That kind of sexist attitude toward women is exactly the reason why many females are turned off by the gaming industry, because we do not appreciate being objectified and we are NOT comfortable with that shit.

period.

"Cheryan and colleagues tested this idea by alternately decorating a computer science classroom with objects that earlier surveys pegged as stereotypically geeky—Star Trek posters, videogames and comic books — or with objects that the surveys found to be neutral— coffee mugs, plants and art posters. Thirty-nine college students spent a few minutes in the room, then filled out a questionnaire on their attitudes toward computer science."

BULLSHIT!!!!!!

To me it's BOTH the incredibly misogynist/sexist attitude towards women AND the notion of male gamers as a) unclean b) without any social skills (emotionally unattractive) c) physically unattractive (pale, flabby, no fashion sense, ungroomed).

And I totally forgot: I'm not into weapons, killing people, extreme violence, general goriness and militarization. So THERE. Nothing left for me in gaming then.

I just realized there is another reason why male gamers and as an extension the entire gaming industry is unappealing to me: Gamers constantly try to prove some bizarre imaginary manliness in the games (yuck!) and ironically physically do not match this. Another stereotype is that of the boy never growing up (also "unmanly")-with the stacks of empty pizza crates to prove it.

Everything is better with Star Trek posters!

I clicked over to the blog (http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/) associated with the cartoon speech there and it's ironic that it seems at first glance to be full of sexy pictures that are almost as exclusive to me as the examples in the video (cleavage says to me "I am fanservice for guys"). Well, the title does include the word "sexy" after all, and maybe the current appearance of the top of the home page isn't representative (nothing sexy scrolling down).

Interesting that a Sexy blog by a woman features a sexy woman in the title. (I'm assuming she is straight.) So who is the blog sexy for? Men?

I didn't realize Indiana Jones was supposed to be sexy. He gets to wear clothes! That, like, cover his skin!

http://jezebel.com/5443722/act-like-you-know-nielsen-research-confirms-that-women-buy-systems-and-play-games

http://jezebel.com/5437097/everquest-gamers-shatter-gender-stereotypes

Some Jezebel articles on this topic; despite the accepted reality that girls don't game, the truth is otherwise.

What I don't like is that the creators of the video don't address the fact that the culture around gaming, aside from marketing, is part of the problem. He says "don't scare them off" and that message is intended for those who are deep enough into the culture as too know what that means. I think for a lot of people who aren't involved in gaming culture its kind of vague though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCYPGnJdO1U (NSFW due to language) This is just a humorous skit, but its not an exaggeration. At all. To get an idea what gamer culture can be like, imagine playing with more of him and you haven't ever played Monopoly before.

To blame the marketing isn't quite fair, because for female consumers getting past marketing is really just jumping the fence. This culture that fuels the marketing is the huge brick wall that they come to after the fence.

I wonder how the demographics of online gamers compare with non-online console games. I personally know three women who are addicted to World of Warcraft - and yet "somehow" manage to have complete lives in the real world with real people (including women and men who probably have no idea that they spend hours each week playing fantasy characters in an MMORPG). (And who knows, maybe more of my female friends are into gaming, but it's just never come up in conversation, so my referent group may well not be representative.)

In other words, does the online nature of some gaming allow women to physically remove themselves from being associated with "gamer culture"? I personally think that there are many women who aren't really so offended by how avatars are rendered that they will refuse to play popular MMORPGs (such as WoW), but might feel social pressure to not admit to playing video games.

Also, is the fact that WoW is a computer-based game that has additional appeal in that there is no need to purchase the gamer console, and thus have no physical "evidence" of their interests in gaming?

I think a huge problem is how we define games as "casual" vs "hardcore". I've always thought of the distinction as a difference of time spent gaming, rather than the genre. Once the game industry starts realizing that (some) gamers they classify as "casual" actually play a lot of games and spend a lot of time playing them, they will start marketing games toward those tastes.

