I used to dislike Anita Sarkeesian, but...

[Erttheking]

Seriously, how -hard- has the industry tried to delve into the niche? It's small because the attempts are generally kinda hard to see. We've gotta see a bigger effort to get it noticed, IMO.
How inviting has the industry been to women in less than trashy depictions?

I get the feeling you'd be surprised. Devs have been trying to appeal to women as gamers since the early days (Pac Man being perhaps the earliest attempt). And recent trends suggest that roughly 47-48% of gamers are women, so they're getting pretty decent at it, despite the popular preconception that women make up a minority. Were I to make a guess, I'd wager that perception may stem from the typical focus on FPS titles, which less women tend to play (Statistically women tend most towards more social, story driven (RPGs) or constructive (ala The Sims) games)

Those numbers are a bit flawed though if you want to talk about the AAA games industry.. Yes 47 percent of gamers are female, but how many of those are just playing games on their phone or facebook, instead of on a PC, Xbox, PS, or Nintendo? Because for the big publishers those that dont play on the big consoles might as well not even exist.

Even if that's true they've got to start somewhere. I think that number should still point out potential customers that can be roped into more mainstream games, not something to go "Oh, they're not already playing, not gonna bother" at.

Not to mention I doubt that people who just play those games make up the majority of female gamers. At the very least I'd say 1 in every 4 of mainstream gamers is a woman.

 

[FriendlyFyre]

- She spends far too much time getting bogged down in lists and details instead of outlining and dissecting possible solutions.

We can all debate a hundred different reasons why to like or dislike Anita. However the one thing that Anita destroys herself over is the fact she never provides solutions.

She is happy to point out what's wrong, happy to criticise, however she does not provide any solutions beyond "stop doing it."

From the very start before I had formed an opinion on Anita I asked "Where are the analyzation on positive Female characters? Were is the reinforcement of what has been done right, so we may do that instead of whats wrong." it took 11 videos in her list before she came up with one positive title. Which after her three videos on Damsel's in Distress is looking to be video 40 before she begins any dedicated look at positive Female characters.

If her goal is to shake the industry up and help them create better female roles and characters. Improving female representation then help it, instead of punishing all men and claiming "patriarchy" at every corner. Aswell as stop wasting time on "Trolls" and talking about "victimisation" when there is already plenty of discussion on it.

If she doesn't have answers to the problem then why keep beating everyone over the heads that there IS a problem?

I pondered this for a while, and mentioned it earlier, but I think asking her for solutions before we understand (Or even believe in) the problem is just useless. And from what a lot of what I see, people are still defending their tropes and blaming individuals for being assholes, rather then asking what kind of society would create a space where people believed this was normal.

I think the reason she is "beating everyone over the heads" is because it's the only way people will seriously stop and look at the state of gaming from a different perspective, because they've gone through so much of life without any alternatives.

 

[runic knight]

Seriously, how -hard- has the industry tried to delve into the niche? It's small because the attempts are generally kinda hard to see. We've gotta see a bigger effort to get it noticed, IMO.
How inviting has the industry been to women in less than trashy depictions?

I get the feeling you'd be surprised. Devs have been trying to appeal to women as gamers since the early days (Pac Man being perhaps the earliest attempt). And recent trends suggest that roughly 47-48% of gamers are women, so they're getting pretty decent at it, despite the popular preconception that women make up a minority. Were I to make a guess, I'd wager that perception may stem from the typical focus on FPS titles, which less women tend to play (Statistically women tend most towards more social, story driven (RPGs) or constructive (ala The Sims) games)

Which leads to my conclusions that they should actually try and welcome women more into the gaming industry not just to appease the current fanbase but to pull in more women.

I don't feel like the industry is trying to be welcoming as so much as women gamed regardless of what they had to see, and who they had to play as, and the community they had to endure.

Imagine, with such a high percentage of women gaming, if they actually tried to pander to them some? Grow the market, I say. Not exclusively towards women, but enough to make the scene that can be better recommended to women.

I hate to say, but I think they have tired. Keep in mind this is an industry that often views its male audience as horny teenagers. Perhaps they have tried to pander to their presumption of the female gamer (to hilarious failure) and instead of changing their presumptions of female gamers, merely wrote them off?
Actually, that might explain the shovelware games you see about pop stars, barbie whatever, and girl girl sorts of games. Tentative attempts by an industry that doesn't even understand its main market that well trying to "reach out" to the other markets by looking at other successful products and trying to apply that logic. What things are popular among girls that they might look at? Well, the massive teen girl fashion industry, sexist as hell, but a solid, reliable market that games would of course look to first.

Least, that is my guess anyways.

