Deified Data
Banned
Having a wife who games is just about the best thing in the world. Such an amazing hobby to share with someone.
So, did the human genome in advanced (post-)industrial states around the world rapidly adapt in the last half century, during which the entirety of the population is unlikely to have even played video games, or are you suggesting that a supposedly natural feminine aversion to video games as a medium is the epiphenomenal result of some other phenotypic expression that has seemingly no corresponding result for other, similar media (entertaining or otherwise) such as, e.g., television, film, books, music, etc? Each seems like wildly conjectural, completely irresponsible, pseudo-scientific hogwash, but I'm just curious which sort of wildly conjectural, completely irresponsible, pseudo-scientific hogwash you prefer.
To bring up a counter example, and I know that it hardly rebukes the arguments but I want to add to the discourse, is the marketing for Dota 2. Here is a game that, by its characteristics, shouldn't work if it's directed at men because it features predominant female characters. The only trailer for Dota 2 shows the first "hero" of the game as a woman.
Like it or not, this is pretty accurate. Many women considered men who played videogames as nerds, losers, etc., and you even have some today who attach connotations such as 'living in mom's basement' and the need to 'man up' to guys who play games.
In what ways would a male lead for XIII been the superior choice?
... I really don't think XIII chose a female lead to be more inclusive, gonna be honest there(I get quite the opposite impression from Lightning actually).
And FF VI also kind of had the technical lead as female(Granted the lead swapped a lot, but the 2 characters that were most focused on were female).
If it's that one with a comedian, I'm not clicking it. Because I've seen it and been linked to it many times before. People seem to enjoy linking to it and find it very poignant. It, any many other videos are very commonly used by pro evo. psych folks to prove a point. And most of us on the anti side have already seen them many, many times.
It made me lose all respect for that comedian. And I wouldn't call it a "great Norwegian documentary". I would call it a disgusting and repugnant documentary with a clear agenda. It makes use of lots of poor anecdotal evidence to attempt to prove a point. As well picking certain people and claims from them in order to try to make people on the nature and pro equality side of arguments look ignorant. The man in the video claims that he is only trying to be curios and "raise questions" without an agenda. But the sexist agenda in the 'documentary' is very transparent. Also Simon Baron-Cohen is also doing a disservice to millions of girls and women with autism everywhere. The claims of people like Simon Baron-Cohen are leading to further discrimination against and under diagnosis of girls with autism around the world. Girls with autism are far less likely to be diagnosed than boys. And people are far less likely to be sympathetic to their struggle in society by thinking differently due to gender roles. And the reason for this is because people like Simon Baron-Cohen are promoting extremely backwards neurosexist notions that "Autism is the extreme male brain". Which is complete psuedoscience, and is significantly contributing to the double oppression of women with autism.
That video isn't a revelation and it isn't new to many familiar with nature vs. nurture and evo. psych arguments. It is a very very commonly posted video used to promote an evo. psych agenda. Of course, if that isn't the video you posted I'm going to look a bit silly. But usually when a "Norwegian documentary" is posted, its the sadly oft cited very disgusting one with the Norwegian comedian. It is a documentary with a very sexist agenda. And I'm very saddened for how often is it used in arguments. If it is indeed the video with the comedian, then this is probably more than the 100th time it has been "recommended" to me.
I'm sad that a documentary with such a repugnant sexist agenda is so revered by so many people.
Here, is a good book about the subject refuting many of the claims in the video I assume you are posting.
So, did the human genome in advanced (post-)industrial states around the world rapidly adapt in the last half century, during which the entirety of the population is unlikely to have even played video games, or are you suggesting that a supposedly natural feminine aversion to video games as a medium is the epiphenomenal result of some other phenotypic expression that has seemingly no corresponding result for other, similar media (entertaining or otherwise) such as, e.g., television, film, books, music, etc? Each seems like wildly conjectural, completely irresponsible, pseudo-scientific hogwash, but I'm just curious which sort of wildly conjectural, completely irresponsible, pseudo-scientific hogwash you prefer.
Great post. We do see some similar gender selectiveness in movies, but I'd argue that's because of how they're marketed as well (action movies vs. rom coms e.g.) It seems appealing to sexual preference has a huge determining factor, and a gender difference is merely assumed/implied in that dichotomy by the audience or marketers, respectively.
