"Anjin Anhut's concise explanation of why gender representation svcks in games and geeky movies"

http://boingboing.net/2014/01/05/how-gender-bias-in-games-and-g.html#more-278056

and

http://howtonotsvckatgamedesign.com/2013/12/marketers-fear-female-geek-2/

Read first then comment.

I dunno really. I always felt a bit of a social outcast for being a nerd: I think that the lack of marketing targeted in my direction didn't really contribute towards that, other than being a minor irritation. And having seen how badly wrong targeted marketing often is, I guess I should be thankful.

As an academic who is specialized in this topic, I can tell you that these articles are inaccurate and demonstrate an ethnocentric bias, as well as other biases. I can also tell you that this is quite typical of Western media and even some scholarship.

Girls play games, girls have always played games, nothing new here. I grew up playing games with girls, I worked with women managing family amusemant centers during the early to mid 1990s, I learned programming from women in the early to mid 1980s, and I worked with senior female technical programmers and personnel during year 2000 work. Were they the majority? It all depended on context. In some cases, they were, and in others, they were not. However, this leads to a much more important point.

Physical six (not gender, which is psychological not physical) is not a set of binary, dichotomous categories of "male" or "female" but rather a continuous spectrum of choices, including all intersixed and transgendered individuals of many kinds all along the spectrum. For example, how would you define "male" or "female"? What do you mean when using such terms? Do you really mean "masculine" or "feminine" and, if you do, how do you define those terms, as such concepts change with culture and time and are socially constructed in the first place?

American superhero stories never interested me, although I enjoy watching some of the movies in order to study and anolyze the special effects and other elements. The typical military FPS from American game developers doesn't interest me, either, although I will sometimes check such products out for similar academic reasons. The same is true for the Western market's focus on so-called "photorealistic" character aesthetics, including Bethesda's games. There is a reason why the East Asian modders who recreate hair, faces, and bodies are some of the most popular modders for Bethesda's products, and the reason is because there are many people all over the world who do not like the Western artistic approach but prefer the East Asian approach. This is also the case for popular mods that put characters such as Hatsune Miku into games like Valve's Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead as skin replacers for in-game characters, or even for Japanese games that use "photorealistic" characters such as Biohazard/Resident Evil 4. The same observation applies for why Japanese games dominated the industry for over two decades and why East Asian characters and entertainment is followed by people around the world from very different cultures and very different physical appearances.

In other words, claims that there is an effort to exclude women are false, or at least that such a viewpoint misses the actual point entirely. I do not identify as or empathize with the typical "photorealistic" characters we so often see in Western market products, nor does the action, real-time focus of such products tend to appeal to me. I spend a ton of time anolyzing such products, and I support companies like Bethesda because their products offer other important pedagogical values, but the consumer side of it is nonexistent as far as appealing to me as a consumer. In contrast, when I went to Akihabara in fall 2000, most of the products I saw and heard appealed to me (but I could never afford all of the ones I wanted nor have the time to play/watch/read them all). As an example from America, Roberta Williams did not design her adventure games at Sierra Online in order to appeal to female players. She simply made games that interested her, and many people enjoyed them without any regard for their own physical sixual identity or hers.

Unfortunately, the Japanese game makers tend to focus on console systems, and the choices of offerings for Western markets tends to be products that follow typical "photorealistic" action, real-time based trends while ignoring the fact that an awful lot of people prefer playing on PC or PC-related platforms and would very much appreciate having excellent Japanese (and other East Asian) games with beautiful or cute characters who can actually be related to and empathized with on such platforms. Market pressures are beginning to introduce some changes in this regard, so we will see if more companies begin offering their excellent console titles on PC as well as PC-only titles being offered via mainstream services (e.g., Valve's Steam platform is perfect for East Asian adventures and visual novels, and such games are excellent for PC as well as mobile platforms). The same pressures are forcing open East Asian markets that had long banned Japanese console systems and/or had neglected other global markets for their products.