 

[carnex]

You say "Propegate," which is actually where i am a little further away from her arguments. I feel if there is one thing Radical Feminism needs to do it is draw a clear line between how our media affects us, and how we react to our media.

It's rarely helpful to tell someone they are being "controlled," "programed," or any other brain-washy term, because most people's first response is to deny it, be offended, and then ignore the speaker. Telling someone they don't have free will is to suggest they have no power over their actions, and when the person doing that is linking it to something we like, we often just write it off as them not believing we can have a difference of opinion, which is insulting.

That's why I keep saying that the content in video games doesn't make us more likely to use violence or degrade women (Same with music) because whether we are likely to do something I believe depends on who we are, what we have access to, and how we are feeling.

What i DO consider however, is the fact that extreme violence and sexuality are looked at as common aspects of our day to day culture, and whether being exposed to it routinely, though we may understand reality is different from fantasy, may lead us to believe that the two are "Normal"

But if we didn't grow up in so much of this violence, wouldn't we have a different idea of what constituted "normal"?

And since you believe these things are normal, aren't you more likely to think their prevalence isn't a problem?

Then you look at the people who say it's not normal and say they are being irrational, or reading too much into things, when in reality, you've had your idea of normal created for you by tv and movies and music that in no way represent reality, but whose content has acclimated you to a certain expectations.
Like a girl being kidnapped by a dragon.

Yet we never ask ourselves, "Why a girl?" "Why a dragon?" "Why didn't he just invite her over for tea?"
Because no one has ever made us until now.

You are not helping your case. You actually confirming what I said, you only think you are right to assume it true.

On that level I can justly say, with straight face, supported by those very same games that games propagate that males are on this planet for exclusive purpose to serve and protect women. I mean, hero even doesn't exist in the story until there is a female that needs to be rescued. Only when there is a woman who has her sacred rights to freedom and safety of he life and limb endangered that hero appears. Hero who's whole persona is "smash, kill" etc, etc

If you didn't understand what I meant up there here it is in a nutshell. You can have an idea, a construct based on your feelings but unless there is some research into things you really cant claim it's anything more bout personal unsupported opinion.

And again, you are making the same exact claims as those against "violence in video games" were making. And they had much better case and still lost in court over and over and over again. They didn't lost the case because of some bias against them, but because they failed to present any evidence proving causal links between video games and real life. And your case has none.

In the end, if you really want to go with programming of humans I could go down that road and present you with enough evidence to prove that it's you who is actually programed into your own opinion but I prefer to think human being is capable of fact checking and introspective. I didn't need anyone to tell me to look at how video games influence people. It's in core of my humanity to think about that.

And as I said what you argue is just the base layer, the foundation of a skyscraper. There are so many things to argue in those videos it would demand good several hours of discussion if everyone comes with evidence supporting their cases. Otherwise what's the point?

Finally to answer your last two question
Why Girl
Because female life is, in our culture and in biological terms, much more valuable than male. Violence against and death of male is accepted fact and their disempowerment is their own fail, they didn't fight for it. Female is, on the other hand, to be protected from any harm to the risk of life and limb of a protector (usually male)and their fall from power is always doe to some malicious outside force and it must be corrected. It's almost never a fault of their own.

Why Dragon
Because Dragon is representation of unpredictable and overpowering nature of events that we have no influence over and see as evil.

 

[runic knight]

- She spends far too much time getting bogged down in lists and details instead of outlining and dissecting possible solutions.

We can all debate a hundred different reasons why to like or dislike Anita. However the one thing that Anita destroys herself over is the fact she never provides solutions.

She is happy to point out what's wrong, happy to criticise, however she does not provide any solutions beyond "stop doing it."

From the very start before I had formed an opinion on Anita I asked "Where are the analyzation on positive Female characters? Were is the reinforcement of what has been done right, so we may do that instead of whats wrong." it took 11 videos in her list before she came up with one positive title. Which after her three videos on Damsel's in Distress is looking to be video 40 before she begins any dedicated look at positive Female characters.

If her goal is to shake the industry up and help them create better female roles and characters. Improving female representation then help it, instead of punishing all men and claiming "patriarchy" at every corner. Aswell as stop wasting time on "Trolls" and talking about "victimisation" when there is already plenty of discussion on it.

If she doesn't have answers to the problem then why keep beating everyone over the heads that there IS a problem?

I pondered this for a while, and mentioned it earlier, but I think asking her for solutions before we understand (Or even believe in) the problem is just useless. And from what a lot of what I see, people are still defending their tropes and blaming individuals for being assholes, rather then asking what kind of society would create a space where people believed this was normal.

