I'm super depressed about sexism in gaming...

[felbot]

...i stopped sleeping for this? i thought this topic was long fucking dead yet you people keep bringing it up like a decayed zombie being risen constantly, just die already.

on topic: do like total biscuit and just ignore them, you're gonna be less stressful and you're not going to be sick, or have your teeth fall out.

 

[BRex21]

Snip.

If you claim it's nothing to do with gender, I do wonder why you posted that here.

I know, Its not like the individual who started this thread has a history of completely misrepresenting issues and calling them sexism. Its not like she frequently makes comparisons of say FemShep to Ivy and accuses the latter of being sexist because she is poorly written. Its not like the vast majority of "gender issues" here are simply created through misrepresentation or by ignoring the other half of the equation.
Oh wait...

 

[Infernai]

I don't do ponies. I'm a berserk fan for christ sakes, i have standards! However....here's a picture of Isidro and the elves in berserk playing a prank on sleeping Schierke

Spoiler

OT: I honestly don't give a shit about gender in games. As long as you can play and aren't a total asshat then i don't really care.

 

[Lyri]

Snip snip

Isn't this part of the problem though?
I get that you were harassed because you're a women but hiding the fact doesn't really help you at all, it's is the online equivalent of disguising yourself.
Maybe if women did become more vocal and more prevalent in the online community by actually pitching in then maybe this nonsense would eventually go away.

I find it frustrating playing with females because they refuse to use their voice programme software, I play a lot of DotA and up until recently I played with a friend who would never, ever use her voice to communicate.

I get harassed for being British because of my accent, my dental care or because of stuff that happened in the past that I am somehow responsible for.
This mockery and harassment is something that happens online for everyone involved, regardless of sex, religion or race. If I'm going to be 100% honest, I'm not sure why women refuse stand up against people in these games by just blocking/muting communication and getting on with playing the game but rather starting threads like these (not that I have a problem with that mind you).

I was in a guild a long time ago that played a few MMOs, part of the sign up rule was "We don't care if you have a vagina, you don't get special privileges. You get treated like every other member, yes you will be the butt of sexist jokes and yes you will be told to get back in the kitchen. If you can't handle that then don't sign up."
I've never, ever, been in a regular guild that had more female members than that guild did. The mockery wasn't exclusive to women, everyone was on vent as it was a mandatory requirement and everyone was totally chill about it.
After being in that guild it was apparent to me that we can get a long, it just takes a little work and a little understanding from both parties.

 

[Treblaine]

Secondly gaming does not belong to men.

Excuse me but...

Why not, exactly?

Now follow along here, I want you to think back to when gaming as it is now (Read: Just after the Atari Era, prior to that games were made exclusively by code-monkeys with no creative input) was in it's very infancy. I want you to think of that era and name me one development company that was founded or co-founded by a woman, or even one that simply employed one. There was NOTHING stopping them from doing this, most developers in that era were people programming independantly in their basements that could only only barely be called "Companies" anyway. Why did no women make video games? The industry wasn't even really an industry at this point, the only real requirement to getting in the door of game development was the resolve to stick with it, and the skill to put out a quality product.

King's Quest, 1983 by Roberta Williams, the very FOUNDATION of adventure games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberta_Williams

Just one example.

Didn't a woman write the Gabriel Knight games?

Though I guess that was in the 90s, bah whatever, I'm embarrassing myself, I'm just gonna go to sleep before I make it worse.

Well it's very true that "back in the day" video game production was dominated by men, but that was true for almost every emergent medium.

I think one thing might be how games were inherently violent from the outset as the first thing people realised in programming and running the most basic video computer games was that they did conflict better than anything else. The first thing out of the Gutenberg press was The Bible. The first thing out of video games was, basically: Asteroids.

But this was because video games were only really good at being programmed to represent things spatially, so what things - that didn't change much - are and where they are. You can't really express deep ideas of love or introspection, but missiles and lasers and jumping and shooting computers understand that. That's conflict, even Super Mario Bros is about physical conflict.

