Silicon Sisters Say Game Industry Still Doesn't Understand Women

[fulano]

"I use persuasion as an example. That's something women are incredibly good at: persuading people with our words and our thoughts and our bodies... and how do you translate something like that into a mechanic?" she said.

I'm a guy and I find that depressingly sexist.

Sorry if I'm being harsh but that just sounds like a slut-simulator. One nasty stereotype of women is they use their sexuality to mainpulate people at the cost of demeaning themselves. I don't know, maybe like violent video games it works as a release mechanism but I really worry that such attitudes that women really get satisfaction from this should be pursued.

PS: not all games are shooty-blasty-racing stuff:
-Portal 2
-Civilisation V
-Flower
-Braid
-Mirror's Edge
-Flower
-Echochrome
-Minecraft

Don't tell me that Minecraft's satisfaction of building is purely a male quality. Even if that's true I think that's an instinct that would be good to instil in all females

I hope she is hideously hideosly wrong, but then I consider my sister and the only game she ever liked was The Sims, where she would micro manage and tormet these poor gibberish people's lives. Like a god.

Then when I blow up an alien invaders head to save the world from apocalypse she is like:

"Oh, why can't you play a nice game like The Sims"

Sorry. But as far as I'm concerned games like The Sims are softcore torture porn. It's not a game where the aim is to make them happy, they are playthings to manipulate and toy with.

They are not saying anything controversial and the list of games you cited does not further your argument of there being actual some meaningful choice involved one bit b/c I could easily cite a different one where all you do is blast shit.

They are all plainly pointing at the elephant in the room which is the simpole fact that games are made to cater to male tastes, mainly. Most of the action in the industry is geared towards a forceful form of agency; hence why many women prefer to exhert theirs in different ways like in The Sims where-while it may indeed be torture porn-they may choose to not play the part of the torturer; or in Mass Effect where shooting shit is not the most important aspect of the story; or, yes, neutral Minecraft, where they can play the game without an invisible arbiter enforcing strict rules upon them (the same as everyone else who likes the game irrespective of their gender).

Males and females do not approach agency in the same way. Our brains are wired differently. What is so wrong in acknowledging that? If you notice, games that are less constrained by specific mechanics are the ones that are more well liked across the board by different demographics.

And...so what if they wanna play a slut simulator?

"Males and females do not approach agency in the same way. Our brains are wired differently."

I'm going to need some specific and tested Scientific evidence to support that before you can expect me to believe "group X is different on a fundamental level". And no your word as a dude is not enough.

It's pretty easy to prove that males and females diverge in sexual thought, but beyond that? How can you say it is in the brain and not the result of society? But to say women find it fundamentally unsatisfying to use agency of force... you are going to have to answer to all the female gamers here who like games of forceful agency.

You are right. I should have given you a link that sort of summarizes it in a nutshell:

1) http://www.medicaleducationonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=69

2) http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html

There you have it: Science!

That's basically it in a nutshell. That females can like games of forceful agency does not mean that they could not be inclined to have a better time with a game that appeals to a different way of enforcing their agency.

Think about it: Most games are programmed by dudes and, even if subconsciously, tend to cater more to the leanings of dudes than those of dudettes.

What if only females made games? Do you think we would be playing the same kinds of games, or that we would be having the same exact good time we do now? The answer is nope.

Chicks need to start either having more input in how games are made or start making their own.

 

[infohippie]

And assuming what men want is also very sexist. I know men who will choose a JRPG over Halo or CoD any day.

Hell, I'm a man and I'd choose a JRPG over Halo or CoD any day, and I don't even like JRPGs!

 

[Ariseishirou]

Naaaaaaaah.

Me and my vagina love racing and shooting just fine, thanks. My one and only request would be for more ladies in those games, but the industry seems to be working on that already, so I'm good, thanks. I don't want touchy-feely-pinky-fashiony back to the kitchen bullshit like she seems to be describing.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

So men are too brutish and short-sighted to enjoy building relationships, and women are too timid and manipulative to enjoy direct conflict. And of course, neither could possibly hope to understand the other in even the most basic of ways, let alone possibly develop a game the other gender could enjoy.