I think the reason she is "beating everyone over the heads" is because it's the only way people will seriously stop and look at the state of gaming from a different perspective, because they've gone through so much of life without any alternatives.

I remember an interesting discussion back in a science class. Back when people were still figuring out the why of electricity and atoms, around the era of the pudding atom model, scientists would make guesses, not just about how they worked but also what would be needed to test those hypothesizes. In doing so, they demonstrated that they not only understood the topic as it was, but how one might go about to learn even more, in spite of knowing that the tools they required to do that had not yet been created. Hell, they even went so far as to describe the sort of tools they would need before it was possible to make them properly.

In showing possible solutions, even flawed ones, Anita would only show a greater understanding of the problems in general, as would be reflected in how she designed her possible solutions. Since a good solution would take into account the cause of the problem and fix that (rather then a surface attempt that may just mask the problem), it would show a far grater understanding of the topics at hand and help others grasp not only that solution, but the problem itself. After all, when you understand why something works and why a solution may work to fix it, you understand it far better. The difference between saying "car is broke" and "we are out of gas and the oil needed a change 20000 miles ago."

By beating people over the heads, all she does is harm the cause. She desensitizes people to hearing about the problem, makes fans worn out over the debates without direction and at best may get a worthless effort to hide the symptom rather then address the underlying illness. Furthermore, like a madwoman at town hall meeting, she is the poster child for dismissal of the topic itself, poisoning the discussion as any topic related to it inevitably brings up the equivalent to "you sound like that crazy woman who complains about the pothole on 3rd".

 

[Asita]

Which leads to my conclusions that they should actually try and welcome women more into the gaming industry not just to appease the current fanbase but to pull in more women.

*blinks* Ok, if you were questioning the figure like Desert Punk, I could see where you were going with that but given that you seem to be taking it at face value? "Pull in more women"? If those figures are accurate there's a pretty even split between men and women in the market, which is what a given market should strive for. That's 'build/maintain customer loyalty' time, not 'appeal to a demographic more' time. Did you perhaps mean that in a different context than I'm interpreting it?

 

[Erttheking]

Which leads to my conclusions that they should actually try and welcome women more into the gaming industry not just to appease the current fanbase but to pull in more women.

*blinks* Ok, if you were questioning the figure like Desert Punk, I could see where you were going with that but given that you seem to be taking it at face value? "Pull in more women"? If those figures are accurate there's a pretty even split between men and women in the market, which is what a given market should strive for. That's 'build/maintain customer loyalty' time, not 'appeal to a demographic more' time. Did you perhaps mean that in a different context than I'm interpreting it?

I think what she's getting at is that even if a lot of gamers are women, the general mindset of the industry, at least when it comes to the really big companies is that "Gamers are all teenage boys". I think she wants to move away from that mindset. So, oddly enough, the "Appeal to a demographic more" and "Build/maintain customer loyalty" periods are actually kind of mixing together here.

 

[Asita]

I think what she's getting at is that even if a lot of gamers are women, the general mindset of the industry, at least when it comes to the really big companies is that "Gamers are all teenage boys". I think she wants to move away from that mindset. So, oddly enough, the "Appeal to a demographic more" and "Build/maintain customer loyalty" periods are actually kind of mixing together here.

Well that would certainly make sense of it. (And be more than a little justified given that the 18+ women make up 30% of the market whereas boys under 18 make up 18%, according to that same study)

 

[Hagi]

Heh, funny...

Your post made me come to realize that I dislike Sarkeesian where previously I felt nothing about it.

I reject the notion that strength, resilience, coolness under pressure, rationality and perseverance are male traits. I reject that being emotionally open, vulnerability, caring or cooperative are female traits. Mainly because research has shown time and time again that individual differences trump gender differences for all of these traits.

I also reject the notion that sexualizing something is harmful. I think it's completely healthy to have sexual fantasies that serve purely and only those having the fantasy. I don't think there's any problem with fanservice, skimpy outfits or pressing X to bone attractive character A. In fact we need more of it, specifically we need more of it with men as the subject. We need manservice, skimpy man-thongs and pressing X to bone attractive man B.

 

[FriendlyFyre]

You say "Propegate," which is actually where i am a little further away from her arguments. I feel if there is one thing Radical Feminism needs to do it is draw a clear line between how our media affects us, and how we react to our media.

It's rarely helpful to tell someone they are being "controlled," "programed," or any other brain-washy term, because most people's first response is to deny it, be offended, and then ignore the speaker. Telling someone they don't have free will is to suggest they have no power over their actions, and when the person doing that is linking it to something we like, we often just write it off as them not believing we can have a difference of opinion, which is insulting.

