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I've just read a piece on Digitiser by someone moaning about the lack of consideration for the fairer sex in today's games. Basically she was complaining because games are tailored towards males, even though there are thousands of female gamers yadda yadda yadda.
Anyway, I was wondering - what exactly is the problem here?
Is it that games feature too much gratuitous titillation? No, it can't be, films are the same - how many pert-buttocked six-packed half-naked male action heroes do we see in today’s games? Many. And who honestly gets off on seeing digitised women/men anyway? Is it that games try and provide us with cynically-contrived female icons like Lara Croft? Maybe - but who cares. If you are offended more by this than by the quality of the game you are clearly dabbling in the wrong media. Lara is a marketing tool - if she had the face of a baboon the game would be no different. Is it that games do not reflect female interests? No. Barbie, horse riding, all of that patronising cack, its been tried before to universal derision. What exactly are 'female interests' anyway?
I watch films with rap music soundtracks, even though I hate rap. I listen to music where the protagonist sings about her love for a man, even though I don't find men attractive. I even play golf games sometimes, despite the fact that I hate golf. I went to womengamers.com to try and find out, but I'm still none the wiser. The website seems full of the usual news and reviews, but not particularly different from most other news sites (apart from a distinct lack of juvenile bloke humour). Further to the womengamers.com bit, I found a part of the site, which bizarrely gives ratings to female game characters on how ‘non-sexist’, and 'strong-inspirational-woman' they are:
http://www.womengamers.com/dw/
Strangely, after an introduction where they say they are concerned about the representation of women in games, they go on to rate most of the characters 7/10 upwards. Apart from the characters in such seminal and influential games as Excalibur 2555AD and Space Bunnies Must Die. Whenever developers try to make a game for girl exclusively they turn out cack. I say keep churning out games the way they are. I know a lot of women don't play games because they find computers intimidating, not because games are targeted at male audiences. Maybe we should start a website on how non-sexist and strong-inspirational men game characters are. How many of us go and buy a game because we have great respect for the hero's cause and what he/she is fighting for? Do we hold up polygonal game characters as role models? Maybe female gamers would be happier if say, Max Payne had been about a woman? Or maybe all the soldiers in MoH had been women? I can see it now - Maxine Payne...
It would be safe to say that women love cack games. Clearly, this is not the case. Women on TFC have killed me, although they could have been 14-year-old boys. Nobody plays that anymore, male or female. But I'm getting off topic. I think it is the community. If a woman reveals her gender in a game chat-room or wherever, she is open to hundreds of kids making dirty jokes. But perhaps we are making too much of the situation. There are lots of men who hate computer games too, and I know lots of women gamers. If anything, they often have better game sense than some men: I knew a girl who loved The Longest Journey. She was a wonderful person. Minor piece of self-experience here – I know a young lady who has a certain liking for computer games, especially Tomb Raider. She sees Lara as a strong role model and loves the ability to do funky moves and gracefully shoot the living hell out of lots of men. The only thing she doesn't like is the butt-wiggling animations and the little orgasmic shouts whenever you do something, but that's really just the kind of poor stereotype that we all hate anyway.
I'd say that the FPS/RTS genres aren't popular with many women because of their emphasis on violence, possibly due to hormones or something. Maybe not. On the other hand, apparently women are great at Worms. Maybe it's a social thing. Maybe girls in general don't find it cool to play games, do Sciences at Uni or at A-level, program computers, as a social trend. Of course, this trend is breaking down bit by bit, but it's still the case that some subjects or pastimes are seen as goony for girls. To put a more scientific edge on it, women have a worse special sense than men do, and sometimes have problems translating things from 2D to 3D, etc. Because of the nature of FPS games (2D screen, 3D environment), this may make them harder to play, compared to the standard 2D nature of most RTS and management games. One of my lady friend’s was watching me playing Mechwarrior 3 a few months back, and after a few minutes of circle strafing, she said that it was making her feel sick, because she couldn't cope with the 3D motion on the 2D screen. Her visual sense couldn't translate the images without a sense of motion sickness. Bizarre stuff. We all know that women are far more biased to social situations rather than violence (see popularity of romantic comedies over Vietnam movies), also, which is why the Sims wins out over Command And Conquer.
Another link people might be interested in:
http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/ 004_Games_for_Girls/004_games_for_girls.htm
Inevitably its almost 50/50 when it comes to sex on games (that’s sex as in male/female, no puns please). So, the question I ask is why do game designers make games for girls. Well, in truth, they feel that if they don't they'll be done for sexism. In truth it seems that no one cares. What needs to be done is that gaming needs to be steered towards girls/gals/women (whatever you like again). Then there won't be a problem. While it is true that many women rise above the insults and stuff, not all of them do. This is not just a female thing: I'm sure hundreds of male gamers have been put off (online) gaming because of hurtful comments. Anyway, I stand by what I said before: People make too much of this. The difference in ability is extremely minor. It's like saying that because men are worse at facial recognition and multitasking (also quantitatively proven) they wouldn't enjoy or play games like The Sims, because they're just not very good at it.
