Prove to me that the Gaming Community Excludes Women

[DrWut]

Oh I beg to differ, on the "offence is not evidence" point here. How much offence are you willing to put up with before you stop doing something thats fun, because it's not fun anymore? Because, on a game-by-game basis thats the level, the watermark. A community where it's acceptable to behave like that to a group = exclusionary, it doesn't matter whether it's 'everyone' or not, it just has to happen ( and be allow to happen) enough.

A year or two ago, the developers of one biggish name game claimed that that sort of thing was a vital part of the gaming experience, at least for their game.

Can't remember what it was, some fighting game.

That has the bold assumption that it is acceptable to behave like that. I think nobody here thinks is acceptable

That's based on the assumption that everyone know what "like that" is, that it is overt, intentional and obvious, though. It's easy to cause problems because "that's just the way it is", and people act without thinking about it.

Just for the record, because everything needs 5 disclaimers these days. I don't think gendered insults are OK in any context where you are not friends with the person.

But it's my understanding that the fighting game crowd are a distateful bunch who loves to insult each other. Do these articles look into how the men treat each other in their environment? Unless they are remarkably respectful to other men and insult only women I'd take allegations of sexism with a grain of salt, it could be just misguided trash talk. If that's the case it's not really an example of sexism, sexism in that given situation would to trash talk among male competitors and completely shut up when a woman comes along.

 

[AvtrSpirit]

Because of the generalizations at the beginning (and the continued instance on keeping definitions broad), there really is no "proving". When someone pointed out that publishers are sexist, then the line became "well, we are not talking about publishers". When others argued that a subsection of gamers are toxic, then the line became "well, we are not talking about the extremists". When the XBL study was presented, the line became "well, we aren't talking about XBL gamers", "we aren't talking about young gamers" and "we aren't talking about gamers who play a certain type of game".

Basically, what you are trying to say is "prove to me that the non-sexist part of the videogaming public is sexist". In that case, I will immediately concede that that is impossible to prove.

 

[Thaluikhain]

But it's my understanding that the fighting game crowd are a distateful bunch who loves to insult each other. Do these articles look into how the men treat each other in their environment? Unless they are remarkably respectful to other men and insult only women I'd take allegations of sexism with a grain of salt, it could be just misguided trash talk. If that's the case it's not really an example of sexism, sexism in that given situation would to trash talk among male competitors and completely shut up when a woman comes along.

True, though IIRC, there was a particular issue with sexism (possibly racism and homophobia), beyond their usual insults. Was some time ago and I can't remember that well, though.

 

[Dizchu]

Basically, what you are trying to say is "prove to me that the non-sexist part of the videogaming public is sexist". In that case, I will immediately concede that that is impossible to prove.

On the contrary, what I asked for was evidence that there was enough sexism and exclusion happening on a large scale to warrant "gamers are dead". When responses pointed out these aspects in smaller segments of the community all it proved was that it is a problem that affects those certain segments and not the community as a whole.

I agreed that it is a problem with select portions of gaming culture but I disagree that it's a characteristic of the whole. I'm not here to dismiss problems of sexism, I think they're serious and worth discussion. However I don't believe the situation is as dire and hopeless and widespread as it was being characterised and I think it is doing more harm than good to portray it this way.

 

[BillHamp]

But this is more of a problem with developers. As far as I know, women are quite underrepresented in the dev community. This shows. Very few games have a female PC(in games where you can't choose gender) compared to generic McWhiteguy. I can think of a dozen games that fit that mold, but only a handful of female PCs. It's like developers don't expect men to be able to relate with a female character. Yes, there are some things men just won't get, but I've yet to see a game feature menstruation or pregnancy as game mechanics. All the rest can be understood.

I find this particular sentiment to be a straw man at best. Where is it written that because women or men make up a certain portion of the population, they must make up that same proportion of every occupation? Women and men have different interests and thus pursue different avenues in terms of career. To say that women are "underrepresented" is to suggest that there is some active mechanism that keeps them out of games and that it isn't personal choice? Did anyone stop to consider that perhaps all the women who want to be in gaming and have pursued the means to get in are already there?

