Great minds think alike! (Should have read further before posting my similar comment.)
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The people are the government, so thereâs no point.
Or - we could keep all of the games and get rid of the market itself. The independents already exist for people to play.
Are you suggesting that sex tends to be anti-social? If so, itâs a weird outlook IMO, but surprisingly not uncommon. I have recommended sex as a more social kind of interaction for games, but most developers panic about having anything to do with it.
There have been both solid steps and mis-steps in this direction. I think itâs the same problem - comics are great, but the comics industry is garbage. Same with the industries for music, movies, games, etc. Culture industries just seem like a bad idea.
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Admiral Grace Hopper is one of my heroes. I missed seeing her speak in person, although not by much, but in my USAF tech school classes we did see what at the time was fairly recent footage of her discussing trying to explain computers to military officers and handing out ânanosecondsâ - lengths of copper wire cut to how far light travels in a nanosecond.
It wasnât until years later that I read more about her efforts to develop compilers and other computer innovations. That made me admire her all the more.
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Did the wire length correspond to the travel distance in vacuum, or in a cable? This tends to quite substantially differ.
but yeah⌠women had nothing to do with computing, as a certain pack of wankers points out⌠I mean, wimmims, what have we ever done for the human race, amirite⌠other than birth it and raise it and still make important contributions to society along the way. But, you know, other than that⌠/s
But yeah, Hopper was BAD ASS for sure!
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The irony here is that I am currently the mostly-at-home parent to two teenagers. And Mr. Bells ⌠programs video games for a living. Iâm the one who doesnât get social interaction here; the teens are either rolling their eyes and ignoring me, or Out Doing Things (that often require me drop anything I might be doing and chauffeur them). Mr. Bells has the option of telecommuting a day a week, but he rarely takes it because, as he says âProgramming is collaborative. I need to be in the office so I can talk to people when I need to.â
Lonely my ass. Heâs got 300+ equally nerdy and brilliant people to talk to all day. I have the internet and people who only want to talk about Minecraft, gmod, and Korean soap operas.
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The mere existence of the forest prevents the shrubbery from every being seen or noticed. Society and general perception only has cognitive space for a single generalization about gaming, and that generalization will be that gaming is for boys (not men) as long as the market is dominated by young men.
Letâs be realistic, culturally, it is a zero-sum game. Either young males (with caveats noted above) dominate and no-one else is welcome, or theyâre to be de-facto excluded because the wants, desires, and behaviours that come with many young males are not accepted in that culture.
This is not about being able to find a niche. Some young women have been able to find a niche and enjoy certain games. Itâs about whether they should have to find a niche.
(Of course, reality is rather more nuanced than my bombast here, but I simplify for clarity and effect :-).)
Well played! Hats off to you.
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Itâs been a while since I saw the films (about 26 years ⌠when did that happen?) so I had to look on YouTube to see if I could find it. This might not be the exact one they showed us, but itâs similar enough and I remember the comparison of the nano- and micro- seconds. In this clip, she references the distance traveled by electricity, so yeah, electric impulse via cable, not light through vacuum. (Which make sense, seeing as how sheâs addressing programmers and computer engineers!)
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You get all the hugs!
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Well said!
Stay at home motherhood (well, parenthood, but we know how it stands) can easily be enormously isolating, which is a strong reason to take at least a part time job even when it might not make strict economic sense.
Especially with young children, my wife liked the asynchronous nature of the Internet. Since she couldnât ever depend on having 5 minutes in a row to herself, email and forums provided much of her social interaction with her peers.
My job was to understand that no matter what sort of day I had on my job, taking care of an infant was a lot tougher. (I got to talk with peers and have uninterrupted washroom breaksâŚ)
Itâs why having paternal leave for the first few weeks was so important. Itâs critical for any first time father to learn that by contrast, weâre getting 8 hours of vacation each day, and thus need to be ready to take our share of the real work when we get home from work each day.
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Iâm going to assume that youâre not a complete trolley based on your more reasonable second post - honestly though - eliminate the demographic? WTF am I supposed to make of that?
It really isnât - having actually been a young male*, I can assure you that I was able to have female friends and act rationally in public without having to be excluded from society. I have three brothers too - we were able to enjoy the occasional violent game along with having more âfeminineâ interests (I was recently on the bus with another young guy who had also brought his sewing with him). None of us are are particularly aggressive and we all care quite a bit about having a society where women feel safe.