That's why I keep saying that the content in video games doesn't make us more likely to use violence or degrade women (Same with music) because whether we are likely to do something I believe depends on who we are, what we have access to, and how we are feeling.

What i DO consider however, is the fact that extreme violence and sexuality are looked at as common aspects of our day to day culture, and whether being exposed to it routinely, though we may understand reality is different from fantasy, may lead us to believe that the two are "Normal"

But if we didn't grow up in so much of this violence, wouldn't we have a different idea of what constituted "normal"?

And since you believe these things are normal, aren't you more likely to think their prevalence isn't a problem?

Then you look at the people who say it's not normal and say they are being irrational, or reading too much into things, when in reality, you've had your idea of normal created for you by tv and movies and music that in no way represent reality, but whose content has acclimated you to a certain expectations.
Like a girl being kidnapped by a dragon.

Yet we never ask ourselves, "Why a girl?" "Why a dragon?" "Why didn't he just invite her over for tea?"
Because no one has ever made us until now.

You are not helping your case. You actually confirming what I said, you only think you are right to assume it true.

And on that level I can justly say, with straight face, supported by those very same games that games propagate that males are on this planet for exclusive purpose to serve and protect women. I mean, hero even doesn't exist in the story until there is a female that needs to be rescued. Only when there is a woman who has her sacred rights to freedom and safety of he life and limb endangered that hero appears. Hero who's whole persona is "smash, kill" etc, etc

If you didn't understand what I meant up there here it is in a nutshell. You can have an idea, a construct based on your feelings but unless there is some research into things you really cant claim it's anything more bout personal unsupported opinion.

And again, you are making the same exact claims as those against "violence in video games" were making. And they had much better case and still lost in court over and over and over again. They didn't lost the case because of some bias against them, but because they failed to present any evidence proving causal links between video games and real life. And your case has none.

And, in the end, if you really want to go with programming of humans I could go down that road and present you with enough evidence to prove that it's you who is actually programed into your own opinion but I prefer to think human being is capable of fact checking and introspective. I didn't need anyone to tell me to look at how video games influence people. It's in core of my humanity to think about that.

And as I said what you argue is just the base layer, the foundation of a skyscraper. There are so many things to argue in those videos it would demand good several hours of discussion if everyone comes with evidence supporting their cases.
Otherwise what's the point?

Turning the story around doesn't work though, because a patriarchal world looks at everything active as the male, and everything reactive as the female. To suppose that men only exist to serve women would ignore how they dominate them and continuously ridicule aspects of femininity instead of worshiping it, or at least seeing it as essential to themselves.

Yet, evidence of pre-agricultural society surprisingly enough depicts a world where the sensitivity of women was viewed in every way the equal of the strength of men, and where sexual assault was virtually unheard of.
However, when farming and crops produced resources, there was finally a reason not to cooperate and share with each other, but rather to grow as much as you could in order to feed your family and acquire the ability to trade. As for why the men and the masculine became associated with this is a little up to debate, but the women's child birthing abilities perhaps restricted them from being the ones to first start competing with others.

Marxist feminism usually uses this explanation, but Radical Feminism still sees the roots of the masculine/feminine dynamic as something we began to encourage, and not something that came to use naturally.

 

[Chicago Ted]

I think what she's getting at is that even if a lot of gamers are women, the general mindset of the industry, at least when it comes to the really big companies is that "Gamers are all teenage boys". I think she wants to move away from that mindset. So, oddly enough, the "Appeal to a demographic more" and "Build/maintain customer loyalty" periods are actually kind of mixing together here.

Well that would certainly make sense of it. (And be more than a little justified given that the 18+ women make up 30% of the market whereas boys under 18 make up 18%, according to that same study)

Yes, but the issue in citing that is that is that it's speaking of the market as a whole, as opposed to the aspect of it that we're discussing. That 30% of women over 18+ are going to be representing a completely different part of the industry than the 18% of under 18 males. There'll be some overlap, sure, but most females over 18 aren't going to be going out to see Expendables on their own, while few of those under 18 males are going to be going out of their way to see The Iron Lady [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Lady_(film)]

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Seriously, how -hard- has the industry tried to delve into the niche? It's small because the attempts are generally kinda hard to see. We've gotta see a bigger effort to get it noticed, IMO.
How inviting has the industry been to women in less than trashy depictions?

I get the feeling you'd be surprised. Devs have been trying to appeal to women as gamers since the early days (Pac Man being perhaps the earliest attempt). And recent trends suggest that roughly 47-48% of gamers are women, so they're getting pretty decent at it, despite the popular preconception that women make up a minority. Were I to make a guess, I'd wager that perception may stem from the typical focus on FPS titles, which less women tend to play (Statistically women tend most towards more social, story driven (RPGs) or constructive (ala The Sims) games)

Which leads to my conclusions that they should actually try and welcome women more into the gaming industry not just to appease the current fanbase but to pull in more women.

