199 réponses à ce sujet

[Allan Schumacher]

Because players don't intuitively recognize people in Thedas as different from regular humans. Because sometimes people want to tell stories that aren't based in a different universe.

 

I think your position is fundamentally antiquated and the assumptions you believe of people are increasingly less common.  Because sometimes people just want to tell stories where the bogus gender expectations aren't a reality.

 

 

In any case, discussion like this isn't relevant in a thread that is effectively designed to encourage and support this.  Telling the women in this thread how women think and behave isn't productive and the tangent stops now.

 

Further discussion along this lines will be removed.

 

 

 

 

Gender roles are mostly societal constructs. I dare say at the risk of getting swarmed by the women, that there is a very weak biological argument for a disposition against risk in the Female's of our species. The long gestation period, low "litter" count (almost always one), and high infant mortality rate would make the female averse to risk, and prone to the duties of reproduction. Since the male's part in the ordeal of species propagation is about two minutes long* we tend to be biologically "Expendable" in a way that females aren't.

I understand where you're coming from, but I think it is obsolete, especially in Western World where women have autonomy over their reproductive rights.  Many choose to not have kids and our population isn't particularly threatened with minimal enough risks, that it doesn't apply anymore (unlike something like the 30 years war).  Situation may change depending on circumstance, but that bridge gets crossed when it gets there.

[Allan Schumacher]

Well, tough luck.

 

Most armies are made up of men.

 

They aren't generic though.  This post isn't particularly productive to the concept of the thread either.  Try to be a bit more insightful within the context of video game representation of women, which this thread is about.

[Allan Schumacher]

Yeah there are lot of women that play mobile, handheld, and browser games, and that number is growing. I don't know why you're discounting those games.

 

All you have you do is look at the top selling AAA games each year to know that AAA gaming dominated by the male demographic. GTA, Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, Halo, Battlefield, Gears of War, sports games like Madden, FIFA, NBA2K, etc 

 

There's a game developer that answers questions on tumblr and you can find an article that discusses the breakdown here:

http://askagamedev.t...-that-women-buy

 

It shows that a lot of women (roughly 80 million) actively purchase games for the big consoles, and that while it's not as big as men (about half as much), that's still a lot of people.  And it shows that the most common game type tends to be action, followed by shooter.  Casual games make up a small part.

 

It's possibly a large reason why representation calls are becoming more frequent.

[Allan Schumacher]

Yes, but we are not talking about hate, we are talking about discrimination. Choosing not to play a game just because the main character is male is not hatred, it is discrimination and that is the very definition of sexism.

 

No, it's not.

 

This tangent stops right now.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm wondering to myself where these numbers for digital sales came from seeing as Steam enjoys the majority of the digital distribution market and Valve never releases sales figures.

 

It helps if you read the link a bit more closely since it's discussing digital sales on consoles.  So Valve/Steam's sales figures are irrelevant.

[Allan Schumacher]

One of the charts is for digital worldwide, and another is for what games people are buying in US, digital or not. And factoring in the digital sales include DLC, subscriptions, and microtransactions, I don't know how you can put together those two graphs and claim almost 80 million women are purchasing games for consoles.

 

He/She is manipulating numbers to prove a point. 

 

You are correct that the graphs don't measure the exact same thing.

 

Here's the thing, however.  Are you supposing that the purchasing habits for people are measurably different for things like DLC, subscriptions, and MTX?

 

80 million women are purchasing content for consoles.  Do you believe that women have significantly different purchasing patterns based on digital or other forms of supplementary one between men and women?  That's the assumption being made, and I don't find it unreasonable.

[Allan Schumacher]

I believe men and women on average have different interests. That digital graph doesn't show what females are buying. Minecraft on consoles as a whole is nearing 35 mil sold and I know that it has a sizable female population. Just Dance/dance central are digital and those games sell in chunks each year.

 

I'm not saying females aren't interested in mainstream AAA games, just no where near male gamers, which is why those type of games aren't catered to them.

