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On November 20 2010 03:59 fush wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 02:23 mcc wrote:
Ok, I will split my answer.
1) The original poster said it has nothing about competitiveness, to that the answer is men in big majority of societies are more competitive than women. Research for that exists and is pretty conclusive.
2) I made stronger(in mathematical sense of stronger) statement, which said that this competetiveness difference is biological in nature. That statement is not so conclusive, but there are a lot of indirect indices. As far as I know there has been no direct research that points one way or another. The indirect indices are : There is biological component to competetiveness in general, because males raised in equal environments differ in it, so considering all the other biological differences between males and females and considering evolutionary mechanisms for human species it not big stretch to assume that there is in fact some innate difference between men and women.
What I asked for was sources for your statement that men are more competitive than women. You say the research exists and is conclusive. I asked, where?
No you asked for sources that prove that men are innately(I hope by that we both mean biologically) more competitive than women. And in point two I agreed with you there is no research that can solve it, so. In lack of direct data, I pointed some arguments for this to be true.
If you are asking for sources that men are more competitive than women then for example :
http://karlan.yale.edu/fieldexperiments/pdf/Gneezy and Rustichini_Gender and Competition at a Young Age.pdf . There are few societies that do not follow this, but they are so few that we can ignore it.
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Here are my thoughts, as a gamer, female, member of the StarCraft community, gaming industry professional, and as someone who has studied cognitive neuroscience and evolution of human behavior in college:
Observation:
Generally speaking, I think men and women have different goals when they play games - they are satisfied by different outcomes, respectively. Men are focused on winning, while women are focused on increasing general happiness and enriching social bonds. Both tendencies obviously have great value in the maintenance of modern human civilization.
Causes:
Biology and environment/society interact to make men feel more personally validated by some objective or subjective measure of dominance ("I scored x points" or "I'm better than you in x") than by social approval. If a typical guy had a choice between winning a basketball match against his sibling/friend/co-worker and losing on purpose so that the other party wouldn't lose face and/or get his/her feelings hurt, I think most Western men would take the former.
On the other hand, biology and environment/society interact to make women feel more personally validated by behaving in ways that support social stability and overall well being than by achieving dominance. Given the same hypothetical situation, your average woman would probably opt for losing on purpose or would say "it would depend on who I was playing against." Women are generally taught (and are generally biologically predisposed) to consider their role in the context of a group (couple, family, clique, etc.) and as dependent on or interdependent with the social whims of others. Women are - by and large - not islands. Women judge themselves by how they are perceived by others - it's a relational standard for self-approval or disapproval.
Effects:
As a result, there is a huge disparity in female player preference/participation between games where you are rewarded for thinking contextually and enriching the relationships between different parties (The Sims) and games where you are, in essence, rewarded for making someone else feel bad (PvP-heavy games).
Women who truly enjoy PvP-heavy games like StarCraft (multiplayer) are in the minority. It means we actually enjoy actions which have the side effect of making other people feel bad about themselves (via losing) and therefore decreasing greater social happiness, which is a big no-no. I believe that this tendency is correlated to other behavioral leanings, as well: refusing to agree just for the sake of agreeing, for example, or feeling bad when you just sit there and nod instead of saying what you really think. Part of the reason I wrote up my socially awkward experience was to gather more data about this hypothesis from other females who frequent this site (and presumably have an interest in playing StarCraft), and so far I think I'm on the right track.
My prediction is that other women will never participate in the StarCraft scene in anything like the way they participate in WoW, Farmville, etc. unless they can see competitive StarCraft as a way to create and enrich social bonds and increase general happiness. This is why I support the SC2 Female Cups and why I don't think they should ever have a cash prize - it should appeal to women who want to bridge the gap between losing for the sake of saving someone else's face and cutting someone else down in the quest for personal dominance. In the Female Cup, you can win against someone else but still be friends with them (or even make a new friend)! Completely the best of both worlds.
Recommendation:
If there are people who sincerely want to see more women in StarCraft (including pro gamers), there are a few things you can keep in mind. Not all of them are feasible - I certainly can't see TL turning into a community where people prioritize social harmony over the pursuit of personal dominance, nor would I want it to be that way. My more practical (and somewhat self-interested) recommendation would be this: value and respect the females that are already here for their contributions to the community. Whether that contribution is amazing art, or high level zerg play, or blog posts, or running an entire league, or just being interesting people to talk to - if women sense that this is a community where it is possible to be openly female and be appreciated as a human being and for what they can contribute, they will come.
I would not be here if I didn't know about lilsusie and mnm. Just food for thought.
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It's really all just numbers, just like the reason koreans dominate broodwar leagues. It's not because they have some inborn talent the rest of the world does not, it's because way more Koreans played brood war at a serious level so it would stand that more good players would come out of Korea then North America.
