Why do either you or the woman you're talking to bother to respond to AC trolls?
I dunno about him, but I just did it because I was bored.;) I think of it as a creative challenge, trying to come up with a snappy comeback to somebody I know doesn't have to guts to back up anything he's said.
No, it wasn't Spike. It was something with three letters. I think it may have been TNN, but I'm not positive. I just know it wasn't Spike. This was a channel I had watched once or twice before, but it was the first time they seemed to be saying "no girls allowed" (unless they're supermodels and don't mind being gawked at).
And once again, I just used it as an example. I'm not objecting to male oriented channels, just pointing out that a show (or a computer game) that might otherwise be acceptable to women is less likely to be watched (or played) when it's wrapped in male-oriented images like that.
God, don't get me started on Cosmo. Magazines like that are why so many teenage women are depressed and/or anorexic.:/
Did you know that most of the female mannequins you see in stores are so thin that if they were alive they would be physically unable to have children?
Wow, I feel special. I've been insulted by my first anonymous troll. I love how male geeks are always so quick to assume that female geeks are out of shape and single. See, the benefit to being a female geek is the male-female ratio. There's, what, 20 geek guys for every one geek girl? Insulting one of the few women who actually enjoy being around geeks like you is a good way to stay single.;)
I'm not denying that the young male demographic spends more money on games. This is the sad truth. I'm one of the few women I know who actually goes out and buys them on a regular basis. My sister used to be a bit of a gamer, but she's not anymore, being deeply mired in extracurricular activities in college that take up the majority of her time, so she usually only plays games that I recommend to her, and then she usually borrows the game from me instead of buying one herself. In fact, besides her I don't know any women personally who game.
But the question is, if games became as widespread an entertainment medium as movies or TV, would more women spend money on them? I think so. I don't think there's anything about computer games in general that automatically makes them less appealing to women, besdies the stigma that says comp games are for boys and that fact that most games today justify that view. Women, especially young women like your daughter (I'm assuming she's in the 10-20 age group), are very sensitive to peer pressure. They're constantly bombarded by the media and their friends with ideas like they should be concerned only about shoes and their weight and that computer games are for boys. Don't get me started on mags like Cosmo, BTW, they're a huuge part of the problem.
It will be a slow process, trying to pull the gaming companies away from the moneymaking young men's demographic, but I think it's possible and that eventually women will be playing and buying as much as men. But that'll only happen if the gaming industry decides it wants to be a mainstream, socially acceptable entertainment medium like movies and television. Until it does that it'll always be labeled as the pasttime for boys and geeks.
Okay, I admit I went off on a bit of a tangent and not many games have "slutty female characters". I think I was thinking about the game magazines mentioned in the parent of my first reply. I'll refer you back to that post.
I'm not saying that there should be more games pointed towards women specifically (I don't think I said that... if I did, that's not really what I meant), just that they shouldn't be pointed towards men specifically. I did say that there weren't many games out there pointed towards women, but I said that not to suggest that their should be more, but to point out an inbalance in the industry. I think we need more gender neutral games, or at the very least more gender neutral packaging/advertising (i.e. gaming mags).
Thinking back on some of the games I've played recently, yeah I'll admit that most of them aren't bad in the demeaning-of-women sense. Prince of Persia, my current addiction, actually has a strong female character. But it's hard to deny that most games are made with men in mind, either intentionally or unintentionally. When you have the option to choose the gender of the character there are usually subtle disadvantages to playing a female. Nothing as unfair as differences in the game rules, the genders usually play the same, but there may be less avatars to choose from or less voices or less sideplots. I remember back when I played through Baldur's Gate 2 that my sister advised me to play a male main character because there was only one or two possible love side-plot for a female character, compared to three or four for a male character. And when you can't pick the gender most of the time the main character is male (GTA, the original Deus Ex, Prince of Persia, Thief).
I'm not saying gaming industry should be fragmented (as you said) by targeting the huge lot of specific audiences out there. I'm saying it should start thinking outside the box and trying to make up games that appeal to more than just the teen/young adult male demographic. It's tempting to play just to them because they've shown themselves to be big spenders. But if, as the article said, we want to bridge out computer games and make them into a mainstream media element then we need to think wider appeal, which means women.
That was simply an example. I could have changed the channel, I did several times, actually, but kept coming back to it because there was nothing else on that I wanted to watch. I was in the mood to watch Star Trek, so I watched Star Trek, racy commercials and all.
But this debate is not about television shows, it's about games. And I don't think you can point to as many as three games that are aimed towards women specifically. This is why women don't play games, the same reason most women (even those women who enjoy Star Trek) would not watch that channel. Of course, it's an infinite loop. Women don't play games, so games aren't made for women, so women don't play games... However, if that channel had bombarded the viewer with less breasts then those few women who enjoy the show would probably have sat through it. The show itself could appeal to both genders (okay, Star Trek isn't the best example of that, but assume ST's gender neutral for the sake of argument) but if the packaging is male-oriented then less women will play it.
