Women and Video Games Part 2
When I wrote Women and Video Games, I expected two things to happen:
a) Some people would agree, because the basic core idea of that piece that “sometimes, more men like certain things than women and vice versa because of the differences both sociological and biological” was not exactly controversial unless you hate science;
b) Some people would disagree, because in today’s world even the most reasonable ideas are challenged for ideological reasons (see, for example, what postmodernism is).
In my piece I have used two tweets from James Murff but my evaluation of them was the evaluation of ideas, not a person. Murff decided to write a reply…
…and somewhat unsurprisingly — I will not pretend the methods of his ideological camp are unknown to me (and I will show examples soon enough) — it got personal.
Apart from the typical and tired accusations of sexism, the remark that made me laugh out loud was calling me a “conservative” defender of the status quo. Which is hilarious if you know the last game I designed — The Vanishing of Ethan Carter — is an experiment in gameplay merged with story-telling as an ode to freedom of expression and creativity, one that is much closer to, say, Gone Home than it is to Call of Duty.
For what it’s worth, despite its unnecessarily antagonizing form I am glad Murff’s reply exists: it’s obvious we disagree and things get heated every now and then, but such discussion is still better than two sides barricading themselves and lobbing insults from behind the castle walls.
Oops. Oh well. Still, let my try to address Murff’s reply. He starts with…
[…] Adrian Chmielarz wrote a long-winded justification of the status quo on Medium.
This is merely the third sentence of Murff’s response, and we’re already in the But That Is Not True territory. Just one quote from my piece:
[…] some women say, “Listen up, we want big games with big production values, you know, the type that costs trillion dollars, gets the magazine cover and wins gaming awards.” — and I get that. Currently it’s like men and women have their own indie movies, but only men get their big budget movies. If I am not mistaken, there is not gaming equivalent of The Hunger Games for women gamers.
It’s apparent I am not entirely content with the status quo. If I was, I would not be writing things like:
[…] we need different types of games.
Or:
Creators should consider adding tweaks to the game that may please the female audience. […] a few tweaks of already existing variables [can] make the game appealing to a larger audience.
Does it all sound like “I like the way things are now, change nothing” to you? Of course not…
…but see what happened. I already spent six paragraphs defending myself from the accusation that is basically a lie. Am I surprised, though? No. This is the favorite strategy of the moral crusaders: “throw dirt enough, and some of it will stick.”
(In all honesty I should probably be doing something better with my time than to defend myself from lies and the army of strawmen I will keep exposing in this piece. However, a certain comic book writer told me once of a rule he and his friends live by “You should respond, just do it once — repeating argument makes no sense if they didn’t get it the first around or are unwilling to do so”, and I think it’s a pretty decent rule. So let’s continue, this one time.)
While I have an abiding and utmost respect for Chmielarz and his work, this article is a thinly veiled justification for something I’ll call “bioessentialist ludology”: the notion that men and women, biologically, can only enjoy certain games or game mechanics.
This time we are in Half Truth land. I did not say the above, but I did say that there are genres that most women or most men will not like:
To sum up this part, a) there are genres that women tend to like simply because the genres as such appeal to them, b) there are genres that do not achieve that, and c) there are genres that the games of which women like or not depending on the actual features of the game.
To make it clear that things are not black and white, I added:
Whenever I said or say “women this, men that”, I always mean “most women, most men”. Obviously some women love games that the players of which are mostly men (and vice versa).
Of course, you will not find any mention of the above in the Murff’s response. This is another strategy of the crusaders: if the hypothesis does not fit the facts, screw the facts.
But the important issue here is that, again, the idea that “sometimes, more men like certain things than women and vice versa because of the differences both sociological and biological” is somehow controversial:
Women and men are, indeed, biologically different. But any differences of taste in media is almost entirely sociological and a function of the media itself, not any biological imperative to enjoy certain media.
So we are biologically different but it has almost no effect on the way we experience media. This is basically saying that all our biological differences are cosmetic or matter only for physical stuff like strength. There are no mental differences or any sort, and if they are, they are so weak they’re basically meaningless.
I am not aware of any respectable scientists claiming the above (and Murff is, of course, not linking to any). Literally none. We have a lot of studies done to prove there are differences of all physical and psychological kinds (here’s one interesting recap), though.