Do we want women to play games? I mean enough men walk around with strained wrists, cross-eyes, wasted muscle and lack of social life without women joining in to. Personally I wish I could stop playing games. The answer to this quandary is really very simple (in essence). It has nothing to do with developers creating games that are 'geared towards blokes' or misogynist stereotypes (although developers are guilty of all these things). It's simply a cultural thing. Why don't all you hairy barrel chested men out there play with Barbies? Why don't you fawn all day about your desire to ride a cutesy pony? It's because you're blokes and you're brought up in a society that tells you you don't do those things. Just as girls are brought up in a society that tells them they aren't suppose to be interested in computers and computer games. That’s the blokes territory that is. You get a few women playing the Sims but that's pretty much it because it's akin to playing with dolls - a safe feminine thing to do, and if you have to play with computers you might as well do that.
Here's another question, then:
Are "girls games" like Barbie, those horse-riding ones, the Mary Kate and Ashley (or whatever they're called) licenses at all a good thing? Are they good for getting more girls involved in gaming at a young age? Are they bad because they're misrepresentative of the themes of the majority of videogames (i.e. Kill! Smash! 'Splode!)? Why should we be interested in making games for females? From a business point of view, this is a large percentage of consumers, who are not buying these products. Why? Video gaming is becoming a large(r) part of entertainment culture, yet somehow we are excluding at least half of the population. That's a lot of money, which could be, and should be, pouring into this industry. Perhaps the types of games we are making are too narrow in scope, too restricted in idea. This is almost certainly true; arguments about lack of vision in gaming abound on these very forums. I am a bloke and I love games, all sorts, but ultimately in almost every game I play, I resort to conflict resolution, almost exclusively of a violent nature (I shoot enemy, I bomb enemy base etc.). In fact, this idea of enemy/opposition could be part of the problem. It has been argued that there is an intrinsic difference between the two sexes. Men/boys exhibit destructive and combative nature, whilst Women/girls display restitutive and inclusive tendencies. Men fight, women talk. This may be a generalisation, but I think we can reach a tentative consensus on this. The Sims is a case in point. Everybody loves to bash the Sims, but this game has crossed the gender boundary, and the amount of money it has made for its developers/publishers is the envy of all in the industry. Perhaps we need more games like the Sims, and less like Doom III (although bring out Doom III first please, and make the shotgun go Ker-chick-BOOM).
I always select a female character in RPG's and MMORPG's for self-amusement purposes anyway…
Just out of interest, which specific sexes are games like NOLF aimed at? If there are any GirlGamers™ here, perhaps they could enlighten me?
Thanks for reading,
Flux.
Anyway, I was wondering - what exactly is the problem here?
Is it that games feature too much gratuitous titillation? No, it can't be, films are the same - how many pert-buttocked six-packed half-naked male action heroes do we see in today’s games? Many. And who honestly gets off on seeing digitised women/men anyway? Is it that games try and provide us with cynically-contrived female icons like Lara Croft? Maybe - but who cares. If you are offended more by this than by the quality of the game you are clearly dabbling in the wrong media. Lara is a marketing tool - if she had the face of a baboon the game would be no different. Is it that games do not reflect female interests? No. Barbie, horse riding, all of that patronising cack, its been tried before to universal derision. What exactly are 'female interests' anyway?
I watch films with rap music soundtracks, even though I hate rap. I listen to music where the protagonist sings about her love for a man, even though I don't find men attractive. I even play golf games sometimes, despite the fact that I hate golf. I went to womengamers.com to try and find out, but I'm still none the wiser. The website seems full of the usual news and reviews, but not particularly different from most other news sites (apart from a distinct lack of juvenile bloke humour). Further to the womengamers.com bit, I found a part of the site, which bizarrely gives ratings to female game characters on how ‘non-sexist’, and 'strong-inspirational-woman' they are:
http://www.womengamers.com/dw/
Strangely, after an introduction where they say they are concerned about the representation of women in games, they go on to rate most of the characters 7/10 upwards. Apart from the characters in such seminal and influential games as Excalibur 2555AD and Space Bunnies Must Die. Whenever developers try to make a game for girl exclusively they turn out cack. I say keep churning out games the way they are. I know a lot of women don't play games because they find computers intimidating, not because games are targeted at male audiences. Maybe we should start a website on how non-sexist and strong-inspirational men game characters are. How many of us go and buy a game because we have great respect for the hero's cause and what he/she is fighting for? Do we hold up polygonal game characters as role models? Maybe female gamers would be happier if say, Max Payne had been about a woman? Or maybe all the soldiers in MoH had been women? I can see it now - Maxine Payne...
