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On November 20 2010 08:13 Sfydjklm wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 07:39 mcc wrote:
Try to learn some written text comprehension lessons, it might help you, since it seems you fail at that. I have not uttered even a word against evolution. I said that it often happens (especially to people that are not biologists) that they use evolutionary explanation that is in fact false or the logic is so full of unfounded assumptions that it cannot be taken seriously.
no it seems you fail at that. If you disregard generally accepted scientific theories you might as well disregard evolution.
What generally accepted scientific theory have I disregarded ? If you are using evolutionary explanations, it is not enough that they "make sense", I could create evolutionary explanations for many things that are not true. You have to provide more than just the mechanism if you want proof. Mechanism is good starting point, but it is not enough. Incidentally I think the evolutionary explanation in this case is correct, but I have not seen proof of this yet.
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On November 20 2010 08:26 Slasher wrote:
This thread is ridiculous for the sole reason that nearly no one in this thread has any knowledge of any competitive female players besides Tossgirl. Hafu won a MLG with fnatic (WoW). Vanessa won a WCG Pan-America, taking out Master in the finals (DoA). SK Gaming (CS 1.6) has won multiple ESWC's and female CS has been going on for a long time now. Succubus and Killcreek led the way for female Quake players 10 years ago.
There are several legitimate arguments against female gamers at the very top of the competitive circuit (which I have mentioned on Lo3), but none of them have displayed here. Many of you need history lessons and fact-checking.
It's a bit of a stretch to say that this thread is completely without value because we don't discuss other esports here. Although there are competitive gaming scenes with notable female players, and some with a substantial number of them, there's still a significant gender imbalance across the board. I met Hafu at the Blizzard North American WoW and WC3 Regional Finals in 2008, and she was the only female player in the whole tournament, I believe.
StarCraft in particular is interesting because it's so incredibly devoid of female presence at top competitive levels. The stuff we talk about here can't necessarily be generalized to all esports, but I think it's useful to look at extreme cases when trying to evaluate situations like this. You're right - most of us don't know about all the female gamers in all the esports in the world, or even all the female gamers in this one particular game we're discussing. That doesn't mean we have no basis for examining the gender gap we see in front of us.
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On November 20 2010 08:38 TrueRedemption wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 07:43 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On November 20 2010 07:10 ganjazerg wrote:+ Show Spoiler +how can people deny these following facts 1. men are more competitive in nature than women
2. men are better strategic thinkers than women
3. starcraft does infact require "intelligence"honestly the amount of people stating the opposite is surprising... the long version + Show Spoiler +1. as several people mentioned, this is simple evolutionary biology. men compete, and brag with their victories. men have a natural impulse to compete with eachother, in every imaginable way. boys play soccer, girls play with dolls. that's just the way it has always been. and anyone claiming it's only due to cultural indoctrination is either deluded or not educated enough to understand the concept of evolution.
2. i'm not talking about sports, men's physical superiority is not up for debate (anyone denying this i simply cannot take seriously). i'm talking about the ability to abstract, think efficience-oriented and plan long-term. i used chess as an example in a previous post and its a perfect example. the fact that women can't compete with men in chess proves this point. it's also a fact that the requirements to be an above-average sc player, are similar to the requirements of being an above-average chess player.
3. "you don't need to be bright to be good at starcraft" is just plain bullshit. you definitely DO need to be bright. what are you doing, if not constantly obtaining and processing information? calculating probabilities and possibilities? adapting and making decisions under pressure?
