Issue 23 - Games of a Fairer Sex

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Slartibartfast

Nathaniel: Excellent response, very well thought out. Also note that mice and humans are 97% similar genetically

The intrinsic problem with nature vs nurture is that either way is completely unprovable. There's a reason you talk about this stuff in philosophy classes: it's pointless. No amount of evolutionary psychology, anthropology or sociology is going to show us exactly why current differences between the sexes exist, and even if you do somehow answer this question that answer is pretty useless. This is a case where you are not going to find a solution by looking for a cause, because the cause is half buried in our genes and half lost to history. Sociological equality between the sexes is certainly a long way off, but before we get there some more changes have to be made.

Feminism needs to wake up to it's own nature. As somebody said above, I am totally feminist myself because I believe women should economically/politically/socially equal to men, but that does not mean I think we are the same. The problem as I see it is that feminism is getting to the point where "feminists" see themselves as superior to men, while at the same time expecting chivalry to still hold true (equality also means no special treatment). And of course I am not saying that all feminists are this way, but the most vocal ones tend towards this behavior, as I think Bonnie does.

Ultimately though, if girls want games that appeal towards women, go into game development or design. Just demanding that devs make games for girls isn't going to get you anywhere. Ask a writer how to be a writer, and they're going to tell you to write what you know. Well, game devs are going to code what they know. It's human nature. Besides, if I wrote a game that I meant to be for girls, I do not doubt that it would suck, because it would naturally be filtered through my perceptions of women. I'm sure that if more girls went into game dev/design, girl-friendly games would become more prominent. But now I'm being sexist by saying that some games are girl-friendly and some are guy-friendly.

This is the problem with beliefs. Religion, feminism, nazism are all the same at their core: they allow their followers the freedom to not think.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Scott Jon Siegel
http://xy.teSticleSgo.net
Nathaniel,

I'm happy we're able to discuss this at a mature level, even if I still feel that your objections to Bonnie's pieces are more because you personally disagree with her argument and less because it's actually a "faulty" argument. I might have to stop doing this, because it's in opposition to things with deadlines, but I'll grab a few of your points:

1 - "We objectify men far more frequently, and probably more narrowly, then we do to women. She fails to address this point, or assumes that if a man plays a game with a male lead the male lead is somehow immune to objectification. "
Maybe this wasn't addressed in the article (I don't remember), but the female avatar in video games *appears* more susceptible to danger than the male. This isn't just looks, or my own social conditioning. The best examples are characters like Alex in Eternal Darkness and the sisters in Fatal Frame, who become exhausted easily and can not run for extended periods of time. It's literallly debilitating playing as women. Even Lara Croft, rough-and-tough as she is, still walks like the prettiest princess at the ball when she's not gunning down mummies. When she falls from a great height, she doesn't scream, she squeals. In general, female counterparts of male avatars in games tend to have less health, (Jill vs. Chris). The male lead isn't immune to objectification, but he certainly plays a more in-control role than the female lead.

2 - Refer to number 1. Also, innately, there's something violent about sex. Penetration is a violent act, so yes, I could argue that there's a sort of violence against women in men. Is that a bad thing? Only when it manifests itself so. Sex is violent.
Also, her point is really to establish the idea of "puppetry" when playing a game. You CONTROL something, and therefore dominate that object. When the majority of gamers are men, and they play a game with a female avatar, she becomes the She-Puppet (she Peggy Ahwesh's "She-Puppet").

3 - "The greatest violence done to women is what Bonnie herself advocates: she wants to turn little GIRLS into chain swinging CREATURES or just pitchfork wielding ZOMBIES if that's what it takes to get physical power. Bonnie isn't content to strip women of their feminitiy, she finds it preferable to strip them of their very humanity as well!"
But that's the point. Jill's less powerful than Chris Redfield. Alex in ED gets tired very quickly. Lara Croft sounds like a five-year old when she plummets. Where are the strongest female characters in videogames? They're the monsters. The literally overpower the male protagonists. Lisa Trevor is far more frightening than Nemesis. Femininity is fine, but in video games where power is what counts, the most powerful females are the least human ones.

I don't think she's saying that she hates games like Eternal Darkness or Resident Evil. The point of the article is to look at these games from new angles, rather than just how fun they are, or how good they look. If she wanted to talk about objectification of females in games, she'd be talking about Dead or Alive, or Rumble Roses.

