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On March 12 2015 09:32 Scootaloo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2015 08:49 Sub40APM wrote:On March 12 2015 06:24 Scootaloo wrote:On March 12 2015 05:51 Logo wrote:And all these new people coming in? they want to love games too. A lot of them probably aren't even new people. If you've been playing games for a long ass time it's nice to get something different than yet another shooter or yet another RPG. If you combine that with getting older and having less time then doubling up with some narrative depth and personal meaning is a pretty good way to make the time spent feel efficient. In either case welcoming in new people (instead of harassing them) and a broader audience would only help get those games made. Like what? A recent game that been tried to make as female friendly is, DA:I, a complete financial disaster because instead of inventing new gameplay mechanics they focussed everything on making semi-deep characters, dumbing down the few things they hadn't already dumbed down in the previous game, and ofcourse it was a complete bug fest. You are seriously blaming DA:I on the developers focus women? DA2 sucked too. Maybe it has something to do with a bad studio being bad at game design and the damage that cross-platform releases have inflicted on PC RPGs because things have to be made comparable with console controllers? What other examples do we have of games with a female focus like that? I could cite Depression Quest, which was horrible, Revolution 60, which was horrible, Gone Home, which although not as complete garbage as the previous two mentions was still the most pretentuous walking simulator I have ever played, I'm having trouble thinking of any other really feminist games advertised as such. DA:I was not not dumbed down for consoles, DA:O was their classic 2nd ed. DnD system they used dumbed down and simplified for consoles, it worked fine despite this and was still intelligent enough to be a good game. DA:I was dumbed down to reach a dumber audience, less game, more story, because what Farmville tard is going to want to do complicated battles with pausing or differentiating class mechanics beyond basic roles? Ewwwww. But a long dumb story about kings 'n shit? It's just like Game of Thrones!
So, what does any of this have to do with women? Unless your point is "Women are stupid" (Which is utter nonsense), simplifying a game has nothing to do with anything anyone was talking about.
And obviously, if a game is designed to be feminist, instead of a good game, it is going to suck. The same way any game where the main goal is not to make a good game, but to make some sort of political point is rarely good. Luckily, very few games are made like that.
Also, what is your beef with story? I like to have a good story in my games.
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Northern Ireland26740 Posts
Apparently girls are too dumb to identify with characters who aren't female. I for example share a lot in common with a ripped Demi-God in Kratos, or a government agent augmented with nanotechnology like JC Denton
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On March 12 2015 09:07 Godwrath wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2015 08:38 Plansix wrote:On March 12 2015 08:09 Wombat_NI wrote:On March 12 2015 04:26 Plansix wrote:
The internet badass MRA have arrived and want to tell us all about our need to toughen up and get out of our hugboxes. And they clearly didn't read the article because none of what they are talking about is referenced.
I also like how a bunch of channer's are pretty much going full old man on this and saying "When I was a kid back is 2004, I was totally fine and the internet was great. These kids nowadays are soft and weak." Do you have to use the term MRA to describe every single post that you disagree with? It's no better than the irritating debate-damaging practice of calling anyone discussing women's issues a 'feminazi' When their arguments are the exact same as every other regurgitated, prehashed talking points I've seen all over, yep. The points are disingenuous and shitty. No point in have the same arguments over bills hit over and over. I haven't read anything from you being any different. "Kids these days" i guess. By the way, i am 30. But i would never try to argue with someone younger pretending my age gives me a better insight on different subjects (which it does) showing disdain, but actually answering the arguments. And calling them MRA is absolutely a crap bait. Now on DAI's point. And i don't care who they targeted with DAI (i guess i would need to read some pointless DEV interview to find that), but the game wasn't bad because it was focused to X. It was bad because it was uninspiring. The game lacked direction, it wasn't the true son to DAO like they promised and it was a horrible PC port. Anything else about casual, not casual (that word has been prostituted too much, please, stop using it) is not what the game aims for. Its problems are the repetition, the lazy quest/game design, controls and lacking storytelling from a company who actually has been making money out of it, removal of features which you may think it is to target the "casuals". No, it's not, it's just lazy game design. People who just play a game a few hours and move on into the next one couldn't careless if you had a tactics screen in his way, removing it didn't catter to what you describe as casual players in any way, it was just a net loss.
