Extra Credits talks about gender sterotypes in game mechanics.

Demagogue

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Rahkshi500 said:
Excellent points made in the video. I never knew that hidden objects games were made for women, even though I like them; I got into them because they reminded me a lot of I-Spy, which was one of my favorite childhood memories. Indeed, as others have pointed out, that hidden object zombie apocalypse idea is a lot like This War of Mine.
You never knew, because hidden object games weren't made for women. They were made for people who enjoying hunting for things. There is just a large demographics of women who apparently enjoy that activity.

I remember growing up and hunting down every single Where's Waldo book and finding him. I routinely get those little Japanese puzzles to solve (though I'm batting like a 40% average on completing them). I also like shooting people in Planetside 2, or Battlefield back in the day.

Some people enjoy puzzles, some don't. Some enjoy Warbased FPSs, some don't. It is okay to have a differing opinion on a genre.

Not everything has to be made into a gender issue, but sadly that is what is passing for critique now days. No offence to you erttheking, you didn't make the video, I have a feeling this is James soapboxing. So now people will go into a big debate about what genres are for what gender, and how can they be more 'inclusive' to the other gender, and further hodgepodge the gaming genres until everything is the same.

Should they make games girls enjoy? YES. Should they make games boys enjoy? YES. Should they make games people who don't identify as boys or girls to enjoy? YES!

They should make games for all people to enjoy, but it doesn't have to be the same game.


edit edit: nope, upon review that wasn't the right way. fixed now... maybe?
 

Ishal

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The Lunatic said:
It could be argued that match-3 are popular amongst women because there are more women mobile and casual gamers and some of the most popular games to come up in this form of gaming was Candy-Crush and Bejeweled, as the limited hardware of these systems only allowed for rather more simple games.

Simply put, the reason FPSs don't sell so well to women may just be because more women play casual games and an FPS does not work well on a mobile device.

Rather than considering these possibilities the video instead insists that somehow, if we started doing things their way, market trends would dramatically reverse.

Basically, it's just more pretentious non-sense from a group of people who's only real achievement is one of them working at a game company for a few years.
It's true.

I'm all for niche games appealing to niche markets. But there is something to be said about studying the markets and why they are the way they are. Furthermore, the title is borderline drivel. Gender? In game-mechanics? Come now. What is gender having to do with first person perspective? Or platforming? Or top down RTS management?

Most of the best games are not built around such a woefully limiting concept such as gender. And certainly their core mechanics aren't, either. The marketing, however, is. These people, and I actually shouldn't say it in plural, because the only one who matters in that outfit is Portnow. They're putting the cart before the horse. Make the great game first, then concern yourself with the audience.
 

nomotog_v1legacy

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Demagogue said:
Rahkshi500 said:
Excellent points made in the video. I never knew that hidden objects games were made for women, even though I like them; I got into them because they reminded me a lot of I-Spy, which was one of my favorite childhood memories. Indeed, as others have pointed out, that hidden object zombie apocalypse idea is a lot like This War of Mine.
You never knew, because hidden object games weren't made for women. They were made for people who enjoying hunting for things. There is just a large demographics of women who apparently enjoy that activity.

I remember growing up and hunting down every single Where's Waldo book and finding him. I routinely get those little Japanese puzzles to solve (though I'm batting like a 40% average on completing them). I also like shooting people in Planetside 2, or Battlefield back in the day.

Some people enjoy puzzles, some don't. Some enjoy Warbased FPSs, some don't. It is okay to have a differing opinion on a genre.

Not everything has to be made into a gender issue, but sadly that is what is passing for critique now days. No offence to you erttheking, you didn't make the video, I have a feeling this is James soapboxing. So now people will go into a big debate about what genres are for what gender, and how can they be more 'inclusive' to the other gender, and further hodgepodge the gaming genres until everything is the same.

Should they make games girls enjoy? YES. Should they make games boys enjoy? YES. Should they make games people who don't identify as boys or girls to enjoy? YES!

They should make games for all people to enjoy, but it doesn't have to be the same game.

edit edit: nope, upon review that wasn't the right way. fixed now... maybe?
I don't think the video make making an argument about if you should or shouldn't make games for everyone. (We basically take the games for everyone as red by now.) It was more laying down a idea that the mechanics of a game are basically gender blind. So you don't have to view genres a stuck to one gender. I guess some of that is how you see genres and possibly genders too. (There is like a 90% probability people are going to get confused between genre and gender. :p)
 

MechaSlinky

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I don't really have anything important to add. I just saw a few people getting a bit hung-up on the idea of Portal as the go-to example of a non-violent FPS, and although it's actually a third-person shooter rather than first-person, I think Splatoon would make a much better example. Perhaps Splatoon wouldn't work since it has yet to be released so there's no sales data for the EC crew to point to, but at the very least its core mechanic is to shoot all the things and is about as non-violent as a game about shooting other people can get. I'd be very interested to see the gender-divide in the sales/player-base for Splatoon to see if there's any credence to EC's idea.
 