4 - "Why, I'm tempted to ask, isn't it the abnormal nature of their behavior compared to accepted standards of HUMAN contact? Isn't that what makes zombies scary?"
Yes, it is. But men are expected to act violently. Women aren't. The "accepted standards of human contact," by the way, is a societal implication, and women monsters breach these standards much more than male monsters. There's something scary/sexy about a dominant woman, and nothing's more dominant than taking a bite out of someone.

I think the bottom line is that there's a lot going on when someone plays a video game. Being a male, playing a female avatar is simultaneously gender play and puppetry, due to the duality of gaming as "playing" (puppetry) and "becoming" (gender play). It's a question of immersion. Do you see yourself as controlling a character on screen, or do you see yourself AS that character? There's a LOT to take on here, and I stick by my belief that Bonnie did a rather good job with just a sliver of the myriad of ways of looking at gameplay. -sj

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Randall Fitzgerald
http://www.ikimashou.net
SJ:
Chun Li. (Also: every fighting game ever [some exceptions maybe {who knows}])

Whoops, I forgot that a woman can't be sexually attractive and powerful. That plays too much ot men. OK! I've got it! Hinceforth, all strong female characters shall wear pantsuits and speak in a dulcet middle D timber with non-dialectical diction. Although, this may cause trouble when you're looking for a hooker to beat to death in GTA. I'll work on it.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Randall Fitzgerald
http://www.ikimashou.net
timbre* to*

Where is the damn edit button?! Whitney?!?

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Nathaniel Givens

Scott:

1- You're confusing the issues. Whether or not we can objectify a person does not, in my opinion, have anything to do with their susceptibility to physical harm. Take a look at war-time propaganda for evidence of this. So really this point of yours isn't valid.

2 - I don't think sex is by definition violent. If you see it that way I probably can't convince you otherwise. I don't think the penetration is a fundamentally violent term either.

As far as the "puppetry" stuff goes, Bonnie contradicts you on that point. She claims that the player IDENTIFIES with the lead. Which is it going to be? Identification or puppetry? Bonnie tries to have it both ways - that's a problem with her ability to argue not with her conclusion.

As far as which is it really, puppetry or identity, I think there are aspects of both. But even if there is puppetry when males play female characters, what about when males play male characters? Isn't that also possibly puppetry? And doesn't that happen more often? But I think that generally identity is MUCH stronger than puppetry. What we like about video games is that feeling of immersion, that WE are in the thick of things. We can't have this feeling if we're psychologically removed from the action.

3. Again, you're just not thinking this all the way through. I undertand that the female gains physical power by shedding her feminitiy and becoming an inhuman monster. That's settled. But Bonnie is ADVOCATING that as a path to freedom. That's the problem.

The question isn't "should we have weak female leads that are stereotypically feminine, or strong females that are inhuman beasts". My whole problem with Bonnie is that she ACTS as though that's the decisions we have to make. But we don't. If we have a broader conception of "power" then just "ability to break stuff" then we allow for freedom w/out trying to have men and women always having equivalent destructive power.

look, this isn't a patriarchal or sexist attitude: guys are stronger than girls. Your average guy can beat up your average girl. That's just the way life is. It's a biological fact. I'm not saying that this means that you have to have EVERY guy stronger than EVERY girl in video games, but it's just silly to try and act like girls and guys should, in video games, be roughly equivalent on average. That's just not realistic.

But even most FPSers are not just about blowing stuff up. They involve story, plot, narrative, characterizaion. In all of these various realms we have an opportunity to broaden the definition of power and allow women to flourish as powerful, independent characters. Guys have invented most games, they have invented most games for guys, and therefore they have focussed on things guys like and that guys tend to be good at. This means the entire landscape of games is based on guy-type objectives: blowing stuff up, exercising raw power on things around you. It's ridiculous to expect, on average, girls to like a game that's geared towards guy pursuits. Of course some girls can beat up some guys. And some girls are more interested in blowing up stuff than some guys. And that's 100% cool. Individual variation overrides group variation.

But if we want women ON AVERAGE to like games, we're going to have to shift the focus of games from male-oriented worlds to female-oriented worlds. Bonnie is trying to make girls be just as good as guys in realms where guys are biologically superior. I'm sorry if that's not PC, but it's the truth. And it's not fair to girls and it's not fair to guys either.