Having a wife who games is just about the best thing in the world. Such an amazing hobby to share with someone.
Funny you would use that as an example. The relatable hero in The Terminator is Sarah Connor.Seriously? Why do you think the industry is dominated by males and male leads? Males understand males better and male gamers relate more/better to male characters. It's common sense and I'm sick of being made to feel guilty about it every time I bring it up.
Next people will be arguing that masculine characters like Rambo and the Terminator will be better off as females. You can also ask any comic book fan about which Superhero they fantasize of being and 9 times out of 10 it'd be a male character, 1/10 for the weirdos who dream of being Supergirl/Wonder Woman. Is this considered sexism? Of course not.
Tera was at least bearable, I didn't mind her in FF6 because she didn't hog all the focus (despite everyone billing her as the lead character in the game) and allowed Locke and other major male characters to show their presence. I enjoyed FF6 but it definitely wasn't Tera I related to when playing the game.
Seriously? Why do you think the industry is dominated by males and male leads? Males understand males better and male gamers relate more/better to male characters. It's common sense and I'm sick of being made to feel guilty about it every time I bring it up.
Funny you would use that as an example. The relatable hero in The Terminator is Sarah Connor.
A lot of the time I feel video games are the most interesting when you can't or don't relate to the character.
Often it means the character has their own established personality free of self-insert and bland 'everyman/woman' traits that muddy the water of striking characteristics.
That being said that sort of thing isn't everyone's cup of tea, some people like to relate, some people the last thing they want to do is relate. So long as you're buying games you're encouraging the type of game you like to be made. So no reason to savage each other over prefrences.
Yeah, but the Terminator isn't relatable in the first film. He's frightening and emasculating (like in the bedroom scene where he beats the shit out of that one makes guy trying to have sex). The poster I quoted was talking about relatable characters. There's only one scene where you can really relate to the original Terminator, and it's the "Fuck you asshole" line to the annoying neighbor.Yeah, true. But the icon who sold the tickets is definitely Arnold in his sunglasses. It's the rare movie where the person on the cover, and the focus of the movie, is on the villain.
Yeah, but the Terminator isn't relatable in the first film. He's frightening and emasculating (like in the bedroom scene where he beats the shit out of that one makes guy trying to have sex). The poster I quoted was talking about relatable characters. There's only one scene where you can really relate to the original Terminator, and it's the "Fuck you asshole" line to the annoying neighbor.
If we're talking about James Cameron, might as well bring up Aliens too. That movie actually did put its relatable character on much of the marketing (unlike Alien). And it did pretty well at the box office.
I think
I don't think I've ever met a single person, not even the most strident queer theorist, who will deny that hormones affect human behaviors. The issue is more to the side of that claim: what should be identified as the primary factor, cause, or catalyst for an apparent differentiation in the likelihood of use of an entire medium. My personal inclination lends me to believe that it isn't biological per se - considered in the narrow way in which we tend to conceive of biology (this latter point I'll leave vague, because the argument for it goes well beyond the bounds of this video game forum, but does relate directly to my ongoing postgraduate work). This isn't to say that testosterone, estrogen, or whatever are not providing some effect, that they aren't giving someone a nudge, but it would be useful to keep in mind that we don't know how or where exactly that nudge is occurring - viz, it does not necessarily produce directly a particular predisposition away from the entirety of the medium, but could have effects on the organism in other areas or aspects of life and society that have the epiphenomenal result of leading said organism to alternative uses of their time and energy (moreover, I'd like to make it clear that this sort of epiphenomenon does not even necessarily entail an orientation away per se in a directional sense - a point I can only make entirely clear by way of a seemingly unrelated analogy: I very rarely, if ever, eat onions and fuyu persimmons, but I do not eat them for entirely different reasons: The former, onions, I don't eat, because I simply do not like the taste, ergo I actively avoid them. My orientation is purposefully oriented away from onions. Fuyu persimmons, however, I do not eat, because they are rarely available - hachiya I can readily find in stores around this time of year (hence why I have persimmons on the mind), but I never see the fuyu variety - ergo I am not oriented away from fuyu persimmons; they are simply something with which I do not come into physical contact due to a complex mix of geography, biology, economy, etc). This is all to say that drawing a direct causal relationship between biological sex and the use of an entire technological medium is incredibly simplistic in and of itself. The use or not of such a medium is overdetermined by so many different inputs (including hormones) that it is negligent to point at some correlation and immediately leap to a conclusion. There is not, by default, some supposedly natural response by such a large subset of humanity to a technological medium.No. I'm saying that there are differences in our biology (hormones, to say the most obvious one) that influence the way men and women (ON AVERAGE*) behave. Of course the influence of society and culture is big as well. But even just considering that women are on the whole less physically violent than men can give a hint. When you see that, consistently, women prefer media that is more about relationship between people and less about pure action or violence you can see pretty clearly that a lot of women will not be interested in a medium like videogames that works very well in dealing with action and pretty bad at expressing something meaningful about humans.
