If the sexes are equal, nobody should care. That’s the central contradiction in most versions of the progressive argument: Adding a woman instead of a man to a group dominated by men is an intrinsic gain only if a woman brings something unique to the table that a man cannot, i.e. only if there is an irreducible difference between the sexes pertinent to the interests of the group in question.
I don’t think you’d get much out of a campaign against that skeevy niche of Japanese gaming. They know what they’re creating and they don’t care. This is much different from developers unthinkingly creating the same tropes time and again because that’s how it has always been done.
I suspect you may look back at this quote later and think “What an idiot”, but to take it seriously, you’ll miss an awful lot.
Several of my favourite forum posters about supposedly male-centric, ‘hardcore’ games are women, in some cases they are my most valuable poster on a game series. Take out a women friendly atmosphere and those posts are gone. As it turns out I also play more than just strategy, East European RPGs and military-style FPS games, and for some other types of games you get far more discussion when women feel comfortable enough to regularly participate. Alienate the women and perhaps you don’t have enough posters to support a discussion about some games at all.
Then there is the value of different perspectives on the familiar. Over at BF, as has been observed before, we got an influx of dating game fans which at first seemed like a separate planet appended to the forum. However, over time there has been travel back and forth and, as it turns out that several popular ‘hardcore’ franchises are actually also partly dating simulators. While some old usenet grognards (men or women) might be the best people to critique the tactical battle systems in Dragon Age Inquisition, I put it to you that there are few better places than BF for analysing the plot and relationship entanglements of the series. Remove the female friendly atmosphere and I suspect most of that discussion would disappear.
So yeah, there is a lot in it even for the straight, white male. In return, you lose nothing except your dubious freedom to make other people feel uncomfortable in one tiny corner of a vast, vast internet. We haven’t even got onto arguments of basic human decency, I mean shouldn’t people strive to be nice and welcoming to their fellow humans whoever they might be? Should we being asking questions about what percentage of discussion about Pardox games we lose by alienating black people? I mean perhaps it’s less than 5%? Maybe some white guys just feel more comfortable letting their casual racism just hang out there?
Anyway, on the more general direction of the thread - I think that whatever the rights and wrongs of the original ‘great migration’ it’s clear by now that there has grown to be different cultures around the two forums that has only a little to do with the original group of exiled posters. I’m hopeful that one day Qt3 will move in a more BF-like direction in regards to feminism, but for now I suspect this thread serves as a useful guide to what you can expect as the disputed facts in each community. It perhaps goes without saying that anyone that feels uncomfortable is welcome to come over and post about Beyond Earth, Dragon Age, Sims 4 and the re-release of Hatoful Boyfriend; and that I salute those that are willing (and able) to stay and fight this cause in their forum.
I have to admit i dont even think posters are male or female when reading posts. I always feel most people are anonymous and could be either. Maybe in PR or more serious discussions its more obvious but generally i seem to associate the post with an alias rather than a sex.
I never thought about the ratio of men to women in this forum or any other but thinking now anything that brings variety, differeing view points is a good thing. The question is how do you bring those people in to the forum in a positive way for them and those already there. Starting a forum from the ground up like BF will work but it cannot be easy in forums where they already have an identity and a core of posters.
Lets be honest a group of men gathered together can become “Lads” yet remove the group or alcohol or dude bro stuff and they revert back well behaved human beings, its that pack mentality. I always find going out with a group of guys difficult, work parties, weekend drinking etc is something i prefer doing with my wife or couples rather than blokes. Sometimes this same thing can rear it’s head in gaming forums due to the mainly male posters.
Well you could also say anyone wanting a more feminist type forum could visit BF for that.
It is also easy to pick a specific part of say BF eg saying its great for woman and you need to become like us while ignoring the negative issues like the feeling of being ganged up on and removed if you don’t follow the hive mind etc which a lot of people posting here have said they really dislike and maybe BF should become more like QT3 in that respect. Something that BF would probably disagree with.
The reality is all forums have their positives and negatives and the fact we can visit many forums if required to meet our needs is great and actually you could end up removing what makes a forum a place worth visiting for said individual.
Individually it also matters on which topics and forums you visit, i hardly visit PR, Hardware or movies so if anything happens in them i miss it. I also ignore most topics that don’t interest me which can mean things pass you by.
Edit… The game I have found the most female interaction with was Everquest 2, probably 30% of my old guild was female, never found that in WoW though.
I just assume everyone on the internet is a dude. I guess I have the added bonus that I don’t talk shit about women even when it’s just dudes, so I don’t think anyone gets offended.
As far as women in gaming, most of them I ran into were in MMO’s. Quite a few in WoW. I remember playing Red Alert with a female back in the day. And uh… that’s about it, but since I never ask or try to find out, I could be playing with tons of women.
I remember when I was letting my daugther at 12 play World of Warcraft, with me beside her, how surprised I was at how fast people figured out both that she was a dane, and that she was a girl. Luckily, no bad stuff resulted from it, other than her having a healthy attitude (In my opinion) towards gaming to this day :-)
As for the issue of tone, its nice to be reminded sometimes that things we take for granted, aren’t always as straightforward as we’d like to think. I am not very good at discussing these kind of things online, but I appreciate the discussion here a lot, and I feel that I’ve come out learning a few things as well. I’ve seen my elder generation too often being too set in their ways to change for the better, to not at least try and understand some of the more excellent posts here, advocating a better atmosphere than we currently have. I DO see some of the boys locker room talks here and other places from time to time, but mostly just shrugs it away. After all, there aren’t any women around is the easy excuse.