Are you getting this yet? I'm not angry about Bonnie's conclusions so much as I'm angry about what Bonnie's conclusions reveal about the paradigm she's trying to force on us. A paradigm where the only thing that matters is being able to hurt and destory, being bigger and faster and stronger. This paradigm is unrealistic, and because Bonnie can't think outside this paradigm she ends up with some truly awful solutions to finding gender equality within the paradigm.

4 - "The accepted standards of human contact is a societal impliation". That statement is incredibly naive. Do you think that men and women were just chilling a few thousand years ago and then all of a sudden some guy was like "hey, dudes, let's be violent' and some girl was like "eww... gross, I like ponies!". Where do you think "society" came from? Men are more violent because they are biologically stronger. In some species the woman is stronger, in homo sapien the male is physically dominant. Society evolved around that central truth. There are deep biological reasons for many social details - it's not like someone rolled dice and was like "who wants to be the hunter and who wants to be the gatherer?"

Look, we agree that females are, to most guys at least, scarier than males. But Bonnie says this is because they are violating societal norms. What's scary about that? When some dude farts in public he's breaking a societal norm - are we scared? Afraid? Is there anything inherently scary about breaking societal norms? No.

So what's more likely? Why are guys more afraid of a nightmare girl than a nightmare boy? In my opinion there are two reason: 1 - guys understand guys, but not girls. So fear of the unknown. 2 - guys know that in many ways girls WIELD MORE POWER THAN GUYS. The point is that Bonnie says our fear of women monsters is somehow evidence of female monsters breaking free from societal contraints - but there's no reason to believe this.

Look, if you think Bonnie did a great job - that's your opinion. But all I have to say is that you clearly have very low standards. And that's OK. Bonnie was using some basic literary criticism theories in her writing. Compared to the realm of most journalism, that's like magic. But it's like someone going to a high school algebra class and doing some basic calculus. Once you've taken differential equations it's not really that impressive. And holding Bonnie's work to the standard of literary crticism instead of the much more lax standard of opinion journalism reveals how shoddy her thinking and writing really is.

I mean, she contradicts her own argument within the article. How do you consider THAT "a rather good job" by the standards of professional publication?

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Mark

Somebody mentioned that there has to be a market for these games, and I didn't want that to go unaddressed.

Here's how it works. It applies to nearly all children who play video games, in fact, except the ones who have older siblings who are serious gamers.

You've got a ten-year-old girl who, somewhere along the line, picked up a Game Boy Advance because all the cool kids had one. She's not a serious gamer, she wouldn't know the difference between a good and a bad game if it came up and punched her in the face, and in fact she might even be intrigued by the novelty of pressing a button to make the character do something. This is a person with no sense of whether a game is entertaining or not. This is a person who is susceptible to brands.

This girl will ask her parents for video games, and of course the ones that bear familiar brand names will be the most appealing to her. She'll ask her parents for these. The parents buy them. The game store employees will have been trained to identify the signals.

As time goes by, if our hypothetical little girl lucked out and picked up a game that had some level of depth and finesse, she might still be playing a while down the road. She'd now be about the age where her parents have no idea what she's into, but still have a great degree of control over what video games get purchased. She might not know what games are out, or her parents might not think to ask; they'll end up getting a few more licensed girls' games for her.

The people who buy these games are anything but conouisseurs. They're not the kind of person who's even aware of such things as "E3" or "backwards compatibility" or "smooth controls," knowledge that we as serious gamers take for granted. These people can only be addressed through mainstream publications... and video games are a long way from having half of an entire section in the Sunday paper devoted to them, like the movies do.

Video gaming is a pretty exclusive club. To get in, you have to know somebody with taste. There are market forces at work trying to change that, but they won't even begin to have a noticeable effect for at least another year.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Nathaniel Givens

Still no response from Bonnie's apologists? I've demonstrated how her article is decidedly misogynist AND androgynist (her only talent) and how it's bad writing form every standpoint. My detractors have basically said "you're wrong".

Is that where it ends?

