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ScherzoPrime · May 9, 2016

Flayer said:
It's because more males tend to enjoy pointless competition more than females. It's not just video games, look at games that have been around for much longer than video games and don't have a physical aspect that gives an advantage to men (such as chess, snooker, darts, bowls etc) and you still see much higher male participation than female.

...But that's mainly only because men are socialized to be more competitive. It's not like Women are incapable of being competitive or adrenaline junkies.

BTW, sincere question: do any of you know how Estrogen and Testosterone actually effect people? Legitimately curious because I kinda rather dislike holistically biological definitions of gender (obviously Biology plays some role, but it isn't all-encompassing).

Sub Boss said:
nerd cuture

That just punts on the question. Why is nerd culture gendered Male?

Mesoian · May 9, 2016

Flayer said:
It's because more males tend to enjoy pointless competition more than females. It's not just video games, look at games that have been around for much longer than video games and don't have a physical aspect that gives an advantage to men (such as chess, snooker, darts, bowls etc) and you still see much higher male participation than female.

Oh.....that's not true. The games are different, but the competition is real (and often times far more savage).

akira28 · May 9, 2016

I did have to literally tie my sisters down to make them play video games with me. but my youngest actually took to it. I remember that back then there was a real stigma around video game playing. Nowadays it seems so mainstream, but it wasn't always the case.

Cultural social resistance, definitely affected by gender dynamics as well.

Gormless Noodle · May 9, 2016

gafneo said:
Just look at the genre's we have to choose from. I think Moba is too odd to say. Why not just social arena? Girls want something with clean interfaces, real pics instead of cartoon or fantasy scifi. They want realistic graphics, no stiff looking npcs with repeated lines or annoying voices. That stuff is a real deal breaker. Girls like freedom to personalize. Immersive realism and easy of use is an attractive thing.

What are you basing this on though? Just your own desires or do you have sources for this? Not trying to call you out or anything, but if there's research on that I'd be interested in it.

ScherzoPrime · May 9, 2016

akira28 said:
Cultural social resistance, definitely affected by gender dynamics as well.

I'd say the biological aspect has much less of a deterministic impact than what is commonly assumed by most people.

Dash_Riprock · May 9, 2016

Electronics like TVs, computers, and radios have always been targeted towards. Its long been assumed woman don't like them because they find them too complicated, similar to the "Women are bad at math" stereotype.

ScherzoPrime · May 9, 2016

I think a lot of that was also women not being independently wealthy for the longest time. You can't market $1000+ electronics to people who're dependent on their husbands/relatives for their wellbeing

gafneo · May 9, 2016

ScherzoPrime said:
I'd say the biological aspect has much less of a deterministic impact than what is commonly assumed by most people.

Biologically a man and women both hunger from emotional violence and psychical aggressive situations. I think men tend to let out there emotions more so where women re frame from engagement. Women tend to not want to surround their selves with influences towards neurological stimulation if they are not intending to get any real world pay off.

n0razi · May 9, 2016

Most games involve shooting or sports which has traditionally been male dominated interests... this is obviously changing

ShinMaruku · May 9, 2016

Boy and men have a higher recidivism rate that females thus making them more profitable to some people

ScherzoPrime · May 9, 2016

gafneo said:
Biologically a man and women both hunger from emotional violence and psychical aggressive situations. I think men tend to let out there emotions more so where women re frame from engagement. Women tend to not want to surround their selves with influences towards neurological stimulation if they are not intending to get any real world pay off.

But again I think these outlets have been circumscribed by social outlooks.

samn · May 9, 2016

ScherzoPrime said:
...But that's mainly only because men are socialized to be more competitive. It's not like Women are incapable of being competitive or adrenaline junkies.

BTW, sincere question: do any of you know how Estrogen and Testosterone actually effect people? Legitimately curious because I kinda rather dislike holistically biological definitions of gender (obviously Biology plays some role, but it isn't all-encompassing).

That just punts on the question. Why is nerd culture gendered Male?

well how can you be so sure it's all down to socialisation if you have no idea what the effect of testosterone is?