Now women are conditioned to stay out of physical conflict in general and with men in particular, as without the performance enhancing benefits of testosterone they will statistically almost always end up worse off.

But the thing about conflict in video games is all the strength and toughness of testosterone won't help one little bit, this is what makes video games so important to women as they can compete with men in things like fighting and not be screwed over by nature always selecting males as the stronger and faster one.

But none the less, culturally women are conditioned not to compete with boys. Yet competition is the bread and butter of video games. Either competition between players or against an AI that though simple know the rules perfectly.

Anyway, the first video games you can see had very little appeal to women - from the prejudices they were brought up with. But it's interesting where the video games did get beyond running around mazes avoiding but then eating ghosts or having space wars, the adventure games. These brought the idea of personal Experience that gameplay could deliver to character interaction. Crude at first but it was truly a game. And here you find women developers even in the earliest stages.

 

[neoontime]

I bet you are all sitting there thinking 'Oh yay another gender thread!' This isn't a thread about how much clothes female characters are wearing or whatever (Apart from a small comment at the end*) it's about the simple attitude some guys have towards women playing video games.

Like many of you on this forum know I have been playing games for a loooong time. It's my most beloved hobby but I'm not going to sit here and justify myself any more than that.

Firstly I don't know why having ovaries makes you a different gamer. Secondly gaming does not belong to men. Yes the devs often cater to lads over women because of demographic but that does not mean they have some sort of divine right that makes their opinion more valid.

You see when someone says 'How dare people like (insert woman here) come into our hobby and tell us what's wrong with it! They are doing two things. They are claiming gaming as some sort of medium that only belongs to them and they are depriving someone of the right to an opinion just because they are female.

Also there is some sort of reaction of 'Why don't you go off and make your own games! Instead of asking men to do it for you.' This works on the assumption that all developers are male and the only people who are allowed to have an opinion about games are people who make them (if that was true forums like this wouldn't exist.)

Lastly the existence of female cons like 'Geek Girl Con' do not prove that 'men should be allowed to exclude women too' They are only there because women feel like they cannot be part of the main scene. If you look at pictures of those cons, sure they aren't as busy as the main cons but there is a significantly different amount of women you see there and in the pictures from the main cons. That is disturbing to me. It suggests that women feel like the main gaming cons aren't relevant or just plain hostile to them.

Maybe I'm preaching to the converted here, Escapists tend to be intelligent people, but diversity in games isn't a bad thing.

Please add your own thoughts or post pictures of spider-man and ponies to cheer me up, either works fine.

*PS. As an aside I had an idea about adding a toggle to games to change the outfits of female characters (and I guess, maybe even male characters.) That way we can stop women feeling put off by PVC clad nuns without depriving the lads of their eye candy. Seems simple doesn't it. Considering a lot of games already have costume changes I don't think it would be that difficult to implement either. Other methods of reducing sexualisation while not pissing some people off might be more difficult, but one step at a time I guess. One step at a time

(If you have nothing to say other than 'I am sick of these threads' then please just don't post it isn't helpful or constructive.)

Not to make a point, but what about other gaming minorities.

 

[BRex21]

Implications about violence against women and treating women purely as objects, however, should be taken seriously, because they have real world ramifications that developers often fail to take into account. It is not unreasonable to point this out to them, and to ask them to be better about it in the future - in spite of what you may think.

Well, since violence against men is far more pervasive in our society, and treated with far less severity, perhaps we should be talking about how the acceptability and glorification of violence against men in our media influences violence against men.
And while women are often marginalized as sex objects, which gender do we throw away when they stop being productive?

Welp, let's ban the entry of women in the military and police because they might be victims of violence!

I feel its important to point out here that most countries specifically prevent women from being combat soldiers for this very reason, and most require special extraction regulations when they are there.

