaking a new game out of the box, and instead of the usual muscular hero with armor, they have to play as a half-naked Chippendale dancer knockoff, oiled washboard abs gleaming, and wearing little more than a hugely enlarged bulging codpiece.
Would teenage boys play this game for one lousy second? No, they'd drop it like a steaming turd, exactly the way girls do with Tomb Raider, and for the same reason. Well, maybe gay teenage boys would like the game (and I mean that as no putdown, I'm gay myself), and actually maybe some girls would like it too. But straight guys would feel weird staring at that character - they'd be going "man, this is too queer! Is anyone seeing me play this? I hope not."
Let me slap y'all upside the head with a clue-by-four: it is totally uncool for teenage boys to sit and stare for hours at a sexy half-naked guy. And most grown up straight guys would feel this way also. For the same reason, it is totally uncool for teenage girls to sit and stare for hours at Lara Croft. It makes them feel "queer," which is perfectly OK if you are queer (and don't care who knows), but 90% or more of the female population doesn't fit that category. So give it up - the vast majority of women and girls are going to hate this game, period, forever.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
Yes they can, read the studies. There are differences in the actual brain tissue, and they're there even in babies. Men have better connections within each brain hemisphere and women have better connections between the two hemispheres. Most boys learn to move faster than girls, and most girls use complex speech before boys. Regardless of culture or race (there are also some racial differences, but they're almost irrelevant compared to the difference between men and women, and social differences only kick in later).
A difference between male and female brains is common in other species as well, and has been observerd in animals raised in laboratories, with no social interaction.
Let me put this in terms that a Slashdot reader can understand: Athlons and Pentiums are both x86 CPUs, but Athlons have a better FPU and Pentiums have better hardware prefetch. They do the same tasks, but they're wired differently.
RMN
~~~
No. Japanese animators know that most women have different taste than men, even more obvious at young age (that would be boys and girls :P).
That's why they have style that are boys-oriented and others that are girls-oriented and a few other that can please to both, mostly those for the "older crowd")
For example, Macross felt definately boy-ish while Sailor Moon is more girl-ish.
However, those stories with more character involvement will usually please both gender, even if the main character used to be an assassin samourai (Kenshin), there are big robots (Neon Genesis Evangelion) or they chase the bad guys in space ships (Cowboy Bebop)
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
I love to play computer games, I play Quake2, Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo II, Diablo, Sim City, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Monoply, Unreal Tournament, Wolfenstine, and plenty more. I must tell you that I am a 23 year old Female. I don't think that it is all females that don't want to play just some of us don't say anything that we are female. People asume that we are males. I have been asked a number of times if I am really a girl. So we are out there even though there are just a few of us as people say.
I'm also a (straight-leaning) bi female with a marginal interest in computer games. (I don't play a lot of the shooters because my hand-eye coordination sucks. Perhaps another related factor?)
;)
"And btw the idea lately that games need to be made more female friendly p!$$es me off... if I wanted to do girly things, I'd go bake and put on make up or some such crap."
You know, you don't have to put down women just to be accepted in this community. Personally, I think it's incredibly unfair to make such a generalization.
So by your definition here, you can be female without being "a woman." Ok, I buy that, I never much liked that concept of "womanliness," either, but femaleness (on my terms) suits me ok. I don't think that the original comment was meant to "put down women," for acceptance here or not (although goodness knows there's enough [unconscious] sexism here [post title: Women/Male]).
However if someone's idea is that to be female, we must all bake, wear makeup, and do other similar things (the domesticity maven brigade), I'm going to put that attitude down completely, without degenerating into ad hominem attacks on anyone.
Incidentally, my favourite computer game ever was "Below the Root" for the C-64. I also like "Black and White" and "I Have No Mouth..." but when it comes to shooter games, I'm a voyeur -- I like to watch far more than I like to play. Wonder what that says about me?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
The Video Game Girl Webring
Most games nowadays are made by teams of more than twenty people. And a lot of teams include women, but they're not usually designers or programmers. They're artists, producers, etc..
;-)
I studied IT / software engineering in college, and in over 1000 students, there were about 20 women. I'm sure this is partly a social thing, but I think most women don't like programming as much as men. They get bored. Just like most men get bored teaching young children or dealing with people over a phone. And again, I'm pretty sure there are biological factors here. Women prefer more social activities; men prefer to work alone, or in very small teams.