I am having a hard time debating whether Earth is flat or not, or if men and women sometimes differ in some things (with varied degree) like interests or types of entertainment. The idea that we can be different but for some unexplained reason we experience things like video games or books nearly identically (or, we would, if not for the society) is absurd.
For example, no one would argue that people with more of the cognitive empathy see all media exactly in the same light as people with more of the affective empathy. No one would argue that narcissists see all media in exactly the same light as altruists. No one would argue that highly sexual persons see all media in exactly the same light as asexual persons.
And yet when it’s men and women, despite literally centuries of research on the differences in brain’s physiology and psychology, somehow there are no differences.
How. How does one get to a conclusion like that? Explain it to me. How.
But anyway let’s see what arguments Murff has to convince us to his hypothesis (actually, I only found one, the rest is conjecture and wishful thinking presented as facts):
We see this in movies. Stereotypically masculine media, such as superhero movies like Iron Man or Avengers, have relatively even demographic splits. Even Expendables, a movie about dudes blowing up other dudes with guns and being dude-like, had a better demographic split than the majority of games. These movies cater to masculinity and avoid stigmatizing femininity, leading to movies that appeal to guys but which can be watched and enjoyed by women without having to wade through overtly sexist nonsense.
First, obviously, women can enjoy the display of masculinity from men just like men like to see the display of femininity from women. That does not mean women love or are interested in every aspects of masculinity just like men do not love are not interested in every aspects of femininity. That also does not mean we have to kill those aspects until only those are left that appeal to both sexes. It is okay if some aspects appeal only to one sex. Good for them, enjoy.
Second, comparing game genres to movie genres is wrong because the difference between a complex, user-unfriendly MMORPG and a puzzle adventure is infinitely larger than the difference between an intimate indie drama and a blockbuster superhero movie. It’s a big problem with video games, because one says “video games” and people assume it’s something as homogenous in form as books, songs or movies. But the reality is that some game genres are so different from each other it’d make more sense to treat them as separate entertainment entities.
Third, movies generally are never swayed towards “90% of the audience were men/women” because going to the cinema is way more “directly social” activity than gaming. We all saw a movie we normally wouldn’t see if not for our partner/friend. Also, movies are a low investment entertainment: easy to consume, relatively short when compared to, say, books or games. When the investment required grows stronger while the interest grows weaker, the gender disparity grows, e.g. that is why a whopping 84% of the romance novel readers are women.
And yet despite cinema being social and easy and quick to consume we still see the disparity. Nearly 60% of Iron Man’s 3 audience were men, while 54% of Hunger Games audience were women. And while there’s is absolutely nothing wrong with that, it’s yet another proof that sometimes, men and women prefer different things (as always, it does not mean all men and all women).
To sum it up, no, the paragraph I quoted earlier is not a proof that men and women experience media equally.
But here comes the funny part, applying logic to prove how convoluted this ideology is. But first, just a short reminder of what kind of rhetoric I have to deal with here. I wrote that the players of games like League of Legends or EVE Online are vastly male, but then I acknowledge that the data might be skewed due to the toxicity of the social environment:
This [gender disparity] is not limited to online games, where sometimes people hide their gender to not find themselves in an unpleasant company.
…to which Murff’s answer is…
The problem with these statistical quotes is that they are taken out of the context of the communities they take place in.
…basically ignoring my words and making it as if I am not aware of the fact of the toxic communities.
But let’s go back to logic. Here is my question. Women wanted to play soccer or basketball, but they knew that due to the physical differences between men and women playing against men would not exactly be fun or fair. So they have simply organized their own women-only leagues. That is how and why we have women soccer and women basketball. Cool!
Why isn’t that happening to League of Legends? We know it’s possible to have a female-only league, so why is that not happening around the world? If the game is universally appealing, and it’s only the community that keeps women away, why aren’t they creating their own “LoL safe space” that would move the needle towards 50/50 male/female ratio? What’s the issue here?
I mean, one explanation could be that women are generally (exceptions will always exist, great!) not that interested in highly competitive war-like user-unfriendly games that require a significant investment of their time they feel they can use for a better purpose, but I’m sure such explanation would be sexist, wouldn’t it?