My point is that if games start to pull away from the horny male demographic that alienates women then they will probably find more women will play the games. Opening up games to a wider audience is the only way to make them more mainstream and more popular, and I think a good way to start is to move away from the male-oriented packaging. You can do this without losing the patronage of men, as proven by the Sims (which has both a male and female following). It's okay to have games with slutty female characters and tons of gore, just like it's okay to have that channel. Just give the women another option, and you'll find that there's a ton of women gamers, just waiting for a game that won't insult them.
Being one of the few women who enjoy computer games (and I'm talking about the boys' games like Half-Life and Diablo, GTA and Civilization), I couldn't tell you why most women don't like games, but I can tell you what turns me off. That boys-only locker room style, scantily clad women whose obvious purpose is only to make the boys drool really alienates women. It's not just that the industry isn't making games with us in mind, it's that they seem to be making games specifically NOT for us, as if women are dangerous to the gaming market and they have to keep us out. That's what it feels like sometimes.
I can give you a great example of what I'm talking about, but it's actually about a TV network rather than a game. When I was watching TV one night by myself in a place where the channels and schedules were unfamiliar I was flipping until I saw something that looked good. Star Trek: TNG caught my eye and I stopped. When it went to commercial break, however, I realized that I had apparently picked the wrong channel. I forget what network it was, but it was flaunting itself as the "Guy's Channel." The commercials were filled with big-breasted women in seductive poses and over and over again they repeated their motto of "men only" or something to that effect. This was a network I could recal watching before, mostly for exactly what I was watching it now, ST:TNG. Sometime between the last time I had watched it and this time it had completely changed its advertising style. I understand that they are playing to a certain audience, but I was insulted that they would go so far as to completely alienate me like that. There was no need, I thought. I had always been perfectly happy to watch ST:TNG on this network before, but the commercials were making it seem like a porno, claiming the episode was "uncut" and that there would be a racy scenes where Troi took off her shirt, or something to that effect. There was nothing else on, so I gritted my teeth through the commercial breaks and watched the entire episode. I saw no such scene. Perhaps it had happened before I had tuned in.
It's this sort of thing that keeps computer games from being mainstream. As somebody already said, the really popular games like Tetris and the Sims appeal to both men and women. You don't have to aim games towards women, you just have to stop aiming decidedly AWAY from them.
Think about what makes a really good movie. It usually has something in it for all demographics. Not very often does a bloody, gory movie get high praise when awards night comes along, and neither do those who feature scantily clad women who are only there so the boys can jerk off. Yes, we still have movies like that, and quite a number of those are popular. But they will never be studied or critiqued for their use of symbolism or their careful crafting of the viewers' emotions. If we want games to be seen as an art form, we need to *gasp* craft them like an art form.
That won't happen until the game companies stop playing to the horny teenage male demographic, and, sadly, this won't happen until it that demographic stops being so profitable.
....Creative Writing? A good writer can create a storyline that is fluid and can conform to the concept of a video game, and most games nowadays involve a story of some sort.
Although I'm not in the games industry at the moment, working on a computer game has been my dream job ever since I gave serious thought to the matter of my profession. I always liked computers and took to programming immediately, however I also have always had a passion for storytelling and writing. With this in mind, I chose computer science as my major in college and also took a minor in creative writing. I got the technical training and the creative exercise.
That's what creative writing classes are, really. Exercise. If the talent isn't there in the first place you'll find that you can never write a good story, no matter how hard you try or how many classes you take. There's no formula for a good story, just as there's no formula for a good game. You can't teach that sort of thing. You can, however, exercise it. If you want to include the creative side of games in the education process the easiest way is to add a creative writing class or two, just to exercise your students' creativity. Because either they already have it or they don't, there's no learning it.
Oh, it's science fiction. Who was it that said "really advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic"? It is, however, SOFT scifi, as opposed to HARD scifi.
Hard scifi is what you said, extrapolating technology into the future. Technologies in hard scifi are usually based on real science or science theories. Really good hard scifi is often used to point out problems with upcoming technology or as satire to poke at flaws in our current society. The short story/movie "Farenheit 451" comes to mind.
Soft scifi is more fantastical (but not completely fantasy). The technology is less similar to our familiar technology and is often not based on real science. It's hard to keep believability in a story when it's pushed very far into the future or very far away in space without making it soft scifi. When you have huge distances in space or time it's less likely that the technology will have evolved into something we'd expect, thus writers have to resort to making up things instead of using real science. Farscape, being far in space, is soft scifi. So is Star Wars, being far in time AND space.
They both have their advantages and disadvantages and often apply to different fans. I enjoy both, but I think I favor soft scifi more because I like to escape from reality when I watch TV or read a book, and soft scifi is much farther from reality than hard scifi. And sometimes you will have soft scifi elements poking their way into hard scifi shows. Technomages in Bab5 are an example. Even the 'mages themselves admitted what they were doing was magic (or rather, highly advanced technology designed to emulate magic). You do not immediately categorize them as a fantasy element, however, because there is technology behind their magic. It's highly unrealistic technology, but it's tech nonetheless. It's soft scifi.