 

[MetalMagpie]

The first, I think we will always have to deal with, but we ought to be more vocal about telling them to go fuck themselves. The second, I think, ought to be made aware that they don't always pay attention to the ramifications of their work, so that they don't offend potential customers.

No disagreement on either point. Although there are a lot worse things in the world than offending people. After all, a lot of religious people are getting pretty damn offended by the game Smite, but I still think it should be made anyway. It's not nice to offend people. But free speech (and free expression) is important too.

Asshats who act out their sexism in online gaming communities, however, give gamers in general a bad name, and when you have an industry that panders to males (unintentionally or not) with hypersexualized or objectified women (Ivy from Soul Caliber is an oft-quoted example) it reinforces sexist views by tying females in games to their sexuality even when the situation doesn't call for sexuality in any regard.

Let's be clear here: Ivy is kick-ass. She's about as far from "princess in an ivory tower waiting for her prince" as it's possible to get. She's also not a short-haired tomboy-dressed "clearly just wants to be a man" action girl. She's a loud, proud, in-your-face, totally overblown woman. And I bloody love her.

You guys have Superman and Batman. Well, Ivy Valentine is my power fantasy. She's all about being a sexy lady and a kick-ass action girl. Because the two are not mutually exclusive, and having obviously feminine traits does not make you weak. If guys get a kick out of her too, that's just fine by me.

Variety is - of course - the spice of life. By no means should all female characters in video games be like Ivy (and they generally aren't). But there is nothing wrong with a woman who dresses how she wants, does what the hell she likes, and looks awesome doing it.

(Although, on a related note, all ditsy-blond-schoolgirl characters can die in a hole. I seriously do not get what guys find so attractive about stupidity.)

I don't have blog posts. I'm sure there are forum posts, but I don't have those either. I don't actively court sexist opinion, I just yell at it when I find it. Sorry. I probably should have done the research. I guess there's probably stuff on 4chan but I have never and will never delve into that cesspool for any reason.

But anyway, the fact that it isn't organized doesn't mean there isn't a pattern of behavior, there. Which is why I suggested the two blogs I did suggest, because those indicate a pattern of behavior within gaming communities that consider girls inferior and insult them because of their gender.

I guess the only real way to find out if there's a pattern of this behaviour (beyond the internet "normal") would be for a university to run some sort of large-scale survey. Otherwise it's impossible to tell if gamers are actually greater twats than the average internet user.

Have you seen beach volleyball? And I think plenty of female video games characters have proved (in defiance of all logic) that their outfits are not detrimental to their performance!

Okay, I must confess I haven't. I don't really watch sports - I find that if you want to enjoy sports, the best way to do it is to play one (same attitude about videogames, actually). And yeah, girls can kick ass in games wearing chainmail bikinis, but that doesn't make those actually practical for girls to wear when fighting with swords.

Female beach volleyball players tend to attract pictures like this in the tabloids:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2180705/London-2012-Olympics-Beach-volleyball.html

The great thing about video games is that the clothing doesn't need to be practical. I've seen male characters in fantasy games wearing pauldrons so huge that they should be unable to raise their arms! On the weapons front, Cloud Strife has a sword that's as big as he is!

In real life, designers need to consider what a real human being can practically wear. In video games, artists can come up with whatever crazy outfits and props they want to. And games are better for it.

You've never heard any guy gamer say "Ohmigod it's a girl!!" while playing online? Because I have. I heard it a fair amount when a girl would pop up in a random Halo match. But then I gave up multiplayer a couple years ago, when I realized Xbox live was filled with jerks.

I really have never experienced that. Then again (as I previously mentioned) my time playing Halo online lasted about ten minutes, during which no one spoke to me at all. If you say the Halo community has this problem, I'll have to believe you.

And then there's the Girlfriend Mode again. Why would it be called girlfriend mode if girls (and by extension, girlfriends) were not seen as anomalous to the gaming community?