Well, that's good to know. I guess we've been wasting our time with this whole "sexual equality" thing!

[small]Crap, I think I just burst my sarcasm gland.[/small]

 

[Yureina]

This girl disagrees. I have plenty of fun with a wide variety of games, including those sorts of crazy shooter games that apparently are "for guys".

What a smelly organization. They don't speak for me!

 

[coates32]

I don't have a problem with the kinds of games Silicon Sisters want to make, but I have to disagree with their about their statement. My mother, for an example, loves playing the GTA games, playing against me on any Mortal Kombat game (with the blood setting to max), and enjoys the Burnout series. Lets not forget about the women who work at gaming sites like at the Escapist.

oddly enough the Japanese probably have more games aimed at women then we have here in the states... or at least more games that are the kind women would enjoy

I kinda agree with you about about that, at least when it come sexual pandering. For an example, the Sengoku Basara games were marketed to Japanese hetero sexual women.

 

[Klepa]

I use persuasion as an example. That's something women are incredibly good at: persuading people with our words and our thoughts and our bodies... and how do you translate something like that into a mechanic?

I realize that it's a woman saying this but.. persuasion? Is being a manipulative ***** seriously the best example of how a female of our species is different from a male?

 

[EdwardOrchard]

On the one hand, they seem to have managed to piss off Men, Women, and the Game Industry in one brief article. On the other hand, I'd never heard of Silicon Sisters before now.

 

[Treblaine]

"I use persuasion as an example. That's something women are incredibly good at: persuading people with our words and our thoughts and our bodies... and how do you translate something like that into a mechanic?" she said.

I'm a guy and I find that depressingly sexist.

Sorry if I'm being harsh but that just sounds like a slut-simulator. One nasty stereotype of women is they use their sexuality to mainpulate people at the cost of demeaning themselves. I don't know, maybe like violent video games it works as a release mechanism but I really worry that such attitudes that women really get satisfaction from this should be pursued.

PS: not all games are shooty-blasty-racing stuff:
-Portal 2
-Civilisation V
-Flower
-Braid
-Mirror's Edge
-Flower
-Echochrome
-Minecraft

Don't tell me that Minecraft's satisfaction of building is purely a male quality. Even if that's true I think that's an instinct that would be good to instil in all females

I hope she is hideously hideosly wrong, but then I consider my sister and the only game she ever liked was The Sims, where she would micro manage and tormet these poor gibberish people's lives. Like a god.

Then when I blow up an alien invaders head to save the world from apocalypse she is like:

"Oh, why can't you play a nice game like The Sims"

Sorry. But as far as I'm concerned games like The Sims are softcore torture porn. It's not a game where the aim is to make them happy, they are playthings to manipulate and toy with.

They are not saying anything controversial and the list of games you cited does not further your argument of there being actual some meaningful choice involved one bit b/c I could easily cite a different one where all you do is blast shit.

They are all plainly pointing at the elephant in the room which is the simpole fact that games are made to cater to male tastes, mainly. Most of the action in the industry is geared towards a forceful form of agency; hence why many women prefer to exhert theirs in different ways like in The Sims where-while it may indeed be torture porn-they may choose to not play the part of the torturer; or in Mass Effect where shooting shit is not the most important aspect of the story; or, yes, neutral Minecraft, where they can play the game without an invisible arbiter enforcing strict rules upon them (the same as everyone else who likes the game irrespective of their gender).

Males and females do not approach agency in the same way. Our brains are wired differently. What is so wrong in acknowledging that? If you notice, games that are less constrained by specific mechanics are the ones that are more well liked across the board by different demographics.

And...so what if they wanna play a slut simulator?

