Are mainstream devs deliberately discouraging women from gaming?

[deadish]

Why you guys are attacking me like I called your mum a slut ... I seriously have no idea.

You made a stupid claim based on shaky anecdotal evidence and when we didn't believe you and pointed out how the logic doesn't hold up, you started whining about how we were attacking your free speech. I have no patience for that nonsense.

You are not attacking my free speech. I mean I'm still talking.

But you are attacking me a.k.a an ad hominem attack. You accuse me of bullshitting (it's my own view of things; I never claimed it was a universal truth), of having poor moral character/being sexist, taunt me with shit like :

And you're still going to lose.

I mean WTF man. What happened to keeping it civil.

Feel free to point out counter-evidence or where my chain of reasoning lapsed. I may or may not change my mind, but I would be happy to read it and take it into account.

 

[Phasmal]

Snip.

I wasn't in a hardcore raiding guild either. It was a social/casual raiding guild, run by a woman, with several women in it, all of whom played seriously. My boyfriend's been playing since vanilla and it's been the same for him.
I don't see why your anecdotal evidence is better than mine.

Game developers know very well women like me are around. And even if they didn't care, the way they present their female characters is misogynistic at worst and just plain dumb at best. If I were a dude I'd be kinda insulted if that was what they thought I wanted.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Other than the fact that basing your opinions on generalizing your very non-general personal experiences is only slightly more accurate than picking your opinions at random?

When did I claim it was accurate? I'm well aware of my own fallibility.

I'm just here to share what I experienced and my own view on things.

Truth be told. Like most internet arguments, I expect it to end on a "agree to disagree" note.

Where all the taunts and accusations about my supposed poor moral character comes from. I have no idea.

And we're here to tell you that your view isn't reality-based, and that you should get a better view.

I also have no sympathy for people who say "well, I'm fallible, so I guess I'll just stick to my opinions instead of trying to learn about the world."

 

[deadish]

Snip.

I wasn't in a hardcore raiding guild either. It was a social/casual raiding guild, run by a woman, with several women in it, all of whom played seriously. My boyfriend's been playing since vanilla and it's been the same for him.
I don't see why your anecdotal evidence is better than mine.

I never said it was better. Just that I disagree base on personal observation. It was not what I experienced.

Game developers know very well women like me are around. And even if they didn't care, the way they present their female characters is misogynistic at worst and just plain dumb at best. If I were a dude I'd be kinda insulted if that was what they thought I wanted.

Again, I have explained my theory as to why this is so. It's based on what I know of the game industry. Personally I think it's slowly changing, as more women enter the game industry.

And we're here to tell you that your view isn't reality-based, and that you should get a better view.

I also have no sympathy for people who say "well, I'm fallible, so I guess I'll just stick to my opinions instead of trying to learn about the world."

Well, the thing is, I'm unconvinced your view is better or more accurate than mine.

So far in replies to me, I haven't seen anyone link any hard data that is serves as counter-evidence to my experiences - hence the "argue from personal anecdote" claim.

Feel free to post suggest data or even your personal experience, but please lets keep this civil. Easy on the ad hominems.

As I said I expect this to end on a "agree to disagree" note, too much gaps in data, but what the heck right.

 

[deadish]

Ad hominem is only if I produce no support for my argument and trust the insult to carry the weight.

You should avoid the "insults" all together. It irrelevant to the topic at hand and doesn't help your argument. There is a reason "ad hominem" are considered a fallacy.

We already did. Several people have pointed out to you that your generalization is based on two major flaws.

1. Your sample size is so small that any real statistician would shit himself laughing at it.
2. You admit to knowing little about women and are making assumptions based on pop culture stereotypes rather than any real comprehension of psychology, neurology, behavioral psychology, evolutionary psychology, sociology or the nature of the entertainment industry.

When this was pointed out to you, you didn't say, "Oh, well what do I need to fix that?" No, you used the word "opinion" as a shield to protect your idea from criticism.

I'm aware of the sample size, hence me not claiming it as a universal truth. It's was a conclusion based on very limited data and I said it as such.

If you have to know, other than interaction with the WoW player base, another data point I draw on was my little sister. My attempt to get her interested in games, never really "worked out". She doesn't like any of the kind of games I like - this applies to movies and books as well. The last AAA game I manage to get her interested in was, believe or not, DOA Beach Vollyball. She played it for the clothes collection ... /shrug Given the atmosphere of the replies to my posts, I hope you understand why I'm hesitant to bring it up.

 

[Kahunaburger]

And we're here to tell you that your view isn't reality-based, and that you should get a better view.