That doesn't mean women can't be great game designers, though (and that's what really matters here). But I don't think most women would design "these games"; they would design different games. If I'm not mistaken, at least one of The Sims' lead designers is a woman (possibly two, I'm not sure).
So I think the mistake here is thinking that, because Lara is a female character, the game should appeal to girls. It won't, even if you make her boobs smaller, or if you replace her with a semi-nude man that keeps turning back to the camera and saying charming one-liners. What matters is the gameplay, and this sort of game (exploring, jumping, shooting) doesn't appeal to women as much as it does to men.
I think the perfect female game would be "Shoe Shop Tycoon".
RMN
~~~
I suspect it's likely the game genera that is causing this, rather than the main character. I don't know, maybe this is a sexist comment, but I suspect the whole shoot'em up/action style games don't interest women as much. IMHO I find women are much more social than men. Of course this could be because I can get my fiancée off "The Sims" long enough to check my email.
Macross was boyish? I certainly didn't think so. And I had to run out and get the music instantly from Macross Plus. I would think Akira was more boyish (not many girls out there like to see lots of gore, though this was the first anime I saw ).
Sailor Moon is trying to hit the *very* young girl population.
But honestly, I've never noticed one particular anime aimed toward one sex or another unless it was the ones with large bouncing spheres aimed at guys (though I do like Sorcerer Hunters also)
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
cough, clear throat [falsetto] I'm a girl and I'd love to test your game!
Akira is not really one of them - Akira has a story that can appeal to adults of both genders (once you forgive portentuousness, which is *usually* a dead giveaway for a pitch at the young crowd. When you're young, everything interesting seems like a world-historical event; when you get older, seeing the world on such epic scale comes over as a bit silly.)
maybe it's the fact that the tomb raider series is played out? i lost interest since tomb raider 2.
R.I.P.
My name is Amanda and I'm trying to get into college in IN. And I'm hot.
Women, like all humans, come in a variety of spin-states and versions. (by way of disclaimer) :)
:), we know men want more than the cartoon bimbo can give them. And we have it.
But I notice that very few of us feel enthused or challenged enough to compete for male attention with the stereotypical cartoon of the big breasted playmate by actually mastering the boring games.
Besides,
The first thing to ask, imho, about why women aren't playing the games and therefore not being testers, is: where are the female developers who might design a game that women find addicting and exciting? Imho, we're just bored after the first ten minutes with most of the games available. They just don't meet our emotional or psychological needs. We want 'escape' and catharsis just like men do.
Maybe women just need very complex and very social and strategic games to engage them.
One might as well ask: what's the difference between men and women? Better than trying to make women into men. *smile*
Women do have a strong hunt and kill instinct, they just prefer a more psychologically complicated scenario than blasting away with a weapon at strangers that appear in the corners.
And here's the real punch: maybe our circuitry is more evolved, making us more immune to computer/visual repetitive action addiction --we need more from a game than collecting the same old good karma points or health or weapons store. We may be victims of repetitive tasks so often in our daily lives that doing the same thing for recreation just isn't appealing.
This whole topic is really about marketing: how to sell billions of dollars worth of software crap to the women-market. Helping the marketing enemy wasn't my goal, but if you guys out there could understand your wives/girlfriends/daughters a bit more, it might make the computer universe even more of a help to society. Your female SO's probably already told you the answer to this: they like touch and feel real experiences, they like to feel powerful in the ways that mean something to them.
Blamming away is fun as hell at the end of a frustrating day, and probably helps prevent a lot of real violence in the world--but it isn't how _women_ *deal* with their bad day. They want to talk and work through the things that upset them. They want to be ACKnowledged.
(/end soapbox)
See http://courses.lib.odu.edu/engl/jbing/brain6.html for an excellent critique of "Brain Sex." Pay particular attention to the points about how one experiment that shows a small difference will get a ton of attention, while fifty other experiments that show no difference will be ignored. Also note the point that any experiment run to find differences between two groups (tall people vs. short people, blue eyed people vs. brown eyed people, etc) will likely turn up *some* difference, but that difference won't necessarily be statistically significant.
If it is true that women are more relationship focussed than men then we need to build games that take this into account. What is a relationship? Interaction of different characters. So instead of one character that does everything for the entire game, how about changing from character to character (even from the good guys to the bad guys) and have this affect the gameplay. Having equal ammounts of gameplay for the hero, his romantic interest, the side kick, the evil villian, the clueless henchmen etc shows you more sides of the story and how their actions affect each other. Maybe even generate sympathy for the 'villian' cause they have justification for their actions, even though they must be stopped. Think about movies that you like, how many of them are only about one character that doesn't interact with other characters?
