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[Karkador]

In the context of the effect they have on the industry, of course they should be discussed. But I just don't see myself participating in a thread about my experiences playing Temple Run.

They talk about casual games, at length, on the Giant Bombcast all the time. It's actually where I learn about most of those games, and some of them would have gone unnoticed by me otherwise.

Also, posters like me who don't want to discuss those games =/= fostering an exclusionary community. I don't think anyone would be offended if they saw a new Temple Run thread and demand that it would be closed. If someone is enthused about it and wants to make one, go for it.

It's only one of the ways that people on GAF are exclusionary (other posters in the thread have already pointed out some of the other ways).

But demanding that a Temple Run thread be closed sounds extreme. If you don't care about a thread, why try to bring it down rather than stay out of it? Unless you somehow typoed that.

 

[hey_it's_that_dog]

Have you read the men's/women's rights threads? Why would women feel welcome here?

That's kind of disingenuous. If the criterion for women to feel welcome is that there has to be literally no one present (among a population of thousands) who holds abhorrent views of women, then women will never feel welcome anywhere.

I think there's a tendency on GAF in general to overestimate the prevalence of certain viewpoints simply because they exist at all. Lots of incredulous threads about "why do people think this?" when the "people" in question are just a tiny fraction of the user base. In such cases it might not make a ton of sense to treat them as highly relevant or reflective of the greater community.

 

[Dark Octave]

Women aren't as big into gaming as guys. It's one of the reasons that I was bummed I was having a daughter instead of a son. There is a greater chance that she simply will not be interested.

But that was over three years ago, she's great and I've learned and grown a lot as well.

 

[Miss Riot]

I post in there all the time and almost always have a picture of myself as my avatar. No dick satellites revolving around me.

=( certain people get a certain treatment there. on tumblr and other forums that pay attention to gaf they call it the ninjaboi effect.

 

[fallagin]

This raises another question. Why is there such a high barrier to enter Gaf? Just to eliminate spam? Is it to prevent the number of members from getting too high and crashing the servers?

I guarantee you that if gaf brought down its walls the community would be about a 1000x worse than it is now. Gaf is a curated community that has strict rules and good ways of verifying whether someone is shilling or just straight up lying.

To see how things would be, you need look no further than gamefaqs.

 

[Hari Seldon]

I don't really care if there are women in my online discussions. Either bring the interesting or not, no matter what gender you are.

As far as dude-bro discussions like "would" posts, that is just a functions of dudes congregating together. It is a law of nature. You could ban the "Dat Ass!" posts, but people would simply replace it with "She sure is pretty", but "Dat Ass!" is a lot more accurate to what is actually going on in the brain.

 

[Malvolio]

Video game culture is like Calvin's G.R.O.S.S. club and there are far too many children willing to enforce those rules and not enough women brave enough to endure the onslaught.

 

[terrisus]

But my point is that women interact just as much on the internet so saying they don't doesn't make sense.

But we're not talking about "on the internet," we're talking about "on message boards/on NeoGAF," where the topic posed (and I would imagine is the case) that there are much fewer females here.

 

[FallingEdge]

dick satellite is an amazing term.

stolen

 

[Mesoian]

They talk about casual games, at length, on the Giant Bombcast all the time. It's actually where I learn about most of those games, and some of them would have gone unnoticed by me otherwise.

...when was the last time they talked about casual games on the bombcast? They used to do the 3DS report, but I think that's mostly because it was a consistently funny bit that poked fun at Nintendo's super odd PR department while illuminating how much the 3DS downloadable stuff was a god damn wasteland of bullshit.

 

[Chojin]

I post in there all the time and almost always have a picture of myself as my avatar. No dick satellites revolving around me.

I felt the same way when I was an altar boy

 

[Miss Riot]

all I can say is that as a grown woman there have been far too many instances where I've said to myself "I should have just kept my mouth shut" with online communities and I wish it wasn't like that. how do we fix that?

 

[Silky]

I don't really care if there are women in my online discussions. Either bring the interesting or not, no matter what gender you are.

Pretty much.

all I can say is that as a grown woman there have been far too many instances where I've said to myself "I should have just kept my mouth shut" with online communities and I wish it wasn't like that. how do we fix that?

Disregard the online community's popular thought or whatever and say what you please. They can't do much other than backlash, but that's what blocking features/reporting are for. I'm amazed at how many people I have set on ignore at how nonsensical they can be.

