Slashdot Mirror
Women Remain the Ignored Audience In Gaming
donniebaseball23 writes "Research firm Interpret has released its new report, 'Games and Girls: Video Gaming's Ignored Audience,' which finds that while the female audience in gaming has grown, games tailored to their needs and preferences continue to go missing. Women represent 50% of the market and their usage of HD consoles like Xbox 360 and PS3 is rising. 'It remains to be seen whether developers and marketers will effectively invest in understanding and exploiting the undertapped female gaming market,' said Courtney Johnson, analyst for Interpret."
Unless, of course, 50% of the gamers (the women) flock to a medium which they don't like.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I don't understand why a game developer would want to tailor games to a single sex, male of female. The broader the appeal the larger the audience. Why target only half your potential audience? Games are an art form, and every artist wants as many people as possible to enjoy their works.
I seem to remember a decade or so ago someone attempted to target girls with some game or another, and it was denounced by women as sexist.
Now, kid's games I can see targeting one sex or another. My daughters had a Barbie game on the PC and they loved it. No boy would want to play it, however.
Free Martian Whores!
But the gaming population consists of 50% of them. Obviously there is something they like in these 'boy' games. Or does the group who commissioned/produced the report want gaming to be 75% girls and 25% boys, screaming feminine slogans like those who believe sexism is the reason why women don't get as many top jobs and not their lifestyle choices?
Studies like this piss me the fuck off. morons.
Try pulling any woman in my family away from Bejewelled Blitz!
Judging by your spelling/grammar and your views on gender related topics you should cool the fuck down when it comes to comparing people to three year olds.
"But I from itali/swedenn/bolgaria/american school system, i no know english!!1"
Well, as long as you treat women the way you appearently do based on your own retarded observations, I see no foul in treating you like an idiot based on what ever reason I feel like.
50% my ass
It pisses me off that some brain comes up with the theory that women are not catered to in computer games, while that same brain can't fathom the fact that there simply are'nt enough female game-programmers out there to actually 'know' what a woman wants and then, to ensure that such games are released. It's not like women are shunned from the gaming industry. Sure it's male dominated, but only because males in general, love the industry more than women seem to.
Geekism is your _only_ God!
In other news, it is discovered that male population is ignored in fashion industry. There is great inequallity if we look at fashion where vast majority of products is aimed at female population. You just have to look around your nearest shopping center to see that most shops are centered around fashion and most of this shops target women. No shit, really? Women aren't being targete by game developers? Guess what, maybe it's because most women don't give a flying fuck about games? Just like clothes shops don't target men cause most men don't give a flying fuck about fashion.
My Windows is NOT slow, it's special!
I really don't think adding a playable female lead character to everything is the answer. I'm a man and I have very little in common with the usual muscle-bound he-man videogame protagonists. You can play as a female in plenty of games (WoW and Mass Effect, for instance) but the overwhelming majority of players are still men. So I want to know what the article thinks those mythical "needs and preferences" are for female gamers. From the available data I'd say they're actually pretty well catered for - only we call them "casual gamers". Browser games, smartphone puzzle games, word games, etc - they're all at 50% or more female gamers.
This discussion seems to crop up every now and then and the question needs to be rephrased - why don't females play "hardcore" games? What is it about them that makes them inherently male? Me, I don't think it's about what your avatar looks like or how story-driven the game is. I think it's all down to culture. Same culture that tells us videogames are for 13 year old boys. All we need is for games to be great, immersive, well done, and for the shift to happen. It's gonna be slow, though.
Both are popular with women, relatively speaking. Been in guilds in both where women were significant in number and some of them influential. Couple of female Guild Masters, did wonderful job. (yes, we used Ventrilo; not fakes) No need to make games designed to attract females. Games are games are games. Only need to avoid elements in games that are offensive to most women. Much harder task is to remove online offensive language and adolescent crudity from players.
Ok, I'm sure this is going to get modded to oblivion, but here goes.
Why the hell do I care?
When I dress up as a boy and go to work and have to deal with women who get bamboozled by basic Word features like tab stops, why do I care? If these women don't care about games or any other tech, why, as a guy, do I care?
When I dress up as a girl when I get home and fire up Monster Hunter or BlazBlue or whatever I feel like playing, why the hell do I care what some other woman wants out of games? If other women don't want to play video games, why do I care?
If women want to be "represented" in video games, they can get out GCC, SDL, and whatever else and make their own games. But they don't.
Besides, the girls at work who do play video games are perfectly happy with Smash Bros from what I understand anyway. I don't like Smash Bros. Does that make me underrepresented in Smash Bros? Why should anyone else care that I don't play Smash Bros?
Why do we all have to bend over backwards to try to get people who have no interest in our hobbies to be interested in our hobbies? They're just not interested, so why the hell should I care?
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
Duke Nukem Forever was all about women. What more do they want??
What hope is there for studios understanding women when their understanding of men is that all we need is ever bigger guns and gore? I'm so sick of seeing the current unending stream of military games. Yawn!
So attempts to "target" women as an audience will be just as woefully patronising and base. Maybe a pregnancy game, eh? That's what all the girls want while all the boys want to go kill people.
I see plenty of TV adverts for games that are very clearly aimed at women - Nintendo in particular has made a big push in this direction (and families, and older people of both sexes). I'm not qualified to say whether these really meet the needs of women, but its clear that the manufacturers think they do.
Presumably TFA has some narrow definition of gaming that excludes casual games, Sims-a-like, pet simulators, fitness trainers, online bingo etc. That just leaves one of this year's biggest game releases (Portal 2) which featured a female protagonist, and a female (ish) big bad making bitchy comments about our hero's weight.
Now, if it turns out that women are rejecting this pink fluffy stereotypical family-friendly stuff, and want more subtle changes to game design, that's a different story.
Perhaps Duke Nukem would have got a better critical reception if they'd taken a tip from the "Smack my Bitch Up" video and, right at the end, panned the camera round to reveal that Duke was actually a woman...?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
like seriously... i am 6 feet and 7.6 inches and my feet wont fit in those pretty shoes...
Yes, impeccably delivered. Best troll I've seen in a while.
Dilbert RSS feed
Without being sexist, there are definitely games out there that are more suited to either males or females, but they don't outright say it on the box. From my experience, more males seem to have embraced playing games such as Football(soccer) games, FPS games and heavy RTS and other strategy games, females are definitely more prevalent on other types of games such as MMORPGs (In a decent sized guild, a large section of the playerbase are normally women), Simulators such as The Sims and Farmville and adventure type games.
It's the content of the games that is the problem. The majority of women are not interested in guns and tanks and explosions such as the large majority of men really wouldn't care to design and build a farm. I definitely don't think that any man or woman wouldn't play a game purely because it wasn't designed specifically for them, that's just silly.
There are games where women, by design, aren't featured in games (Such as WW2 and other war games where women in the army were either non-existent or low in numbers). I don't think because of this women would just stop playing it, it doesn't work like that, I've talked to quite a few females while playing RTS games, that's just what type of games they like.
There are many games with a female hero/antagonist but going further than that to specifically tailoring it to women would alienate a large portion of the fanbase. I am aware that it notes female gamers as being 50% of all gamers but I personally don't see playing the occasional browser-based flash game as 'gaming' and a 50:50 share is definitely not prevalent in the majority of games online.
Unless, of course, 50% of the gamers (the women) flock to a medium which they don't like.
Exactly. From TFA:
"Market representation for women has grown to 50 percent overall, with console use rising significantly in the past two years"
Apparently, we're supposed to think that somehow this demonstrates that female gamers are being ignored and not getting what they want.
Next they'll tell us that women are being forced to play games against their will.
What this article doesn't address is what comprises a "gamer". Someone that has an Angry Birds app or plays Farmville for a certain amount of time, by the standards of most studies, is a "gamer". If you were to eliminate those and focus only on those that either play their consoles regularly, or "actual" computer games, you'll find the female to male ratio will drop drastically, thus explaining why they're the underrepresented demographic in video games.
If there is a demand for some kind of games - there will be an offer. In a short time - especially considering the current game market saturation. If there are no games of some particular kind - that means that the demand is way too low to be on the radar of publishers, or even independent studios.
It's also not generally accepted for women to play games. I know my sister gets serieus omgwtfbbq reactions when she mentions she's off to a lan party with some friends to play (among other things) Unreal Tournament. While a lot of guys are (once they've recovered from the shock) like "MARRY ME!" usually girls respond like "You stay where you are while I walk backwards to the door. Slowly. Don't make any sudden moves." Seems to me like it's a bit like coming out of the closet, everybody knows it exists, but you'll get shunned over it anyway.
Now I'm willing to accept that she's an exception (and/or I live in a pathetically retarded country in this respect) for playing shooters but if the forums about RPGs/Action adventures are any indication there's quite a few women playing those and there's not usually complaints about the game being "designed for men" (there is, sometimes about lack of romance options for women, but this is something that's improving itself, if there's an audience then there will be (changes to the) product.
Games are for fun, so that women are playing them says they are having fun with them.
To me it just sounds like whining. If there are specific things that need to be done differently to attract women to gaming, let's hear them. However just saying "Oh they aren't good for women," sounds like bitching without evidence to me.
The only thing they list in the article "For instance, they are much more likely to prefer to play solo than men, and play games for less competitive and more narrative- and character-driven reasons." is stupid. Why? Because we HAVE plenty of games like that, and there is no reason that ALL games should be like that.
To me what that says is "Women tend to like single player RPGs more than multi-player FPSes." Ok, wonderful. Turns out there are plenty of those. The market is being enough for both kinds of games, and in fact for more than that.
I also question that one since story driven, single player games have been around for much longer. While competitive multi-player games are popular, they are new. For many a year single player was the big thing (because we lacked the Internet), yet fewer women were in to gaming.
I personally think any lack of women in gaming (which I've not observed, lots of women play games in my experience) is more cultural/mindset than anything else. Women feel like gaming is not something they should do, so they don't. That isn't the sort of thing different kinds of games really can fix.
