Yes, I did read the rest of the examples. The other cases did seem to indicate sexist advertising, but the joystick issue (listed last...) seemed to be a tenuous link at best -- without actually viewing the advert.

Don't spend too much on that little bump.

Learning the right touch is important. Over stimulation can short-circuit a mouse's building energy. Remember that it is not just the bump, but both the left and right buttons are extremely sensitive.

cheers,
sand

The future is Rollerball.

Wow. Yours is ribbed, and has a swiveling tip?

Have you seen a doctor about this? It's not normal.

I couldn't use that stick. It might arouse some latent tendancies that I just don't want to deal with.

cheers,
sand

The future is Rollerball.

"Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden." - Eric Hoffler

Also, she's bitching about:

Sadly, there is not one "safe" computer gaming magazine I could recommend to my friends who play games like Simcity, Re-Volt, or Myst. Not only do these magazines alienate women, but they also alienate entire groups of non-combative and non-violent gamers

I have some news for you, lady. The reason why you're never gonna find magazines that talk about those games is that they're FIVE FUCKING YEARS OLD AND NOBODY PLAYS THEM ANY MORE, AND IF THEY DO, THEY ALREADY BOUGHT THE STRATEGY GUIDE WHEN THE GAME WAS ACTUALLY GETTING PRESS COVERAGE!

If all you're playing is Myst and Sim City, you don't NEED gaming magazines, because you wouldn't be interested in the content anyway, no matter what gender it was catered to or written by. And most women I know who play "computer games" just play pansy shit like that (no offense) and Jeopardy and stuff. They never really get into games that much, either. It's like card games for them. Infrequently, and for short periods of time.

Yes, there are exceptions (KillCreek, etc.) who could probably kick my everyloving ass in Quake, but they're few and far between. The point is that women just don't obsess over games like guys do. You'll never hear a woman talking with her friends and saying "Dude, you'll never guess how many frags I got on that new low ping Arena server today! I whooped ass! Oh, and I tweaked my TNT2 drivers and reinstalled a few windows DLLs to pull an extra 12 fps in 1024x768."

No, you'll hear women saying "I got a high score on tetris. So do you like these new panties I got? I went shopping at Wet Seal today. They had the greatest sale. I got all these (pulls three shirts out of her bag) for just $86."

And as for the phallic joystick remark, give me a break. I've never seen a joystick in my life that isn't phallic, get used to it. Hey, how bout the Slashdot crew get together and write a video game just for women. It will come with a specially designed contour-less ultra-phallic joystick with stroke sensors, and the game will train this woman to give good hand jobs, cause she probably doesn't get any sex considering how frigid and whiny she is about being a female.

Well I guess I failed my goal of not sounding like a masoganist. But who cares? <joke> Not like I'd be given a fair trial by those militant dykes anyway :) </joke>
www.fishdot.org: Home of the Furby Hooker Network

and I likely sound like a freak

No. You sound like someone has managed to avoid interpreting your surroundings as a personal insult.

That is fairly rare these days. The fashion now is to claim that anything you don't like is an insult to your gender/ethnicity/diety/social-group, and demand that it be removed. Since you are not a whiner, you will find yourself in the minority.

Being in the minority is not a bad thing.

Hidden Win2K Menu

Great minds think alike. Fools seldom differ.

True 'dat :)

Okay now I'm done..and I likely sound like a freak...but oh well.

Not at all. You sound like a woman that doesn't expect men to apologize for being men.

I'll admit it for us all. We are pigs.

cheers,
sand

The future is Rollerball.

But two men were there before her:

• Renee Descartes
• Charles Babbage

It's about the people, not their gender.

While this is *partly* true, of people like my mom, perhaps you should get out for half a minute and actually meet some women your age. I know plenty who aren't technofiends but still play starcraft and quake2 and 3 all day. Or perhaps you only hang out with the ones 10 and under who still play barbie games that you're so bored with.

And as for the phallic joystick remark, give me a break. I've never seen a joystick in my life that isn't phallic, get used to it. Hey, how bout the Slashdot crew get together and write a video game just for women. It will come with a specially designed contour-less ultra-phallic joystick with stroke sensors, and the game will train this woman to give good hand jobs, cause she probably doesn't get any sex considering how frigid and whiny she is about being a female.

How about we get used to you being ignorant about real women? Oh wait, I think we have. Do you even realize how stupid, sexist, and ignorant that whole statement is? No wonder you have no idea that a lot of women play the same kind of games you do. The point there was that the joystick itself was being displayed as if it were some kind of sex toy, not talking about the design. Consider this your fair trial.

I can see how that could be true for gamers... at least the ones who spend all their time playing games and not doing anything productive. But not necessarily for geeks... after all, most of us, at this point, have a phenomenal earning potential...

