Study About 'Sexist Games' is Severely Flawed

[Yopaz]

Im not aware of anyone in the medical field that actually supports these homeopathy studies. heck, most of the studies used by homeopaths themselves claim that the author did not found a link between homeopathy and medicine.

So you are claiming to be an expert in behavioural studies now? I never claimed medical experts disasgree on homeopathy, although plenty of them do in fact believe in homeopathy and some doctors also have homeopathic background and offer homeopathic treatment and claims it's better than conventional medicine. I said people. As in non-experts. That includes the author of this article who clearly doesn't grasp the statistics behind choosing a sample size and it includes me as I am mainly concerned about inflammation.

I what now? I said im not aware of a medical expert supporting homeopathy, not that im an expert in behavioral studies. I am actually an expert in statistics though, and can recognize bad ones in this case.

Also no, you said doctors, implying medical professionals. in this very post i quoted even.

This is the part of my post that you quoted in its entirety:

Did you know that 50% of the articles published in Nature in neurobiology has been shown to be incorrect in their analysis and should be retracted? That one third of publications in life science in general can not be replicated by independent laboratories? Why aren't there articles on that? Shoddy science happens in every field, it's a huge problem, but every single article doesn't require a long article which (poorly) picks it apart. The peer review system needs to improve and all journals need to agree on certain standards.

Why are we so set on debunking this study? Because we disagree with it. Sadly that's what science is facing across the board. Studies showing that homeopathy doesn't work in double blind trials is met with the same type of arguments as come up whenever someone says anything bad about video games.

I mentioned doctors exactly zero times. Why do you lie and say that I said doctors?
Also how did you get to the part about medical professionals arguing homeopathy? I said that whenever a study finds something bad about video games we are quick to start arguing. YOU drew the connection between this article and this thread and medical professionals, not I.

I believe its a duty of every person that wants rational mind and intelligence to prevail to oppose falsehoods, including those presented in badly done "scientific" studies.

Calling this article rational is a falsehood. It is loaded with plenty of personal bias mirroring the original study. We don't need more of that.

Adding an additional story here does not make the site loose anything

Things lost when I read this:
1. Credibility in unbiased reporting on this site.
2. A desire to read future articles form this contributor.
3. Any belief that this site has standards higher than any tabloid newspaper.
If you want this site to be a circle jerk of your own opinions I see why you think that nothing is lost. If you want quality reporting or at least wit then you'd see the loss.

 

[Stewie Plisken]

But that's why you try to work with randomly selected groups of a sufficient size; to control the confounding variables created by the things you listed. If all of those factors had a strong enough influence that it creates nothing but sprawling, uncorrelated data, the test would be completely unreliable. But if among big enough random groups, there is still a reasonable correlation forming, then those outside influences aren't having too negative an influence to throw off the results.

Indeed, but that's the point; the sample size was comparetively small and fairly homogenous (Italian high-schoolers), not to say anything of the questionable follow-up (the pictures, the questions they directed at the students, the limited time in the games, the selection of the games itself) and small details like the things I mentioned are more likely to influence the result. Note that (fortunately) the correlation the study makes isn't so much between the content of the games and the results (which calls the language used in question), but between views/adoption of 'traditional masculinity' and said results.

NYMag posted a piece of the study that I find a generally better critique of it; it roughly gets to my point better than I do, if anyone's interested in reading it:

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/04/here-s-an-overhyped-study-about-video-game-violence-and-misogyny.html

I dont remmeber the site i read it on but there was a study done to see the gender demographics based on genre of games, probably 4 years ago or so. Women absolutely dominated the RPG genre. so this sounds quite accurate to me.

I think it's specifically the MMORPG genre (though RPGs in general probably fair better in comparison to, say, first person shooters) and there's probably a good reason behind it. Someone who knows how should probably look into it.

 

[Areloch]

Well, no, she's still wrong. You say 'Too Many' games are like that, but what measure is 'too many'? If the grand, GRAND majority of people buy and enjoy actiony explode-o-fests, then that's what's going to be made. Given the fact while a smaller number, there are plenty of games, especially now more than ever, that don't focus on direct action/violence, such as the walking-simulator genre, the complaint rings hollow.

More than ever still isn't very much, and they typically don't get the same type of resources thrown behind them. And the problem is much worse around traditionally feminine ideas and themes. The problem to me seems to be the attitude is self perpetuating. Game makers make action games because those games sell, and they sell because those are the games made. Game companies rarely even think about alternate priorities in their game.