MerlinCross

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You know when I read the title I thought it was going to be about well, something different.

The smaller gender stereotypes you sometimes see in gaming. Like males having a higher STR score at character creation while females have higher speed/magic. Or in other games(usually strategy fantasy games with cannon fodder), males tend to take up the bulk of the army/class options while females have a smaller roster. The kind that blends into the mechanics/numbers that you really don't pick up unless you really look.
 

nomotog_v1legacy

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MerlinCross said:
You know when I read the title I thought it was going to be about well, something different.

The smaller gender stereotypes you sometimes see in gaming. Like males having a higher STR score at character creation while females have higher speed/magic. Or in other games(usually strategy fantasy games with cannon fodder), males tend to take up the bulk of the army/class options while females have a smaller roster. The kind that blends into the mechanics/numbers that you really don't pick up unless you really look.
I thought the same thing when I read the title too. The old men are strong women are agile trope. (and the other flavors of it.) It's so so pervasive that I wonder how many people take notice of it anymore. Though talking about is likely off topic.
 

kris40k

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MechaSlinky said:
I don't really have anything important to add. I just saw a few people getting a bit hung-up on the idea of Portal as the go-to example of a non-violent FPS, and although it's actually a third-person shooter rather than first-person, I think Splatoon would make a much better example. Perhaps Splatoon wouldn't work since it has yet to be released so there's no sales data for the EC crew to point to, but at the very least its core mechanic is to shoot all the things and is about as non-violent as a game about shooting other people can get. I'd be very interested to see the gender-divide in the sales/player-base for Splatoon to see if there's any credence to EC's idea.
Portal is most definitely a FPS.
http://www.gamershell.com/static/screenshots/1/11183/240383_full.jpg

A third-person shooter (TPS) would be something like Gears of War.
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/xbox360/gears_of_war_3/screens/gears_of_war_3_90.jpg
 

MechaSlinky

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kris40k said:
MechaSlinky said:
SO MANY PUPPIES!!!
Portal is most definitely a FPS.
http://www.gamershell.com/static/screenshots/1/11183/240383_full.jpg

A third-person shooter (TPS) would be something like Gears of War.
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/xbox360/gears_of_war_3/screens/gears_of_war_3_90.jpg
I wasn't saying otherwise. I was mostly making the point that maybe rather than pointing to Portal, which does not play like other FPSes other than being in first-person and requiring aiming and shooting, something a bit closer to what most people think of as shooters would be a better example. They perhaps should have dropped the FPS thing and instead just talked about shooters in general, first and third-person alike, as they often seem to have a lot of overlap in terms of audience and design (like the awful two-weapon limit Shamus shat all over so beautifully).

It's sort of like talking about games similar to 2D Mario platformers and then using Zelda 2 as an example, even though Super Mario 3D World is much closer in spirit and design to the 2D platformers despite its 3Dness.

Love your avatar display picture thing, by the way. Excel Saga is something approaching brilliance.
 

death525

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The Lunatic said:
Essentially, the idea video seemed to go about the notion that the gameplay elements are what makes a game to appeal to people, rather than the theme.

Which is impossible.

The majority of people buying a game do not know exactly how the game will play out.

Admittedly, you have a good notion of genre, but, if you look at the advertising and promotion of a game, far more time is spent telling you the theme of the game rather than the moment to moment gameplay.

The video starts with listing exceptions to the rules, and then goes on about how these rules are apparently so concrete and need changing. It seems to fail to grasp the concept of popularity.

It could be argued that match-3 are popular amongst women because there are more women mobile and casual gamers and some of the most popular games to come up in this form of gaming was Candy-Crush and Bejeweled, as the limited hardware of these systems only allowed for rather more simple games.

Simply put, the reason FPSs don't sell so well to women may just be because more women play casual games and an FPS does not work well on a mobile device.

Rather than considering these possibilities the video instead insists that somehow, if we started doing things their way, market trends would dramatically reverse.

Basically, it's just more pretentious non-sense from a group of people who's only real achievement is one of them working at a game company for a few years.
They did say it was theme that actually drew in certain demographics but that developers were confusing the reason why certain demographics were playing certain genres. They agreed with you in the fact that the markets where these genres first started was what really caused the divides. Yes, the fact that James has worked for several years in multiple companies on multiple genres of games makes him fairly knowledgeable on the subject.
 