Changing gears here, as someone in college who doesn't have a lot of money, my gaming is focused on computer games, because it doesn't require me to purchase a console for $700. The problem is, games designed for consoles kind of suck when played on computers.

Basically... The gaming industry needs to stop seeing gamers who enjoy puzzle game genres and computer/online gamers as "gateway" gamers that need to be "converted" to console gamers. We are happy where we are, and we'd be glad to consume your games if you created more of them.

Rawwwrr... Back to Farmville and Café World!

I've read another explanation for why women lean towards casual gaming(perhaps here). Due to a range of gender-based expectations these women are busier, multitasking, and don't have time to invest in the more elaborate games. I think this works in concert with the reasons discussed in the video.

Overall, the video makes a number of solid points about gender representation in games and gamers, but it perpetuates a weird authenticity thing that bugs me. Why are casual games considered a gateway drug instead of legitimate gaming? Why should casual gaming women strive to become "real gamers" by playing Halo and the like when "real gamers" don't respect their gameplay enough to cross over to casual games? It's yet another example of activities deemed feminine marginalized as illegitimate.

The video makes several wonderful points that I've never seen discussed openly in the gaming community, but it has its share of problems.

Why does the video admit that women play games, and then address an all male audience? "We guys have been playing our games for years!" the announcer pipes, like I haven't been doing the same thing. And, "We all have a sister or a cousin that can kick our asses at Halo." First of all, I'm nobody's woman gamer friend. I'm tired of seeing men throw around the acquisition of a woman gamer friend the way white people would a black friend, or a gay or other minority friend. Second, we see again the belief that it's not good enough for a woman to play games; she's got to be better than you (the male viewer, the only one watching this video, despite assertions otherwise) to prove that she's a real gamer.

There's the usual textbook case of the devaluing of games that women like to play, which are compared to a "well-researched kiddie pool," with the aim of making video games more inclusive to get women playing "real" games. You know what? I've played video games from every genre for 24+ years, and right now I exclusively play simulation games like The Sims and Harvest Moon. Fuck what people think - I play them because I like them, not because I'm not aware of "real" games.

There's the reinforcement of the idea that women need to be coerced and tricked into playing video games. This baffles me. Maybe I'm not hanging around the right places, but I never see men get together and discuss how to trick their wives and girlfriends into getting into fishing or hot rodding. I wonder if it has something to do with the nature of those hobbies being understood as retreats for masculinity. Video games are no less so, but they are not publicly acknowledged as such.

It's odd to see Lara Croft continue to be held up as the sex star of video games. She's mild in comparison to other digital women these days in terms of adult content, and, at least in the first four or five Tomb Raider games, she was a brave and competent adventurer. Lara Croft is hardly a feminist icon, but when you realize that most women in video games today exist only to be sexualized or brutally murdered (or both) she looks like the symbol of a better time.

I have to question the use of Metal Gear's The Boss character, a mother-mentor figure in an extremely misogynistic game, as an example of a good woman character. I mean, she rips open her jumpsuit to show off the cesarean scar that has left her bereft of womanhood. The game's creator originally wanted to show off her tits too, but he didn't get his way.

Wired magazine makes the erroneous assumption that geekdom is masculine, which makes me think that they've never hung around the woman-oriented sci-fi spaces on the internet. I wonder how the experiment would have been different if they had put images the likes of which I've seen on those sites - like two male sci-fi characters making out, and strong, interesting looking female aliens - on the walls. The whole thing is fundamentally flawed when you start out with the assumption that the male spaces of geekdom represents the entire thing.

More fun with selling women out to make a buck! Maybe if I didn't feel objectified, violated, disrespected and nauseated by things like this, I might actually pick up a video game BESIDES Animal Crossing a little more often.

At this point, as a parent, I don't allow my children to play these games which objectify women. It may be "the norm" in society, but it's not in our house.