It would be safe to say that women love cack games. Clearly, this is not the case. Women on TFC have killed me, although they could have been 14-year-old boys. Nobody plays that anymore, male or female. But I'm getting off topic. I think it is the community. If a woman reveals her gender in a game chat-room or wherever, she is open to hundreds of kids making dirty jokes. But perhaps we are making too much of the situation. There are lots of men who hate computer games too, and I know lots of women gamers. If anything, they often have better game sense than some men: I knew a girl who loved The Longest Journey. She was a wonderful person. Minor piece of self-experience here – I know a young lady who has a certain liking for computer games, especially Tomb Raider. She sees Lara as a strong role model and loves the ability to do funky moves and gracefully shoot the living hell out of lots of men. The only thing she doesn't like is the butt-wiggling animations and the little orgasmic shouts whenever you do something, but that's really just the kind of poor stereotype that we all hate anyway.
I'd say that the FPS/RTS genres aren't popular with many women because of their emphasis on violence, possibly due to hormones or something. Maybe not. On the other hand, apparently women are great at Worms. Maybe it's a social thing. Maybe girls in general don't find it cool to play games, do Sciences at Uni or at A-level, program computers, as a social trend. Of course, this trend is breaking down bit by bit, but it's still the case that some subjects or pastimes are seen as goony for girls. To put a more scientific edge on it, women have a worse special sense than men do, and sometimes have problems translating things from 2D to 3D, etc. Because of the nature of FPS games (2D screen, 3D environment), this may make them harder to play, compared to the standard 2D nature of most RTS and management games. One of my lady friend’s was watching me playing Mechwarrior 3 a few months back, and after a few minutes of circle strafing, she said that it was making her feel sick, because she couldn't cope with the 3D motion on the 2D screen. Her visual sense couldn't translate the images without a sense of motion sickness. Bizarre stuff. We all know that women are far more biased to social situations rather than violence (see popularity of romantic comedies over Vietnam movies), also, which is why the Sims wins out over Command And Conquer.
Another link people might be interested in:
http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/ 004_Games_for_Girls/004_games_for_girls.htm
Inevitably its almost 50/50 when it comes to sex on games (that’s sex as in male/female, no puns please). So, the question I ask is why do game designers make games for girls. Well, in truth, they feel that if they don't they'll be done for sexism. In truth it seems that no one cares. What needs to be done is that gaming needs to be steered towards girls/gals/women (whatever you like again). Then there won't be a problem. While it is true that many women rise above the insults and stuff, not all of them do. This is not just a female thing: I'm sure hundreds of male gamers have been put off (online) gaming because of hurtful comments. Anyway, I stand by what I said before: People make too much of this. The difference in ability is extremely minor. It's like saying that because men are worse at facial recognition and multitasking (also quantitatively proven) they wouldn't enjoy or play games like The Sims, because they're just not very good at it.
Do we want women to play games? I mean enough men walk around with strained wrists, cross-eyes, wasted muscle and lack of social life without women joining in to. Personally I wish I could stop playing games. The answer to this quandary is really very simple (in essence). It has nothing to do with developers creating games that are 'geared towards blokes' or misogynist stereotypes (although developers are guilty of all these things). It's simply a cultural thing. Why don't all you hairy barrel chested men out there play with Barbies? Why don't you fawn all day about your desire to ride a cutesy pony? It's because you're blokes and you're brought up in a society that tells you you don't do those things. Just as girls are brought up in a society that tells them they aren't suppose to be interested in computers and computer games. That’s the blokes territory that is. You get a few women playing the Sims but that's pretty much it because it's akin to playing with dolls - a safe feminine thing to do, and if you have to play with computers you might as well do that.