do you know this feeling when you are about to engage in a game-deciding battle, and you KNOW your positioning is very bad, and you KNOW you could retreat with minimal losses and force a fight with way better positioning, but in your mind you are like "meh lets get it over with"? and then you engage the battle, and lose the game. what just happened was... you got lazy. you got lazy because starcraft on a high level is mentally exhausting. it requires mental stamina, just like chess. Your only chance for supporting 1 and 2 is arguing by gender, not by sex. Gender meaning "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex" and sex meaning biologically male or female. There is no significant scientific evidence supporting the claims that men are more competitive than women or men are better "strategic thinkers" than women. If those things are true, it's because of cultural/behavioral/psychological traits -- how we raise boys and how we raise girls. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16807524http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15358443http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21075538I don't necessarily expect you to read more than the abstracts, or entirely understand the articles, i just wanted to point out that men are in fact not only statistically more aggressive than women, but they have also evolved to be that way, thus the different sexual responses to testosterone and other hormones, not to mention a large amount of neuroscience evidence I'll spare you. Now i'm not saying one way or another, certainly not using science to try and justify something that isn't completely understood. But at least the science should be straight set as far as what we know thus far.
If you're going to pose as an educated individual who's making an informed judgement after evaulating all the facts, at least link to articles that don't require a $31.50 sign up fee to see the contents that you undoubtedly shelled out just to justify a post on a thread.
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On November 20 2010 08:42 _Darwin_ wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 08:38 TrueRedemption wrote:On November 20 2010 07:43 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On November 20 2010 07:10 ganjazerg wrote:+ Show Spoiler +how can people deny these following facts 1. men are more competitive in nature than women
2. men are better strategic thinkers than women
3. starcraft does infact require "intelligence"honestly the amount of people stating the opposite is surprising... the long version + Show Spoiler +1. as several people mentioned, this is simple evolutionary biology. men compete, and brag with their victories. men have a natural impulse to compete with eachother, in every imaginable way. boys play soccer, girls play with dolls. that's just the way it has always been. and anyone claiming it's only due to cultural indoctrination is either deluded or not educated enough to understand the concept of evolution.
2. i'm not talking about sports, men's physical superiority is not up for debate (anyone denying this i simply cannot take seriously). i'm talking about the ability to abstract, think efficience-oriented and plan long-term. i used chess as an example in a previous post and its a perfect example. the fact that women can't compete with men in chess proves this point. it's also a fact that the requirements to be an above-average sc player, are similar to the requirements of being an above-average chess player.
3. "you don't need to be bright to be good at starcraft" is just plain bullshit. you definitely DO need to be bright. what are you doing, if not constantly obtaining and processing information? calculating probabilities and possibilities? adapting and making decisions under pressure?
do you know this feeling when you are about to engage in a game-deciding battle, and you KNOW your positioning is very bad, and you KNOW you could retreat with minimal losses and force a fight with way better positioning, but in your mind you are like "meh lets get it over with"? and then you engage the battle, and lose the game. what just happened was... you got lazy. you got lazy because starcraft on a high level is mentally exhausting. it requires mental stamina, just like chess. Your only chance for supporting 1 and 2 is arguing by gender, not by sex. Gender meaning "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex" and sex meaning biologically male or female. There is no significant scientific evidence supporting the claims that men are more competitive than women or men are better "strategic thinkers" than women. If those things are true, it's because of cultural/behavioral/psychological traits -- how we raise boys and how we raise girls. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16807524http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15358443http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21075538I don't necessarily expect you to read more than the abstracts, or entirely understand the articles, i just wanted to point out that men are in fact not only statistically more aggressive than women, but they have also evolved to be that way, thus the different sexual responses to testosterone and other hormones, not to mention a large amount of neuroscience evidence I'll spare you. Now i'm not saying one way or another, certainly not using science to try and justify something that isn't completely understood. But at least the science should be straight set as far as what we know thus far. The second article you posted concludes with this: Inter-individual differences in testosterone and cortisol were rarely associated with dominance or competitiveness. I don't necessarily expect you to read the entire article, but if you are posting something in favor of your position then you could at least read the abstract.
Yea... that's the only one that's really relevant to what Tyler and some of us have been alluding to. And it pretty much says there seems to be no difference in endocrine responses under what they perceive to be a "competitive" setting.