I've been a gamer for a solid 18 years now, playing everything from platformers, to MMORPGs to First Person Shooters, but according to video game marketers, I don't exist. You see, with my lack of a Y chromosome, all I want to play is Cooking Mama and "Imagine: Babysitterz".

Nevermind that I clocked as many hours on Dragon Age: Origins last year as most men who play, nevermind that I've clocked as many or more hours into MMORPGS. As a gamer, I simply don't exist. Things aren't made for me, things aren't marketed to me. I get to swallow the misogyny or I don't get to play.

It's frustrating, it really is. It's also the reason that when I play online or social games I always play a male character and refuse to get a mic. Because "coming out" as a girl in a social gaming space guarantees one of two responses. "Get back in the kitchen" or "Are you hot?"

When I was first introduced to this blog a few weeks ago, I thought it provided some excellent insights into the racial and gender assumptions that surround us. As a feminist and a social democrat, I'm always on the lookout for clever and insightful social science blogs. But this post was really, really bad.

Misogyny is incredibly pervasive in both the development culture of gaming and also the wider player culture, and there's a lot of excellent work being done to both investigate and remedy the situation. (Obviously, Nintendo is leading the way with their ridiculously successful Wii-branded games, but there's a very long way yet to go. My guess is that the industry will eventually fracture in the way comics did, with a "new" culture of gender-friendly independent games that expands rapidly while the old dominant misogynistic culture slowly withers but never actually dies and yet for some reason still gets to be seen as the standard bearer for the whole medium. The consequence of this is that the "mainstream" gaming world will only ever appear to improve in tiny, tepid baby steps, when actually it's being replaced altogether. This is all in parentheses because it's not actually why I'm commenting at all!)

And yet, you decided to represent the mainstream gaming industry with 1) a Japanese pornographic video game, 2) a cheesecake app for the iPhone, and 3) a disastrous and nauseatingly stupid PR move by Yahoo (which, last I checked, isn't a gaming company by any definition). This isn't even cherry picking, it's just completely irrelevant! Not a single one of your examples has anything to do with actual gaming culture! Finding gender problems in the world of gaming is shooting fish in a barrel, and you still completely missed the mark! If anything, you lumped all of video games, software development, computer science and other "male nerd stuff" into one big group and acted as if it was homogeneous (i.e., stereotyping) in order to level a criticism, which is exactly the kind of bad behavior you rightly call out elsewhere every day. This is a diverse, complex and, most importantly, rapidly evolving subculture, and all you did was show that you were more invested in being outraged at it than actually understanding it.

I am extremely disappointed in you, but unfortunately this kind of post seems increasingly typical. I was always wary that this blog had an occasional tendency to wander away from its scientific mission and towards the righteous rant, which serves no purpose except to relieve the frustrations of the author and sympathetic readers. The material in your archives is incredibly impressive, and actually the occasional justified rant doesn't really bother me, but even in the few weeks I've been reading, I've felt a distinct slide towards less insight and more anger, which is unfortunate, as this blog is clearly ascendant right now. I am hoping that the corrosive, navel-gazing culture of the comments isn't causing a decline in post quality, because it's only going to get more insular in here as the blog becomes more popular. You can and should do better than this.

But for now, with some regret, I'm unsubscribing from Sociological Images. I thought I should let you know why. Take care.

I'm sorry, all I can comment on this point is that freaking game trailer, and all I can say is AAAAAUUUUUUGGGHHHHHKDFJALSDKFLASDHKLASDJFLKDASJ!!!

(I may be more coherent later when I've finished banging my head into the wall. BRB.)

Wait a second, women don't like violence in games? We don't play games with big guns? Nice to know. I guess I'm not a woman.

Being objectified is one thing, but trying to lump all women into one category does not work.

Personally, I don't care too much what the female characters look like so much as how they act. Princess constantly needing to be saved? No thanks.