If the game just lacked direction why didn't they just reuse everything from DA:O like they did for 2? That was bad because it was just a short add-on to DA:O advertised as a seperate game.
They made a concerted effort to make everything simpler, if they where lazy wouldn't they just have left everything as it was? People didn't complain that Baldurs Gate 2 didn't reinvent the mechanics after the first.
Unless the dev's specifically state whether or not the dumbing down was for the audience or the colsoles it's all speculation I fear, but shit like this: http://www.themarysue.com/bioware-blog-dai-trans-character/ gives you the impression that they focussed a lot of effort into this one trans character, who I believed in my playthrough I talked to once and never even found out they where trans before reading this article just now.
"I wrote Krem as best I could, and the editing team looked at every line and cleaned up dialogue and paraphrases that could give the wrong impression. I then passed him to two friends in the GQ community… at which point they showed me where I was absolutely messing things up and gave me constructive feedback on how to improve."
All that for a side character that has no direct impact on the story, is not a companion or even useful for ANYTHING but standing in a pub and appearantly have conversations with about being transexual.
If only they put all that time into making a better game instead of pandering to whatever the GQ community is.
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On March 12 2015 09:39 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2015 09:32 Scootaloo wrote:On March 12 2015 08:49 Sub40APM wrote:On March 12 2015 06:24 Scootaloo wrote:On March 12 2015 05:51 Logo wrote:And all these new people coming in? they want to love games too. A lot of them probably aren't even new people. If you've been playing games for a long ass time it's nice to get something different than yet another shooter or yet another RPG. If you combine that with getting older and having less time then doubling up with some narrative depth and personal meaning is a pretty good way to make the time spent feel efficient. In either case welcoming in new people (instead of harassing them) and a broader audience would only help get those games made. Like what? A recent game that been tried to make as female friendly is, DA:I, a complete financial disaster because instead of inventing new gameplay mechanics they focussed everything on making semi-deep characters, dumbing down the few things they hadn't already dumbed down in the previous game, and ofcourse it was a complete bug fest. You are seriously blaming DA:I on the developers focus women? DA2 sucked too. Maybe it has something to do with a bad studio being bad at game design and the damage that cross-platform releases have inflicted on PC RPGs because things have to be made comparable with console controllers? What other examples do we have of games with a female focus like that? I could cite Depression Quest, which was horrible, Revolution 60, which was horrible, Gone Home, which although not as complete garbage as the previous two mentions was still the most pretentuous walking simulator I have ever played, I'm having trouble thinking of any other really feminist games advertised as such. DA:I was not not dumbed down for consoles, DA:O was their classic 2nd ed. DnD system they used dumbed down and simplified for consoles, it worked fine despite this and was still intelligent enough to be a good game. DA:I was dumbed down to reach a dumber audience, less game, more story, because what Farmville tard is going to want to do complicated battles with pausing or differentiating class mechanics beyond basic roles? Ewwwww. But a long dumb story about kings 'n shit? It's just like Game of Thrones! So, what does any of this have to do with women? Unless your point is "Women are stupid" (Which is utter nonsense), simplifying a game has nothing to do with anything anyone was talking about. And obviously, if a game is designed to be feminist, instead of a good game, it is going to suck. The same way any game where the main goal is not to make a good game, but to make some sort of political point is rarely good. Luckily, very few games are made like that. Also, what is your beef with story? I like to have a good story in my games.
Go back one or two pages for links to studies and a more detailed discussion on this, women play much more casual games then men do, much, much, more, this is not because women are dumber it's because of different interest, women tend to be more focussed on social media when they're using computers, casual games are more easily mixed with this and often times directly plug into it.
Pandering to women, if we're talking about a fairly complicated RPG like DA:O, does in fact mean it will be casualized unless they expect to suddenly turn all these women into the hardcore gamer demographic by writing better stories.
I have no beef with story, but I also know that video game stories on average tend to be shit, whether or not it's written with a special focus on women tends to have zero impact on this, if not actively hamper the process.
Also I'm just rehashing old points here, so just go back a bit if you want to know why I said these things that you took offense with.
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Look... the point you're trying to make is all over the place.
