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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?
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
The testers they're after would be on site salaried staff....
;)
you'd want to hope they could tell
Advanced users are users too!
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.
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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.
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.
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
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
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.
... 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!
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?
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?
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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?
... 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.
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
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
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.
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
Play Half-Life.
My deviantArt site
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
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
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
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.
..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.
/me is really 16/f!
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!)
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'.
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"
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!!
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 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
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!!!
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!
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).
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
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?
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
~~~
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"
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
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
Actually one of the two level designers (Heather Gibson) was a woman, as was the script writer (Vicky Arnold).
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.
Grin. So are you the exception that proves the rule, or are you the counter-example that discredits it?
Why do men want to be Lara Croft?
Why do men playing online games play female characters? I dunno. I neither play Tomb Raider or female characters, I couldn't tell you.
I do know a bunch of role-players (d&d, etc) and I've been told a good roleplayer will play the opposite sex for the challenge and fun. Maybe it's linked to that, I have no idea.
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
~~~
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.
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 have that inner woman inside of me... ...luckily, she's a lesbian. Can I volunteer?
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
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.)
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
~~~
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 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.