Apologies for the ramblings, my point is - I appreciate the discussion, even if I don’t take much part in it so thanks!
Fundamentally this will never happen because of who the owners are and what they want. Lum runs BF as curated community; TC runs Qt3 like an MC at an event (that happens to be in his living room), and if having that curated experience is a prerequisite for posting then, no, Qt3 will (likely) never be that. There are probably at least two posters in this thread that would have been autobanned at BF and several more that would have been dog-piled by the groop. Is engaging them with hostility and the intent of censure and/or exclusion your goal, or is the language and propriety you engage with them with more important? Do you assume everyone you disagree with is posting in good faith, or do you assume otherwise? There are many different answers.
I just don’t like that they game-ified forum posting.
The answer Broken Forum (or at least a lot of the people who left here for BF) demonstrates is what made me stop posting there. It’s the height of intellectual immaturity to assume that any contrary opinion can only be held in bad faith. People around here might call you dumb for opinions they don’t like, but at least they don’t claim that you’re straight-up trolling.
Jesus fuck. Really?
“If the sexes are equal” it matters because your potential audience is 50% larger if women feel included as well. Period. Full stop.
There’s no “There’s a unique viewpoint that only a woman can bring” conspiracy going on. It’s full-on about the fact that 50% of a potential audience is flat-out missing because of the pervasive atmosphere. It doesn’t matter if it’s woman, man, sentient moo-cow, or extradimensional beings whose projection into this dimension takes the form of a small, furry rodent.
What do women bring to gaming? I can share my own experiences.
One of the best half-hours in gaming I’ve had in the past couple of years was a round of Mass Effect 3 silver level multiplayer. I jumped into a random game, which turned out the be three women, all of whom were obviously friends from the banter. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence when they figured out a new guy had joined in, so I announced I was a relative newbie, and would appreciate tips. The next half hour of conversation was a discussion of how weapon and armor mods worked, how maps were laid out, where you expected mobs to show up and a lot of witty back-and-forth. I neglected to note their Origin names before the crappy EA servers blew up and dropped us in the middle of the third round.
While we’re talking about Mass Effect 3, in a recent playthrough, I decided to spice things up by modding the single player games. It turns out that some of the most visible and talented modders in the ME3 are women. Elle, Otte, Kitsume, girlplaysgame and others have created some gorgeous and entertaining mods for ME3 and Skyrim.
One of the women I’ve worked with over the years is a cofounder of Sharky Extreme. Her company shipped one of the first games accelerated for 3dfx back in the day. She was also the producer for Cyberia and Cyberia 2, both well-regarded adventure games back in the day. Through her, I learned a lot about app coding (she now is the product lead for a company developing mobile apps) and how game production works when you have limited resources.
My board gaming meetup group has a number of women who show up. One is by far one the best strategy board gamers I’ve met. She consistently wins in medium and heavy Eurogames, can trash talk with the best of them, but is also always willing to give advice and help out.
I can still recall how my older daughter used to school my Friday night LAN party group in UT2004 back when she was 14. Her weapon of choice was the sniper rifle. She could jump off a ledge, spin in midair and one-shot kill any of us.
So yeah, my gaming has been enriched over the years by knowing women.
Given the attitude I’ve seen here (I literally facepalmed when I read Asher’s post), I think I’m done with Qt3. Have fun in the echo chamber.
Pretty much. It’s amazing how much more civil and how much less swearing there is in a mixed environment rather than an entirely male one. Of course, all-female environments can be just as poisonous. Humans work best (surprise surprise!) when it’s a mixed environment.
Case - They’re people.
This thread reflects poorly on Qt3 and it is disappointing to learn the mindset of some of the members here.
I disagree entirely. It is very easy to use the viewpoints of the few and use that to beat the whole. The reality is everywhere there are people with differing views, even nasty and short sighted views. That does not reflect on the whole and if you feel it does you need more introspection yourself.
I think your post reflects poorly on you and shows a real lack of understanding in how people in general work and the differences in everyone and in all walks of life. But it still to easy to be judgemental on the internet and much harder to do it face to face. There is no human face on the internet and that can be an issue
Sigh. Nevermind.
12345
Conversations on these topics can be difficult. Conversations on these topics conducted over internet forums is even more difficult. If someone asks a question or phrases a response incorrectly, it is too easy to read the wrong thing into their response without the other cues we take for granted - tone, body language, expression, etc.
Don’t be so quick to assume the worst from people because they have a slightly different view or are seeking input from others to help themselves grow and understand other positions.
Second half of the post is dead on though. It’s always saddening to find out people you share tastes with and have productively engaged in conversation have opinions so vile they taint all future interactions.
If everyone agrees on everything and there are no disagreements, no discussions based on the merit or lack of merit of something or an idea, do you ever grow or learn?
If you live your life expecting everyone to agree with your world view you will be greatly disappointed.
And Brian, I have seen what you did done several times at BF, and always with the same type quick response. Don’t take it personal. I have learned to never use pronouns at BF as it is a way to get in trouble. Some posters will explain your “mistake”, others will take offense. BF has it’s own little quirks.
Hah, thanks man!