No girl wins: three ways women unlearn their love of video games

boing
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Real and lasting damage? Like the 90% of murders in the United States that are committed by men? Is that real enough, and damaging enough for you – or is that just another gender stereotype misrepresented by those with an agenda?

Gender is not destiny, not by a long shot, but it is the source of some of the deepest fundamental differences that humans have. Race, religion, culture are incredibly superficial in comparison to gender.

So when I read the above article:

For my sister, and so many girls and women like her, the gaming marketplace begins and ends with these mainstream visions of gaming, and the mainstream stores like Game Stop that sell them. “It’s obviously for boys. The nudity of course, but even the colors. From what I see, they mostly hire boys.” We discuss the posters and cardboard stand-ups we’ve seen in their windows: stubbly white men cradling bricks of oily black weaponry, or half-naked voluptuous women with pouting, glossy lips inviting the onlooker to ogle. Be the hero, over and over again, in a million monochrome worlds: crush the bad guy, fuck the woman, do a whole lot of shooting in between.

Is the answer:

  1. Change GameStop to be free of guns and violence and explosions and action movie tropes and sexualized women
  2. Have a different section of GameStop which offers games that cater to different tastes, somewhat like Barnes and Noble has a Romance Novel section (among others)
  3. Open a totally different store that caters to women’s videogame interests exclusively

I think the real answer is none of the above, but a fourth option: smartphone and tablet gaming unencumbered by these dumb real world constraints. Pretty much every game mentioned in that article would run fine on a modern tablet or smartphone – Cooking Mama, Never Alone, Gone Home, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, Journey, Transistor etc. In fact, most of them exist in one form or another in the iOS App Store today.

Today’s smartphone is literally a computer from 2007. And that gap is closing every single day; performance has doubled every generation of iPhone, such that today’s iPhone 6 is close to 8 times faster than the 2011 iPhone 4 – and today’s iPad Air 2 has 8 times the memory of the original 2011 iPad. As far as we have come, that is just the beginning. The next iPhone will (effing) finally have 2 GB of ram, and be significantly faster than the already blazing fast iPhone 6. I’m not even sure there will be a generation of consoles after the PS4 and XBone, and perhaps… good riddance?

Instead of waiting for – let’s face it – the entrenched, ossified, “hard core” console gamer culture to adapt to them, women should be embracing the smartphone and tablet worlds (as gamers, as game authors) that are already sweeping the whole world away in front of them. No weird nearly-all-male GameStop vibe, no posters of hulking men with black glistening guns and scantily clad damsels in distress, just infinite choice presented in a completely judgment free, totally egalitarian, digital App Store.

The whole article speaks to the need for a new gaming mainstream. Rather than changing the weird “mainstream” gaming culture of the last decade, why not embrace the new mainstream gaming culture of app stores smartphones and tablets that is already (mostly) here, and still forming?

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Side note: Running Gone Home on my Mac Airbook near cooked it well done! Had to take breaks to let the poor thing cool down!

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For the three things presented in the article:

  1. Disqualification: girls almost certainly have played video games, but then gamer culture carefully categorizes the games they’re most likely to play as illegitimate.

  2. Social hierarchy of the gaming community: the narrow, deforming spaces it offers to the women who do persevere: hot and treated as sex object, or unattractive and weird. Both are put down by men.

  3. Marketing: “There aren’t really any games that seem positive to me,” my sister explains. “They’re all about violence and nudity. I don’t like how the female body is made out. It makes me really uncomfortable. All of the commercials are for guys.”

I feel like the focus on GameStop and the old school “real physical world” console model of gaming is a major part of the problem here.

  1. Smartphone and tablet worlds are full of casual games, as well as hardcore games. Nobody is going to disqualify you because you are not playing a “real” match 3 game or endless runner on your phone.

  2. Every human being on the planet has a smartphone. How could using it to play games make you any different than the rest of us in the social hierarchy? This is not a niche that anyone owns, much less a gender – it belongs to all humans. Everyone has a smartphone plastered to their face 24/7, it is not a weird basement dweller, glued to your giant 40 inch man cave plasma TV for 8 hours while binging on Fiesta Salsa Doritos and sucking down Sangria Blast Mountain Dew kind of occupation any more.

  3. Move to a mobile App Store, and the choices get a lot better – games are equally marketed to men and women. And why not? Your market is no longer limited to the hardcore tech enthusiasts with man caves and a 50 dollar a day anime habit, but every person who wants to talk to another person anywhere on earth. That is literally everyone.