I also have no sympathy for people who say "well, I'm fallible, so I guess I'll just stick to my opinions instead of trying to learn about the world."

Well, the thing is, I'm unconvinced your view is better or more accurate than mine.

So far in replies to me, I haven't seen anyone link any hard data that is serves as counter-evidence to my experiences - hence the "argue from personal anecdote" claim.

http://www.skepdic.com/ignorance.html

Once again, you no evidence your view is reality-based. "Prove me wrong" is not a working defense of a view that has no evidence to back it up.

 

[deadish]

http://www.skepdic.com/ignorance.html

Once again, you no evidence your view is reality-based. "Prove me wrong" is not a working defense of a view that has no evidence to back it up.

Once again. I'm not really here to "prove a point". I'm here to share data and personal interpretations of the data.

I repeat, I never claim that my views are accurate.

I have argued enough on the internet, that I have come to the conclusion that establishing any kind of truth for most topics is a waste of time. Rarely does anyone have all the facts at hand.

In this case, I don't have any hard data. Either does anyone else it appears. It's hard to draw any iron-clad conclusions base on anecdotes. In short, we have nothing to really argue with.

Edit: OK, believe or not the blank captchas are back. -_-

I feel this whole mess is due to you guys attributing to me "intent" I never had. You guys don't seem to be interested in exploring the topic, exploring the data and possible conclusions. You want a "truth" NOW - one which I don't believe is attainable for reasons I have explained above.

We are not operating on the same common goal here. I think I have to bid everyone farewell, because I believe no one is benefiting from this "conversation" - at least I feel I'm not. Not to mention, it has once again become inconvenient for me to post - no captchas for the last 10+ posts; but they are back now. :s

To those of you who shared your personal experience, without insulting me, I thank you for the lively chat. Good day.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

And now I will illustrate the problem with anecdotes like that by pointing to my own sister. She doesn't play any MMOs, but her Steam library is packed with RPGs, adventure games, action games, puzzle games, and TF2. I believe she likes playing the Scout. So that's 1-for-1 in anecdotes. That's not exactly a good position to be arguing from.

My sister doesn't play ANY games. She likes partying with friends, and ballroom dancing.

CONCLUSION: Most women like Ballroom Dancing. It is a common trait in women, as per my personal experience.

PROVE ME WRONG PEOPLE. Hard data demonstrating that most if not all women don't like Ballroom Dancing, or GTFO. I'm assuming they enjoy it because of the observable fact that it involves wearing shoes, and all women like shoes.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Your assertion is that "the desire to play games to play games", or in this specific case, the desire to progress in World of Warcraft, is a biological trait commonly shared by men, and not by women. Apparently our penises make us want to raid? And you used your anecdotal experience as evidence for this assertion. And for some reason, you can't understand why people are laughing.

WAT?!

I assert it was it was not shared by MOST women and that conclusion is base that of my personal observations. You can take my opinion anyway you like, feel free to disagree. But I believe I have to right it.

You asserted that they don't "play the game to play the game", and speculated that socialization could be the reason instead. It's the age old "No True Scotsman" fallacy as applies to gaming. You've even trotted out the timeworn CoD/Sims routine in an attempt to give the argument a backbone.

WTF you talking about?

I killed cthun server first and downed sunwell pre patch.

What did you do in WOW?

 

[Kahunaburger]

http://www.skepdic.com/ignorance.html

Once again, you no evidence your view is reality-based. "Prove me wrong" is not a working defense of a view that has no evidence to back it up.

Once again. I'm not really here to "prove a point". I'm here to share data and personal interpretations of the data.

Anecdotes are terrible as data haha. You're trying to prove statistical significance from data points that aren't random and are probably in the single digits.

I repeat, I never claim that my views are accurate.

This is the view I have no sympathy for. I have no idea why someone would form an opinion on something without bothering to pay attention to reality.

I have argued enough on the internet, that I have come to the conclusion that establishing any kind of truth for most topics is a waste of time. Rarely does anyone have all the facts at hand.

In this case, I don't have any hard data. Either does anyone else it appears. It's hard to draw any iron-clad conclusions base on anecdotes. In short, we I have nothing to really argue with.

Fixed for you.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I killed cthun server first and downed sunwell pre patch.

What did you do in WOW?

His experience indicates you were only there for the conversation. You certainly weren't playing the game to play the game.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I killed cthun server first and downed sunwell pre patch.

What did you do in WOW?

His experience indicates you were only there for the conversation. You certainly weren't playing the game to play the game.

Clearly I only spent 6 months on Muru for the scintillating dialogue between my esteemed guild members...