Is this something you can back up or is it just something that's convenient to believe?

gafneo · May 9, 2016

ScherzoPrime said:
But again I think these outlets have been circumscribed by social outlooks.

Human interaction is of course influence among piers. The world could have went the other way and females could be dominating the crap out of games.

SomTervo · May 9, 2016

It was Nintendo.

Kezen said:
Because the market for action games is male dominated.

Wrong answer.

nkarafo · May 9, 2016

Because games were always (mostly) about killing things and destroying some kind of enemy. Violent themes attract more boys than girls.

SolidSnakex · May 9, 2016

n0razi said:
Most games involve shooting or sports which has traditionally been male dominated interests... this is obviously changing

What's changing? Women are playing more shooters and sports titles? Because we certainly aren't seeing less. And shooters really didn't become the dominant genre on consoles until last gen. They obviously existed before then, but other genres were bigger. Back in the PSone era for example the best selling games were Gran Turismo, Mario, FF, RE, Tekken, Tomb Raider, MGS, GE, Zelda etc. Of those only GE would be a shooter. RE, TR, and MGS obviously have shooting elements, but I don't think anyone would classify them as being shooters. The big genres back then were JRPG's, survival horror, racing, and platformers.

ScherzoPrime · May 9, 2016

samn said:
well how can you be so sure it's all down to socialisation if you have no idea what the effect of testosterone is?

Is this something you can back up or is it just something that's convenient to believe?

I know that research has shown that male and female brains are virtually identical. I just don't know if Testosterone and Estrogen levels have a predictable effect on judgments. At any rate, it doesn't really eve say anything about interests either, because one can be interested in military shooters and other violent things while still being meek and timid (like me).

Ponn · May 9, 2016

Money. Profits. Perception of profits. Potential of losing money by changing target demographics. Take your pick.

HMD · May 9, 2016

Console gaming publishers just stopped marketing their games to women, my sisters introduced me to gaming as a young kid, and now I'm the only one that still playing on a non-mobile device.

joelseph · May 9, 2016

Surface of Me said:
Likely has to do with computer technology being a male dominated field, so when those people started making games they made it for tge audience they knew, men. Only recently has there been a push for more women to get into that and similar fields.

I also know plenty if fenales that enjoy Gears, Uncharted, and other similar games. Not sure why you think only males would enjoy action.

Same issue in board games though.

ScherzoPrime · May 9, 2016

BluePumpkin7 said:
Console gaming publishers just stopped marketing their games to women, my sisters introduced me to gaming as a young kid, and now I'm the only one that still playing on a non-mobile device.

Well I think the displacement of casual gaming consoles by mobile is affecting everyone, not just women.

MattKeil · May 9, 2016

explodet said:
Nintendo chose to put the NES in the boy's toy isle instead of the girl's.

This is pretty much the real answer. Before the NES, marketing for home consoles focused on families and kids in general, featuring boys and girls playing. When Nintendo stealthed the NES into toy stores by calling it a toy rather than a game system, they had to pick a side due to how toy stores laid out their merchandise, and they picked boys. You see a very noticeable shift in how games are marketed after the NES launches.

El-Suave · May 9, 2016

I'm over 40 and when I was young I think the stereotype of girls playing with dolls and boys with cars and technical toys was very much in effect when it came to gift giving. Home computers were the entry point into serious gaming for most of us but knowing your way around one was not nearly as much a requirement as it is for the kids of today.

gafneo · May 9, 2016

ScherzoPrime said:
I know that research has shown that male and female brains are virtually identical. I just don't know if Testosterone and Estrogen levels have a predictable effect on judgments. At any rate, it doesn't really eve say anything about interests either, because one can be interested in military shooters and other violent things while still being meek and timid (like me).

Men have had more exposure over the years. The act of influence is what shapes our biology. Environment, stages of trauma, it carries in blood line. Take away our history, you can flip the script.

If mass media wanted to sell violence to women, they could make it part of their full-time lifestyle. Maybe if they did, it would get in the way of other products they are trying to sell them.

