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RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - Nice - 04-24-2014

(04-24-2014, 07:35 AM)Wooderson Wrote:
(04-24-2014, 05:47 AM)MyRedNeptune Wrote:
(04-24-2014, 02:44 AM)Bridge Wrote:
(04-24-2014, 01:35 AM)Ghieri Wrote: @ KMan: The problem that seems to be the crux of this debate is that both standards are relative to men. The image of musclemen is meant to incite a power fantasy, and the image of women are meant as eye candy.

Frankly, if men were equally being objectified, then they'd all be shirtless and have thick mustaches, with bowties around their necks.

So I take it you are implying that muscly men are not eye candy to women

Ugh, no. You've all got it wrong! Sad

This is what we like: https://scontent-a-cdg.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/q81/s720x720/1488764_10200217647283909_1721865685_n.jpg

Not silly muscle men.

Hands off ladies, he's taken Wink

there you go boys and ladies, just for you http://i.imgur.com/MW350gt.jpg

not sure whats so special about my demon eyes and "eat your soul" face but if you desire, i'm more than glad to provide you with more...exotic photos Wink

RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - Acies - 04-24-2014

Spoiler below!

(04-23-2014, 09:20 PM)Bridge Wrote: You don't need to write an academic paper about it, just name the traits you have noticed in your own experience and we can determine if they are reality.

(04-23-2014, 05:46 PM)Acies Wrote: Academic Paper

(04-24-2014, 12:41 AM)Bridge Wrote: Just finished reading it and was not impressed. I would need to do a quite lengthy analysis of it to fully explain why but I'll give you a few bullet points.
  • Obviously women and minorities are "misrepresented" in the majority of video games, but is that discrimination or laziness? I argue that it's laziness. I asked a perfectly reasonable question earlier: Do these games even represent white males? Being in a leading role does not necessarily mean you are well written.
  • Context is king. Yes, I would very well expect a NBA game not to have female characters because it is a men's only league and it makes a lot of sense for it to have more black characters because a whopping 78% of the NBA is black. Otherwise, consider that a game set in the US is likely to have a lower percentage of black people than a game set in some African nation because black people only make up around 13% of the nation. Here's a game set almost entirely in Brazil and lo and behold, it has only one Caucasian leading character. The enemies are mostly non-Caucasian because you wouldn't expect to find a lot of Caucasians in Brazil where they are a minority. Here's another example of that. The game takes place mostly outside of the US, and the enemies are whatever nationality you would expect to find in the country the particular level is set in. I could go on and on listing examples, but this type of arithmetic doesn't jive with me. It goes completely against common sense. Would you be happy if the ratio of ethnicities and genders were all 1:1, even where it doesn't make any sense or is distracting?
  • The sample is way too small. Top 20 games 2006? That doesn't give you any useful information at all, it can so easily be heavily skewed. To say nothing about the quality of the games they picked. I'm not riveted by most of them, and they are not what most people take seriously. It's akin to doing a study of the most popular stupid movies that everybody hates and which are not the subject of critical analysis. And they even reference a study of NES and Genesis games all the way back in the dark ages of gaming without irony (not to mention suggesting that studies have confirmed that violence and video games are linked - which has been debunked over and over.)
  • They only played the first 10 or so minutes of a game (or viewed the introductory cutscene) and called it a day. That's extremely poor methodology to me. Not even a fraction of useful information can be deduced from that, and a lot of absolutely non-sexist games would be immediately labeled as sexist.
  • They imply that video games directly influence people's views and can have harmful effects especially on adolescents. Maybe if you completely immerse yourself in video games so that you literally don't know what reality is anymore and have no upbringing, but that is hardly representative of most people.

Just for example.


I was asked to provide a few pointers from personal experience, but managed to find an academic study relating closely to what we are discussing. Obviously any "personal experiences" I would have provided would have met the same demise as the statistical data just presented before you :] Well, I am not arguing wheter the reason is discrimination or 'laziness' (which seems like a straw-man's attempt at an argument, but anyway) I am just arguing that:
(04-23-2014, 05:46 PM)Acies Wrote: I believe the gender of a person has influence on the artistic work they produce (and by an extension to this thread: a group of females would produce a different type of game than a group of males).

To quote your words:
(04-24-2014, 12:41 AM)Bridge Wrote: Obviously women and minorities are "misrepresented"

Which is why I'd argue that such a misrepresentation would not exist in a game created by a group of females. I'd believe there would be more variations than that, but at least this variation can be factually proven (and actually admitted to being existing in your eyes).

RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - Bridge - 04-24-2014

EDIT: Just forget it. I don't want to do this anymore. It's been grand, though.

RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - Acies - 04-24-2014

(04-24-2014, 01:37 PM)Bridge Wrote:
(04-24-2014, 12:55 PM)Acies Wrote: I was asked to provide a few pointers from personal experience, but managed to find an academic study relating closely to what we are discussing.

So the academia can do no wrong, is that it? I read the paper you linked and I gave my thoughts on it - what I hope are well reasoned arguments. You're now supposed to respond and tell me why I'm wrong, that's how this works. I'm not going to take an academic paper at its word because it is an academic paper.

Not to mention, I didn't ask you to prove that there is misrepresentation in games, I asked you for examples of female-specific values, so the paper is irrelevant. How can you in good conscience say that there are such things if you don't even have any conception of what they are?

Quote:Obviously any "personal experiences" I would have provided would have met the same demise as the statistical data just presented before you.

Statistical data? Okay, let's say I pick 20 people at random each from a major city. Ten out of those 20 are criminals, therefore 50% of all people are criminals. Do you have a problem with my conclusion? What's that, are the people I chose not necessarily representative of all people, and was my sample so small that had I picked some other group of 20 people the results would have been completely different? Gee…

Yes, I'm sure they would have met the same demise if you used them to make baseless generalizations like the paper.

Quote:Which is why I'd argue that such a misrepresentation would not exist in a game created by a group of females. I'd believe there would be more variations than that, but at least this variation can be factually proven (and actually admitted to being existing in your eyes).

This mindset is known as sexism.

I already linked you a bunch of stuff created by females that is indistinguishable from stuff created by males. Now it's your turn to link me something that is obviously female, or your argument doesn't hold water.

Hahaha, no - they are not well reasoned arguments. They are straw-man arguments. You attribute the represenatation of females to 'laziness'. It is so statistically common that it's not an indication of laziness, but rather a mindset.

(04-24-2014, 01:37 PM)Bridge Wrote: So the academia can do no wrong, is that it?

I might ask you the same question in return, can not your personal opinion be wrong?

(04-24-2014, 01:37 PM)Bridge Wrote: Statistical data? Okay, let's say I pick 20 people at random each from a major city. Ten out of those 20 are criminals, therefore 50% of all people are criminals. Do you have a problem with my conclusion? What's that, are the people I chose not necessarily representative of all people, and was my sample so small that had I picked some other group of 20 people the results would have been completely different? Gee…

Yes, I'm sure they would have met the same demise if you used them to make baseless generalizations like the paper.

Do you not see how this analogy is wrong for the example at hand? There was a total of 174 notable games released that year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_in_video_gaming). What 'major city' has 174 inhabitants? Going back to the study, picking the 20 most popular games of that year means that you encompass a majority of the gaming market for that year. It seems like quite a logical choice to pick a sample size which allows you to analyze a majority of the market and the exposure, no?

On top of that, this type of study has been successfully repeated 3 other times, by 3 independant researchers (copy-paste from https://www.msu.edu/~pengwei/Mou%20Peng.pdf):
Spoiler below!

Following the female as sex object perspective,
Beasley and Standley (2002) particularly
focused on the appearance of female characters,
using clothing as an indicator of sexuality. They
examined three categories of clothing: sleeve
length, neckline, and lower body clothing. They
also coded body cleavage and breast size of female
characters. Beasley and Standley (2002) found a
significant sex bias in female characters. Of the 597
characters coded, only 82 (13.74%) were women.
A majority of the female characters wore clothing
that exposed more skin than the male characters.
To be specific, female characters were more likely
to be in low-cut clothing and with bare arms than
male characters, and about 41% of the female
characters were big busted. In addition, there
was no difference among different game ratings
(i.e., “E” for ages 6 and older, “T” for ages 13 and
older, or “M” for ages 17 and older), which means
children could see voluptuous women images as
frequently as adults do in video games.
A follow-up study by Downs and Smith (2005)
demonstrated a similar result. They did a content
analysis of 60 video games. Compared to male
characters, females were more likely to be represented
in a hypersexual way: being partially
nude, featured with an unrealistic body image
and shown wearing sexually revealing clothing
and inappropriate attire. Similarly, Haninger and
Thompson (2004) found that in the sample of 81
teen-rated video games, women were significantly
more likely to be depicted partially nude than men.
In addition, there were much more male playable
characters (72 out of the 81 games) than female
playable characters (42 out of the 81 games).