Therumancer

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Hmmm, well I do have to say that I find it somewhat irksome that now that people are beginning to acknowledge that women were never really being neglected by the gaming industry nor was there ever a shortage of well developed female characters in a general sense (I've been pointing towards things like Hidden Object games for years), now people are presenting it as an issue that there has been some degree of gender segregation based on the two genders wanting different things (which is in part why the generas proving a lot of the sexism in gaming points false have been largely been invisible to those making the arguments... not being there for guys, the guys trying to make PC statements tended to overlook them and how many there were and what a big business they cumulatively represent).

Extra Credits is right in a general sense, but only in that the big budget gaming industry tends to stick almost exclusively with what it knows works, causing stagnation, something which has been being complained about for years. Trying to tie gender issues to it seems pretty much ridiculous... as well as the whole basic point of this video with all the complaints about how there were no games being developed FOR women, now that it's obvious that there have been, and for a very long time, having these girl games is suddenly wrong?

As far as people stepping over gender intent, that happens all the time in a limited sense. It's sort of like how anime is divided into Shoujo and Shonen titles and this extends to video games. Hardcore fans step over those lines all the time (less so for casual ones which is why the designation exists) however every so often something comes along that becomes a huge blockbuster in part because it winds up appealing heavily to a general audience as opposed to one gender. As much as people try and point fingers at the elements that caused this to happen and say "this is why" that usually fails which is why it remains exceptional, as opposed to something that happens all the time, as attempts to simply plug in a formula lead to failed projects. The same applies to video games, and within gaming when it comes to the hardcore gamers of both genders, you see people generally stepping over those lines with a hardcore gamer girls getting involved in the combat FPS games and so on, and various adventure and puzzle type games finding a male audience. Pointing to things like Puzzle Quest or Portal and how they appealed to pretty much all demographics is kind of pointless when you consider all the failed attempts to duplicate those successes, following the formula those games set down, there seem to have been plenty of games trying to knock them off one way or another, none of which seem to have become blockbusters.

As a general rule I see no real reason why men and women shouldn't have games and game types directed primarily at them with the occasional crossover successes happening. When it comes to the level development happens at I think in some respects it comes down to how serious both genders are about gaming. Women on average DO tend to be more casual, and the hardcore girl gamers tend to gravitate towards the boy games anyway. The important thing to consider here is the money being spent. Over the years people DID try and develop top dollar adventure games and such (Hidden Object being a descendent of them) and as a general rule they did not succeed or make the big bucks as girls generally do not dish out the same kinds of money on average even when the products are provided. As a result you see games developed for girls largely at the level the majority are willing to pay, while the dudes who will shell out $60 or so regularly and have proven they will pay see more in the way of successes. At the end of the day all the "academic" and political comments in the world mean very little, to change things you need to actually have girls show up in massive numbers and putting the money in more, provide the market with an identifiable revenue stream and it will be tapped, simply telling the market "well it's there, you just can't see it" doesn't work when it comes to investors, especially when people can look back to the days when adventure games were king and how many major crashes they had trying to do exactly this. All legal criticisms aside, back when CD Rom was "new", interactive movies/puzzle games with digitized actors and such were going to be king, and people spent tons of money on these things, even hiring people like Tia Carrera (who was a bigger name then, at the height of her Wayne's World success if I remember) to do games like Daedalus Encounter which became a sort of investment Titanic if I remember. The period's biggest success was probably "The 7th Guest" and it's sequel "The 11th Hour" which were basically dressed up puzzle collections, they did well with women apparently, and remain influential on the genere today, but otherwise investors look back on how many big budget cash dumps they were involved in trying to make AAA adventure games for women and general audiences while shooters and RPGs were kicking their butt at a fraction of the cost. That said every once in a while you see people go back and talk about things like "Ripper" or "Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller" either mocking them or talking about how surprisingly good they were for their day and how the technologies were interesting (and wondering where it might have gone) but the thing is those games were pretty big failures commercially when they came out. For every "7th Guest" or "Gabriel Knight" there was a seeming truckload of spectacular failures.
 

EXos

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Therumancer said:
-Huge Wall 'o' text-
Spot on.
People are making a fuss for nothing. Video Gaming started as a male hobby and it shows in the genres that became popular. In the past few years more women started to play and it is going through the same developments. If people would just let it run its course then we'll probably see a good "female" line-up of games next to the "Male" and all stuff in between.
 

NPC009

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Wendman said:
Portal is an FPS? I dropped it right there...
It's first person and you shoot things. FPS/Puzzle seems about right. It's not Portal's fault most FPS games are too pre-occupied with shooting nazis/terrorists/aliens/demons to try something else :p
 

Lilani

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Wendman said:
Portal is an FPS? I dropped it right there...
The whole point of the episode was to look at typical genres at different angles and not get caught up in assumptions of what they should be, in order to get out of that stereotyping mindset. Portal was designed with the Source engine--an engine which up until then had primarily been made to create shooters. At times you use portals to redirect projectiles or destroy enemies. You literally shoot the portal in the same way you'd shoot a gun in Half-Life.
 