If most games are action movie analogs, why can't other analogs be relatively as successful? Let's take the obvious and easy one: the romantic comedy. You cannot tell me a romantic comedy game wouldn't sell well, Fire Emblem basically stumbled onto this one not long ago. Many people absolutely love the shipping simulator elements (as many people call them) of the game. And it isn't even particularly well done. It is simply all there is. Oh, and visual novels/dating sims, which... yeah. While there are a handful of good ones, they are not what most people (with traditionally feminine interests) are looking for in an actual romantic comedy.

And you joke about shopping games, but people love shopping. Men and women. I know several people who spend a ton of time on MMO's scouring the world for the best possible clothing. I used to be one of them when I had more time, my Blood Elf Mage has a pretty epic collection of dresses. There is a lot of demand for these types of elements but people rarely explore them beyond the most surface level. I think the reason the grand majority of people buy actiony explody games is because that is what is being made. The Sims is essentially a game about shopping and relationships and yet it is a massively successful franchise.

I love action games as much as the next person, but I do think there is probably room for more in the game industry than we are currently exploring. And I want to see those games, I think they sound fun.

Oh, to clarify, I have exactly no problem with these alternative game styles.

Heck, I want to Gamejam a game where you literally just clean. Pick up books and organize them on shelves, throw away trash on the floor, put away laundry, etc. A droll chore in real life, but it would have a weirdly relaxing zen to doing the activity for funsies in a game environment. We see that sort of pull from the dozens of hours people will spend organizing their houses in games like Skyrim, or MMOs and the like. In regards to shopping, one of my favorite things about the meh-ness that was the collective experience of Fable 3 was that you could walk into a shop and see the items for sale on mannequins, and then try them on to see how they'd look before buying. A good shopping game is entirely in the real of possibilities, it just requires someone to think of how to do it and then make it. It's pretty crazy what can click and be compelling for that kind of stuff.

My primary point was that the student has a inherently flawed assumption and locks herself out of a huge potential of things she could enjoy because of her flawed perceptions. Sure, more non-action games could be made, and they will be! But just because there are 'only' thousands of options that could appeal to non-masculine interests rather than millions doesn't mean there are "too many" masculine-typed games.

The medium as a whole is still pretty new, and people have only started realizing these kinds of non-standard genres are actually pretty hefty sellers in the past 2 or 3 years. So someone standing there going 'There are too many games I don't enjoy' is the height of entitlement, and locking them to purely gendered interests is kinda insulting to...well, everyone.

 

[RedRockRun]

One more thing to file under, "Adventures in Confirmation Bias".

 

[Areloch]

Well, no, she's still wrong. You say 'Too Many' games are like that, but what measure is 'too many'? If the grand, GRAND majority of people buy and enjoy actiony explode-o-fests, then that's what's going to be made.

You do understand that's precisely the logic that made videogames sexist for so many years? The same logic why female characters aren't even allowed in the covers by product marketers?

"Why should we EVER put a female character on the cover?? We always put a grizzled male hero on the cover, and it sells just fine."
"Why would we need to make less videogames about male heroes murdering enemies? They sell so much."

It's a terrible case of mistaking the effect with the cause.

If videogames had been originally targeted at girls in the '90s, now we will hear people say "why would we EVER put a male character on the cover?? We always put a cute girl on a pink background on the cover, and it sells just fine."
"Why would we need to make less videogames about female characters having long discussion in rpg games? They sell so much."

What?

Ok, inquiry: should, say, Activision be obligated to go out of their way and spend millions of dollars to produce and publish, say, a shopping game, or fashion modeling game or whatever other "girl things" type of game would apparently rectify this supposed "sexism" issue, even if it may make them back no money at all and end out a huge financial failure?

Do you believe that they should be obligated to do that?

 

[Phasmal]

Yes, the study is wrong because videogames don't make boys rapists anymore than they make people become mass murderers. What a surprise.

However..... LET'S NOT USE THIS FLAWED AND STUPID RESEARCH AS AN EXCUSE TO CLAIM THAT VIDEOGAMES DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH WOMEN.

Yeah, this.

Games are still in a weird place, gender-wise. You'll still get people either say straight out that they're only for one gender, or it comes across in their attitudes that's how they feel. Which is straight-up bizarre when you think about it.
Imagine if a dude sat down to watch a movie with me and I was like 'Um excuse you movies are for women???'.
An entire medium of entertainment is not just for one gender, that's stupid.

And I know even talking about this presses a bunch of people's 'defensive' buttons, though god knows why. If you're not acting like a jerk to women who play games (and women who want their opinion on games considered), congratulations, you are not the problem and I'm not talking about you.