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I skipped a bunch of pages so I dont know if anybody mentioned my point here yet or not. But I think the most.. affecting reason is the social pressures. By that I mean people of both genders are competitive by nature, but what most people overlook is that this competitiveness is actually within each gender instead of between. For example, its universally agreed upon that men work out to impress women. But practically speaking, women only care to a certain extent - they dont care that your body fat percentage is 10% and not 11% or a difference of centimeters of your bicep size. So why do men take working out so seriously? Its because of the competition between men - Bob can benchpress 200lb so I must hit the gym until I can get 205 NOT because that chick across the gym will be any more impressed but rather because I want to beat Bob.
Likewise, an example for women is makeup and dressing up. Yeah when girls go out they spend a lot of time on makeup and dressing up. But how many of us guys really notice that new eyeshadow technique or where she got that dress from? Girls for the most part do it because they're in competition with the other girls, the ones who would actually care and notice. Some of us are good to go if shes got titties and we're drunk enough, but girls compete and compare the way we go "oh you overclocked your i7 to 3.5ghz? well mines at 3.7 on AIR"
So to answer your question, I think a major factor is if a girl plays starcraft, this is a thing that gets looked down upon by society for girls, and therefore she "loses" in her never ending comparison with other girls. What sounds better (between girls): "Oh I'm a model at Abercrombie" or "Oh I play Starcraft" Confidence and security are definitely factors too of course.
I dont really know where Im going with this anymore, but this was the biggest thing on my mind after reading about half this thread so I just wanted to leave it here and see if other people could expand upon what I've started.
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I have just done a cast of the ESL's Ladies Starcraft 2 Cup for my youtube channel specifically because it was the first match that I have seen that was girls playing. I cast the final and its played by Pikachu and Dzejna. Pikachu is the real life, Linda Laio - who not only is a top diamond player but is also a model, actress, tv show host and singer.....
So if you want to check out some lethal ladies when it comes to gaming go to http://www.esl.eu/uk/#/eu/female/
You can see the finals of the last one on my channel www.youtube.com/siegestarcraft
But in relation to the point, I would like to see more girls playing at top level. Ive only seen one at a "mainstream" tournament so far and I think that was MLG DC?
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On November 20 2010 08:56 JoeSchmoe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 08:38 TrueRedemption wrote:On November 20 2010 07:43 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On November 20 2010 07:10 ganjazerg wrote:+ Show Spoiler +how can people deny these following facts 1. men are more competitive in nature than women
2. men are better strategic thinkers than women
3. starcraft does infact require "intelligence"honestly the amount of people stating the opposite is surprising... the long version + Show Spoiler +1. as several people mentioned, this is simple evolutionary biology. men compete, and brag with their victories. men have a natural impulse to compete with eachother, in every imaginable way. boys play soccer, girls play with dolls. that's just the way it has always been. and anyone claiming it's only due to cultural indoctrination is either deluded or not educated enough to understand the concept of evolution.
2. i'm not talking about sports, men's physical superiority is not up for debate (anyone denying this i simply cannot take seriously). i'm talking about the ability to abstract, think efficience-oriented and plan long-term. i used chess as an example in a previous post and its a perfect example. the fact that women can't compete with men in chess proves this point. it's also a fact that the requirements to be an above-average sc player, are similar to the requirements of being an above-average chess player.
3. "you don't need to be bright to be good at starcraft" is just plain bullshit. you definitely DO need to be bright. what are you doing, if not constantly obtaining and processing information? calculating probabilities and possibilities? adapting and making decisions under pressure?
do you know this feeling when you are about to engage in a game-deciding battle, and you KNOW your positioning is very bad, and you KNOW you could retreat with minimal losses and force a fight with way better positioning, but in your mind you are like "meh lets get it over with"? and then you engage the battle, and lose the game. what just happened was... you got lazy. you got lazy because starcraft on a high level is mentally exhausting. it requires mental stamina, just like chess. Your only chance for supporting 1 and 2 is arguing by gender, not by sex. Gender meaning "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex" and sex meaning biologically male or female. There is no significant scientific evidence supporting the claims that men are more competitive than women or men are better "strategic thinkers" than women. If those things are true, it's because of cultural/behavioral/psychological traits -- how we raise boys and how we raise girls. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16807524http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15358443http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21075538I don't necessarily expect you to read more than the abstracts, or entirely understand the articles, i just wanted to point out that men are in fact not only statistically more aggressive than women, but they have also evolved to be that way, thus the different sexual responses to testosterone and other hormones, not to mention a large amount of neuroscience evidence I'll spare you. Now i'm not saying one way or another, certainly not using science to try and justify something that isn't completely understood. But at least the science should be straight set as far as what we know thus far. If you're going to pose as an educated individual who's making an informed judgement after evaulating all the facts, at least link to articles that don't require a $31.50 sign up fee to see the contents that I you undoubtedly shelled out just to justify a post on a thread.