So if things really need to be done different, well let's hear it then. However all I see here is bitching that amounts to "Girls don't like online FPSes." To that I say:
1) So what? There are plenty of other kinds of games. We can have games for all kinds of people, not every game need to be targeted to every person (as such a thing would fail).
2) Says who? Though far less common then men, there are women who enjoy shooties plenty well.
My wife has a Wii and a couple of games on my PS3. She says she's a gamer but I haven't seen her touch a controller in nearly a year with the exception of when we play Rock Band together. I would absolutely LOVE it if she was into COD or some-such. We would so be killing pixels together... But I doubt that would ever happen because men and women, despite exceptions to every rule and so on, are fundamentally different. Men = hunters. Women = gatherers. Although I think things are (very, very, very) slowly shifting, we have evolution to thank for the lack of females who are hard-core gamers as most hard-core games are tasty-violent with a freakin' laserbeam.
Life is sleep. Death is a dream. Wake up.
When the Sims 2 came out i remember all the boys i lived with being far more excited about it then the girls ^.~ but wow, seriously impressive argument mate, girls like clothes ALL girls like clothes and have the brains of 3 year olds.. thats like saying all men drink beer and play football. Dunno about you guys but I had more fun playing Postal 2 then The Sims 2, and while it is true that as a girl i do prefer games where there is a better story (Assasians Creed II) and clever game play (Portal 2) I just as much enjoy some good slow motion heads going splosh (Fallout 3). It's true whats stated about giving Women better choices with games, I'm sure guys feel a bit weird running around as a female character, so imagine how we feel! It does get boring playing the same old Mr Superman role all the time and have the female characters be nothing but good looking game fodder. That said it does have to be appropriate to the game, and it's certainly not a magic bullet to make a crappy game suddenly 'lady friendly' wtf that means.
They need to take their games and add a virtual clothes rack and clothing store, where you can buy boots and other little items for your avatars. That way an additional challenge is presented: "Hmmm, should I spend this billion ISK on a Carrier class starship, or should I spend it on a silly looking monacle for my avatar?". The women, of course, will choose the clothing. And the men will choose the big pew pew ships. And so the game will be much less frustrating for women because they will still get pwned, but at least they will die stylishly.
/incarna rant
PS: All the women I know prefer big guns over pretty boots any day.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What special 'needs' do women have in gaming? Most of the women I know love playing Halo, GTA, TF2, L4D, Mortal Kombat, all the games I love to play myself. As far as I'm concerned those are games made for men and women, what do women need that they don't provide?
if you read the story, rather then just the slashdot mention you'd have seen that they did break it down into console use and casual vs non-casual gamers where the rate was still 40% non-casual gamers.
I think the biggest barrier for entry for women gamers isn't the games themselves, but the gaming community. We all know of The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, but women get presented an even uglier side of online gaming. This site has some good examples: http://fatuglyorslutty.com/
It seems the moment a female gamer reveals her gender she's automatically the target of the most vile and despicable comments the online community has to offer. Granted, most gamers are thick skinned and can brush this stuff off. But it makes me wonder how many women have tried playing a game, had an experience similar to the ones at the site above, and gave up entirely. It would be nice if the online community were a little friendlier. We would all have more fun that way, regardless of gender.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
People made computers. Women AND men.
rewriting history since 2109
Next they'll tell us that women are being forced to play games against their will.
If this was China...
Ass-asians Creed II? I've not heard of that porno..
I don't feel weird running around as a female character, any more than I feel weird running around as a shotgun wielding cyborg, flying a spaceship or base jumping off the top of a skyscraper. Games are generally about playing a role which is very different to your own life.
I enjoyed Mirror's Edge and Heavenly Sword quite a lot. I always thought Tomb Raider was a bit shit, but that's nothing to do with the main character being female. Can't think of any other female protagonists right now, apart from in RPGs where you can choose your sex.
which is totally what she said
To create a blockbuster game that appeals directly to women is a massively risky investment. Games like Gears of War and Halo take tens of millions, if not over $100M, to produce. No publisher in their right mind is going to spend that on trying to win female gamers since most female gamers are "casual gamers" who haven't shown a predilection for "hardcore games" of any type. It would be a career or even company-ending move if it didn't go well.
I don't generally like to encourage trolls... but that was pretty funny.
And trolling aside, The Sims actually is a good example of the design by committee-esq games you get when you try to make something with broad appeal. Just enough to keep both gender steriotypes happy, but not really mind blowing for either.
If you really want to bring women into gaming at a mainstream level, you have to make games specifically tailored for women... and thanks to politically correct "gender neutral" types ready to jump on anyone who tries it, probably not going to happen any time soon. What we'll see is women gamers who enjoy steriotypical guy games, and casual women gamers...
Wait...what?
Now if we could only ignore them at home as well...
Women don't buy ridiculous gadgets like Xboxes and such... so why would those systems make games for them? That doesn't mean women are being ignored. Facebook games anyone? Bejeweled? I'd argue that if you just counted the number of games out there, there's actually MORE tailored to women than to men. The only difference being, Men are willing to pay a lot more for their entertainment and entertainment companies are happily willing to take their money.
The report was published by a company which provides "research and consulting services" to game publishers.
They''re not going to publish a report saying "actually our services are not needed and we're a waste of money".
The kinds of games that are made are the kind that get sold. If games are targeted at men it's because they're the ones that want to buy them. I believe that there are games targeted at women (or at least not targeted at men specifically) already so I don't see the problem there. Maybe advances in technology or shifts in the gaming interfaces will make the medium more attractive to women in the future. Games, like any other product, will always be targeted to wherever the demand is.
...but when are you going to make works tailored to female audiences?
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Men are easy, you just need to have these three letters and add letters to the end BOO,
M
BS
TY
MERANG...
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's because they're all busy playing Farmville on Facebook. The last numbers I heard were around 60 to 70% female players. That's with a game that lies north of 50 million active players. Sounds like a huge chunk of women having just the type of fun they need with the gaming industry.
Add in my daughter and her friends all hooked on Animal Crossing DS(i) I'd say the video gaming industry is doind just fine with the ladies.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I believe the entire line-up from Popcap games is already pretty women-friendly. And looking how big the Sims is, I think women get plenty of attention. Warcraft has a huge amount of girls playing as well.
Besides.. who says women don't like FPS's like Counterstrike and such? I think women would hate it more if they were relegated into a corner with an all pink edition of Barbie Pony Combing, then let out in the world and play anything we guys play.
There are games i like (MMORPGs, strategy / empire building, puzzle, though I haven't played much except WoW for a few years), and games that I don't like (FPSs - the movement makes me feel ill).
I don't think that any imbalance between the numbers of male and female gamers is anything to do with the games themselves, but rather the mindset and cultural expectations of their potential players.
We just need more geek girls in the media, that should help bring their plight front and center.
This vloguer is also a Linux geek, which is how I originally stumbled upon her (she has some of the most articulate compiz nowto videos I've ever seen)
http://www.nixiepixel.com/
In order to build games for women don't you need to understand them ?
Does anybody (who can code) know what women wants ?
Samus in every Metroid game was female. She is arguably one of the first female protagonists, though the fact that she is hidden behind that suit 99% of the time makes many people assume she is a male instead.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Hilarious.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
At some point I found a clothing store that I actually liked (Today's Man). Needless to say, they promptly went out of business.
And that's why I ignore the fashion industry.
Well, that, and because my extended family in Thailand is always sending me surplus apparel from the factory markets before they get their name-brand markups.
Spent the first 20 years of my life being told that women are equal in every way. Now we are spending the next 20 years catering to their differences. I am very confused, I think we have been had.
I admit I didn't read the article due to the difficulty with reading it, what is the deal with that? There is no way women make up 50% of HD console market, I find that a very optimistic number. However, the last year I played WoW there was definitely a surge in female players, and the last time I was in CS a chic handed me my ass a few times(we were in vent so I know she was a chic).
It was a reasonably common gamer idiom for a shocked reaction not too long ago.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
As far as running around in a female character/avatar, some guys prefer it that way... especially when they are hot looking. Looking at some "superman" all day knowing you can't be that is worse than looking at a hot female form that you can control. ;) So no, it's not weird feeling.
Sure it has to be game appropriate too, but Tomb Raider didn't require the female main character... it was part of the draw of the game though.
I think before "gaming for women" can happen, there has to be a better understanding of what gaming, if any, women want. There are simply some activities that men like and women don't and vice versa. Is gaming a "girl thing" at all? I tend to think not. Even when the games were simple like pong, boys would play it for hours while girls didn't really care that much. I formally acknowledge that there are women who like games regardless of how they are "targeted." But generally...?
Obviously, some study was done that asked something along the lines of do you ever play video games.
And of course ~ 100% of people said yes, making the study show that 50% of gamers are women, which of course any competent person knows that is false.
And then I assume that they asked some other generic question where the answer of yes the gaming industry does focus on men was the obvious answer.
How no one in the study could of not realized their first mistake with the number of 50% even after the contradiction of why are just as many girls attracted to games as men if few games are made for them is beyond my understanding though..
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You mean like they had to change all the sports to tailor them for women?
No, maybe women aren't into gaming because there are better things to do (and I say this as a dedicated gamer).
Also, many of the best-known games are openly hostile to women. People are surprised that women aren't rushing to play Duke Nukem Forever?
You are welcome on my lawn.
You target a fraction of the total population because "family appeal" games are hard to do and significant chunks of the market don't want them. Most action movies are aimed at 16-30 year old males for example. Sure some women like them but the overwhelming market for such fare is 16-30 year old males.
The console market being focused on men (the casual game market has a huge female audience but the article isn't about that) is because traditionally only males could get away with sitting inside all day playing video games due to social reasons. Most content producers aren't in the business of social change so they just aimed their product at the market as it was.
Now days young women spend as much time playing Bedazzled or Farmville as young men do playing Call of Duty. So we will increasingly see AAA console titles that are aimed at a female audience (which is good for all of us, as it means games will get more sophisticated stories and less retarded characters).
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Deciphering the marketing speak: “All our game have scantly clad women, guns, and blood, we need to make games for women with puppy’s,unicorns and rainbows”.