 

[Areloch]

Well, no, she's still wrong. You say 'Too Many' games are like that, but what measure is 'too many'? If the grand, GRAND majority of people buy and enjoy actiony explode-o-fests, then that's what's going to be made.

You do understand that's precisely the logic that made videogames sexist for so many years? The same logic why female characters aren't even allowed in the covers by product marketers?

"Why should we EVER put a female character on the cover?? We always put a grizzled male hero on the cover, and it sells just fine."
"Why would we need to make less videogames about male heroes murdering enemies? They sell so much."

It's a terrible case of mistaking the effect with the cause.

If videogames had been originally targeted at girls in the '90s, now we will hear people say "why would we EVER put a male character on the cover?? We always put a cute girl on a pink background on the cover, and it sells just fine."
"Why would we need to make less videogames about female characters having long discussion in rpg games? They sell so much."

What?

Ok, inquiry: should, say, Activision be obligated to go out of their way and spend millions of dollars to produce and publish, say, a shopping game, or fashion modeling game or whatever other "girl things" type of game would apparently rectify this supposed "sexism" issue, even if it may make them back no money at all and end out a huge financial failure?

Do you believe that they should be obligated to do that?

A few things to consider.

WHY would a fashion modeling game or whatever not sell?
....Especially when dudebro games with the same amount of intelligence as a fashion modeling game SELL MILLIONS OF COPIES?

I'm not even going into the whole clich? of "gurlz only like shoez and clothing" you're bringing up here: because millions of boys buy videogames only because they can pretend to be footballers or supersoldiers who never reload (also known as: "buff guy who shoots the bad guys and gets the hot chick or whatever"). So who am I to say girls are immune to this level of dumbness? No they aren't.

But somehow, boys are allowed to play dumb dudebro games "I am a superbadass who kills all evilz", but girls can't play out their equally dumb fantasies.

You do understand the issue now. We live in a world were dumb power fantasies for little boys are considered awesome, but dumb power fantasies for little girls are mocked and called "fashion modeling games or whatever".

You have utterly missed my point. The point is, a fashion game is INCREDIBLY niche.

Like, you seem to not realize how fast sales on games dwindle when they're not a major AAA title and also an established franchise. It's why when Ubisoft or EA gets around to actually launching a new franchise and it does well, people are kinda blown away.

But you step outside of that small, consistent bubble of primary interests that make up the majority of "Dudebro games"(As an aside, I'd thank you not to presume that girls don't have power fantasies about mindlessly mowing down thousands of aliens just as much as boys do) and the sales dwindle rapidly.

The more niche the genre, the faster those sales dry up, and producing a game, even a relatively simple one requires a lot of man-hours to produce, which means a lot of money invested up-front before the game even sells. If it sells poorly, they WASTED money - potentially millions of dollars.

Creating and selling a game unfortunately comes down to pragmatic arithmetic. Do you actually believe that if Ubisoft or EA made a fashion game, it would sell as well as a Call of Duty game? Because I don't, at all.

The gameplay alone is drastically different from the mass market appeal, and both boys AND girls would look at that kind of gameplay(just as we already see with other non-standard games like walking simulators) and go "that looks boring/stupid" and they don't buy it.

So if the likelyhood of getting a large return is minimal purely due to how many people would even find it interesting(because again, it'd be a niche product) then it's VERY difficult to justify 1 or 2 years and potentially millions of dollars into a product that may only sell a few thousand copies.

So again, point blank: Do you honestly believe that if a AAA studio produced and marketed a fashion game, it would reach the same sales numbers as a Call of Duty game?

 

[Areloch]

You have utterly missed my point. The point is, a fashion game is INCREDIBLY niche.

Like, you seem to not realize how fast sales on games dwindle when they're not a major AAA title and also an established franchise. It's why when Ubisoft or EA gets around to actually launching a new franchise and it does well, people are kinda blown away.

But you step outside of that small, consistent bubble of primary interests that make up the majority of "Dudebro games"(As an aside, I'd thank you not to presume that girls don't have power fantasies about mindlessly mowing down thousands of aliens just as much as boys do) and the sales dwindle rapidly.

The more niche the genre, the faster those sales dry up, and producing a game, even a relatively simple one requires a lot of man-hours to produce, which means a lot of money invested up-front before the game even sells. If it sells poorly, they WASTED money - potentially millions of dollars.