He probably gets access to that through a university or other educational/research institution... not through his own pocket. Stuff indexed on pubmed is published, most likely through a peer review process. Much more convincing than stuff you find on random websites on the internet I'd say 
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women don't get hardcore into things the same way men do, in general. also women who do play get called bad and get so many trolls thinking they're clever with outdated misogyny jokes that it really discourages them from 1) revealing that they are female or 2) playing at all.
if you think women just arent as good at video games look at WoW arena. there are females at the top even though there arent many. There are some.
Then compare the number of women at the top with the number of women who play competitively or hardcore at all.
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United States313 Posts
On November 20 2010 08:42 _Darwin_ wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 08:38 TrueRedemption wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 20 2010 07:43 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 07:10 ganjazerg wrote:+ Show Spoiler +how can people deny these following facts 1. men are more competitive in nature than women
2. men are better strategic thinkers than women
3. starcraft does infact require "intelligence"honestly the amount of people stating the opposite is surprising... the long version + Show Spoiler +1. as several people mentioned, this is simple evolutionary biology. men compete, and brag with their victories. men have a natural impulse to compete with eachother, in every imaginable way. boys play soccer, girls play with dolls. that's just the way it has always been. and anyone claiming it's only due to cultural indoctrination is either deluded or not educated enough to understand the concept of evolution.
2. i'm not talking about sports, men's physical superiority is not up for debate (anyone denying this i simply cannot take seriously). i'm talking about the ability to abstract, think efficience-oriented and plan long-term. i used chess as an example in a previous post and its a perfect example. the fact that women can't compete with men in chess proves this point. it's also a fact that the requirements to be an above-average sc player, are similar to the requirements of being an above-average chess player.
3. "you don't need to be bright to be good at starcraft" is just plain bullshit. you definitely DO need to be bright. what are you doing, if not constantly obtaining and processing information? calculating probabilities and possibilities? adapting and making decisions under pressure?
do you know this feeling when you are about to engage in a game-deciding battle, and you KNOW your positioning is very bad, and you KNOW you could retreat with minimal losses and force a fight with way better positioning, but in your mind you are like "meh lets get it over with"? and then you engage the battle, and lose the game. what just happened was... you got lazy. you got lazy because starcraft on a high level is mentally exhausting. it requires mental stamina, just like chess. Your only chance for supporting 1 and 2 is arguing by gender, not by sex. Gender meaning "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex" and sex meaning biologically male or female. There is no significant scientific evidence supporting the claims that men are more competitive than women or men are better "strategic thinkers" than women. If those things are true, it's because of cultural/behavioral/psychological traits -- how we raise boys and how we raise girls. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16807524http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15358443http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21075538I don't necessarily expect you to read more than the abstracts, or entirely understand the articles, i just wanted to point out that men are in fact not only statistically more aggressive than women, but they have also evolved to be that way, thus the different sexual responses to testosterone and other hormones, not to mention a large amount of neuroscience evidence I'll spare you. Now i'm not saying one way or another, certainly not using science to try and justify something that isn't completely understood. But at least the science should be straight set as far as what we know thus far. The second article you posted concludes with this: Inter-individual differences in testosterone and cortisol were rarely associated with dominance or competitiveness. I don't necessarily expect you to read the entire article, but if you are posting something in favor of your position then you could at least read the abstract.