And I may be ugly, but I'm absolutely not fat... ok, I'm not ugly, but sometimes I think I am...

Nice try. I don't have a wife or a girlfriend. And I know all of the things you're going to say... forget it. I think I've figured out about how old you are... it's about six. And I'm being generous.

Really, can't you figure out better things to do than insult people facelessly? Too cowardly to come out and face me like a... ummm, I was going to say "man", but...

Oh well. Enough of this waste of time.

And I know all of the things you're going to say
makes them no less true

I think I've figured out about how old you are... it's about six.
I'm old enough to be your daddy O sexless wonder.

Then you should be mature enough to know better.

Consider this conversation closed. You're not worth my time.

Challenging my ideas is welcome... Just cause I'm not an old geezer doesn't mean I can't tell the difference between insults and a debate...

So what's the difference between choosing a guy for his earning potential and for the way he looks and/or how she's attracted to him? I don't see much. Just different attributes.

Anyway, at this point, I really don't care... I consider my earning potential to be an outward reflection of my intelligence, which is definitely a "good gene". So if someone wants to be attracted to me cause of that... fine. I've never been in much of a position to complain. Of course, if she doesn't love me as well, you might as well forget it. I'm no gigolo.

Thanks for talking about this MATURELY, rather than the other guy...

A woman who chooses a mate that can earn enough money to support himself (and maybe her) is smart. A woman who marries someone who si destined for a life of financial uncertainty is in for a world of frustration and conflict.
www.fishdot.org: Home of the Furby Hooker Network

I can see ugly and smell funny, but my image of the stereotypical geek/gamer is a skinny guy who is so involved in gaming/hacking/pick-your-computer-pursuit that he forgets to eat.

On the other hand, it seems that the article is asking Playboy to show naked men. If the editors like games with hot women, it's their problem, it's their magazine..

It's also easy to find commercials for men advertising products for woman. For ex.: a commercial of a naked woman taking a shower, that sells some shampoo or body oil for women. Or vice versa; a man with big musles using a deodorant for men. I change channels because I like ladies.

--
this is the last post of the milenium. buy now

The real question is do game players care that there are sexist ads (and I would distinguish these from ads that merely use sexual imagery - this distinction is admitted in the original article)?

It seems foolish to me for game companies to be alienating a huge market. The female market is a pretty under-developed one at the moment.

I wouldn't know the feeling cuz im da bomb and nevuh diiiieeee! muuuahahhahhahaha

frag n.,v.

[from Vietnam-era U.S. military slang via the games Doom and Quake] 1. To kill another player's avatar in a multiuser game. "I hold the office Quake record with 40 frags." 2. To completely ruin something. "Forget that power supply, the lightning strike fragged it.

/joeyo
Slashdot User #173

The marketing decisions are typically based on "What has selled before" as opposed to "What would sell"

Sad but true

All opinions are my own - until criticized

I am female. I have never been into Quake, but when Heretic came out I was all over it. I think it was because the wepons interrested me. I also like Grand Theft Auto. Great for getting those aggressions out after a long drive home.

So, no, we do not always go for conversations and complexity. For me, I just need something original or unusual for it to hold my attention long enough to install it.

I've read this kind of statement before in interviews with people who claim to be experts on female gaming, but I have observed just the opposite. Women don't often like games that require a great investment of time just to get started on. The games I've seen women go crazy for are not social simulations, but very abstract games like Tetris or Minesweeper or solitaire.

Anyway, my girlfriend loves Soul Calibur and she can kick my ass at it.

If there is any one game characteristic that unifies women gamers, I would say it would have to be problem solving. Games like Myst and Riven, the Oddworld series, and many good action games (the Marathon series comes to mind) feature excellent gameplay that challenges the mind first and foremost; itchy trigger fingers are a secondary skill.

I have high standards for my games. I like screaming graphics just as much as any other geek, but I am easily bored by repetitive shooting sprees.

flamebait, offtopic alert: Quake? To me it's a yawner -- if I want network play, I'd rather exercise my napoleonic tendencies in Myth II; learning to flank works the mind a little harder.

Back to the subject: I'm not trying to imply that teenage boys are poor at problem-solving, or even uninterested. They just have different standards for what qualifies as an un-fscking-believable game.

Please remember, though, that the ads that are the subject of this story target people who buy magazines and NOT people who buy games. Big difference.

I'm not going to go out and buy any game magazines for the same reason I don't buy auto magazines: the signal-to-pr0n ratio is pathetic. I'd rather read womengamers.com for gaming information...and for you boys out there, check it out -- it's not like the reviews are filled with thinly veiled references to vaginas or anything. (Can I even say that on Slashdot?)

I'd like to know if any males find women gamer sites to be particularly hostile to men.