Shraggler

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EXos said:
Spot on.
People are making a fuss for nothing. Video Gaming started as a male hobby and it shows in the genres that became popular. In the past few years more women started to play and it is going through the same developments. If people would just let it run its course then we'll probably see a good "female" line-up of games next to the "Male" and all stuff in between.
Exactly.

This whole "gender perspective/bias" is less pronounced now than it was 10-20 years ago.

Even the gaming "world" has changed substantially.

The word "gamer" lacks a qualitative definition at this point. It used to imply a "socially awkward, isolated, potentially basement-dwelling nerd (male, 100% of the time)" and/or "someone who spends the majority of their free time with video games, or choosing that above all other forms of media entertainment."

Anyone who owns a console can be considered a "gamer" at this point as the term is almost completely arbitrary regardless of context because of the ubiquity of consoles and the modern, widespread societal acceptance of video games as a form of viable entertainment.

I've never thought of specific genres appealing to certain genders, save for maybe first-person shooters, they're kind of the outlier here.

Hell, I've been able to enter into almost any social situation and casually begin a conversation about HALO, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, just to name a few. Video games have stopped being a truly niche hobby. For fuck's sake, consoles and their games have commercials now.

The marketing for some games may imply a specifically-targeted audience based on gender, but I've yet to see anything that seriously says, "This is for YOU and ONLY YOU, dude!" It's more like, "This game is so cool and fun, buy it! BUY IT NOW!"
 

Phasmal

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I think some people may be missing the point of this video.

There is a difference between what people see as gendered things `Boy games, girl games` and what these things actually ARE `games with combat themes, games with non-violent themes`, and we tend to use them interchangeably, which can cause confusion.

Personally, I love violent games. I love combat and shooting and all the other things that have been put in the `boy` box. To me, these things are not particularly male at all.

But yes, back to the video. It's clear that the games industry has a bit of tunnel vision usually, and tends to stick to things it knows. This video just encourages people to look outside their preconceived notions.

And, yeah, Portal is an FPS. Seeing as it's done from first person in which you shoot portals from your portal gun.
That some people have difficulty with this is kinda just proving the point of the video. FPS's don't have to be Call of Duty, colour match doesn't have to be Candy Crush.
 

Schadrach

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Phasmal said:
That some people have difficulty with this is kinda just proving the point of the video. FPS's don't have to be Call of Duty, colour match doesn't have to be Candy Crush.
Except that Portal really doesn't have any elements that you would normally associate with an FPS other than the camera angle and that something can be made to project from the player character.

Or to put it another way, ChexQuest is more readily recognizable as an FPS than Portal, and is about as related to Call of Duty. Or Drunken Robot Pornography, if you prefer something newer than ChexQuest as an example.

Similarly, people don't generally associate Antichamber with being an FPS either, generally being more willing to lump it in with titles like Portal as being more of a puzzle game.
 

nomotog_v1legacy

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Schadrach said:
Phasmal said:
That some people have difficulty with this is kinda just proving the point of the video. FPS's don't have to be Call of Duty, colour match doesn't have to be Candy Crush.
Except that Portal really doesn't have any elements that you would normally associate with an FPS other than the camera angle and that something can be made to project from the player character.

Or to put it another way, ChexQuest is more readily recognizable as an FPS than Portal, and is about as related to Call of Duty. Or Drunken Robot Pornography, if you prefer something newer than ChexQuest as an example.

Similarly, people don't generally associate Antichamber with being an FPS either, generally being more willing to lump it in with titles like Portal as being more of a puzzle game.
What is portal missing to be called a FPS?
 

suntt123

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nomotog said:
Schadrach said:
Phasmal said:
That some people have difficulty with this is kinda just proving the point of the video. FPS's don't have to be Call of Duty, colour match doesn't have to be Candy Crush.
Except that Portal really doesn't have any elements that you would normally associate with an FPS other than the camera angle and that something can be made to project from the player character.

Or to put it another way, ChexQuest is more readily recognizable as an FPS than Portal, and is about as related to Call of Duty. Or Drunken Robot Pornography, if you prefer something newer than ChexQuest as an example.

Similarly, people don't generally associate Antichamber with being an FPS either, generally being more willing to lump it in with titles like Portal as being more of a puzzle game.
What is portal missing to be called a FPS?
Well, for one thing the focus of the game is using the portals and physics to move from platform to platform in order to solve a linear succession of puzzles, as opposed to murdering a bunch of guys in order to move onto the next part of the story whereupon you then murder more guys.Really, Portal is an FPS in much the same way that Call of Duty is a point and click adventure, where you can only "use bullets" with "terrorists/aliens/zombies, etc."