Raist · May 9, 2016

Mesoian said:
If I were going to sell CoD to women, I'd focus less on how large of a bodycount I can squeeze into 30 seconds and perhaps talk a little bit more about the characters or the situation within. Less Huu-rah, more actual character motivation. Even this uncharted ad, which when divorced from the trailer it comes from seems incredibly ineffective, focuses on the fact that Drake has just killed a dozen people.

Let's step away from ads for men or ads for women and talk about ads for everyone.

Pokemon - an ad that focuses on greatness, regardless of your world position
Street Fighter 5- an Ad that focuses on community and inclusion
Overwatch - an ad that focuses on characters and motivations instead of how much raw damage the characters can do. To the question of how you sell CoD to women? This is how.

It's not hard to do this stuff right, it's just easier to stay set in your ways and do it ~~wrong~~ the same way you always have. A lot of explosions played over a cover of an old song will still play in this world, but it's still only going to hit a specific, but dedicated and interested, demographic of gamers.

Character development has never really been a focus in CoD... it's a military shooter.
But that still doesn't explain why the way it's currently advertised is presumably only for men - or not suitable for women.

The issue with this type of debate is that we're hearing two things in parallel.
Advertisement is sexist when it's about dolls and whatnot for girls and cars and guns re for boys, but it's also a problem when it's then supposedly not focusing on women. That seems fairly contradictory.

The past 15 years have been utterly dominated by IPs like CoD, Gears, Uncharted, GTA and so on, and a presumably "men-centric" marketing. Yet this period of time has also seen gaming demographics change from 90% male to pretty much parity.

So the whole "it's a boys club, women are not welcome, marketing is focusing on boys" etc type of argument seem rather difficult to reconcile with the hard numbers.

Simbabbad · May 9, 2016

How did boys/men become a core target audience for gaming?

Because men and women are different, and don't care about the same things in life.

Shocking, I know.

Russ T · May 9, 2016

Simbabbad said:
Because men and women are different, and don't care about the same things in life.

Shocking, I know.

Only because society molds them that way.

The real answer is because sexism. Then it stuck because more sexism. These days it's much better but is still held back by sexism.

SomTervo · May 9, 2016

nkarafo said:
Because games were always (mostly) about killing things and destroying some kind of enemy. Violent themes attract more boys than girls.

Wrong answer.

Simbabbad said:
Because men and women are different, and don't care about the same things in life.

Shocking, I know.

Wrong answer.

Spoiler:

It became what Russ said, but originally it was Nintendo trying to pin down a new market. They tried to create a sales segment by focussing on boys rather than splitting marketing among girls and boys. (It worked.)

Alebrije · May 9, 2016

Because "Movement de liberation des femes" began late 60s and early 70s . so these days most of computer / videogame stuff were focus to men's

I remember that a girl called Carol was the developer of River Raid , I game I loved ...

Found this interview , its a good read if you are interested on female rol these days :

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/800

SomTervo · May 9, 2016

Alebrije said:
Because "Movement de liberation des femes" began late 60s and early 70s . so these days most of computer / videogame stuff were focus to men's

????

Nosgotham · May 9, 2016

whats the ideal game for ''women''? it has less to do with the content and more to do with the stigma of playing videogames imo. women enjoy action blockbuster movies but they dont enjoy action videogames? that doesnt make sense and i guess i dont get the point youre trying to make OP. there are plenty of games that are not driven by ''testosterone''. it just happens some of the big games right now are.

Aggie CMD · May 9, 2016

I have a young son and a young daughter. They have both grown up in the same environment surrounded by video games. No shortage of opportunities to play.

My son is obsessed with Minecraft. My daughter is obsessed with brushing her doll's hair. I can't explain it. It just happened that way.

Alebrije · May 9, 2016

SomTervo said:
????

Read the link on my post , specially the the impact of gender on profession at the end

SatelliteOfLove · May 9, 2016

It ran parallel with the industry narrowing itself down over the ages towards the singularity that was Gen 7, often specifically denying that the concept of female gaming was even a thing to wanna do. Add in cattiness from classmates, the third quote below and voila.