GCS/GE/>GL d-(pu) s-:- a-- C++@$ ULH+$ P+++>++++$ L++>+++>$ E+$ W+++(---)$ N-- w! M+ PS++(+++) PE-(+) Y+ t* 5-- X++ b+++ D---@ r++ x+++

Nobody will ever see this post, so I can kind of just ramble here...to me, it truly is not whether you win or lose. Shit, everyone dies, so ultimately, it's game over, you lose (though if I remember correctly, you are a religious person and would disagree with my metaphor).

If I may point this out, the idea of relaxing for an entire hour with Quake and THEN move on to other games is totally alien to me -- that's a whole lotta time devoted to competing. And among boys, that's not even close to "obsessive".

No matter what your gender, you rank a game by how much fun it really is. Fun for some is bass fishing, for others it could be barbie makeovers, or late night quake games beating the crap out of buddies, or just exploring alien worlds like Riven...

For me, all I really care about is figuring shit out. I like slurping up a problem and coming up with a solution in a real time. Women are good at that kind of stuff (so are men), but they aren't under the influence of male hormones. I think that is why you see women playing solitaire, tetris, riven, oddworld....it doesn't bother them that they aren't scoring off anyone.

Do you REALLY play a game a few dozen more times once you've finished it? Why? Once you've figured it out, why would you play it again? Maybe you are trying to get your money's worth...but I can't even understand that. Once I know all the secrets, that's it. Shelf time.

Dammit -- now I've blown the secret women's code regarding men -- the real reason why we love 'em and leave 'em. :-)

GCS/GE/>GL d-(pu) s-:- a-- C++@$ ULH+$ P+++>++++$ L++>+++>$ E+$ W+++(---)$ N-- w! M+ PS++(+++) PE-(+) Y+ t* 5-- X++ b+++ D---@ r++ x+++

Why target a group that makes up less than one percent of your buyers?

And why should females use the computer for entertainment? An understandable, but vicious, cycle. Perhaps if society is so concerned about getting females into computers, they need to take a more comprehensive look at what would interest them, instead of guessing that it's Cosmo or Barbie.

The truth is that games are easier to program for boys. We like points, action, motion, and triggers. Women (stereotypically, but also truthfully) like conversations, complex rewards, stories, and ...thinking. My sister, for instance, doesn't see the point of Quake: in her mind, you get killed only to come back again. What's the point of getting killed if there are no repercutions?

I think that you may have oversimplified. Both genders like all of these things (points, (inter)action, motion, complex story, (stimulates) thinking). Some elements may appeal more to men than women or vice versa. A game that possesses all of these is sure winner. As I think about it, that's why I like Myth and Myth II so much. But, many games do not have all of these elements or only have very simplistic beginnings of these elements, but substitute fantastic graphics so that it's a bit more like an interactive movie. To boot, many of the most popular games on the market are just varients on the same engines. It's much easier to wrap an engine in a new skin, maybe add a few new effects/weapons/modes/etc. and resell it (see Unreal or Doom).

Many of these games, perhaps to sell the dangerous adventure aspect, are violent. It seems like the same themes over and over (some war is going on and you have to save the day). For some reason, there are alot of women who are turned off by violence. This isn't to say that the stories that appeal to women must be violence-free, but extraneous and ultra-graphic violence doesn't tend to be appreciated.

For years I've thought about doing a "game for girls" but had no idea what to put into it. I don't have the same interests that most women have and lack the conversation gene. I know what _not_ to put into it and it some of it seems to overlap with edutainment (cute, fluffy, non-confrontational, dumb, narrow focus). Unfortunately, this would be the wrong forum to ask what should go into it.

-Jennifer

> Why target a group that makes up less than one percent of your buyers?

Total BS - you've fallen for the myth. R-rated, so-called "adult" content is not a magic ticket for high sales. Look at the top 10 movies of all time. NONE are R-rated... in fact most are G/PG. Oh well, there goes your theory that sex/violence sells.

The fact of the matter is, most game developers are too lazy to come up with game concepts that would appeal to an audience outside of the 13-35 male demographic. Instead than taking a chance (and possibly reaping HUGE rewards a la Myst), they'd rather take the easy way out for the guaranteed cash.

If you don't believe this, ask yourself why no game development house or designer has been able to produce an unbroken string of commercial successes (and, like they taught us in school, if people aren't willing to pay for something, then they don't really want it) and only a handful have been able to produce more than one or two really successful products.

So, speculating about what sorts of games will be successful in general, let alone what sorts of games will appeal to a subgroup (i.e. women) is a tremendous waste of time. And asking women what kind of games they want to play, coupled with a notion that responses should be acted upon, is a sure way to lose lots of money.

For instance: How many responses of 'Barbie stuff' do you think you'll get in answer to the preceeding question? But that franchise was, to the consternation of feminists everywhere, a big seller. Us game developers hated that fact as well....developing crap like that is not a good way to spend your life.