"Males and females do not approach agency in the same way. Our brains are wired differently."

I'm going to need some specific and tested Scientific evidence to support that before you can expect me to believe "group X is different on a fundamental level". And no your word as a dude is not enough.

It's pretty easy to prove that males and females diverge in sexual thought, but beyond that? How can you say it is in the brain and not the result of society? But to say women find it fundamentally unsatisfying to use agency of force... you are going to have to answer to all the female gamers here who like games of forceful agency.

You are right. I should have given you a link that sort of summarizes it in a nutshell:

1) http://www.medicaleducationonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=69

2) http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html

There you have it: Science!

That's basically it in a nutshell. That females can like games of forceful agency does not mean that they could not be inclined to have a better time with a game that appeals to a different way of enforcing their agency.

Think about it: Most games are programmed by dudes and, even if subconsciously, tend to cater more to the leanings of dudes than those of dudettes.

What if only females made games? Do you think we would be playing the same kinds of games, or that we would be having the same exact good time we do now? The answer is nope.

Chicks need to start either having more input in how games are made or start making their own.

Brain scans are useless.

I worked on placement in a hospital we did a brain scan on some guy who had a stroke: a quarter of his brain was gone yet he spoke pretty fine. I happened to ask the doctor who was doing the brain scans and he doesn't treat scanning female or male brains any differently, of all the parts of the body that is the part most similar between genders.

It is POINTLESS to look at the brain to judge performance/limitations, it's like looking under the hood of a car and just trying to guess how fast the car is from the dimensions of the engine.

Also this:

That females can like games of forceful agency does not mean that they could not be inclined to have a better time with a game that appeals to a different way of enforcing their agency.

A Double Negative... what the hell are you playing at?

Assuming you meant just a single negative. None of these studies even vaguely hint that women could not enjoy forceful agency in games or fictional works.

This is a telling quote from your second article:

But do these differences mean a superiority/inferiority relationship between men and women?

"No", says Dr. Pearlson. "To say this means that men are automatically better at some things than women is a simplification. It's easy to find women who are fantastic at math and physics and men who excel in language skills. Only when we look at very large populations and look for slight but significant trends do we see the generalizations. There are plenty of exceptions, but there's also a grain of truth, revealed through the brain structure, that we think underlies some of the ways people characterize the sexes."

This is all this scientists has found, in his own words: "a grain of truth" in a mountain of myths.

I will conceded there are cultural differenced between males and females (which are vary malleable), but such huge fundamental, universal and unchangeable brain differences... the good doctor himself has explicitly excluded that idea.

If you knew about women in the gaming industry you'd see they don't seem to have the poisonous "girlifying" effect.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/215652/interviews/bioshock-2-interview/

I just get the impression you have never worked with women in any kind of professional or artistic capacity.

You speak as if the only women you know is your mother and possibly your girlfriend.

 

[Frankster]

Shooting, driving and what was 3rd...Sports?

I feel a bit discriminated against, when give the option I rather sneak past enemies or take them out subtly rather then engage in a firefight, I have never been into driving games at all (wipeout 2097 is one of the few exceptions) and whilst I have indulged my male instincts by watching important football games in the pub with the lads, this is the exception rather then the rule and when it comes to actually playing sports games, they bore me like no other.

Honestly though, my favorite genres are strategy games (the more complex, the better!) and rpgs, dunno how masculine/feminine that makes me.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Huh? This is entirely silly. For starters, driving and sports games are taking a giant nosedive. Secondly, they sound like they're worse for female stereotypes (let's have a game where everyone talks and no one gets hurt!). Fair enough, 95% of games around cater way more to men, but that doesn't mean that all girls want a Bratz video game.