Get away from this physical real world GameStop stuff, and suddenly the picture seems a lot brighter, for everyone involved.

Edit: and if anyone thinks I am trying to dump people in the “filthy casuals” bucket, I really believe based on current trajectories there is a high chance that there will literally never be another generation of consoles past the current PS4 and XBone. Not so much a “good riddance” – though I think you could make a solid case for that too – so much as “we ALL need to evolve past the ossified console mindset to reach the next billion gamers”.

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1, 2, …3?

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Your logic is leaping all over the place here. The case that 90% of the murders in the US are committed by men seems to be the root. If we take that as a given, you then seem to presume the cause for this is stereotyping? That doesn’t logically follow. You further say that I might believe that this is a statistic given by those with an agenda, which…you know if you want to have an argument with a straw man, I’m not going to stop you.

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that 90% of the murders in the US being committed by men is caused by biology. There is no persuasive evidence I’ve seen for that belief, and I personally think that to view it in that way would be destructively simplistic.

There’s no evidence to support this assertion. Furthermore, viewing the world through this lens turns gender lines into an alienating thing when there is no reason to believe that.

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Until recently, most psychologists thought differences in the degree to which men and women exhibit physical aggression stemmed largely from societal reinforcement of traditional gender roles. Social factors undoubtedly account for a part of the differences. But in a study published in 2007 psychologist Raymond Baillargeon of the University of Montreal and his colleagues reveal that as early as the age of 17 months, 5 percent of boys but only 1 percent of girls engage in frequent physical aggression, such as kicking and biting. What is more, this gap does not widen between 17 and 29 months, as might be expected if environmental influences such as socialization by parents were to blame. These findings suggest that biological factors—such as the effects of testosterone on brain function—contribute to sex differences in violent behavior.

And, fellow mammal,

males are the more belligerent sex in virtually all mammalian species that biologists have studied. Even the one marked exception to this trend—the spotted (“laughing”) hyena—may prove the rule. The female hyena, which is more physically aggressive than her male counterpart, has higher testosterone levels than the male does.

It is not too surprising that increased aggression leads to increased risk of homicide, is it?

Not just violence / aggression is affected by testosterone, there are some fascinating porn consumption stats (pdf) as well, with truly vast gender differences in that data. Many games scratch the same kind of itch.

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You know what this study doesn’t do?

Tie that belligerence to the murder rate.

Do you know why it might not do that?

Because the two are not causally linked. Or else we’d have to say that black men in the US are apparently more “male” than white men, because they’re the ones getting arrested for murders! Or maybe it’s just that white men can “control” themselves?

“Men may be more belligerent” is not the same as saying “Men commit more murders because they’re men.”

And keep in mind that 17 months is PUH-LENTY of time for social learning to kick in - kids learn stuff at an exceptional rate. The line between biology and culture is not a clearly demarcated one, and while younger kids are sought for that division, the way children learn their society is not well understood. The study doesn’t even suggest that this continues into adulthood, let alone that it is the foundation of some great and fundamental gender divide. That’s all you.

It is if you like to have evidence for things and not just comfortable stories that people tell themselves to excuse their horrible behavior.

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Sincere inquiry - why weird relationship between a mushroom-stomping plumber, a classical damsel-in-distress princes and a weird punk-fetishistic dragon-tortoise is seriously considered as potential source of future misogyny and negative stereotyping, but ultraviolence is not a concern?

Not defending Anita here (I happen to think that ultraviolence in games does not correlate with negative social outcomes such as violence because there is no evidence for it, much like there is no evidence that would suggest that Mario’s shenanigans with Peach and Bowser cause negative social outcomes such as general sexism or specifically the reduction of my chances to become fortune 500 CEO :wink: )

But at least she is being thoroughly consistent

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Now, I am sure we can agree it’s not because women can’t work hard but,
in general, because women, even in the 21st century, are the ones
looking after the children and the household. And even if a particular
woman doesn’t have kids, she is, whether she likes it or not,
responsible for the majority of housework in a relationship, even if she
also has a career. This is lamentable but it is the real world.

For one, that ‘lamentable fact’ certainly does not keep women OUT of exploitative, hard, shitty hours jobs. Way too many women have absolutely no choice regarding their work schedules on TOP of managing their households and feeding their kids to fend off sneers about them being supposedly too choosey for the game- or any- industry.