Your only considering the analysis as an overall study of gender differences, but the paper is actually about college level competitive rowers, specifically looking at fixed time points before, during, and after the event. The primary study was not inter-individual but intra. Whats noteworthy are the gender differences in response to androgens as well as differing patterns of increased testosterone and cortisol levels. The papers are actually in a specific order outlining current popular understanding if considered correctly. With a name like Darwin I'd expect your part of or at least hoping to enter the biology field, but what makes biology so unbelievably expansive is the fact that unlike physics and chemistry there is no closed system fully understood yet beyond a few very specific in vitro protocols. You must always keep in mind the environment and subjects of a test in order to draw any meaningful conclusion from the data whatsoever.
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There are probably fewer female sc2 players/pros because people think like this thread.
Has it ever been the case that a woman has gone through the same sort of training regiment as the korean pro-gamers do? I honestly don't know.
Even reading ToSsGirL's page on the wiki it sounds like she had to go through a lot of personal trouble in order to get where she did.
Nobody ever thinks that Male players are bad because there are guys who can't get out of Gold League. The best players are those who have had everything line up for them, and have been committed to being the absolute best. I mean, most guys have in general more practice playing computer games to start, so they are ahead. When a guy wants to play a game like Starcraft, he's far less likely to be discouraged by friends and family. If a guy begins to become very good at a game like starcraft, he is encouraged. If a girl were to get very good at it, she'd be looked at like an oddity.
As a guy, I've played RTS games since I was very young. I've had no impediments to playing video games. If I were to have wanted to start competing in tournaments, nobody would hold it against me. But even if I were to decide right now that I want to be an SC2 pro, there's no telling that I'd actually ever be able to accomplish that goal.
If you can honestly claim that women aren't SC2 players because they're just mentally not as good at things like SC2 as men, you could also claim on the same grounds that American SC players aren't as good at SC as Koreans because they're brain composition is different.
In reality, the reason there's fewer woman pro gamers is simply because there's fewer opportunities for women to become pro gamers, and more barriers to them trying, in the same way there were fewer opportunities for foreign players to be come SC pros. It's not because Americans or Women have feeble brains, it's just because it's easier for guys to find social support like practice partners and encouragement from peers than women, and it's easier for korean players to explain to their social circle that they're training to become an SC pro than it is americans.
More people trying to be pros, and more access to peers playing at or above your level is what allows people to become pros themselves. If you are from a community that is going to make fun of you for trying to be a professional video game player, and you have a hard time getting serious practice time in with top level players because they find you more of a curiosity than a valid partner, you're going to be less likely to try in the first place, and then when you do try, you're going to have a harder time succeeding, if it's even possible at all.
Do you really think if there was a woman to win say MGL out of nowhere, that she wouldn't attract a far different type of attention than if I showed up and won it? This would give her a very different reaction from other players.
For me, I might get some notice, and maybe some respect from other high level players. Maybe they'd be impressed with my play and would have the opportunity to practice with them. Other than that things would be pretty normal.
The girl would get instant fan-pages, people critiquing her on her looks and weight, saying whether they'd hit it, commenting on her play like she was from another planet, using her to prove theories on balance of the sexes. She would get a different kind of attention from pro gamers. Some would hate her for being an attention-whore even though she may not actually try to call attention to herself. Some might user her to get more exposure themselves. Some might play with her because they have a crush on her because, "Hey, she's a girl and she can beat me in starcraft!"
I don't think that women are mentally predisposed towards being bad at starcraft. I think that social norms discourage women from playing starcraft professionally moreso than they do men. I think that the fact that a high level female starcraft player would be just treated very differently than a guy.
For instance, from : http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=108832
Just look at that interview, you have glamour shots with blowing hair, questions about who her ideal boyfriend would be, questions about whether her or her sister is prettier. The first comments in the thread are:
"I should have known she didn't like guys..."
"Tossgirl looks really pretty in those pictures!"
and then a bunch of patronizing comments about how IdrA made her cry.
There's just a very different standard we'd hold a female progamer to, and I think that just makes the environment different enough that it is kind of like a different ladder they have to climb.