No one wants to sell games to girls/women more than the developers. The failure to do so is more likely to indicate the shocking fact that girls/women don't much like games than anything else. That's not to say there aren't a lot of exceptions, but the tacit assumption of womengamers.com that all the industry needs is a little advice from women is simply too stupid to be believed. If that were the case, whither Purple Moon and all the other attempts to make non-franchised girl/women friendly games?

Speed costs Money. How fast can you afford?

Hey, why don't some women prove Jon Katz wrong and voice their opinions? What games do _you_ want to play?

Actually, most guys do, too, come to think of it.

I was taught sexism, and I was taught DOS. I learned UNIX and I learned true equality.

While I totally agree with your comments on the values that children learn, I can't really see what open source has to do with this at all. Skepticism has nothing to do with whether you like to have the source code for your current operating system / application. I'm sorry, but it really doesn't follow that enjoying hacking around with source code makes you some kind of social guru.

P.S. Don't take this as a flame - the rest ofyour comment was well thought out.

Why do I call myself a n***** U ask me/ Because the police alway s harrass me

Or what about this little gem:

So what about the bitch that got shot, fuck her!
You think I give a damn about a bitch, I ain't a sucka!
-NWA, "Straight Outta Compton"

M$Windows users have RSI, Unix users have AWK

Some anonymous coward dun said:

Actually, you really don't need to give girls Barbie dolls or boys Lego blocks, they tend to have a maddeningly predictable preference. :-)

Well, if that's so, I must be some kinda freak then. :) Or a gay transsexual trapped in a woman's body but I just don't know it. ;)

I never played with Barbies except to shave off all their hair and mark them up and attempt to surgically "alter" them...my parents ended up buying me Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars along with Tinkertoys and Lego sets, because I had (and still have) an irresistable urge to take things apart to see how the hell they're put together. "Traditional girl toys" like baby dolls and such bored the absolute HELL out of me--I had much more fun playing with little highway sets I made for my Hot Wheels cars, or playing with GI Joes or Transformers (back in the good old days before they bastardised them to hell and back)...or playing "war" with my neighbourhood friends (who were mostly boys)...or making my own toys out of pipe-cleaners and playing with them (mostly furries, at that...surprise, surprise). I honestly thought at first Lord Kano got his name from Kano in Mortal Kombat rather than the actual martial arts person. :) Most of my favourite Playstation games tend to be Namco fighters, and my husband refuses to play Soul Edge with me anymore because of one too many times when I had Sophitia repeatedly knee Mitsurugi AND his gonads to death :) (ok, so I LIKE Sophitia, damnit!) and came very close to doing the same thing with me and Lilith in Darkstalkers 3, or Sakura in ANY Capcom game in which she appears :) (ok, so I go for the Kawaii Factor :). I have to have my husband remind me that we are not buying a Dreamcast for the sole purpose of playing Soul Calibur and allowing Sophitia to repeatedly knee Rock to death. The three big hobbies I've had are electronics construction, radio, and computer stuffle (ranging from building my own boxen for fun, to proving that PPP CAN work on an old 8086 box, to messing about with fractals, to messing about with Linux, to messing about with computer graphics--and it was the combination of fractals fascinating the hell out of me and having crazy dreams of working for Industrial Light and Magic someday what got me into taking what is known now as Computer Engineering and Computer Science, despite the high school counselor trying to steer me into essentially taking crafts...). I also have an unhealthy interest in special effects, especially on miniaturisation and costuming (I'd love one day to learn how to make my own fursuits, and I read Fangoria as a teen both for stuff on horror flicks and on costuming technique). I think Warhammer 40K is the bee's knees (and have on occasion attempted to pester the hubby, who owns Chaos Gate, to get Rites of War so that certain of us who like Eldar [aka Elves...in...spaaaaace...] can get Equal Time :). I usually don't just play with soldiers, but with Eldar and Orks (!). In my house it's my hubby who's the good cook, and I'm the all-around fix-it bitch :). I spent an unhealthy amount of time as a kid reading "Home Mechanix", and spend an unhealthy amount of time now reading the Physician's Desk Reference for fun as well as watching "New Yankee Workshop" and wishing I had the space and money to afford a workshop like Norm. :) I still think it hilarious that every woman who has EVER been on "Hometime", including Joanne Liebler (the once and future fix-it-lady), has succeeded in making Dean look so incompetent that they have eventually been forced off the show and started their OWN shows. :) I always preferred sci-fi and fantasy, and Harlequin novels bore me to absolute tears. I don't even like to wear dresses all that much because they're too damned drafty. :)