It’s the same bullshit targeted marketing you will find in all industry’s, Most women I have known, got in to gaming because of there boyfriends/husbands, when alone form other females, and most enjoy so called boys-games.
It’s the same with men, I started watching Gilmore Girls and Army Wives because of a girlfriend , Yet I would never crack open a beer and start taking about it with my mates.
When you get down to it and have a deep look at so called male-thing and female-thing, you will find they actually have a broad appeal it is just skewed by marketing and gender role ignorance.
We'll write games for women, as soon as they tell us what they want - be specific, say what you want, not just that what we offered isn't it!
We just released a new game, called Super Bride and Groom, and focused very heavily on making sure that it would appeal to both men and women. With a two-person team made up of a male programmer and a female designer, we had insight from both angles. We're starting small, with just a Flash game, but do intend to include women in console games, if not cater to them specifically, without dumbing down the content like many "girl games" do.
There's a trick here that's creating the illusion that women aren't interested, and that trick is that the goalposts for what makes a "girl-friendly" game are moving. When Pong came out, there was a very extreme gender bias in anything related to technology or computers, and as such, the average woman didn't feel comfortable stepping into something so clandestinely electronic. It wasn't that there was a major stigma associated with it, but merely that the subconscious sensation of being a fish out of water became extremely unpleasant. In gaming today, this is still a problem for a large portion of women, though fortunately more and more are being raised on excellent titles like the Portal series (which has, of course, been discussed to death) that not only fail to propagate the chauvinism (which the eternally popular puzzle games also do), but present women in a variety of roles with meaningful emotions.
Still, the proximity in genre and cultural context to some of the worst offenders (Duke Nukem and Lara Croft come to mind, but even military games like MW2's single-player campaign are so Saxton-Hale-grade manly it makes me physically ill) has a powerful dampening effect: the prolonged success and influence of such games still underscore the message "you are an outsider here," and that's something that today's teenagers are really the first to make a stand against, en masse. Every Zoey (L4D) and Samus helps push against this... but Valve, why do you still only have one girl per L4D game? All it takes is equal representation. We figured this out in academia; heck, the engineering department at my university now has a 20% female undergraduate population. It's not as hard as it may seem at first.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
You mean like they had to change all the sports to tailor them for women?
Couldn't judge from the tone of your post, but was that a statement or a counter. If the latter, see: womens hockey.
No, maybe women aren't into gaming because there are better things to do (and I say this as a dedicated gamer).
That kind of goes along the steriotype that most women are at most casual gamers, and even if there were tailored games, they would have no interest. This could very well be true, but I don't think we've seen enough serious titles aimed at women to make a judgement. Would be if all movies were either chick flicks or fluff comedies, as a guy I would probably make the same kind of "I have better things to do" statement.
Also, many of the best-known games are openly hostile to women. People are surprised that women aren't rushing to play Duke Nukem Forever?
Would say many, but not most. Duke Nukem is kind of an extreme example. Either way this is symptom of games either being targetted at everyone (casual games mainly) or guys.
Yup. If 50% of gamers are women, then obviously the market is pretty optimal right now.
Sure, you could put farmsville on PC with HD graphics, but....would that work? The platform (facebook) as has much to do with it than the game. That's why "primarly guy" populated discussion forums will have "console wars".
Then you have hybrids. I'm pretty sure Terraria will appeal as much to women than it will to men. If there's less women, it is probably only because Steam markets mostly to guys, and little more.
As an employee at Zynga, I can tell you there are TONS of female gamers out there. They just aren't playing the same games you dudes are....
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
I know my sister gets serieus omgwtfbbq reactions when she mentions she's off to a lan party with some friends to play (among other things) Unreal Tournament.
THIS is a big part of the problem too. A story about this just showed up on Fark recently:
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2011/06/20/fat-ugly-or-slutty/ is a very good read.
When I was first shown the offensive messages that my friend Jaspir received, I laughed. Their crudeness was so hilariously over-the-top that it was nothing short of ridiculous. I had been told many times by people I know and trust that online games are a wild and untamed jungle, with pictures of genitalia hiding around every corner. But it wasn’t until I was actually shown the messages that I really understood. Something finally clicked.
I thought I was alone in this misunderstanding. I figured every gamer must have already known how horrible the world of multiplayer gaming was, and that I’d only missed it because I don’t play online all that much. I figured the lewd content and insults were accepted by everyone as a hazard of the hobby – it’s just trashtalk, right?
So, when my friends and I started Fat, Ugly or Slutty to collect examples of this rude banter we didn’t think it would shock anyone. We wanted to gather all this horribleness in one place and have a chuckle about how stupid and ridiculous it was; the FailBlog of gaming.
http://fatuglyorslutty.com/
Some girls take that a bit more personal than others and if you start acting like that there's a good chance they won't come back.
Maybe the women change. Would the researchers like Second Life: Barbie Edition to suite the womens needs?
Its like womens universities, womens computer courses etc? Womens games?
I think that there have never been much "men specific games" (lets exclude Strip Poker on the Commodore64 here...)
There has been an education that tell women no to play certain games.
The free market is supposed to solve issues like this on it's own. Why don't a bunch of women get together and start their own gaming company then? They could call it Amazon. Errr, AmazonGames. .... Okay, forget Amazon, but they could have their own company and write games that they would like. Why do "we" have to write games for "them"?
I can't read past page 2 of the actual paper, and the article is a little bit vague, but are they saying that 50% of people who PLAY games are women, or that 50% of the time played is played by women? Because if it's the latter, then you're totally correct, if it's the former, then they may have a point about untapped markets.
For example - I'm a female, and I would say I am a gamer, although I play one game primarily - three guesses what that might be (not the sims) - and sometimes I play little puzzle/flash games, but it's rare that I would go out and pick up a new game 'cause I just don't care about most of them. I'm not opposed to the IDEA of buying games, so it's not a social barrier that needs to be overcome. If there is a signficant population like that then that might be considered as an untapped market.
...no two people are not on fire.
"Next they'll tell us that women are being forced to play games against their will."
I, for one, find the idea vaguely arousing.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I think it's a matter of recognizing a hole, a niche, that could be profitable to fill. Let's start with a premise. Men and women are different. Some of it is biological, some of it is cultural, and all of it varies from individual to individual; but in a broad, sweeping, sense men and women are different. Now let's instantiate that presence. Movies are made for three primary types of audiences (we'll ignore kid movies or specialty movies for now): men, women, or both. Don't get me wrong, plenty of girls like a kick and smash movie, at least occasionally. Plenty of guys can enjoy a check flick, at least occasionally. Mostly, though, those genres are made for one sex or the other, with the understanding that overlap will occur. Most more general comedy/drama type films are made to appeal to both audiences.
Video games are right now in a place where they're making mostly "Guy games" and "broad appeal" games. Most women enjoy the broad appeal games, and occasionally they'll enjoy a "guy game". My wife loves a good kick and smash movie every so often, and she also enjoys blowing away aliens every so often. Think of the money to be made if you could be the one to come up with the first "chick flicks" of the video games industry though. It doesn't mean women would stop liking general appeal or action focused games, any more than every woman loves chick flicks or hates action movies.
It would be a huge impact on the industry, potentially bringing in new female gamers and selling hugely to existing female gaming population. And as a guy who likes the occasional chick flick, I'd probably play it too.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
"...while the female audience in gaming has grown, games tailored to their needs and preferences continue to go missing."
Uh, what the hell is this all about? Tailored to "their needs"? They act like women gamers have 3 arms instead of two. It's a game, and usually within gaming revolves around FPS gaming. "Headshots" are not "tailored" towards any gender...what, do they find that women gamers prefer more pink on the battlefield? (Yes, I know that sounds sexist, but so is the comment in TFA)
Give me a break. You either like the game well enough to play it, or you don't. Gender should have nothing to do with it. This likely has more to do with advertising within games than the game itself. Leave it to the marketeers to try and "tune" something that doesn't need tuning for the sake of doubleclick.
Most "women's sports" are exactly like their male counterparts. Same rules. Occasionally, like with basketball, they lower the basket and change other dimensions to accommodate smaller sizes.
But the point is: women play the same games, in sports, as men. Because those sports aren't openly hostile toward women.
On the other hand, you're not going to see a lot of women enjoying slapping boobs, degrading strippers and pissing into urinals like in Duke Nukem Forever.
It's also one of the most famous games ever. It's emblematic of what "computer gaming" has been. If you look at the other top games, you'll find other examples.
You know what my daughter likes to play? Terraria, Diablo, adventure/action games. If she saw DNF she'd probably leave a wake of destruction that would include a computer going through a window. She's not quite a riot grrl, but she doesn't like being insulted. Many current video games are insulting. Think Bayonetta. You think women came up with that character and her impressive decolletage, skin tight tights and porn-star glasses? That's what today's game designer would say is a "game for women because it empowers girls". This is something only a man without daughters would say.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Beyond Good & Evil's protagonist is a female journalist named Jade. The Portal series also features a female protagonist. I don't think that many games these days are overly-masculine; at least none that I play. I think this "problem" is being blown out of proportion. If there were a significant market in making "feminine" games, game publishers would be pushing money into it. Either female gamers are largely satisfied with the current market offerings, or games designed for females aren't selling well, it seems to me.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Frankly i think it's more the culture of the comments on this slashdot entry that needs to change. We have a wide diversity of games both good and bad, and yes it is a pity that so much of the marketing drives women away from really brilliant gaming experiences but to assume that women don't find anything in Triple-A titles is nonsense. Sure we may be a minority but I think the real point driven home by the research is that we are less of a minority then people think. Probably because there's no obvious way to tell a gamer's gender nor measure if a girl is buying a game for themselves or someone else with the 'oh it's for her boyfriend assumption'. Societies problem seems to be that girls don't exist unless they're girly? According to most of the replies here it's a big deal for females to be gamers, why else would there be such a polarized reaction? Personally the look of the industry seems very divided atm between 'casual' and quality games. The last decade has been groundbreaking for better storytelling and gameplay that crosses the gender divide. Sure we have 'backwards' titles like Duke Nukem Forever (which having been a fan of Duke I II and 3D I have mixed feelings about certain elements) but the overall growth has been to improve the status of female characters in games which thanks to Chell, Lara Croft etc.etc. there's a lot of hope for more great female leads and a ever growing female market share both in the industry and gamers alike as Gaming grows up and becomes more acceptable.
