Why are people so stuck in the 1950s?
Glad to have woman playing. To paraphrase Iwata (Nintendo), gaming should be fun for everyone
Edit: "women" because I have butter fingers
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
140 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37730 readers
431 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
My girlfriend has ~800 hours in Lost Ark and ~500 hours in Guild Wars 2.
She always nags me about not finding her new games. I am glad we are compatible in more than one thing.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Glad to have woman playing.
Just one? Guess it's fitting given you're on lemmy.one :P
RIP Satoru Iwata, the least bad gaming CEO. Dude actually took a pay cut when Nintendo wasn't doing well.
God knows why some people are like that.
"God" has a lot to do with it, yes.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I don't understand why they're surprised. Gaming has been mainstream for many many years now and women are half the population.
first they took our jerbs, then they took our 'obbies, what's next, are they going to demand equal pay as well??!???!?!?!?11
jerbs
'obbies
I admire your effort to seamlessly characterise misogyny on both sides of the Atlantic!
what can I say, I believe in equal opportunity
load more comments
(2 replies)
Some of them have a sliver of an excuse, as from my childhood until I was at least in my late 20s, gaming was the realm of kids and geeks with no social life (according to populate opinion). And some people have trouble changing their understanding of the world after a certain point in their lives.
They probably also have a lot of other issues as that kind of mindset can affect a lot of other things, but that is the way some people are.
Just don't do news about Twitter reactions. It's nothing but outrage bait.
True; this is lazy journalism.
That said, it's absolutely a real problem. Women aren't safe participating in many online spaces because a minority of misogynists make it a toxic space for them.
It starts young, too. Girls just don't show up when I make "gaming" spaces at school. They don't feel welcome.
I get why journalists go to Twitter, too. It's a lot easier to find and provide "receipts". Women who post about their experiences are dismissed regularly with statements like "I don't see it so you must be making it up," completely missing the point that they don't see it because women have been eliminated from these shared spaces already.
Is Kotaku's business model rage-baiting to generate clicks? Yes.
Is toxicity toward female gamers online a real problem? Also yes.
Some of my friends get annoyed when I take that stance, but it's absolutely possible for both statements to be true simultaneously. I want women to feel safe if they want to try online gaming, and it's counter-productive when sites like Kotaku constantly post fear-mongering articles about it rather than offer any solutions.
I used to browse twitter occasionally, but almost every tweet now has really low quality troll post underneath them. It feels like Twitter just consists of people who find everything outraging and they complain about everything.
It used to be that there were some interesting back and forths on Twitter, but in the last year or so all I see is outrage and insults.
basically just elaborating on this twitter thread.
And because Kotaku decided to play a >1min video ad while i was trying to read:
tl;dr:
According to Circana's PlayerPulse:
47% of console video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
50% of PC video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
54% of mobile video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
41% of PS5s in the US are female owned
45% of Xbox Series consoles are female owned
52% of Swich consoles are female owned
50% of gaming PCs are female owned
load more comments
(3 replies)
I... have to admit, other than Switch I'd have estimated somewhere around 20% to be honest.
But I like to be wrong here, cool that it's not that divided!
And I'm not sure it's a good sign that I didn't expect this.
Maybe Men are more vocal (possibly because women are less so, because of bad treatment), or maybe I'm just not as attentive...
Maybe Men are more vocal (possibly because women are less so, because of bad treatment), or maybe I’m just not as attentive…
it's almost certain some of this disconnect is women just not participating in traditional gaming communities because they have to deal with dipshits constantly, yeah. i don't know if i'd characterize all of gaming as unusually misogynistic, but it's still probably really easy to find casual misogyny even in the best moderated gaming spaces--and a lot of gaming spaces aren't that well moderated either
There's also the fact that most people assume everyone else is a guy online, even if the users says otherwise. Given the misogyny you were mentioning I think a lot of the women who do stock around in gamer communities tend to not correct that assumption.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Most Switch Owners Are Women, Gamers React Poorly
Interesting title. As if "Women" and "Gamers" were two distinct groups.
Indeed, I’m assuming it wasn’t the female gamers that reacted badly…
Capital G Gamers doesn't just mean people who play games, it means people who've built their whole identity around being weird little exclusionary creeps about gaming
load more comments
(1 replies)
Really? People are still acting like this? I remember back in the early 2000s when people were giving me crap for being a female gamer. The sad part is that I have been gaming probably before a lot of these new people complaining about female gamers have been born. I started back in the day with the Super NES. I also have a gaming PC, a Switch, and a Steam Deck. I also have various other consoles.
It's bizarre, isn't it. I'm a woman and I remember growing up with Pokémon, and Zelda and those 2 game series are extremely popular with women. A lot of women I know love puzzle games and were huge fans of Professor Layton on the ds when that was out. I even know a woman at my job who's into Elden Ring.
load more comments
(1 replies)
No Kotaku is acting like this. There was a distinct lack of evidence in their article
Some suggested the data is wrong or that the owner stats are skewed by moms buying consoles for boys
This isn't acting poorly, this is just questioning the methodology, which is a good idea, because a lot of these surveys are very poorly done or have obvious holes in them like that one. .