Note also the stank amount of cash companies like Popcap and Nintendo bring in.

MrHoot said:
Darksouls3.jpg

Needs a bigger crab behind him.

Aurongel said:
Current IT is a boys club largely, early IT was driven in large part (though not entirely) by women. Following World War II, the best typists in the country were all women, which is why so many early computer languages used dumb shorthand for everything (the men made the most typos). The underepresentation of women in modern Computer Science is driven by social norms constructed around it and not by the industry itself.

Women are chased away from Computer Science for many of the same reasons they're chased away from engineering. The idea that women were never interested in the field to begin with is at best uninformed and at worst a revisionist lie.

XKCD sums this thread up the best:

^^^

Messofanego said:
If Call Of Duty appeals to girls, then I don't see Gears Of War being far off.

"According to their study, girls don't just play games, they are prolific gamers; although many of them have developed a negative association with that specific term. Of the girls in the study, 26% played first person shooters, 36% played RPGs, and 15% played MOBAs. In all, more than 80% played at least one type of game, with many of them playing several. These are genres that are typically considered the preserve of the male 'core' gamer, but as Wiseman quipped, 'we have girls who like blowing shit up.'"

"This is October 18th [a summit in a Pennsylvania school], 700 girls, 7th grade, I put up a slide of Call of Duty. And the girls went bananas! They were high-fiving, they were yelling, they were totally happy! They were doing what I usually see with boys. They were recognising imagery that they really like...I wish I had recorded this."

GDC Vault video - "Curiosity, Courage and Camouflage: Revealing the Gaming Habits of Teen Girls" : click on 'Girls, What Games Do You Play' (9:12). Whole presentation is worth watching.

See what happens when they're somewhere safe? The reasons can differ a good bit on an individual basis vs boys, but the destination is the same.

Az987 · May 9, 2016

It's an industry where most of the creators of the content are young men and also fans of the industry so it's easy to figure out what the consumers will like when they are basically them a good bit of the game.

akira28 · May 10, 2016

ScherzoPrime said:
I'd say the biological aspect has much less of a deterministic impact than what is commonly assumed by most people.

is your avatar a Jenny from Ittle Dew?

WiiredShawn · May 10, 2016

Aggie CMD said:
I have a young son and a young daughter. They have both grown up in the same environment surrounded by video games. No shortage of opportunities to play.

My son is obsessed with Minecraft. My daughter is obsessed with brushing her doll's hair. I can't explain it. It just happened that way.

Aside from just "kids like certain things," it's not hard to imagine that they've also followed the gender path that they think is expected of them. They look at what their friends are doing, what kids on TV are doing, and think "Hey, that's what other boys/girls are doing. That's what I should do, too." That children have opportunities in front of them isn't necessarily all that useful if they feel like pursuing the opportunity is the "wrong" thing for them to do in order to fit in.

I'm not criticizing you as a parent, by the way. You're just letting them do what they want. But we do know that many children are highly sensitive to what their peers are doing and do everything they can to avoid being ostracized. They pay close attention to their surroundings, even if they're not necessarily conscious of why they're doing it.

Morrigan Stark · May 10, 2016

WiiredShawn said:
Aside from just "kids like certain things," it's not hard to imagine that they've also followed the gender path that they think is expected of them. They look at what their friends are doing, what kids on TV are doing, and think "Hey, that's what other boys/girls are doing. That's what I should do, too." That children have opportunities in front of them isn't necessarily all that useful if they feel like pursuing the opportunity is the "wrong" thing for them to do in order to fit in.

I'm not criticizing you as a parent, by the way. You're just letting them do what they want. But we do know that many children are highly sensitive to what their peers are doing and do everything they can to avoid being ostracized. They pay close attention to their surroundings, even if they're not necessarily conscious of why they're doing it.

Yup. I grew up with two older brothers. Is it because of them that I got interested in "boys" stuff like video games, sword and sorcery, Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, heavy metal, etc. pretty early on? My interests never aligned 100% with theirs, but they were undoubtedly an influence. If they hadn't been around and I had grown up with two older sisters, things might have gone very differently.