Yes, there is a fine line between soft scifi and fantasy, but there are things that are obviously fantasy and things that are obviously scifi. Harry Potter is fantasy. The Wheel of Time is fantasy, and so is the Lord of the Rings. Star Trek is scifi. Bab5 is scifi. In the middle would be, say, the Pern novels. Sure, there's scifi elements (the dragons were genetically engineered from the smaller native firelizards) but to the average reader who doesn't know the history, it reads like fantasy. Farscape may be closer to fantasy than Star Trek, but it's by no means fantasy. It's just soft.
...the series wasn't cancelled due to lack of interest...
Yes, in a way, it was canceled due to lack of interest. Lack of ratings, actually. Farscape has a rabid fanbase, but small cults do not for high ratings make. SciFi didn't think it was profitable enough for them to keep on the air.
I don't get the scifi channel (insert obligatory swearing about cable prices), but I'm deffinitely asking my aunt to record this for me as soon as I find out when it'll air.:) I'm waiting to buy the series on DVD until just after the the miniseries airs so it'll seem to add to the number of dollars coming in because of the revival.;)
Plus I still live with my parents (don't laugh, it's cheap and I was damn glad I hadn't found an apartment yet when they announed the cancelation of my project and it sounded like I wasn't going to be employed shortly) and my dad's been a Nazi lately about power consumption after a few large electric bills. I'm sure he'd shut off my computer if he saw it on during the 11-12 hours that I'm not at home. And if I told him what it was for then he'd probably shut it off quicker.;)
Find something that interests you and start hacking. Pick up a new programming language. Build a website for your family. Write some demo apps to showcase your skills and put up where pontential employers can take a look at them.
Been there, doing that. It's hard, though. Technically, anything I work on during company time is property of the company. Anything on my work computer is also property of the company. All my pet projects are at home, and even if I could work on them remotely then they'd become property of the company. I know they're not watching me 24/7 and they'd probably never find out that I was coding personal projects in my spare time, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. I find myself doing worthless stuff or just screwing around. To brush up on my Perl I wrote a script to search the server for files I've updated and create an excel file with the details of each file I've worked on. I've been teaching myself javascript and practice by hacking up a ProBoards forum. But it's all junk, just stretching my legs. And technically it's all property of my company. I find stuff to keep busy, but I still have that nagging feeling that it's meaningless and I find myself playing freecell by the end of the day anyway.
But we didn't stop actually doing work for it until this past week.. talk about annoying.. working on something so specific for a project that is canceled..
Tell me about it! It's not just annoying, it's damn hard to keep working on something you know is just gonna go into a folder and collect dust for the next ten years. The motivation's just not there. I'm not sure whether I'd rather be doing that or sitting here doing nothing like I am now, though. At least then I had something to keep my mind off of the whole situation. Now I worry.:P
Oh, and I was told Comanche was canceled by my father via email. I remember folks who've worked there for 5-10 years telling me not to worry, that these rumors about the project being canceled pop up every once and a while and they always go away. Whoops, this one didn't go away. You know, I don't think there's much worse than being told by the media, rather than your boss, that your job has just had it's neck placed on the guillotine.
You ever do any borderline-mindless duties? Do the words "boring as hell" mean anything to you?;) I'd much rather be doing something stimulating for less pay than something mind-numbing for more pay.
And it's possible to have the internet and still be bored to death. Here they block half the internet. Games, entertainment, MP3s, "mature" (okay, that one I understand), all come up with a page that says "You're not supposed to go here! Your attempt to access this site's been logged!" I'm surprised I can get the "games" secion of slashdot. I don't think anybody checks, but it's still not a nice reminder that you're being watched and you've just done something that has the potential (small potential, but it's still there) to get you fired and it's been written down somewhere.
My situation is kinda similar to the parent. You folks remember the Commanche helicopter? I was hired to work on that six months before the army told us they were gonna cancel the project. That was a month ago. You wanna know what the really wierd thing is? I'm still working here. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), they haven't given me anything new to work on. Right now they're paying me to play solitaire and read Slashdot. My boss literally told me to just look busy. You may think it's fun to be paid to goof off, but it's really really boring. Gimme something to do, damnit!
Why? Because it's boooooring, that's why.
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You're Watching Less TV
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm not sure exactly when it started, but sometime between high school and post-college I lost the desire to simply sit and watch something. (I guess I don't really count towards this demographic, being a 22 yr-old woman, but I tend to follow the trends of the young adult male most of the time anyway.) I remember being home on summer break and having my father complain that I was spending too much time on the computer. Yet he would say nothing if I found a warm spot on the couch and watched TV for 12 hours on end. I'd sit there saying to myself, "I can feel my brain liquifying and draining out of my ears. Why on earth does Dad think this is a better pasttime than playing a video game where I actually have to (god forbid) think?" Even if the computer's broken or occupied or otherwise unusable I find that I can't simply sit and watch TV anymore. I have to be doing something else, whether it's doodling, reading, or doing some sort of craft activity. Folks my age who grew up with computers and interactive stories just get BORED with passive activities. You'd think the parents would be happy at this trend away from mind-numbing television and back towards a creative and brain-exercising medium like books used to be, but most of them (my father included) seem to be afraid of this new trend, whether it's because they think their children are going to grow up as little psychopaths from too much violence or they fear carpal tunnel syndrome. And god forbid the move away from television encourages the creation of new and more interactive media coming from the boob tube. The future's here, and it has a keyboard. Deal with it.