 

[Worgen]

I don't have a problem with the kinds of games Silicon Sisters want to make, but I have to disagree with their about their statement. My mother, for an example, loves playing the GTA games, playing against me on any Mortal Kombat game (with the blood setting to max), and enjoys the Burnout series. Lets not forget about the women who work at gaming sites like at the Escapist.

oddly enough the Japanese probably have more games aimed at women then we have here in the states... or at least more games that are the kind women would enjoy

I kinda agree with you about about that, at least when it come sexual pandering. For an example, the Sengoku Basara games were marketed to Japanese hetero sexual women.

well really aside from games like mass effect or dragon age, most western games tend to be more about manly men fighting the good fight, japanese games tend to be more about inter-personal relationships between the chars... in a back drop of a bunch of teenagers and one creepy 45 year old, saving the world

women tend to like creepy 45 year olds... I mean inter-personal relationships, or at least thats the stereotype

 

[fulano]

"I use persuasion as an example. That's something women are incredibly good at: persuading people with our words and our thoughts and our bodies... and how do you translate something like that into a mechanic?" she said.

I'm a guy and I find that depressingly sexist.

Sorry if I'm being harsh but that just sounds like a slut-simulator. One nasty stereotype of women is they use their sexuality to mainpulate people at the cost of demeaning themselves. I don't know, maybe like violent video games it works as a release mechanism but I really worry that such attitudes that women really get satisfaction from this should be pursued.

PS: not all games are shooty-blasty-racing stuff:
-Portal 2
-Civilisation V
-Flower
-Braid
-Mirror's Edge
-Flower
-Echochrome
-Minecraft

Don't tell me that Minecraft's satisfaction of building is purely a male quality. Even if that's true I think that's an instinct that would be good to instil in all females

I hope she is hideously hideosly wrong, but then I consider my sister and the only game she ever liked was The Sims, where she would micro manage and tormet these poor gibberish people's lives. Like a god.

Then when I blow up an alien invaders head to save the world from apocalypse she is like:

"Oh, why can't you play a nice game like The Sims"

Sorry. But as far as I'm concerned games like The Sims are softcore torture porn. It's not a game where the aim is to make them happy, they are playthings to manipulate and toy with.

They are not saying anything controversial and the list of games you cited does not further your argument of there being actual some meaningful choice involved one bit b/c I could easily cite a different one where all you do is blast shit.

They are all plainly pointing at the elephant in the room which is the simpole fact that games are made to cater to male tastes, mainly. Most of the action in the industry is geared towards a forceful form of agency; hence why many women prefer to exhert theirs in different ways like in The Sims where-while it may indeed be torture porn-they may choose to not play the part of the torturer; or in Mass Effect where shooting shit is not the most important aspect of the story; or, yes, neutral Minecraft, where they can play the game without an invisible arbiter enforcing strict rules upon them (the same as everyone else who likes the game irrespective of their gender).

Males and females do not approach agency in the same way. Our brains are wired differently. What is so wrong in acknowledging that? If you notice, games that are less constrained by specific mechanics are the ones that are more well liked across the board by different demographics.

And...so what if they wanna play a slut simulator?

"Males and females do not approach agency in the same way. Our brains are wired differently."

I'm going to need some specific and tested Scientific evidence to support that before you can expect me to believe "group X is different on a fundamental level". And no your word as a dude is not enough.

It's pretty easy to prove that males and females diverge in sexual thought, but beyond that? How can you say it is in the brain and not the result of society? But to say women find it fundamentally unsatisfying to use agency of force... you are going to have to answer to all the female gamers here who like games of forceful agency.

You are right. I should have given you a link that sort of summarizes it in a nutshell:

1) http://www.medicaleducationonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=69

2) http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html

There you have it: Science!

That's basically it in a nutshell. That females can like games of forceful agency does not mean that they could not be inclined to have a better time with a game that appeals to a different way of enforcing their agency.

Think about it: Most games are programmed by dudes and, even if subconsciously, tend to cater more to the leanings of dudes than those of dudettes.

What if only females made games? Do you think we would be playing the same kinds of games, or that we would be having the same exact good time we do now? The answer is nope.