And if games like League of Legends or Eve Online are universally appealing then why did they draw in the “toxic masculinity” that resulted in those “toxic male-dominated communities” in the first place? Some online community-driven games are released and they draw in varied crowd and you don’t see “toxic young males” super-dominating them — how come? Why do these males choose only certain games and not all of them?
Again, there is one very simple explanation, but hey, it’s impossible that men and women might like different things sometimes.
Continuing with his convoluted ideology, Murff claims that Mass Effect 3 failed to capture the female audience despite “putting Female Shepard front and center” in the marketing, because “a single game will not tear down decades of built-up social disincentives”. And yet seconds later he uses Skyrim as an example of a game that performed much better in the gender parity area, so apparently “social disincentives” magically did not play much of a role here. And let’s remember that Skyrim’s marketing was about a warrior dude with a horned helmet and tools of murder in his hands — and yet many more women wanted to play this game than Mass Effect. Why?
Did I mention there is an explanation, it’s just invisible, apparently, if you’re wearing certain ideological glasses?
When we talk about games, we have a penchant for treating women as totally dissimilar to the male half of humanity. It’s like they are two different species.
Here Murff is inventing things. No one does that. No one says women are so different we are nearly unable to communicate. It’s a textbook example of a strawman fallacy. A reminder that the whole “Women and Video Games” essay was inspired by:
Which, as a general rule, is simply not true.
Women do not inherently want something significantly different from a game that guys feel okay playing. They just want a game that isn’t so relentlessly dismissive and disgusting to women. They want women that are powerful, self-possessed, and in control. That’s not some sort of alien request. In fact, it sounds entirely reasonable.
What does this have to do with anything? In my essay, I have clearly stated that women like to play as women (which is why vast majority of HOPA games feature female protagonists). This is not mutually exclusive with the fact that sometimes men and women like different things.
But more importantly, this quoted statement then leads to the idea that a game must appeal to men and women 50/50:
[…] ideally, games would represent the roughly 50/50 split of men/women in modern society. […] We can’t expect instant results, and even the best anomalies are going to be below our expectations. That’s okay, though; it means we just need to keep trying.
Why exactly is that “ideal”? Why must both sexes like things equally? It’s like saying all things must be equally liked or disliked by young and older people —why would that be “ideal”? Why is a bad idea that a thing exists that older people like more than young adults? Why is it a bad idea that a thing exists that women like more than men?
As long as there’s nothing explicitly driving them away, you’ll end up with better demographic percentages than an abysmal 96% men.
Again, why is that “abysmal”? So a thing exists that is liked only by men, just like things exist that are liked only by women. How is the world worse because of that?
This 50/50 philosophy is a peculiar one. I am still waiting for the proponents to advocate that women find work in septic tank servicing or as sewer pipe cleaners and trash collectors, in order to eliminate the atrocious gender disparity (currently: more than 99% are men).
This notion, that men and women have inherently different tastes because of their gender, is the core of bioessentialism. It’s also totally wrong. Women can enjoy men’s media in the same way that adults can enjoy kid’s media.
Of course they can, as Untangled or Frozen show us. But that is not always the case. Most adults do not enjoy or do not care much for My Little Pony, choosing to spend their time on something else. What does this mean?
Choose one:
- We need to kill the toxicity of adulthood, or the creators of My Little Pony should strive to make it more appealing to adults.
- It’s okay there’s stuff more appealing to kids than adults, and it’s okay there’s stuff more appealing to adults than kids.
If you are sane and chose number 2, why would it be not okay then that there’s stuff that’s more appealing to women than men and vice versa?
Anyway, we’re getting to the main dish, which is Murff’s reply to the core question I asked in my piece, let me quote that question here for convenience:
If men and women naturally like and dislike certain genres and games, and the market seems to have solved the problem already (half of population are women, and half of gamers are women, so there’s no under-representation, if you believe in that sort of thing) and is keeping everyone busy playing, why do we keep hearing the voices asking for “games for women”, “stories that are not just for men”, “strong female protagonists”, etc? What is the reason for this push to invade the market that could be described as core? Why can’t “men games” be left alone, when we all have too many games to play anyway? And why don’t we hear men protesting the lack of male protagonists in HOPA?