I remember a few years ago when my parents were re-doing their living room. My mother almost broke down crying one day while trying to pick a sofa to match the wall paper. She told me that she wanted somebody to pick a handfull of the millions of sofas out there in the world and just tell her to pick one of those. I'm fairly certain, however, that if I had picked out four sofas (probably at random, because I didn't want to choose either) she would have been happy with none of them, being aware that there may be a better one out there somewhere.
It's a fine line between having too many choices and not enough. Too little and you feel as if you are missing out, that the "perfect" one isn't anywhere to be found. Too many and you become overwhelemed, knowing that the "perfect" one is in there, but not knowing which one that is.
Humans are notorious for wanting to take the easy way out of everything. It's in our nature. We walk on the grass if that path is shorter than the paved walkway. We type "u" instead of "you" because it takes less energy. And we would rather choose between five items than 15 because it takes less thought. When it comes down to it, to perform an "efficient" comparison between any number of items we need to compare each item against every other item. If we have two items, we only need one comparison. If we have five items, we need ten comparisons. Nine items require thirty six comparisons. It's exponential. Quickly it becomes more work than it's worth.
I know when I have to decide between a large number of items and I have as much time as I need I literally compare them one at a time. I take the first and second options and decide which I like better, then take the winner and compare it to the next option. At the end, I have the best of all possible options. This isn't always that easy, though. Think about cars. It's not always easy to pick between just two cars, nevermind fifteen. Car A might be better than car B at gas mileage, but car B is safer than car A. And car C looks better than both of them. I've actually solved this problem with a spreadsheet before. Each factor in the decision was given a weight (safety is most important so it gets a 3, gas mileage gets a 2, and look is least important so it gets a 1), and then each car is given a score for each factor. The car with the highest weighted result is the one you buy.
Of course, this takes time and is somewhat arbitrary (who's to say that safety is three times as important as look, or that gas mileage is only twice as important?), and frankly only a geek would think of doing something so... computer-ish. The only way to really do this right is to stop trying to find the best and just find the one that's good enough. In all likelyhood you will be just as happy with the "good enough" option and you've saved yourself all that stress of chosing. [Insert your diety here] knows there's too much stress in the world already.
Allow cable companies to offer packages AND a la carte programming. For some subscribers, buying just one or two channels out of a package will be more economical (because they know they won't watch the other 6 in the package), but for others buying the whole package will be better (because buying 6 channels a la carte is more expensive than buying 8 via package). This allows those no-too-popular or cult channels to survive while allowing those of us who simply want the Sci-Fi channel (and only the Sci-Fi channel) to pay less.
I don't know if this is feasable technically or economically, but I think it would be the best solution for everybody involved (short of somehow encouraging cable companies to start competing with each other).
I like to play over message boards. Play goes more slowly, but it's great for a group that can never seem to get online at the same time. There are plenty of dice rollers available online to use with these pages, or you could just have the DM do all the rolling. These are also great if you don't have a group and want to meet some folks to play with.
Some of these tags are so small you would never find them.
And if they don't label items as "RFID-free" then you'd have no way to know which items have the tags and which don't. You could look for weeks through a shirt's seams, trying to find the tag. And there's also the possibility that the tags may be integrated so seamlessly into the product that removing them would damage the item.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the only (and I mean ONLY) reason I still have Windows on my home computer is because there are more games for Windows. If the number of (good) Linux games equaled (or even came close to) the number of Windows games then I'd drop M$ in a nanosecond.
It won't happen overnight, but if the number of Linux games goes up then I bet eventually the number of computers with Linux will go up as well. The hard part is keeping a games company alive in that space between now and when Linux becomes popular for gamers.
Actually this will probably be the only show to deal with today's most important legal issues.
I agree. This sort of thing is what science fiction is REALLY for. I mean, lightsabers and timetravel and spaceships are all cool, but "real" scifi -- the kind of scifi that they'll be reading in schools years from now (like 1984 or Brave New World) -- deals with stuff that nobody wants to talk about because it's so controvertial. I don't have high hopes for this show, but I think it has a chance if it keeps bringing up issues about technologies that either are here or will soon be here. I like television shows that spark debates between the viewers, and this one looks like it has good potential. I just hope they come up with enough "new" issues that it doesn't become boring or that it doesn't degrade into a soap opera too soon (because that's what happens to all shows eventually except for unusual examples).
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Why do either you or the woman you're talking to bother to respond to AC trolls?