What a shame for the escapist that it takes so little to sate our reading standards.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Scott Jon Siegel
http://xy.teSticleSgo.net
I've stopped replying because I don't really have the time to methodically check this blog for what has become a moot point. You feel one way about her writing; I feel another. If you'd like to continue the discussion, I'd suggest e-mailing me ([email protected]) instead of replying to this blog. Beyond that, it might be more fruitful, if you haven't done so already, to bring up your problems with Bonnie Ruberg herself, who is quite accessible via e-mail or through her blog. Considering your issues are with her, and not the magazine, (and assuming you're looking for answers, and not just a podium to stand on) it would have made more sense to write to her directly instead of her editor.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Jaedynn

Alright. I got about halfway through this comment list then gave up because my eyes were bleeding, so if I missed something, I'm sorry. A lot of people are wondering where the women commenters are, so I figured I'd step up to the plate.

The basics: I am a woman. I am 25 years old, and have been a gamer for about 22 years of that. I have touched on just about every console starting with my Atari 2600. I am very adept with computers, having started with those around third grade. I play MMORPG's - in the form of EQ and EQII.

I am utterly sick of this crap. I am sick of the discussion "what should be marketed towards women". I agree with who asked "what is that suppose to mean"? What is a "womens" game anyway? I'll have to say that I think Chris Crawford's article was complete utter crap. Why do people think they have to analyze the evolution of women to make a friggin' game? I'll tell you what women like - the same damn thing as anyone else.

Some days I want to kill things, so I play Halo or Unreal Tournament. Some days I want to slay dragons, so I play EQ. Some days I want old school so I plop down in front of an Atari and my well-worn copy of Galaga. Some days I want Mario, Zelda, Tetris, Eternal Darkness,Gauntlet, or any other of random games. My point is my tastes are dictated by who I am and what I like, not by my gender. I really hate that people have to turn everything into a gender issue.

I am lucky in that I havn't been "oppressed" in my gaming life. Maybe thats the difference - I've never had to deal with that. I grew up with both male and female hardcore gamers, I married a hardcore gamer - and neither groups have any qualms against sniping my ass down or being sniped down by me in a free-for-all. I have never been accused of not being a girl (although advertising that your female in an MMORPG is like hanging a big blinking sign over you head that ssays "VAGINA ALERT! COME HIT ON ME!"). But if gender issues do become a (brief) problem in the MMORPG's I play, I attribute it to stupid people with their own stupid biases, not neccisarrily a larger issue at hand. I usually just tell them off and go on my way - mainly because there are far too many good people that play to waste my time worrying about what the bad ones think.

To answer the questions about the 8 - 13 year old demographic... At that time I was playing Mario, Maniac Mansion, Faxanadu, and a whole host of other games. I think I rented the Barbie game once, played for five minutes, and promptly hated it. I hated it because the game play was crap, not because I disliked Barbie. I loved Barbies in fact. So you see, as a girl, I had more than one facet to my personality. I could play video games and like barbies too! Shocker!

The bottom line is I don't want to be told what I should like because I'm a girl. I don't want to be told I should like more "social" games. I think the Sims Online would make me want to hang myself. I don't want to be told "girls don't like shooters". And I really don't want to be told that "well thats what are market research suggests". If thats the case I have no idea where your getting your women to interview for these researches. There are far, far more of us then apparently anyone realizes.

Does this mean I don't see the sexism in games? Of course not. While back in the day it was much less prevalent, with the invention of better graphics comes the better ability to stick in scantily clad realistic looking women. And yes, even to a confident, strong willed women sometimes being slammed in the face with that type of idealism can be a bit disheartening and disappointing.

My solution is this: don't market your games to women, or analyze them to death and try to tailor make games to them. Make the games you already have and tone down or eliminate the sexism. I don't even mean do away with the "boy saves girl" story line - I'm not real offended by that, it's a classic story. Nor do I have any huge identity issues by playing them - they are after all just games. All I ask is that maybe you make women look like real women - tone down the unobtainable body shape and put some clothes on them. It helps out both sexes - women don't feel like the can never be perfect and young boys aren't conditioned to fall in love with an ideal that doesn't exist. It's a fairly simple solution.

Women are complex creatures that have more than one, flat personality trait that can be marketed to. They are like everyone else, and this is only an issue because we invest so much time in making it an issue. The real breakthrough is when game designers STOP trying to market their games to women, realize that women stepped up to the plate a long time ago, and just make games that everyone can enjoy.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Nathaniel Givens

Wow... awesome post. Thanks so much for totally stepping up to the plate. I don't agree with everything you said but I'm glad to see the tone of the discussion take a huge swing upwards.

