Discussing the lack of top female starcraft gamers - Page 17

The Polgar sisters are a great example of why more women don't do well in competitive games. Of course one of the reason is that women don't have the same competitive "spirit" as men, but that simply means there are less potential women gamers, not that there can't be. In the case of the Polgar sisters, their father decided to develop a way to bring up genius, quite literally. His approach to teaching Chess was based on pattern recognition (recognizing "good" and "bad" positions on parts of the board of various sizes) instead of series of sequential moves and general strategies. Of course, you need to know opening moves and endgame sequences, but these are more rote memory and experience, areas in which women are not inferior to men. But in pattern recognition, women are actually better in general. So the Polgar sisters did great. The oldest though maybe lacked the competitive spirit of the youngest and as such she stopped competing after being the first female to achieve the title of grandmaster.

Now, one may look at this and think, if women can do great in Chess with the right education, why not in other games? Let's take Go for example. Go is also heavily dependent on pattern recognition, but is much more complex than Chess. Opening sequences cannot be memorized as easily and the end game is pure mathematical heuristics (i.e. lots of calculation). Maybe, if someone could devise for Go a teaching system like Lazlo Polgar did for Chess (not going to happen anytime soon by the way), some women could get really strong at Go ; but I doubt it considering the end game that is pure calculation, for women are generally weaker than men in this regard as much as they are better at pattern recognition.

So this takes us to Starcraft. What are the defining characteristics of RTS games that make them different than Chess and Go? First, like the name says they take place in real time. Second, you do not have perfect information. Third, you need to manage both a static base and a moving army (divide time between macro and micro if you like). Base management should be no problem for women and with TossGirl we see that if it's not Flash like at least it isn't a problem. Micro shouldn't be a problem either on it's own. Women are known to be great at detailed work. After all, they've had thousands of years of experience sewing us men clothes. But we will see later how juggling the two can be very bad for women gamers.

So all right, before taking on the real-time aspects, let's get this information conundrum out the way first. This is where I think women really get the evolutionary short end of the proverbial stick. Who hunts food? Men. Who contends with dangerous situations day-to-day? Men. Who doesn't know when or where his next kill will to be or even if he'll come back in one piece? Men. Men have lots of experience with unknown situations and pressure situations. In general they will secrete lots of adrenaline at the dimmest hint of danger. They have evolved to cope with unknowns. This is why men can orient themselves better than women without a map. With a map, the playing field is leveled (as long as you know how to use it properly, which is a pitfall many women encounter simply because they never had an opportunity to learn). It is no wonder either that men are better at advanced math (real math, not simple equation solving which has more to do with pattern recognition). You could say the difference here is that women like to match known quantities together, whereas men extrapolate better (or simply more readily) based on incomplete information, while also having the added advantage that they aren't as uncomfortable with unknown situations as women are in general. Hence men take more risks. How many successful female VCs or traders have you seen lately? It's not like women are not trying to make a quick buck too. But like Virgil said, "fortune favors the bold".

Next, RTS games are real-time, another area where women must give the evolutionary edge to men, albeit not as much as with coping with imperfect information. Many mistakenly believe that real-time means multitasking, but that is false. What it means, in an RTS game, is task-switching (in fact, I am not sure you could design a competitive RTS game designed around multitasking playable only with mouse and keyboard. Maybe some form of management game like The Sims, but not an RTS and neither an FPS for that matter. No wonder both recreate situations of war). So, in RTS games in general and in Starcraft in particular you have to switch between macro mode and micro mode and do it fast. Men are good at that. For example, here's the daily routine of the primitive man : stalk the prey, get caught, now switch to run-for-your-life mode pronto ; and don't forget to yell and warn others on your way out! Or, switch to kill mode if you have the opportunity: load the bow, don't lose the tail, watch where your clan mates are, check for possible obstacles, plan retreat route just in case, make dinner plans, shoot the arrow, miss, pursue while reloading, hop over a fallen tree and wham! right in the thing you were hunting. Good. Now take it back to camp with you 10 miles somewhere in that general direction while the sun is setting down. Don't forget wood for the fire and a flower for the missus on your way. Alright, now you can play Starcraft and win some games for once! Now, ask a women to play WoW and talk to you at the same time. She will be glad to gossip and recount her whole day while organizing a raid and crafting things and watching auctions, etc. She may even be able to do all that while playing Starcraft, but then don't be surprised when she loses.