Here's another question, then:
Are "girls games" like Barbie, those horse-riding ones, the Mary Kate and Ashley (or whatever they're called) licenses at all a good thing? Are they good for getting more girls involved in gaming at a young age? Are they bad because they're misrepresentative of the themes of the majority of videogames (i.e. Kill! Smash! 'Splode!)? Why should we be interested in making games for females? From a business point of view, this is a large percentage of consumers, who are not buying these products. Why? Video gaming is becoming a large(r) part of entertainment culture, yet somehow we are excluding at least half of the population. That's a lot of money, which could be, and should be, pouring into this industry. Perhaps the types of games we are making are too narrow in scope, too restricted in idea. This is almost certainly true; arguments about lack of vision in gaming abound on these very forums. I am a bloke and I love games, all sorts, but ultimately in almost every game I play, I resort to conflict resolution, almost exclusively of a violent nature (I shoot enemy, I bomb enemy base etc.). In fact, this idea of enemy/opposition could be part of the problem. It has been argued that there is an intrinsic difference between the two sexes. Men/boys exhibit destructive and combative nature, whilst Women/girls display restitutive and inclusive tendencies. Men fight, women talk. This may be a generalisation, but I think we can reach a tentative consensus on this. The Sims is a case in point. Everybody loves to bash the Sims, but this game has crossed the gender boundary, and the amount of money it has made for its developers/publishers is the envy of all in the industry. Perhaps we need more games like the Sims, and less like Doom III (although bring out Doom III first please, and make the shotgun go Ker-chick-BOOM).
I always select a female character in RPG's and MMORPG's for self-amusement purposes anyway…
Just out of interest, which specific sexes are games like NOLF aimed at? If there are any GirlGamers™ here, perhaps they could enlighten me?
Thanks for reading,
Flux.
Page:
Yes, I know. It's a forum.
icedtears wrote:
> FinalFantasyFanatic wrote:
> Some girls might like horrible violent games with blood
>
> ...... >:-D You said it !! =)
I wrote it actually.
This isn't chat, by the by
> FinalFantasyFanatic wrote:
> Some girls might like horrible violent games with blood
>
> ...... >:-D You said it !! =)
I wrote it actually.
This isn't chat, by the by
FinalFantasyFanatic wrote:
> Some girls might like horrible violent games with blood
...... >:-D You said it !! =)
> Some girls might like horrible violent games with blood
...... >:-D You said it !! =)
Oh, and when there is a game released 'just for the ladies' under some femanist anti-men title with 'girl power' for the 'intelligent women' it's nothing but a pile of cliched patronsing rubbish. This does nothing to give women anything extra it just shows how pathetic all the femanists are by making a game 'for every woman'.
Like i said, everyone's different.
Get over it
Like i said, everyone's different.
Get over it
The whoel 'games for girls' things does exactly what the femenists don't want. It makes the assumption that all girls are the same and that they don't want any voilent or scary games or whatever. Which is just pathetic.
Not everyone likes RPGS
Or Beat-em-ups
Or FPSs
Or puzzle games
Or platformers.
So why make this generalisation for women? It seems a little stupid to me, no-one is the same male or female.
Some girls might like horrible violent games with blood, other may enjoy playing Spyro.
In case you didn't notice women are different, as are men - there's a type of game for everyone whatever their gender.
Get over it.
Not everyone likes RPGS
Or Beat-em-ups
Or FPSs
Or puzzle games
Or platformers.
So why make this generalisation for women? It seems a little stupid to me, no-one is the same male or female.
Some girls might like horrible violent games with blood, other may enjoy playing Spyro.
In case you didn't notice women are different, as are men - there's a type of game for everyone whatever their gender.
Get over it.
maddmun wrote:
> Anyway, I was wondering - what exactly is the problem here?
>
> THere's a problem? No, It's just girls trying to BE COOL and fit in
> with us cool gamers.
"Trying" to be cool ? Hehe!! :oD
> Anyway, I was wondering - what exactly is the problem here?
>
> THere's a problem? No, It's just girls trying to BE COOL and fit in
> with us cool gamers.
"Trying" to be cool ? Hehe!! :oD
Flux wrote:
> ½pint wrote:
> And do you 'forget' often?
>
> Hehe. :0D
Yep
> ½pint wrote:
> And do you 'forget' often?
>
> Hehe. :0D
Yep
yep
Flux wrote:
> I've just read a piece on Digitiser by someone moaning about the lack
> of consideration for the fairer sex in today's games. Basically she
> was complaining because games are tailored towards males, even though
> there are thousands of female gamers yadda yadda yadda.
Most of the people who reply to Digitiser are idiots anyway, so why care?
> Anyway, I was wondering - what exactly is the problem here?
THere's a problem? No, It's just girls trying to BE COOL and fit in with us cool gamers.
> Is it that games feature too much gratuitous titillation?
Meh?
> No, it can't
> be, films are the same - how many pert-buttocked six-packed half-naked
> male action heroes do we see in today’s games? Many.
I don't check, you disgusting fiend!
> And who honestly
> gets off on seeing digitised women/men anyway?
Ummm, I don't know....
> Is it that games try
> and provide us with cynically-contrived female icons like Lara Croft?
Meh again?
> Maybe - but who cares. If you are offended more by this than by the
> quality of the game you are clearly dabbling in the wrong media. Lara
> is a marketing tool - if she had the face of a baboon the game would
> be no different.