Secondly, dude above was definitely not a victim of innocently, poorly chosen words. He said women are complaining and whining because they prefer to get a bunch of perks from the game industry (like a somewhat inclusive one, go figure) while sitting around and bitching. His words clearly and repeatedly represented his opinion on the matter- and of women. I don’t get why you’re attacking everyone else’s reading comprehension to defend this guy. Plenty of us are involved or personally know people in the game industry; his was not some precious insight into a mysterious world that had to be protected at all costs. He was contemptuous, dismissive and rude and I’m glad the luckdragon got fed.

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Yes, that is precisely why I brought that up, I was about to kill a bunch of people and then at the trial yell “oops the testosterone did it!” and then the laugh track would kick in and the judge would bang his gavel and give me the secret man wink as he dismissed the case.

Anyways, more seriously, nobody is bringing up the heavily documented science linking aggression levels and testosterone (not just in humans – in all mammals) as an excuse, but as a way to help understand why it is that 90% of homicides are committed by men. And maybe just maybe why men are inordinately interested in aggressive violent video games that most women find are not their cup of tea.

(Also correlated strongly with porn consumption, really do look at that pdf I linked. Sax and violins, man. Sax and violins.)

I would also like to add that, as a man,I find it helpful to understand my own biases and predispositions and biology so that I can control myself better and compensate for those times when a million years of biology is telling my body that that guy is all up in my grill and how dare he and you’ll show him, you’ll show everyone and my old pal testosterone helpfully amps me for combat by filling my body with rage and adrenaline. No that doesn’t cloud my judgment at all, thanks million years of biology, thanks for everything. Really.

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Well, while I definitely agree that more diversity == good and wish author and her sister finding the games they love…
…I find the pretty explicit stereotyping of all women as “not fond of computer game violence” and “fond of specific types of game mechanics” to be deeply unsettling.

That’s sexism.

That’s insidious, pervasive sexism that pisses me off way more than any amount of 13yos screaming about [censored] in multiplayer matches.

Women aren’t born hardwired for “female interests” and “female technicolor aesthetics” and “non-agressive empathic gameplay” or some other bullshit like that, there is literally nothing about having two X chromosomes that would cause that kind of hardwiring (there may or may not be predispositions, science still out on this one, but definitely not “hardwired destiny” to prefer Cooking Mama over Alien:Isolation and Bulletstorm)

Pretending that “women who are into nonviolent, cutesy games” are the only women there are borders on (I hate the term, but the shoe fits!) erasure.

So, yes, more diversity is allright and enjoy the games you like, but please, pretty please don’t stereotype women into one homogenous hivemind. OK?

P.S.:
Also, calling bull on mario cart thing. It has vast cross-gender appeal, and people who disagree should get into the sea :wink:

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It doesn’t help us understand that. A study of agression in 17-month old children has pretty much bupkiss to say on the crime rate of adult men. At most, it might help explain why little Billy kicks when he doesn’t get his way. You’re twisting the study to fit your own narrative.

Oh, so you don’t commit murders because of your man-rage? Well then, why would you imagine anyone else does?

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Except there are multiple studies, extending beyond the Homo sapiens species. There’s apparently quite a lot of underlying biochemistry that can’t be just wished away.

Probability, thresholds, predispositions, statistical crap like that.

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I don’t, but statistically, some percent of men will.

Maybe the conditions were just freakishly right, maybe that person had an unfortunate childhood, who knows, but the more testosterone you feed the machine, the higher that percent will be.

I just had a road rage incident a few weeks ago, in fact. It was not good. It was really double plus ungood. If I had been carrying? It could have been triple plus ungood. I am honestly still embarrassed thinking about it.

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I am looking for persuasive evidence. The purported evidence was not actually evidence. You saying there’s evidence is not actually evidence. People say there’s evidence and it turns out they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Ah, right, everyone else might commit murders out of man-rage, but I’m the exception. Nice little fundamental attribution error we’ve got going on there.

This behavior isn’t justified or explained away by your gender.

Also, obligatory

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What is everyone going about murders? I was hoping this thread would come up with some nice video game suggestions. Who wouldn’t play the following?

game.png964×382 71.6 KB

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Because that is basically a real life simulator, and who would want to play that?

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Careful. Someone will show up to remind you that women picked fruit while men speared mastodons so that’s why they like pink and stuff.

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Your life must be very different from mine.

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My father left me many gifts… some of those gifts I try really hard not to give to my children in turn.