CNN Talks About Online Game

[SirBruce]

I'll give a good example of how men and women different psychologically in general: men want to figure out how something works, whreas women want to be shown how something works.

There are so many things wrong with that entire post, but I'm not going to bother with it. Suffice it to say, I've heard hack comedians make more salient points with that same argument.

It's a good thing this is serious, then, and not comedy.  Perhaps if you derived your idea of right and wrong from serious study instead of Comedy Central, you might have understood the point better.

It's important to keep in mind, before the flames start, that again we are talking about general trends that have been observed.  Such tendancies are not universal to everyone.

Anyway, I could have pointed out a more common example, like women being more likely to run and organize guilds, but that's something I think most people here already know.... I think it was even mentioned before in the thread already.

Bruce

[eldaec]

This discussion is NOT about non-gamers.  They don't game.  This discussion is about people who DO game, happen to be female, and don't play mmogs.

Hmm, are you suggesting...

P(female plays MMOG | female is regular PC gamer ) < P(male plays MMOG | male is regular PC gamer)

Because if so, I'd have to disagree.

I'd say the proportion of EQ players who are female is way higher than the number of CS players who are female for instance.

MMOGs are already have *relatively* high female participation. presumably due to not requiring twitch skills and the social aspect. The problem is that using that as a platform to attract more customers is hard. Because I sure as hell don't know what an actively female targetted MMOG looks like, and because I still don't know how we quantify or plan around this 'untapped' potential.

This may, of course, be why I am poor.

[HaemishM]

Anyway, I could have pointed out a more common example, like women being more likely to run and organize guilds

And if you had, that would have been a much less assinine-sounding generalization. What you said in your first post is that women can't or won't learn how to play a game on their own, which makes you sound like a chauvinistic jackass.

I understood precisely WHAT you were saying, but the manner in which you said it was incorrect and inflammatory.

[Otis]

...  the Puzzle Pirates Beta had the highest percentage of female players, I've ever experienced online.

And it remains that way. From my experience in UO, AC, DAoC and a few others, Puzzle Pirates by far has the largest percentage of female MMOGers I've seen. Obviously it's a factor of the puzzles, the huge social core game, cutesy graphics and the allure of the piratey era.

I'd love to find out some hard numbers, but my guess would place about every third subscribed player in PP as female (perhaps a more conservative estimate would say a quarter). A high number of the profile players are female, too--including many of the most successful captains and monarchs/alliance leaders (consider them at the top of the social game).

[Venkman]

Not really - CoH and to an extent Eve are reskinned D&D.

I disagree here. Just because the games have advancement and numbers doesn't make them D&D. The treadmill in both derive the same place ALL treadmills derive: those numbers being updated in an approximation of real-time. That's when they are treated like slot machines and enter into that area of the psyche that says "these things must go up quickly."

Where CoH and Eve differ are on the themes. They are escapist fantasy without being Fantasy themed. Someone who enters the genre for either isn't going to immediately acclimate to EQ, DAoC or UO, because the playing of the game and the world in which it happens are just very different. And different enough to appeal to different types of players.

[SirBruce]

What you said in your first post is that women can't or won't learn how to play a game on their own, which makes you sound like a chauvinistic jackass.

No, that's not what I said at all.  In fact, I specifically stated later in my post, for the morons in the class here, that that was NOT what I was stating.

I understood precisely WHAT you were saying, but the manner in which you said it was incorrect and inflammatory.

No, the way you read it was incorrect and inflammatory, because you've got a world-view predisposed to flame everything I say and generally cause me a lot of shit, because you get your rocks off by doing so.  It may be wise to note that such people are not as welcome around here as they once were....

Anyway, had I focused on the community-building thing, you could have just have easily called by chauvanist for alledgedly implying that all women are naturally homemakers and caretakers and it is the men who go out to do the real work of farming, killing, etc.

Bruce

[HaemishM]

Not going to get into a troll war with you about this. It ain't worth it.

If you knew that is what people would infer from your statement, why bother to state it that way?

The community-building thing is not chauvinistic, unless of course, you add something to it about women being homemakers and caretakers and men going out to hunt, blah blah blah.

There are shitton of barriers for women being brought into computer gaming, and no, I do not believe that one of them is, as you stated, "men want to figure out how something works, whreas women want to be shown how something works."

Had you wanted to say what you say you meant, you should have stated it that "Men like to tinker with a system in a self-directed fashion, while women prefer to learn the system of a game through social connections." It sounds so much less degrading, and doesn't need the statement that "women are not stupid and can't learn."

[SirBruce]

I think the statement was clear enough in meaning.  YOU figured out what I meant.  You simply decided to bust my balls anyway because you could.

I stand by what I said.  Your paraphrase of it is not quite the same.

Bruce

[HaemishM]

Yes, it lacks the jackass.

[SirBruce]

Not going to get into a troll war with you about this. It ain't worth it.

Nice to see you are a man of your word!

Bruce

[WayAbvPar]

Next Stop- Cold Storage.