Obviously, I skew the whole works all to hell and back. :) I'm also a woman and straight; last I checked, I didn't have an extra Y chromosome hiding around (then again, I also don't know my own blood type...yeah, real smart, I know). Given a choice between the Lego blocks and the Barbies, I'd take the Legos any day :)

So, am I really that much of a freak? ;)

(BTW, I can't say that the Natalie Portman crap really offends me that much. Kinda wish they'd stop posting it in every single thread on Slashdot, and I wish they'd quit posting it in triplicate, but I can't say it offends my sensibilities as a woman. I just wish they'd vary it...like, oh, hell, I dunno, Zelgadis Greywards naked (those of us who watch Slayers already know he's petrified, so no worries on that)...and people think I'm odd because I like Zelgadis. *shrugs*)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)

Now (1) statistics doesn't exclude exceptions to the norm; (2) considering the weight of acquired traits in human behavior, genetics only account for an initial trend, that can be amplified or dampened by social pressure; (3) as computer science/gaming is considered more and more "traditional" and "safe", you can expect women to be more and more into this activity, (4) even if you manage to get a fair ratio of women in CS, then, you'll most likely still be able to feel a neat difference between behavior of male and female computer scientists/gamers (for better and for worse).

-- Faré @ TUNES.org
Reflection & Cybernethics

Being a 24 year old male, this is probably not typical for people of my age/demographic group (mammarically challenged) but...

I went in with the attitude of "so what?"... but when I read the examples and realized exactly what was being depicted... I think they're right. The magazines and games need to be boycotted. I mean, I like sex as much as the next guy, but there's a such thing as going too far... and a such thing as being demeaning to women. Now if they'd have some ads targeting women, too... well, I'd think differently.

-shamless plug- I believe women should be treated as people and not objects for our pleasure... /shameless plug

Then again, as we speak, I'm watching the "Bikini Car Wash Company II", so I'm something of a hypocrite... or maybe I'm just weak.

How can she be naked at the same time as she's wearing a halter-top?
--- "When you're strange"

But how do you change the demographics? That's the question. And going one step further, should it be changed? Are the violence oriented games covered by the mags something most females would like if only they were approached in the right way? If you think yes, do you create different ads or do you hope by some miracle the demographics change and then you advertise to them? As I see it the whole point of advertising is to create demand. Some ads are targeted to your "most likely to buy" sector and some are targeted to increasing your market share or expanding into previously untapped markets. Ads targeted to women may get them to take a look, but will they stay? You'll have to ask some women for that answer.

Are you saying that significantly more women would buy Unreal Tournament if it was marketed differently? It's still the same game. The object is still primarily to annihilate the other players. How would different advertising make it appeal to people that aren't already interested in that type of game?

In other words, does Unreal Tournament, as a game, appeal to people who are offended by the ads?

I've talked (online) to girls that play Quake too, but they represent a tiny fraction of the total FPS market. I don't think that that's because of the advertising alone. In fact, I think advertising is only a very minor contributing factor. I think the main reason is that girls grow up being pushed in a completely different direction. They shouldn't bother with computers. That's guy stuff. If they're going to play games, they should be playing nice games like Tetris.. on Gameboy.

If more girls were encouraged to get into computers, there would be more female programmers. At least some of these female programmers would get into creating games. These games would probably attract a larger female following than games made by guys for other guys like themselves.

I must say I agree with the general tone of the article. Many of the ads I've seen in gaming magazines, and even in game developer magazines, are simply tasteless.

There are two ads in particular which come to mind: One by ATI, showing nothing but a synthetic woman (evidently from some published game) with an almost unlawfully short skirt clutching an Uzi to her chest; and another for TrueMotion 2X, which has another synthetic woman in a pose about two pixels away from flashing her genitalia. The recent ads for LightWave 6 aren't much better, which feature two synthetic females in the foreground who are all cheesecake and no art. (And then there's the ads for Ventriloquist, which aren't offensive, just disturbing.)

I admit this is all very subjective; some of the stuff I find interesting would probably have some of you on the phone to the authorities. So I would encourage the marketroids at game companies -- and other companies as well -- to avoid stuff that's crass and exploitive. It's too easy, and suggests laziness in your creative department. Try to be more original and artful.

Schwab

Now, granted, Mist and Riven were nice games and all, but they hardly make up the majority of the market, and just don't hold most gamer's attention.

Ummm, no. IIRC Myst is one of the best-selling games ever and still sells today. Other best-selling games include Sim City, Civilisation and Command & Conquer - all of which require more thought than "oh look there's the other player - shoot him!" Personally I can't be bothered to play Quake or its many derivatives - I'd rather play Civ or Alpha Centauri any day where I have to think rather than twitch :) Oh and I'm a 22 year old male FYI.

Visit Boswa Bits. Now with 98% less evil!