Yes it would, the lead character weould have a baboon face and that big ad up the top of the page would look crazy.
> Is it that games do not reflect female interests? No.
> Barbie, horse riding, all of that patronising cack, its been tried
> before to universal derision. What exactly are 'female interests'
> anyway?
Putting on makeup and carrying hairdryers in their bags (I know girls who do this)
> I watch films with rap music soundtracks, even though I hate rap. I
> listen to music where the protagonist sings about her love for a man,
> even though I don't find men attractive. I even play golf games
> sometimes, despite the fact that I hate golf.
Why?
> I went to
> womengamers.com to try and find out, but I'm still none the wiser. The
> website seems full of the usual news and reviews, but not particularly
> different from most other news sites (apart from a distinct lack of
> juvenile bloke humour). Further to the womengamers.com bit, I found a
> part of the site, which bizarrely gives ratings to female game
> characters on how ‘non-sexist’, and 'strong-inspirational-woman' they
> are:
Are you joking!? ROFL!!!!
> http://www.womengamers.com/dw/
Is the homepage pink with a flower border?
> Strangely, after an introduction where they say they are concerned
> about the representation of women in games, they go on to rate most of
> the characters 7/10 upwards. Apart from the characters in such seminal
> and influential games as Excalibur 2555AD and Space Bunnies Must Die.
> Whenever developers try to make a game for girl exclusively they turn
> out cack. I say keep churning out games the way they are. I know a lot
> of women don't play games because they find computers intimidating,
> not because games are targeted at male audiences. Maybe we should
> start a website on how non-sexist and strong-inspirational men game
> characters are. How many of us go and buy a game because we have great
> respect for the hero's cause and what he/she is fighting for? Do we
> hold up polygonal game characters as role models? Maybe female gamers
> would be happier if say, Max Payne had been about a woman? Or maybe
> all the soldiers in MoH had been women? I can see it now - Maxine
> Payne...
Ah, this is your comment, I thought this was rather confusing.
> It would be safe to say that women love cack games. Clearly, this is
> not the case. Women on TFC (MEH?) have killed me, although they could > > > have
> been 14-year-old boys. Nobody plays that anymore, male or female. But
> I'm getting off topic. I think it is the community. If a woman reveals
> her gender in a game chat-room or wherever, she is open to hundreds of
> kids making dirty jokes. But perhaps we are making too much of the
> situation. There are lots of men who hate computer games too, and I
> know lots of women gamers. If anything, they often have better game
> sense than some men: I knew a girl who loved The Longest Journey. She
> was a wonderful person. Minor piece of self-experience here – I know a
> young lady who has a certain liking for computer games, especially
> Tomb Raider. She sees Lara as a strong role model and loves the
> ability to do funky moves and gracefully shoot the living hell out of
> lots of men. The only thing she doesn't like is the butt-wiggling
> animations and the little orgasmic shouts whenever you do something,
> but that's really just the kind of poor stereotype that we all hate
> anyway.
We ALL hate? what about the 12 year old's who wish that Lara was their sex partner in life?
> I'd say that the FPS/RTS genres aren't popular with many women because
> of their emphasis on violence, possibly due to hormones or something.
> Maybe not. On the other hand, apparently women are great at Worms.
But I'm not a woman and I OWN at worms.
> Maybe it's a social thing. Maybe girls in general don't find it cool
> to play games, do Sciences at Uni or at A-level, program computers, as
> a social trend. Of course, this trend is breaking down bit by bit, but
> it's still the case that some subjects or pastimes are seen as goony
> for girls. To put a more scientific edge on it, women have a worse
> special sense than men do, and sometimes have problems translating
> things from 2D to 3D, etc. Because of the nature of FPS games (2D
> screen, 3D environment), this may make them harder to play, compared
> to the standard 2D nature of most RTS and management games. One of my
> lady friend’s was watching me playing Mechwarrior 3 a few months back,
> and after a few minutes of circle strafing, she said that it was
> making her feel sick, because she couldn't cope with the 3D motion on
> the 2D screen. Her visual sense couldn't translate the images without
> a sense of motion sickness. Bizarre stuff. We all know that women are
> far more biased to social situations rather than violence (see
> popularity of romantic comedies over Vietnam movies), also, which is
> why the Sims wins out over Command And Conquer.
I'm beginning to understand a lot more here, but, it still makes little sense.. you have a friend????????
> Another link people might be interested in:
>
> http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/
> 004_Games_for_Girls/004_games_for_girls.htm
Does this have a pink homepage?