The notion that casual games are inferior to hardcore RPG or FPS games is a huge problem with this debate, something that even this quirky video can't get away from. Pointing out that women are playing casual games, but that they aren't "enough" is like discussing women who work outside the home in a traditionally feminine job (e.g. nurse, maid, childcare) but aren't participating in the more masculine trades. Merely drawing attention to these two categories -- masculine games and jobs versus feminine games and jobs -- create a problem.

Women game more than most people, including the guy on the top video, think, we just don't talk about it online much. Why? Because when we do, oftentimes a series of things are said, depending on the location: Offers of cybersex in MMOs, "there are no girls on the internet", "that's hot", "are you single?", and patronizing advice. Not everyone does this, but they're a pretty vocal minority.

The games themselves can be the problem, but an equally large problem is the gamer culture. I see it in my friends sometimes, and certainly on the internet. It's often homophobic and sexist, though they claim that it's in jest. I can't count how many times "fag" gets thrown around at LAN parties or vent servers, or "rape" gets used instead of pwn. Some women are better at tuning it out than others, but I couldn't. I don't go to LAN parties anymore, and I don't game online.

My advice to men who want their female friends to game more: call yourself and your friends on your language and don't call the Sims a "girly game".

For the person above who said that casual games shouldn't be viewed as less than 'real games': the reason casual games are viewed as lesser is the same as the reason that mass-media images are viewed as less than purer art forms. Casual games aren't necessarily designed to cater to women, they're designed to cater to people who as a whole do not want to invest as much time in a game. Games are an art form, and to say that they aren't because someone decided that some scantily clad women would appear in some games is an easy way to make yourself look uneducated in the topic and overly rigid in your views. I don't see anyone mention , there are often scantily clad men, for example in Morrowind the very first thing you see is a man wearing nothing but a loincloth, in Final Fantasy 7 Barret Wallace's cleavage is so low you can see his nipples, in Dragon Age Origins when you purchase a gay prostitute, the prostitute you purchase actually gets in a position to be penetrated doggy style, of course still wearing his loincloth - shall I go on? Back to the point, you have something that's made for occasional consumption by a broad audience. So you think that's as much of an art form as a game with a complex storyline that keeps you enthralled for a week straight? A game that wraps you in emotionally with the characters and fills you with anger, fear, passion, love, and sadness? This is like saying Cosmopolitan or Reader's Digest or Computer Shopper is the same as Moby Dick or Tom Sawyer or the works of Shakespeare. Of course they're lesser. Does that make them bad? No. But to say that simply because women prefer casual games that you should give them equal credence is ridiculous. Games are getting increasingly complex, with more open-ended worlds that allow for all sorts of experiences. Why not suggest that these open-ended worlds give more for everyone to enjoy? That's more realistic.

As for computer science and the original article, we need to shatter through the political correctness and realize the reason why women are afraid of being with 'unwashed nerds.' Basically, it's because they aren't handsome successful marriage-worthy material. You won't say that this is the reason, and I'm sure someone will get up in arms about it, but this is basically the case. As much as you may hate to admit it, it's still a part of our culture that women are of a mindset that they go to college to "land a husband." Sure, they want to start a career as well, but they as a whole very much want to get married, start a family, which will entail time off, and computer programming is not the kind of field where you can take time off and expect to be useful even a few years after being gone. Instead, the few women that go into computer science go in precisely because they want to shatter those traditional norms. You should be applauding those women for being strong and facing adversity, which I wager in a significant amount comes from other women who view them as strange and abnormal for not wanting to settle down and start making babies. Placing a veneer over the classroom's style is not going to solve any problems, because you're still going to go into the classroom and be in a highly competitive classroom with predominantly men who are nerds. I'm sure that most computer science classrooms - like all classrooms - have nothing hanging up other than posters about the material. You need to attack the problem by getting to the heart of the matter, and that's the traditional views that women have of themselves.

@ MD: "realize the reason why women are afraid of being with ‘unwashed nerds.’ Basically, it’s because they aren’t handsome successful marriage-worthy material."