Deep down I guess you're making some point that games which cater to wider audiences are worse than games that cater to the "core" gaming audience. You then apply on to this the assumption that women are "casuals" and are the wider audiences being catered to. And so pandering to women results in worse off games.
This is just so cheesy on so many levels:
1) Guess what, games have been becoming easier well before this modern era. Dragon Age it self is just a slimmed down version of the DnD engin was behind bauldr's gate. The story lines of the new round of RPGs are all much more streamlined compared to the rambling, wordy plots of their forefathers. COD is an arcadey off spring of counterstrike... the list goes on. This has been happening well before the discussion about women came around, and will probably continue on.
2) The reasons for why games are becoming easier are many. One that you're missing is that the core audience of yesterday have grown up and just haev less time to grind away playing. This core audience now has money but less time, and so you make games that are more accessible. Think of the ridiculous grind fests older MMOs like SWG were, and compared them to WoW (even at vanilla). People also generally have much shorter attention spans.
3) I have no idea where you are getting your impression that games like Far Cry or DA:I were specifically geared towards women. You point out some discreet features of the game, but that's just a few features in a sea of other things that make up that game. I also have no idea why you think that these two games sucked specifically because it was geared towards women. Like how about them just sucking because they were bad?
4) You are really ignoring other games that have been more progressive in trying to be women-friendly, and that tried to move away from the "core gaming audience" and did fantastically:
- Mirror's edge (strong female protag, no male main character)
- the Tomb Raider reboot (realistic breasts, and clothing)
- The Last of Us (a girl as the second main character)
- and even older titles like Beyond Good and Evil (strong female protag)
Your problem is that you first assume that the games you mentioned were changed to cater to women, then that they were bad because of this change, and then you draw a general principle that generally catering to women is a bad thing. All three of these propositions are unsupported assumptions.
p.s. regarding Diablo 3, yes I know it's easier than D2, but really D2 was not exactly difficult to begin with. My point is that Last of Us, which made a little girl as one of the main characters, had DLC involving a lesbian kiss, and generally focused heavily on story and dialogue, made steps to appeal to an audience wider than the "core gaming audience". D3, basically a redressed D2, was made for the core audience, but Blizzard made it eaiser. It also stank (at launch).
So just in this example we can see:
- things can be made casual without catering specifically to women (d3)
- you can actually cater to non core audience and have a fantastic game (Last of Us).
To sum up - Good, well made games, are good. Bad games are bad. All this stuff about catering to whoever actually has no casual bearing on whether a game is good or not.
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Pretty sure all those games you mentioned are examples of rape culture and sexism.
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Yeah, because making games more accessible totally has something to do with wanting women to play them. As can be seen by so many titles with a primarily female demographic like CoD, SCII, and pretty much most of the modern AAA titles. The fact of the matter is that you can apparently make a lot more money by making your game more accessible. This is utterly unrelated to women in gaming in any way.
Women might play more social media games, but once again i don't see how this figures into anything at all. Game studios make games to make money. Thus, they will want to make a game that a lot of people will want to buy. Real inaccessible "Hardcore" mechanics are not very popular outside of a select crowd, which is a lot smaller than the console crowd.
Also, apparently to you, all games are on a scale from casual to hardcore, with anything below BW level mechanics being casual. There is a lot more nuance to this. Really casual mobile/social media games are completely different from console games, which are completely different from oldschool games, which are completely different from newer indie games, etc... Apparently, if you want to make a successful AAA title nowadays, you need to appeal to the console crowd, simply because there are a lot of them, and they tend to buy games at full price a lot. This console crowd tends to like more simplified mechanics, both due to controller issues and some other reasons that you would probably conflagrate into "they are too casual".
Note how none of this has ANYTHING to do with social media games or mobile phone games? Or women?
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On March 12 2015 09:42 Wombat_NI wrote:
Apparently girls are too dumb to identify with characters who aren't female. I for example share a lot in common with a ripped Demi-God in Kratos, or a government agent augmented with nanotechnology like JC Denton
They are not to dumb, but they would like more characters like them. I don't think any girl thinks she is Korra from LoK, but they like her. Heaven forbid they(and everyone else really) ask for characters that aren't brooding, gritty, loner male protagonist. Personally I am bored to death of them and want like anything else.
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On March 12 2015 10:31 wei2coolman wrote:
Pretty sure all those games you mentioned are examples of rape culture and sexism.