A lot of games show women as scantly clad objects with big breasts and bubbly butts, but I'd be disturbed to play a game where the male character has a crotch bulge the size of a basketball and a bazillioon abs.
Of course there are tons of games that don't objectify women. Heavy Rain, the female characters look down to earth.
It's really all subjective.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Every Zoey (L4D) and Samus helps push against this... but Valve, why do you still only have one girl per L4D game? All it takes is equal representation. We figured this out in academia; heck, the engineering department at my university now has a 20% female undergraduate population. It's not as hard as it may seem at first.
You mention L4D, which has a 25% female cast, and compare it to your engineering department with a 20% female undergrad population in an attempt to show that Valve needs to learn equal representation. I'd make a joke about your math skills, but I think it would be inappropriate for this conversation...
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Okay, that sounded dirty but it's true. And quite frankly, they're good at it and girls who are good at FPS are super hot.
...that ignoring women was the point of gaming?
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Sounds like the words of a single guy.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
No kidding. What are they suggesting, that they should make cooking and cleaning games? Obviously women are enjoying the games they play.
It's also one of the most famous games ever.
It was also from a different time period (well, kinda). Reading reviews of duke nukem forever, most people (guys included) seem to agree that the sexist nature of the duke nukem series, while cool and taboo at the time (when most of us were teenagers at a time when for most guys swear words were cool), seems out of place in the current culture. Maybe this is an encouraging sign?
Think Bayonetta. You think women came up with that character and her impressive decolletage, skin tight tights and porn-star glasses?
As I recall this came out of Japan, where cultural views towards women are actually kinda scary for a fairly advanced culture.
I know plenty of girls who enjoy games that people would probably label as "guy" games.
To this day the best person I know at FPS games is a chick, and oh man, it is SO much fun to listen to guys having their egos crushed online.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Except that your premise is wrong.
from TFA:
"Market representation for women has grown to 50 percent overall, with console use rising significantly in the past two years"
Half the people who play games are girls, they're not forced to play them, since games are for fun they're playing them to have fun and given that as many women as men choose to play these games to have fun it would suggest that they're already catering to real women just as well as to men.
You've been conned just as the writer of the article intended.
you were convinced that there's some kind of need that isn't being fulfilled when it really is.
Interpret sells its services to game publishers so they have an interest in convincing you that their services are needed when they really aren't.
It's no fun guessing WoW after you tell us it's not The Sims or Farmville.
Perhaps you are unaware that many colleges have had to cut a significant number of men's sports to meet Title IX requirements because they could not get enough women interested in playing sports to match the number of men in their men's sports programs. That is, a smaller percentage of college women have an interest in playing college sports than the percentage of college men with such an interest.
So, it is pretty clear that women's entertainment interests are significantly different than men's. I am a fairly good judge of the types of movies and books that women will like and could with some effort lay out the elements to put into one of either if one's goal is to appeal to women. I have a much harder time imagining how those elements can be used to create a video game. That is not to say that it cannot be done, just that I have trouble seeing how to make a game out of those elements (although SIMS seems to be the right approach).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
People are surprised that women aren't rushing to play Duke Nukem Forever?
I think that, at this point, people would be surprised if ANYONE was rushing to play DNF...
Oh yeah, forgot about portal. Doesn't help that she doesn't really talk. I also think this story is a heap of crap. The Wii era seems to have opened up gaming to a much wider audience, in terms of both age and gender.
which is totally what she said
Think Bayonetta. You think women came up with that character and her impressive decolletage, skin tight tights and porn-star glasses? That's what today's game designer would say is a "game for women because it empowers girls".
Someone, I think it might have been "Game Overthinker" did a pretty interesting "analysis" on Bayonetta that seemed pretty spot on to me, and it made her a less-than-stellar example.
You might want to take a look: TGO Ep 32
I wouldn't want to discount the disparity of post-collegiate professional opportunities in this discussion, since a pretty large number of college sports participants aren't doing it just for entertainment.
More to the point, you're arguing from the point that's being made. Why would you consider yourself a good measure for what female gamers would like to see in a game, rather than finding some female gamers to help you design it? Alternately, if the field did more to actively court female designers and programmers, elements that a broad swath of female gamers would like will be more likely to appear in games (or things that actively drive them away will be less likely to appear).
Virg
It's true that programming is male dominated, but I can't fathom why it is. The world's very first programmer, Lady Lovelace, was a woman. The first compiler was written by a woman.
Free Martian Whores!
That's why the population of female FPS players appear so low -- they don't want the men to know they're women. I'm clicking the "no bonus" boxes because this is a tad redundant (modding myself down so to speak), but I had a populat Quake site and got a lot of mail because of it. I'd say roughly half of my respondants were women, and a LOT of them expressed that to me.
Remember the Blue's News parody called Yello There? Kneel Harriot's real name was Janet.
Free Martian Whores!
I was just going to moderate the GB poster, but instead i think i shall point out that you seem to be dead set on continuing the original fallacy.
"Many people use X" does not equate to "X is designed optimally for those people."
Do you think if there were no chick flicks that women would just stop going to movies? No, they'd still go to the "broad appeal" movies and a few of the "guy" movies so they'd still be movie consumers, but it's quite likely that total movie revenues would be less. Would women still read if there were no romance novels? Sure they would. Would the publishing industry be missing out on a huge chunk of income without that genre? Definitely! And the recent explosion of the paranormal romance sub-genre shows that there was a need unaddressed by the market, even though most of those people were probably already buying books before that point.
Really this is the best kind of marketing research. They've identified a large group of people who are _already_ customers whose desires they feel can be better addressed. Would you be equally outraged if SyFy did some market research which determined "Our primary audience are geeks who like high quality science fiction television series. Perhaps we should produce some more of those"? After all, by your argument SyFy shouldn't do anything like that because those people are _already_ watching, therefore their needs are already met, right? The possibility that those people are just desperate for any kind of Science Fiction and will settle for the crap that's currently on SyFy because there's not much else available elsewhere doesn't bear consideration does it?
"We've already got the customers, so we don't need to do anything to improve our product/services" is pretty much the antithesis of progress, and it would surprise me to see that attitude on Slashdot if it were being expressed about almost any other topic, but since we're talking about women getting into something that's been traditionally male dominated i guess that's par for the course?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Hell, I was just commenting the other day that I would love to play an RPG based on the old Arnette Lamb book "Maiden of Inverness." A 10 year old song of a blacksmith is engaged to an 8 year old Scottish princess, and must train hard and become a clan leader to eventually claim his bride and the crown of the highlands. Great narrative, great backbones for an RPG, and since it's a romance novel, all the escapism and fantasy a woman could want.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I wouldn't want to discount the disparity of post-collegiate professional opportunities in this discussion, since a pretty large number of college sports participants aren't doing it just for entertainment.
The sports being cut are things like men's crew. Exactly what post-collegiate professional opportunities are there for someone who rows on a crew team in college? The schools I am talking about are cutting men's sports because,even with offering scholarships to women athletes, they are having trouble finding as many women interested in participating in college sports as men who are interested in participating without the incentive of a scholarship.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Wow. You should have thought twice before posting.
Comparing a statistic that describes the dynamics and personal decisions of hundreds if not thousands of people to the presence of a token character is not even slightly equatable. I assume you haven't taken a second-year statistics course.
Further, the targets are different and not necessarily causally linked. The fraction of women with the potential to enjoy engineering is not the same question as the fraction of women interested in gaming, which TFS argues is about the same as the number of men; even if the sheer numbers are approximately comparable, that doesn't even support the idea that they're identical sets.
Further still, you're comparing fractions of representation to fractions of audience, which is a little like tying your own shoelaces together and then tripping over them. Universities have been improving the sex ratio in STEM programs primarily through enhanced representation of women in promotional materials and cultural portrayals of their disciplines. Because the cultural image the institutions put forth is woman-friendly, we're not turned off at the front door, and because the staff and faculty within are conscious of their organizations' intended office culture (typically canonized in policy), they themselves make an effort to be more egalitarian.
No mandate or attitude for such reform exists in the commercial world, where products live and die based on sales, even though they carry with them potentially powerful cultural impact. As a result, the games industry has a long-standing habit of staying within the boundaries it's comfortable with, lest they alienate what they perceive to be their core audience—as it often occurs in these sorts of cases, one dollar sign is making a judgment about another dollar sign's value system, and screwing over a third.
Going back to picking on Valve: only one in five special infected in the original L4D was female, and you couldn't even play her in Versus. The amount of effort that would have been required to make the Hunter, Smoker and Boomer be gender-neutral would have been trivial compared to the rest of the game.
Relatedly, and continuing to pick on Valve, players have been working for years now to create workable female models for TF2—and there's still been precious little interest from Mann Co. Even though the gender bias is part of the game's atmosphere, a significant portion of the fanbase feels slighted by it. This seems to be a stumbling block outside of extreme fantasy and science fiction; sometimes authenticity needs to be sacrificed in favour of modern moral values. Just ask Benjamin Sisko.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
That's ridiculous. For instance, has anyone seen Duke Nukem Forever? Plenty of women in there.
What are we talking about, again?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
That's the thing...WTF do women want in gaming ?
Hell, we can't for the most part figure out what the the fuck they want in real life....much less what to put in a game that would entice them to buy and play.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I just knew someone was going to mention BG&E and Portal. Do you know how I knew that? Because there just aren't that many games with female protagonists that you could've mentioned. The problem isn't overstated at all.
I think this "problem" is being blown out of proportion. If there were a significant market in making "feminine" games, game publishers would be pushing money into it.
Most game developers aren't interested in anything more than churning out identikit sequels these days, and they seem to have the same viewpoint as you - if it was worth catering to female gamer, someone else would already have done it. Also, female is not the same as "feminine", and neither means "OMG pink!" - most previous attempts to target female gamers have spectacularly failed to realise this.
Alternately, if the field did more to actively court female designers and programmers, elements that a broad swath of female gamers would like will be more likely to appear in games (or things that actively drive them away will be less likely to appear).