I think this is where people really find problems with individuals like Anita Sarkeesian. They attack men in the gaming community with blanket-labels of misogyny, and suggest that they are actively keeping women out of gaming. Yet, Anita is perfectly free to develop a game and market it to see if it flies. The problem isn't that "men" don't want Anita to develop a game, the problem is that "men" don't want Anita telling them that they are holding her back in the world of gaming, that they are holding other women back in gaming, and that they need to stop enjoying the games THEY enjoy and start enjoying the games she says they should so that it can balance out some imaginary notion of "representation."

Now who's making strawmen? We're not talking about a 70/30 split here.

Women make up a bit less than half of the core gaming population and are about 22% of game developers. This doesn't even mesh with the number of female gamers(not casuals). The discrepancy is between players and creators, not gender numbers in general. This demonstrates that women do not lack an interest in video games and should probably be more represented in the creation of games.

I'm not saying there's some big conspiracy or something, just that we fall into our old modes of thinking and what we've been told. We've been told that gaming is mostly a male thing. These are things that "everyone knows". They generally go without being challenged. This is not good.

In the end, like what you like but admit that other people can criticize what you like and then proceed to make things you don't like. Movies do it all the time. Some movies are made for men, some are made for women, some are a bit more neutral. Tell me, given that they make up 45% of the audience, don't you think something should be made that appeals just to women? Is that so unreasonable?

I don't expect to like every AAA release, why should you?

Once again, you are creating a logical fallacy. Enjoying using something and enjoying creating something are not even remotely the same. Many people enjoy eating, but do not enjoy cooking, for instance. Just because there are a lot of women gamers (I note you don't give any numbers there, which is suspicious), that does not mean a lot of women enjoy creating games.

You create a second fallacy by addressing a different point than the one that was made. I wasn't arguing about whether people believe that "gaming is mostly a male thing," I was arguing that there is no evidence that women are actively excluded from the gaming industry (i.e. creating games). I also never said that games should not be made to appeal to women. Again, you attack an argument that I never made. I said that anyone is free to create and market a game that they think will appeal to any audience. That is a very different thing than what Anita Sarkeesian is saying, which is that certain games should NOT be produced because they don't fit her definition of appropriate. She further conflates the fact that those games exist with a specious conclusion that they mean there is misogyny in gaming (both developers and players), and then offers no evidence for that, much like you have done.

So, the summary is this. There is no evidence that people, regardless of gender, age, sex, race, etc. are actively being prevented from producing any game they want to on some massive, industry-wide scale. To suggest otherwise is to be inflammatory and to operate without evidence, which is an insult to all of the gamers and game developers who aren't misogynists and who simply produce games they want to play.

 

[BillHamp]

Basically, what you are trying to say is "prove to me that the non-sexist part of the videogaming public is sexist". In that case, I will immediately concede that that is impossible to prove.

On the contrary, what I asked for was evidence that there was enough sexism and exclusion happening on a large scale to warrant "gamers are dead". When responses pointed out these aspects in smaller segments of the community all it proved was that it is a problem that affects those certain segments and not the community as a whole.

I agreed that it is a problem with select portions of gaming culture but I disagree that it's a characteristic of the whole. I'm not here to dismiss problems of sexism, I think they're serious and worth discussion. However I don't believe the situation is as dire and hopeless and widespread as it was being characterised and I think it is doing more harm than good to portray it this way.

Your request is reasonable, but straw men will abound from your opponents. They have created a narrative and they will believe in that narrative in spite of what the evidence might say, so they need no evidence. You are correct that it does more harm than good as well. The more people through blanket statements of "sexism" around, the less responsive will be the people caught in the cross fire. No one wants to be accused of being a jerk and, when they are wrongly accused, would like an apology of some sort. In the case of your opponents, however, saying anything other than "I agree with completely," is considered sexism, so they are happy to lump you in to the group. It's called fanaticism.