This might seem like help, but hey it's advice.

 

[The Librarian]

For a more serious response...

Posts like that are some of the worst on NeoGaf. People don't say "Would." as much as they used to, but it's still really pervasive.

A couple months ago there was a cool thread about the mayor of Reykjavik, and all the comments were about how people wanted to fuck his daughter.

As a girl, there are a couple of things on GAF that bother me, two of which I can name off the top of my head.

As the only noticeable female regular of PoliGAF, one thing that gets me is the continued use of the phrase "Grow some balls!" or any variation thereof. For one, it doesn't make any sense. Testicles are a very fragile pair of reproductive organs, and half of the population can be tough without 'em! That phrase has been used so often it seriously bugs me every time it's used.

The second is the one you mention in your post. Now, if this forum were 90% female, you'd probably see the same thing aimed at men, but in either case it's extremely annoying. This is a problem in PoliGAF too. When a picture of a woman is posted, inevitably, at least one person will comment saying "would." There are a couple things that bother me about posting this type of response. The first are the implications. If you feel the need to post declaring that you would have sex with this woman, that sends a signal to me saying that you're only concerned about how hot she is, regardless of the context the photo of her is posted. Secondly, it's extremely annoying. I don't care if you'd like to have sex with this woman. Why do you need to let other people know that? Does anybody care? Furthermore, rarely are these "would" posts on topic, and only encourage others to post the same type of response.

 

[Pau]

=( certain people get a certain treatment there. on tumblr and other forums that pay attention to gaf they call it the ninjaboi effect.

People talk about GAF on tumblr? Then again, I've been called a tranny on those other forums for posting my picture so eh. If other places are making fun of women for daring to post what they look like that's pretty fucked up.

 

[Dennis]

=( certain people get a certain treatment there. on tumblr and other forums that pay attention to gaf they call it the ninjaboi effect.

Please explain this ninjaboi effect

 

[Zoe]

all I can say is that as a grown woman there have been far too many instances where I've said to myself "I should have just kept my mouth shut" with online communities and I wish it wasn't like that. how do we fix that?

Do you feel GAF is guilty of that?

We can't police other communities.

 

[davepoobond]

You're a dude

A smily face? You must be a girl. Girls always express emotion for frivolous reasons!

Or.... You are a dude pretending you're a girl.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

It's a videogame forum.

This.

 

[Liu Kang Baking A Pie]

"Why is GAF predominantly male" seems like a given. The better question is why hardcore gamers are predominantly male.

It's an industry made by, supported by, and bought by men. Like some science and web fields. Either men get in and then don't let anyone else in with them, or the women that would be interested are just intimidated by the existing gender statistics. It's not that women can't be good at or get interested in those things, but why would they bother?

 

[Chojin]

all I can say is that as a grown woman there have been far too many instances where I've said to myself "I should have just kept my mouth shut" with online communities and I wish it wasn't like that. how do we fix that?

Honestly? By not keeping your mouth shut. If something really bothers you there should never be a time when you should censor yourself. Open discussion will at least have some sort of change, keeping to yourself will just cause things to fester.

A lot of men don't realize that what they do or say can be viewed as sexist. A lot of times when there are things women that say things that could be construed as sexist men won't even think of it as being sexist. When people don't bring it up it stays the same.

A smily face? You must be a girl. Girls always express emotion for frivolous reasons!

Or.... You are a dude pretending you're a girl.

Oh you ^.-

You should have seen me in my animu days in college circa 1998 ^^

I already posted I'm married and a dude and an altar boy. I just like to express myself =^.^=m

 

[Karkador]

Evilore can sell NeoGAF for millions. He doesn't, that alone should indicate what kind of direction NeoGAF will have in the near or far future.

Would you rather take a lump sum payment that may or may not be undervalued (and may or may not be millions), and then not have your major source of income anymore, or would you keep your money-making website for years and probably make more from it in the long run?

 

[Mesoian]

all I can say is that as a grown woman there have been far too many instances where I've said to myself "I should have just kept my mouth shut" with online communities and I wish it wasn't like that. how do we fix that?

The person who figures it out will make a lot of money.

Honestly, It might not be something that can be "fixed" just endured until more like minded people arrive.

And that sucks...but shit man, I have no idea how to even begin trying to fix that.

 

[Nista]

I bet there's a lot of female lurkers who don't want to post in fear of gaining unwanted attention from male posters gawking at them.

