Forbidden Love

which bit of it is forbidden again?

I was going to write something about self-reinforcing gender stereotypes, but then I got caught up in watching football, hating ‘the gays,’ and hitting people who are smaller than me.

In all seriousness, that IndieGamer thread made me feel a bit sick to my stomach. Who knew the indie gaming community housed so many bigots?

in reply to the IG thread I was gonna say that I’ve already known that 97% (and rising) of people are absorbed in their minds up to a level of crypto-fascism (or yeah, bigotry, to say the least) — then I’ve caught _myself_ absorbed in my mind! EW! git outta ‘ere!

seriously, who cares? if one is so inclined on stereotypes, or quick (and wrong conclusions), or bitternes, or whatever but their own happiness, it’s their problem.

now how about forgetting about gender stereotypes (blue bloody for the boys, pink fluffy for the girls), and making games for human beings?

What about a game in which you casually destroy dishes?

WHAT THEN??

You gain:

1. A community of insecure ‘men’s men’ who will inappopriately reassert their masculinity at every possible opportunity by ganging up on anyone who doesn’t fit into their narrow confines of acceptable behaviour for a given gender.

2. Complete protection from cooties.

my favorite game for males is the one where you have plug your penis in with the usb adaptor and you get a point for everytime you don’t have two X chromosomes.

stfu guyz, it’s not like anyone is getting offended. after all, there’s no girls on the interbuttz.

“What about a game in which you casually destroy dishes?

WHAT THEN??”

I buy it. Sounds ace! Get to it…

Why would you be an idiot? Like, if you can bring some other points up, good for you, but Thorbrian’s data tells you *how* men and women behave, not *why*. From my brief skim reading (so I totally could have missed something) it also neglects things like age, which is important.

I’d be interested to see what kind of differences – relevant to games – you’d ascribe to biological gender/sex differences.

If you can demonstrate, independant of socialization, that men and women have significant emotional or mental differences, I would love to hear about it. As for differences in ‘brains,’ they are physically indistinguishible, as you might know if your interest lay more in research and less in spittle-throwing polemic.

However, I can point out examples in specific individuals and in entire cultures, contemporary and throughout history, who defy our modern social stereotypes, many of which, like men’s inability to maintain sexual fidelity, are quite recent, and are in fact reversals of previously held stereotypes even in the western world.

“Thorbrain’s hard data,” whomever “Thorbrain” is, has no indication on whether or not its results are statistically significant. He specifies that they gave site users a series of personality questions ‘for fun.’ No indication is made of controlling factors or even the distribution of visitors by sex and background. This wouldn’t fool a first year stats student, and you have to be kidding if you think its results are remotely relevant to the discussion.

Science: it works, bitches.

How am I an idiot for accepting the simplest explanation, which is differences in socialization and role-modelling, for the issue of gender differences? Would you prefer that I accept your hocus-pocus untested, unproven theories of biology? Socialization accounts for all the historical and contemporary evidence for which biology does not, unless biological differences connected to the behavior of sexes can be found in people of other cultures which differentiate them from ourselves. It’s an argument towards extreme coincidence, really.

You lay claim to “facts,” yet you fail to demonstrate argument except “men and women are different.” A conclusion is not an argument.

I Like Cake, you are so mislead! Can’t you see that men and women’s brains are simply being mutated over the centuries, leading to differing behaviour!

By the radioactive meteor!

In the sky!

Sent by the reptiles!

Oh SNAP, Pyabo just got owned.

I don’t really have anything to say, really, I Like Cake pretty much covered everything I was going to, and s/he did it in a much more hilarious fashion than I would have. Kudos to you, sir/madam.

Of course it’s both, but saying that doesn’t really get us anywhere. The key is asking about *how much* or *what* each factor influences.

Cake, I think your science is behind the times. Here are the first two Google hits I came across:

http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00018E9D-879D-1D06-8E49809EC588EEDF

As for my lack of “facts”… I thought my statement was self-evident, but here’s a couple for you:
1) men have penises, women do not!
2) women have boobies, (most) men do not!
3) women can have babies. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the only man to ever have a baby
4) women are bad drivers

Now then… number 4 is a satirical joke, in case anyone didn’t get that. “Women are bad drivers” is a sexist remark. This is not: “Given two games, one simple click-management with a gardening theme and another control heavy hand-to-hand combat set in feudal Japan, most women would probably prefer gardening.”

I will grant you that social conditioning certainly plays a role in the behavior of men and women. But biology also plays a huge role, and it affects every behavior a man or woman exhibits… including choices they make about video games.

Businesses are built on averages, not exceptions. And the bigger your business the more “average” your target.

If you’re making a game for the Big Fish / Real Arcade market then you’d better accept that explosions and extreme difficulty levels aren’t in your design document EVER. If you load up a male gamer portal with Bejeweled clones then be prepared to change targets or go out of business.