> Inevitably its almost 50/50 when it comes to sex on games (that’s sex
> as in male/female, no puns please). So, the question I ask is why do
> game designers make games for girls. Well, in truth, they feel that if
> they don't they'll be done for sexism. In truth it seems that no one
> cares. What needs to be done is that gaming needs to be steered
> towards girls/gals/women (whatever you like again). Then there won't
> be a problem. While it is true that many women rise above the insults
> and stuff, not all of them do. This is not just a female thing: I'm
> sure hundreds of male gamers have been put off (online) gaming because
> of hurtful comments. Anyway, I stand by what I said before: People
> make too much of this. The difference in ability is extremely minor.
> It's like saying that because men are worse at facial recognition and
> multitasking (also quantitatively proven) they wouldn't enjoy or play
> games like The Sims, because they're just not very good at it.
OK, it's making less sense here again.
> Do we want women to play games? I mean enough men walk around with
> strained wrists, cross-eyes, wasted muscle and lack of social life
> without women joining in to. Personally I wish I could stop playing
> games.
Then get off of the forums.
> The answer to this quandary is really very simple (in essence).
> It has nothing to do with developers creating games that are 'geared
> towards blokes' or misogynist stereotypes (although developers are
> guilty of all these things). It's simply a cultural thing. Why don't
> all you hairy barrel chested men out there play with Barbies? Why
> don't you fawn all day about your desire to ride a cutesy pony? It's
> because you're blokes and you're brought up in a society that tells
> you you don't do those things. Just as girls are brought up in a
> society that tells them they aren't suppose to be interested in
> computers and computer games. That’s the blokes territory that is. You
> get a few women playing the Sims but that's pretty much it because
> it's akin to playing with dolls - a safe feminine thing to do, and if
> you have to play with computers you might as well do that.
But, you play with dollls, don't you!!! DON'T YOU!!!
> Here's another question, then:
>
> Are "girls games" like Barbie, those horse-riding ones, the
> Mary Kate and Ashley (or whatever they're called) licenses at all a
> good thing? Are they good for getting more girls involved in gaming at
> a young age? Are they bad because they're misrepresentative of the
> themes of the majority of videogames (i.e. Kill! Smash! 'Splode!)? Why
> should we be interested in making games for females? From a business
> point of view, this is a large percentage of consumers, who are not
> buying these products. Why? Video gaming is becoming a large(r) part
> of entertainment culture, yet somehow we are excluding at least half
> of the population. That's a lot of money, which could be, and should
> be, pouring into this industry. Perhaps the types of games we are
> making are too narrow in scope, too restricted in idea. This is almost
> certainly true; arguments about lack of vision in gaming abound on
> these very forums. I am a bloke and I love games, all sorts, but
> ultimately in almost every game I play, I resort to conflict
> resolution, almost exclusively of a violent nature (I shoot enemy, I
> bomb enemy base etc.). In fact, this idea of enemy/opposition could be
> part of the problem. It has been argued that there is an intrinsic
> difference between the two sexes. Men/boys exhibit destructive and
> combative nature, whilst Women/girls display restitutive and inclusive
> tendencies. Men fight, women talk. This may be a generalisation, but I
> think we can reach a tentative consensus on this. The Sims is a case
> in point. Everybody loves to bash the Sims, but this game has crossed
> the gender boundary, and the amount of money it has made for its
> developers/publishers is the envy of all in the industry. Perhaps we
> need more games like the Sims, and less like Doom III (although bring
> out Doom III first please, and make the shotgun go Ker-chick-BOOM).
Or, they won't and they'll keep bringing out 100 more Sims add-on packs.
> I always select a female character in RPG's and MMORPG's for
> self-amusement purposes anyway…
Is that because you want to *play* with them?
> Just out of interest, which specific sexes are games like NOLF aimed
> at? If there are any GirlGamers™ here, perhaps they could enlighten
> me?
Ask Mystique.... erm, are there any girl gamers?
> Thanks for reading,
> Flux.
Oops, I quoted the whole message :D
> I've just read a piece on Digitiser by someone moaning about the lack
> of consideration for the fairer sex in today's games. Basically she
> was complaining because games are tailored towards males, even though
> there are thousands of female gamers yadda yadda yadda.
Most of the people who reply to Digitiser are idiots anyway, so why care?
> Anyway, I was wondering - what exactly is the problem here?
THere's a problem? No, It's just girls trying to BE COOL and fit in with us cool gamers.
> Is it that games feature too much gratuitous titillation?
Meh?
> No, it can't
> be, films are the same - how many pert-buttocked six-packed half-naked
> male action heroes do we see in today’s games? Many.
I don't check, you disgusting fiend!
> And who honestly
> gets off on seeing digitised women/men anyway?
Ummm, I don't know....
> Is it that games try
> and provide us with cynically-contrived female icons like Lara Croft?