I dunno about him, but I just did it because I was bored. ;) I think of it as a creative challenge, trying to come up with a snappy comeback to somebody I know doesn't have to guts to back up anything he's said.
No, it wasn't Spike. It was something with three letters. I think it may have been TNN, but I'm not positive. I just know it wasn't Spike. This was a channel I had watched once or twice before, but it was the first time they seemed to be saying "no girls allowed" (unless they're supermodels and don't mind being gawked at).
And once again, I just used it as an example. I'm not objecting to male oriented channels, just pointing out that a show (or a computer game) that might otherwise be acceptable to women is less likely to be watched (or played) when it's wrapped in male-oriented images like that.
God, don't get me started on Cosmo. Magazines like that are why so many teenage women are depressed and/or anorexic. :/
Did you know that most of the female mannequins you see in stores are so thin that if they were alive they would be physically unable to have children?
Wow, I feel special. I've been insulted by my first anonymous troll. I love how male geeks are always so quick to assume that female geeks are out of shape and single. See, the benefit to being a female geek is the male-female ratio. There's, what, 20 geek guys for every one geek girl? Insulting one of the few women who actually enjoy being around geeks like you is a good way to stay single. ;)
I'm not denying that the young male demographic spends more money on games. This is the sad truth. I'm one of the few women I know who actually goes out and buys them on a regular basis. My sister used to be a bit of a gamer, but she's not anymore, being deeply mired in extracurricular activities in college that take up the majority of her time, so she usually only plays games that I recommend to her, and then she usually borrows the game from me instead of buying one herself. In fact, besides her I don't know any women personally who game.
But the question is, if games became as widespread an entertainment medium as movies or TV, would more women spend money on them? I think so. I don't think there's anything about computer games in general that automatically makes them less appealing to women, besdies the stigma that says comp games are for boys and that fact that most games today justify that view. Women, especially young women like your daughter (I'm assuming she's in the 10-20 age group), are very sensitive to peer pressure. They're constantly bombarded by the media and their friends with ideas like they should be concerned only about shoes and their weight and that computer games are for boys. Don't get me started on mags like Cosmo, BTW, they're a huuge part of the problem.
It will be a slow process, trying to pull the gaming companies away from the moneymaking young men's demographic, but I think it's possible and that eventually women will be playing and buying as much as men. But that'll only happen if the gaming industry decides it wants to be a mainstream, socially acceptable entertainment medium like movies and television. Until it does that it'll always be labeled as the pasttime for boys and geeks.
Okay, I admit I went off on a bit of a tangent and not many games have "slutty female characters". I think I was thinking about the game magazines mentioned in the parent of my first reply. I'll refer you back to that post.
I'm not saying that there should be more games pointed towards women specifically (I don't think I said that... if I did, that's not really what I meant), just that they shouldn't be pointed towards men specifically. I did say that there weren't many games out there pointed towards women, but I said that not to suggest that their should be more, but to point out an inbalance in the industry. I think we need more gender neutral games, or at the very least more gender neutral packaging/advertising (i.e. gaming mags).
Thinking back on some of the games I've played recently, yeah I'll admit that most of them aren't bad in the demeaning-of-women sense. Prince of Persia, my current addiction, actually has a strong female character. But it's hard to deny that most games are made with men in mind, either intentionally or unintentionally. When you have the option to choose the gender of the character there are usually subtle disadvantages to playing a female. Nothing as unfair as differences in the game rules, the genders usually play the same, but there may be less avatars to choose from or less voices or less sideplots. I remember back when I played through Baldur's Gate 2 that my sister advised me to play a male main character because there was only one or two possible love side-plot for a female character, compared to three or four for a male character. And when you can't pick the gender most of the time the main character is male (GTA, the original Deus Ex, Prince of Persia, Thief).
I'm not saying gaming industry should be fragmented (as you said) by targeting the huge lot of specific audiences out there. I'm saying it should start thinking outside the box and trying to make up games that appeal to more than just the teen/young adult male demographic. It's tempting to play just to them because they've shown themselves to be big spenders. But if, as the article said, we want to bridge out computer games and make them into a mainstream media element then we need to think wider appeal, which means women.
That was simply an example. I could have changed the channel, I did several times, actually, but kept coming back to it because there was nothing else on that I wanted to watch. I was in the mood to watch Star Trek, so I watched Star Trek, racy commercials and all.
But this debate is not about television shows, it's about games. And I don't think you can point to as many as three games that are aimed towards women specifically. This is why women don't play games, the same reason most women (even those women who enjoy Star Trek) would not watch that channel. Of course, it's an infinite loop. Women don't play games, so games aren't made for women, so women don't play games... However, if that channel had bombarded the viewer with less breasts then those few women who enjoy the show would probably have sat through it. The show itself could appeal to both genders (okay, Star Trek isn't the best example of that, but assume ST's gender neutral for the sake of argument) but if the packaging is male-oriented then less women will play it.