In any case, short of literally eliminating young men, where would they go? This whole argument is a counsel of despair that ignores the agency of men beyond their biology. Create spaces where it is clear that bad behaviour is not acceptable. Take control and eliminate bad behaviour from that space, rather than proposing some government ban that has zero chance of success. Make it clear that young men arenât just problematic and are actually vital to a functioning society (parental leave is a good idea - now my wife is the one with the 8 hour holidays while I slowly go mad from too many renditions of âLet it goâ). @Elsa_K suggested another example: only allow 100 friends in a game (or allow people to set their own number). After that, you have to convince someone to drop one of their friends in order to be included in their group, and you donât have to deal with a lot of the trollies. Make sure the best spaces go to those who promote a better community, and abusive participants get sidelined or banned. Itâs not just women and older men who want a decent experience online, there are many young men who would prefer it too.
*Wait, youâre a guy too? Yeah, figures.
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I saved this link, ages ago, for just this eventuality:
A small excerpt:
- Geek media long ago has decide to optimize towards a straight cis
male mostly white audience. This means most content of geek media,
the way geek media is advertised, and also geek media related
merchandise are all catering to that target audience. Leading to very
few properties with female protagonists or the idea that female
models in multiplayer are too expensive.- To optimize the messaging for their target audiences â meaning making
them feel superior to anybody else â they sell male power fantasies,
with few to none strong women. They make women obtainable like
objects and present women as sexually available, dependent on men and
needy by sexualizing them. Secondary outlets (websites, print
magazines, tv shows and such) about geek stuff â if depending on
advertising revenue â need to actively avoid getting a too gender
diverse audience. Simply because publishers of geek media are
hesitant to buy ads in spaces, where the potential viewer is too much
likely to be a woman, since women are not their target.- Conventions need to be careful about how they implement
anti-harassment policies or if they prohibit exploitative marketing
(like booth babes), if they are dependent on big name publishers.
Because publishers need conventions to be a welcoming space for their
target audience, meaning men who respond to sexual objectification of
women and who dig the idea, that they are superior to women. When
media outlets allow for gated content â meaning that publishers can
decide if the ads they buy will be shown only to specific
demographics â women will not get to see a lot of content that might
be interesting to them, even though they are enjoying the same
subjects and hobbies men do.- The list is longer and some of the points above have many sub-forms
of their own, but you get the idea. It is a huge network of
self-perpetuating bullshit and self-fulfilling prophecies. It poisons
everything and is biased towards confirming itself.
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Says who? That is the kind of statement that really irritates me.
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I see red every time I see some dude whining about how itâs unfair that girls get to be nerds now, and that girls hated/tormented/mocked ânerdsâ (understood to be entirely masculine), because what fucking bullshit that is.
But you know, I shouldnât be surprised, because to such dudes all women who arenât the epitome of the âtrophyâ girl might as well be invisible. Because they donât give a shit about women as people: itâs all about women as status signals. They donât actually want the girl, they envy the status that âgettingâ that girl represents.
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Itâs funny because it was only recently that boingboing shared this:
Which reveals the extent to which the same damn job and same damn skill set gets described as requiring attention to detail and patience when itâs considered womenâs work, and lone dedication and genius when itâs considered masculine.
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In January 1945, at the peak of codebreaking efforts, some 9,000 personnel were working at Bletchley;[28] over 12,000 different persons (some 80% of them women, primarily seconded from Britainâs armed forces and Civil Service[30]) were assigned there at various points throughout the war.
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I wanted to take a second to explain what she is trying to say - I think some guys are confused.
We grew up playing games. We had enormous fun doing so, and we miss that.
But the thing is, as a woman - Iâm 37 years old - games we like just seemed to vanish as we got older. It is very rare now to see a game like Myst, a game like Zork (Nemesis was my favorite), a game like the Longest Journey. Games that have mystery where the challenge doesnât necessarily involve you killing things, but more about you achieving things. Figuring things out. Doing things that make you feel central to a story and like you have importance, with characters that are relatable to you as a person. Not a lot of women I know would relate very much to miss jiggly tits and her specific bounce physics. Games where you can do achievements, you can become the best chef, the best designer, build something awesome (or awesomely pretty), solve a mystery, be the hero, that would appeal to you as a girl or a woman.
