4/14/14: hi politards! this thread has AIDS, enter at your own risk, seems like it's time to take the CHAINS off of it

6/7/13: thread excised from this thread because this discussion has AIDS and needs to be quarantined

For Chilltown, from GDC 09 rant panel:

So is this thread about the so called "sexism" in games?

That's one of the issues that would be considered interesting and thought-provoking, yea.

I find it neither interesting nor thought provoking because its pure feminist propaganda. Im from the feminist mecca of Sweden so ive seen enough of this. Cherry pick stuff and take it out of context and show how unfair everything is to women.

Yawn.

What is neither interesting nor thought-provoking is your post on the subject. The Arkham City article in the OP is very thoughtful, perhaps you could make some reasoned counter-arguments to what Hulk says?

I haven't watched BJ's video yet but will later when I have time.

Why provide arguments when you can simply handwave the entirety of the evidence/argument away as "feminist propaganda"?

I'm not sure about the level of insight we as a group of nearly all male poker playing gamers can bring to a discussion about sexism in video gaming, but this topic keeps coming up lately so maybe we talk about it from our unique perspective. In both gaming and poker it's interesting to note that we rarely see any women being competitive at the top levels aside from the few occasional standouts. The discussion around making gaming more accessible for women seems to focus on the issues of male game protagonists, getting more women into game development, or on the hostility of predominately male online communities towards women (and this I think is only a big issue on somewhere like XBL where 10-15 year olds boys run amuck), while I don't personally see any extrinsic factors keeping women from being competitive poker players aside from it being a historically male predominant game.

Obviously gaming has a broader appeal than poker, but it seems to me that core gamers - also a historically predominately male group - have dictated the direction of the gaming market, and that has to be overcome before any kind of major changes can be made to address the three major issues I pointed out. Yet I think so few women are interested in core gaming, as with poker, that we won't see many changes aside from a few publishers worried about being politically correct bothering to tone down the offensiveness of some of their protagonists or subject matter, and that most of the articles popping up lately on the issue are coming from a small disaffected group of core women gamers, or sympathetic male journalists who really would like to see more diversity and participation with women involved in core gaming. But articles complaining about how obnoxious the competitive street fighter scene is, or how immature XBL is, or why we don't have more female protagonists or female game designers seem to miss the point entirely to me.

The fixes aren't all one-sided. They shouldn't be assumed to be. Yes, there need to be more women in the development/coding aspects of game design, but that's an issue with multiple angles of attack. The first hurdle is simply the systemic bias that plagued education vis-à-vis women and math/science. We've done a lot as a society to overcome such stereotypes, but that doesn't mean there isn't more work to do.

At the same time, male designers can't just throw their hands up in the air and say, "What I'm doing is fine, when more women designers come along they can focus on the touchy-feely crap." This is basically the huge issue with gender imbalances and stuff like this: men wanting to take no action/accountability. The online male psyche/persona has not evolved one iota from where it was when the Internet became more ubiquitous and wide-spread. When a girl shows up anywhere, be it Xbox live, an MMO like WoW, or even a poker forum, the immediate make response is usually "pics/tits or gtfo", and we all laugh because lol tits are awesome.

But it's not funny. It really never was. That attitude does nothing to encourage women to integrate into predominately male cultures. And that's to say nothing of the actual sexually aggressive things that men often say.

We, as a gender, need to check our respective selves. Because we are part of the problem. Implicit acceptance of the cesspool culture is acceptance of treating a valuable slice of the population in a degrading fashion.

A while back, I heard that Mason, in all his infinite wisdom, had strongly considered adding b**** to the profanity filter for this site. When I originally heard about this, I thought it was dumb, a needless restriction on speech on an already over-filtered site. However, as I venture around the site more and more, the more I realize that he had a good reason to want to restrict that word, and do wish he had stuck with his original inclination.

It's hard, as a lazy man, to admit that you might need to change your ideas and evolve, and its even harder to make those changes. It takes a huge amount of effort on a daily basis to stop using vocabulary I've used for decades, but I think words matter, and for that I'm willing to put forth some effort. The first step for others, probably the hardest, is to even recognize or admit that there's an issue that we contribute to.

My point was that game designers are going to cater to their primary audience - core gamers are ridiculously vocal. The indie scene is where I see any real changes being made in terms of the availability of games more relevant to female interests, I don't think AAA developers and publishers can do too much at the moment. The only question is will there be enough interest for such new trends to make their way over to the mainstream.

As far as the level of interaction women can expect in online gaming, are they really being treated that much differently from anyone else? A relatively mature male gamer can't even go a match in CoD or Halo without a preteen spouting out the most ridiculous filth, or go into general chat in WoW without thinking about how maybe a planet destroying asteroid wouldn't be that bad just now. For years now if you've wanted a worthwhile online gaming experience you've had to rely on networking through communities like this or RPS or whatever to find mature people to play with.

When somebody new posts on 2p2 does anybody pay attention to anything other than quality of post? What about when the poster is noticeably female?

It would be nice to write off the harassment as "it happens to everybody", but there is clear misogyny on 2p2 and many other forums/subcultures that is WAY out of proportion to the amount of general negativity and scumbaggery.

Bit of a chicken and egg situation: do devs cater to boys because outs are the primary audience, or is the primary audience boys because devs cater to them? I don't think that's an easily answered question at this point.