I don't feel like the industry is trying to be welcoming as so much as women gamed regardless of what they had to see, and who they had to play as, and the community they had to endure.

Imagine, with such a high percentage of women gaming, if they actually tried to pander to them some? Grow the market, I say. Not exclusively towards women, but enough to make the scene that can be better recommended to women.

I hate to say, but I think they have tired. Keep in mind this is an industry that often views its male audience as horny teenagers. Perhaps they have tried to pander to their presumption of the female gamer (to hilarious failure) and instead of changing their presumptions of female gamers, merely wrote them off?
Actually, that might explain the shovelware games you see about pop stars, barbie whatever, and girl girl sorts of games. Tentative attempts by an industry that doesn't even understand its main market that well trying to "reach out" to the other markets by looking at other successful products and trying to apply that logic. What things are popular among girls that they might look at? Well, the massive teen girl fashion industry, sexist as hell, but a solid, reliable market that games would of course look to first.

Least, that is my guess anyways.

Yeah, they try to segregate women into pastel and pink worlds of generally vapid characters of little substance, with games that were shallow, low production affairs built from scrap. Generally treating women as a seperate from gamers.

As much as I hate to say it, but this sort of thing sounds a lot like Anita's take on Legos. Legos used to appeal to everyone, and were marketed towards everyone. Then something happened in the 80's I think. They aimed more squarely at boys. Legos got violent. Guns, and swords, and violent professions.
Lego City, and a lot more became a boys club.

When Lego finally got around to trying to appeal to girls, well, we got pink, pastel worlds outside of Lego City. Not even the figures were really compatible, as girls got minifigs. Sure the're easier to make outfits for, but the line was drawn too wide, imo.
Honestly it's really offputting. Then again, if they're successful, then they are.

These pink and pastel games have to be doing something right if they keep getting made, and I'd say they are still being made but I don't keep track, and they get near no publicity.
I think if they made attempts at women over the age of 12, some shovelware that looks more refined, it might get some more traction.
Treat the female gamer as gamers. Pander to them, and give them mature minded content, and they will be happy for it I'm sure. Guys generally want the same thing, don't they?
Honestly shovelware seems like a good thing if it gets more pandering out there. Some might see through it as shovelware, but something has to be done. They can't write off girl gamers just coz highly stereotypical games didn't work.

It'd help if these games actually came to consoles, too.

 

[Erttheking]

I think what she's getting at is that even if a lot of gamers are women, the general mindset of the industry, at least when it comes to the really big companies is that "Gamers are all teenage boys". I think she wants to move away from that mindset. So, oddly enough, the "Appeal to a demographic more" and "Build/maintain customer loyalty" periods are actually kind of mixing together here.

Well that would certainly make sense of it. (And be more than a little justified given that the 18+ women make up 30% of the market whereas boys under 18 make up 18%, according to that same study)

Funnily enough, yeah. It's funny, a year ago I would've fallen into that same demographic, now I'm out of it. So I take it that is something we can agree on, developers should seriously stop trying to pander to that demographic and remember that there are plenty of other ripe markets out there. In short.
<youtube=irZ-159xsZY>

Pretty much this.

 

[FriendlyFyre]

I made an account just so I could post this, so know that I believe what I have to say is important for each and every man and women who reads it.

You, and Anita, haven't proved any of the things you say, and simply stating that they are true doesn't make them so.

Assertions:

1) Partiarchy exists in the form you say it does, and is responsible for the oppression of women

2) Women are oppressed in first-world civilization, e.g. 'rape culture'

3) Videogames perpetuate this oppression

These assertions are flung around in every discussion involving AS, and all other neo-feminism discssions. They are never proven, merely asserted and then assumed to be true.

Yoshaian, can i call you yoshi? Thanks.
I never said I would prove anything, this is not about me proving Anita right or wrong. This is me suggesting that if we look more closely at games and stop thinking everything in them is "normal" that we may be more open to the possibility that she is onto something.

This is not science, because in some ways it would deny objective judgement due to how deeply it has shaped out culture. What we can do is ask questions and see what the answers have in common.

I gave a definition of patriarchy by a fairly well-known feminist (Allan G. Johnson) and explained how certain phenomenon make more sense under patriarchy then believing that people are just awful because they can be. here it is again.