My point is that if games start to pull away from the horny male demographic that alienates women then they will probably find more women will play the games. Opening up games to a wider audience is the only way to make them more mainstream and more popular, and I think a good way to start is to move away from the male-oriented packaging. You can do this without losing the patronage of men, as proven by the Sims (which has both a male and female following). It's okay to have games with slutty female characters and tons of gore, just like it's okay to have that channel. Just give the women another option, and you'll find that there's a ton of women gamers, just waiting for a game that won't insult them.
I completely agree with the parent.
Being one of the few women who enjoy computer games (and I'm talking about the boys' games like Half-Life and Diablo, GTA and Civilization), I couldn't tell you why most women don't like games, but I can tell you what turns me off. That boys-only locker room style, scantily clad women whose obvious purpose is only to make the boys drool really alienates women. It's not just that the industry isn't making games with us in mind, it's that they seem to be making games specifically NOT for us, as if women are dangerous to the gaming market and they have to keep us out. That's what it feels like sometimes.
I can give you a great example of what I'm talking about, but it's actually about a TV network rather than a game. When I was watching TV one night by myself in a place where the channels and schedules were unfamiliar I was flipping until I saw something that looked good. Star Trek: TNG caught my eye and I stopped. When it went to commercial break, however, I realized that I had apparently picked the wrong channel. I forget what network it was, but it was flaunting itself as the "Guy's Channel." The commercials were filled with big-breasted women in seductive poses and over and over again they repeated their motto of "men only" or something to that effect. This was a network I could recal watching before, mostly for exactly what I was watching it now, ST:TNG. Sometime between the last time I had watched it and this time it had completely changed its advertising style. I understand that they are playing to a certain audience, but I was insulted that they would go so far as to completely alienate me like that. There was no need, I thought. I had always been perfectly happy to watch ST:TNG on this network before, but the commercials were making it seem like a porno, claiming the episode was "uncut" and that there would be a racy scenes where Troi took off her shirt, or something to that effect. There was nothing else on, so I gritted my teeth through the commercial breaks and watched the entire episode. I saw no such scene. Perhaps it had happened before I had tuned in.
It's this sort of thing that keeps computer games from being mainstream. As somebody already said, the really popular games like Tetris and the Sims appeal to both men and women. You don't have to aim games towards women, you just have to stop aiming decidedly AWAY from them.
Think about what makes a really good movie. It usually has something in it for all demographics. Not very often does a bloody, gory movie get high praise when awards night comes along, and neither do those who feature scantily clad women who are only there so the boys can jerk off. Yes, we still have movies like that, and quite a number of those are popular. But they will never be studied or critiqued for their use of symbolism or their careful crafting of the viewers' emotions. If we want games to be seen as an art form, we need to *gasp* craft them like an art form.
That won't happen until the game companies stop playing to the horny teenage male demographic, and, sadly, this won't happen until it that demographic stops being so profitable.
Although I'm not in the games industry at the moment, working on a computer game has been my dream job ever since I gave serious thought to the matter of my profession. I always liked computers and took to programming immediately, however I also have always had a passion for storytelling and writing. With this in mind, I chose computer science as my major in college and also took a minor in creative writing. I got the technical training and the creative exercise.
That's what creative writing classes are, really. Exercise. If the talent isn't there in the first place you'll find that you can never write a good story, no matter how hard you try or how many classes you take. There's no formula for a good story, just as there's no formula for a good game. You can't teach that sort of thing. You can, however, exercise it. If you want to include the creative side of games in the education process the easiest way is to add a creative writing class or two, just to exercise your students' creativity. Because either they already have it or they don't, there's no learning it.
Oh, it's science fiction. Who was it that said "really advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic"? It is, however, SOFT scifi, as opposed to HARD scifi.
Hard scifi is what you said, extrapolating technology into the future. Technologies in hard scifi are usually based on real science or science theories. Really good hard scifi is often used to point out problems with upcoming technology or as satire to poke at flaws in our current society. The short story/movie "Farenheit 451" comes to mind.
Soft scifi is more fantastical (but not completely fantasy). The technology is less similar to our familiar technology and is often not based on real science. It's hard to keep believability in a story when it's pushed very far into the future or very far away in space without making it soft scifi. When you have huge distances in space or time it's less likely that the technology will have evolved into something we'd expect, thus writers have to resort to making up things instead of using real science. Farscape, being far in space, is soft scifi. So is Star Wars, being far in time AND space.
They both have their advantages and disadvantages and often apply to different fans. I enjoy both, but I think I favor soft scifi more because I like to escape from reality when I watch TV or read a book, and soft scifi is much farther from reality than hard scifi. And sometimes you will have soft scifi elements poking their way into hard scifi shows. Technomages in Bab5 are an example. Even the 'mages themselves admitted what they were doing was magic (or rather, highly advanced technology designed to emulate magic). You do not immediately categorize them as a fantasy element, however, because there is technology behind their magic. It's highly unrealistic technology, but it's tech nonetheless. It's soft scifi.