I won't address the latter point, because I feel I did so sufficiently above, but with the former you are subtly shifting your line of argument, whether you realize it or not, and essentially making a case against something with absolutely no bearing on what I'm arguing. I never said that if we do even the briefest, most superficial survey of entertainment media that we won't find obvious differentiation between genders. I wouldn't make such an argument, because it would be hopelessly futile to defend such a patently false view. What I'm addressing is the use or not of the medium as a whole, which was what you yourself were addressing in the post I originally quoted. You were dealing with why, "[a]fter puberty, a majority of girls stop playing," not why, hypothetically, "after puberty, a majority of girls expect different variants of the video game medium," hence the response I provided. If you go back and reread my original post, hopefully my meaning should now be more clear now.And if you don't see the pattern in other media I don't know what to say. I guess you don't see differences between Eat Pray Love, 50 Shades of Grey, Danielle Steel books and the Fast & Furious series, Tom Clancy books and MMA fighting. I guess it's wildly conjectural, completely irresponsible, pseudo-scientific hogwash to imply that these things appeal differently to men and women because of how men and women are made.
The biology argument you prefer works the exact same way. In fact, so much of the social-constructionist argumentation that proliferated through the 80s and 90s was specifically focused on opening space for human freedom or agency (however conceived) against the perceived desire of sociobiologists to naturalize the present political state of affairs and deny the possibility of alternative social formations.The problem I have with the "it's all society's fault" side is that paints people as puppets of an invisible master and takes away agency from them. Instead of assuming that people do or don't do things because they want or don't want to, the assumption is that their choices are not determined by who they are but by what a mysterious force wants. Even worse, this perspective, in gender-related discourse, takes the male side as the natural state of humankind and the feminine side as the oppressed, slave-like state.
There are so many possible explanations in so many of the threads on this theme that I honestly can't be bothered to enumerate them all. To go back to the original topic of the thread, however, I certainly think the prevailing assumption that girls don't (want to) play video games is contributing.Why would companies who are constantly looking to sell more willfully exclude half of their previous audience?
No doubt, bro. I can't even begin to fathom how anyone could want a badass character like Warrant Officer Ripley to be played by some chick.Next people will be arguing that masculine characters like Rambo and the Terminator will be better off as females.
Boom.No doubt, bro. I can't even begin to fathom how anyone could want a badass character like Warrant Officer Ripley to be played by some chick.
Seriously? Why do you think the industry is dominated by males and male leads? Males understand males better and male gamers relate more/better to male characters. It's common sense and I'm sick of being made to feel guilty about it every time I bring it up.
Next people will be arguing that masculine characters like Rambo and the Terminator will be better off as females. You can also ask any comic book fan about which Superhero they fantasize of being and 9 times out of 10 it'd be a male character, 1/10 for the weirdos who dream of being Supergirl/Wonder Woman. Is this considered sexism? Of course not.
What was the reason, then? Because I'm certain they didn't just toss a coin and choose the sex based on what side came out.
Tera was at least bearable, I didn't mind her in FF6 because she didn't hog all the focus (despite everyone billing her as the lead character in the game) and allowed Locke and other major male characters to show their presence. I enjoyed FF6 but it definitely wasn't Tera I related to when playing the game.
Why the hell would a marketer decide to target half of the potential interested audience? You think that more women than men want to watch the latest Jennifer Aniston rom-com because of how it was marketed and not because, generally speaking, more women are interested in that kind of product?
No doubt, bro. I can't even begin to fathom how anyone could want a badass character like Warrant Officer Ripley to be played by some chick.
No offense, but do you really relate to a JRPG character? You genuinely feel emotional connection to a Final Fantasy character?