Do try harder. Even as trollbait this was pathetic.
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On March 12 2015 10:24 levelping wrote:
Look... the point you're trying to make is all over the place.
Deep down I guess you're making some point that games which cater to wider audiences are worse than games that cater to the "core" gaming audience. You then apply on to this the assumption that women are "casuals" and are the wider audiences being catered to. And so pandering to women results in worse off games.
This is just so cheesy on so many levels:
1) Guess what, games have been becoming easier well before this modern era. Dragon Age it self is just a slimmed down version of the DnD engin was behind bauldr's gate. The story lines of the new round of RPGs are all much more streamlined compared to the rambling, wordy plots of their forefathers. COD is an arcadey off spring of counterstrike... the list goes on. This has been happening well before the discussion about women came around, and will probably continue on.
2) The reasons for why games are becoming easier are many. One that you're missing is that the core audience of yesterday have grown up and just haev less time to grind away playing. This core audience now has money but less time, and so you make games that are more accessible. Think of the ridiculous grind fests older MMOs like SWG were, and compared them to WoW (even at vanilla). People also generally have much shorter attention spans.
3) I have no idea where you are getting your impression that games like Far Cry or DA:I were specifically geared towards women. You point out some discreet features of the game, but that's just a few features in a sea of other things that make up that game. I also have no idea why you think that these two games sucked specifically because it was geared towards women. Like how about them just sucking because they were bad?
4) You are really ignoring other games that have been more progressive in trying to be women-friendly, and that tried to move away from the "core gaming audience" and did fantastically:
- Mirror's edge (strong female protag, no male main character)
- the Tomb Raider reboot (realistic breasts, and clothing)
- The Last of Us (a girl as the second main character)
- and even older titles like Beyond Good and Evil (strong female protag)
Your problem is that you first assume that the games you mentioned were changed to cater to women, then that they were bad because of this change, and then you draw a general principle that generally catering to women is a bad thing. All three of these propositions are unsupported assumptions.
p.s. regarding Diablo 3, yes I know it's easier than D2, but really D2 was not exactly difficult to begin with. My point is that Last of Us, which made a little girl as one of the main characters, had DLC involving a lesbian kiss, and generally focused heavily on story and dialogue, made steps to appeal to an audience wider than the "core gaming audience". D3, basically a redressed D2, was made for the core audience, but Blizzard made it eaiser. It also stank (at launch).
So just in this example we can see:
- things can be made casual without catering specifically to women (d3)
- you can actually cater to non core audience and have a fantastic game (Last of Us).
To sum up - Good, well made games, are good. Bad games are bad. All this stuff about catering to whoever actually has no casual bearing on whether a game is good or not.
1: I literally said in one of my previous posts how DA:O was a dumbed down version of Baldur's gate(and NWN and IWD), which was the amount of pandering they needed to do to make it playable for a colsole audience, the dumbing down they've done now is for the benefit of casuals, who else would have anything to gain from it? And considering CS:S and CS:GO are still alive and kicking CoD seems like a dumb comparison, might as well call Halo Counter Strike while you're at it. Thank god the FPS community still has it's values straight and creates new game series to dumb down the formula, not screw up a perfectly fine one like DA.
2: Yes, the core audience grows up, but the new people in that age and wealth bracket become the new core audience, you really think that the first couple of gaming generations where somehow special and now it's gonna stop? It's just getting bigger and bigger, especially with increasing wealth in third world countries allowing for more people to enjoy videogames. And do you really think these new world audiences are going to enjoy crazy feminist cliché's where all females have to be a badass, can never be in peril and needs some kind of deformity to show how hardcore she is. Guess what, they tend to be a lot more conservative then the more traditional gaming countries and will probably gravitate more towards Japanese games because they don't shove, for them, alien political ideas into their games.
3: Just do some background research on these games for gods sake, here's a tweet from the lead writer of Far Cry 4: https://archive.today/c6PKD , just look up the lead writer of DA:I, he's been very vocal about how, can't find much on David Gaider, these types tend to be remove their offending tweets once they get flak for it, David Gaider is pretty well known for his insistence on prominently putting homosexual characters in his games, something I personally don't mind, but I think we can agree that having over half your group of characters being gay, bi or even trans now appearantly is not normal for a videogame or even statistically realistic. And here's a quick one that got preserved in a neogaf thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=849365 I'm pretty sure you don't talk about "Pandering to straight white males" unless you have some kind of political agenda to achieve.