It's actually called "Best Friends Forever". And it's a skill tree, not a mode. (The term "Girlfriend Mode" was invented by the member of the Escapist who wrote the title for that article.) As I said, his comment (that he wanted to create something like a "girlfriend skill tree") was aimed at the idea of introducing new people to shooters. He was implying that those new people are often people's girlfriends. That's probably not such a terrible assumption.

Errant Signal is a youtube video series by some guy whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, and he talks about violence as an necessity inevitability (earlier verbage was erroneous) in videogames because it is a primarily spatial medium, which was a really interesting take I hadn't considered before.

I don't have any problems with violence in games myself, and I don't especially care what non-gamers think (unless they're trying to censor stuff - in which case I care a lot because freedom of expression is important to me).

It's just - when you have a gamer like Moonlight, who has been a gamer her whole life, who defines herself as a gamer, and she gets treated a certain way online, and she sees certain attitudes towards women presented in games and by the people who play those games, it can be overwhelming for her, which is what her original post was about. She's been gaming for longer than some people here have been alive, and still she gets accused - in this very thread - of being some sort of attention whore, because she's a girl and she has issues about sexism.

I'm not trying to play down anything Moonlight has experienced. Being treated like that is really awful. The behaviour of that barman meant I never went back to that pub again. It was one incident, but I decided I'd rather just go to different pubs than have to deal with him again. What I've realised since is that he'll only change his behaviour if someone calls him out on it. So I guess that's the closest to an answer we're going to get. If someone acts in a hurtful or abusive way to another member of a gaming community, they should be called out on it. They should be told (without just hurling abuse back) that their behaviour is not acceptable.

Also, PS - you are fantastically articulate and well-reasoned, and you've actually made me reconsider my stance to a degree. Bravo. I'd like to send you a friend request, if I may.

Thanks. Just because it's the internet, doesn't mean we can't have a normal, flame-free discussion.

I'll have a look at your links once I've got some sleep!

 

[ElPatron]

Welp, let's ban the entry of women in the military and police because they might be victims of violence!

I feel its important to point out here that most countries specifically prevent women from being combat soldiers for this very reason, and most require special extraction regulations when they are there.

To quote Jimmy Rotten: "You know nothing, son..."
I have several times defended that I agree with the decision of not allowing women in dedicated combat - at least for the time being - in this very forums.

However, women do not need to be in dedicated infantry to see combat. If they are under attack, flying aircraft or just combat medics they have the right (and probably the duty) of engaging the enemy.

Also, women are not barred from entering the police force.

 

[RJ 17]

Huh, and here I had always thought the main reason women avoided the main cons isn't because they feel put off by other gamers, but rather they're more easily offended and put off by the rancid stench of hundreds of BO-emiting gamers. :3

Seriously, though, I'll admit that I'm not "in the loop" when it comes to topics like this...as in, I didn't know that such a problem existed. Really I can't help but groan and face-palm every time I see any topic pop up on this forum that seems to be nothing but sex-baiting. But that's because to me, I've never noticed a glaring problem, at least not one that needs to be discussed.....in a new topic created every hour on the hour. Quite frankly I was considering making my own topic asking what the hell the deal is with all these gender-based topics and if there was some sort of problem or controversy that I wasn't aware of that demands such attention.

I know that 9 times out of 10 the entrance of a female into a multiplayer loby tends to turn most males with a mic into cavemen jackasses, but that's because they're douches (the men). Douchebags like that exist, it's a sad fact of life, but to feel like the entire industry is openly hostile towards women is - at least in my experience - a bit of a stretch. But again, this is coming from a guy who has never noticed such a problem before, though I fully admit I don't have ovaries (to use the OP's lingo) so my trying say "There's no problem here" likely carries as much credibility as if I tried to argue that child birth didn't hurt. :3

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Stop feeling persecuted because people are picking on you for saying or doing misogynistic or homophobic things. If someone tells you that something that you said is offensive? You apologize and don't say it again. Maybe you'll LEARN something if you actually listen to what they have to say instead of shutting them down.