Chicks need to start either having more input in how games are made or start making their own.

Brain scans are useless.

I worked on placement in a hospital we did a brain scan on some guy who had a stroke: a quarter of his brain was gone yet he spoke pretty fine. I happened to ask the doctor who was doing the brain scans and he doesn't treat scanning female or male brains any differently, of all the parts of the body that is the part most similar between genders.

It is POINTLESS to look at the brain to judge performance/limitations, it's like looking under the hood of a car and just trying to guess how fast the car is from the dimensions of the engine.

Also this:

That females can like games of forceful agency does not mean that they could not be inclined to have a better time with a game that appeals to a different way of enforcing their agency.

A Double Negative... what the hell are you playing at?

Assuming you meant just a single negative. None of these studies even vaguely hint that women could not enjoy forceful agency in games or fictional works.

This is a telling quote from your second article:

But do these differences mean a superiority/inferiority relationship between men and women?

"No", says Dr. Pearlson. "To say this means that men are automatically better at some things than women is a simplification. It's easy to find women who are fantastic at math and physics and men who excel in language skills. Only when we look at very large populations and look for slight but significant trends do we see the generalizations. There are plenty of exceptions, but there's also a grain of truth, revealed through the brain structure, that we think underlies some of the ways people characterize the sexes."

This is all this scientists has found, in his own words: "a grain of truth" in a mountain of myths.

I will conceded there are cultural differenced between males and females (which are vary malleable), but such huge fundamental, universal and unchangeable brain differences... the good doctor himself has explicitly excluded that idea.

If you knew about women in the gaming industry you'd see they don't seem to have the poisonous "girlifying" effect.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/215652/interviews/bioshock-2-interview/

I just get the impression you have never worked with women in any kind of professional or artistic capacity.

You speak as if the only women you know is your mother and possibly your girlfriend.

So basically you just spat on years of research by a bunch of serious individuals that have drawn conclusions based on on a bunch of data filtered through averages using one doctor as your source (competent as he may be). I'm not here to lecture you but...that's not how it's done--you are comparing fairly different methodologies using one example of one doctor who does things in one way against the collected pool of scientific data and findings of a bunch of different people.

Can you not see how I may have a problem with how you are drawing your conclusions?

You seem to have drawn your oppinion on gender leanings, already, based on nothing more than personal experience (which in science amounts to nothing) which would lead me to believe that your position stems mostly from from ideology more than anything else. You also seem to assume that I'm trying to perpetrate some kind of sexist agenda when I'm only pointing to you some fairly straight forward evidence which you already said you will not accept even though we are dealing with the cutting edge of scientific theory here when I'm merely talking about primitive leanings--the "grains of truth" of the article from which they draw their conclusions and not from the "mountains of myth" that you so hard decry (and believe me, I do too...not that you seem to care or notice).

Also, nice of you to filter some passive aggression. I can always commend a jood jab, but since that's not what I'm here for I'm afraid I'll have to bow out unless you can point me to some decent links of serious scientific findings that show how brain scans do not work instead of throwing half-baked ad-hominem shit at me (you could've just said "Fuck off" and be done with it--would've killed this thing much faster and with a lot less words).

I'm being open minded here, you know. And civil.

 

[Treblaine]

So basically you just spat on years of research by a bunch of serious individuals that have drawn conclusions based on on a bunch of data filtered through averages using one doctor as your source (competent as he may be). I'm not here to lecture you but...that's not how it's done--you are comparing fairly different methodologies using one example of one doctor who does things in one way against the collected pool of scientific data and findings of a bunch of different people.

Can you not see how I may have a problem with how you are drawing your conclusions?