"Badass" isn't a character trait per se; it's a description. One that, in fact, is very often applied to this character. A quick Google search of Ripley+Alien+badass results in 142,000 matches. Sigourney Weaver herself even called Ripley a "badass." Obviously, such a description for this one particular character is relatively widespread.Ripley wasn't 'badass', it isn't suppose to be a part of her character trait. What made her work was how 'down to earth' she was, allowing the audience to relate to her more easily. She wasn't there as a symbol for feminism, but rather as a struggling human being that had to overcome great obstacles. She needed to be 'weak' in order for her triumph at the end to be meaningful.
At least have a better idea of your characters before throwing it at my face, genius.
Seriously? Why do you think the industry is dominated by males and male leads? Males understand males better and male gamers relate more/better to male characters. It's common sense and I'm sick of being made to feel guilty about it every time I bring it up.
Next people will be arguing that masculine characters like Rambo and the Terminator will be better off as females. You can also ask any comic book fan about which Superhero they fantasize of being and 9 times out of 10 it'd be a male character, 1/10 for the weirdos who dream of being Supergirl/Wonder Woman. Is this considered sexism? Of course not.
You make it sound like rock climbing.
The amount of male femisnists in the industry currently annoys me to no end.
Ripley wasn't 'badass', it isn't suppose to be a part of her character trait. What made her work was how 'down to earth' she was, allowing the audience to relate to her more easily. She wasn't there as a symbol for feminism, but rather as a struggling human being that had to overcome great obstacles. She needed to be 'weak' in order for her triumph at the end to be meaningful.
At least have a better idea of your characters before throwing it at my face, genius.
The amount of male femisnists in the industry currently annoys me to no end.
If the story and characters are well written, of course. It's what the creators want.
Ripley wasn't 'badass', it isn't suppose to be a part of her character trait. What made her work was how 'down to earth' she was, allowing the audience to relate to her more easily. She wasn't there as a symbol for feminism, but rather as a struggling human being that had to overcome great obstacles. She needed to be 'weak' in order for her triumph at the end to be meaningful.
At least have a better idea of your characters before throwing it at my face, genius.
The amount of male femisnists in the industry currently annoys me to no end.
Another misguided soul who believes "strong human being" isn't somehow the ultimate feminist ideal.
What do you think a feminist is, exactly?
The problem I have with the "it's all society's fault" side is that paints people as puppets of an invisible master and takes away agency from them. Instead of assuming that people do or don't do things because they want or don't want to, the assumption is that their choices are not determined by who they are but by what a mysterious force wants.
Another misguided soul who believes "strong human being" isn't somehow the ultimate feminist ideal.
What do you think a feminist is, exactly?
If the feminists don't know what they are exactly, how are we supposed to know?
There's about 50 different kinds of feminists these days, take your pick on what the definition of feminism actually is.
There's a very clear-cut, baseline definition of feminism out there: advocacy for the equal treatment of women. Picking and choosing crackpot outliers (the same outliers that can be found in any political or philosophical movement) doesn't change that.
Today's feminism movement has greatly varied definitions of equal treatment. And it's not just the outliers. What feminism was in the 20's through the 80's doesn't necessarily reflect what it is today.
There's only one meaningful definition of equal treatment. It defines itself.
And since we're living in the present, it's very safe to assume that we're discussing feminism in the present tense.
I attribute lightning's presence more to a certain lightning obsessed director's preferences, not some attempt to appeal to female gamers(Very far from it I'd say). Not to mention XIII was bad overall not because of the lead, but because almost everything about the narrative was crap.What was the reason, then? Because I'm certain they didn't just toss a coin and choose the sex based on what side came out.
Tera was at least bearable, I didn't mind her in FF6 because she didn't hog all the focus (despite everyone billing her as the lead character in the game) and allowed Locke and other major male characters to show their presence. I enjoyed FF6 but it definitely wasn't Tera I related to when playing the game.
Equal treatment is ranges from fighting actual discrimination, to tropes, to birth control is a right. And everything in between.
I'd be happy if I could get a consistent answer to the question : "If I hold a door open for someone just because she's a woman, does that make me sexist?"
Equal treatment is ranges from fighting actual discrimination, to tropes, to birth control is a right. And everything in between.
I'd be happy if I could get a consistent answer to the question : "If I hold a door open for someone just because she's a woman, does that make me sexist?"