I see no reason why games - especially the thinking games so many people on this thread assume are what appeals to women (news flash - can't stand 'em myself, and all the people I knew who owned MYST were guys) can't be advertised and marketed to women in the same way as books.

Something that surprised me was how much my sister got into Roller Coaster Tycoon. She's an addict, which is pretty funny, considering I've never seen her get into a non-console system game before.

The games she digs are: Tetris, Dr. Mario, San Francisco Rush, 1080 Snowboarding, Roller Coaster Tycoon. And she's pretty darned good at all of them.

The implication behind your satire is that games aren't for girls. Full stop.

That's not the way I understood it at all. I think the implication was that some types of entertainment simply don't appeal to some types of people. Therefore, there's no sense in trying to market to those people.

Now, if there is an adolescent boy somewhere trying to figure out what FPS game is cool to buy, then the advertising might influence him. It appeals to him. Since the advertising appeals to (or at least doesn't offend) the majority of the people that are interested in FPS games like Unreal Tournament or QuakeIII, they are getting the best return for their advertising dollar. If their ad can sway some people to buy UT instead of Q3, then they've done their job. If you only like games like Bomberman and Mario Kart, then you aren't likely to purchase Unreal Tournament, no matter what kind of ads they use, simply because the game itself doesn't appeal to you and the marketing isn't aimed at you.

Pat Robertson.

Corrinne Yu:
[I'm in the 99.9999 percentile. Nothing you say applies to me. Stop it!]

When you get to the fringes of the culture, generalizations cease to apply. Still, there's no point in pretending, that these generalizations are invented. They're not; they are based on observating the mass of people who inhabit the center of the bell curve.

It's obvious that a lot of guys on Slashdot have never actually spoken to a typical American woman. I wonder if you have, either.

The advertising for the games is really not operating on this level - not saying it's better, just saying it's different. Nudity is generally not a problem for the people complaining about this; it's the placement and nuances. Why is this person naked, particularly if it has nothing to do with the game?

It's amazing to me, actually, that sex still sells. If I'm going to buy a game, I read reviews, talk to people, look at screenshots, so on. I'm not sure the thought process that goes from "hot chick" to "I must have this game" - I expect nerds to have a higher IQ than your average American.

For example, I think Tomb Raider is a fun game. I like the fact that I can adventure and save the world and not have to be some macho guy who enjoys watching naked women (ala Duke Nukem), but instead someone I can relate to just a little bit better. However, the emphasis in advertising on how hot Lara is, rather than on how fun the game is, almost makes me embarrassed to admit I play it, for fear someone might think I'm a lesbian, or at least associated with the lewd advertising.

It is disappointing when otherwise completely enjoyable games are so obviously geared towards ONLY a male perspective. It's one thing to have a male main character, but it is an entirely different thing to have scantily clad women fawning on you at every move, when such actions may not even be relevant to the plot!

On the other hand, there are some games that do a wonderful job of being widely-appealing, including:

• Final Fantasy
• D&D (except, you have to wonder what the point is for wearing armor that bares every vital part of the body . . .)
• Starcraft
• Dark Reign - some units are actually female, and not special characters! [gasp]

As is shown from these best-selling games, it pays to have a wide appeal. Games appealing only to sex-deprived men just don't sell as well as games that have a wider appeal. -Qirien qirien@earthling.net

I remember back in Ultima VI where you could play a female character, and go and pay for sex with the gypsy south of where you started. She was a bit dubious, but you could still go for it :)

except, you have to wonder what the point is for wearing armor that bares every vital part of the body . . .

Perhaps this takes a little bit of cultural rewind, though - dating back to the heyday of Commodore and Atari, the primary market segment has always been adolescent males. When I was growing up, Star Raiders and Missle Command were the hot games. . . and since then, a plethora of games imitating the formula of other successful games has taken place.

The fact is, American companies hate taking risks, since if you take a risk you might lose everything... Some of the SIM games that appealed to a largely female audience flopped miserably. Unfortunately, the one leading the fray for the 'female game' is Hasbro with its crop of incredibly bad Barbie games - no WONDER the young girls won't play them.

However, the Japanese games that appeal to both genders equally have met to great success here in the States. One needs merely look at the sales track record of SquareSoft to prove those numbers.

Perhaps if marketeers would take a second look at the new generation of simulation games coming out of Japan they would find more women entering the fray. Some of the most popular genres of simulation games there include 'dating sims' which are heavily plot based (Thousand Arms, Todomechi Memorial), 'decision sims' where the decisions you make determine the course and development of the game (Princess Maker).

We need more Roller Coaster Tycoons, and far less Doom-clones.

...Hasbro with its crop of incredibly bad Barbie games - no WONDER the young girls won't play them.

I can't argue that they aren't bad, but they seem to be selling. "Barbie Generation Girl Gotta Groove" is number 5 on PC Data's Top Ten list for December '99. Check it out.