And here are Murff’s comments and my answers:
There is so much wrong with this paragraph.
No, there’s nothing wrong with the paragraph. It’s a series of questions that Murff himself could ask, like why the push for more games that appeal to women, etc. It’s the answers that Murff does not like, not the questions.
Men and women do not inherently like certain videogames (say, shooters for men and casual games for women), that’s bioessentialist and absolutely wrong.
Good argument, I am convinced.
Well, not really, but hey, I like making up words too, so the above is socioessentialist and absolutely wrong.
Misrepresenting scale — overall representation is not relevant when we’re talking about making the most popular games in the world less sexist — is an overt attempt at diversion.
Not true, I do mention the scale later in the piece, when I actually move from asking questions to answering them. I genuinely acknowledge that there are no female audience-centric blockbusters that cost trillions and grace the covers of popular gaming magazines.
For a game critic, Murff is also disarmingly incompetent. Here is the list of “the most popular games in the world”:
Not a single game on that list is sexist. Obviously, the chronically insulted consider GTA as sexist, as if the series was offending women exclusively while presenting men as good, noble, sane souls.
Not on that list are F2P behemoths like League of Legends but we have already established that the game as such is not sexist, didn’t we?
Why do we ask for more AAA games with women protagonists, strong women, women that have agency? Because that not only makes those games have wider appeal, it also makes them better games.
- Saying that a game is better if the protagonist is female is sexism.
- Better game writing is something I am a big advocate of for years, and better writing does include, of course, better female characters. I have written a lengthy piece about it just a few months ago (where I also explained why “better” does not equal “stronger”). However, the gender quota does not automatically make games better, and in most cases forcing it makes the work worse (I gave examples in my essay).
There is no invasion. The maturing of our medium is not invasion, especially when it’s spearheaded by people who have been in this industry a long time.
There is invasion. More in a second.
Another misrepresentation of scale — we have so many games to play, so why do you care about making AAA games better? — is both relative privation and yet another diversion.
Repeat of an argument I already addressed above.
We don’t hear men protesting the lack of male HOPA protagonists because HOPAs are a much smaller segment of the market and there is already a wealth of positive male representation in mainstream games. There’s also the innate stigma for men to play casual games.
If so, then we don’t you fight that stigma?
Now, the promised “invasion”. Later in his reply, Murff writes this about “cultural colonialism”:
The framing of our new conversation on games as cultural colonialism is appalling on just about every level. Asking for games to mature in their treatment of women and minorities is, and it’s comically absurd that this even needs to be said, not colonialism.
Honestly, I am starting to lose the count of the strawmen built.
Let’s apply logic again. Games have been criticized for decades. This, of course, included the discussion on women in video games (e.g. see Edge 121 from 2003, the issue on “sexism” — the cover featured the zoom on a body of DoA Extreme Beach Volleyball character. The game was heavily criticized by some for sexual objectification. Eurogamer gave the “wankerdom” the score of 3/10).
If so, how come we never had to use the term “cultural colonialism” before? What has changed? Why now?
“Colonialism” emphasizes two things: a) the arrival of the outsiders, b) their demand (or the newly converted’s) to replace the current culture with theirs.
Personally, I don’t mind the arrival of the outsiders. Yes, they are often incredibly incompetent, but there’s always a chance they’ll say something thought-provoking. The same goes for the converted to the new culture, I respect everyone’s right to change (isn’t it the reason why humans discuss things?).
However, if Murff actually clicked on the link I provided when I used the term “cultural colonialists” he’d see the explanation behind the dangerous b) element. Quote from the article:
But there is something about 2014’s cultural moralists that sets them apart. Because while the Mary Whitehouses of the past shouted ‘ban this filth’, the Mary Whitehouses of today want to take culture and shape it for their own purposes. They don’t bother with outright censorship — that’s still, just about, a dirty word. They want to straighten culture’s act up. They want to nag it and finger-wag it into a nice, socially acceptable form. They want to stake their flag in the savage world of culture and give the natives a lesson in piety. This was not the year of the cultural censor. This was the year of the cultural colonialist.