That's actually not the reason why I lurk so much, I'm just a natural lurker ever since the bbs days. Like a big internet crocodile, waiting for juicy information to come by to snap up.

Also ancedotally, I read NeoGAF more than any of my male friends and coworkers, both gaming and OT side. I guess I just rarely post unless I have specific game questions or answers for people.

 

[Miss Riot]

Do you feel GAF is guilty of that?

We can't police other communities.

its as guilty as anywhere else honestly. I dont see gaf as above of beneath it. it's all the same. the answer I've always had is to just put my head down and look for what I like in a community and brush off all the bullshit. is that even solvable on any level though? what does it take, and is it fair to even ask that?

 

[LiK]

Just wanna point out from earlier replies that there are also the xxxx male celebrity sure is looking good threads as well. There's an equal amount of tongue wagging, imo.

 

[andycapps]

You can separate the historical fact that it's a predominantly male hobby from any prescriptive judgments about what women should or should not be interested in. I certainly believe that the women here are just as interested in gaming as the men. I also believe in the obvious fact that there are fewer of them.

Right, there are obviously fewer of them. I was just speaking to the idea that some have (not necessarily the person I quoted) that women don't belong on a video games forum. That they shouldn't be into video games or don't know enough about them to talk about them.

There were 40K+ in the stadium for the Cincinnati Reds season finale, likely close to a 50/50 split in gender. There are two women who post on my Reds board. Lots of women play games, statistically zero give much of a fuck about discussing the latest DRM debacle on the Internet.

That is true. Maybe a better discussion of this would be, if so many women are into games, how can we get more of them to contribute to Neogaf? More viewpoints are always good.

 

[Liu Kang Baking A Pie]

As far as dude-bro discussions like "would" posts, that is just a functions of dudes congregating together. It is a law of nature. You could ban the "Dat Ass!" posts, but people would simply replace it with "She sure is pretty", but "Dat Ass!" is a lot more accurate to what is actually going on in the brain.

That's not necessarily looking at the real problem, though. Consider the reactions in situations where gay men or the few women here have objectified men.

 

[hey_it's_that_dog]

I bet there's a lot of female lurkers who don't want to post in fear of gaining unwanted attention from male posters gawking at them.

But they can easily post (about video games) without ever referencing their gender. So are you talking about lurkers who only want to participate in discussions of gender issues in games from a female perspective, or post in OT (again, making explicit their female perspective) or what?

 

[Chojin]

its as guilty as anywhere else honestly. I dont see gaf as above of beneath it. it's all the same. the answer I've always had is to just put my head down and look for what I like in a community and brush off all the bullshit. is that even solvable on any level though? what does it take, and is it fair to even ask that?

Start a thread and have it build into a communty thread. We were able to brush off the "Magic the Gathering" nerd stigma (sadly still no but I can dream) in our own community thread. Now we're accepted! (I hope)

Seriously though, there's strength in numbers. See if there's others interested in promoting a more conscience or at least less fucktarded mentality on when it comes to women here.

 

[Pau]

I felt the same way when I was an altar boy

Pretty sure I have much less dick satellites than an alter boy.

all I can say is that as a grown woman there have been far too many instances where I've said to myself "I should have just kept my mouth shut" with online communities and I wish it wasn't like that. how do we fix that?

Honestly, the reason GAF has gotten better with this stuff is because women have started posting about this stuff. Nine years ago this place was alienating as all hell and it has made progress.

 

[Valhelm]

I guarantee you that if gaf brought down its walls the community would be about a 1000x worse than it is now. Gaf is a curated community that has strict rules and good ways of verifying whether someone is shilling or just straight up lying.

To see how things would be, you need look no further than gamefaqs.

It would be interesting if there was some kind of "proving grounds", where all the new members would post. Instead of having to deal with a long waiting period, there would be a strict moderation system, and all rule-breakers would be permanently banned.

Those who are hand-picked by a large group of volunteers would become junior members.

 

[Silky]

its as guilty as anywhere else honestly. I dont see gaf as above of beneath it. it's all the same. the answer I've always had is to just put my head down and look for what I like in a community and brush off all the bullshit. is that even solvable on any level though? what does it take, and is it fair to even ask that?

It works for some people. There are people on here probably who only post on Official Threads, and sticks with a group of people he/she enjoys to communicate with.