Competitive video games right now are dominated by men, and that's where the unbalance lies. I don't doubt the ratio of males:females playing starcraft is rather one sided. Give it 10 years and I think you will start to see a lot more females playing in competitive gaming leagues, but we just have to wait and see to be sure.
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Simple fact is men tend to be quicker and have faster reactions. The women that have those factors on the level of men, well, how many are there? and how many of them play video games, and how many of them starcraft.
The sample size of female gamers is so small as is that to find one of them that would even play competitively or have the drive to player 8 hours a day to stay on that level, few and far between.
Every once in a while you'll find a girl like Haemonculus who DOES have the talent but she isn't going to play 8-10 hours a day like the pros, so how can you expect anyone, regardless of gender, to keep up with them.
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On November 20 2010 04:21 Peanutsc wrote:
If a typical guy had a choice between winning a basketball match against his sibling/friend/co-worker and losing on purpose so that the other party wouldn't lose face and/or get his/her feelings hurt, I think most Western men would take the former.
That was a great post peanutsc. Your analogy about basketball actually fits perfectly with my own experiences trying to get girlfriends into SC. Some of them have given it a shot when I offer to play some 2v2s with them. Probably because like you said it's basically a team building exercise which would (hopefully) bring us closer together in their eyes. But the concept that they get good at 1v1s and would have a chance of beating me seems to be a no no. The ironic thing is, if I had a gf who could beat me at starcraft, I'd actually like them more haha.
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On November 20 2010 03:59 fush wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 02:23 mcc wrote:On November 20 2010 01:27 fush wrote:On November 20 2010 01:20 mcc wrote:On November 20 2010 01:14 hmunkey wrote:
It's more socially unacceptable for women to play video games than for men. the same applies to children -- girls don't grow up wanting to play games like boys do.
That's it. It has nothing to do with competitiveness or anything else. And you have anything to prove that other than I said so. There is a lot of research, mechanisms to explain why it is a biological thing, is there anything that really points to it being because it is socially unacceptable ? In many countries in a lot of social groups it is not unacceptable any more, yet girls still do not play games competitively as much as boys. Problem is the rate of emancipation highly exceeds the rate of increase in women's competitiveness. There's research on there being more innate competitiveness in males than females? Please give your sources on these research and mechanisms. I CAN tell you that you're probably 99% wrong regarding biological coding for competition behaviour, but maybe I've missed something  Ok, I will split my answer. 1) The original poster said it has nothing about competitiveness, to that the answer is men in big majority of societies are more competitive than women. Research for that exists and is pretty conclusive. 2) I made stronger(in mathematical sense of stronger) statement, which said that this competetiveness difference is biological in nature. That statement is not so conclusive, but there are a lot of indirect indices. As far as I know there has been no direct research that points one way or another. The indirect indices are : There is biological component to competetiveness in general, because males raised in equal environments differ in it, so considering all the other biological differences between males and females and considering evolutionary mechanisms for human species it not big stretch to assume that there is in fact some innate difference between men and women. What I asked for was sources for your statement that men are more competitive than women. You say the research exists and is conclusive. I asked, where? Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 03:25 Zyphen wrote:
You guys talking about nature/nurture are really getting into a tangential debate. Women, as a group, are just less competitive period. That's the reason why there aren't more top female gamers, chess masters, race car drivers, etc (basically anything that doesn't require being physically gifted).
The few women that do make it don't prove anything about the rest. It's called anecdotal evidence. Sure, a woman COULD do it, but that's not the question. The lack of female gamers, as a whole, is because they lack competitiveness in games involving direct confrontation. Whether the few that do well possess an extra chromosome or were raised as tomboys seems superfluous to the argument. Women as a group are less competitive... interesting conclusion based on what? Your examples are all full of crap because they're all fields that have been typically male dominated and not encouraged for women to do in society. I'm not denying there's differences biologically between genders... it's what I study for a living. But the wannabe scientists here saying how females "don't have" testosterone (which they do) probably don't even know its effects in cognition, because guess what... no one does. So how about a suggestion, before you pull out some hair-brained idea of how you think females are less innately "competitive" or whatever, get a clue.
Lol. Some reading comprehension please? My entire post was about how I don't CARE whether it's nature or nurture that's the culprit for any behavorial differences. The facts are that they exist.
And you're asking me for proof? Really? It's already accepted fact that women are under-represented in starcraft 2 and just about every other competitive event listed in this thread. I think your position is the one that's more indefensible. The burden should lie with you. How about this. Find me a single instance of a direct competitive game/sport where women are equally represented at the top tier as men (i.e. they don't form their own separate league, actually play with and BEAT the boys, you look at a tournament bracket - half are women, half the time they even win it, etc.).