I listed these games specifically because they where games that where influenced by the recent wave of feminism that has been spreading over the internet and which I believe the OP's video to be part of.
All of the games you list except for Tomb Raider (which I didn't play for longer then an hour or so so I won't comment) have anything to do with feminism, can you find articles of the dev's talking about how they where inspired by feminism or any prominent figures? They where just good games that happened to have female protagonists. If you're gonna ask me to prove that the DA:I an Far Cry 4 devs did not have ties to these cults, which I did give several sources for by now, how about you prove the opposite for Mirror's Edge or BGaE.
A character having a strong female character doesn't automatically mean the creators have some sort of feminist ideals, otherwise you might argue that medieval Japanese where feminists because of the story of the bamboo cutter, or ancient Greeks because of Artemis.
Yes, my assumptions that games become worse when they're catered to women is no great universal law that shalt not be broken.
If you look at the data though, female gamers are so stuck in the casual games market and their lives, with social media and such so entrenched around it that you'd have to be a complete idiot to not see the connection.
If you want to cater a game to women, you better as hell make sure the mechanics are fairly easy or a large part of that demographic is simply not available to you unless you want to start some kind of revolution to make hardcore videogames for girls.
Diablo 3 was still dumbed down from Diablo 2, and considering it was initially only planned as a PC game, this must be for the casual crowd, nothing else makes sense.
Didn't play the Last of Us, I might when it get's a PC release someday, but from the couple of LP bit's I've seen it doesn't seem to be a game catered to women, yes, there's a girl, and OMG there's a lesbian kiss, but that shit ain't edgy anymore man, if anything women kissing tends to be one of those things macho men love to put in, ever seen the Benny Hill show? Now men kissing, that'd be a clear sign of a strong focus on female and gay gamers, but everyone except probably gay men can enjoy lesbians.
I agree one of your final points, games can be casualized without any pandering to women in particular, but if you do want to pander to female audiences, casualization is almost certain.
The last of us is definitely catered for the core audience though, nothing of it I've seen is even remotely shocking, please describe a better example then 2 girls kissing, and mechanics wise it's still reasonably complicated.
The only real point here is that you seem to believe that catering games to women will change nothing but lure more women into videogaming.
I however posit that because the female audience is comprised mostly casuals, that catering to them will invariably lead to the games becoming more casual, things can also get casualized for other reasons, but I don't think there's any difference in experience playing a game that has been casualized for consoles, women or baby's, either way they're bad games.
Either way, these casualized games tend to flop pretty hard, so there's very little we need to do but just keep not buying bad games.
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"Casualization" is not certain if you try to make a game more female friendly. You are conflating "female" and "casual". Yes, females are currently overwhelmingly "casuals" when it comes to video games, but this is not an intrinsic part of being a female gamer, and it can be argued that the current setup is due, at least in part, to the fact that "hardcore" games aren't female friendly in the first place.
Making a game female-friendly, or open to women, or contributing to feminism or anything like this doesn't require that developers bend over backwards and make it specifically for that cause. It doesn't even require conscious effort at all. All it requires is that women are depicted realistically (their bodies aren't overly-sexualized), they are put in at least some prominent roles (doesn't need to be the main character, but it definitely can be), and their entire existence doesn't revolve around a male character. The problem is that it is a pretty well-established fact that games that currently do this are not that common.
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I'm still lost as to the logic behind what you're saying. So just because a writer or developer of the game has some tweets about social justice the whole game is actually catered to women? What the hell. And it's ludicrous that on one hand you assert repeatedly that women are mostly casual gamers, while at the same time saying that far cry, a freaking fps is catered to women. Last I check far cry didn't have social media or angry birds in it.
I actually expected you to ask for evidence of my games specifically catering to women which is why I made no such claim. The games I mention were all great games which expanded its focus from the core gaming group, by having things like female leads who are not sexualised. I never said the game was made solely or mainly for women.
