Slashdot Mirror
Women on Sex and Videogames
KillerBetties.com continues to produce interesting female oriented gaming commentary. Their latest piece is entitled Sex and Videogames, with several female gamers commenting on the likes of Leisure Suit Larry, the Anarchy Online 'Play Me' ads, and the breast size of electronic actors. From the article:"Do you think the shift towards breeding game designers in college with specialized degrees is going to detract from the casual-gaming young female? Companies so intent on hiring people with only complete devotion to videogames... I didn't know I wanted to make games until my last year of college."
here's a game guaranteed to get your girl off ^_^;;
finally stoner videogame boyfriends and needy nontechie girlfriends can be 100% on the same page!
This poor child has to face both stereotypes.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Women constantly complain about boobs in games, but look at the cover of women's magazines: boobs. They clearly like looking at boobs too.
Gordon Freeman is "cute"?
They just totally ruined the ass-kicking aspect of the character for me!
It's hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys.
Or, in other words "Whaaaaa! Women are discriminated against because they have to make a choice! I require benefits to pad reality so my choice not to devote my life to my art is easier!"
Look, ladies. You either want to play with the big boys or you don't. You can have a career in tech, or a family and a pseudo-carrier. Even maternity/parental leave won't make up for the fact that taking a year out is virtually inconceivable in an industry where 1% downtime is a joke if it's proposed and a disaster if it happens
Even if it that weren't the case men will always outperform women in business (any business, games included) because the choice of carrier or family is one luxury men don't have. That right girls they don't have a choice. Women can have a family or a career. Men can have a career or a bottle of Listerine in a brown bag on the street.
Al Lowe, the creator of the original (and who had absolutely nothing to do with this POS) said this about MCL:
Yeah, right.
Gak, as a woman gamer even I wouldn't find "sagging breasts" and "child bearing hips" attractive. The girl from Dark Alliance isn't ugly, even if these gals don't think she's pretty. Very cliche'd, but it really is true that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
I don't think women getting a larger market share would stop games from marketing using sex or making games that include sex. That's like thinking that more women buying magazines will reduce the number of guy magazines. Women getting into games will simply provide support for developers and programmers who want to try different things - like an RPG with female heroes that doesn't focus on changing clothing or an FPS with female characters who dress and act like real military women do.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
These women must not read any womens magazines as they are just as 'bad' if not 'worse'. Of course, they could just be jealous that they do not get as much attention as they think they should.
Begin Quote:
Sarah: Here's another rant on sex in videogame advertising. It's an endless cycle, girls don't play because the ads are clearly geared towards men. They don't feel like game development is a good place to be. They don't join the industry to change things, so things stay the same.
Telka: Sexuality in ads will exist as long as you have uncreative minds clamoring away on the idea "
that their audience is entirely male."
How many guys look and behave like Duke Nukem or most other male characters in video games?
Do we play those games because we wish we were big juiced-up tough guys or is it just funny and fun to play? Are we worried that if girls see Duke that they'll expect us to look and act like him?
Anyway, you can't prevent what guys find physically attractive in females. The reverse is also true. If I'm an ugly bastard, that doesn't mean all male characters in video games should also be ugly bastards.
Why did the interviewer allow it to degenerate into a political discussion? Hell, they couldn't keep their minds on the topic for 30 mintues and we a susposed to respect their opinions?
... I was fooled by the liberal propaganda that Kerry actually had a shot in hell and I voted for him -- which made his losing all the more devastating.
"Telka: You'd be surprised... not to offend anyone here if you did vote for Bush... but look how many people voted for him because "he prays". That's it... *shakes head*
Staci: I don't want to talk about elections
Trisha: Understanding a sound bite about the president is easier than understanding the hundreds of games that come out yearly.
Trisha: Bummed at the election as well."
In defense of Anarchy Online's marketing ads. The game is a cyberpunk game and you always have half naked girls in sci fi. (Of course this is a fairly accurate stereotype).The game has been in a downward slide for some time. Even back when I played for about 6 months there were only like 3 servers. Now they are letting people play for free for a year. Lastly I had several friends online and real life that played the game and were girls.
I agree with the comment about at least making the video game girls attractive. My friend and I just recently played through the second Baldurs Gate and I choose the Cleric and she was very ugly. Even my friends wife was like, "Man she is ugly!"