1. Male dominated--which doesn't mean that all men are powerful or all women are powerless--only that the most powerful roles in most sectors of society are held predominantly by men, and the least powerful roles are held predominantly by women

2. Organized around an obsession with control, with men elevated in the social structure because of their presumed ability to exert control (whether rationally or through violence or the threat of violence) and women devalued for their supposed lack of control--women are assumed to need men's supervision, protection, or control

3. Male identified: aspects of society and personal attributes that are highly valued are associated with men, while devalued attributes and social activities are associated with women. There is a sense of threat to the social structure of patriarchies when these gendered associations are destabilized--and the response in patriarchy is to increase the level of control, often by exerting control over women (as well as groups who are devalued by virtue of race, ethnicity, sexuality, or class).

4. Male centered: It is taken for granted that the center of attention is the natural place for men and boys, and that women should occupy the margins. Public attention is focused on men. (To test this, take a look at any daily newspaper; what do you find on the front page about men? about women?)

I have mentioned some of the most prevalent issues of women in 1st world civilizations, including misogyny (Hatred of the feminine) and how it effects our community ("Checking women's knowledge of games," where men can be assumed so) Also objectification that serves only the male audience and leaves no room for concepts of sexuality for female players (Skimpy armor)

I do not use the word perpetuate because it strikes me as being to close to controlling. I state that when these things are so prevalent in games, they form our idea of what is "normal," and that we are more likely to accept what we believe is normal, even if that is something like people getting death threats or being told to "Suck it up" when playing in a tournament.

Look, I understand that you don't think this can have validity if it can't be tested or proven, but the fact is we see evidence around us everyday when it comes to jokes, pictures, and even who get's published in the latest science journal. And if you accept it, you will start to understand the world in a way that can truly benefit humanity just as science can.

 

[carnex]

Turning the story around doesn't work though, because a patriarchal world looks at everything active as the male, and everything reactive as the female. To suppose that men only exist to serve women would ignore how they dominate them and continuously ridicule aspects of femininity instead of worshiping it, or at least seeing it as essential to themselves.

Yet, evidence of pre-agricultural society surprisingly enough depicts a world where the sensitivity of women was viewed in every way the equal of the strength of men, and where sexual assault was virtually unheard of.
However, when farming and crops produced resources, there was finally a reason not to cooperate and share with each other, but rather to grow as much as you could in order to feed your family and acquire the ability to trade. As for why the men and the masculine became associated with this is a little up to debate, but the women's child birthing abilities perhaps restricted them from being the ones to first start competing with others.

Marxist feminism usually uses this explanation, but Radical Feminism still sees the roots of the masculine/feminine dynamic as something we began to encourage, and not something that came to use naturally.

Your first argument is arguments to dismiss arguments against it. You can't claim otherwise because it's this way.

Again, no. Female bones have been constantly been found to have less violent injuries and more repeated strain injuries (they actually hauled stuff around more and were foraging while men were hunting and fighting for turf or at least that is how we interpret those). General accepted theory is that that social dynamic is one of three greatest factors while we prevailed over Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Floresiensis (feeding habits and technical advancement (even though we have found art and fine stone utensils in Neanderthal caves) being the other two) . Farming made those far worse making hunting less prevalent but making wars for fertile lands much more violent and frequent occurrences wile making procreation less of a problem thus making killing of opposing tribes women, rather then capturing them, available choice.
Also, you are mistaking power preferences for gender preferences.

But even given all that, those were tens of thousands to about six thousand years ago.

 

[runic knight]

Seriously, how -hard- has the industry tried to delve into the niche? It's small because the attempts are generally kinda hard to see. We've gotta see a bigger effort to get it noticed, IMO.
How inviting has the industry been to women in less than trashy depictions?

I get the feeling you'd be surprised. Devs have been trying to appeal to women as gamers since the early days (Pac Man being perhaps the earliest attempt). And recent trends suggest that roughly 47-48% of gamers are women, so they're getting pretty decent at it, despite the popular preconception that women make up a minority. Were I to make a guess, I'd wager that perception may stem from the typical focus on FPS titles, which less women tend to play (Statistically women tend most towards more social, story driven (RPGs) or constructive (ala The Sims) games)

Which leads to my conclusions that they should actually try and welcome women more into the gaming industry not just to appease the current fanbase but to pull in more women.

I don't feel like the industry is trying to be welcoming as so much as women gamed regardless of what they had to see, and who they had to play as, and the community they had to endure.

Imagine, with such a high percentage of women gaming, if they actually tried to pander to them some? Grow the market, I say. Not exclusively towards women, but enough to make the scene that can be better recommended to women.