 

[BillHamp]

Because of the generalizations at the beginning (and the continued instance on keeping definitions broad), there really is no "proving". When someone pointed out that publishers are sexist, then the line became "well, we are not talking about publishers". When others argued that a subsection of gamers are toxic, then the line became "well, we are not talking about the extremists". When the XBL study was presented, the line became "well, we aren't talking about XBL gamers", "we aren't talking about young gamers" and "we aren't talking about gamers who play a certain type of game".

Basically, what you are trying to say is "prove to me that the non-sexist part of the videogaming public is sexist". In that case, I will immediately concede that that is impossible to prove.

It would help if you could clarify a few points:

1. How are publishers sexist?
2. You claim the OP is moving goalposts, which may be a valid claim, can you explain a bit more about the original post and what you think the goalposts were?
3. Do you think that there is sexism in the gaming industry that is:
A. Unbalanced, favoring men over women?
B. That prevents women from entering the industry who really want to?
C. That somehow justifies saying "gamers are dead?"

 

[AvtrSpirit]

On the contrary, what I asked for was evidence that there was enough sexism and exclusion happening on a large scale to warrant "gamers are dead". When responses pointed out these aspects in smaller segments of the community all it proved was that it is a problem that affects those certain segments and not the community as a whole.

Ok, cool. This is a much more specific goal and I'm more than happy to answer it:

Q: Were the "gamers are dead" articles warranted?

A: No. Not at all. I am going to make the same appeal here that you do about the gaming community: These are voices of a vocal minority whose actions are not representative of the rest of Social-justice-in-videogames movement.

Q: How widespread is the problem of sexism in the gaming community?

A: This is a difficult question to answer because it is ambiguous. There are many possible interpretations for this: "What percentage of the gaming community is hostile to women?", "What percentage of the male gaming community is hostile to women?", "What percentage of a woman's experience gaming is subject to hostility?", "How extreme/vulgar are the forms of hostility against women?"

So the question becomes: do you tie the severity of the problem to the %age of men participating in the hostility? Or do you tie it to the experience of women, and the impact it has on them?

If the former, then the answer is likely no. But if you consider (statistically) the large effect that even a small percentage of hostile men has on women, then you may think that yes, it is an issue. There's a great post on probability and statistics of this here: http://iangent.blogspot.ca/2013/10/the-petrie-multiplier-why-attack-on.html

Final summary: Yes, there is sexism in the game industry. Yes, it has a large impact on women. No, it's not because a majority of men are sexist. No, the "gamers are dead" articles are not warranted. Yes, we should still talk about the ways to alleviate the sexism.

 

[Jesterscup]

Your request is reasonable, but straw men will abound from your opponents. They have created a narrative and they will believe in that narrative in spite of what the evidence might say, so they need no evidence. You are correct that it does more harm than good as well. The more people through blanket statements of "sexism" around, the less responsive will be the people caught in the cross fire. No one wants to be accused of being a jerk and, when they are wrongly accused, would like an apology of some sort. In the case of your opponents, however, saying anything other than "I agree with completely," is considered sexism, so they are happy to lump you in to the group. It's called fanaticism.

And it's always going to be while you consider the debate to be purely 'us' and 'them' , what you have done there is to tarnish 'the other side' as unreasoning fanatics. While that may, be the case, it's also an accusation that can be levelled at 'your' side as well. In fact it could easily be argued that you're falling into the same trap you describe.

 

[TaboriHK]

I'm not saying it's just a problem with the religious or conservative points of view, they just seem to be where most of the truly nonsensical sexism comes from. I don't deny that every group has a degree of sexism, Western society is very patriarchal after all. There are differing opinions as to what is or isn't sexist, some think that men and women have different standards to adhere to, others like myself think everyone should be held to the same standard.