I'll bet honest - I thought Chris Crawford's article was great. So did my wife. She hates FPSers, and the games that she does like, according to both me and here, fit the model Chris suggested in his article.

And there's a lot of research that backs up the idea that guys and girls game differently. Here's a sampling:

Men and women prefer different types of online and offline games. Males prefer war and sports themes. Men are also three times as likely as female gamers to participate in first person shooter games (38 percent vs. 12 percent), real-time/turn-based strategy games (33 percent vs. 11 percent), and sports games (30 percent vs. 10 percent). In contrast, female gamers prefer board/card games (78 percent vs. 51 percent), gambling themes (36 percent vs. 26 percent), and quiz/puzzle/trivia contests (55 percent vs. 25 percent). http://www.gamesfirst.com/articles/releases/women_gaming.htm

"The violence and absence of female characters in traditional computer games are a turn-off for most girls," says Justine Cassell, professor of media studies. "But there's also a lack of attention to problems that many girls find interesting. Girls tell me these games are just boring."

Research shows that, in general, boys are more interested in fantasy games involving combat and conquest. Girls, on the other hand, generally prefer more reality-based problems of social interaction.

- http://web.mit.edu/giving/spectrum/fall99/games.html (quote is from Justine Cassell. She is a professor at MIT and coauthor of numerous articles on girl games)

There are plenty more for you to find - Casseel and Jenkins edited an entire book on the subject published in 1998 (which I haven't read yet, but intend to do so soon). I want to point out though, that even though I disagree with you on whether or not there are differences between how guys and girls play games in general, I actually completely agree with your conclusion: "Just make games that everyone can enjoy".

Here's a quote from an abstract of Cassell and Jenkin's book that expresses why:

Cassell and Jenkins point out that much research on girls and games has been predicated on some problematic assumptions, namely that girls and boys are fundamentally different, that their preferences can be clearly determined from market research, and that the best response to this difference is the creation of separate forms of media for girls. This approach may inadvertently reify the male-female technological division (with male as norm and standard), as well as the notion of essential gender differences (which, furthermore, erases differences within genders). In addition, this approach often uses a model of gender which is static and fixed, rather than context-dependent, performative, and dynamic. Without a critical feminist sense of structures of power, efforts to solve the "problem" of girls and games may end up perpetuating the same systems that they attempted to challenge.

This is really the biggest problem that I have. Bonnie's analysis, as I've discussed, is overwhelmingly sexist in that it endeavors to evaluate girl gamers and girl games strictly in terms of a "male-as-norm" paradigm. So while I insist that there likely ARE differences in how we play (as groups) this is in some ways irrelevant. First of all because you are not "women" - you are a woman - a person. Just because women have an average height doesn't mean you have to be that height. You have your own height - and it doesn't matter in the slighest whether that height is average, shorter or taller than the norm - it's your height. And that's what matters - the individuality. Similarly I'm not "men", I'm a man. It's vitally important that we see and interact with each other as individuals NOT as mere representatives of some homogenous mass.

And secondly because in our efforts to catalog the differences and the ways those differences are reflected in games we put FAR too much emphasis on groups and far too little emphasis on individuals to the extent that we actually damage individuality. I'm concerned that if Bonnie's viewpoint were to ever be adopted as mainstream we would probably get better "girl games" but at the incredibly high cost of entrenching gender differences as paramount to individual preferences. This is the huge danger - the elephant in the room.

Whereas if we take the approach that, aside from certain obvious sexist changes (the gravity-defying boobs and the runway style armor) the point is to make games that INDIVIDUALS enjoy I think we'll find that there will be more games for gamers to enjoy - regardless of their gender. And THAT'S what really matters.

-nathaniel

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Brinstar
http://acidforblood.blogspot.com/
This is really the biggest problem that I have. Bonnie's analysis, as I've discussed, is overwhelmingly sexist in that it endeavors to evaluate girl gamers and girl games strictly in terms of a "male-as-norm" paradigm. So while I insist that there likely ARE differences in how we play (as groups) this is in some ways irrelevant. First of all because you are not "women" - you are a woman - a person. Just because women have an average height doesn't mean you have to be that height. You have your own height - and it doesn't matter in the slighest whether that height is average, shorter or taller than the norm - it's your height. And that's what matters - the individuality. Similarly I'm not "men", I'm a man. It's vitally important that we see and interact with each other as individuals NOT as mere representatives of some homogenous mass.