I think that's why things like female leagues and female tournaments are a good thing. Because at least in those cases, women can develop the sport and play against people that have had similar circumstances as their own. Doing that can bring legitimacy to their playing in the first place, and maybe at some point they could be parallel and the leagues could be merged. This is similar to having, say, regional SC tournaments to promote north american players rather than having only established korean pros dominate every tournament. Not because the NA players have feeble brains, only because the sport is less developed in that community. In that way, female players are from a different community than male players.
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Well what exactly was your point with Tyler's post then? He never really disputed the fact that males display more aggressive behaviour, but only said there's no evidence for men being more "competitive" and are better "strategic thinkers".
I don't have access to the full article at home, but measuring a larger increase in androgens and cortisol in males in an activity involving heavy exercise isn't too surprising. As such, it doesn't really further the assertion of the poster that Tyler was replying to that males are more "competitive" than females.
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honestly I think this thread has devolved into something of a gender superiority debate in which the winner will most likely be decided by whoever can google up more impressive scientific shit to backup their claims. Notably a girl posted her opinions a few pages back on this topic but no one gives a shit because this thread is about the lack of top female starcraft gamers right?
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On November 20 2010 08:11 fush wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 08:01 mcc wrote:On November 20 2010 07:32 fush wrote:Well if my objection is true, it doesn't matter that the effect is not seen in boys, the method is systematically flawed and not designed to accurately measure these differences. This is the only direct comparison between male and female "competitiveness" in a medical journal... based on questionnaires. Here's the abstract (bolded my point): + Show Spoiler +
Br J Soc Psychol. 1998 Jun;37 ( Pt 2):213-29.
Are men more competitive than women?
Cashdan E.
King's College Research Centre, Cambridge, UK.
This study uses competition diaries to see whether women and men differ in (a) what they compete over, (b) whom they compete with, and (c) their competitive tactics, including use of aggression. In Study 1, university students kept diaries of their competitive interactions during the term. Sex differences, few overall, were as follows: (a) men's diaries contained more same-sex competition, (b) women competed more about looking attractive whereas men competed more about sports, and (c) men used physical (but not verbal) aggression more frequently than women. In Study 2 strength of competition was also measured by questionnaire. Women and men felt equally competitive overall, but men felt more competitive about athletics and sexual attention whereas women felt more competitive about looking attractive. In men, but not women, competitiveness for financial success was correlated with various aspects of mating competition. Young men were more competitive than older men in a variety of domains and were also more physically and verbally aggressive, but no age difference in aggression was found for women.
I said that your objection is in fact not true, and even if it was then if the boys don't display this effect they are in fact more competitive, because they are not deterred even by this knowledge that deters girl from competing. Also you are questioning methodology of that study while presenting this one As I said google is your friend (of course you need some critical judgement to filter things google throws at you) and if you really do not want to I will post you links, but it's no like this is some obscure controversial finding. What is unsure is how nature vs society works in this. Well you said they tested different groups with different gender makeups. How does that validate the flaw in the methodology? My problem is that they mentioned the children were familiar with the procedure. Basic of any behavioural test where you're trying to get at intrinsic activity is to have the subjects be naive to the performance task. These children were not. Having them run races simply is not a good measure of competition when they knew who they were competing against and how well the others were going to perform from previous history. Besides, this paper was published in an economics journal... hardly convincing when trying to tackle this problem. I haven't looked at others in google... only a simple pubmed search. You can link me others if you'd like.
This was not a test of a drug, they were not trying to eliminate placebo effect or other psychological effect by using double blind or even blind trial. They were in fact measuring said psychological effects. Subjects have to be naive of the procedure in some cases, but not in others. Competitiveness in this scenario is on of those that actually do not require it. Why is the relative competition performance not a good measure of competitiveness. It starts to look like we operate with different definitions of competitiveness.
Well I agree that economic journal is not the most promising source , but so is medical one(on this topic, on medical topics medical journals are great, unlike economical on economical topics ). My preference would be biological one, or at least psychological.