This isn't the 40's. While there is still some sexism, I think "the field" is plenty open to women developers. Heck, I see no boundry preventing an entire company of women developers established for the sole purpose of building a non-sexist female oriented game.
The fact that you don't hear about this happening to me indicates either:
- There really isn't a substantial non-casual gaming interest in the female population
- Been tried and failed because of the first option
- Something about software development is a huge turn off for women
- I'm not paying attention and the industry is extremely sexist.
- I'm not paying attention and there is actually a huge female gaming genre
Ah yes, we hear this same idiotic argument all the time with why all characters need to be black, jewish, muslim, etc. Do you hear guys sit around bitching when the main character in a game is a girl? No. But girls like you have been raised over the last few decades to think that the sun shines out of your ass and that the world should bend to your will because you have a pair of tits (quality of said tits being irrelevant to your belief that you are superior to anything with a penis).
You specifically bashed military games like MW2 - guess what? In the REAL FUCKING WORLD the people doing that stuff are *wait for it*..........MEN - hence why they use MEN as the main characters. If you want a game where the main character is a girl and she shoots all the "evil males" or whatever, make it your damn self instead of demanding that the rest of the world change to fit your delusional idea of reality.
As for L4D? Even 25% of survivors being female is probably pushing the bounds of reality pretty hard..........yes, some girls are badass and can take care of themselves in a life or death situation - however, most can't as they're too busy crying like a two year old because they saw a mouse. Do you really think a girl like that is going to have what it takes to cut apart people (even if they're technically already dead)?
I really don't give a fuck if I get modded down for this. You thinking that everything should be focused on what you want is so fucking narcissistic and stereotypical of the self-absorbed bitches running rampant these days that it makes me want to punch something (or someone).
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
That depends what you're looking for in your relationship with your avatar I suppose.
which is totally what she said
I wonder what differences are contained in the term "gamer" when we're talking of gender differences. Are most women "gamers" in the same sense of how men use the term?
My girlfriend has picked up a bit of gaming from me, she even tried WoW* for a couple months. She mostly sticks to causal type games, though, like Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, and Peggle. She gets more use out of the Wii than me too, but mostly plays games like Trauma Center (though she did enjoy No More Heroes a bit more than me). For example her latest obsession is Kirby's Epic Yarn. If this was my obsession I wouldn't even call myself a gamer.
When, in a masculine sense, we say "gamer" we generally mean someone who plays the so-called "hardcore", action genre. With men, playing Farmville doesn't make you a "gamer". Is this term used the same way by women? If not, the comparison makes very little sense. Do most women WANT to play Halo XII, or DNF? (As a male, I sure as hell don't). If we made the action genre 100% "woman friendly", would women flock to it?
I'm not being sexist. With my girlfriend I've noticed that a large part of our gaming differences come from past experiences. She was raised to play with dolls, I was given a C64 and an Atari. She never picked up the knowledge of the various given schemes for gaming, nor the very specific dexterity needed. Thus she never gets to really play, since the difficulty curve is pretty high for her, whereas I've been doing it for 30 years.
*actually, and surprisingly, WoW has a rather large female audience. Some of my old guilds, when I used to play, were around 40-45% female. My friends list was almost representative of the actual gender makeup. Though often there was uncomfortable moments in instances and raids when pick-up members started lashing out with juvenile sexism, and the daily "omg yer a gurl" comments when people hopped on vent. Actually most of the MMOs I've played have had a rather high female component, it might be that the social aspects help.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
This is actually pretty true. Part of catering to my needs as a female gamer, is - let me save any freaking time I want and don't make me replay a huge section when I reload. Because the darn oven buzzer is going off and I'm 30 mins from a save point.
Well there's a problem with that. As someone who's browsed many profiles on dating sites over the last few years, I've realized something that I'd never thought about before - most girls don't have hobbies. Seeing as how essentially EVERY guy has at least one hobby, I never thought that there were people who essentially did NOTHING with their free time. However, if you start really asking girls what they like to do it's usually something like "party / shopping / get drunk / go clubbing / tanning". Is every girl like this? No, but well over 50% are. If a girl isn't interested in having hobbies PERIOD, how can you try to claim that she's a potential for a hobby that's historically been looked down on by the majority of people (at least those out of college) in both genders?
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
As a female gamer who plays the so called 'hard core' games.... I don't see a huge gap in how games appeal to men and women. Other than the turd of the new Duke Nukem game there is a really great selection out there (and I was a fan of DN3d. Used to create levels for it). A few companies are really getting it right like BioWare. Mass Effect and Dragon Age both let you play a female character with a fleshed out story and applicable love interests. I wish more games were like that. For example, Rockstar could do more to let me play a female character like in Red Dead Redemption and the game I'm currently playing - LA Noire.
Secondly, I want to be able to save any time I freaking want. And don't make me re-play a big section just because I had to exit to do something more important. Having to reach a 'save point' is nonsense and kills my fun really quickly.
Also, don't know if this is a girl thing or not... but I like more social interaction with NPCs in the game. Like in Dragon Age for example it's very good. In Oblivion however... I get kind of lonely pretty quickly. The lone wolf adventurer gets old after 40+ hours.
That reminds me, I want to finish Oblivion before Skyrim comes out. But I have yet another repetitive oblivion gate to close. Gaaah. There's such a thing as a game being too long.
My, nearly, car analogy:
I drive on the freeway every day to work. So does that mean that the free was is the best way to get to work? It must be since I use it every day.
No, the most optimal route to work would be a direct road going straight from my drive way to the parking lot at work. This road doesn't exist yet I want to drive to work so I take the freeway.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I thought they'd like this game I made, but apparently, she's angry and I know what I did wrong. Will somebody tell me what that means?
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
IIRC, Admiral Hopper was just as wired as the Professor, too.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
What the hell are you talking about 50% of girls don't have hobbies? Your ass must be incredibly sore after pulling that one out.
I'm a woman, I know many women, I have known many women throughout my life, and I honestly cannot think of one woman over the age of 5 who legitimately does not have a hobby of some sort or another.
And actually, as someone who has perused a few dating sites, I can safely say (at least as safely as you could) that at least 50% of men don't have hobbies unless you count beer pong or drinking natty life with their bros.
Maybe it isn't that people don't have hobbies, but that people on dating sites who are trying to attract people are just presenting an image of themselves as being all about fun etc. rather than "geeky" things like hobbies. Young people especially. They are looking to hook up and have fun, in most cases, not find a soul mate. If you wanna get drunk and party with random people, why would you bother talking about your real interests?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Judging by reviews, most people don't want to play DNF.
Wow, reading through these comments is pretty upsetting. Lot of unwarranted, borderline misogynistic ranting. No reason to feel threatened, guys. Girls just wanna have fun.
Anyway, some observations about how women are portrayed in games:
Male protagonists dominate the top games, while female protagonists are primarily defined by their sex appeal (Lara Croft, Bayonetta, any female from Street Fighter) or are somewhat masculine themselves (Mass Effect's female Shepard, Samus Aran before she strips). In addition, many respectable female characters are relegated to sidekick status (Alyx Vance from HL2, Meryl from Metal Gear Solid) or become emotionally-wrecked villains themselves (GLaDOS, Aribeth from NWN).
For every non-mute (Sorry Chell), non-overtly sexualized, emotionally resilient lead female character, like April (Longest Journey) or Jade (Beyond Good & Evil), I can think of half a dozen females who always need rescuing by the boys: Princess Peach, Princess Zelda, Yorda (ICO), the Duke Nukem girls, and so on...
Based purely on personal anecdotes, most real-life girls I know gravitate toward games like the Sims, Oblivion, or World of Warcraft (PvE). Social chatting software like IMVU are popular among women too. I think in these kinds of games, they can define their own characters and their own place in the game world. They seem to like creating, customizing, and exploring, while approaching the content at their own pace.
That's not to say no women enjoy pressure-driven games like WoW (PvP), Starcraft, or Left 4 Dead--I remember at least 3 girls kicked my ass in separate L4D Versus matches--but the ratio of fiercely competitive girl gamers to guy gamers isn't very high, in my experience.
If developers want to attract more women playing games, I think they need to develop more characters that women want to play or characters that women can identify with. To do that, I would suggest hiring more female developers, writers, and play-testers. But that's a risky business move, and in this climate of conservative remakes and shooter clones, I don't see it happening anytime soon.
You started with a legitimate question and then followed with bullshit.
What do women want in games? The answer is the same as what men want in games. Different things for different women and satisfying one can often mean offending another.
What is a "women" game anyway. Maybe the real sexist issue is our preconceived idea of what things you're suppose to enjoy according to your gender.
No mater what we define gamer as, I'm pretty sure that this marketing evaluation labels gamer as "One who buys games" and not caring in the least about how they play them.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
If it were any lower than 50% I might agree with you but if there was a massive need going unmet you'd expect some kind of difference, 40%, 45% some kind of impact.
If the movies didn't appeal to women as much as men you'd expect to see less women than men going to the movies. if books didn't appeal to women as much as men then you'd expect less books to be bought be women.
now there can still be holes in the market or you can manufacture them by tying things in with other media like how true blood and twilight dragged in more customers by going after traditional consumers of other media but that works with both sexes.
but no.
dismiss it and make a snide little remark implying I'm sexist for pointing out that a company is simply trying to convince people their worthless services are more valuable than they really are.
The point you seem willfully blind to is that gaming is not male dominated because 50% of the gamers are already female.
Well, my wife spends more time gaming than I do, but it's just the same goddamn hidden-object-games from shockwave.com reskinned in a new theme each time.
She'll also play diner dash clones.
She can't play games that involve reflexes, essentially any kind of jumping is unacceptable. Nothing involving shooting, b/c FPS/TPS disorients her. Nothing too complicated, and nothing too stressful either.
This left options like Plants vs. Zombies, Elite Beat Agents, some RPGs, and the like. It's not impossible, just really damned hard to find games she'll play. I don't know what kind of games should be made to appeal to female gamers. My wife honestly doesn't know either, but at least she's still enjoying her HOG games.
and methodology.