It'll take me longer to list all the things men dominate than for you to squeeze out that one exception (which, honestly, I'm dying to know).
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I think that this has a lot to do with numbers and interest level. It's a cultural thing for males to grow up thinking about strategy and tactics in a lot of different things that they do. While the females interests tend to lie elsewhere (relationships [not just the male/female kind] etc) So males tend to be more predisposed to be interested in strategy and tactics, + males form a deeper understanding of these things by doing so much with them throughout their lives. So males have more vested interest in RTS games, as well as an innate advantage in that they are far more likely to have done a lot of strategy/tactics type things during their childhood/adolescence.
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It's pretty easy to see why the player base from female's would be smaller. Just go look at the comments on the initial ESL all-female tournament threads or the threads about starting all female clans. Some absolutely disgusting comments. Hopefully this type of behavior will go away, but until it does the barrier for entry into the Starcraft community will remain very high and we won't even get to see girls (that would become amazing) pick up the game.
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On November 20 2010 04:43 Kelsin wrote:
It's pretty easy to see why the player base from female's would be smaller. Just go look at the comments on the initial ESL all-female tournament threads or the threads about starting all female clans. Some absolutely disgusting comments. Hopefully this type of behavior will go away, but until it does the barrier for entry into the Starcraft community will remain very high and we won't even get to see girls (that would become amazing) pick up the game.
Yeah and this kind of behavior I just don't understand. What difference does it honestly make to you (not you Kelsin) if you're playing against a girl or a guy. Seems like a lot of people are trying to scare away girls from getting in to it. Why? I have no idea.
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On November 20 2010 04:43 Kelsin wrote:
It's pretty easy to see why the player base from female's would be smaller. Just go look at the comments on the initial ESL all-female tournament threads or the threads about starting all female clans. Some absolutely disgusting comments. Hopefully this type of behavior will go away, but until it does the barrier for entry into the Starcraft community will remain very high and we won't even get to see girls (that would become amazing) pick up the game.
It's like anything else in life. You're not going to get taken seriously unless you aspire to be the best. Not the best "female" gamer, not the best "foreigner", but the absolute best period. Some of the stuff is straight juvenile horseshit, I agree, though. But even the well meaning are condescending with their encouragement. I respect someone like TossGirl because she at least actually TRIES to compete with the boys.
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i know that this is gonna come over as incredibly sexist and offensive,
but i do believe (and i'm fully aware that this makes me a bad person) that
womens ability to abstract and think strategically is in average inferior to that of men. im pretty sure
the worlds best female chess player, is no where near the 100th best male chess player. similar in starcraft.
:c
unleash the hate
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Seems like a lot of people stubbornly refuse to believe that girls just are not as into gaming compared to guys. These people are dangerous. They are the same type of people that will borrow your pen and not return it the next day. /random
Then there is the lot who try to attribute gaming success in males to their intellectual superiority and reaction times. These are the people who are just patting themselves on the back. You do not need to be a genius or even remotely smart to do well in SC2.
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I feel like the interest level/competitiveness argument pretty well sums it up. But also, I feel like there might be a little bit of the same phenomenon that might be holding foreigners back:
I have no proof, but I feel like for the majority of women interested in playing SC2 (just like the majority of foreigners playing SC2), are probably plagued with an "us vs. them" mentality. Foreign players may think "Man, there's no way I can be as super gosu as the koreans....", just like girls might be thinking, "man, there's no way I can beat the boys at this". And I feel like it's that kind of defeatism that's incredibly poisonous to one's thoughts.
I have no doubt in my mind that if a female decided to practice as much as IdrA, she'd become a super baller. Just like any foreigners who may be doubting themselves: just listen to incontrol's experience at GSL3. Sure he didn't qualify, but from SotG, he realized it's not the impossibility he used to think it was. If you listen to IdrA's reasoning on why Koreans are doing better than foreigners, he's not saying "because they have different hair", he's saying "because they practice more".
The thing is, the "foreigner vs. koreans" is a product of StarCraft, where "boys vs. girls" is a product of centuries upon centuries of human society. So while the first defeatist mentality is easier to overcome on a personal level, the second probably isn't. I would expect this is what's resulting in most interested female players getting themselves down mentally, where all they need to do is spend 8 million hours a day training like everyone else.
And I am by no means saying female players don't try hard enough. I'm just saying that this kind of thinking makes it much easier to give up altogether.
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You say that there's no inherent disadvantage "like chess" yet there are male and female chess leagues, and the top male chess player is always better than the top female chess player.
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Females don't have the mechanical ability of men.