I also found interesting link (again economical) , that mentions that in most of the world men are more competitive than women, and has some references for those claims, but also mentions that there are matriarchal societies that have the opposite. If true this is pretty interesting and shows that simple evolutionary explanation is definitely not enough and social setup plays at least significant role : [link]http://www.iza.org/en/papers/1545_29062007.pdf[/link]
Also this, only abstract, unfortunately : [link]http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(05)00033-4/abstract[/link]
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Females overall just don't have the same goals or the same type of drive that males have in this particular field.
In the early BW days how many nameless koreans shacked up in apartments living a terrible quality of life playing 12+ hours a day just hoping to make it big?
How many girls would have subjected themselves to such living conditions?
Does that mean females don't have the tools to become a top caliber player? No... It just means it isn't something that commonly resonates with how they think.
I think before you get into the nuances of starcraft itself as a game, you should first look at the broader picture because there are factors that impact how many girls try to play SC competitively that are not exclusively related to SC itself.
I think the biggest factor with sc itself is just the motivation to develop the best mechanics. The strategical aspect of these games is not so complex that someone with above avg intelligence can't grasp them.
It's the dedication to having polished and top notch mechanics that put some above the rest, and perhaps the path you travel in developing such mechanics is simply not something that a lot of females would find worthwhile.
Playing 8+ hours a day?
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On November 20 2010 07:10 mcc wrote:
Seems you cannot separate neutral factual statement (like "men are born better at chess"), and valuation statements
1. The statement is not neutral. This is obvious in that it takes a very specific side in an argumentative debate, nature v nurture - which is impossible to settle without the use of unethical and - by societies modern standards - inhuman research.
2. The statement is not factual. It's not backed up by any factual study. The statement "men of age X generally show a higher aptitude for success in chess than women of age X/Y" would be factually accurate if a study did indeed support such findings. It is the notion that an individuals ability to succeed in a game constructed by humans raised in a normative society is determined by said individuals mix of genes, that strikes myself (and anyone who dares question commonly accepted beliefs) as so thoroughly unsubstantial.
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United States313 Posts
On November 20 2010 09:20 fush wrote:
Well what exactly was your point with Tyler's post then? He never really disputed the fact that males display more aggressive behaviour, but only said there's no evidence for men being more "competitive" and are better "strategic thinkers".
I don't have access to the full article at home, but measuring a larger increase in androgens and cortisol in males in an activity involving heavy exercise isn't too surprising. As such, it doesn't really further the assertion of the poster that Tyler was replying to that males are more "competitive" than females.
Aggression is currently the most correct way of saying competitive in an attempt to best define the most basic aspect of the trait. People can be competitive in a wide variety of different situations for many different reasons. Clearly someone's "competitive" attitude regarding anything is variable, a casual chess player is naturally far more competitive if he was placed in a situation where suddenly the winner was given a large amount of money, or if the loser was killed. Therefore to analyze competitiveness across any significant sample size what can only reliably be tested is the likelihood to show increased interest/aggression/dominance. Its not really trying to compare just how competitive a man or a woman is when they are competing at something. It is trying show that men are more likely cross the threshold of mild casual interest/aggression and therefore spend more resources pursuing dominance in a situation compared to women.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20816841
This paper published this month in Hormonal Behavior takes a look at a proposed competitive molecular system which casts the Testosterone/Cortisol comparisons of the 2nd paper I linked earlier in a modified light.
Again I'm not trying to say this is actually the reason there are or aren't more high level female SC2 players, simply that Tyler could've been mistaken and that the whole thread might see the importance of actually referencing published papers when attempting to argue something scientifically. Male aggression may be an unlinked correlation, it may be an indirect factor in what constitutes a great player, or it may be causative in that fewer female players statistically are likely to become heavily involved in this 1v1 form of competition, and that affects female success akin to foreigner success in the GSLs. I could probably argue all three sides convincingly, simply showing that there is no truly correct answer, but before people even begin rampant speculation it serves to have a reasonable starting place.