 

[fallagin]

=( certain people get a certain treatment there. on tumblr and other forums that pay attention to gaf they call it the ninjaboi effect.

Does this have to do with some guys pm'ing girls constantly or something? Yeah, it's not something you can really see just by looking at the posts on the board, it goes on behind the scene. I bet that is a bit creepy.

 

[Mesoian]

That is true. Maybe a better discussion of this would be, if so many women are into games, how can we get more of them to contribute to Neogaf? More viewpoints are always good.

They have to want to care more, which means more gaming stuff that appeals to them on a level that's more intense than, "i'll play this for 5 minutes while I'm waiting for the train to get to my stop."

This might sound reductive, but gaming hasn't had it's "waiting to exhail" yet.

It would be interesting if there was some kind of "proving grounds", where all the new members would post. Instead of having to deal with a long waiting period, there would be a strict moderation system, and all rule-breakers would be permanently banned.

Those who are hand-picked by a large group of volunteers would become junior members.

Isn't that the process for Junior Members to become members?

 

[imBask]

The second is the one you mention in your post. Now, if this forum were 90% female, you'd probably see the same thing aimed at men, but in either case it's extremely annoying. This is a problem in PoliGAF too. When a picture of a woman is posted, inevitably, at least one person will comment saying "would." There are a couple things that bother me about posting this type of response. The first are the implications. If you feel the need to post declaring that you would have sex with this woman, that sends a signal to me saying that you're only concerned about how hot she is, regardless of the context the photo of her is posted. Secondly, it's extremely annoying. I don't care if you'd like to have sex with this woman. Why do you need to let other people know that? Does anybody care? Furthermore, rarely are these "would" posts on topic, and only encourage others to post the same type of response.

it's the internet and most things you write have very little to no consequences

Overly-feminist posts (the exagerated ones, don't get me wrong here) but I just learned to deal with them and ignore them. Yes there are fewer of those than dumb "would" post, but you can't expect them to stop and you can just ignore them...

When I play LoL i'm expecting to get yelled at, but I just don't care because i'm prepared for it and I know I shouldn't care

But yeah I get it, it gets annoying over time, because of the amount of them and etc.

 

[PK Gaming]

The difference between Reddit and Neogaf is that Neogaf is much smaller and clumped together. Imagine a room crammed full of male gamers with some female ones peppered here or there and it's no wonder they get drowned out. It's harder to split off into their own groups (the Arrow thread, par example) because a community requires a certain amount of activity to sustain it. Reddit can get away with female-dominated subreddits through sheer numbers, but Neogaf's format (two forums, two subforums), selective registration process and strict moderation policies means it's harder for the women of Neogaf to find enough females who share their interest in order to sustain a thread or a community by themselves. Without these enclaves serving as a gateway, it's more likely that a potential female member will look elsewhere for a friendlier more accessible environment.

I completely agree, and I appreciate the time you took to make such a thorough post.

 

[Miss Riot]

Honestly, the reason GAF has gotten better with this stuff is because women have started posting about this stuff. Nine years ago this place was alienating as all hell and it has made progress.

that's really encouraging to hear. I will keep my nose to the grindstone, be heard, and take no shit! unwarranted shit!

 

[LiK]

It would be interesting if there was some kind of "proving grounds", where all the new members would post. Instead of having to deal with a long waiting period, there would be a strict moderation system, and all rule-breakers would be permanently banned.

Those who are hand-picked by a large group of volunteers would become junior members.

I think we've been through that before. GAF moderation is pretty great right now. Permabans should be restricted to the absolute worst, imo.

 

[hey_it's_that_dog]

Right, there are obviously fewer of them. I was just speaking to the idea that some have (not necessarily the person I quoted) that women don't belong on a video games forum. That they shouldn't be into video games or don't know enough about them to talk about them.

Ah, I see. I certainly can't deny that those people exist.

If they're a small minority, though, they can be ignored, like many kinds of idiots on the internet. This dovetails with my previous post about how if you literally cannot tolerate even a very small number of assholes, then the internet will never be a welcoming place for women (or anyone).

 

[Pau]

Does this have to do with some guys pm'ing girls constantly or something? Yeah, it's not something you can really see just by looking at the posts on the board, it goes on behind the scene. I bet that is a bit creepy.

Most women I've talked to on the board have never gotten a "creepy" PM. And I can only recall one instance where it led to someone being banned.

that's really encouraging to hear. I will keep my nose to the grindstone, be heard, and take no shit! unwarranted shit!