I hate to say, but I think they have tired. Keep in mind this is an industry that often views its male audience as horny teenagers. Perhaps they have tried to pander to their presumption of the female gamer (to hilarious failure) and instead of changing their presumptions of female gamers, merely wrote them off?
Actually, that might explain the shovelware games you see about pop stars, barbie whatever, and girl girl sorts of games. Tentative attempts by an industry that doesn't even understand its main market that well trying to "reach out" to the other markets by looking at other successful products and trying to apply that logic. What things are popular among girls that they might look at? Well, the massive teen girl fashion industry, sexist as hell, but a solid, reliable market that games would of course look to first.

Least, that is my guess anyways.

Yeah, they try to segregate women into pastel and pink worlds of generally vapid characters of little substance, with games that were shallow, low production affairs built from scrap. Generally treating women as a seperate from gamers.

As much as I hate to say it, but this sort of thing sounds a lot like Anita's take on Legos. Legos used to appeal to everyone, and were marketed towards everyone. Then something happened in the 80's I think. They aimed more squarely at boys. Legos got violent. Guns, and swords, and violent professions.
Lego City, and a lot more became a boys club.

When Lego finally got around to trying to appeal to girls, well, we got pink, pastel worlds outside of Lego City. Not even the figures were really compatible, as girls got minifigs. Sure the're easier to make outfits for, but the line was drawn too wide, imo.
Honestly it's really offputting. Then again, if they're successful, then they are.

These pink and pastel games have to be doing something right if they keep getting made, and I'd say they are still being made but I don't keep track, and they get near no publicity.
I think if they made attempts at women over the age of 12, some shovelware that looks more refined, it might get some more traction.
Treat the female gamer as gamers. Pander to them, and give them mature minded content, and they will be happy for it I'm sure. Guys generally want the same thing, don't they?
Honestly shovelware seems like a good thing if it gets more pandering out there. Some might see through it as shovelware, but something has to be done. They can't write off girl gamers just coz highly stereotypical games didn't work.

It'd help if these games actually came to consoles, too.

I wouldn't go so far as to say legos became a boys club, rather, the aspects of the established types of sets simply grasped more of the traits one would assume of them. Knights sets have existed from the start, always with weapons and often dragons too. The city ones, the space ones, they use the same themes in a cycle, revisiting them with a new flavor but never any less inclusive to girls then the settings themselves would dictate. The only change I can think of is the inclusion of more firearms type pieces, as for the longest time they strayed away from those (outside of pirate muskets, for some reason). Thus one can only claim that is more directed to boys by implying that violence and guns are male oriented in the first place, a social construct that, in this case, is not enforced on those playing with the legos in the first place. The space sets for instance are simply sci-fi, nothing that excludes women, and often they have a female minifig or two with the sets to have some variety, though obviously they are aware the audience is more male then female, so they may have more male minifigs. The various set types have always come off as unisex to me, with exception of the blatantly pink ones. My nieces sure have no issue pitting pirates against space aliens with my old collection, though they do say the pink set is for girls too.
So in that regard, it isn't a boy's club as it does nothing to exclude girls, there is just a "competing" type of sets that may appeal to a girl's interests more.

But, in making the competing product that is more "ideal" for the gender, does that not undermine ideas of inclusiveness? Yes, you get more people buying the product, but you encourage segregation into the same sort of preset categories that culture and society at large already does. I have been a fan of legos since I was a child, and the ones on the shelf look the same to me (only more cool because better pieces), and at no point as a child or adult did I think that they were anything but universal as a toy, especially given the toybox nature of the toy itself to make whatever you wanted. By taking that and then acknowledging socially created gender expectations, aren't they doing more harm there?

To tie it back to video games, by making pandering pink games, are they really including them as players and members of the gaming community, or is the industry merely getting more sales while the community itself is divided further by the behavior that funnels people into preset, socially assumed groups?

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Which leads to my conclusions that they should actually try and welcome women more into the gaming industry not just to appease the current fanbase but to pull in more women.

*blinks* Ok, if you were questioning the figure like Desert Punk, I could see where you were going with that but given that you seem to be taking it at face value? "Pull in more women"? If those figures are accurate there's a pretty even split between men and women in the market, which is what a given market should strive for. That's 'build/maintain customer loyalty' time, not 'appeal to a demographic more' time. Did you perhaps mean that in a different context than I'm interpreting it?

What I'm getting at is that the industry gets business from women because the women have little choice but to play ball with the status quo tht appeals almost solely to guys.

If they appealed more to women, lets take CoD: Ghosts for instance as they added female avatars to multiplayer, then it'll create more good will, and faith in the industry. With the rise of inclusiveness in respectable representations of women, so, too, will there be an increase in money spent by women all around.