Its not that games are male-focused with violence and competition but they are EGO-FOCUSED. One character all the time who does everything himself and doesn't need anyone else. A team is a relationship and an excellent storytelling method, especially a team created by forcing people with old conflicts together by circumstance (like ex-lovers, childhood rivals, old enemies etc). Have some mission objectives that conflict with the overall aim just so one character can get back at one of the others because of something that happened 10 years ago. Petty differences and childish arguments.
We don't have (many) games like this because it takes time, effort and talent to create a good story and characters like this. Its just easier and quicker to have some gungho meat-heat run from point A to B to C, blow/stab/punch/fireball everything in sight, and then tack on a few cut scenes of 'story' as to why he had to do this.
By the way I remember playing the first tomb-raider (when I bought my first computer) and I think that Natla (the villian(ess?)) was a much more interesting and developed character than Lara.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
If the difference always points in the same direction, it is significant, even if it's not very big (and it is reasonably big, although some testing methods are rather dubious). In the majority of cases, women's brains show more activity in the language centres and men's brains show more activity in the spatial perception centres. And this matches real-world observations. Just look at the way children develop (girls usually learn to read faster - and this is even before the hormones kick in), or at the way men and women navigate (men use spatial models, women use landmarks). Are you going to tell me that boys are encouraged to not learn to read, or that women are taught by society to use landmarks instead of abstract spatial relationships?
.01%. There is a gay gene.
I really don't get those people who keep saying "we are all the same". We are not, and that's part of the fun. Brain damage in certain areas causes fairly specific and consistent changes in personality and ability. So why is it so amazing that a difference in brain structure and brain activity should also have an influence on people's abilities and personalities? Men are different from women. Their bodies are different (most men don't have breasts, have you noticed?), their chemistry is different (most wome produce very little testosterone, you know?), their brains are different.
Why do some people have such a hard time accepting that the brain is as subject to genetic differences as the size of the jaw or the amount of chest hair?
Yes, some women have chest hair, and some men have a short jaw. But if you see someone with a chin like Bruce Campbell and more chest hair than Sean Connery, you will probably assume it's a man.
It's like the gay gene. Oh no, no way a gene could determine that! After all, genes are just our blueprint. They can determine the colour of my eyes, how tall I am, the health problems I'll have when I'm 70, but no way they could have any sort of influence over whether I'm gay or straight. Well, the margin of error of most studies on that subject was less than
Of course, you don't have to do what your genes tell you, just like you don't have to do what your mother or your army superior tell you. Education and experience play an important role, too. But it's kind of hard to say they have no influence at all, or that their influence is irrelevant. And the (consistent) genetic difference between men and women is much bigger than the (consistent) genetic difference between straight and gay men.
RMN
~~~
There are certain types of stories that speak to the anxieties and fantasies of adolescent boys, and until you get to the other side of adolesence, you probably won't recongize them.
Your "other side of adolesence" has nothing to do with recognition. Until you talk to more women, you'll realise that men and women have the same anxieties and fantasies. Getting to your "other side" will not have anything to do with finding out fact. You can become wise enough to take an objective look, but you really won't know anything unless you happen to TALK to them (uh oh.. I said talk.. guess I'm female) and get an honest statement.
The idea of stories which "speak" to fears and dreams automatically being boyish is a crock of shit. Men and women have the same anxieties and fantasies. I could say that Kimagure Orange Road or Maison Ikouku are boyish by the argument that they speak to a boy's anxieties and fantasies (hell, the main characters are boys going after one particular girl and not ever getting the courage to say it outright in addition to not knowing the "correct" things to say) but I thoroughly enjoyed them (and have several images of Ayukawa since she is most like myself of all anime I have watched) and do not see why any other girl wouldn't either.
