To be fair Eve's penetration of the female demographic is minimal, to put it kindly. (If you'll pardon the parlance.)
Sure. And it was even
less at the time; player base was low and percentage of female players was very low.
I didn't mean to necessarily express outrage, I said I cringed. Because it came across as patronising and the suggestion (in the context of the thread, mind you) pleased no one - male or female. The most sensible (in my opinion) posit was that real life gender shouldn't matter either way; we're all here to just play the game. But that said, I can understand the irritation at being written out when you're already a minority.
Of course I understood the intention - to be more inclusive and make more money. Neither of which would be bad things. Just that it overlooked the points outlined above, and if anything came across as naive if well-intentioned.
I meant it more as an extension of the 'toys' point (which does regard marginalisation - ignoring a proportion of a playerbase, however small, when kind of referring to them at the same time...well it's kind of like talking about you when you're in the room) but also just as something I found interesting at the time (and still do). I'll bring up that point not just in regards to gender, by the by, but also about how I feel it's (always) important not to lose sight of what your original vision is when attempting to broaden your userbase. I'm not saying don't adapt or be flexible, what I'm saying is...
If you build it, they will come. Broadening your appeal is fine, as long as you still have the spirit of what everyone is there in the first place for. The women who liked the game are already enjoying it; change it too much to fit into some idea of what you think all women would like (if such a thing could be possible), and you risk alienating your initial playerbase (or even worse, in your earnest desire to broaden your userbase, you've left the niche that made you singularly interesting).
Also, in a completely ironic turn of events, you are expressing outrage at being marginalised because CCP seek to introduce a wider audience, which is pretty much in total counterpoint to the first part of your post where you slap around people who feel outrage at being marginalised because Developers are seeking to be welcoming to a wider demographic. :3
Not saying I haven't been inconsistent with my views, it's entirely possible! But who did I slap around for feeling outrage at being marginalised? I'm all for the marginalised! Not sure at all what you meant there - who's being marginalised by asking for smarter, more complex and innovative games? People who aren't into having to think about stuff are always going to have purely twitched based stuff if they aren't interested in story and characters.
Did you mean the whole misogynistic backlash at any complaint of sexism in general, reaching crazy melodramatic proportions of rape and death threats towards any perceived threat? (Such as the fem freq videos or that bioware writer or whoever else)
cause um. those outraged people aren't marginalised at all.
They're pretty much the main demographic of every game everywhere whose outrage is entirely based on entitlement of that fact. 0.o;
The fact that she'd receive so much hate for even wanting to study tropes in games (which is a massive compliment to the gaming industry as a whole, btw, in basically saying it's a legit medium as much as film or literature to examine this stuff) is...frankly insane.
/scratches head
Something you said regarding Skyrim sort of jarred with me, I don't know how others felt about it, but you said that controversy regarding same-sex marriages in Skyrim was low because they were non-threatening. That sort of rubbed me up the wrong way because I find same-sex relationships and marriages unthreatening a posteriori.
Should they be threatening? How would that look?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPbuPwVI4N8
Yah, no to the pillows
Ok - yeah, I didn't spell it out but will do so now -
The people likely to feel threatened and froth at the mouth at the overt presence of same sex marriage or anything outside of their comfort zone in 'their games' are likely to be the same people who go apeshit at the damsel in distress videos. The 'threatening' bit (to someone ALREADY homophobic,
not me, which seemed to be your suggestion >.< I find the concept 'unthreatening a posteriori' also. at least, I think I do, as I'm not 100% on what 'a posteriori' means, but with you on the first bit) is when it's IN the narrative, challenging it directly, FORCING the player to have to deal with said concept IN the storyline thereby having to face their OWN set of associations; however formed, however erroneous.
Skyrim emphatically does not do this. Nor am I saying it necessarily should be in the forefront of the game, because that's not what Skyrim is about. Just that's my opinion of why people who may dislike the idea of games being more diverse also had no problem with Skyrim - because it's all very easy to ignore. And therefore non-threatening to
people already predisposed to find it threatening. Who, as we've already established, is not
you or me.
But tell me those people aren't vocally active and pervasive in the gaming community and I will respectfully disagree.
Author
Topic: GDC Vault: Sex and Sexism in Games (Read 7466 times)