By "pull in" I mean entice. Create something girl gamers notice, and say "What? I'm included in this? You have a sale!"
Like some guys, there's women that want to play their own gender.
Rare are the guys that want to play a game where they have huge dicks, and balls wobbling around while the guy wears nothing but a bananna hammock, oiled, and muscled, and this would hold true for female gamers not wanting to play as women wearing the equivalent of 3 doritos held to her by dental floss weith a heavy emphasis on T&A.
I'm not saying these games shouldn't exist, but making them the norm would suck.

I mean, I look at GTA V, and say "meh" as great as the game might be, it's low on my wants. Sure it might have great plot, and gameplay, but I still feel alienated.
But GTA Online (aka GTAV's multiplayer) being deep, and allows me to be a gal? Now I really want the game. I'm included. I can be a girl in the game with my own story, and deeper immersion.

As another example, WWE games since Smackdown Vs Raw evolved into more and more inclusive itterations. Before WWE '13 women couldn't play in a 6 on 6 match to say the least. Guys certainly could, though. The limitations on the female wrestlers were infuriating, and as large of a fan as I am of wrestling in general, I think I actually skipped installments because women wrestlers were restricted heavily in what matches they could perform in.
WWE 13 lifted a lot of restrictions, but still hung on to some. I.E. No women in royal rumbles, no women in first blood matches, a limit to 5 women online.
Still, they are slowly lifting restrictions and with ever yearly installment, I'm more and more hopeful that I'll have the agency, and fredom I crave from that game series.
With those lifted restrictions, even gradually, I'm more and more willing, and eager to buy. It feels like the women's rep in the game is getting more and more respect, and equality. It makes me happy.

Basically, despite the business the industry gets from women, the industry doesn't do a lot to actually welcome them. Women game in hostile territory, more or less. I'd like that to change. I'd like them to appeal more to women.
It doesn't really take a lot to get the ball rolling. Gender Select is a surprisingly big step towards making women feel included.

 

[thebakedpotato]

Aww yeah another one of these threads! Wooohoo!

Honestly what pisses me off about the whole ordeal is that the energy behind it all is misdirected. If both parties approached a different, solvable, remarkable issue like say... curing AIDS; with as much energy, and vitriol as they do debating and arguing and taunting and threatening and soapboxing... That shit would have been cured.

Now I know how the pope must feel about masturbation

 

[FriendlyFyre]

Turning the story around doesn't work though, because a patriarchal world looks at everything active as the male, and everything reactive as the female. To suppose that men only exist to serve women would ignore how they dominate them and continuously ridicule aspects of femininity instead of worshiping it, or at least seeing it as essential to themselves.

Yet, evidence of pre-agricultural society surprisingly enough depicts a world where the sensitivity of women was viewed in every way the equal of the strength of men, and where sexual assault was virtually unheard of.
However, when farming and crops produced resources, there was finally a reason not to cooperate and share with each other, but rather to grow as much as you could in order to feed your family and acquire the ability to trade. As for why the men and the masculine became associated with this is a little up to debate, but the women's child birthing abilities perhaps restricted them from being the ones to first start competing with others.

Marxist feminism usually uses this explanation, but Radical Feminism still sees the roots of the masculine/feminine dynamic as something we began to encourage, and not something that came to use naturally.

Your first argument is arguments to dismiss arguments against it. You can't claim otherwise because it's this way.

Again, no. Female bones have been constantly been found to have less violent injuries and more repeated strain injuries (they actually hauled stuff around more and were foraging while men were hunting and fighting for turf or at least that is how we interpret those). General accepted theory is that that social dynamic is one of three greatest factors while we prevailed over Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Floresiensis (feeding habits and technical advancement (even though we have found art and fine stone utensils in Neanderthal caves) being the other two) . Farming made those far worse making hunting less prevalent but making wars for fertile lands much more violent and frequent occurrences wile making procreation less of a problem thus making killing of opposing tribes women, rather then capturing them, available choice.
Also, you are mistaking power preferences for gender preferences.

But even given all that, those were tens of thousands to about six thousand years ago.

My first argument was based on a empathetic argument I agree. If you don't think it makes logical sense then we will have to think of a different way to discus it.

I don't believe i ever said females did less work then the males, especially since males and females probably hunted TOGETHER in order to provide for themselves. If you have an idea why females would be the ones to perceive the need for personal control over working together instead of males I would willingly listen to it.

it sounds like we agree on the agricultural front, the production of resources was the first time they had a inclination to not share. Sort of like the beginning of "The God Must Be Crazy"

The question is why would the possession of females become so important? You'd say it was biological, and it would have to do with them wanting their generations to propegate, but would that REALLY lead them to consider violence against other's rather then working together?
Why (or how) did women go from the great mother, an essential part of existence, to a casualty of it?