And secondly because in our efforts to catalog the differences and the ways those differences are reflected in games we put FAR too much emphasis on groups and far too little emphasis on individuals to the extent that we actually damage individuality. I'm concerned that if Bonnie's viewpoint were to ever be adopted as mainstream we would probably get better "girl games" but at the incredibly high cost of entrenching gender differences as paramount to individual preferences. This is the huge danger - the elephant in the room.

But doesn't this conclusion just mean that the evolutionary viewpoint is just as flawed given the fact that it, too, places emphasis on groups (men and women) rather than the individual?

By the way, I just want good games as well, without the gendered nonsense, but that will not stop marketers from making girly games.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Nathaniel Givens

In short: no.

In long:

1. The evolutionary psychology standpoint is fundamentally a question of science, not politics. It's speculation to say "women aren't as good/don't like shooters because of these evolutionary principles". If you assume that that speculation is right before we have the evidence to back it up that's bad (and you're likely saying it because you're sexist). And if you assume that the differences don't exist - that's also bad (and, as I argue, also sexist). The scientifically reasonable thing to do is simply leave it as an open-ended question and await scientific results (or do studies yourself). I've been arguing vehemently that you can't rule out the differences for the same reason scientists hate ID - I don't want any religious or political dogma to ever trump reason. The scientifically mature mind is capable of living with uncertainty.

2. Given that there are differences the next question is "how do we treat those differences?" My problem with Bonnie on this point is this: she only admits of male-centric criteria for disucssing the differences. As I've said many times "power" in Bonnie's writing just means "ability to physically hurt stuff" and, by extension "ability to not get physically hurt by other stuff". We already know that men are better - in general - in this realm. It's fact. The problem isn't the differences (which either exist or don't no matter how we feel about it) - it's how we evaluate them. In the method, criteria, and values of evaluation lies the truly insidious sexism.

3. Finally, even given the differences and saying we evaluate them correctly (or not at all) there's still a difference between acknowledging differences between groups and elevating group differences to the point where they obscure individualality. IF (and this is just an over-simplified example) we proved "men are good at math in general, women are good at literature in general" then we can either accept that as a fact or we can start evaluating men and women individually by their group dynamics. The former is acceptable - the latter is not. It'd be like saying "girls are shorter on average" and then this girl walks in the room and she's 6'2" (I'm only 5'8") and I would say "You can't be taller than me!". Or, I would just say, without even looking at here "You're shorter than me". That's sexist. The problem again is not the differences (which exist or don't regardless of politics) it's what we do with them.

So even IF girls aren't as good or don't like FPSers in general, the key is realize that go, "hunh.. OK" and then when you meet a woman realize that she may be able to kick your butt in Halo because the INDIVIDUAL variation is greater than the GROUP variation. Knowing that girls are shorter doesn't permit you to rationally decide if a girl is shorter or taller than you without checking. The only way to know is to check. The only way to know if a girl is any good at Halo is to see her play. No matter how much you know about a group in general you HAVE to evaluate individuals as individuals.

My biggest beef with Bonnie is not just that she refuses to acknowledge that those differences may exist, it's that she also acts as though differences between the sexes threaten individual worth. I think THIS is really sexist. Again, IF women were not as good at math (and I *really* don't believe this but it's an example) then that shoudln't matter at all to women who like math, are good at math, or are mathematicians. They shouldn't say "Oh, if women aren't good at math than I must not be good at math." They shouldn't be concerned with the characteristics of their GROUP, bu the with their OWN characteristics. To say that the group characteristics somehow threaten an individuals performance is to fundamentally destroy individuality. If we say "don't say women are bad at math" even if the evidence points that they are, because we are afraid of discouraging those women who ARE good at math, then not only are we being close-minded zealots about the factual evidence in question, we are ALSO teaching the wrong message. We're teaching women that they have to be like the group. That they can't stand out, excel, or do things on their own. That it's only OK for a woman to be good at math if women in general are good at math. That's the sexism implicit in what Bonnie says. She thinks you have to prove something about the group in order to prove something about the individual.