You seem to have drawn your oppinion on gender leanings, already, based on nothing more than personal experience (which in science amounts to nothing) which would lead me to believe that your position stems mostly from from ideology more than anything else. You also seem to assume that I'm trying to perpetrate some kind of sexist agenda when I'm only pointing to you some fairly straight forward evidence which you already said you will not accept even though we are dealing with the cutting edge of scientific theory here when I'm merely talking about primitive leanings--the "grains of truth" of the article from which they draw their conclusions and not from the "mountains of myth" that you so hard decry (and believe me, I do too...not that you seem to care or notice).

Also, nice of you to filter some passive aggression. I can always commend a jood jab, but since that's not what I'm here for I'm afraid I'll have to bow out unless you can point me to some decent links of serious scientific findings that show how brain scans do not work instead of throwing half-baked ad-hominem shit at me (you could've just said "Fuck off" and be done with it--would've killed this thing much faster and with a lot less words).

I'm being open minded here, you know. And civil.

I haven't spat on year of research, I have used YOUR OWN SOURCE against you were he explicitly excludes what you are claiming. These aren't my opinions, these are scientific conclusions from the source YOU PROVIDED! Presumably it was the best example you could find... did you even read it?

It's also no science for me to have to prove you wrong, when you haven't even proven you are right. Go BACK to your source and he addresses this, that these gross differences in average brain areas sizes between males and females are only "slight" in "very large populations". Explicitly your source states:

"To say this means that men are automatically better at some things than women is a simplification"

The comment on experience with women is not a personal jab, And you don't seemed to have corrected my guess, I take it I am correct? You really do seem like someone who has not worked along side women in a professional/artistic capacity where everyone is stretched to their mental limits. There you won't find any differences between the sexes, no mental task that a man would find impossible and only a woman could do, or vica versa.

It isn't a personal attack to suggest ignorance. There is nothing wrong with never having worked with many females, lots of workplaces are for serious reasons gender segregated to large extents. There is no shame in ignorance, I am completely ignorant on nuclear reactor design... that is why I don't get into slagging matches with people who DO know about them.

I stand by the source you provided to me that contradict your claims that all or even most women fundamentally approach agency-of-force differently from men- which is a part of "men are automatically better at some things than women" which he explicitly refutes.

You want a source? You want HUNDREDS of first hand sources, look on all the escapist profiles who are women and who like to play video game that are 'apparently' designed for male minds only...

 

[fulano]

So basically you just spat on years of research by a bunch of serious individuals that have drawn conclusions based on on a bunch of data filtered through averages using one doctor as your source (competent as he may be). I'm not here to lecture you but...that's not how it's done--you are comparing fairly different methodologies using one example of one doctor who does things in one way against the collected pool of scientific data and findings of a bunch of different people.

Can you not see how I may have a problem with how you are drawing your conclusions?

You seem to have drawn your oppinion on gender leanings, already, based on nothing more than personal experience (which in science amounts to nothing) which would lead me to believe that your position stems mostly from from ideology more than anything else. You also seem to assume that I'm trying to perpetrate some kind of sexist agenda when I'm only pointing to you some fairly straight forward evidence which you already said you will not accept even though we are dealing with the cutting edge of scientific theory here when I'm merely talking about primitive leanings--the "grains of truth" of the article from which they draw their conclusions and not from the "mountains of myth" that you so hard decry (and believe me, I do too...not that you seem to care or notice).

Also, nice of you to filter some passive aggression. I can always commend a jood jab, but since that's not what I'm here for I'm afraid I'll have to bow out unless you can point me to some decent links of serious scientific findings that show how brain scans do not work instead of throwing half-baked ad-hominem shit at me (you could've just said "Fuck off" and be done with it--would've killed this thing much faster and with a lot less words).

I'm being open minded here, you know. And civil.

I haven't spat on year of research, I have used YOUR OWN SOURCE against you were he explicitly excludes what you are claiming. These aren't my opinions, these are scientific conclusions from the source YOU PROVIDED! Presumably it was the best example you could find... did you even read it?