Are you saying only boys are likely to enjoy anime which centers around fears and dreams of adolescent boys? That's rather sexist. As I mentioned previously, the only anime I can see as particularly boy oriented is the bouncing boobies anime. All I can think of is ouch when watching that stuff.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
That doesn't mean you can't enjoy, understand, or appreciate stories that "target" or express concerns that aren't quite the same as yours - being able to understand the structure of an anxiety that you don't have is a sort of acquired skill, a kind of narrative literacy - and the general experience of anxiety, fear, love, etc. tends to be understandable by all, even if the contexts and structures in which those emotions occur are more specific. But the fact that different genres attract different demographics, and that producing for those genres garners audienceship in those demographics, demonstrates the point. Boys can enjoy Revolutionary Girl Utsena, as well, but statistically, the audiencship numbers will line up according to genre.
The specific anxieties of adolescent boys that I'm most explicitly addressing are those in which there's a sense of messianic purpose in conflict with anomie, isolation, and loneliness. That's very much part of the development of male identity in those years - a lot of kind of messianic/superhero fantasies are a way of testing possible social identities, and compensating for a profound feeling of persecuted powerlessness and shame. Girls aren't disqualified from having the same sort of complexes, it's just a social fact that, for the most part, they don't - in shorthand, girls anxieties are about competing with other girls for social status, while boys' are about accumaliting the trappings and apparata of power and authority.
And there's absolutely nothing sexist about it - any feminist film/literary theorist would not only agree with it, but observe that a refusal to note the fact of gender is, in a sense, a way of making the male universal.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. You continually speak from a male view and site how that is supposed to be different from women, but I see no anomalie for the same traits applying to women. I agree that there are general differences between sex, races, but I argue that they come from experiences: more women get raped than men so more women will develop a victim complex; asians feel stronger duty to family because their parents ground it into them. Conflicts don't have to be so deeply understood. That is something that can add to your understanding but does not detract from a story if you don't see a nuance, nor does it target because of such.
Your viewpoint of "girls' anxieties are about competing with other girls for social status while boys' are about power and authority" is wordiness for the same thing while, at the same time, wrong about girls. To say that girls are after status is the same way that I can observer most men are after status and in fact do a lot more penis waving to get it. Women often feel isolated and alone but it sounds like you're acknowledging them as an anomalie which is far from the truth. In fact, I would say women more often deal with "persecuted powerlessness and shame." Especally in a case of rape: you should talk to these women and hear either how they feel they somehow got themselves into that situation (blaming themselves) or how *other* people blame them for getting into the situation. 1 in 3 women are raped. That's a pretty big chunk of women. Or what about fights? You don't think that girls get beat up by gangs of other girls for doing something as small as not answering?
And if you talk about feminism, then you're also picking a subset of extreme views, not of what I am talking about which is that genderism is conditioned by viewpoint and preconceptions more than inherent.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
I view the relationship between biological gender and social/cultural/historical gender as seeing being gendered as equivalent to being drugged with one or another drugs. Hormones - androgens, estrogens, and the lot - are drugs, and people who are on certain drugs will resemble each other in behavior in certain ways. The mild paranoia of one pot-head will be different than that of another, but generally you can tell the difference between a pot-head and a speed freak.
Talking about rape is a digression and a bit of a red herring (and invoking penis-waving is just a bit - juvenile.) There's no question that women feel powerless, too - however, the exercise, domain, and response to that powerlessness, and the specific structure of that experience, is still different. And that difference is reflected in the cultural products that women are more likely to consume.
I shall attempt to clarify: I do not mean to say that you are not comprehending because you are male, but because you are viewing women as a separate group and thus negating that any feelings you particularly might feel that a female might also go through in addition to attributing percieved differing qualities.
Human-drug interaction is not substantial enough to do more than draw general physical conclusions. There are a significant number of studies performed on animals showing behavioral change with hormone therapy, but that doesn't provide the information to know if humans are as tied to them. I know of no study that provides hormone levels equivalent to the opposite sex (and know for a fact that they would take a significant amount of time to level out the dosage for each test subject).
I was using rape because it is a common enough example of an instance where women may feel shamed and powerless. I wasn't attempting to "invoke" penis-waving; the thought was just recently in my mind due to the subject brought up in another recent reply to one of my posts (his terminology was more crude). I agree that the structure may differ in lack of power, and as well in choice of marketed products, but not that it will be reflected in anime they watch, being ultimately a medium of a story, which I do not feel is gender specific. I admit that some of my responses may have been less thought out than they could have been (that's what I get for writing at work), but some of your comments have held an unnecessary degrading fashion, as subtle as it may have been.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind
of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation
of these atoms is talking moonshine.
-- Ernest Rutherford, after he had split the atom for
the first time
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