 

I think you're rationalizing based on assumptions that may not be correct in order to reinforce your world view.  For instance, roughly half of the content QA playtester team on DAI is women, and they're pretty enthusiastic about the game (and to be working here, and all that stuff that I felt when I first got hired for DAO).

 

Note that terms like "no where near" are ambiguous.  Is 2:1 ratio considered "no where near?"  Because that's what the article mentions as the ratio.

[Allan Schumacher]

How many of those women are just using Xbox for netflix, movies or other streaming sites? Remember up until a few months ago, all apps were behind the Live paywall.

 

I say this because I've been on xbox live past years, and played though thousands of multiplayer games in Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield, ME3, etc and rarely do I ever come across any females.

 

I know it's just from my experience, but I think I've had a big enough sample size. If women are as interested in AAA games as people say they are, I would've met a ton more than I have already. 

 

I've had friends of mine that I didn't even know with gamers until she overheard me talking about WoW.

 

Your personal experiences are not representative.  Sorry.  No one person's sample size is large enough.

[Allan Schumacher]

Very true for the most part.

 

His first sentence."I believe men and women on average have different interests" is fairly accurate though. Even if a man and a woman both love video games, it is very likely they get different things out of their gaming experience. Even within the same game.

 

This statement is true generally speaking between two different people.  For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if you and I get different things out of our gaming experience, even with the same game.

[Allan Schumacher]

Yes I know it was common. I just did not think it was still common with all the voice chat and video chat etc. that is out now. I guess those women don't use mics or video links in order to maintain the illusion.

 

Even as a man I typically only use voice chat when talking with actual friends.

[Allan Schumacher]

Give me an example of a game with a large percentage of female developers that was still aimed at males?

 

Give me an example of a game with a large percentage of female developers.

 

Scratch that, give me several.

[Allan Schumacher]

 Not sure what you mean by "lack of an inviting industry", do these companies put up a sign saying "don't bother applying if you are a woman"?

 

Not explicitly, no.  But science and technology has subconscious biases against women unfortunately.  The idea of "hire based on merit" isn't actually reality.

 

Here's a study that shows an experiment with a job application in sciences.  The applications was identical in every way, with one expection: half got the name of a woman, the other half got the name of a man.

 

The applicants were rated for competency, hireability, willingess to mentor, and starting salary.  In every single category, the woman scored less by an amount large enough to not be considered plausible due to luck.

 

The kicker: this pattern was observed in both men and women professors assessing the applicant.  The study doesn't indicate the specifics as to why this phenomenon occurs, but it does demonstrate that gender/sex isn't irrelevant.  If merit was the only thing that mattered, there'd be no observable difference.  But there was and given that it affected men and women, there seems to me to be something systemic rather than overt "I hate women" types of perspectives.  It's subtle and unconscious.

 

 

Now imagine you're a woman with the exact same qualifications as a man applying to work at a job in the tech sector.  Or maybe even slightly better.  If you're being rated more harshly because you're a woman, you're being disadvantaged by nature of your sex.

[Allan Schumacher]

Isn't that the problem?

 

But that being said while I am not sure about the rest of the Dragon Age team isn't the majority of the writing staff female?

 

It is a problem.  Having said that, challenging someone like myself to take a birds eye approach to things we do in games is perfectly valid.

 

If someone is a gamer and would like to enact change, one way of doing so is to provide feedback.  There's no good reason why I must create works that are exclusively enjoyable by men (especially since it's unlikely that works that exclusively appeal to men even interest myself, since the term is ambiguous).

[Allan Schumacher]

And I never claimed otherwise, however would it be unfair to say that anything that you create would largely be influenced by your own tastes?

 

If your own tastes include things that exclude things that women may enjoy, then I think it's important to reevaluate your tastes.  That doesn't mean they have to change, but there may be something there that isn't a good thing.

 

These conversations help me reevaluate my own habits of typically playing men when given the choice (I stick to this less and less as time goes on), as well as examining the content we help make.  BioWare isn't perfect by any means but if I see something that seems off, I speak out about it, and it helps enact change.