They later shared the methodology, but it still isn't clear what the exact questions were.
The rest of the article is the Kotaku writer speaking very vaguely about people. Was it 2? 200? 2000? who responded like this? You certainly wouldn't know from that article, but Kotaku isn't shy about painting all gamers with the same brush in the headline.
They're "questioning the methodology" because they didn't like the answer. While, yes, being skeptical is good, this skepticism wouldn't even be happening if the result was what gAmErS wanted it to be
yeah we don't have to pretend most of the unskewing here is being done with good intentions because it's not, lol. there is a real, unambiguous swath of capital-G Gamers who hate the idea of gaming being something women also participate in, and they do everything in their social power to raise a fuss about it.
load more comments
(4 replies)
“I don’t know ANY women ~~who play games~~!” Is probably half their comments.
They do, of course. They're just the reason no one on the team has a mic
load more comments
(1 replies)
I read some digital market reports a few years back, which showed that something like 98% of all people between 13-18 were gaming. Obviously mostly casual games, but nevertheless paying consumers of games. More female than male by a close margin.
When I discussed it on another gaming forum they were really quick to dismiss casual games altogether, despite it being the very largest group. There's probably still a male majority in desktop first person shooters, which seemed to be the only "correct" gamers according to he kind of people following that kind of forum. Anyway, if I were to program a game I surely wouldn't aim at the "stereotypical" gamer. They're a minority with very high demands and very expensive gear. The whole stereotype is gatekept to the point where I don't want to participate neither as a gamer or as developer.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I'm a 38-year-old woman who has been playing games since she was five years old. The myth that women don't play and enjoy games is a long-running one.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Toxic incel minority that makes a lot of noise. People have known it for years and nobody gives a damn. Videogames are made for every person to enjoy
More information from a closer source: https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1667172957066600448
47% of console video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
50% of PC video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
54% of mobile video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
For these numbers quoted: n = 10,184
For people interested in PlayerPulse:
Frequency: Monthly
First Data Captured: Jan 1 2017
Methodology: Circana conducts a monthly survey of US active gamers over the age of 13. Surveys are fielded online, via PC and mobile devices, drawing from a nationally representative pool. Respondents qualify on the basis of having played games in the past month (30 days). To ensure consistency across samples and correct for any biases/errors, Circana implements a weighting system for each monthly dataset based on representative distributions of platform use and platform investment. Circana’s models are based on aggregated, cross-product samples, and are updated quarterly to account for market shifts.
Mat Piscatella - Executive Director & Video Game Industry Analyst at Circana (NPD).
My girlfriend has been literally using my PS5 more than me since I got it, gamer girls do exist and we should cherish them, not alienate them
It isn't surprising, at least with my anecdotal experience, but still higher than I expected. Two girl friends of mine started to play lan parties with us since covid, and I know another that is completely obsessed with Valorant, and another that is equally obsessed with Football Manager.
I tried to find the original study and can't. The only source that everyone points to is this tweet by the executive director of Circana. Anyone knows where I can find it?
load more comments
(5 replies)
Toxicity towards girls and women in gaming is a real problem, but this article doesn't really show that as it's just talking about random people from Twitter It's definitely nice so many women feel free to own consoles nowadays
Among my personal friends, probably the same ratio of men and women are into Souls games. So like… yeah, women play games. And not just “lady-friendly” fare. As a non-woman, I freaking love Animal Crossing; meanwhile my wife has beaten most of the Souls games and I’ve given up on all of them. Anecdotal, but like… gamers like gaming, and I feel like these days trying to say anything about game preference and gender is just not really helpful.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Clearly the data is wrong. Switches Jane, who owns three hundred million switches, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
I am glad this trend is becoming better understood. A more diverse audience means more diverse stories being told, and while another MCU or Street Fighter is a perfectly good game to release a game targeting that more diverse audience will give more options for me. I typically play games like Risk of Rain, Skyrim, Creeper World, and so on, but I have also lost many hours to Viva Piñata, so I would love to see some more diversity in the games on offer.
You do realize women like fighting games and the MCU, right?
That's the whole point of this statistic: the current gaming market is already palatable to everybody, unlike what your statement seem to misunderstand.
Glad to see more women picking up gaming! Here's hoping that'll stop my wife from nagging that my gaming habits are purely a "men/boys" problem.
Wait, woman game? Gamer brain fried
I am a woman person and I have TWO switches. This is a source of consternation for some reason?
Noooo they made the switch Political !!
Nooooo only BOYS should ne GAMERS we are the most oppressed demographics!!
That is the most Onion headline I ever seen for real news. Kotaku? Yeah, the clickbait makes sense.
view more: next ›