However there comes a point where sexism is not tolerated and it sparks outrage if it gets exposure. Maybe "that point" comes as too little, too late... but it doesn't get ignored. The Steubenville incident sparked an outcry despite certain media outlets trying to garner sympathy for the rapists. There was a huge amount of disapproval for the journalists involved and it spread quickly through social media. You'd be hard pressed to find many people branding those that called out the journalists as "feminazis" and "SJWs".

I don't understand how I'm being childish for trying to explain a certain misunderstood sentiment with what I hope to be less emotionally-charged language.

I'm not calling you childish. I'm calling anyone who uses the term feminazi childish. It's fine for you to not find that phrase utterly ludicrous, and I'm not saying it should be banned. On the contrary, I want to know who the flaming idiots are, and I'd like to help them stand out so I can recognize them as soon as possible. My point is simply this: there's no excuse for using a word like that, and you show your agenda when you do. It's not an overreactionary misunderstanding, it's deliberately used by awful, small-minded people.

 

[DANEgerous]

While I can not speak for women I will speak for another group that "Gamers" and #GamerGate supposedly hates and that would be non-heterosexual people. While sure fag gets thrown around in a lot of games I have never actually cared and there are plenty of times I have taken offense so such language but it was in an entirely different context. I recall several months ago a celebrity called some paparazzi a ****** and people flipped their shit over how offensive it was, I found it to be utterly... meh. Why? Simple, context, context is everything. Yelling any insult in a fit of anger is just not something I can be bothered to care about. What would offend me is rather simple, the fact that gay marriage is opposed what so ever is offensive to me. A vote against such a thing being legal is several trillions of orders of magnitude more offensive than some guy yelling an insult, any insult in anger. So back on focus I have never found harassment like that condoned by any sizable population of gamers, I have found it opposed and opposed very strongly, I have always felt safe as a gamer it has been one of the few places that I have never felt like an outcast in, not that that I am complaining, it is nice to have none the less.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

-snip-

"Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It?s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality."

C-mon, man. How is this not confrontational? Saying that Hitman creators want their players to kill prostitutes for sexual pleasure is a very serious accusation to make against both creators and player. It's also an outright lie that, in the same way as the Tropico 5 review by Polygon, tries to equate the possibility of doing something bad with the implicit endorsement of those actions, which is crazytalk.

Oh wow, missed that as I was reading through. That's a ridiculous claim and I definitely won't make any effort to defend it. As I mentioned, I'm not a regular watcher, and just from the videos I have seen, I've found her tone to be generally non-confrontational about it. That is certainly a notable exception though

 

[Ramzal]

The gaming community and games exclude women? Huh... That Xbox, gamecube, psp, and nintendo DS my wife had before we got together must have been an illusion spell that was cast on me. And her being better at me in CoD and Battlefield online was an illusion too. Namely her enjoyment of fanservice when she herself likes women too.

Am I living in a non-existent universe....?

Honestly, I've asked 24 female friends of mine on campus how they feel about women being excluded from video games and their response has typically been "... We are? Since when?" One of them in which enjoys FF13 because of Lightning as the main lead. 19 of them seemed to not care much about the subject of violence against women in games because they usually get angry that the women in game get to shoot stronger fireballs than themselves and the other 5 seem to be of the opinion that "It's just a game. Who cares?" One in which having the opinion of "Oh no. There aren't enough women in our fantasy settings of video games! Hold on! There probably isn't enough women in 'Guess Who?' board games!" I was honestly surprised about how few people who aren't involved in online forums, chats, or social media revolving around how unfairly women get it in games could care less about the subject.

That being said the majority of them are extremely comfortable with themselves, science/animal science/psychology/physics/sociology/and health science majors, or mothers. My mother actually enjoys going to gamestop and buying cheapo games for her Ps2 that I left her and everyone in there are nothing but nice to her (Or so I'm told as I am half way across the country and I wouldn't know if she lies about it or not. But then again why would she.)

 

[Dragonbums]

Does gaming actively exclude? No.

Is it off putting to many people? Yes? It seems that gamers as a whole are in abject denial of how we look to people who don't play videogames at all, or even on a monthly basis. Especially in regards to women, and other minority demographics.