Creating and selling a game unfortunately comes down to pragmatic arithmetic. Do you actually believe that if Ubisoft or EA made a fashion game, it would sell as well as a Call of Duty game? Because I don't, at all.

The gameplay alone is drastically different from the mass market appeal, and both boys AND girls would look at that kind of gameplay(just as we already see with other non-standard games like walking simulators) and go "that looks boring/stupid" and they don't buy it.

So if the likelyhood of getting a large return is minimal purely due to how many people would even find it interesting(because again, it'd be a niche product) then it's VERY difficult to justify 1 or 2 years and potentially millions of dollars into a product that may only sell a few thousand copies.

So again, point blank: Do you honestly believe that if a AAA studio produced and marketed a fashion game, it would reach the same sales numbers as a Call of Duty game?

Yes, yes it would.

Case in point: LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY THE TWILIGHT SAGA MADE, BUDDY.

Case in point: LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY CANDY CRUSH MADE, BUDDY.

Case in point: LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY HANNAH MONTANA MADE, BUDDY.

Case in point: LOOK AT HOW MUCH MONEY COOKING MAMA MADE, BUDDY.

And I could go on.


Please, step back and realize that the stance you have taken in your post is this: "girls like shooting things but men don't like fashion. Things are fine as they are because girls can adapt to dudebro stuff but boys should never adapt to cutesy stuff".

Also keep in mind that I am a woman but I have never liked stuff like Twilight or Cooking Mama and I prefer shooting things. That does NOT mean I have the arrogance of thinking everyone should have my tastes, and while I know many girls who like shooting things, I know many girls who instead like fashion and cooking.

(Edit: That was a serious attempt at some levity, by the way. Wasn't trying to be a sarcastic douche there)

One, it's becoming increasingly grating for you to keep referring to action-y style games as 'dudebro'. LOTS of girls enjoy those kinds of games, and not because they're "adapting", because they actually legitimately like them. The fact that you keep delegating those types of games as purely male interests is pretty insulting and frankly floating into actual sexism territory if you think that girls only like that kind of thing because they're "adapting" and not out of any genuine interest on their own accord.

Similarly, guys obviously have no problems "adapting"(heugh) to cutesy stuff. See the internet implosion-explosion that was My Little Pony.

Next, it's generally not compatible to compare sales of entirely different mediums, because of different pricing architectures and different appeal/consumption rates. Most namely, you bringing up Twilight, which has only existed in film and books, both of which have much broader appeal and consumption than games do.

So lets use the more direct comparison. The entire franchise of Cooking Mama, which you used as one of the examples, has earned 12 million units in sales: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/09/mama-franchise-reaches-12-million-sales-worldwide-8-5-million/

So the ENTIRE franchise of Cooking Mama managed to match up to a single Call of Duty game.

But honestly this is derailing a little bit from my original question which you hadn't answered yet:

Do you feel developers and publishers should be obligated to take tens millions of dollars in financial risks to appeal to relatively niche genres of games?

 

[Areloch]

AARRRRGGH!!!!!!!! I had written a LONG answer and I got a "captcha error" and it disappeared!!!!

Sorry man, you'll have to deal with the short version then.

Do you feel developers and publishers should be obligated to take tens millions of dollars in financial risks to appeal to relatively niche genres of games?

Nooo. They should keep making videogames with white straight male protagonists, possibly with shaved hair and American heritage, and have them shoot bad guys.

After all, videogames are totally not like movies or books. Videogames are mostly for males. We all know that. There's no way you'd profit out of the other 50% of the human population, when it comes to videogames. That's just NICHE.

Sucks about the captcha error, but I see you opted for sarcasm and falling back into sexist categorizing rather than actually answering my question.

Unfortunate.

 

[McElroy]

How is San Andreas even that s- Oooohhh, they made them play that mission for the pimp ("Jizzy"), didn't they? I wasn't even fourteen when I paid my dad to pre-order the PC version of SA. Instead of making me a sexist sociopath (it was already too late, lol) I learned a valuable lesson in life: fuck bitches, get money.

It's my experience with women gamers on average, that they prefer story-driven games and role-playing.

Sounds familiar, but how? Why don't old people play video games? Possibly because they were adults when video games apeared as children's toys. Could you attract them with an engaging story? Hell no, unless the gameplay was no more complicated than turning pages. Games are sensory overload, something that kids want. But then how about girls who know video games and have played them every now and then? They know the harmless games kids play are not for them, but offer them an "adult" story with adult people or a world where you can sink into and it might be a sale. Of course, this will get us the downside of arbitrary gameplay in the eyes of these beginner gamers. For example I have two female friends who play casual free-to-play games but watch LPs of story driven ones because it's free and doesn't waste the time that goes into learning the game.