I will be blunt here, very very blunt. There, I warned you.
The reason I am not afraid of, but rather without any interest in 'unwashed nerds' is that I have no desire to f#ck them. They do not sexually attract me. And all HUMANS (men and women alike) tend to surround themselves by humans they are physically attracted to.
There. If he was physically gorgeous, emotionally stimulating and not homophobic and misogynist, yet dirt poor without any reasonable expectation of his financial situation increasing (hence, according to your definition not marriage material), I would enjoy his company.

However, I am generally unsure where you tried to go with your statement. So if women are interested in success in their spouses and you dislike that... Should we go the general male route: Try to marry someone less successful in order to feel superior?! Given that all the images play on female physical beauty, I am even less sure where you were trying to go with your statement.

(and yes, huge gigantic generalizations here, yet given the low baseline MD's comment gave me to work on, I felt that was in order)

"Casual," I've come to believe, is just a term that's bandied about because it's a convenient way for a certain brand of male gamer to reassure himself that he's probably not in mixed company. Having women around, even if he's a raging misogynist, is likely to make him think twice about throwing around gendered insults and overtly sexist language. I think this term is used more in dividing gamers up by sex than in any other kind of conversation.

As one of those people who goes out and waits around in the freezing cold at midnight for a game like Halo or Fallout 3, I still deal with unstated assumptions of my boyfriend that I'm somehow not a hardcore gamer because I spend more time playing solitaire on my computer (four seasons). In spite of the fact that my tetris score exceeds his by several hundred thousand, I still find him surprised when he finds out that I play Halo games on Legendary. And he's hardly the only one that makes these assumptions. If you spend any amount of time on Gaming forums or blogs, the comments are chock full of examples of dudes claiming that their girlfriend isn't hardcore because she prefers puzzle games, but admitting that sometimes she plays shooters or complex million hour JRPGs.

My point is that the line is so blurry here one wonders what the real use of it is to begin with. It only begins to make sense when you see that "casual" games are usually those which are largely known to be played by women. I've watched games go from some vaunted status to "casual" the minute numbers come out showing that greater than fifty percent of players are women.

I consider myself a gamer, but I feel weird saying that I'm a hardcore gamer. I don't have the money or time to play every game, and I've been in situations where not playing some arbitrarily designated hardcore title has been used to strip me of the status. So I say screw it. These distinctions are BS to begin with and I refuse to continue to acknowledging them.

I’ve come to enjoy Socio Images coverage of media and the various commentary on the linked material by Lisa Wade and Gwen Sharpe, guest authors et al. and while I generally refer to the Internet’s rule of ‘don’t read the comments’ I was bothered enough before even reaching them to feel the need to point out how essentialist this post is not to mention many of the comments.

I agree very much with ACLS’s comment above — this post is a selective cherry-picking of misogynistic material, one of which has little or nothing to do with the gaming industry (the Yahoo! hiring scheme featuring lap dancers — Yahoo! isn’t a gaming company).

While I agree much of the discourse (e.g. ‘your team got raped!’) and imagery within the gaming industry could be classified as misogynistic and an objectification of women and femininity (Lara Croft springs to mind), making conclusions of the gaming industry with selected unrepresentative examples, describing game consumers using negative stereotypes and going as far as to label their gaming experiences as only furthering their inherent misogynistic tendencies as highly essentialist and offensive.

I can understand the anger that erupts from elements of the gaming discourse, imagery, and its culture but we should remember as we try to understand the roots of these problems and the people who partake within said cultures that we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves by making gross generalisations. Generalisations are only likely to further anger and alienate members of all sides and turn these discussions into unproductive flamewars.

I really enjoyed these two articles:

Michael Thomsen: "Vaginophobia- Fear of Women in Gaming"

The comments made me want to either scream or cry or both though... Very 'insightful' in a negative way. I can't believe some of the crap some gamers came up with.