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On March 12 2015 13:04 Stratos_speAr wrote:
"Casualization" is not certain if you try to make a game more female friendly. You are conflating "female" and "casual". Yes, females are currently overwhelmingly "casuals" when it comes to video games, but this is not an intrinsic part of being a female gamer, and it can be argued that the current setup is due, at least in part, to the fact that "hardcore" games aren't female friendly in the first place.
Making a game female-friendly, or open to women, or contributing to feminism or anything like this doesn't require that developers bend over backwards and make it specifically for that cause. It doesn't even require conscious effort at all. All it requires is that women are depicted realistically (their bodies aren't overly-sexualized), they are put in at least some prominent roles (doesn't need to be the main character, but it definitely can be), and their entire existence doesn't revolve around a male character. The problem is that it is a pretty well-established fact that games that currently do this are not that common.
So basically you're saying women are incapable of relating to characters that aren't like them, and are therefore not likely to enjoy "hardcore" games?
This fails on at least two accounts. First, there are plenty of "hardcore" games that either most males cannot relate to the main character either. I'm pretty much nothing like Kratos for instance. I played female Shepard in Mass Effect, and I loved Mirror's Edge.
And then whole "can't relate to characters" explanation ignores multiplayer-focused games or strategy games where there either are no characters or they're non-essential to the enjoyment of the game. Like Counterstrike or Europa Universalis.
I think the real explanation is that women are just naturally less likely to be competitive, and most "hardcore" games are competitive in nature. Either its you against other players, or its you against the game.
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Canada11505 Posts
Has gaming even been around long enough to even know whether women 'naturally' gravitate to this that or the other? I mean, we are seeing an explosion of more and more people getting into games in general- female and male. Have we actually experimented around enough with player characters, side characters, game ideas to know whether females will always eschew 'hardcore' games. I feel like we are still shaking the snowglobe and we haven't yet seen how things are going to settle for some time now.
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On March 12 2015 13:22 Millitron wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2015 13:04 Stratos_speAr wrote:
"Casualization" is not certain if you try to make a game more female friendly. You are conflating "female" and "casual". Yes, females are currently overwhelmingly "casuals" when it comes to video games, but this is not an intrinsic part of being a female gamer, and it can be argued that the current setup is due, at least in part, to the fact that "hardcore" games aren't female friendly in the first place.
Making a game female-friendly, or open to women, or contributing to feminism or anything like this doesn't require that developers bend over backwards and make it specifically for that cause. It doesn't even require conscious effort at all. All it requires is that women are depicted realistically (their bodies aren't overly-sexualized), they are put in at least some prominent roles (doesn't need to be the main character, but it definitely can be), and their entire existence doesn't revolve around a male character. The problem is that it is a pretty well-established fact that games that currently do this are not that common. So basically you're saying women are incapable of relating to characters that aren't like them, and are therefore not likely to enjoy "hardcore" games?This fails on at least two accounts. First, there are plenty of "hardcore" games that either most males cannot relate to the main character either. I'm pretty much nothing like Kratos for instance. I played female Shepard in Mass Effect, and I loved Mirror's Edge. And then whole "can't relate to characters" explanation ignores multiplayer-focused games or strategy games where there either are no characters or they're non-essential to the enjoyment of the game. Like Counterstrike or Europa Universalis. I think the real explanation is that women are just naturally less likely to be competitive, and most "hardcore" games are competitive in nature. Either its you against other players, or its you against the game.
Nowhere in my post did I say anything of the sort.
It's simply a fact that the ability to relate only goes so far. Not only have you created a terrible strawman, but you've also created a false dichotomy between "all game characters are male" (which is what we're much closer to now than either the middle or the other extreme) or "all game characters are female". The idea is that there needs to be more diversity, because women don't want to be part of a gaming culture where 98% of playable characters are male and 75% of important/powerful characters are male. Most people (that aren't closed-minded) want more parity; men don't mind playing female characters and women don't mind playing male characters. The problem is when a culture almost always depicts the powerful or important characters as one/a few particular prototypes.
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On March 12 2015 13:30 Falling wrote:
Has gaming even been around long enough to even know whether women 'naturally' gravitate to this that or the other? I mean, we are seeing an explosion of more and more people getting into games in general- female and male. Have we actually experimented around enough with player characters, side characters, game ideas to know whether females will always eschew 'hardcore' games. I feel like we are still shaking the snowglobe and we haven't yet seen how things are going to settle for some time now.