It helps to see that there are other female (and male!) posters who won't take any shit either. I first started posting because I saw Devolution saying a lot of the things I was feeling but too timid to say.

 

[Haly]

I don't see much trans bashing on the internet compared to racism or misogyny

EDIT : okay then nevermind, I'M okay with them I guess. You rednecks

I can't speak for other sites but it's an unfortunate side effect of the moderation policy that you don't get to see the "dark side" of NeoGAF often, as it were.

The transphobes who are dumb get banned swiftly by the largely trans-friendly moderation team. The transphobes who are smart know not to tempt fate. This doesn't mean they don't exist, simply that they're out of sight. While this situation results in a more trans-friendly community, it is in no way a replacement for true acceptance.

And the reason sexism and racism slip "under the radar" more often is because they're more nebulous and open to debate whereas transphobia manifests itself in very obvious ways (transphobes aren't really subtle about it).

 

[Miss Riot]

also I'm not calling out ninjaboi he just has a unique way of giving compliments that some people think is super weird. not saying he PMs people I don't know if he does or not. I have 0 PMs and I'd like to keep it that way unless it's an emergency.

 

[Karkador]

...when was the last time they talked about casual games on the bombcast? They used to do the 3DS report, but I think that's mostly because it was a consistently funny bit that poked fun at Nintendo's super odd PR department while illuminating how much the 3DS downloadable stuff was a god damn wasteland of bullshit.

There was a period just a few months ago when Brad couldn't stop playing or talking about Kingdom Rush. Like DOTA2 levels of obsession. I also remember them talking about Hundreds, which is a very casual (but fun) mobile game, as well as Bejeweled 3 (with their friend from PopCap).

 

[Mesoian]

I can't speak for other sites but it's an unfortunate side effect of the moderation policy that you don't get to see the "dark side" of NeoGAF often, as it were.

The transphobes who are dumb get banned swiftly by the largely trans-friendly moderation team. The transphobes who are smart know not to tempt fate. This doesn't mean they don't exist, simply that they're out of sight. While it results in a more trans-friendly community, it is in no way a replacement for true acceptance.

And the reason sexism and racism slip "under the radar" more often is because they're more nebulous and open to debate whereas transphobia manifests itself in very obvious ways (transphobes aren't really subtle about it).

I mean, forget the internet, that's just life.

There was a period just a few months ago when Brad couldn't stop playing or talking about Kingdom Rush. Like DOTA2 levels of obsession. I also remember them talking about Hundreds, which is a very casual (but fun) mobile game, as well as Bejeweled 3 (with their friend from PopCap).

Ah, right.

So yeah, it's been a WHILE.

I guess Giantbomb is a lot more accepting of the games that most of us would brush off as fodder. They did cover Curiosity pretty well, and I remember the Farmville thing they had the interns do which was pretty funny, though also very short.

 

[Valhelm]

This.

You are literally contributing nothing to the discussion.

 

[Dennis]

also I'm not calling out ninjaboi he just has a unique way of giving compliments that some people think is super weird. not saying he PMs people I don't know if he does or not. I have 0 PMs and I'd like to keep it that way unless it's an emergency.

lol now you are probably going to get tons of PMs

 

[Silky]

I can't speak for other sites but it's an unfortunate side effect of the moderation policy that you don't get to see the "dark side" of NeoGAF often, as it were, and so you get the impression that everything's fine and dandy when it's just a veneer over larger problems existing below the surface.

The transphobes who are dumb get banned swiftly by the largely trans-friendly moderation team. The transphobes who are smart know not to tempt fate. This doesn't mean they don't exist, simply that they're out of sight. While it results in a more trans-friendly community, it is in no way a replacement for true acceptance.

And the reason sexism and racism slip "under the radar" more often is because they're more nebulous and open to debate whereas transphobia manifests itself in very obvious ways (transphobes aren't really subtle about it).

When do you think there will be 'true acceptance' on NeoGAF? Honest question.

 

[Valhelm]

Isn't that the process for Junior Members to become members?

Yep. But I think it would be great if the process was extended to junior members, as well.

It's like how you have to take a test for your learner's permit, before you can take a test for your license.

 

[The Librarian]

Most women I've talked to on the board have never gotten a "creepy" PM. And I can only recall one instance where it led to someone being banned.

I've gotten a couple. :|