Everyone of those studies pointed at the same results, each with more games in their sample. In return, you provide your own thesis and support it with a non-random sample selection of two games.



(04-24-2014, 01:37 PM)Bridge Wrote: I already linked you a bunch of stuff created by females that is indistinguishable from stuff created by males. Now it's your turn to link me something that is obviously female, or your argument doesn't hold water.

I think common sense would dictate that a group of females would not create games in the way described above. I am sorry but I don't think I'll partake in this 'trail of the discussion' anymore, as I can't really feel a meaningful exchange going on.

I think Kman previously raised some interesting points, things like that could stack up to deliver a different experience gameplay-wise :]

RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - Bridge - 04-25-2014

@Acies: I'm sorry if I offended you in any way - it was not my intention to be so acidic. Sometimes I don't notice. Anyway...

Acies Wrote:Hahaha, no - they are not well reasoned arguments. They are straw-man arguments. You attribute the represenatation of females to 'laziness'. It is so statistically common that it's not an indication of laziness, but rather a mindset.

Badly written female or minority characters go hand in hand with badly written male/white characters. Unless you seriously think the majority of games and movies writers are rampant misanthropes or sociopaths - it's laziness.

Quote:I might ask you the same question in return, can not your personal opinion be wrong?

Maybe, but I'm not willing to accept that the majority of men are secretly highly sexist. Furthermore, I'm not willing to accept that women are magically not sexist at all. I find myself somewhat in doubt whether this is actually what you are saying. I apologize if it isn't, but that is the impression I get.

Quote:Do you not see how this analogy is wrong for the example at hand? There was a total of 174 notable games released that year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_in_video_gaming). What 'major city' has 174 inhabitants? Going back to the study, picking the 20 most popular games of that year means that you encompass a majority of the gaming market for that year. It seems like quite a logical choice to pick a sample size which allows you to analyze a majority of the market and the exposure, no?

Look, I didn't want to make such a big deal out of this minor point but it is undoubtedly a flaw. Ten percent is not a majority of the gaming market unless you meant the majority share of the total sales. Regardless, this is only one year and this paper is making sweeping statements about the entire medium using this data. One would think that 20 games and especially ten minutes worth of examination would not be sufficient for such a study which is what I hoped to illustrate with my hyperbolic analogy. I'm not trying to argue that the data is false in and of itself though, as I've already agreed that it is true. Most of these games however are only what serious gamers would begrudgingly call games and cannot be considered representive of games as art. It's the conclusions that you reach that I take most offense at.

Quote:Everyone of those studies pointed at the same results, each with more games in their sample. In return, you provide your own thesis and support it with a non-random sample selection of two games.

Well, as much as I'd like to spend all day compiling a list of games where the gender and race of the characters is decided by context, the point again wasn't to say that there is no misrepresentation, only to mention two examples off the top of my head where minorities become the majority in videogames because it makes sense in context. The paper should not have counted games like NBA in a study of gender representation because you are guaranteed never to find a major female character in such a game for one simple reason: it's a men's only basketball league. Is it a sexist game for being true to its source material? Otherwise I agree that it would not be negative if more female characters were introduced into games, provided it is not done artificially. I just disagree with the notion that it's sexism.

Quote:I think common sense would dictate that a group of females would not create games in the way described above. I am sorry but I don't think I'll partake in this 'trail of the discussion' anymore, as I can't really feel a meaningful exchange going on.

Well I personally think common sense would dictate that a group of skilled females would not create a game with poorly written caricatures of people, in the same way that skilled males are capable of doing. I think it's sexist to suggest that a female is naturally more adept at something not necessarily ordained by nature like art. Artists are as a general rule special cases. Even if they weren't, good artists should and do think very carefully about what they put into their works. Again, correct me if I'm wrong but you seem to suggest that males by virtue of being male are somehow incapable of thinking critically about themselves and their environment.

Quote:I think Kman previously raised some interesting points, things like that could stack up to deliver a different experience gameplay-wise :]

Interesting and most of them true to some extent but as I said, it doesn't actually make much of a difference when you start talking about great artists. You might think so, evidently we disagree on that. It is my experience that men and women are not exceedingly different past a certain point - take that as you will.

RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - VaeVictis - 04-25-2014

Kman, you have an antiquated notion of gender. Amy Hennig directed the Legacy of Kain series.
Dunno what psych class you took, but the information is out dated.
I'll get later when I have the time and resources on hand for a refutation.

RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - VaeVictis - 04-26-2014

(04-24-2014, 01:38 AM)Kman Wrote: uh also as for the whole female/male values thing while they might not as be as prominent as a lot of people would like you to believe i do believe they exist. most of this is just going off memory from various articles ive seen online + a psych class i took earlier this year + my own personal experience so im sure it won't be 100% accurate BUT from what i can remember
  • men are generally better at spatial reasoning
  • women are generally much more social and pick up on the subtleties of interaction a lot easier
  • women tend to be more in touch with their emotions (sort of similar to the last one but w/e)
  • men tend to see in black and white and absolutes a lot more then women in particular with emotions
  • men are generally more aroused by specific body parts (hey i actually have a source for this one LOL WHATS UP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-A8GvUehq4)
  • women have a disconnect between being aroused and actual wanting to engage in any sort of sexual act
  • womens sexuality is highly influenced by their peers and relies more on the status of their partner rather than their body
  • masculinity encourages men to be more aggressive, protective, and assertive
  • our culture teaches women to be more submissive and to work to appeal to men (i could go on and on about these last two points for days but im guessing you already know the basics of them)
  • both genders cant express enjoyment of certain media without getting judged because of gender roles (like bronies or girls w/ videogames and such)

those are just the first few that come to mind, im sure i could come up with more if i really spent some time on it. like i said i don't think that these necessarily impact all art or that, but i think acies does definitely have a point that the gender of a creator definitely can have an impact on a work of art even if its not anything super noticeable. a lot of that certainly explains why you might see certain trends that have been brought up depending on which gender it was primarily created by.
i don't think the actual intent behind it is really relevant if we're discussing what sort of impact it has on the consumer. it do believe that the focus around men in both exposes a lot of the focus in media and shows the inequality between the two sexes when it comes to most forms of art, but that doesn't really effect what kind of mindsets it shapes

and yeah of course men aren't objectified as much as women but thats not to say that it doesn't happen and that its not just as shitty when it does happen. regardless of which sex is being objectified it still has the same shitty toxic effect on people who embrace it.

Quote:[*]men are generally better at spatial reasoning
[*]women are generally much more social and pick up on the subtleties of interaction a lot easier
[*]women tend to be more in touch with their emotions (sort of similar to the last one but w/e)
You know those things you listed are more cultural than biological, right?
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/hesaid-8-studies-that-debunk-gender-stereotypes/
http://bigthink.com/videos/debunking-gender-stereotypes
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/the-gender-myth-20100908-151d3.html

Also, Amy Hennig had a huge role in the Legacy of Kain series. Do you think that women working on such games are anomalous? And if it is, is it really because of gender stereotypes, or because women are discouraged from entering the field in the first place?

Quote:[*]men are generally more aroused by specific body parts (hey i actually have a source for this one LOL WHATS UP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-A8GvUehq4)
[*]women have a disconnect between being aroused and actual wanting to engage in any sort of sexual act
[*]womens sexuality is highly influenced by their peers and relies more on the status of their partner rather than their body

Again, these are more cultural than biological. In non-Western tribes, women do not were bras or tops. The men are not walking around in a state of uncontrolled desire, they've just accepted that breasts aren't actually for them.
Women many times require mental stimulation for arousal. But maybe this is only an issue because men don't like to facilitate that? And not all men depend on objectification and strict visuals for arousal. This isn't even unusual, it's just beat into our heads that men are strictly visual.
Women's sexuality is not dependent by their peers and status of their partner. This is evolutionary psychology at its worst. If women were not oppressed into NOT owning property (ie. having access to resources of their own), then there'd be no reason for women to seek a wealthy partner.
It's sweeping generalizations like this that harms women's representation in the media, which leads to low self-esteem.
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news-archive/22445.html

RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - Kman - 04-26-2014

im not sure if you actually watched the video i linked or not but

Quote:[*]men are generally more aroused by specific body parts
[*]women have a disconnect between being aroused and actual wanting to engage in any sort of sexual act
[*]womens sexuality is highly influenced by their peers and relies more on the status of their partner rather than their body

are all things that have been observed throughout the world. this isn't based on my own personal experience or view on life and its not based off just western civilization - it's a trend thats recurrent throughout almost every culture across the board. im sure there's exceptions to this based on cultural norms and other factors (like you listed) but all those points have actually been observed and concluded through actually studying what tends to trigger male and female arousal

besides even if all of these trends are determined by society that doesn't........ really change the point i was trying to make. acies claimed that because of the differences between how men and women experience life and their values and such that they would inevitably produce different art and so i decided to back that up with specific examples. whether those are biologically linked to men and women is irrelevant to the discussion considering whichever category it fits into doesn't change the fact that its still part of how they experience life and would inevitably change the final product even if its a minute change

i dont really know anything about legacy of kain so i dont think i'd be able to respond to that with any sort of legitimacy sorry

RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - Bridge - 04-26-2014

(04-26-2014, 02:50 AM)Kman Wrote: are all things that have been observed throughout the world. this isn't based on my own personal experience or view on life and its not based off just western civilization - it's a trend thats recurrent throughout almost every culture across the board. im sure there's exceptions to this based on cultural norms and other factors (like you listed) but all those points have actually been observed and concluded through actually studying what tends to trigger male and female arousal

Even if that were true, and I'm not implying that it is or isn't because I don't have enough knowledge either way, it would only be a general way to describe things, not an absolute one. I have a disconnect between arousal and wanting to engage in any sort of sexual act, but I'm not a woman. It stands to reason that people are not doomed to follow nature's dictates with no conceivable free will and if they actually think things through they can come to unintuitive conclusions that defy what one would expect of their gender. Does it induce cognitive dissonance? Yeah, but what aspect of society doesn't involve even a little cognitive dissonance?

Quote:besides even if all of these trends are determined by society that doesn't........ really change the point i was trying to make. acies claimed that because of the differences between how men and women experience life and their values and such that they would inevitably produce different art and so i decided to back that up with specific examples. whether those are biologically linked to men and women is irrelevant to the discussion considering whichever category it fits into doesn't change the fact that its still part of how they experience life and would inevitably change the final product even if its a minute change

But there are factors that actually have more than a minute effect in influencing the quality of a work of art, such as sensitivity to art, knowledge of the technical skills required for the particular field and experience. It's precarious to talk about gender-specific "undertones" if one can not point to even a single example that is unique to one gender. Furthermore, what implications do Acies' words have, that male undertones make games created by males somehow repellent to females? That males should only play games created by males and females only games created by females? It is a ugly and divisive philosophy that I want no part of. Don't know about you guys, but I have absolutely no problem playing games that females have worked on and not because I want to be exposed to female undertones because I'm not convinced such things exist in the way they are discussed here - nor do I have any problem with playing female protagonists which makes me call BS on the theory that women don't like playing games that don't have female protagonists. But pay no heed to my words, I am after all an oppressor trying to retain the status quo.

Diversity is a great thing, but it is mostly achieved (in my opinion) when many people with significantly differing worldviews each offer their thoughts. Women may contribute to that diversity, but not exclusively because they are women.

RE: Genders in Gaming Target Audiences. - spukrian - 04-26-2014

(04-23-2014, 02:08 PM)Dogfood Wrote:
(04-23-2014, 02:02 PM)Kreekakon Wrote:
(04-23-2014, 01:58 PM)Wooderson Wrote: Another example... Look at Sam and Dean from Supernatural. If they weren't as attractive as they are then a significant amount of the female audience wouldn't bother to watch.

I actually think that doesn't matter. As long as the actors/actresses aren't absolutely ugly I do not think their appearances/sex appeal contributes much to an appreciation, or distaste of a show.

as someone that watches supernatural I have to agree with Lucke.

There's erotic gay fanfictions between the two main actors all over the place, when they have some sort of a meetup with fans or how are those events called, most of the audience are physically unfit women that laugh at everything the two say in the most "overly attached gf" kind of way even though the two didnt mean it to be funny.

You look at supernatural videos, 80% comments are going to be either adoring how hot the two actors look or "omgomgomg i want them to have sex they're so hot"

even the directors of the series noticed it, so the new episodes are having more and more gay sexual innuendos.
Supernatural is a good case study.

In the show you can find lots of jokes making fun of the fact the fans want to see homosexual incest between the two male protagonists.

You can also see that any attractive regular female character on the show tends to die, because the fanbase (consisting mostly of heterosexual women) tend to get jealous of most females on the show. So most regular characters on the show are male. Of course, on the show, there are very few overweight or minority or whatever characters... Make of that what you will.