We donât really get that. As we age thatâs not available to us anymore. And we remember when we were children how awesome and involving and fulfilling it was for us, and when we got olderâŚit was like we werenât important anymore. Like the things we like are silly or something. There were not really many video games that continued to grow with us, very few4 games that developed to market to us. If you were a girl games became obsolete.
There are other factors as well. I realize the love in this article and how she tries to express the way we get crowded out, pushed aside and treated like our wants arenât important enough to be marketed to in a highly interactive media, something that has the potential to be more enriching than merely reading a book, and tries to be diplomatic. But itâs not just that thatâs the issue. Itâs not just boys, itâs not just the marketing, itâs not just the giant jiggly tits, I think itâs womenâs culture that partially does it.
We would love to play games, if:
-we had the time. Please understand that this does not mean every woman, but weâre usually busy managing our schedules, everyone elseâs schedules, work, home, husbands, children, pets, food management, everything. If weâre in school weâre managing that.
-we didnât feel like we were being uncomfortably judged by both men and women, and that society found it acceptable for us to play games. We get away with playing them on our phones I think because thatâs not the primary purpose of a phone. A DS though, the primary purpose of that is to play games. That is obvious and regarded as immature.
-we also would be regarded as behaving like a children, odd and weird if we admitted to being a gamer. (Try admitting it to other professional women if you game. Just try it. I dare you.)
-reading a book takes less overhead to break into. You go to a bookstore, or online. Choose a book, read it. Itâs a singular activity. It does not require you to walk into a gaming store, learn new equipment, all the while being treated like a moron and or regarded as if you donât belong, or treated like you are there to buy a childrenâs game.
-gaming is regarded as a childrenâs activity (this is kind of going back to number one) by other women. You are weird if you do it, or childesh and arenât acting like a grown up. This is perfectly acceptable in our minds for men, but if we pick up a gaming instrument and youâre not a gamer for life, itâs like an extreme feeling of discomfort, like someone is going to judge you, and shouldnât you be doing something less childesh and more important? A lot of it goes into how we see ourselves as well.
-you learn to avoid things that cause you discomfort, so as much as you like and wish and would love to have games like you played when you were children and want that feeling of fun and activity back, it comes almost with a feeling of dread. Itâs a lot of stuff at once and you just kind of avoid it, or you have just convinced yourself that a totally interactive medium that has almost limitless potential isnât for you because itâs for children, you give yourself reasons.
-you learn not to try to talk to men about it, or try to get other women interested in it, because itâ not for girls and youâre not a kid, and while most men arenât really hostile about it, they get avoiding when you start actually you know, start speaking with knowledge about games. That sort of avoiding look anywhere else like what the fuck just happened situation.
But some part of you just knows that if it became acceptable, if only things changed a tiny bit that youâd see more people doing this so you can experience the same thing you felt then, that level of involvment and joy and well immersion that you donât really get anymore. But it would be a LOT for it to change, a lot. And as recent events have shown us, while we would love that, are we really willing to play the price of stigma over it? Are we willing to walk through the fire for that? Because it turns out to be fire over what is a hobby for enjoyment, because some people think it belongs to them for some strange reason. And game developers canât seem to overcome this either, because they donât have a clue how to do so, and any time they try itâs unsuccessful because of these various reasons? Itâs a wish, itâs a dream, and it kind of makes you sad. But you have every reason and right to say it. And every justification to want it, even if you know you canât really have it because it would take moving mountains to get there.
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There was a scene in my house last year that your comment reminded me of: picture 4 men playing board games. One is in the kitchen cooking. One is crocheting while he plays. The career Army guy is mixing Tequila Sunrises.
Meanwhile, on the sofa, Iâm drinking a beer and watching football with my daughter whilst the men roll their eyes and shake their heads.
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Yes, this - as a teenage nerd girl no one wanted me around. The popular guys thought I was a weirdo, and the nerdy guys ⌠also thought I was a weirdo. And I had a 1200 baud modem and liked to frequent a BBS or two, so I got to experience sexually targeted internet harassment before there was even an internet! From other ânerd guysâ, I might add, since who else had a modem in 1989?
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Thatâs why they call it âmale gaysâ. Because of the latent homoeroticism of males desire to win the approval of other males.