""For instance, they are much more likely to prefer to play solo than men, and play games for less competitive and more narrative- and character-driven reasons."
This flys in the face of other reports, and my personal experience; granted my person experience may be self selecting and/or biased.
My daughter and her friends really seem to enjoy gaming with each other; certainly more then my son. When she finds a new game, almost the fist thing she does is figure out how to connect with other people.
Now that I think of it, almost every guild I've been in was being run by women.
Again, I would love to see the data.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is just idiotic. "FPS and strategy games rarely interest girls" and this is based on?
I looked at my friends of the female variety on http://www.trueachievements.com/ and of the 661 games they had and more importantly spent a lot of time with, there were all sorts of titles from Civilization Revolution to Dynasty Warriors and Fallout/Bioshock/Gears/Borderlands/Zombie games galore. I did notice a far wider variety of games in their collections than I'd see in a typical guys collection but no apparent avoidance of any particular genre. My gf's favourite game is Bioshock and owns 30% FPS 55% RPG/Adventure 15% Mario titles. Obviously this isn't scientific data (nor is the OP's claim of 50% female gamers).
People play games as a social outlet and as a way of experiencing a good story, those are the games that are successful no matter what the gender.
I think that, at this point, people would be surprised if ANYONE was rushing to play DNF...
I saw it on the store shelves this weekend. I thought, for Father's Day, I might get it for myself.
But I don't have the cash for it right now. And if there's one thing that game has taught me, it's patience. Maybe I'll get it next year.
No mater what we define gamer as, I'm pretty sure that this marketing evaluation labels gamer as "One who buys games" and not caring in the least about how they play them.
You are correct on a basic level, but it would be insane for the industry not to divide games up into different classes and types, with detailed demographics for each. All "drivers" are people who drive cars, but the statistics for such would be completely worthless from an industry, and marketing, standpoint. the demographic who drive 100k+ luxury cars are different than the people who drive cheap economy cars, which is different from the crowd looking for hybrid/electric cars. Having these categories makes it useful, know who wants it, and what you need to do to expand your potential customer base, Grouping all "gamers" together is similarly worthless.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
touche!
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
So, does that mean you have no desire every to be part of a community, or do you shun them because of they way you've been treated?
I"m in a Clan that pretty much wouldn't tolerate that crap.
http://www.clan-ai.com/main.php
I wonder how well a 'gender focus' option to a game would work out.
I like Men. Women, Either, None
So the eye candy and gender of characters could change.
Also A 'Sexy' option. Pulp Fantasy(Everyone has a bear nice chest), Scantly, Imply sexy through clothing, Realistic. Armored to the chin, nothing exposed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"casual solo player with rare 5 man instance runs."
Giggity!
" "rape that priest and we give it the pally into his a***" "
Giggity.
Her problem is people. There are plenty of perfectly good groups who don't tolerate that. IT's pretty trivial to find them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm sorry, but there's no "let's bash the evil x" going on here, where x is whatever pleases the audience. I have no interest in fighting with your straw ad hominems. I realise that you probably don't even know how much of your post is flamebait, so I'll try to step around it entirely. Maybe something will get through to you.
People enjoy playing games where they can closely identify with the characters. Games are already fantasies and lack realism in all sorts of other ways; where not dramatically or technically infeasible, there are lots of cases where giving the players a choice in their self-representation would do more to benefit marketability than hinder artistic value. A lot of games deal with this problem successfully without turning into Second Life.
There's no such thing as a gamer who doesn't empathise with his or her avatar within the game. This isn't vanity in the sense of Narcissus sitting in front of a mirror all day, but part of the experience and what makes video games unique. Being Duke Nukem makes you feel powerful and unrestricted; being Chell makes you feel tenacious and irritated; being Gordon Freeman makes you feel desperate but ingenuitive. Try as we might, gender is still a very strong dividing line in our world—much moreso than skin colour or cultural heritage—and as such, it has a powerful dampening effect on this empathetic process.
In the hypothetical end-game of feminism, this dividing line is virtually invisible—but then, so are the stereotypes that caused the problem in the first place. These aren't new arguments.
I didn't set out with the intention of saying that MW2 needs to be more girl-friendly, by the way; merely that testosterone-drenched games currently dominate the market, and without a counterbalance, it's easy to see the genre of FPSes as a whole as a boy's club.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
This is quite possibly the best example of Privilege Obliviousness / Denial I've seen in a while. Not sure if troll..
'Most' 'girls' (note the pairing of MEN with girls) 'cry like 2-year-olds' when seeing a mouse because society has stamped that stereotype into their malleable little heads since birth. Go somewhere with a less comfortable lifestyle where people still have to deal with the ugly realities of life and tell me how many women you see crying like children on seeing a rodent. Then come back here and tell me it's inherent to all women.
And then if you're still looking for someone to punch, come give me a try, asswipe. I may be a 'narcissistic self-absorbed bitch' but I work hard on my physical fitness and from the tone of your post you sound like squishy basement-dwelling material to me.
Think you have to ask a more basic question. Do women want gaming? Gaming as we know it? I'm not talking just computer games, but sports, races, board games such as chess, and pretty much any kind of competition with clear rules and "fairness". Sure, some will play. They'll even get into some games and really enjoy them, and get very good at them. But we never see as many women playing anything.
Gaming is by its nature competitive in a very direct way, and this is not how women go through life. Yes, they compete. But the style and substance of their competitions is different. They can't physically compete with men, so they don't. For instance, how can you have a fair weight lifting contest between both sexes? You can't, any more than you could have a fair contest between a group of 20 somethings and a group of octogenarians. In other sorts of contests in which the girls can show up the boys, they often prefer not to. Some men are very bad sports about being beat by women, so much so that "winning" is actually rather risky for the girls. In typical games, the goal or victory conditions are really very arbitrary and one dimensional. The ultimate in one dimensionality is the concept of "victory points", or just points, capped with ladder style playoffs in which only one person or team can win. Why do we like such championships so? Why this pressure to scrap the current college football bowl system in favor of a more definitive championship? Why are we so obsessed with anointing someone or some group as the very best? Why does a silver medal, a red ribbon, not feel like a great accomplishment? Even in games that have many directions and unrelated goals, such as an RPG, the designers (men, of course) couldn't resist building in a very linear point based system of advancement, in these cases, "leveling". Money can serve as another goal, but it is still a very rigorous, easily comparable measure. These goals are just not important to the women, or are even to be avoided as possibly dangerous.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Not really...although I did say it forcefully with a couple of explicatives.
But from my findings over the years with many women...and when talking to many other men over the years...we all pretty much come up with the fact that despite both sexes being human, and having the same base needs (food, air, water, etc)...when it comes to the brain and thought patterns and behavior and reactions to social situation...women are completely and totally different than men.
Women just do NOT share the same though processes as men do.
The main one that fascinates me, is woman's tendency for backwards rationalization.
She'll go back tracing why she did something, or reacted to a situation...and basically change her reality of the situation to fit her needs.
Say she goes out and sleeps with a guy that picks her up...the girl will often rationalize sex with a this man on the first night based on his ease with women, and the accidentally nature of it all, or she was 'tipsy', when in reality she wanted it as much as he did, but had to convince herself and her social circle that she is âoenot that easyâ, as least most of the time.
That last part in particular.
She will often go back...rationalizing her actions, and will actually often change her beliefs on what actually transpired through the past....and believe it as if it really happened.
Sure men and women have this trait, but men not nearly as so as women who use it on a seemingly constant basis.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The point being, women are like 3 year kids. They don't like it when you tell them what to do and what not to do, so you use psychology to deliver your message subtly and non-directly. Just don't make it too obvious.
Wow this guy is taking a lot of hate for saying something that is frankly true. I hate the knee-jerk reactions of people calling him a troll. A REAL counter is that it is not only women who behave like 3 year olds (a claim he didn't make anyway).
The average man, like the average woman do behave like kids in that they don't like it when you tell them what to do. And yes, women like dresses and taking care of stuff, and the large collection of restaurant themed mini games, favored mainly by women, do suggest they like the kitchen.
I think the problem is the stigma we associate to gender preferences and the way we cope with it.
Women love for fashion is seen as shallow and wasteful, as is men love for sex, sports and violence. Both genders react by pointing out exceptions, which is okay since exceptions do exist and need to be pointed out, but men also cope by calling critics prude and spoilsports; a line of defense I've never seen used to defend fashion games.
In addition, women who love the kitchen are seen as perpetuating the subjugation of all women, which is taken as treason, an accusation unknown to most men, fans of Duke Nukem not withstanding.
But... the future refused to change.
Pogo seems to be doing swimmingly by appealing to women.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
military games like MW2's single-player campaign are so Saxton-Hale-grade manly it makes me physically ill
Manliness makes you physically ill but it's men who are sexist. Just golden.
But... the future refused to change.
However, does that percentage hold for every sector of gaming? For example, are 50% of console gamers women? It might be that there are certain areas where the desires of female gamers are being met abundantly, but other areas where they are not.
I did, however, think this was funny:
"Women not only exhibit different gaming behaviors than men, but also express attitudes about gaming that are dissimilar to those of their male counterparts," said Courtney Johnson, analyst for Intrepret. "For instance, they are much more likely to prefer to play solo than men, and play games for less competitive and more narrative- and character-driven reasons. "
That's exactly the sort of game I like, and I don't feel that my needs aren't met. In fact, I don't have enough time to play the games I have!
That's a great analysis video! As a woman who really enjoyed Bayonetta I feel compelled to put in a word for its defense. Along with great graphics and solid gameplay I felt like a badass playing this character. It's completely over the top in many respects, but I never felt uncomfortable with their portrayal of female strength or sexuality. Shocked, yes, but not offended.
In my opinion social pressures are more damaging to women gamers than the actual game selection currently available. When I was growing up I was criticized by many of my female friends for playing video games. Adults, both male and female, would suggest it wasn't a very feminine thing to do. I have a friend who said she felt like she had to play games in secret. This is where I see the greatest problem; trying to find everyone into a convenient gender assigned box.