The game sucked, but the ads certainly got attention.

Changing the character would involve new artwork for the sprites and replacing all the player sounds. It would not have been difficult at all, just a little more work.

Sexist or no, Tomb Raider could never be appealing to women: I can't watch Lara Croft without thinking how much it would hurt to run like that without a SERIOUS sports bra. It hurts me - and most women - to walk quickly upstairs without a bra, and I'm a C cup. She's a least a DD.

For you guys out there, imagine playing football in boxer shorts, OK?

Ouch.

The ads in better homes and gardens don't appeal to me.. So?
The articles in "self" and other women oriented magazines have many articles on sex, getting men to do what you want, and so on.. Why is no one decrying this?

On a related note, their sci-fi section is lithe with nothing but the despicable hormonally-crazed Seven Of Nine worship which has completely turned me off on the sci-fi "scene" at large. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they were also into the pointless desparately-waiting-for-Natalie-Portman-to-become-legally-fuckable debacle shortly following Phantom Menace.

It wouldn't surprise me if it were an IGN publication which "Atari" (the author of this well-reasoned article) was mostly talking about, either. They tend to fall into the trap of showing off the "beautiful rendering" of female characters rather than giving useful screenshots.

But hey, I just read it for the articles. And rarely, at that.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a .
Quine "quine?" "'Quined' quined" quines "quined."

No really when I said "minesweeper and solitare" Thats exactly what I meant.

However I would not classify some one who is addicted to Freecell, while they sit at the office, as a gamer

I gamer is someone who skips work to play a game and plays it so much that the dream THE GAME

I gamer is someone who plays a game so long when they turn away from the monitor, reality doesn't look 'real' anymore

Seriously, I found the article more than a little ridiculous. I mean, sure, game magazines ignore women sometimes because they have determined that more men play games than women (and I can't believe this isn't true), but what about the makeup industry? How many makeup magazines are there aimed at men who have a small cross-dressing fetish? NONE!!

Do you know how many times I have wanted to perfect my feminine outfits, but have always been put off by the SEXIST assumption that only women would want to put on lipstick and mascara, when in fact a RED BLOODED AMERICAN MAN such as myself is eager to do so??

You don't know pain like I do, sister!!

Somewhat related topic

What's with gaming magazines no-a-days? They all seem to be pandering to the sexually awkward, identity crisis suffering, snotty nosed 14-year-old. The ones that think "Looking at grrls iz cool" and have the "1.2ghz overclocked athlons", the "l337 h4x0rs" if you will.

Modern gaming magazines like Pc accellerator or Incite promote this rather sexist and immature attitude, which is fine because it targets the gaming audience more accurately, or at least I'd fathom the sales say so. But at the same time it alienates an equal or large audience, Namely ME. I'm talking about the MALE audience that experienced at being in a loving relationship with a female. I can't stand to listen about "How many polygons they added to Laura Croft's chest this time" or "What Seven-of-nine thinks about being a geek object of lust" another time. Don't these dumb-ass marketing people understand that:

There are geeks that don't associate gaming with sex?

Larger market segments get more magazines targeting them. You happen to be part of a smaller segment with fewer magazines competing for fewer dollars.

I get most of my gaming info from Computer Games: Strategy Plus, various gaming websites, and a little from Maximum PC.

If you don't like mags like Incite or PC Accelerator, don't buy them. There are obviously plenty of people who do like them though, and I think that that's fine too. To each his/her own. You can't expect every gaming mag to be aimed at people like you. There probably are some out there that appeal to you, you just have to look for them.

I agree with phwiff, but I don't mind it too too much. Yes, it's sexist. Yes, it's stupid. But the problem is, it works.

If it didn't, would the magazines sell as well? If it didn't, would advertisers from all different fields use sex to sell? I don't think so. The problem lies not with the gaming mags, but everywhere a picture of a scantily-clad woman can be slapped up to help sell something. Companies have been using sex to see for aeons, although it's more obvious to us now because cultural mores allow for much more skin to be shown/flaunted than ever before.

So yes, gaming magazines do have a big problem with it (as shown by the rather superfluous "Ten Ways to Get the Girl" article in the most recent incite PC gaming, featuring plenty of pictures of actress Kobe Tai). So do beer commercials. And car commercials. And just about everything else under the sun.

If there's to be a revolution, though, the gaming magazines would be a fine place to start.
Ian Inventor of the WeaselBot 5000

Be glad you're unique.

I would never have even considered buying one of those magazines. They strike me as aimed at teenagers, let alone just men.

Bingo. This is the point she missed. As more marketers realize this untapped resource of adult computer gamers, we'll see more appropriate magazines emerge. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we had a business magazine take up the slack.

--
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics won't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty

If companies target this audience, we'd have bankrupt companies left and right.