Some, like all people, legitmately don't give a fuck about vidya. Others, when glancing at Gamestop just don't see anything even remotely "female friendly".

You guys can list indie and JRPG games all you fucking like. But at the end of the day, when most people walk into game centric stores like Gamestop they are going to see the "kiddy" section that is Nintendo, and the "mature" section that is Sony and Microsoft. None of the games on full display look anything different. Same shit different age. Big, buff, burly dude with explosions in the background and probably fuck tons of testosterone and oh look- A new GTA game is out. The most mainstream game on the planet next to Mario and Pokemon. That's not even getting into the stereotype that's still alive and well that the moment you say your a girl people dog pile your ass with sexist slurs and shitty kitchen jokes.

Of course Extra Credits puts this way better imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8ZVZRsy8N8

 

[Dragonbums]

You have convinced me, that artist has to go. There is no excuse for those shoes.

I can't believe you thought it was the boobs. It was always about the shoes. No woman in her right mind would want to identify as someone wearing those

At least she isn't wearing crocs.

Anyone who wears crocs who are not grandmas or at Walmart lose 500 points from me. Anyone who wears Uggs can just be permabanned everywhere.

 

[Monokuma]

From my experiences in the video game industry (I worked for a popular contractor for translation services and linguistic testing in Canada that has been doing work for Ubi, Sony, EA and several other notable publishers) I did not see any form of sexual harassment. The work place was very diverse culturally (with about 200 people we had something like 20 nations being represented) and the male to female split was something around 70/30. This split was reflected across the whole company, up to most positions higher up like project management. My team was probably one of the most diverse, with an almost 50/50 split. I actually checked up with some of my female work colleagues in the last couple of days just to ask if there had been any form of harassment in the work place and none replied with yes.

I am not saying it did not happen since I am speaking from my personal experiences, but if there was any form of harassment, it happened secretly and I strongly doubt it would have been tolerated. I just find it hard to believe that there is some sort of sexist culture in the video games industry. Maybe it had been this way in the past but my relatively recent experiences (couple of years ago) paint a different picture.

 

[SnakeTrousers]

I only let my wife use an un-synced controlled on the Xbox, while I sit behind the sofa controlling the game with the synced one. That's pretty damn exclusionary. And she hasn't even noticed! She thinks she's really good at games but has never actually played one!

This whole thing has officially been worth it.

 

[grassgremlin]

Except when they're not games because you don't shoot people in the face, see: Gone Home and The Walking Dead.

Question. Why is it when we bring up these issues, people only talk about grizzled shoot em up man games and gone home . . . as if Professor Layton, Phoenix Wright, Every JRPG, Megaman, Sonic, Disgaea, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, the fucking brain age series, tomogachi life, animal crossing, etc., don't exist?

Seriously, every time I hear arguments of sexism all people talk about is The Witcher, GTA, God of War, Call of Duty and all the other big budget games, and then can only sight gone home and the walking dead as if they are the first of their kind. As if visual novels and text adventures never fucking existed before.

Jesus Christ, This is what bugs me. Any time something big comes up in gaming it's as if certain fucking games don't exist. It's just call of duty crowd vs gone home crowd.

Let's talk about the space sims, platformers, jrpgs, point and click adventures for peep sakes. You know . . . actual games we grew up with. This first person shooter junk is way to recent. It's like we forgotten the snes and genesis existed. The N64 and the Playstation One, come on people?

There's millions of games we can talk about.

Earthbound . . . remember that? Chrono Trigger?

 

[LawAndChaos]

I don't even think this is really about games anymore.

How are games "excluding" women? Most certainly in the dev department these issues ARE a problem, there's no arguing that.

But no one is stopping a woman from picking up a controller and popping in a game. What you do with your time is your business. Or maybe I'm just missing something critical in the discussion here. I'm ready to concede that I missed something if that is the case. Maybe things just aren't that simple. Maybe women going into a game store get weird looks or something. Maybe the clerks there scoff at them for wanting games that the average gamer (in other words, them, because an average gamer is someone who enjoys games regardless of gender) wants. I just don't see how misogynists on the internet are pushing women away from gaming.