My favorite game for a long time is Dark Souls.

Big Hat Logan's charisma is the only reason I put up with the huge demons....

 

[Phasmal]

I killed cthun server first and downed sunwell pre patch.

What did you do in WOW?

His experience indicates you were only there for the conversation. You certainly weren't playing the game to play the game.

Clearly I only spent 6 months on Muru for the scintillating dialogue between my esteemed guild members...

My favorite game for a long time is Dark Souls.

Clearly Big Hat Logan's charisma is the only reason I put up with the huge demons.

My main is a mage, so clearly I am only there to provide cake.
Awesome dps and downing bosses are mere side effects of providing cake with which to talk about lady stuff over.

But. Yeah. You've got no argument, really, Mr. Anecdotal.

 

[deadish]

And we're here to tell you that your view isn't reality-based, and that you should get a better view.

I also have no sympathy for people who say "well, I'm fallible, so I guess I'll just stick to my opinions instead of trying to learn about the world."

Well, the thing is, I'm unconvinced your view is better or more accurate than mine.

So far in replies to me, I haven't seen anyone link any hard data that is serves as counter-evidence to my experiences - hence the "argue from personal anecdote" claim.

http://www.skepdic.com/ignorance.html

Once again, you no evidence your view is reality-based. "Prove me wrong" is not a working defense of a view that has no evidence to back it up.

This is going to be a bit long because chances are I won't be able to reply due to captcha problems. So I'm going to cover everything I can think of.

I'm not going to argue with you on this topic anymore, but just want to point out something particular about the way you argued.

I noticed that you seem hell bend on pushing the burden of proof completely onto me and that, I sorry to say, is BS.

You seem to hold this implicit assumption that your position (that my position is wrong; yes that is a position) is somehow the "defacto truth" that needs no justification at all.

Our argument has been like arguing how much money is in a sealed coin purse, I say there is $3 dollars (valueOfPurse = 3), you say there is some other value that $3 (valueOfPurse > 3 OR valueOfPurse < 3). Both our claims are equally tenable - although yours due to it's vagueness is more likely; but that's not saying much - yet somehow I'm the only that has to provide proof.

If you claim that you are just "pointing out the flaws", then I have to say your "services" aren't needed. No one here has any hard data worth a damn, we know there are flaws. You are in a sense contributing nothing to the conversation, you are just the irritating "skeptic" who is maybe getting an ego rush beating on people - I not sure if that is what you are doing, but I kind of getting that vibe.

Secondly, I think you need to realize that the world is really full of "grey". Logic is nice and all, but it isn't very useful when there isn't sufficient data to draw any sort iron-clad conclusions. At this point, it degrades to "opinion" which are subjective personal judgements we all make to fill in the gaps.

You need to learn to accept the diversity of opinion, because there is a lot of those out there. Example? Just look into US politics. To regulate or to not regulate. The left vs right debate has been going on forever because there is no clear cut answer based on rigorous reasoning, due to lack of sufficient data and knowledge, no one has a decent "predictive theory" to work from.

I'm going to stop here because I'm getting tired - and hungry. Maybe I'm wasting my breathe, maybe you were just looking for a fight and trolling me the entire thread. But at least I got this off my chest.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

And this leads me to the Skinner Box and the concept of behavioral psychology and operant conditioning. This is something that gaming is built on, but its concepts apply equally to both men and women. The short version is this: you can program behavior through a system of positive and/or negative reinforcement. If you perform an action and get a reward every time, you get bored quickly with the predictability and eventually the reward will reach a point of satiation. If however you perform an action and infrequently get a reward, it will be more appealing to you because now the reward has become more scarce. And if the reward is given completely at random, then the action can be downright addictive.

How does this apply to online games? Log onto WoW and look at the progress bar to your next level. How many times do you think you've looked at that thing unconsciously? How many times have you decided to go for "5 more minutes" because you were so close to the next level? That's operant conditioning hard at work. Men and women are affected by this in equal measures. Mind you, Skinner first tested this idea on pigeons, so it's pretty universal.

EQ would've been a better example than WoW. Later MMOs have been leaving the game mechanics out in the open. All of the numbers are available to peruse and analyze. So you really do know that X Orcs will equal level up in Y minutes, and so forth. Everquest was aggressively opaque. You never knew when you'd get a skill up (it was completely random), you never knew when a mob dropping a special piece of loot might spawn, you never knew anything. It's probably the one game I've actually felt comfortable labeling as psychologically addictive, in the same way slot machines can be addictive.

Total derail I know. Sorry.