Can you honestly say you would be jumping to play a game about a female protagonist shopping for clothes, even if it was super hardcore and genuinely challenging? Remember, just because it's a traditionally feminine thing doesn't inherently mean you find it unappealing, it's just very likely that you do.

Hehe, the first challenge is to even come up with a hypothetical example. Some sort of Black Friday simulator is the deepest clothes shopping game I can think of this side of The Sims. However, horses are for girls (here at least - we have no cowboys or manly ranches), but I could see myself enjoying a well-made Olympic Equestrian Game (even if it had Dressage in it) with your own stable and everything. Another point is that "hardcore" already narrows it down a lot. Everyone likes filming, but "Cinematography with Vittorio Storaro" would be a really niche title.

One, it's becoming increasingly grating for you to keep referring to action-y style games as 'dudebro'. LOTS of girls enjoy those kinds of games, and not because they're "adapting", because they actually legitimately like them. The fact that you keep delegating those types of games as purely male interests is pretty insulting and frankly floating into actual sexism territory if you think that girls only like that kind of thing because they're "adapting" and not out of any genuine interest on their own accord.

I say it comes down to how these things are codified in the minds of the public. If the commercials you see are for CoD, GTA, and WoT and people point at those saying: "That's a video game." The chance we end up with a male majority of gamers is 100%. Cooking Mama, The Sims, and that Kardashian game would flip it the other way. The reality is closer to the former but not a whole lot when we start to add in all the rather neutrally appealing games. Another thing is I feel video games are pervasive enough that people are less likely to go "I like X, I wonder if there's a game about X." but "I wonder if there's a game I like. Hey, this one's about X!" The time of the latter is long gone.

I also agree. AAA is about the market they can exploit. It's not that they don't want to cater to a "new" demographic, but they don't think they can include enough of the old one at the same time. The problem is with the juvenile fools who will dismiss everything but their prized triple-A as not worth anyone's time and indeed be the first ones to point at the commercials.

 

[Areloch]

Sucks about the captcha error, but I see you opted for sarcasm and falling back into sexist categorizing rather than actually answering my question.

Unfortunate.

Blame it on captcha error deleting my long and thoughtful response.

So, allow me to ask: why is it ok if girls like shooting stuff but it can't be ok for boys liking cutesy stuff?

You brought MLP as an example: doesn't it, again, demonstrate that videogames do NOT need to always be about buff guys shooting to be liked by boys too?

And you didn't answer my sarcastic reply either. Is it ok for you that developers keep making too many stereotyped-white-males-killing-villains instead of coming up with creativity and variety?

Do you consider videogames to be targeted more at males than females? Are you ok with it and think it's how it should be? Do you honestly believe that not targeting white straight teenagers would suddenly make the game industry collapse?

Answer me.

And keep in mind one thing: I am a woman who likes videogames about shooting stuff. That doesn't mean I don't think that it's usually males who like shooting stuff, and that also doesn't mean I think women who'd rather play cutesy games can't have them and have to deal with shooters and muscles.

Ok, why do you keep falling back on the 'boys don't like cutsey stuff' thing, especially when you acknowledge my example of MLP?

They CAN. Keep in mind, however, that people only have so much time and money. If someone has $60 to spend on a game for the month, and their choice is the new Cooking Mama, or the new Call of Duty and they want both roughly equally, other factors come into play that obviously bias the interest toward Call of Duty.

Factors such as more people like fast paced action games than alternative gameplay, if their friends are getting/have gotten CoD already because it, unlike Cooking Mama, has multiplayer, that will heavily bias the decision, and due to it's design and nature, CoD is designed to be played repetitively for very long periods of time, which gives it an initial impressive of having a greater 'bang for their buck'.

It's a lot more complicated an issue than a person standing in a Matrix-esque whiteroom looking at a video game and going 'Ew, that's for GIRLS'.

As for your question in particular, you used "Too Many" again, which is some utterly arbitrary subjective value. I enjoy derpy action explode-o-thons, as do most of the gamers I know, male and female.

Both of my male and female friends, myself included, also buy non-actiony games when they strike us as interesting and worth playing. So from my personal anecdotal experience, no, I don't see anything wrong with the current situation because both actiony and non-actiony games are produced in numbers and types sufficient to appeal to me and my friends, and are doing well enough that the companies making them can keep making them.