 

 

There's not this huge divide between what women want out of video games and what men want.  If I am making a game that caters to my own tastes, there's nothing inherent in that that means that most (if not all) of my games can't still also appeal to many women.  Women are upset with Ubisoft's response and decision because they like playing Assassin's Creed.

 

My taste in women's armor in video games is more akin to something like this: http://media-cache-a...d93496dfb12.jpg  I am under the impression that a lot of women in this thread have little overall issue with the aesthetic, and probably even like it themselves.

 

 

Now, if my taste in female armor is something more like this meme: http://funnypictures...ty-gt-style.jpg then maybe there's some reflection I need to do.  If this is what I find suits my tastes, why is that?  Because I don't find that that particular taste is very respectful towards women.

[Allan Schumacher]

Actually, presentation is everything.

 

No, it's not.  If it was, we'd never have acknowledged much of the disappointment and frustration with ME3's endings, or with DA2.

 

Being angry or upset doesn't invalidate critique, and its an exploitation of privilege in many cases to decide to opt out of it.  Within context of this topic, it's easy to opt out of the feminism discussion in games because so many games aren't really taking part.  It's not easy, however, to opt out of negative views of women in games because it's so rampant, it means isolating yourself from games that you'd otherwise enjoy and leaving a significantly smaller gamer library available.

 

People can be perfectly calm and have absurd feedback that I think is irrelevant.  People can be upset and have extremely valid feedback.

 

 

If you're ignoring people based purely on their tone, you're ostensibly denying yourself room for growth and perspective.  If you're that catered to group, it's privilege because you're saying "I'm the power broker, so you better talk to me the way that I feel comfortable because otherwise I'm just not going to listen."

 

Naturally I prefer it when people are more collaborative than adversarial.  But sometimes that isn't the case.  Sometimes people are more upset about something than I can appreciate and it's not necessarily my place to say that they shouldn't be upset about it.  But my preference is selfish.  It's because I know if someone is being aggressive my defense barriers come up.  But I'm getting better (I think) at not letting that motivate me to simply dismiss since it may be a disservice not just to the person, but to myself, BioWare, and the game we're making.

 

 

 

 

If I start every criticism with "dudebro game X..." how seriously is somebody going to take the criticism?

 

As far as angsty commentary go, it's hardly the worst I've seen (I've once been told I should have been aborted as a fetus to ensure competent QA worked on Dragon Age.  That's being rude to the point where I'm not interested in talking much).  Someone using the term dudebro, especially when they're replying to a post that made them angry, isn't worthy of dismissal in my opinion.

 

 

 

 

I'm sure I'm on a few ignore lists for calling that out, in this very thread.

 

For the record I had removed your post since I considered it unnecessarily focusing on someone's tone, while frankly being a bit of an ass about it.  http://geekfeminism....i/Tone_argument

 

You opted to not only fail to recognize why the poster might be upset (as that's the way I read it), you then decided to nitpick the style of presentation rather than the points made within.

 

 

 

 

However, if I'm trying to appeal to somebody for something I want, I don't open the dialog with "Hey, you know you're a douche bag for not having (insert whatever here)"

 

Did this happen?

 

 

Here's the reality though, I don't find the term "dudebro" offensive in large part because I know when someone says that, they aren't referring to me.  You spend the rest of your post talking about how you're not a bad guy and you aren't like those that were brought up (this is a derailment by the way, you're shifting the discussion away from the thread's topic and making yourself the focus).

 

 

 

 

So yes, how one presents their criticism matters. I'd go so far as to suggest that if the criticism is presented in an extremely negative vein, it will not only be ignored, but will be deleted from the venue, and the person would be asked not to come back, enforced with ban, in the case of online communities. Inappropriate behavior is inappropriate, no matter what the subject matter is.

 

I find your post to be in an extremely negative vein.  I removed the other one (mostly because I know it'd just cause more trouble, even if you are not aware that it will), but not this one since I've opted to reply to it and still actually took the time to read it despite that.