To a certain extent you can predict your market and cater to them – and be better off for doing so.

you guys really need to stop joking around, women’s rights is serious business. i for one think a computer/video-game system should be installed in every kitchen in america (only *real* country, afterall) so that women can also partake in the male dominated *super*sport of gaming.

Pyabo, just wanted to let you know that your post was caught in our spam filter because you included two links. It has nothing to do with you or the content of your post.

It’s up, now (#27).

Pyabo, I think your example is a little misleading and poorly thought-out. I think most *non-gamers* would prefer the gardening game and find the feudal japan game far too confusing. And most *gamers* would find that more engaging than the gardening game.

It just happens that more males have been brought up with games as a hobby than females, and so are more used to control-heavy challenges. The why of *that*, obviously, is quite complicated. And hell, enough men like harvest moon.

But I honestly think, like Derek, that it’s not as simple as you make it out to be, which maybe bespeaks a little inexperience on your part with girls and games. I mean, my mother is strictly anti-violence, she hates violent games, wouldn’t let me touch any until I was like 13. What happens when we decided to play Thief II together? “Kill him! Quick! He’s gonna find us!” That really says “gotten over social barrier” more than it does “biological aversion to violence”, at least to me.

Damn, Thief II was a good game.

Pyabo, I don’t think anyone’s saying that men and women aren’t different, or that talking about the differences makes you a bigot.

But saying that one of those differences is “thinking”… I mean, c’mon.

_”That’s what I was going to mention, most males tend to flock to games that involve shooting, thinking, and simulation (sports, cars). Women tend to like more ‘casual’ stuff like like all those mindless clicking-fest casual games on the top 10 lists.”_

_”As was mentioned – any game that involves strategy, challenge, and thinking, appeals to guys.”_

I mean, Christ… how can you defend that with a straight face? And don’t tell me those are jokes. Those are two separate users agreeing that men enjoy thinking, but women don’t.

The other one is “competitiveness” (find your own quotes for that one). Apparently women aren’t competitive. That is complete and utter bullshit.

I just don’t get what the point of this TIGS post was. I mean, the IGF thread is months old, was it just an unfriendly dig?

It’s this juvenile elitist attitude that pops up here way too often that really puts me off reading TIGS.

It wasn’t meant to be this way, can’t we all just get along? =(

I just found it interesting that some young male developers are making games for older women. :)

YES, interesting. An entire industry based around making games for older women… designed PREDOMINANTLY by men.

Older women have worn clothes for a centuries (heh). Older women have NOT been playing games for a long time, and it’s interesting why they are now. It’s interesting what kinds of games they play. It’s interesting why it’s grown so much as an industry in the past few years.

It’s interesting (and disheartening) to see the attitudes of male game developers toward women and what kinds of games they think women enjoy playing.

Enough explanation?

I never said it was bad. Just interesting. :)

You’re the ones adding the negative contexts.

That said, it would be interesting to see more female designers in the industry as well.

If it’s elitist behavior to dislike bigotry and to feel repulsed by marketing that exploits and exaggerates all the worst aspects of humanity, then yes, I am an elitist, and yes, I am proud to be one.

I am entirely willing to concede the fact that the majority of women living in the western world today are interested in trivial casual games (if any games at all) and the majority of men are interested in games about murder, but is this really something we want to encourage? Personally speaking, I don’t consider wanting more money, even wanting to make a base living, as an excuse for poor social conscience.

It’s no secret that the cultural homogeneity we see exhibited nowadays is in part due to our broader communication channels. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you only have to step out on to the street to see hundreds of people filling roles that have been modelled for them on television and in movies and magazines. Do you think biology tells boys to like violence and girls to like unicorns? Does it also tell them how to wear their hair the same way, how to dress the same, how to develop the same verbal affectations?

I’m just sick and tired of it, you know? I’m tired of an entire culture based around buying, where income is considered a top discriminant among human beings, where computers, possibly the most wonderful and flexible tool of the twenty-first century, have been reduced to a tool for anaesthetic violence in a world where death isn’t real and where clicking a mouse makes you more of a hero than you could ever be if, you know, you only learned to be a more thoughtful person and became a little nicer and more considerate for it, and all because someone wants a new car or a new condo or even a fucking sandwich. Don’t get the idea that I believe violent video games to cause school shootings, or anything nearly so simplistic, I just think that leeching off people’s brutality and stupidity and promoting a listless, lifeless culture for your own personal gain is pretty low.

So to sum up, yeah, I think churning out another cookie-cutter computer game about headshots and bitches and pandering to a male stereotype which features the core hobbies of punching and date rape makes you part of the problem, and that makes you kind of a shithead.