As I said to ThatOtherGirl, the appeal of the non-standard gameplay market has only really started in the pat 2 or 3 years, where people realized that weird, doofy and unique games and gameplay have a broad appeal.

One could make the complaint that AAA relies very heavily on safe momentum and minimizes how much risk they'll take, but I don't find that to be a sexism issue. It just means that the broad appeal of those types of games is JUST now becoming known and AAA will move to target that demographic now that it realizes it's there, but that takes time.

We saw this back in the early console game days, where 90% of games made were platformers, because they sold well, were fun, and were 'safe'. As gaming expanded and technology got better, we saw developers take more attempts and unique gameplay experiences and some worked out and some didn't. It's the same thing here. Actiony games ABSOLUTELY sell, but a fashion game might NOT, so a company that's putting tens of millions of dollars on the line up front is, predictably, going to go with the shrewd business option. That doesn't make it sexist.

Hopefully that answers your question. Could you answer mine now? Do you feel that companies should be obligated to take on tens of millions of dollars of financial risks to target niche demographics?

 

[Jack Action]

When's the last time anyone felt empathy over a nutshot?

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

You have utterly missed my point. The point is, a fashion game is INCREDIBLY niche.

...

So again, point blank: Do you honestly believe that if a AAA studio produced and marketed a fashion game, it would reach the same sales numbers as a Call of Duty game?

If I may interject, I think you are right but only because of a reinforcement loop. Basically, who owns gaming capable hardware right now? The people who play games. Who plays games? The people who enjoy the games currently on the market. What games are on the market? The games you describe.

I think that a sold fashion based game could sell like crazy, if the genre was established enough for there to be a strong audience. But I also think that a budget title in the genre could sell very, very well because it is a severely under served market. And any major company could produce it with little difficulty for fairly cheap. They could take shortcuts to create the game cheaper too, like reusing some of the hundreds of character models they have created for other games. The technology for in engine cut scenes also exists (for the runway/display portion of the game) and simply having models walk and pose is easy compared to the elaborate cut scenes game companies are used to making. It could be very cheap to create.

In fact, we already know of one game series that does this. It is created on a shoe string budget, usually only sells a couple hundred thousand copies per game and still manages to be worth creating: DOAX. Except that isn't a fashion game, unless you are talking about swimsuits.

The funny thing is you wouldn't even have to give up the fanservice aspects of a DOAX game. Fashion is often very sexy, and there is nothing stopping the developer from including a few sets of lingerie or swimsuits for each woman. This is a game that could appeal to a ton of people, it is even a proven concept if you include the fanservice to fall back on, but no one is making it.

But I am getting off topic. The point is that if games like this started to be made then people who enjoy games like this would start gaming, which builds the audience, which makes games like this more lucrative.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Hehe, the first challenge is to even come up with a hypothetical example. Some sort of Black Friday simulator is the deepest clothes shopping game I can think of this side of The Sims.

Well, perhaps that's a failure of imagination.

My point is that we've absorbed the notion that a game about clothes shopping will have boring and shallow gameplay, and I can't help but wonder if that's because we assume that shopping for clothes itself is inherently boring and shallow. I mean, is the gameplay concept of a typical first person shooter terribly deep? Not really. You press buttons to move and you click on people to shoot guns at them. The depth in that case does not come from the fact that shooting guns at people is inherently deeper than shopping for clothes, but rather is a feature of the execution. True, we haven't had many good shopping for clothes games, but maybe that has something to do with the fact that a lot of men will instantly dismiss the concept of shopping for clothes at all as boring and shallow.

Another point is that "hardcore" already narrows it down a lot.

Not necessarily. Many games are marketed and find great success on the premise of being "hardcore". What I mean is a game which adheres to the highly competitive, highly challenging, "git gud scrub", time-intensive, genre-based model which male gamers often claim is absent from typical games designed for female audiences, which indeed are often considerably easier to play, lack the highly competitive element, are often abstract games rather than simulations and often don't rely heavily on metagame knowledge or skills (there is a reason why all FPS games have the same control setup).

So my point is really, what if someone designed a game to reflect the core engagement mechanics generally preferred by a male dominated audience, but whose subject matter depicted something not traditionally enjoyed by a male audience. Would male gamers play it? I would say the answer is probably no, which is why such games do not exist.

Women play FPS games, strategy games, action-RPGs, MMOs and other typically "male dominated" genres, sure, but is that because the subject matter of these games is gender neutral and equally catering to both men and women, or is it because those games are the only ones on the market catering to that particular engagement style?