[Allan Schumacher]

See? This is not constructive. Never have I been sarcastic or rude or belittling in my statements yet people feel the need to be as such towards me.

 

NO, you're telling people that they should only argue in a manner that you feel comfortable with, because you're the one they need to convince.  You actually don't realize that your comments are belittling to other people, which is part of the problem.  You're saying "I don't care what your point is... just as long as you say it nicely to me."  When I am not going to begrudge someone for responding in a more aggressive way to me if it turns out that I actually am pissing them off.  If people are responding angrily to you, you may actually be somewhat responsible for that.

 

 

Thread clean up now.  More off topic nonsense about tone is going to get deleted.  It's not relevant.

[Allan Schumacher]

Right so as per Allan's request, let's bring it back to the lady Inquisitor!

 

Here's something I'm curious about. For women who will roll a lady Inquisitor, will you try to make her look as similar to you as possible, or the complete opposite? I think oddly when I was younger I was more keen on making my characters as different as can be... pink hair, tattoos, the works (I'm referring to DAO's Warden... that was a while back, now!). But now I'm more interesting in creating a character who resembles me more. I wonder if it's an age thing. Not sure!

 

And for the guys... When you play the opposite gender, do you try to make her look as attractive as you can, or like a female version of yourself, etc etc?

 

I still go for someone attractive.  I do the same for male (which naturally isn't tooooo far from myself >.> )

 

Although probably more "cute" than "beautiful" if that makes sense.

[Allan Schumacher]

I always make my very first playthrough look as similar to me as possible, largely because that's my "insert me into the game" run and I try to do everything as I would do were I suddenly sucked into that world.

 

I often start here as a baseline too.  Although I allow myself character development that makes sense within the narrative as it's presented to me, even if it's not something Allan From Earth™ would do.

 

Like go full on darkside and use the Star Forge <.<

[Allan Schumacher]

Soooooooo, we received some cupcakes.

 

In general the responses have been "Wow... that's awesome!"  Some described reading it as a "week changer" as well.  So thanks so much for making this gesture!  I know some definitely called out the sentiment/motivation as touching, rather than just the delicious delicious cupcakes!

 

 

Cheers!

[Allan Schumacher]

[Allan Schumacher]

It's superbly appreciated.  I know for some it was a reaffirmation that "this is why this stuff is important" and for others "I didn't really realize how much some appreciated this" so please keep it up

 

 

I originally just sent it to the Dragon Age team (since it was cupcakes for them), but the letters and sentiment were picked up by the other games and also Montreal and propagated there too!!

[Allan Schumacher]

Something I asked in the Twitter thread--did everyone who wanted one manage to snag one?  We weren't sure if we'd sent enough!

 

I'm not sure unfortunately.  There were a lot, and after about 15 minutes there was still probably 1/3 left, so I think anyone who was "oh yes I must have one" got one.  They are all gone now, but honestly the sentiment is worth more than the cupcakes specifically.  That you organized it at all made some people's day (or week ) for sure!

[Allan Schumacher]

In fact some people are reading the thread now.  I heard one person "OMG I named my nug plushie Nuggins!"

[Allan Schumacher]

Also, thanks from me personally, for the numerous callouts many of you made for my time in this thread and forum in general.  I received a good chunk of playful sass from some coworkers about how my ulterior motive was to show everyone how much people like me!

 

But very nice words from the lot of you and it was almost shy inducing when I read them after sending the letters around first.  So thanks!

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm sorry I didn't contribute in helping with the purchase of the cupcakes for Bioware, I have no credit cards and only pay cash for things, but just wanted to say good job people.  And just so you know, I'm a male gamer and appreciate what Bioware has done thus far.

 

The verbal support is just fine.  Twitter is probably the easiest way to get access to a lot of the developers if you wanted to share verbal encouragement/support, but if you don't have access to that sharing it in this thread is still good.  I know some lurk here, and it's not uncommon for me to share stuff with the team as a whole from time to time as well.