I don't see why video-game companies are trying to appeal to a non-existent audience. We all know for a fact that women aren't real.
On the other hand, not that many males are portrayed realistically either. Seen NFL Street Big? Yeah, those gorillas are realistic.
Now if you'll excuse me, I left Virtual Valerie in a compromising position.
Do not touch -Willie
Surely there is a lot that can be said about "Sex in Games" from the female perspective. But it should be said by a woman with a brain who writes an article because she has something meaningful to say, and knows how to bring an argument.
So my mind boggles why /. felt it necessary to link to this stuff.
There were a number of studies done recently in Australia that showed that men also get side-tracked career wise if it looks like they will put their family first at any stage.
Australia is one of a number of supposedly first world countries that doesn't currently have a fertility rate that is anywhare approaching replacement levels. One of the major issues is that people put off having children and one of the more frequently given reasons are economic.
At some point we need to wake up to real across the board family friendly policies in the workplace for men and women - unless of course we want to outsource our population generation to the 3rd world along with all our jobs.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
In the last decade I have noticed a significan tincrease in the number of women involved in roleplay conventions, largely due to an increase in games that focus more on characterisation, political machinations and problem solving over dice rolling and simply slaying things.
Which is not to say that us chicks don't enjoy a bit of hack-n-slash from time to time, but overall we don't find it particularly compelling hour on hour.
Oddly enough, games that apparently did well in the female demographics were games like Myst and The Sims. They focus more on relationships and problem solving and not so much on killing stuff. They were also games that appealed to non-gamers generally.
They were also games that support picking them up and playing for a few minutes if that's all you have, but will also let you play for hours if you can. As someone with lots of other responsibilities in my life, it can be incredibly frustrating to playing a game and being unable to find the save point before you have to leave the game to deal with something more important. A good example would be one section in the middle of Sphinx last year where it was about an hour between save points the first time through in one area, with complex jumps, stealth sections, pattern based puzzle sequences and several combats. As another example, in WoW my primary character is Lvl 27, my husband's is Lvl 36, we started on the same day but I do most of the housework because he can't drag himself away from the computer.
Most women who game probably class themselves as casual gamers rather than hardcore, if they want to capture the femlae market it's possibly more important to focus on that aspect rather than how much cleavage the female characters are showing.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
From article: "I took pride in the fact that I was the only person to write reviews consistently for IGN who was a female. When I got added to their editorial staff list (because I was promoted to run their vaults), I was the only female on those lists. If another female had come in, I would have felt odd about it. But I would have needed to check myself too."
I think it's interesting that they admit to doing the same that males often get blamed for. Being a "newer" market for women, it feels strange or awkward when a women is in the ranks. This isn't to say she shouldn't be there and if they can pull their own weight than so be it. At least they admit that it seems strange for them too.
I don't like Valve tech or how Valve treats their community, but Half-Life 2 was a thing of beauty. There were both male and female resistant fighters, dressed pretty identically.
And Alyx? If Gordon didn't have his HEV suit, he'd probably dress like that.
They also went for realism all across the board, and although the breasts are perfect, they aren't DDD.
I would even guess that we will start to see more fairness there as games get more realistic. Notice how big they were in Q3A -- but everything was big, guns, armor, everything, because if it wasn't big, you wouldn't see it -- computers weren't capable of particularly fine levels of detail.
No, what I want to see is games that aren't so damn American. If I can blow up a zombie, will seeing some skin really traumatize me so much? Only in America.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Um, no. The Duke Nukem shape is not physiologically possible for any human being.
The strange thing is that while the ultra-hunky heroes are seen as a "wish-fulfillment" figure for guys ("gee, I wish I had muscles like him and knew how to kick ass"), the ultra-feminine heroines are seen as a "jealousy/envy" figure by women ("they've no right to have a heroine looking like that - she makes me feel inferior"). Me, I reckon that speaks volumes about the way most men and women think. Men are much more "pack animals" who collect in mutually-supportive groups, and status rubs off from who you're with. Whilst women are more likely to hang out in larger groups, they're classically a group of mutual competitors. I know this doesn't always hold true, but it's a good approximation.
Grab.