And this doesn't even begin to address the question of what informs the things people gravitate toward in general. Men in Europe once wore tights and carried rapiers around, now not so much. Kids in elementary school once went crazy about Pokemon, now it's Minecraft. What happened? Answer's probably too complicated for a paragraph or two, in both cases.
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On March 12 2015 13:04 Stratos_speAr wrote:
It doesn't even require conscious effort at all. All it requires is that women are depicted realistically (their bodies aren't overly-sexualized), they are put in at least some prominent roles (doesn't need to be the main character, but it definitely can be), and their entire existence doesn't revolve around a male character. The problem is that it is a pretty well-established fact that games that currently do this are not that common.
But it's artistic fantasy. It's fiction, not the real world. For example, in a game like Halo, involving faster than light spaceships, aliens, laser guns and energy shields, the sexualized image of a holographic AI is a problem because it's not realistic? Tychus Findlay doesn't look like me, but I wouldn't think this was a social issue. Living, breathing women in the developed world are able to dress themselves as they please and they have the freedom of their own image. But imaginary female characters are exclusionary if they don't fit your sense of a normalized image?
I don't see why this needs social awareness and how it's not something for the market to just take care of? To the extent women can be an audience for games, studios will want to make stuff they like to make money. Right? In any medium people carve out their own target audiences. Women read Danielle Steel, men read Tom Clancy, everybody reads Ray Bradbury, too many people read Deepak Chopra.
On March 12 2015 13:33 Stratos_speAr wrote:
It's simply a fact that the ability to relate only goes so far. Not only have you created a terrible strawman, but you've also created a false dichotomy between "all game characters are male" (which is what we're much closer to now than either the middle or the other extreme) or "all game characters are female". The idea is that there needs to be more diversity, because women don't want to be part of a gaming culture where 98% of playable characters are male and 75% of important/powerful characters are male.
66% of characters in Starcraft aren't even human. Should we not be worried about how humans relate when playing the campaign? Women watch TV and movies, right? Have Hollywood leading men been holding back women as film audiences?
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On March 12 2015 13:30 Falling wrote:
Has gaming even been around long enough to even know whether women 'naturally' gravitate to this that or the other? I mean, we are seeing an explosion of more and more people getting into games in general- female and male. Have we actually experimented around enough with player characters, side characters, game ideas to know whether females will always eschew 'hardcore' games. I feel like we are still shaking the snowglobe and we haven't yet seen how things are going to settle for some time now.
This seems to be the pattern, not only for video games, but for nearly every hobby that exists. The discrepancy is particularly large, for hobbies that are less social and about developing largely useless skills.
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I think female gamer find themselves targets of discrimination and bullying because they are females in a male dominated game/environment. It would usually be the younger generation that would target her because she is female.People should not judge on age,race,sex,disability,religion or any other thing and judge players on merit on how they play.Treat them like equals and give them the same opportunity as males.Just because someone is female does not make them any worse then a male gamer or any better it would all vary on the person in question.We could take this a step further and put rules in place so people are punished for these sort of things or educate the players better that this is unacceptable.
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On March 12 2015 13:22 Millitron wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2015 13:04 Stratos_speAr wrote:
"Casualization" is not certain if you try to make a game more female friendly. You are conflating "female" and "casual". Yes, females are currently overwhelmingly "casuals" when it comes to video games, but this is not an intrinsic part of being a female gamer, and it can be argued that the current setup is due, at least in part, to the fact that "hardcore" games aren't female friendly in the first place.
Making a game female-friendly, or open to women, or contributing to feminism or anything like this doesn't require that developers bend over backwards and make it specifically for that cause. It doesn't even require conscious effort at all. All it requires is that women are depicted realistically (their bodies aren't overly-sexualized), they are put in at least some prominent roles (doesn't need to be the main character, but it definitely can be), and their entire existence doesn't revolve around a male character. The problem is that it is a pretty well-established fact that games that currently do this are not that common. I think the real explanation is that women are just naturally less likely to be competitive, and most "hardcore" games are competitive in nature. Either its you against other players, or its you against the game.
I think this is key when trying to explain the casual:hardcore audience disparity between sexes.
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EPT