I love shooters AND I love Supermarket Mania 2. I personally don't feel ignored. I understand many women don't feel this way, but now when I go into a game store I see plenty of other women. That's awesome.
One more point! If you want to encourage more women to play online shooters don't let the first words out of your mouth be, "Heheh! Are you a girl?" when a woman's voice comes across the chat. Please?
If the movies didn't appeal to women as much as men you'd expect to see less women than men going to the movies. if books didn't appeal to women as much as men then you'd expect less books to be bought be women.
That one bit is half right, but you're wrong about everything else. I can't see the details of the report since they seem to be obfuscating it, but every reference i've seen to it implies that the numbers they're reporting are strictly how many women "play games" on each console and what genres they prefer. It makes absolutely _no_ claims about how much time they spend gaming or how much money the spend on gaming, especially not in comparison to the male audience.
So it's entirely possible (and in fact seems likely to me) that there _are_ less games being bought by women than by men.
If we lived in some alternate universe where the FPS genre somehow never got invented would you expect to find that less than 50% of the gaming audience was male? Even if their favorite genre didn't exist i suspect that pretty much every gamer would rather be playing _some_ game, especially when they didn't know what it was they were missing out on. But the males would still probably be spending a lot less on games than we see from things like Call of Duty and Halo.
The point you seem willfully blind to is that gaming is not male dominated because 50% of the gamers are already female.
Sorry, but i've worked in the game industry. The game audience may not be male dominated anymore (though i suspect gamer dollars are still male dominated) but the game development industry definitely still is, and that has definitely had an effect on things. I don't even think it's intentional, but when a bunch of people of a certain demographic get together and come up with an idea for some media then if they don't think about it much they tend to come up with something that appeals specifically to their own demographic. That's just natural.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
dumb story. If woman were interested in purchasing games for consoles there would be more games tailored to them. Its not like publishers are refusing to make money. The women I know who play games at all like casual stuff Plants vs. Zombies, Peggle and Facebook games. The first two are already on console. But maybe if we made the Master Chief a chick they would come flocking by the millions.
I like traffic lights
When I played counterstrike, we ran a server, so I felt cool playing there. I've moved to the more general xbox games in the last five years or so, and you can't really enforce behaving like a human being on there. Every once in a while I'll play with my friends, but I think it's just weird to only feel comfortable if I'm playing with friends because I know they won't start making homophobic, racist, or sexist (especially rape orientated) comments. For me, it's just not worth it much. I spend more time on minecraft anyways these days, and being able to control a server allows for more nice behavior, but I then again minecrafters don't seem to have that cultural bent anyways. I'm better off. I honestly wouldn't mind if it was just more evened out, genderwise with both genders all sexed up. Hell, if I could just play a female character that looked older than 18, and wore real clothes every once in a while, I'd consider it a win. That is more of an age misperception, though, where game designers think all of us gamers are teens. You'd think they would want to focus on us old coots. We have money to burn on games.
And yes i'm a female gamer. I love videogames. I play with The Sims (all the versions), Guild Wars, Mass Effect, Atlantica Online ecc ecc ecc More MMORPG free to play. I also played with Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Las Vegas 2... One FPS where you can play as a woman, I love that in any game. I love the possibility to create a character similar to me, in this way i can identify myself in it. But, of course, if i can't create a woman character i don't play the game as well... (Only for Battlefield bad company 3 i had an acceptable response for another female gamer: in US Army Force the female aren't in the first line of combat). So i love what BioWare has done with Mass Effect and Shepard... I also like what Arenanet has done in Guild Wars but... if the female characters have more clothes on... So... please... Game developer of all the world.. Help us to play... We just wanna have fun. Like the boys do. No rape, no misoginism... no cruelty against women... Only fun... it's that possible? Because if you are a male... would you play a game where you can impersonate only a female character that rapes, enslaves, tortures a male? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't... also if the male is ALWAYS half (or more) naked.
mmmmm... slave gamer girl porn. Where can I get some?
Half of the problem is all of you thinking that all we play is casual games.
I have hundreds and hundreds of hours in Left 4 Dead, Battlefield and Call of Duty lines (plus others) and you would be amazed at how many women are there, you just don't see it because they don't make it known. Making it known creates a lot of issues, not just the smack talk, it often crosses the line into abuse, sexual harassment and stalking. It's a nice day when you can get online during peak hours and just be treated like "one of the guys". Instead we get berated upon entering, followed around and ganged up on.
Once I started gaming openly, I ended up quitting half the games I was playing online and almost completely stopped playing during peak hours.
That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out statement.
I think people don't quite get that the gender bias is in the narrative of the game and not in the functioning or theme of the game.
You are describing a case of Cognitive dissonance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
In a similar situation should a guy sleep with someone he consider's ugly on the first date, they'll do the same song and dance.
This is a learned behavior, as we make excuses for actions we take that our friends (and by extension our social circles) would disapprove of.
That's not at all sexist. There are things that I find nauseatingly girly, as well. Sexism is when you apply a negative stereotype to one or both of the sexes. Macho manliness is not the same as masculinity, just the same as cute girliness isn't the same as femininity. Modern warfare military games revel in a specific attitude which glorifies violence and survival instead of treating them like the hardships they actually are. Nowhere in these games do we see battle-weary men struggling to cope with the horrors of war; instead we have action heroes in military fatigues who are swift, confident, and always in control of their circumstances. MW2 did a good deal of work to push away from this (with its constant loss of player control), but the single player campaign is level after level of dominance wish-fulfilment. This is why Machiavelli does not make a good template for a father figure, or indeed a good role model for men in general.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
What on earth do alien invasions have to do with men or women? And would my GF have wanted to play HL2 more if it had been all about puppy dogs and fashion shows?
It isn't so much about the content, as the methods. A HL2 (and the rest of the HL games) are rather neutral. I never saw Gordon Freeman as an uber masculine Duke Nukem type. If you remade HL2 with Duke, your girlfriend would have probably liked it less.
I'm just using Duke because he's the most grievous, modern, offender. Insert basically any AAA action protagonist instead.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
To answer your question, yes. Women want gaming as we know it.
It depends on your definition of "women". Since to me "woman" / "women" holds the connotation of being older, I'd say yes, the OLDER females (over 40) are more likely to have a hobby, but the ones under that limit.........not so much, especially not the ones in their teens through 30 who are most likely to play video games. I'd noticed it long ago from girls I knew growing up / going to school with / family / friends but didn't think much about it - I just figured that they were a minority who were just boring. It wasn't until I decided that since I was getting older maybe I should start browsing dating sites (due to my job making it hard to meet people) that I realized that this isn't a "oh, I just know some boring girls" thing, it's a "good god, the majority of their gender seems to just sit there staring at the phone waiting for a guy to call if they're not busy with work / school" thing. Not only is the lack of hobbies unattractive in itself, but then it leads to issues when they date because guys have shit they want to get done and girls cannot comprehend that - so they harass the hell out of the guy and prevent him from getting shit done because they cannot comprehend that someone might have something they want to accomplish in their non-work time.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I think people don't quite get that the gender bias is in the narrative of the games and not in the gameplay, genre, or theme of the games.
If you have a problem with escapism or wish fulfillment maybe you shouldn't be playing games.
Alternatively, this might just be the game for you.
But... the future refused to change.
There's nothing wrong with escapism in principle, but popular culture has become extremely rife with some downright antisocial ones. They're having some fairly significant effects on people's psyches; Americans in particular have become filled with hate and aggression in the last sixty or so years, and most of them don't even realise it. There's such a thing as too much escapism.
At any rate, however, I wasn't arguing that there's anything wrong with wish-fulfilment; just that one particular set of fantasies has come to dominate to the point that it's poisonous and resistant to the entry of any others. In a way, your replies to me have been a demonstration of this process; at no point have I been attacking you, but you've been openly hostile the entire time, as I've got some jihad against your way of life or something. (For future reference, by the way, most trolls are more subtle.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Not really...but they'll chew their arm off to try to get out the next morning without waking her up...and hope their friends didn't see them leave with 'Lassie'....
But hardly any guys try to go back and justify that their actions, They at least got laid...and just hope they don't get razzed too much by their friends afterwards. And the razzing isn't THAT bad...I mean, most every guy beds an ugly/fat chick at least once or twice...but they don't mentally have to go through everything trying to justify their actions...
We're guys....we just do this stuff. We try to get laid, and occasionally the booze adjusts your boundaries...but you still got laid.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"At least I got laid" , "We're guys...we just do this stuff", "Everyone's slept with an ugly girl" are very much examples of justifying the action of sleeping with someone you don't find attractive. You attempt to explain away something as being warranted or reasonable that you believe your audience (those you are speaking to) may perceive as a negative experience. Society doesn't let girls use the same justifications as guys because we have different cultural beliefs on things girls "just do" and the things guys "just do".
And by you, I don't mean cayenne, I just mean the guy in this hypothetical situation. (Don't want to be misinterpreted as trying to insult you.)
The plural of anecdote is not data. Your shitty experiences are not proof of a trend, just evidence of the generally low quality of people on such sites.
Going by the people on dating sites is not a good way to gauge anything about a general population. If it were, I could conclusively state that most men are unambitious, undereducated losers who have mommy issues. Not true, but you wouldn't know it from the guys on such sites.
Seriously, check out the ads by men on those sites. Under 30 they read like a bunch of bros, over 40 they read like something out of a cliched midlife crisis, and in-between they sound like a lot of guys cheating on their wives. And all of them seem terrified by a woman who is genuinely intelligent and accomplished. It isn't true, but one could not be blamed for thinking it based on the evidence on sites like that.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Terrified of a woman who's intelligent and accomplished? More like "skeptical" because it's such a rare thing. It's not that girls are inherently less able mentally, merely that they usually choose not to use their brains because it's easier to just skate through life on your looks. That's one of the reasons I gave up on dating years ago - because finding a girl who's not hideous and actually uses the brain in her head is quite hard to find (and I'm far from the first guy to give up because of girls intentionally choosing to dumb themselves down because it's easier).