It's also no science for me to have to prove you wrong, when you haven't even proven you are right. Go BACK to your source and he addresses this, that these gross differences in average brain areas sizes between males and females are only "slight" in "very large populations". Explicitly your source states:

"To say this means that men are automatically better at some things than women is a simplification"

The comment on experience with women is not a personal jab, And you don't seemed to have corrected my guess, I take it I am correct? You really do seem like someone who has not worked along side women in a professional/artistic capacity where everyone is stretched to their mental limits. There you won't find any differences between the sexes, no mental task that a man would find impossible and only a woman could do, or vica versa.

It isn't a personal attack to suggest ignorance. There is nothing wrong with never having worked with many females, lots of workplaces are for serious reasons gender segregated to large extents. There is no shame in ignorance, I am completely ignorant on nuclear reactor design... that is why I don't get into slagging matches with people who DO know about them.

I stand by the source you provided to me that contradict your claims that all or even most women fundamentally approach agency-of-force differently from men- which is a part of "men are automatically better at some things than women" which he explicitly refutes.

You want a source? You want HUNDREDS of first hand sources, look on all the escapist profiles who are women and who like to play video game that are 'apparently' designed for male minds only...

This is getting petty but, oh, what the hell.

You keep fixating on this: "To say this means that men are automatically better at some things than women is a simplification." To which I say: Indeed. That is very much correct but that is not even the crux of my argument.

Mine is more along the lines of this: The conclusion is that neuroscience has made great strides in the 90s, regarding the discovery of concrete, scientifically proved anatomical and functional differences between the brains of males and females. While this knowledge could in theory be used to justify misogyny and prejudice against women, fortunately this has not happened. In fact, this new knowledge may help physicians and scientists to discover new ways to explore the brain differences in the benefit of the treatment of diseases, the personalized action of drugs, different procedures in surgeries, etc. After all, males and females differ only by one Y chromosome, but this makes a real impact upon the way we react to so many things, including pain, hormones, etc..

Yet you keep saying that I say that males are better suited to perform agency through direct confrontation that women--yes? I'm not saying that. All I'm saying is that females are likely to naturally have different leanings towards their agency than us, males, do. It is you who has misunderstood the links I have provided and adapted your discourse to attempt to prevail on a weird non-existent self-concocted argument between us. If that were so, I would not only be a fucking moron, but a fucking sexist moron.

I specifically sent you somewhere where you could see how those slight differences (I never claimed otherwise) have been shown to impact our developmental behavior and hence why both sexes ought to have ingrained different leanings, and how they ought to affect their gaming patterns--that males may be more naturally leaned than females to implement their agency through direct conflict of action (force) than females, not that they were more proficient, or that the latter could not develop a similar, if not exact, taste for it. What you are saying, on the other hand (and apparently in the spirit of your anti sexist argument), is that brain differences amount to little or nothing at all in the leanings of both males and females (apparently also in your attempt to disprove my sexist claims) which does have some other implication which you seemingly won't care to hear from me, so you won't.

As for your not--personal-attack--well, since I didn't even bother to address it, it ought to mean that you must be right--naturally! Let's just assume that I must be a somewhat developmentally stunted male because, well, how else could I have developed a dissenting oppinion to yours? Oh, woe me... ...but sadly I indeed have (must suck to be wrong), I have worked alongside some females and we were indeed stretched the limits of our mental limits--but not artistic, mind you, because the shit we were doing was more about math and science--and plenty were, in fact, more proficient than I was and I never saw any difference between us other than that they were smarter. Aaaand?...But wait, maybe I just made all that shit up so as to not a appear who you say I am. We're on the internets, remember?, so you ought to be right!

I'm afraid we have stumbled against a roadblock in this little "argument" of ours and this has gotten rather trite. Should we start from scratch and lay out exactly our arguments without having you fall into "You keep saying men do stuff better than women, your research doesn't support that!" and my having to resort to the "I'm not saying what you say I say" or should we not?

Ball's on your court playboy. Or we may as well call it quits if you like.