Equal treatment is ranges from fighting actual discrimination, to tropes, to birth control is a right. And everything in between.
I'd be happy if I could get a consistent answer to the question : "If I hold a door open for someone just because she's a woman, does that make me sexist?"
The problem I have with the "it's all society's fault" side is that paints people as puppets of an invisible master and takes away agency from them. Instead of assuming that people do or don't do things because they want or don't want to, the assumption is that their choices are not determined by who they are but by what a mysterious force wants. Even worse, this perspective, in gender-related discourse, takes the male side as the natural state of humankind and the feminine side as the oppressed, slave-like state.
Seriously? Why do you think the industry is dominated by males and male leads? Males understand males better and male gamers relate more/better to male characters. It's common sense and I'm sick of being made to feel guilty about it every time I bring it up.
Next people will be arguing that masculine characters like Rambo and the Terminator will be better off as females. You can also ask any comic book fan about which Superhero they fantasize of being and 9 times out of 10 it'd be a male character, 1/10 for the weirdos who dream of being Supergirl/Wonder Woman. Is this considered sexism? Of course not.
Being asked to relate to a character regardless of their gender is not as tightly connected to your own masculinity or femininity as you suggest. Terminator asks you to relate to an unprepared single woman trying to survive, this doesn't mean people who connect with Sara Connor dream of being Sarah Connor, only that the visceral and constant struggle for her life drives the action of the film and keeps the audience engaged. Unless you've got a real problem with rooting for a woman to live to the end of the film, in which case you're going to have to come up with a stronger justification than 'it's common sense, I'd want a guy in that role to survive more than a woman.'
Replace Lightning with a male version of Lightning in XIII and you still end up with an empty shell devoid of emotion or character traits that engage the player. You singling out her gender being forced upon Square Enix by unnamed forces and hand waving it as 'common sense' as a pivot point for why the game failed on a narrative or commercial level is insufficient to escape the patina of sexism dripping from your criticism.
"Badass" isn't a character trait per se; it's a description. One that, in fact, is very often applied to this character. A quick Google search of Ripley+Alien+badass results in 142,000 matches. Sigourney Weaver herself even called Ripley a "badass." Obviously, such a description for this one particular character is relatively widespread.
But let's not stop there. Let's perhaps ponder why you use only the singular "trait" instead of its plural form, and what that says about your comprehension and expectations of characterization. Moreover, we should possibly wonder why you seemingly think a singe word, "badass," could be an adequate "trait" to sum up an entire character - not Ripley, of course, as you've made unmistakably clear, but someone else, undoubtedly with a penis.
What do you think a feminist is, exactly?
You're unbelievable, I actually provided a sensible counter argument to your naivety and you counter with my incorrect use of grammar and a Google search.
Vasquez was the female 'badass', Ripley was just an 'ordinary' woman/human being and I don't think it was ever intended for the audience to draw parallels between the two characters. Her story was there to signify the timely reminder of what human beings are capable of when pushed to extremes, she's not a 'badass' in any sense, merely a survivor that did what she had to survive. Her character would've worked regardless of sex and so please stop drumming the 'badass female' argument.
This is genius, I don't know how devs didn't figure this out sooner.So if they can relate male characters, what the hell is the point of us arguing at all? Stick to male leads and everyone should be happy, right?
Utterly fascinating.Equality for women. The movement has merit and I support their goals, but reality is most feminists just want free handouts without making the effort to earn anything, and they do by bringing up the "we've been mistreated for too long so now you need to give us free stuff to make up for it". I recall a girl at work bring up this argument when she didn't get the promotion she wanted, citing sexism and threatening to sue. My managers called her bluff and she had to leave the company in shame. She didn't get the job because she was lazy and didn't have the skillset to do the job right, and she knew it.
You think feminism is equality for humans in general? Hah! That'll be the day, when have feminists ever sided with or helped men? They drum on about 'gender equality' but I don't think they actually know what the hell that means.
On another note, all this talk of I as a 'male' should be able to relate to female characters because of they are essentially 'human beings'. Well, I can flip that and state that females should be able to relate to male characters just as well, right?
So if they can relate male characters, what the hell is the point of us arguing at all? Stick to male leads and everyone should be happy, right?
I don't know what "adding females for the sake of it" means.
Can someone explain?
I don't know what "adding females for the sake of it" means.
Can someone explain?