But I forgot, you're used to the current anti-male America where girls are told that they're perfect and that everything they want should magically be so without them ever lifting a finger and that anyone who dares to criticize them in any way is just an "evil sexist male" who needs to be sent to a re-education camp.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I honestly don't know how to respond to any of that. Your statements are so counter to anything I have ever heard of that it's impossible to even begin to have a dialog.
Sorry your experiences have lead you to believe and feel the way you do - it sounds like a very lonely and bitter existence, but if it makes it easier for you to blame women for your situation, please, feel free to do so. Since all women are basically the same in your mindset, take my permission as the blessing of all womankind.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Again, you are the one who claims to get physically ill but somehow I prove your prejudice is right? Remember that article about how true believer's faith is reinforced by contrary evidence? Well I might be taking it too far.
At no point have I felt attacked (projecting yourself perhaps?) actually I just don't like the self righteous, although in principle I understand that some behaviors just have to be more beneficial than others, I don't claim to know what those are, and judge those who do to very high standard. Anyone making an "ought claim" without considering the best interests of the subject registers as hypocritical to me.
Actually, I realize now that you should understandably feel attacked since I am arguing against you; as a human being, but it's not out of some feeling of self defense.
I hope that clarifies the matter of my motivation, since you seem to think that's relevant to the discussion, but why did you brought that subject up? What did you expect to gain by speculating over my motivations? Were you trying to dismiss them based on some sort of ad hominem?
(For future reference, by the way, most trolls are more subtle.)
And NOW you are calling me a troll? I'm not trolling you, to my understanding a troll is one who discusses nonsensically just to be a bother.
But... the future refused to change.
i call for a Rule 34 check!
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
It is trivial to find good groups, perhaps.
But it is not trivial to avoid such idiots. And to rephrase you: "Her problem is people. "
No, that exactly is the problem, your wording and your opinion (expressed with your wording) is it. It is not her problem. It is the problem of the idiots and, as the article suggests: a problem of game design.
My GF is quite happy in leaving "idiotic" groups who have problems with sexuality and respect.
To make it clear again: it is sad, really sad, that a girl has to "adapt" to have fun or to participate. While the males can behave like apes ... You understand what I mean? Even *you* proposed that *she* should behave different? Why?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Ah the troll mod who hates me is modding my "normal posts" down again, rofl.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I apologise for calling you a troll; I hope you can see how your statements could be read as purposed primarily to sow confusion and be argumentative. (A troll doesn't need to bring up an inconsistent argument until they run out of angles to attack from, so unfortunately there's no way to distinguish right away.) Your first post equated one particular cultural image of masculinity with the male sex, and the second was easy to see as a personal attack. That combination struck me as vexatious; I am glad I am not arguing with a straw man.
(I'm going to put "or maybe it should be 'straw person'" here in quotes just in case you get worried about it, but let's dispense with the man-hating; "straw person" just looks a bit sillly. Maybe we should call them scarecrow fallacies?)
It's true that it's a very pretentious thing to claim to know how others should lead their lives. On Slashdot, there's a large set of such claims that one can make, and be assured that the responses will be knowing nods and hollow Insightful moderations. This set is so large that I sometimes forget where the boundaries are, and it's rather easy to make a well-thought-out statement sound tragically bombastic. I guess that's happened here, and I must apologise for putting forth my own experiences as general fact without solid evidence.
My unadorned opinion on the matter of fantasies is this: a significant portion of the Western population, especially men but people in general, have become increasingly emotionally detached from real life responsibilities. We no longer live the way our ancestors did; thanks to advances in technology, the amount of leisure time available to the average person has greatly increased, and thanks to media, many spend a significant portion of that time in, essentially, dreams. I posit that there is such a thing as going too far, primarily because the world outside hasn't changed all that much. The success of a civilization is still (at least partially) a result of the aggregate action of its people, and as such, people not engaged in seeking the goals prescribed by society have a diminished value to it. People who spend a lot of time gaming fall into this bracket not only while they're gaming, but because the wish-fulfilment they achieve inside the games is better than real life.
One TED Talker, Jane McGonigal, argued that the inherent property of video games in particular that allowed games to be so much more appealing was the feeling that their rules were stable, consistent, and dependable, unlike real life. (I believe there are also some statistics about gaming's pervasiveness circa last February, if you're interested.) While McGonigal maintains that this makes gamers good problem solvers, it also has an implicit downside in that heavy players have rejected the real world's complicated ambiguities. This does not bode well for society in its present state.
I've heard it argued (by everyone from male septuagenarian math professors to dangerously-radical women's studies survivors) that loss of male ambition has played a significant role in the recent progress toward gender equality in higher learning, and it's a fact of genetics that the bell curve for IQ is broader in men than women. (This brings to light the uncomfortable point that, statistically, there should be more men in universities, at which point most of my friends throw me out.) It seems to me that with so much of modern media so expertly tailed to them, and the money being spent on it still on a steady increase, that video games have at least contributed. In a way, women arguing for balance in gaming are those of us annoyed that we've been left with the baby.
Of course, say the futurists, society is fundamentally mutable. We just need to put the right architecture in place and everyone can live in Second Life forever, without any responsibilities at all. This would be nice, but it hasn't happened yet, and even if it were going to happe
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
That narcissism right there is what I've been talking about. You can't even comprehend that there's a guy alive who doesn't want a girl making him miserable. I'm quite happy - the only times I'm ever unhappy are when I'm foolish enough to let someone convince me to give girls another chance. No guy actually enjoys being in a relationship - even the ones who say that they're "happily married" will privately admit to other guys that they hate it. It's because relationships are an utter farce, just like the whole concept of "love", which is nothing more than a con job to get a guy to shell out tons of money and be an utter slave to some girl who cares nothing for him.
I have plenty of girls who come to me wanting me to date them (not that I expect your narcissistic ass to believe me - you can't fathom that you're not always right) - I choose to not date because all that guys get out of dating is smaller bank accounts and lots of misery. That's why I'm strongly considering ditching the girl I've been dating for the last few months (because as I pointed out before, girls don't have hobbies which thus means that they expect guys to have no hobbies or interests outside of serving their will, so guys never get anything done).
But you'll just go through life with your goal of making as many men as miserable as possible while taking as much from them as you can get. It's not an innate "girl" thing, I'm well aware it's a social issue that created a couple generation of useless, sadistic gold diggers. Maybe someday many years from now girls will learn to act like human beings again.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Holy shit, I cannot even begin to describe just how hard I am laughing at your last post - thank you for that! You really had me going for a bit, but then when I read that I realized that you couldn't be serious because nobody is THAT fucked in the head without being on meds sufficient to prevent them from being able to get online let alone post.
Don't overplay your hand next time - like, when you accuse someone of being a narcissist you can't then immediately start talking about how you are literally able to speak for all men ever. And when you claim to not hate women you can't then turn around and basically call us all gold-digging whores who serve no purpose but to drain male bank accounts. You need to space those out a bit so that it isn't quite as obvious, you know? You also can't just put all the real crazy shit into one post all at once because then you give the game away - like I said, anyone who actually believed the stuff you just wrote wouldn't be capable of going online to write it in the first place, so that just raises the whole "troll" flag.
Still, for the laugh, I give you kudos.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Funny thing, is I do see SOME games oriented for women....development and designed by other women. Trouble is they are an extreme minority in the game development. (come to think of it, there are FAR too women in IT in general). The irony is, studies indicate that while organizations are trying to actively bring more women in the coding and development parts of the IT field, women are leaving in that capacity virtually as fast as they are brought in. How do we fit fix this, I don't know. If we could get more females in gaming as DEVELOPERS as opposed to manager, PR and admin type stuff, we'd probably have way cooler games in general and a breath of fresh air. (It would also be WAY easier for socially awkward male developers to get a date...;-) ) I'd love more women doing software development in general and so would all my colleauges.
'Imagination is more important than knowledge' - Einstien
This is getting out of topic so let me recap: First you said(paraphrasing) "MW2 is so manly it makes me physically ill". Then you changed it to "it's the *wrong* kind of manly because it's escapist" then to "because it's *too* escapist, and that is ruining society".
Now if you are doing it on purpose that's called "weaseling out" or "moving the goal posts" but you may not be doing it on purpose, just remember that you can't say "I hate X" and expect people to hear "I hate bad specimens of X". Kinda like, "I hate Jews!" and then "Oh I only meant bad Jews", I don't think that's not gonna fly well.
Now, do I think there is a problem with too much escapism holding back society? I doubt it. The main source of escapism has always been religion, not TV. Religion was stronger in the past than now and that didn't hold back social progress (well it did but not enough).
The issue is too complex to discuss but the the problem of apathy is people have an easy life already and don't see much gain in engaging a problem that is hard to understand. Essentially people are powerless.
Look at the problem of large companies like Google deciding they aren't going to pay taxes. Since they are such an important source of jobs, they get away with it. Meanwhile Google gets the benefits of a stable country and police protection of private property.
Since they aren't paying taxes it means that people and companies around them end up paying for Google, so that Google has basically made them their serfs and them their masters. It's a return to feudal society, and Google can get away it because it's not just wealthy, its powerful.
No single person has the economic power to tack on Google by market tactics. Violent measures against corporations, or the government are just as ineffective. The government is so not threatened by common people that they don't even have to kill a soul to suppress large masses of protesters.
The only recourse for the common man is the political road. And let's just say that politics is a dirty game. Look at Assange for example, all he did was embarrass the American government and now he is being harassed by phony rape allegations and has had his reputations smeared all over the world.
Any person trying the herculean task of rallying the entire country against corporate tax evasion would be at best ineffectual and at worst destroyed.
So I don't think it is really a problem of boys playing too much MW2.
But... the future refused to change.
IMHO, it's got to do with cultural stereotyping. Women prefer to give programming and computer related jobs a wide berth, not because they are incapable of excelling at it, but because that's how they've been brought up to think. Having been in the industry for almost a decade now, and I've known a lot of female programmers. It's not that they exist, but that their friends (almost always female) tend to look down upon them and treat them like they're not womanly because they're geeks. It's sad, but that just seems to be the way the cookie crumbles. Crab philosophy. When a woman makes her path into previously un-feminine areas, the rest of the women look at her like she's gone over to the other side..
Geekism is your _only_ God!