Yes, there is a fine line between soft scifi and fantasy, but there are things that are obviously fantasy and things that are obviously scifi. Harry Potter is fantasy. The Wheel of Time is fantasy, and so is the Lord of the Rings. Star Trek is scifi. Bab5 is scifi. In the middle would be, say, the Pern novels. Sure, there's scifi elements (the dragons were genetically engineered from the smaller native firelizards) but to the average reader who doesn't know the history, it reads like fantasy. Farscape may be closer to fantasy than Star Trek, but it's by no means fantasy. It's just soft.
And inquiring women. Some women watch the show, too, you know. :)
Yes, in a way, it was canceled due to lack of interest. Lack of ratings, actually. Farscape has a rabid fanbase, but small cults do not for high ratings make. SciFi didn't think it was profitable enough for them to keep on the air.
I don't get the scifi channel (insert obligatory swearing about cable prices), but I'm deffinitely asking my aunt to record this for me as soon as I find out when it'll air. :) I'm waiting to buy the series on DVD until just after the the miniseries airs so it'll seem to add to the number of dollars coming in because of the revival. ;)
Too much trouble. ;)
;)
Plus I still live with my parents (don't laugh, it's cheap and I was damn glad I hadn't found an apartment yet when they announed the cancelation of my project and it sounded like I wasn't going to be employed shortly) and my dad's been a Nazi lately about power consumption after a few large electric bills. I'm sure he'd shut off my computer if he saw it on during the 11-12 hours that I'm not at home. And if I told him what it was for then he'd probably shut it off quicker.
Find something that interests you and start hacking. Pick up a new programming language. Build a website for your family. Write some demo apps to showcase your skills and put up where pontential employers can take a look at them.
Been there, doing that. It's hard, though. Technically, anything I work on during company time is property of the company. Anything on my work computer is also property of the company. All my pet projects are at home, and even if I could work on them remotely then they'd become property of the company. I know they're not watching me 24/7 and they'd probably never find out that I was coding personal projects in my spare time, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. I find myself doing worthless stuff or just screwing around. To brush up on my Perl I wrote a script to search the server for files I've updated and create an excel file with the details of each file I've worked on. I've been teaching myself javascript and practice by hacking up a ProBoards forum. But it's all junk, just stretching my legs. And technically it's all property of my company. I find stuff to keep busy, but I still have that nagging feeling that it's meaningless and I find myself playing freecell by the end of the day anyway.
But we didn't stop actually doing work for it until this past week.. talk about annoying.. working on something so specific for a project that is canceled..
Tell me about it! It's not just annoying, it's damn hard to keep working on something you know is just gonna go into a folder and collect dust for the next ten years. The motivation's just not there. I'm not sure whether I'd rather be doing that or sitting here doing nothing like I am now, though. At least then I had something to keep my mind off of the whole situation. Now I worry. :P
Oh, and I was told Comanche was canceled by my father via email. I remember folks who've worked there for 5-10 years telling me not to worry, that these rumors about the project being canceled pop up every once and a while and they always go away. Whoops, this one didn't go away. You know, I don't think there's much worse than being told by the media, rather than your boss, that your job has just had it's neck placed on the guillotine.
Sorry, I don't give out that kinda information in a public forum. That I work on Comanche is all you're getting. ;)
You ever do any borderline-mindless duties? Do the words "boring as hell" mean anything to you? ;) I'd much rather be doing something stimulating for less pay than something mind-numbing for more pay.
And it's possible to have the internet and still be bored to death. Here they block half the internet. Games, entertainment, MP3s, "mature" (okay, that one I understand), all come up with a page that says "You're not supposed to go here! Your attempt to access this site's been logged!" I'm surprised I can get the "games" secion of slashdot. I don't think anybody checks, but it's still not a nice reminder that you're being watched and you've just done something that has the potential (small potential, but it's still there) to get you fired and it's been written down somewhere.
My situation is kinda similar to the parent. You folks remember the Commanche helicopter? I was hired to work on that six months before the army told us they were gonna cancel the project. That was a month ago. You wanna know what the really wierd thing is? I'm still working here. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), they haven't given me anything new to work on. Right now they're paying me to play solitaire and read Slashdot. My boss literally told me to just look busy. You may think it's fun to be paid to goof off, but it's really really boring. Gimme something to do, damnit!
I'm not sure exactly when it started, but sometime between high school and post-college I lost the desire to simply sit and watch something. (I guess I don't really count towards this demographic, being a 22 yr-old woman, but I tend to follow the trends of the young adult male most of the time anyway.) I remember being home on summer break and having my father complain that I was spending too much time on the computer. Yet he would say nothing if I found a warm spot on the couch and watched TV for 12 hours on end. I'd sit there saying to myself, "I can feel my brain liquifying and draining out of my ears. Why on earth does Dad think this is a better pasttime than playing a video game where I actually have to (god forbid) think?" Even if the computer's broken or occupied or otherwise unusable I find that I can't simply sit and watch TV anymore. I have to be doing something else, whether it's doodling, reading, or doing some sort of craft activity. Folks my age who grew up with computers and interactive stories just get BORED with passive activities. You'd think the parents would be happy at this trend away from mind-numbing television and back towards a creative and brain-exercising medium like books used to be, but most of them (my father included) seem to be afraid of this new trend, whether it's because they think their children are going to grow up as little psychopaths from too much violence or they fear carpal tunnel syndrome. And god forbid the move away from television encourages the creation of new and more interactive media coming from the boob tube. The future's here, and it has a keyboard. Deal with it.