There are companies looking at other demographics, though, because those markets for video games are relatively untapped. They are huge potentials without much notice because of old stereotypes, but the smarter devs are cottoning on and making sure resources are allocated in a fashion that allows tapping that segment.

My assumption with everyone in this thread so far is that they are middle to upper-class white males. (Apologies if not true to anyone itt so far) What we as white males experience is very different than what a black male or white female or whatever else experiences. It's easy to want to hand-wave away the idea that other groups have a very different experience online than you do, but you should remain open to this notion, because I assure you it's true. The folks at Extra Credit have a good video about this, and xkcd even made a comic about this once. It's nice to assume that just because we as white men have it pretty easy then so must everyone else, but we literally cannot imagine the **** people outside our gender or race experience online, on a frequent to daily basis. You seem, up to now, to be a fairly open-minded person, which is good, but I hope you can keep that open mind in this area as well, because its pretty important.

I mentioned in the GTA5 thread that it's a huge shame Rockstar didn't have a female as one of the 3 playable characters. They could have had their cake and eaten it too (not positive I'm using that expression correctly). The types of male gamers less likely to buy with a female protagonist (if they even exist) would still be happy sticking with the male characters.

Imagine what people would be saying about Rockstar if not a single GTA game to date featured a black protagonist?

One thing about the "catering to male audience because the video game market is full of males" - just because males might have an appetite for the types of games that appeal to guys doesn't mean they have an appetite for unintelligent themes and gender roles. Arkham City didn't benefit from, or need, sexist lines all over to the place - it was just sloppy writing by a bunch of dudes living and working in an echo chamber.

It's not "we need to make less shooters" - the problem isn't that we're making too many games for guys and not enough for girls. It's that the games we make for anyone are full of uncomplicated stereotypes when women are represented. And why shouldn't they? The people who make games are a lot like the people who play games. We're awkward. We aren't the best at understanding women. A lot of us resent women for that reason and that bubbles up to the surface in various ways. So we need to become smarter about the way women are portrayed in games. I don't particularly care if girls wind up playing games on a large scale really, but the notion of video games ever being a meaningful art form requires us to grasp the fact that we're ****ing up right now when it comes to accurately portraying gender roles, and to stop ****ing that up.

And with respect to the online community - it seems pretty clear to me that guys don't want girls to be part of the gaming community. I think that's where the aforementioned resentment comes in - lots of gamers aren't good with women, enjoy the notion of games being a safe haven away from whatever problems they have, and are threatened by the idea of women invading that safe space they have. Hence, this stuff:

So instead of addressing issues men may have with women, they should ignore those issues and hope everything resolves on its own by.. portraying gender roles?

This is exactly what I mean when I say men need to accept responsibility, have some accountability, and work toward changing to become better people. This isn't exactly the cultural evolution that occurred wrt the gay community. (Exposure to gay people via sitcoms and such bringing about acceptance of the culture) Women have been around for a while, their experiences and attitudes aren't something new, but for the most part men don't really give a moment's thought to how their perceptions are formed or how they function.

You're absolutely right that it's lazy, though. I tried to watch a Leslie Nielson movie the other day, Spy Hard maybe, and I didn't make it past the intro sequence because it had such atrocious writing wrt the female character. Once you become aware of this stuff, it really becomes hard to ignore. It's everywhere!

I feel like if men started trying to change, started trying to think about how their attitudes negatively impact women, maybe some self analysis and open mindedness could help more than game sales. Maybe it could help men in their interactions and dealings with women on both a social and a romantic level. If we wipe away the "women are like x" stereotype and even just get some intellectual curiosity in the minds if young men toward their female counter parts, maybe that could go a long way toward a better future for both sexes.

Well, I'm trying to be realistic. Obviously men resolving their issues with women would be the best solution but I don't expect that to happen on a large scale anytime soon.

Pretty sure working class males of most ethnic groups have no problem with COD X or whatever.

Also Tomb Raider.

It's something that needs to be talked about. My girlfriend often admits that she would like play more games, but simply isn't interested in playing a male protagonist or a virtual bimbo in a bikini.

As with most of society, the majority of men are ignorant toward the issue. It's easy to dismiss with the attitude of, "I deal with everything they deal with, suck it up" when you are a member of the controlling majority.

It's simply a matter of considering another viewpoint than your own.

Or, we can stick our fingers in our ears and say "get off your period, tits or GTFO"

Should stop this conversation and talk about interesting, thought-provoking commentary on video games imo.

"I've heard about feminism once before, so mentioning it again is boring."

feminism = interesting, thought-provoking commentary on video games?

Considering female representation in the entirety of the video game era, I don't see how you could be against the topic.

Edit: Do you believe that the current market caters to a demographic that is predominately male? What are your views on how females are presented in gaming? If you think it isn't important, why?

Well it's not thought-provoking because it's all very obvious, and imo, has little to do with my enjoyment with playing the games.

It's not intersting because it's all obvious, and has nothing to do with my enjoyment with the games.

I mean I'm sure it's fascinating to your girlfriend because she doesn't like to play male protagonists. I, however, just don't give a ****. If the protagonist is a female or male, I could care less. In fact most of the games I play the protagonist is sex neutral and I can choose whichever.

FYI - The accepted way to shift a conversation towards a different topic is to introduce a new, and particularly more interesting, topic not just whine about the one at hand. Because then what happens is the conversation becomes all about the whining.

Unfortunately I have little to add, but have enjoyed most of what has been posted itt so far so was hoping to get back to that.