The right message should be "it doesn't matter what anyone else can do - woman or man - it only matters what YOU can do". The right message should be "no matter what you know about girls or guys in general, you don't know what YOU can do until you try it". That's what I want my daughter to hear. Because if my daughter hears Bonnie's message she's going to hear "really girls are just as good at FPSers and THEREFORE you can be good too." But what if evidence comes out that they're not? Thanks to Bonnie my daughter thinks she can only do what average people do. So now she's screwed. But if I teach my daughter to do whatever the Hell she's good at no matter what other girls do or don't do or what the average or standard deviation is or isn't than she's a fundamentally stronger person.

Bonnie just wants to rewrite the rules of gender stereotypes. She'll sacrifice deep, intrinsic damage to women's status in society if it means they get superficial gains. I want to teach my daughters (and my sons) that the rules of gender stereotypes don't mean a damn thing in determining what they as individuals can do.

You tell me which is better.

-nathaniel

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Mark

Nathan, I think you're missing out on a significant aspect of the issue... the business side.

It doesn't matter if there are women who like first-person shooters as long as most of them don't, because it means that first-person shooters will not sell widely to women, and developers will be appropriately disinclined to make concessions to gender in the case of such games.




It's easy for a man to design a game that men would like - all he has to do is make the sort of game he'd want to play. It's instinct. Very few men can instinctively think the way that most women think, with the consequence that most male developers have no basis but statistics for determining what will make a game appeal broadly to a female market. You can't take the marketing out of game development, and no problem has ever vanished by saying "Well, that's just a generalization, and there are plenty of exceptions." The reality of the situation is that such generalizations are necessary for a game to be profitable - which is really the purpose of the whole exercise.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Nathaniel Givens

Mark-

Well to a certain extent you're absolutely right. I've been advocating what I think should be the standpoint of gamers in general - and that's been ignoring the business aspect. However, I think the general position I'm advocating stil l holds up.

This position is to take it easy on assuming that women and men are or are not different in specific categories while realizing that there are certainly different in at least some. While it's important to individuals to realize that girls are not one homogenous mass you're right that businesses don't care - they're going to go for groups because they want volume . However there's a definite danger that the male vs. female divide is a bad way to split the group sometimes. So businesses can ignore the outliers, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea for them to only look at gender differences either - there are a lot of other preference groups that may be more profitable to cater to.

There's trouble with the idea that "it's easy for a man to design a game that men would like - all he has to do is make the sort of game he'd want to play".

I think this is philosophically dangerous because you're tending to treat men and women as homogenous groups when in fact they overlap a tremendous amount. But the problem isn't just philosophical - it's that plenty of men make crappy games no one likes, and judging by the film industry some guys can make movies that appeal to girls (James Cameron and Titanic comes to mind). So to the extent that it's easy to make a good game or a good movie (and I don't think it's that easy in general) I don't believe that it's significantly harder to make good movies or games for girls as opposed to guys.

Finally I think that the businesses just want to make money. The film industry has discovered how to cater to women as well as to men. In fact currently it's the young male demographic that they're having trouble pulliing in. Partially they do this by having a wide variety of genres - from romantic comedy to horror. And while most genres could to some degree or another be considered more appealing to men vs. women I think the important consideration when making the movie isn't "let's get all the girls" it's "Let's make a good movie". If they need a movie to pull in the female demographic they'll probably go to a historically female-targetted movie, but once they choose the basic theme they're just going to go with the best script they can get and I sincerely believe that qusetions of making a "girl-movie" take a back seat to making a "good movie" which happens to be, say, a romantic comedy. That's kind of what I'm advocating with games - broaden out and find more genres, some of which hopefully will appeal to more men than women - and then just make good games with more variety. Don't ignore the generalizations - but if you try to craft a movie to meet some statistical framework you're just going to get crap.

And in any case the Holy Grail of movie-making isn't to make the ultimate guy movie or the ultimate girl movie. Those are staples - but the REAL money is if you bring in both men and women.

So the current state of affairs in the game industry is we have a couple genres that seem to be guy-slanted and no or very few games that appear to be successfully girl slanted. "Girl games" are failures from a general gameplay standpoing. The answer is to find new genres taht appeal more to women and also to make games in current genres that are so good that the appeal to everyone. Besides - I just think that everyone likes a good action/adventure movie. I think there's a ton more research that could be done with this comparison of demographic trends in movies to shed light on demographic trends in games.

Why can't we just all get along?

-nathaniel