huge assumption: "and by decreasing isolation, increase interpersonal communication/relationships, decreasing depression and aggressive attitudes"
remember that there are both socially constructive and socially destructive ways for people to use / abuse social networks, and in this case, social networks facilitated by the internet...
more:
what is missing from all of this discourse is the important issue of context that was a huge part of jane's argument in the game girl advance article. Her example was something like, the humorous result of the DOA Vollyball appropriation of the a ridiculous female image as opposed to a more serious, shooter game where that same female image seemed out-of-place / distracting / harmful.
The real issue here is not whether girls vs. boys play puzzle games or shooter games. It seems to me that this distinction is pretty clear, and not a significant result of girls being unable to "relate" to laura-croftesque characters. What the problem right now is that demographics are skewed mostly towards males, because [and this is not mine, but is a very valuable thought nonetheless] the children of first generation gamers have not yet developed into a marketable age demographic for game makers - they are too young. I'm interested to see if the little girls of a 30 something who grew up with video games and still plays them regularly, start pushing the market towards more diversity in product. I liked the idea that someday these DOA Beach Vollyball type games would be reduced the level of a men's magazine like "maxim."
(and no, I don't really buy the argument that these gender specific mags are harmful - or certainly any more harmful to women than magazines like cosmo, whose editor in chief Kate White, is in fact a woman herself. I don't think that if they went away, they would solve all of the problems of male chauvinism)
but I digress...
In reference to the quote about "90-95 percent of test participants...unconscious" - I would say to check out tolerance.org's hidden bias test: http://www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/02.html
The statistics are interesting - and seem to throw up a roadblock to the previous statistics - seems as though those test participants probably already had a bias. now, that's incredibily discouraging in and of itself, but it also shows that more likely than not, games had nothing to do with contributing to bias (or at least in a statisically significant way).
_________________________
I liked this line from a history professor I had:
We cannot present a compelling argument without engaging and confronting the strengths of it's diametric.
i agree with everything you say (including the maxim bit, which was the point i was trying to make). i think the more interesting part of the gamegirl argument is 'how can we move from stereotypes to interesting characters?'
as far as your first statements...of course you can always look at it both ways. but i was trying to point some overlooked positive things. the original post seemed very negative and esp skewed to just looking at almost random percentage points.
ok.
huge assumption: "and by decreasing isolation, increase interpersonal communication/relationships, decreasing depression and aggressive attitudes"
remember that there are both socially constructive and socially destructive ways for people to use / abuse social networks, and in this case, social networks facilitated by the internet...
more:
what is missing from all of this discourse is the important issue of context that was a huge part of jane's argument in the game girl advance article. Her example was something like, the humorous result of the DOA Vollyball appropriation of the a ridiculous female image as opposed to a more serious, shooter game where that same female image seemed out-of-place / distracting / harmful.
The real issue here is not whether girls vs. boys play puzzle games or shooter games. It seems to me that this distinction is pretty clear, and not a significant result of girls being unable to "relate" to laura-croftesque characters. What the problem right now is that demographics are skewed mostly towards males, because [and this is not mine, but is a very valuable thought nonetheless] the children of first generation gamers have not yet developed into a marketable age demographic for game makers - they are too young. I'm interested to see if the little girls of a 30 something who grew up with video games and still plays them regularly, start pushing the market towards more diversity in product. I liked the idea that someday these DOA Beach Vollyball type games would be reduced the level of a men's magazine like "maxim."
(and no, I don't really buy the argument that these gender specific mags are harmful - or certainly any more harmful to women than magazines like cosmo, whose editor in chief Kate White, is in fact a woman herself. I don't think that if they went away, they would solve all of the problems of male chauvinism)
but I digress...
In reference to the quote about "90-95 percent of test participants...unconscious" - I would say to check out tolerance.org's hidden bias test: http://www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/02.html
The statistics are interesting - and seem to throw up a roadblock to the previous statistics - seems as though those test participants probably already had a bias. now, that's incredibily discouraging in and of itself, but it also shows that more likely than not, games had nothing to do with contributing to bias (or at least in a statisically significant way).
_________________________
I liked this line from a history professor I had:
We cannot present a compelling argument without engaging and confronting the strengths of it's diametric.
This is always the struggle.
Posted by will at April 25, 2003 4:15 PMi agree with everything you say (including the maxim bit, which was the point i was trying to make). i think the more interesting part of the gamegirl argument is 'how can we move from stereotypes to interesting characters?'
as far as your first statements...of course you can always look at it both ways. but i was trying to point some overlooked positive things. the original post seemed very negative and esp skewed to just looking at almost random percentage points.
Posted by tripp at April 25, 2003 5:36 PM