"Erin Hoffman: Riot Grrrls Wanted"

Story-heavy games specifically (and pretty much exclusively) made for girls and women are a rapidly expanding market in Japan. Whereas 5 years ago there were only a handful of games, now you have this:

http://girls-style.jp/

It doesn't compare at all to the size of the male-dominated video gaming industry, but it's definitely starting to make a mark. And I was on a girl-game forum once when a rep from Idea Factory (the company that made that porn game in the posted trailer) started asking around if the US market was ready for these games to be translated. I helped him do some market research.

(By the way, they're a VERY tiny percentage, but some of those porn games are actually aimed at women. This review is safe for work: http://whitebutterfly.kokidokom.net/2009/08/otome-game-review/)

I very much enjoy video games, but I've been playing "boy-oriented" video games since I've been in elementary school, from Contra to Shining Force to Final Fantasy to Halo to Starcraft to Modern Warfare.

As a woman, I do admit to being turned off when I'm made uncomfortable. For example, if I'm forced to play a female character that has very exaggerated breasts and barely any clothing on, I feel a little disgusted and repelled from playing the game. Maybe this is because I'm not attracted to women, but it's probably more from the way we tend to sympathize and identify with the characters in the game. Male characters tend to be vessels that male gamers can take on in the game. I tend to sympathize more with female characters and would hate to be running around carrying a huge machine gun in a thong in the snow. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it for me.

On the other hand, there are some games that do have female characters I'm drawn toward - many times, it's because I can relate to her "personality" or role in the game; other times, it's because of the storyline and how I relate to her situation.

It's not that I don't sympathize with male characters. For example, I enjoyed the first Call of Duty, as well as the Modern Warfare series. I like the way the game is designed to immerse you in a war situation and how it's not presented as a glorious, hero scenario, but a gritty one where you're one of many people... and many people die in a war. And taking on that role is less about being a man, though I know that the main character is male, and more about being in that certain situation with a certain directive - and being able to experience it without the consequences of it being real.

Meanwhile, in some games, I am drawn to male characters for different reasons - I find them attractive. ;) But the way men are depicted as attractive tend to be different than women. Strong women tend to have to be sexy to "balance" the character in some way, whereas the men can just be strong without wearing a speedo. Also, I do find there to be a much wider range of male characters, where women tend to fall into two categories: sexy warriors and feminine damsels. This dichotomy generally forces me to favorite any female character that doesn't fit neatly into either box.

Also, when I do play online (which I rarely do any more), I don't use the microphone or give any indication that I'm female. There's a lot of language and behavior on line that I find offensive, such as "tea-bagging" and the use of derogatory language against women. Some guys tend to be happy that there's a woman playing with them and may change their behavior accommodate a female gamer, but many male gamers do see gaming as a boys' club and would rather not curb their behavior, nor do they see anything wrong with using violent sexualized language or behavior.

It's been a year or so since I've played online, so perhaps the online gaming culture has changed, but as much as I enjoyed the actual game play, that culture was very unwelcoming and I can't see any woman really wanting to subject herself to hearing people talking about "raping" each other or how a player is a "pussy."

On a lighter note, toward the beginning of my online gaming experience, I was playing Halo 2 online with my brother. The other team was getting irritated as I was using a sniper rifle and catching them whenever they moved away from their spawn point. At one point in the game, one the players tried to call me out, "Stop hiding and sniping like a girl!" My brother turned on his mic and chuckled, "Dudes... she *is* a girl."

"Women are playing more, but those are CASUAL games!"

This video is sheer idiocy.

I just wrote for an hour and then deleted it. It's just not so complicated.

Women have as many prejudices as men about sexuality and equality. You ever watch and episode of Sex and the City? It makes me want to forfeit my uterus.

There will always be someone who is offended about something. You are never going to convince the spray-tan, $100 a week on her manicure chick that she likes video games. You are never, EVER going to please the feminist, p.c. so long as I'm just making everything less equal and honest for everyone, Jezebel commenter to just unclench and enjoy a video game. It won't happen.