 

[Treblaine]

Snip

OK, so you have backed down to mere "leanings" of one gender for certain things?

That is so trivial. And I think the number of female gamers on this site alone is a testament to how trivial that is to the issue at hand which is the claim: that women need specially segregated games for their female minds.

"I have worked alongside some females and we were indeed stretched the limits of our mental limits - and plenty were more proficient than I was and I never saw any difference between us other than that they were smarter."

So why do you think:

"Males and females do not approach agency in the same way"

These are you words.

 

[fulano]

Snip

OK, so you have backed down to mere "leanings" of one gender for certain things?

That is so trivial. And I think the number of female gamers on this site alone is a testament to how trivial that is to the issue at hand which is the claim: that women need specially segregated games for their female minds.

"I have worked alongside some females and we were indeed stretched the limits of our mental limits - and plenty were more proficient than I was and I never saw any difference between us other than that they were smarter."

So why do you think:

"Males and females do not approach agency in the same way"

These are you words.

Okay, you seem to have calmed down, so let's take it from there.

Go back in my posts and you'll notice that I do not ever say anything other than that leanings are important and that they influence the decisions we may make--I do not see how I've backed down from anything so far. And yes, I did say "Males and females do not approach agency in the same way" which goes along with my comment of our brains (male and female) being wired differently--slightly so, but the differences do show in our base behaviors, as exhibited by both experimental data gathered from brain imaging and other behavioral statistics (like suicide success rates and the means chosen by the suicidees[sic], for example; or the leanings towards schizoid behavior between the sexes; or even to simple aggressiveness).

If women have one part of their brain more developed than males to successfully carry out certain actions like language or the recognition of facial signs, on average, shouldn't it impact their choice of actions and behavior in some way? I believe it would in some level. I also believe it would therefore impact their choice of entertainment in some base level. Also note that I am not saying that men could not develop those same things through nurture, or that they could not outperform women in them either, just like women could well outperform males in things having to do with motor reflexes or spatial reasoning (as I have myself experienced).

In the context of games; I'm merely stating that they have been historically developed by males and thus steered towards not catering to base level preferences of females. Not out of the want to implant some form of exclusion wall by it, but, well, by the lack of substantive female input in the industry...which is what the Silicon Sisters were saying in the first place.

That we approach things differently does not mean that we cannot both arrive to the same place or do the same things in a comparable level of proficiency, on average.

I mean, given the scientific data, why is it natural to assume that groups of people comprised mostly of dudes--and over a number of years, I should add--would program entertainment experiences that are all-inclusive across the board, sex wise; that both males and females would have no trouble being drawn to equally to them given the obvious bias? Or are you implying that males and females come form the same exact place when making their decisions? That somehow our brain's makeup has no effect whatsoever in how and why we do the things we do--that it is all in nurture? As males, having our brains get doused with progressively larger amounts of testosterone until a certain age makes me think that that cannot not be the case, I'm afraid, if that is in fact what you're saying.

Our brains have immense plasticity, yes, but they are not completely removed from years and years of evolution geared towards specific survival needs of the species. That we are only recently attemping to place culture above that--and hopefully with successful results as time goes on and on--should not mean that certain specific traces to our more primitive past are either not there, dormant, or that they lack influence right now. They should, at least, be acknowledged if we are to deal with them.

 

[Skywatcher]

As a woman, this is what I want in my game: the option to play a female version of the protagonist. That is all. And among the games I generally like (think Dragon Age, Fallout 3, etc.) this request is already being fulfilled, so I have nothing to complain about!

 

[II2]

oddly enough the japanese probably have more games aimed at women then we have here in the states... or at least more games that are the kind women would enjoy

It's true.

Visual novel anime / rpg / social games, often released on those popular, non exported Japanese smartphones (forget the name), cater to a huge female demographic quite lucratively.

Is that the answer for the west? I have no idea, but it's probably worth considering what's proven to work, even if the societal context is very different.