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I don't wanna sound like I'm trolling, but men are just better at everything, naturally, yes some woman are very good at certain thongs, and not all men are better than all woman, but take the olympics for example, the mens events are bigger, longer, more contact allowed, as well as more exciting. So at the top levels a man can just reach higher than a woman could. After watching the mens halfpipe snowboarding in the olympics, and seeing so many amazing runs, and than shaun white, it was incredible. Than I watched the womans, smaller run, could barely do a 360 let alone anything with a trick, it was either a grab or a 360, no cool stuff. So I just believe that at the top of evrything there is a man. You may disagree but look at, chefs, scientists, athletes, gamers........................ need I go on.
again I'm not trying to be sexists it's just what I've observed
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On November 20 2010 09:18 zeidrichthorene wrote:
I think that's why things like female leagues and female tournaments are a good thing. Because at least in those cases, women can develop the sport and play against people that have had similar circumstances as their own. Doing that can bring legitimacy to their playing in the first place, and maybe at some point they could be parallel and the leagues could be merged. This is similar to having, say, regional SC tournaments to promote north american players rather than having only established korean pros dominate every tournament. Not because the NA players have feeble brains, only because the sport is less developed in that community. In that way, female players are from a different community than male players.
Thanks for your post, zeid - I agreed with pretty much all of it, particularly its spirit. I particularly appreciated this part because I think having StarCraft events for female players to play against each other is an important part of bringing more women to the game. I liked your analogy with North American vs. Korean players - it's not perfect, but it fits in many ways.
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On November 20 2010 07:43 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 07:10 ganjazerg wrote:how can people deny these following facts 1. men are more competitive in nature than women
2. men are better strategic thinkers than women
3. starcraft does infact require "intelligence"honestly the amount of people stating the opposite is surprising... the long version + Show Spoiler +1. as several people mentioned, this is simple evolutionary biology. men compete, and brag with their victories. men have a natural impulse to compete with eachother, in every imaginable way. boys play soccer, girls play with dolls. that's just the way it has always been. and anyone claiming it's only due to cultural indoctrination is either deluded or not educated enough to understand the concept of evolution.
2. i'm not talking about sports, men's physical superiority is not up for debate (anyone denying this i simply cannot take seriously). i'm talking about the ability to abstract, think efficience-oriented and plan long-term. i used chess as an example in a previous post and its a perfect example. the fact that women can't compete with men in chess proves this point. it's also a fact that the requirements to be an above-average sc player, are similar to the requirements of being an above-average chess player.
3. "you don't need to be bright to be good at starcraft" is just plain bullshit. you definitely DO need to be bright. what are you doing, if not constantly obtaining and processing information? calculating probabilities and possibilities? adapting and making decisions under pressure?
do you know this feeling when you are about to engage in a game-deciding battle, and you KNOW your positioning is very bad, and you KNOW you could retreat with minimal losses and force a fight with way better positioning, but in your mind you are like "meh lets get it over with"? and then you engage the battle, and lose the game. what just happened was... you got lazy. you got lazy because starcraft on a high level is mentally exhausting. it requires mental stamina, just like chess. Your only chance for supporting 1 and 2 is arguing by gender, not by sex. Gender meaning "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex" and sex meaning biologically male or female. There is no significant scientific evidence supporting the claims that men are more competitive than women or men are better "strategic thinkers" than women. If those things are true, it's because of cultural/behavioral/psychological traits -- how we raise boys and how we raise girls.
One can argue that ultimately there's no distinction between gender and sex traits. Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. How did it get this way?
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Honestly though, it's just in particular that StarCraft is predominantly played by a male audience by trends alone - when in fact other games which have better ratios of female players (console games, MMOs, FPS games) mainly because the learning curve and difficulty factor for StarCraft is higher than majority, if not all video games out there. It's just a validity of numbers and ratios, which depict an extremely smaller female player population in SC2 compared to other games .. I'm sure in time though a "female champion" will emerge, aka ToSsGiRL 2.0
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EPT