Astral Dog · May 10, 2016

ScherzoPrime said:
That just punts on the question. Why is nerd culture gendered Male?

its like math and boys, or (years ago) comics and boys, it does not always work, of course, but games became associated with a mostly teenage male audience, specially after CoD and GTA.

MMarston · May 10, 2016

SomedayTheFire said:
Patriarchy.

fixed

Adam_Vania · May 10, 2016

i think it's a target bc we live in a captialist patriarchy and a lot of pop culture aggressively targets men, or at least it did in the 80s. the Reagan years was a time of officially sanctioned backlash against the movements of feminism and other equal rights movements. movies had a lot of violence towards women (era of slasher flicks) and you had lots of video games being made by people that wanted to celebrate that culture. that super macho 80s us culture where you had heroes like Chuck Norris torturing people in their movies. even Japanese game makers were into emulating US hollywood.

TL;DR it was born from a twisted culture

Alpha Phoenix · May 10, 2016

Ya mean, just like every other consumer electronic that has ever been?

gamerMan · May 10, 2016

That's why I think Nintendo has a real shot with women. I am surprised how many girls find Nintendo characters cute. The problem is that Nintendo is going after the same market Sony is going after and not really marketing to this group. Games like Animal Crossing really cross between any gender lines. Unless Nintendo games are suddenly get more violent, they will never appeal to "hardcore" gamers on the scale that Nintendo needs to be hugely profitable.

specdot · May 10, 2016

OP the answer is simple:
Boyz II Men.

Freeman · May 10, 2016

They were the ones playing/buying?

Of all my cousins and friends growin up I could safelly say that the trait of being really dedicated to gaming (console, PC or portable) was fairly common in males, cant say the same for woman(at best some I knew played The Sims for a while, similar tô what happened later with the Wii, Kinect and Facebook games).

My sister had video games and Pcs availiable since the same time as me and she can hardly bother to use one to watch Netflix when needed.

People saying it somehow culminated in Gen 7 are probably triping, arcade, Atari, MasterSystem, SNES pretty much the same ratio in my experience. maybe it was diferent in the US.

At the end of the Day people like diferent things. Why do we care?

tiredheadcrab · May 10, 2016

When I was 10 and my sister was 7 we got a N64. We really didnt play it equally and eventually I would just play all day and she never really bothered with it. She was in her room playing with beanie babies or something. Eventually she got friends and they didnt really play either. I mean i can remember 1 time but that was it. After a year or 2 the N64 was moved into my room to keep me from using the kids room TV and she would watch tv. She would sometimes play with me but they were always competitive games like Mario Kart or Goldeneye so it wasnt really a bonding experience. However she was always more competitive than me at sports. So its mostly my parents fault for not being too involved with what we were playing and doing. However my parents also wanted us to have separate activities that would keep us from fighting. I teased her a lot and still do. Eventually the PS2 era rolled around and we really separated from there, i got more involved and she had her own thing.

There was also no projection of what girls should be in our house aside from my mom being a typical house wife. My sister was really tough (thanks to me, her big brother). She was really into sports and more athletic than the girls in the class. Eventually she got tougher than me. She wasnt big into dolls or shopping. Her current roommate is the literal exact opposite of her and ironically they get along.

In all I think the industry had some odd sexism issues in the 90's which is waaaay better today. However I cant really figure out why she never jumped into it like i did. We started off playing regular Nintendo games and they were very neutral. Maybe it was what she saw on tv, thinking it was a boys club.

Keith Stack · May 10, 2016

Women were afraid that they'd break their nails by playing too intensely. Of course that's not much of an issue nowadays, since women have grown much stronger nails in recent years.

Taelus · May 10, 2016

specdot said:
OP the answer is simple:
Boyz II Men.

Glad I'm not the only one who thought of that.

Nickle · May 10, 2016

We need to show women how far video games have come since Super Mario World.

tearsintherain · May 10, 2016

Nickle said:
We need to show women how far video games have come since Super Mario World.

Some may say too far

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