I have been gaming since I was three and I love video games. If game companies want to draw in more women then they need to aim for women like me. I don't care if the character is hot and busty because the men are giant 'roid monkeys and that is just as unreasonable a body image. I just want the designers not to destroy any evidence of the female character's brain activity be dressing her in gravity-defying hooker clothes while the men are in full body armor. Spend less time on the 'jiggle-matrix' and more time on the story make me feel something for the characters. Allow me to make the game my own so that I can customize it and be attached to it. You could also, EEEEASILY provide outfit options so that guys can look at t&a all day but I can still respect my avatar in the morning.

Treat "Go make me a sandwich" and "Tits or the GTFO" as hate-speech equal to the other prejudiced slurrs in online commenting. And before anyone cries out here that they shouldn't have to put on kid gloves for women because they trash talk everyone online, there is a huge difference between "p0wn'd, shit-waffle" and "shouldn't you be in the kitchen cooking my dinner, bitch?" Both comments show that you are a moron, but one is just not acceptable in any environment. That's someone's daughter. How would you feel if someone said that to your daughter or mother or sister? If you are any kind of man at all then you'd be outraged and if you don't care then you are one of the buttbags ruining online activity for everyone.

Seriously, what is wrong with you? Go for a walk and get a good night's sleep. You are at an unhealthy level of unhappy and calling someone a cuntwhale is not going to fix anything.

There are so many jerks in the world, male and female. Just keep the bullshit battle of the sexes out of my game play experience and focus on making games that are fun, well programmed, don't treat women like idiot-whores (Cosmopolitan Magazine does that enough for me already) and draw me in to the world or on the flip side, make more games that are super-easy, well-programmed and fun to play with a group.

It's not that hard to get more women involved in games and maybe this is why it's so crucial to get more women in on the designing side of games because taking a bunch of male programmers and throwing them into an environment of pizza, beers and boys club is as useless as looking to hypocritical, hyper-feminist rants on what's wrong with video games for guidance.

Of course, any game company could feel free to just ask us actual gamers what keeps us coming back. Have any of them tried that yet?

Good speech... except when you say we need "diversity" you automatically assume they all have to look different. Seriously, didn't your speech teach you anything?

Good speech… except when you say we need “diversity” you automatically assume they all have to look different (aka different races). Seriously, didn’t your speech teach you anything?

So last week my boyfriend and I were playing "Left 4 Dead", a fairly violent zombie killing game. Once I had practiced enough and gotten semi-good, we decided to play online with other people across the country.

As we are logging in, he hands me the headset with the microphone (so you can talk with and hear the other online players) and says: "here, you wear this... They love it when girls play."

That one sentence said so much about the gaming industry and the lack of females within it.

not sure if the irony's already been pointed out of leigh alexander being invited onto floyd's video as a female representative of video games, while her blog is called "sexy video game land," and the provided in-video picture exhibits a sexualized maid. i'm not sure that sarcasm-as-intent works much in the way of an argument when the person maintaining such a site is, supposedly, trying to go for the opposites of exploitation and objectification.

Anyone notice that the "guest speaker" Leigh Alexander didn't say a word? I noticed she got top billing for writing credits and probably contributed a lot to the content of the video, but SHE DIDN'T SPEAK ONCE. For a video about how the gaming world needs more women, it certainly didn't live up to it's own standards.

Talk about literal voicelessness.

I am a female geek and I started my career in video game testing then development.

I fought so many battles about gender, and was laughed, taunted, and treated like crap for years. I wish I could sum up every story, but here are a few quick ones:

PC Accelerator (PCXL) magazine was running a competition, the prize was a date with "Lara Croft". I entered and the editor wrote to me. He was happy to have female readers and asked what could be done to increase female readership. I replied, very politely, and said I was not their target audience. They were kind of Maximesque, with half naked women and terms like "chicks and babes" when referring to any female (eg. "We interviewed the babe from...". I stated there was nothing wrong with targeting males, and if they want to target females they should start a new magazine. I kept it on the up and up as I was a professional in the industry with my name in a lot of credits. I even ran my reply past our marketing director. The magazine editor replied with the most hateful email I have ever received. Called me a "bitch" and a "whore". Said that women should know where they belong, etc.