Which is exactly what is happening. I don’t mind when someone advocates for better writing, more diversity in games, more genres, etc. On the contrary, it’s exactly what I want too.
However, I am not equaling better writing with quotas. I am not proposing that more diversity means some games need to die or change. I am not asking for more genres by stigmatizing the old ones. I am not lying to the world that Mario is sexist and contributes to real life violence against women. I am not telling everyone that racist characters means the creators are racist. I am not demanding that offensive jokes disappear. I am not silencing and shaming developers when the art from their game offends me.
There is no war on games. This is, in fact, an attempt to broaden gaming’s palette. Characterizing it as a radical feminist attack on games is pure fiction, scaremongering for the sake of spreading panic.
I understand.
I admit one thing, though. There is both the attack from the radical feminists and the desire to evolve the gaming tree from people who genuinely care about the quality of and diversity in games. And this often leads to misunderstanding and chaos.
Actually, I am a pretty good example of this myself. I loved Gone Home and I challenged the stereotype of all games always requiring mechanical systems. I defended short games, called gamers the “ultimate trolls”, and tried to tell people that casual games are fine. The heroes of Bulletstorm were a white man, an Asian man, and a woman — and they all kicked ass while being three-dimensional. The hero of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a bullied boy and the game is certainly not your typical video game no matter what angle you look at it under: gameplay or story.
But I also refuse quotas, critique poisonous radfem ideologies, and defend the rights of creators to control their creation and players to fantasize.
Sometimes, people like me might be called hipsters or conservatives depending on the issue. And we add to the chaos because sometimes our words are treated as if we are a part of an extremist movement (e.g. when I say “game writing sucks and so do black box designs” I become a resident of San Francisco). So it’s important to notice that while a “radical feminist attack on games” does exist, it does not mean certain aspects of it cannot partially align with the proposals of those who would not want to be associated with the entirety of the movement.
I wish the chaos went away. I wish that if someone defended male fantasies they would not be called a misogynist, even if misogynists defend the same thing, and if someone expressed their dislike of cheap sexualization they would not be called a proponent of censorship, even if proponents of censorship dislike the same thing. But I am not an optimist here, to be honest. People’s tendency to label is too strong.
Characterizing the push for better women and more playable women in games as “pressure to drop everything” is incredibly disingenuous. It isn’t hard to write decent women. Bulletstorm, a game Chmielarz was director for, has a decently-written woman, at least compared to the majority of games.
It’s not a Herculean effort to write women. It’s a token display. It’s asking for the bare basics. If we can’t meet those basics, what does that say about us, about the medium?
Again, asking for better writing is not equal with cultural colonialism. I appreciate the note about our attempt at better writing in Bulletstorm (quality writing is something I deeply care about, even if the game is a pulp sci-fi with a lot of low brow humor), but again, ask for better writing all you want, that’s not an issue. However, better writing does not mean quotas, or exclusively “strong female characters” (or male, for that matter), or removal of male (or female) fantasies.
Businesses do not listen. They do what they want, and are sometimes pressured by overwhelming outrage to go in a new direction.
“Businesses do not listen”. This is an intriguing concept, one that says that all businesses exist and even grow while ignoring their customers unless they shout really, really loud. It’s fascinating that Murff writes earlier:
You usually want to understand your ideal audience. Studying how players interact with games is, perhaps, the most important task of a game designer. Part systems theorist and part sociologist, game designers and leads should strive to reach the audience they want to reach.
So game designers listen, but businesses do not. People risk money, sometimes all they have earned in life (like we did with The Astronauts), but somehow they are not interested in what their potential customers have to say.
I mean, game studios and publishers pay serious money for QA and even release costly public betas to squash the bugs and tweak the game based on the feedback, but no, apparently businesses do not listen.
Chmielarz lays out a very compelling — if you happen to already believe it, anyway — case for never changing games. It’s built on an unstable foundation of poorly-researched statistics, misunderstood sociology, and a whole heap of sexism. The lightest reading of anybody not desperately trying to excuse sexism in games reveals this.
Ah, sexism. The go to word of the outrage factory. They are crying wolf so often, the word has lost any meaning lately.
But it’s not all bad. With these closing words from Murff…
It’s time to grow up.
…we finally agree.