You can't claim to want to be a part of gaming without being interested in it.

And of course, gaming isn't for everyone. People are individuals, with different tastes. I don't see how a woman couldn't just pop in a Final Fantasy (like, 4 or 6) and appreciate all the characters, male and female. I don't see how a woman couldn't laugh at the Amazon from Dragon's Crown with how absurd she looks, or appreciate how much crap Lara goes through in Tomb Raider. But hey, I'm not a woman, so I can't speak for them. All I can say is people are different.

And before you even poke at Dragon's Crown, I don't think Vanillaware does fanservice to pander to anyone. The artistic team likes 4 things: Boobs, butts, muscles and food. It's just a case of doing what they like. Furthermore, a lot of their games are great, with good characters and interesting stories (Muramasa was awesome, and DC's narrative was a clever D&D homage that was really basic, but fun). It helps that their work looks like moving paintings half the time too. I could be wrong, but that's my take on it. I think their fanservice (compared to something like, let's say, Extreme Beach Volleyball), isn't really something they do as some underhanded pandering tactic, especially considering not many people have played Odin Sphere, or Muramasa, or GrimGrimoire. I think they just love what they do and do what they love (as opposed to making games for the love of money), and do so unashamed. Keep in mind too that Dragon's Crown got quite a bit of negative buzz for the Sorceress and Amazon, yet stuff like DoA has a free pass.

If women want equal representation, they can have it. Final Fantasy has had quite a few strong female characters, like Celes, Terra, Tifa, Rydia...hell, in 11, one of the most powerful mages in the whole freaking game is a woman. And furthermore, in Dissidia it's implied that if she loses, it's because she wasn't really trying. She does what she likes and has no time for weaklings. But I guess since she's not a HUMAN woman she doesn't count, huh?

Then again, I think it's an issue of genre of game. RPGs aren't always as prevalent in this 'tropes against women' stuff. I think it's not really an issue of gender but of writing. It's easier to pander to the majority of your audience than make a compelling story with well-written characters. Some games are just made to play through with a mindless story of "point a to point b." RPGs usually need a strong narrative with strong characters to be enjoyable. Then again, there are people who enjoyed FF13 (Zing!).

But maybe this isn't about single player games. There are women who've complained about online multiplayer trolls who dole out the "get back to the kitchen" crap. That's wrong to have to experience that, yes. But you'll hear the same sort of people insult younger players (we even have a derogatory term for children gamers; we call them "squeakers"), people who don't speak the same language, and people who play poorly in general ("gtfo noob"). Online, you are not special. You are not exempt from insults and assholes who throw out insults because of what you are rather than who you are. MOBA communities are a microcosm of gaming communities as a whole; there are just a lot of really shitty people online.

And yes, the focus of these shitty people's hatred is often minorities; women are one of the main choices. I'm not saying it shouldn't change. It should. I'm just saying it's not just women who are given abuse. The community needs to detox for everyone's sake. Games can't be for everyone, but they ARE supposed to be fun.

Trying to make games that appeal to everyone is an exercise in futility. Trying to appeal to everyone appeals to no one. But then, that's arguing in extremes, so I'll stop that thought there.

 

[geK0]

Which gaming community? There are a lot of gaming communities! I am a member of several.

WE ARE NOT A HIVE MIND!

Although, none of the communities I am part of seem especially exclusive to women as far as I can tell.

the fact that both of these things exploded the way they did (sarseskian and quin) I think speaks for itself

I still don't understand how these two people can spawn flame wars spanning hundreds of pages long...... I mean whats the big deal about some amateur blogger who got lucky with a quick starter campaign or about some small-time game designer with far left political views causing a "conflict of interest" with some game blogger? People blow these things WAY out of proportion! A quick Google search can yield MUCH more offensive bloggers than these people.