As an aside, the number of female college graduates in STEM fields, including computer science and programming, has dropped drastically only during the past 10-15 years. The figures used to be much higher for female computer science and programming graduates back during the 1980s and 1990s. As far as creating games or other forms of software products is concerned, no one knows why this drop has occurred and there have been many efforts (and billions of US $$$) to reverse it. However, it continues to be perceived as an issue. The real issue, in my view, is the psychology and personal preferences of people, not their physical sixual identity.

It's not Geek Movies, it's all movies that treat women as second class objects/plot devices to support the male leads. The Bechdel test determines if a movie is Male or Female centric, and most movies fail the test.

Looking at the list of movies that do pass this test, none of them are mainstream movies that I have ever heard of

http://bechdeltest.com/

Unfortunately, this carries over to games too. I think this is why Bethesda Games are more popular with Women, you can make the main character any type of person you want, and they can be male or female. The NPCs in the games do not seem to be the typical damsel in distress (discounting the game mechanism that no one does anything about their problem until you show up)

Except for a couple of naked nords in Morrowind.

People who genuinely believe that gender bias is an actual issue that has a significant impact more than 5% of the time in real life situations is a moron.

It's a stupid double standard and if I weren't at work I'd link some images of beauty magazine covers that a larger percent of the female population subscribes to than the entire gaming population.

It's a dumb power trip that tries to try play gender superiority king of the hill.

That was a load of crap I just read. Someone has too much time on their hands. Final Fantasy disproves the theory all to hell too.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/more-arguing-about-women-in-video-games.html

At risk of sounding rather pedantic, these things aren't choices, they're just what a person is. The assumption that they're choices drives a lot of the prejudice that such people receive.

I'm going to avoid this talk of six and gender, those topics get heated around here. As for women in video games, I wouldn't say they're sixist. In general, I kind of avoid games with a set female protagonist as women are more often than not weepy saddlebags who NEED a male character who comes along later in the story. Then there's also the 'Girl with a chip on her shoulder against men' types. While I prefer playing as male in games I can choose six, I'd like to see a NORMAL female protagonist. Normal being something not in a Bethesda 'I can choose her story in my head' type. Most women in fixed storyline video games seem to be there as the eye candy or a dysfunctional laugh. For some reason, women are more normal in video games when they're the sidekick character than the lead. I don't really pay attention, but the last game I recall having a female protag was that zombie highschool cheerleader chick, which kinda proves my point about 'wacky sixual toy female protag'.

(For anyone thinking I'm going 'women characters should be backseat', no. What I'm saying is it seems like every female PC I see it's some dysfunctional, hypersixual or just weird because 'Oh look, she's a wacky chick with a nice rack! Ain't that hot?')

Edit: To clarify the 'I wouldn't say they're sixist', I think the real fault is more some of these developers don't encounter women outside of pormo or weird animes and just assume 'So THIS is how women act' and write those awful scripts for their female characters.

I personally find women as weaker objects, as children basically who require guidance. I am a blatant sixist.

I never really have any feelings about this subject. Same with the gays and race stuff when it comes to representation in entertainment media.

The pretense of gender equivalence is foolish. Gender equity is a great thing. What's the difference?

Gender equity calls for equal protection under law, equally fair opportunity in education and employment.

It does not call for pretending that advertisers should target both sixes the same way, or even in the same amounts. The reality of marketing is that genders are not equivalent. Targeting men is easier, because naked women can sell anything to a significant majority of men. Suggesting that advertisers should ignore this opportunity is insane. If someone comes up with a marketing strategy that can be as effective with a comparable fraction of women, great, they should use it. No one has come up with such, and the proof of that is that if they had they would in fact be using it. No advertiser is spurning the female market out of bias, it's just a lot harder to sell to women.

Marketing is a specific area of communication, and in any area of communication men and women are different. Does this have a real impact on who is the best choice for supervisory positions? Unfortunately yes it does. Does this have an impact on where marketing dollars get invested? Unsurprisingly yes it does. Does it frequently get pushed into the background by people who confuse 'equity' with equivalence? Yes, unfortunately it does. And the most unfortunate part of it is that when someone arguing for equity builds their argument on a pretense of equivalence they undermine their own position.