Sony's G.I.R.L. Scholarship Opens For Applicants

[likalaruku]

Eh, I've seen other companies do this when for some (legal? PR?) reason the company needed to hire more female, ethnic, & disabled employees & would pay for their training. I see no sexism here.

Captcha = Chuck Norris?

 

[Hagi]

Yay! Because insulting people is a sure way to show your intellectual superiority and amazing wisdom and understanding!

It would have been an insult if i called you stupid, but what i did was point out that what you said was stupid. Don't want people to point out that you are saying is stupid, then my suggestion would be to stop saying stupid things.

Makes you just want to bunker down and stick to your viewpoint regardless of any rational thought or reality.

LOL no. The fact is that it is objectively sexism & discrimination. It is LITERALLY the dictionary definition of both concepts.

And you know how far being completely and totally literal will get you in actual communication?

A dictionary isn't intended to completely and totally define a word. It's intended to point you in the right direction if you don't know what a word means.

A dictionary can't completely and totally define a word because language is complicated. Way more complicated than can be defined in a single book, especially if you get to abstract concepts like sexism.

There's hundreds of thousands of pages of research into sexism, what exactly it is, what it means, what causes it, why we do it etc. And you honestly believe your paltry dictionary can completely define it in a few sentences?

The world's a bit more complicated than can be put into a dictionary...

 

[Hagi]

A dictionary isn't intended to completely and totally define a word. It's intended to point you in the right direction if you don't know what a word means.

Sure, except for your statement to be accurate not only would the dictionary have to not define the word, it would have to have defined the word as the exact opposite of the concept you are trying to put forward. You know, like Blue now means red, stop means go, you continuing to say stupid things suddenly become super intelligent commentary.

The fact is mate that it is literally the definition of every source that G.I.R.L is both sexist & discriminatory. Thats the very reason they removed the "female only" clause from the digital version (even though it still exists on the hard copy).

At the end of the day you have no leg to stand on. The best you can hope for is too continue this words don't mean what words mean semantic contortionism in the hope that you'll get the last word & people mistake loud mouthed verbosity for validity.

Wait what?

In order for a dictionary to become a guide to what words mean it'd have to define words as the opposite? How does that even make sense?

A dictionary is a guide, an aid, something to help people figure out what words mean. That's all.

It's not the ultimate law on the precise and exact meaning of everything. You using it as such only shows your own lack of understanding.

Words change meaning on the basis of context. They have nuances that dictionaries, thanks to their limited and summarized format, are incapable of describing. The larger context in this situation, the simple fact that women face peer pressure and societal expectation in game-related careers that men don't, means you can't simply literally apply dictionary definitions. The real world doesn't work like that. It's more complicated, more nuanced.

A dictionary is intended to help you out if you don't know or are unsure about what a word means. It gives you a solid basis to work from. It's not intended as the ultimate and complete authority on all linguistics everywhere. Stop attempting to use it as such, it's silly.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

Look at it this way. Sony is investing hefty sums of money and paid internships exclusive to females in order to diversify their creative team, improve the representation of women in their games and find new ideas for marketing games towards women. Now, why would a multi-billion dollar corporation want to do this?

Option A: Altruism
Option B: To increase profits

I don't think it's that simple. There can be more reasons than just those two.

For one, to draw attention from the media and feminist gaming circles. There are some who believe that women in Japan are literally shunned from entering the gaming industry, Sony is a big player in Japan so I'll let you do the math. If this work out well this could help improve their image.

It could also be used as an attempt to make feminists (and certain politically-correct groups) finally shut up by later saying "look we did this female-only thing and it barely worked out. We did what we could, now fuck off."

In fact now that I think about it, this whole thing isn't even calling for a potentially good GAME DEVELOPER to emerge from the prettier sex.

Look at this: "...as well as a 500-word essay that must answer the questions "How can you change and improve the image of women in games?" and "How do you think such changes will help create games that more women will want to play?""

Hold on a second, what about the question "how can you improve GAMES in general and help create games that more PEOPLE will want to play?"
This is extremely specific - they want women to answer what can be done to improve the image of women in games, as well as creating games that more women will want to play.

There's nothing about being a good game developer in there, it appears they only want women driven by feminist motives and happen to be interested in gaming. Think about it, the SOLE REASON they are calling these women into game development is to specifically help create+market games towards other women.

What does one make of this?

 

[Starik20X6]

Step 1: Notice there are more men working in the games industry than women.
Step 2: Decide that in order to entice more girls to join the games industry, you'll offer a course that's specifically targeted to females.
Step 3: SEXISM!

Really, what? From what I can tell, this is designed for girls who might not otherwise have considered a career in the games industry. This isn't for the girls who were already planning to become game designers, environment artists etc.

 

[bluegate]

So, here we have a gaming culture in which women are often looked down upon and a company giving victims of this bigotry a chance to try and change this negative trend that has been flowing through out gaming culture.

And yet, somehow this is a bad thing? Aren't the guys here just jealous that they can't apply for this?

This is like white plantation owners being called racist for asking their black slaves for ways to make their work on the cotton fields more doable and humane.

 

[VanQ]

Sidestepping all of the gender issues:

Am I the only one that finds it suspicious that Sony is essentially farming for ideas in the guise of furthering education? Think about it: concept art and ideas on changing gender portrayal in games while extending that into getting more females to buy games. Those are probably the same things their marketing and development groups have probably been working on for years. Since I'm not a student anymore, I'm not going to spend any time reading over the rules governing applications, but I'd strongly advise anyone considering it to make sure that Sony can't steal their ideas. After all, this is the same company that makes you agree that you won't join a class-action lawsuit against them just to use the online service.

...Sorry, I'll take my tinfoil hat off now.

As far as I'm concerned, all of that is positive. If Sony is reaching out for fresh points of views and new ideas then that can only be a good thing for the industry as a whole. The games industry has severely stagnated over the last decade, very rarely producing anything new and interesting.

Gorged budgets and a concentrated target audience makes it extremely risky to try anything new these days and I think we should be happy to see someone, especially one of the big dogs, still trying to find something new. About Sony "stealing" ideas, that's pretty unlikely. I see it more likely that if someone presents them with an idea worth their time, they'll simply back it and quite possibly launch some girl's career off the ground.

And really, why wouldn't Sony want more girls to purchase their games? And why wouldn't you want more girls to be purchasing games? This is a hobby I assume you love since you're posting here, it's about damn time we learned to share it. The more girls enjoying and talking about AAA games is more girls not talking about FarmVille and Angry Birds all day.

[sub]I have nothing against those two games, people can play what they want. It'd just be nice to hear a girl talk about other games in real life for once.[/sub]

 

[flying_whimsy]

And really, why wouldn't Sony want more girls to purchase their games? And why wouldn't you want more girls to be purchasing games? This is a hobby I assume you love since you're posting here, it's about damn time we learned to share it. The more girls enjoying and talking about AAA games is more girls not talking about FarmVille and Angry Birds all day.

I never said nor did I imply that: I'm a bit insulted you'd generate such a low opinion of me because I have suspicions about a company's motives behind an effort to advance women both in the industry and the player base.

I wish the whole 'women in gaming' thing wasn't an issue: I wish there were more female gamers and game makers. I love video games as an art and I'm frequently embarrassed by how backwards the culture surrounding it can sometimes be.

My point was that Sony has a terrible record in regards to consumer rights, and, given that, anyone considering applying should take that into consideration lest they find their ideas later used without credit or compensation. It's a great opportunity, but there's also some risk involved in the way of intellectual dishonesty on Sony's part.