Meh again?
> Maybe - but who cares. If you are offended more by this than by the
> quality of the game you are clearly dabbling in the wrong media. Lara
> is a marketing tool - if she had the face of a baboon the game would
> be no different.
Yes it would, the lead character weould have a baboon face and that big ad up the top of the page would look crazy.
> Is it that games do not reflect female interests? No.
> Barbie, horse riding, all of that patronising cack, its been tried
> before to universal derision. What exactly are 'female interests'
> anyway?
Putting on makeup and carrying hairdryers in their bags (I know girls who do this)
> I watch films with rap music soundtracks, even though I hate rap. I
> listen to music where the protagonist sings about her love for a man,
> even though I don't find men attractive. I even play golf games
> sometimes, despite the fact that I hate golf.
Why?
> I went to
> womengamers.com to try and find out, but I'm still none the wiser. The
> website seems full of the usual news and reviews, but not particularly
> different from most other news sites (apart from a distinct lack of
> juvenile bloke humour). Further to the womengamers.com bit, I found a
> part of the site, which bizarrely gives ratings to female game
> characters on how ‘non-sexist’, and 'strong-inspirational-woman' they
> are:
Are you joking!? ROFL!!!!
> http://www.womengamers.com/dw/
Is the homepage pink with a flower border?
> Strangely, after an introduction where they say they are concerned
> about the representation of women in games, they go on to rate most of
> the characters 7/10 upwards. Apart from the characters in such seminal
> and influential games as Excalibur 2555AD and Space Bunnies Must Die.
> Whenever developers try to make a game for girl exclusively they turn
> out cack. I say keep churning out games the way they are. I know a lot
> of women don't play games because they find computers intimidating,
> not because games are targeted at male audiences. Maybe we should
> start a website on how non-sexist and strong-inspirational men game
> characters are. How many of us go and buy a game because we have great
> respect for the hero's cause and what he/she is fighting for? Do we
> hold up polygonal game characters as role models? Maybe female gamers
> would be happier if say, Max Payne had been about a woman? Or maybe
> all the soldiers in MoH had been women? I can see it now - Maxine
> Payne...
Ah, this is your comment, I thought this was rather confusing.
> It would be safe to say that women love cack games. Clearly, this is
> not the case. Women on TFC (MEH?) have killed me, although they could > > > have
> been 14-year-old boys. Nobody plays that anymore, male or female. But
> I'm getting off topic. I think it is the community. If a woman reveals
> her gender in a game chat-room or wherever, she is open to hundreds of
> kids making dirty jokes. But perhaps we are making too much of the
> situation. There are lots of men who hate computer games too, and I
> know lots of women gamers. If anything, they often have better game
> sense than some men: I knew a girl who loved The Longest Journey. She
> was a wonderful person. Minor piece of self-experience here – I know a
> young lady who has a certain liking for computer games, especially
> Tomb Raider. She sees Lara as a strong role model and loves the
> ability to do funky moves and gracefully shoot the living hell out of
> lots of men. The only thing she doesn't like is the butt-wiggling
> animations and the little orgasmic shouts whenever you do something,
> but that's really just the kind of poor stereotype that we all hate
> anyway.
We ALL hate? what about the 12 year old's who wish that Lara was their sex partner in life?
> I'd say that the FPS/RTS genres aren't popular with many women because
> of their emphasis on violence, possibly due to hormones or something.
> Maybe not. On the other hand, apparently women are great at Worms.
But I'm not a woman and I OWN at worms.
> Maybe it's a social thing. Maybe girls in general don't find it cool
> to play games, do Sciences at Uni or at A-level, program computers, as
> a social trend. Of course, this trend is breaking down bit by bit, but
> it's still the case that some subjects or pastimes are seen as goony
> for girls. To put a more scientific edge on it, women have a worse
> special sense than men do, and sometimes have problems translating
> things from 2D to 3D, etc. Because of the nature of FPS games (2D
> screen, 3D environment), this may make them harder to play, compared
> to the standard 2D nature of most RTS and management games. One of my
> lady friend’s was watching me playing Mechwarrior 3 a few months back,
> and after a few minutes of circle strafing, she said that it was
> making her feel sick, because she couldn't cope with the 3D motion on
> the 2D screen. Her visual sense couldn't translate the images without
> a sense of motion sickness. Bizarre stuff. We all know that women are
> far more biased to social situations rather than violence (see
> popularity of romantic comedies over Vietnam movies), also, which is
> why the Sims wins out over Command And Conquer.
I'm beginning to understand a lot more here, but, it still makes little sense.. you have a friend????????
> Another link people might be interested in:
>
> http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/
> 004_Games_for_Girls/004_games_for_girls.htm
Does this have a pink homepage?