You know what I don't like seeing in games? Germans as always being portrayed as the bad guys. You know what I don't do when I see yet another game demonize all German people? I don't play the games, or I grow a thicker skin and deal with it. Perhaps you could follow my example.

 

[Erttheking]

I've always been somewhat apathetic towards the whole "Girl gamer" thing, but, from what I can tell, there are two types:

The "Gamer Girl", or the camwhore who pretends to be into games for attention.
And the girl gamer, who is just that. A girl who plays video games.

And, yeah, there is quite a bit of sexism in gaming. It's a really disappointing fact, and it really needs to go away, but there's no way we can just make it disappear overnight. Just try to fight it, and reduce the problem as much as you can. And make sure to always discuss it logically (Which you have, for the most part). Nobody likes it when someone's acting like they have a Gundam up their ass, even if they are, for the most part, in the right.

I think that this might sum that up rather well
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/this-is-not-a-gamergirl.jpg

OT: I dunno, I hear about how this is a major problem all of the time but I never actually see or hear it happening personally. It's weird, I play a fair chunk of gaming online and I can't even find a girl on there, so I'm really not qualified to talk about it.

 

[Treblaine]

snip

Calm down, if you would. I understand you feel your icon is under assault but I'd like to keep the discourse reasonable.

Okay, so I stand corrected on the cold weather bit. I distinctly remember the first Tomb Raider game I played as having a scene with wolves in the snow in the first level, and then a cave filled with polar bears, and all of it in that iconic tank top and shorts. Apparently they gave her cold weather gear by game 3. I confess I never played that far into the series.

However, while she might have looked blocky and polygonal in game, but she was marketed

Spoiler: like this:

which is not at all blocky and polygonal and does feature a large pair of breasts - prominently or not, there they are. There was a game in the series (2, I think) that featured implied nudity, which at the time, if I recall, was considered fairly risque.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't as bad as people made it out to be. But there was an element of sex to it, and while I don't have any particular insight into the mindset of anybody who isn't me, I remember at the time that particular aspect of the game sparked a lot of discussion - and yes, a lot of interest.

I'm not saying that's why you were interested. I'm not saying that is the only reason anyone was interested. I couldn't claim either of those was true and retain any credibility, and I don't believe them anyway. I do, however, think that she was marketed and designed in such a way that her curves were on display, and I think that was a calculated decision, and I think it had some influence over her target audience. I can't say I have any particular evidence of that, aside from her outfit and her silhouette. Though I suppose the existence of Tomb Raider Nude Mods lends a bit of credence to the claim that some guys bought Tomb Raider because Lara was sexy.

In any case, I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, and strike Lara Croft from the list of female protagonists with potentially unfortunate implications. You have made your case well enough that it seems fair. Is that a decent compromise?

Well the first Tomb Raider it's obviously not that cold as not only is there standing unfrozen water pools everywhere but also cold-blooded dinosaurs... inexplicably. Also lush green foliage throughout, it seems obvious to anyone who's played the game that it is not an Arctic wilderness that Lara is in but just a hike up the mountain that briefly went into the snow area. I've been hiking where you start off at a level where you'd want shorts then reach snow level then come down later and it's boiling hot again. Just because snow has settled on the ground doesn't mean you have to dress up like Scott of The Antarctic. When Lara DOES go to REALLY cold environment like Antarctica then she FEELS the cold, Diving into water starts to kill you quickly. You have a "heat bar" that falls rapidly for every second you are in the frigid water.

"does feature a large pair of breasts - prominently or not, there they are."

Well, she is a woman. Of all the things you can gather from that picture, here advancing pose, her expression, the fiery surroundings. Why focus on her breasts?

It wasn't in the developer's mind and it wasn't the motivation who sunk so much of their money and their time into buying these games and playing them which were very hard, gamers these days have it easy, Tomb Raider was balls hard and the series only got more difficult with each iteration.