Story #2. At another game company I worked with an artist had a cube full of playboys and other skin rags he used as "reference" for drawing women. Our male characters were not drawn to the same idea of beauty. I suggested he get a playgirl to draw men. I don't care that the women were drawn based on "magazine beauty" but let's even the playing field and give us girls some men from the same arena. He scoffed at the idea. Sad really. Michelangelo's David is an amazing work of art. The male body is beautiful! If 'hot' girls draw the male purchasers, why not create 'hot' men? Worst case, it has no effect, best case, it increases your sales!

And my last story for today, I was testing a game. If you broke through a wall, the universe (main background) was a close up of women's genitalia. In fact, one of the evil monsters was based on a vagina... Subtle. I, not surprisingly, took issue with it. I was 19 at the time and didn't want to spend my days looking at vaginas. Not that they aren't beautiful, but at the same time, context is important. I asked to be moved to a different game. I was later told the reason I never got promoted was because I "unreasonably refused to test a game and offended the producer." They told me that users would never see that image if the game was tested properly, as they wouldn't break through the walls... Spend a short time on google and you will find that users DID find it.

I don't care about video game nudity or sexuality, but so much of it seems to be an attempt to alienate women and make them feel unwelcome or marginalized. A lot of women like playing video games. Our cash is just as green. A smart business person would seek to get that cash, starting with not alienating us.

Andy Blume of the blog Spatula City has hate speech against women on it.
He is a weird slimy short guy who hates women.
He is a Sociopath.
He has hate speech about Blacks, Women, Religion.

His blog is ……blog.andyblume.com/

He hates the Aborigines and writes about his hate today on his blog. He is inciting violence against them with his speech.

He admits he is a liar, and a drug dealer, as he admits selling drugs on his blog,
he admits raping women on his blog, he admits stealing from others on his blog.
but what is worse is his constant stream of hate towards blacks and women.

He published his address on his own site,
P.O. Box, Elsternwick, Vic, Australia 3185

He is associated with Spatula Publishing Conglomerate that is putting up a business in Broadmeadows, in Vic.

We live in a society where women can do whatever they want -- maybe not without compromise, but that's life. So if there are women out there who want videogames tailored primarily for the female audience, why don't they go to college, get the necessary skills, and make those games themselves instead of whining about how men make games that men find interesting?

I'm a software engineer, and in my freshman class there were 23 boys and 1 girl; in my graduating class there were.....9 boys and 1 girl. In the classes I shared with Computer Science majors, there were 2 girls, one of whom was from my engineering class. In short, my college experience was a goddamned sausage-party.

So whose fault is it if the gaming industry is dominated by men who make games that men want to buy? Is it men's fault for not *proactively* being considerate and deferential enough to women? Or is it women's fault for not following the age-old rule "if you want something done right, do it yourself"? In fairness, the blame for that neglect falls on both parties, but *mostly* on the party who has avoided participating in the first place.

I hate to say it, because I was raised by a strong feminist mother and whatever sexism I have was learned from experience, but most women I know get their kicks playing dress-up and flirting with men. That's their game and they like playing it, which is fine. Those few who'd rather play games on a TV instead, go to school and learn how to make the games you want to play.

I'm pretty sure that nowadays, the number of women playing games has increased a lot, and many women also join the gambling field. Companies like https://live.beter.co help people develop gambling platforms that are attractive for everyone, so I think that over time, the situation has improved a lot.

The advantage of the today's world and the actual online business is that it doesn't matter if you are a man or a woman, you can run such a business with equal ease. I'm particularly attracted to the growing betting industry, so now with the help of turnkey solutions, for example, from Digitain, you can quickly create a high-quality betting platform and get benefit from sportsbook. A good way to make money online, but at the same time not take risks like directly betting on sports

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