> Inevitably its almost 50/50 when it comes to sex on games (that’s sex
> as in male/female, no puns please). So, the question I ask is why do
> game designers make games for girls. Well, in truth, they feel that if
> they don't they'll be done for sexism. In truth it seems that no one
> cares. What needs to be done is that gaming needs to be steered
> towards girls/gals/women (whatever you like again). Then there won't
> be a problem. While it is true that many women rise above the insults
> and stuff, not all of them do. This is not just a female thing: I'm
> sure hundreds of male gamers have been put off (online) gaming because
> of hurtful comments. Anyway, I stand by what I said before: People
> make too much of this. The difference in ability is extremely minor.
> It's like saying that because men are worse at facial recognition and
> multitasking (also quantitatively proven) they wouldn't enjoy or play
> games like The Sims, because they're just not very good at it.
OK, it's making less sense here again.
> Do we want women to play games? I mean enough men walk around with
> strained wrists, cross-eyes, wasted muscle and lack of social life
> without women joining in to. Personally I wish I could stop playing
> games.
Then get off of the forums.
> The answer to this quandary is really very simple (in essence).
> It has nothing to do with developers creating games that are 'geared
> towards blokes' or misogynist stereotypes (although developers are
> guilty of all these things). It's simply a cultural thing. Why don't
> all you hairy barrel chested men out there play with Barbies? Why
> don't you fawn all day about your desire to ride a cutesy pony? It's
> because you're blokes and you're brought up in a society that tells
> you you don't do those things. Just as girls are brought up in a
> society that tells them they aren't suppose to be interested in
> computers and computer games. That’s the blokes territory that is. You
> get a few women playing the Sims but that's pretty much it because
> it's akin to playing with dolls - a safe feminine thing to do, and if
> you have to play with computers you might as well do that.
But, you play with dollls, don't you!!! DON'T YOU!!!
> Here's another question, then:
>
> Are "girls games" like Barbie, those horse-riding ones, the
> Mary Kate and Ashley (or whatever they're called) licenses at all a
> good thing? Are they good for getting more girls involved in gaming at
> a young age? Are they bad because they're misrepresentative of the
> themes of the majority of videogames (i.e. Kill! Smash! 'Splode!)? Why
> should we be interested in making games for females? From a business
> point of view, this is a large percentage of consumers, who are not
> buying these products. Why? Video gaming is becoming a large(r) part
> of entertainment culture, yet somehow we are excluding at least half
> of the population. That's a lot of money, which could be, and should
> be, pouring into this industry. Perhaps the types of games we are
> making are too narrow in scope, too restricted in idea. This is almost
> certainly true; arguments about lack of vision in gaming abound on
> these very forums. I am a bloke and I love games, all sorts, but
> ultimately in almost every game I play, I resort to conflict
> resolution, almost exclusively of a violent nature (I shoot enemy, I
> bomb enemy base etc.). In fact, this idea of enemy/opposition could be
> part of the problem. It has been argued that there is an intrinsic
> difference between the two sexes. Men/boys exhibit destructive and
> combative nature, whilst Women/girls display restitutive and inclusive
> tendencies. Men fight, women talk. This may be a generalisation, but I
> think we can reach a tentative consensus on this. The Sims is a case
> in point. Everybody loves to bash the Sims, but this game has crossed
> the gender boundary, and the amount of money it has made for its
> developers/publishers is the envy of all in the industry. Perhaps we
> need more games like the Sims, and less like Doom III (although bring
> out Doom III first please, and make the shotgun go Ker-chick-BOOM).
Or, they won't and they'll keep bringing out 100 more Sims add-on packs.
> I always select a female character in RPG's and MMORPG's for
> self-amusement purposes anyway…
Is that because you want to *play* with them?
> Just out of interest, which specific sexes are games like NOLF aimed
> at? If there are any GirlGamers™ here, perhaps they could enlighten
> me?
Ask Mystique.... erm, are there any girl gamers?
> Thanks for reading,
> Flux.
Oops, I quoted the whole message :D
½pint wrote:
> And good post by the way, and you're right. Games aren't specifically
> for males or females, and there is such a wide variety of genres that
> it's hard to complain. I think we should strike back... how about...
> Men And Stitching To Undermine Racist Bimbo's And Their Empathy.
> Hehe. (M********E)
LoL! :0D
That cracked me up badly :D
> And good post by the way, and you're right. Games aren't specifically
> for males or females, and there is such a wide variety of genres that
> it's hard to complain. I think we should strike back... how about...
> Men And Stitching To Undermine Racist Bimbo's And Their Empathy.
> Hehe. (M********E)
LoL! :0D
That cracked me up badly :D
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