I remember a few years ago when my parents were re-doing their living room. My mother almost broke down crying one day while trying to pick a sofa to match the wall paper. She told me that she wanted somebody to pick a handfull of the millions of sofas out there in the world and just tell her to pick one of those. I'm fairly certain, however, that if I had picked out four sofas (probably at random, because I didn't want to choose either) she would have been happy with none of them, being aware that there may be a better one out there somewhere.
It's a fine line between having too many choices and not enough. Too little and you feel as if you are missing out, that the "perfect" one isn't anywhere to be found. Too many and you become overwhelemed, knowing that the "perfect" one is in there, but not knowing which one that is.
Humans are notorious for wanting to take the easy way out of everything. It's in our nature. We walk on the grass if that path is shorter than the paved walkway. We type "u" instead of "you" because it takes less energy. And we would rather choose between five items than 15 because it takes less thought. When it comes down to it, to perform an "efficient" comparison between any number of items we need to compare each item against every other item. If we have two items, we only need one comparison. If we have five items, we need ten comparisons. Nine items require thirty six comparisons. It's exponential. Quickly it becomes more work than it's worth.
I know when I have to decide between a large number of items and I have as much time as I need I literally compare them one at a time. I take the first and second options and decide which I like better, then take the winner and compare it to the next option. At the end, I have the best of all possible options. This isn't always that easy, though. Think about cars. It's not always easy to pick between just two cars, nevermind fifteen. Car A might be better than car B at gas mileage, but car B is safer than car A. And car C looks better than both of them. I've actually solved this problem with a spreadsheet before. Each factor in the decision was given a weight (safety is most important so it gets a 3, gas mileage gets a 2, and look is least important so it gets a 1), and then each car is given a score for each factor. The car with the highest weighted result is the one you buy.Of course, this takes time and is somewhat arbitrary (who's to say that safety is three times as important as look, or that gas mileage is only twice as important?), and frankly only a geek would think of doing something so... computer-ish. The only way to really do this right is to stop trying to find the best and just find the one that's good enough. In all likelyhood you will be just as happy with the "good enough" option and you've saved yourself all that stress of chosing. [Insert your diety here] knows there's too much stress in the world already.
Allow cable companies to offer packages AND a la carte programming. For some subscribers, buying just one or two channels out of a package will be more economical (because they know they won't watch the other 6 in the package), but for others buying the whole package will be better (because buying 6 channels a la carte is more expensive than buying 8 via package). This allows those no-too-popular or cult channels to survive while allowing those of us who simply want the Sci-Fi channel (and only the Sci-Fi channel) to pay less.
I don't know if this is feasable technically or economically, but I think it would be the best solution for everybody involved (short of somehow encouraging cable companies to start competing with each other).
I like to play over message boards. Play goes more slowly, but it's great for a group that can never seem to get online at the same time. There are plenty of dice rollers available online to use with these pages, or you could just have the DM do all the rolling. These are also great if you don't have a group and want to meet some folks to play with.
A couple boards I like:
Shadow of the Dragon
Planet AD&D's Play By Msg Board (If that last link is broken, just go to the main page and look for the link to their forums.)
Some of these tags are so small you would never find them.
And if they don't label items as "RFID-free" then you'd have no way to know which items have the tags and which don't. You could look for weeks through a shirt's seams, trying to find the tag. And there's also the possibility that the tags may be integrated so seamlessly into the product that removing them would damage the item.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the only (and I mean ONLY) reason I still have Windows on my home computer is because there are more games for Windows. If the number of (good) Linux games equaled (or even came close to) the number of Windows games then I'd drop M$ in a nanosecond.
It won't happen overnight, but if the number of Linux games goes up then I bet eventually the number of computers with Linux will go up as well. The hard part is keeping a games company alive in that space between now and when Linux becomes popular for gamers.
Actually this will probably be the only show to deal with today's most important legal issues.
I agree. This sort of thing is what science fiction is REALLY for. I mean, lightsabers and timetravel and spaceships are all cool, but "real" scifi -- the kind of scifi that they'll be reading in schools years from now (like 1984 or Brave New World) -- deals with stuff that nobody wants to talk about because it's so controvertial. I don't have high hopes for this show, but I think it has a chance if it keeps bringing up issues about technologies that either are here or will soon be here. I like television shows that spark debates between the viewers, and this one looks like it has good potential. I just hope they come up with enough "new" issues that it doesn't become boring or that it doesn't degrade into a soap opera too soon (because that's what happens to all shows eventually except for unusual examples).