I can tell you how small a difference her curves made, the even more realistically curved Angel of Darkness was an utter flop because the gameplay was crap. The gameplay sold the series, not her curves. The imitators failed because they were stupid enough to believe the complainers that "oooh, people only buy Tomb Raider because Lara's got bit tits". They didn't buy all the shit games that just had sexy women one the cover art. Do you remember BMX XXX? A topless bike-stunt game? I remember it got the worst review scores, it was the butt of every joke for like 3 years, it was shit and to spite all the flesh on display it was an utter flop.

Nude mods were insignificant compared to the far more numerous and more downloaded custom skins of Lara, that dressed her up as a goth, or a Ms Indiana Jones, or as one of the spicegirls or in so many other ways:


Most want to dress her up, not take her clothes off. Sure some are interested out of curiosity. Come on, I've seen how even women's mags are happy to post pictures like "is this Beyonce topless sunbathing?" clearly don't have a total disinterest in female nudity.

What I'd really like is for you to reconsider all the character you hold these conclusions of "unfortunate implications" for.

 

[Samurai Silhouette]

Secondly gaming does not belong to men. Yes the devs often cater to lads over women because of demographic but that does not mean they have some sort of divine right that makes their opinion more valid.

You see when someone says 'How dare people like (insert woman here) come into our hobby and tell us what's wrong with it! They are doing two things. They are claiming gaming as some sort of medium that only belongs to them and they are depriving someone of the right to an opinion just because they are female.

Also there is some sort of reaction of 'Why don't you go off and make your own games! Instead of asking men to do it for you.' This works on the assumption that all developers are male and the only people who are allowed to have an opinion about games are people who make them (if that was true forums like this wouldn't exist.)

The male opinion matters more because we ARE the target demographic. We are the larger and safer demographic to satisfy and cater to because they know a great deal more about us. They don't want to walk on eggshells to appease a new audience as well as risk ruining the experience for their target audience. They most likely wouldn't want to deal with the litigation, unintentional sexism, accusations of stereotypes, and most of all, loss of profit due to throwing money and resources into researching the female gamer.

Look at all the recent formulaic games that have been churned out by the large companies. Almost a copy/paste of the samey 4 games over and over with a new numeral at the end of its name. They just want a safe, guaranteed profit. What are the chances that they'll value the opinion of a new demographic? Gaming might not belong to men, but it's made for men. Like a pair of male pants that the girl/friend decided to steal cause she likes the fit. They're not going to start adding girl features to guy pants, unless you're Borderlands 2. < Yeah, that's what they think of the female audience.

 

[BRex21]

Welp, let's ban the entry of women in the military and police because they might be victims of violence!

I feel its important to point out here that most countries specifically prevent women from being combat soldiers for this very reason, and most require special extraction regulations when they are there.

To quote Jimmy Rotten: "You know nothing, son..."
I have several times defended that I agree with the decision of not allowing women in dedicated combat - at least for the time being - in this very forums.

However, women do not need to be in dedicated infantry to see combat. If they are under attack, flying aircraft or just combat medics they have the right (and probably the duty) of engaging the enemy.

Also, women are not barred from entering the police force.

First off i said nothing of police because it is irrelevent. They see DRASTICALLY less action than a soldier it is ENTIRELY different, the vast majority of police officers never use their weapon outside of a target range. The fact that we allow female officers does not disprove that we as a culture feel the need to protect women from serious violence.
Secondly no, Female combat medics do not have the duty to engage the enemy. You know how I said "special extraction regulations" that means that in order for a woman to be serving she has to have a dedicated exit, this is standard practice for most militaries worldwide and protects women from combat, NOT DEDICATED COMBAT ROLES, combat in general. There is a HUGE difference in staying in combat voluntarily and being required to under penalty of imprisonment or death as a deserter. Personally i don't think women should be soldiers period until they can and are expected to perform all the duties of soldiers.