Look at a socially acceptable competitive game that females play, such as basketball or tennis. Those women at the top simply don't have the physical ability to compete with the men. Even if they put in just as many hours and have been trained from a young age, you won't find females that are able to keep up with the top men in terms of power and speed. Obviously its not 100% of the reason why there aren't any women at the top of SC2, but I do believe it plays a much greater role than the game being "socially acceptable" or women being tactically inferior.
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On November 20 2010 04:21 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 03:59 fush wrote:On November 20 2010 02:23 mcc wrote:
Ok, I will split my answer.
1) The original poster said it has nothing about competitiveness, to that the answer is men in big majority of societies are more competitive than women. Research for that exists and is pretty conclusive.
2) I made stronger(in mathematical sense of stronger) statement, which said that this competetiveness difference is biological in nature. That statement is not so conclusive, but there are a lot of indirect indices. As far as I know there has been no direct research that points one way or another. The indirect indices are : There is biological component to competetiveness in general, because males raised in equal environments differ in it, so considering all the other biological differences between males and females and considering evolutionary mechanisms for human species it not big stretch to assume that there is in fact some innate difference between men and women.
What I asked for was sources for your statement that men are more competitive than women. You say the research exists and is conclusive. I asked, where? No you asked for sources that prove that men are innately(I hope by that we both mean biologically) more competitive than women. And in point two I agreed with you there is no research that can solve it, so. In lack of direct data, I pointed some arguments for this to be true. If you are asking for sources that men are more competitive than women then for example : http://karlan.yale.edu/fieldexperiments/pdf/Gneezy and Rustichini_Gender and Competition at a Young Age.pdf . There are few societies that do not follow this, but they are so few that we can ignore it.
i think natural selection pretty much covers men being biologically more competitive.
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On November 20 2010 05:11 Phaded wrote:
Females don't have the mechanical ability of men.
Look at a socially acceptable competitive game that females play, such as basketball or tennis. Those women at the top simply don't have the physical ability to compete with the men. Even if they put in just as many hours and have been trained from a young age, you won't find females that are able to keep up with the top men in terms of power and speed. Obviously its not 100% of the reason why there aren't any women at the top of SC2, but I do believe it plays a much greater role than the game being "socially acceptable" or women being tactically inferior.
This man has a point - I hate it when I don't have enough power and speed to move the mouse.
On November 20 2010 05:14 Sfydjklm wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 04:21 mcc wrote:On November 20 2010 03:59 fush wrote:On November 20 2010 02:23 mcc wrote:
Ok, I will split my answer.
1) The original poster said it has nothing about competitiveness, to that the answer is men in big majority of societies are more competitive than women. Research for that exists and is pretty conclusive.
2) I made stronger(in mathematical sense of stronger) statement, which said that this competetiveness difference is biological in nature. That statement is not so conclusive, but there are a lot of indirect indices. As far as I know there has been no direct research that points one way or another. The indirect indices are : There is biological component to competetiveness in general, because males raised in equal environments differ in it, so considering all the other biological differences between males and females and considering evolutionary mechanisms for human species it not big stretch to assume that there is in fact some innate difference between men and women.
What I asked for was sources for your statement that men are more competitive than women. You say the research exists and is conclusive. I asked, where? No you asked for sources that prove that men are innately(I hope by that we both mean biologically) more competitive than women. And in point two I agreed with you there is no research that can solve it, so. In lack of direct data, I pointed some arguments for this to be true. If you are asking for sources that men are more competitive than women then for example : http://karlan.yale.edu/fieldexperiments/pdf/Gneezy and Rustichini_Gender and Competition at a Young Age.pdf . There are few societies that do not follow this, but they are so few that we can ignore it. i think natural selection pretty much covers men being biologically more competitive.
Indeed - men need to compete with each other to impregnate women, whereas women need to develop positive relationships so they have a support structure when raising a child. These are not the only reproductive strategies for the two genders, but they're generally the most effective... and they influence our evolution + social structure.
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The answer is FAR simpler than most make it.
You might think of the skill of SC players to follow a Gaussian Curve with the pros being at the top end. If we assume that the Gaussian probability plot looks about the same for female and male (basically, a determined female has the same chance of succeeding as a similar male), then the only variable in changing the number of high level players is the number of players to begin with
As is generally accepted, there are less female gamers so there for there are less female progamers. It is the same deal with why big school sports teams generally are much better than small school teams. Big schools have a larger pool from which to select its best players.
So the question is, how can we get more females interested in SC?
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Women who truly enjoy PvP-heavy games like StarCraft (multiplayer) are in the minority. It means we actually enjoy actions which have the side effect of making other people feel bad about themselves (via losing) and therefore decreasing greater social happiness, which is a big no-no.
I would say that making other people feel bad is the lowest form of motivation for 1v1 gaming. I also hope that its not the majority
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what are you guys talking about!
Effka is such a sick player!
she was in [pG] back in the Bw glory days!!!
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EPT