Have you seen the top selling games lately? Depending on what you consider "real games", I think at least half of the top ten sellers last month were aimed at the casual gamer.

• #1 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
• #5 Barbie Generation Girl Gotta Groove
• #6 Deer Hunter III
• #7 Toy Story 2 Action Game
• #8 Frogger

I doubt anyone would go bankrupt by targeting casual gamers.

Computing, and the resulting geek lifestyle, has long been thought of as a predominately male field. Yet it doesn't take a brain to realize that female geeks are becoming, by and large, a fairly big part of geek-dom.

By excluding what has the potential to be a significant part of the market (intentionally or no), gaming companies are shooting themselves in the foot. There are *tons* of women out there who like to game. Yet we find ourselves excluded, pushed aside. Everyday we have to deal with the mentality that those with tits can't possibly know computers. Those who cry loudest for female geeks are often the same people who trivialize us. Really. I've been there.

I'm not a prude. I like sex as much as the next geek. I recognize that it sells, and quite effectively at that. But I think that by creating extremely sexist advertising, advertisers are dooming themselves. Advertising can be extremely effective without bringing in a little T&A or cock.

Am I offended? Eh. Not really, because I've just grown so accustomed to it. I'm more likely to get pissed off at Cosmo and the like, since fashion mags do much more damage than some sexist game advertisment ever will. I do wish, however, that gaming companies would realize that there are real women geeks out there -- the kind that like to play Quake and fiddle with their boxes. The kind that thought the only use for Barbie was to torture in all sorts of horrendous ways (*evilcackle*). I'd like the gaming companies to remember us before they turn totally kick-ass female characters into sex objects (a la Lara Croft -- just not my kink, you know?). I'd like them to remember that we're real people too.

And to all the guys who said that female gamers only played Myst or Solitare, a hearty fsck you (meant in the nicest possible way, of course =). Female geeks are real and here to stay.

--
"I don't really love computers, I just say that to get them into bed with me." --Terry Pratchett

There once was a company called Purple Moon which did extensive user testing among pre-teen girls to find out which types of computer games they really wanted to play. Afterwards, they came out with a series of titles that were lavishly praised in the gaming press. Now that company is bankrupt, brought down in no small part by its inability to make a dent in the marketshare of computer games based on:

(*evilcackle*) Barbie

This kinnda reminds of the argument over family entertainment. People complain about the lack of intelligent family films and then when one finally comes out in the form of "Iron Giant", it bombs at the box office.

While we're touching the topic of old games (see, people mentioned classics like SimCity and Star Control), I'd like to ask an offtopic question of my own.

Did anybody -ever- finish the amiga/apple II game "In Search of the Most Amazing Thing"? I must have played it for a couple hundred hours back in the mid-eighties. To this day, I still want to know what the amazing thing was supposed to be.

Does anybody else remember this thing?

Action sells just as sex does in advertising.

I would be happy to see a magazine devoted to more though oriented/puzzle type games, but Im sure its circulation might not be as big.

LW

This has been a test of the opinion broadcast system.

You are SO missing the point. The issue with Duke is not the fact that he's musclebound... it's the fact that he's a sexist, who is more interested in seeing strippers "shake it", than saving them from an alien invasion.

As for Croft, it's not the fact that she's attractive - it's that she is impossibly built, and that this is being marketed to teens as a supposedly "ideal" female.

Rule #1 - think before you post.

Got to love games. Tetris? No thanks. Myst? Pretty graphics, I solved the mystery in, like, 45 minutes. Boring.

My game is Soul Calibre. Oh yeah baby! Good old fashioned Violence (capital V intended). Many of my friends love this game, and there isn't a male around that'll play against me any more.

I think the problem here (and as a general rule, everywhere) is that people take things too seriously. It's an ad, for Pete's sake. An ad. Don't like it? Don't look. Although I think the term "feminazi" used by a previous poster is a little harsh, I suspect that the reason many women don't read gaming magazines is more a matter of self-confidence than any political motivations.

I don't feel inadequate looking at those women. I don't feel inadequate watching Lara Croft run around in a bikini.

It's a game, ladies, not the world. It's not some attempt by "male CEO's" to put us down and keep us away from the computer or console.

My $0.02 US ($10,000,000.00 CDN) worth.

Sakhmet.

"When I want to do something mindless to relax, I reinstall Windows 95."
- JLG, of Be Inc., Wired Magazine, Issue 4.05

This type of message is as bad for men as it is for women. Just because it's legal and economical doesn't make things right. Just because we have a free society doesn't mean we benefit from a complete lack of restraint on sexual advertising.

Regulation would be a cure worse than the disease, of course, but people really should ask themselves - "Is my action causing more problems than benefits?" Unfortunately most such assessments stop with their wallet and do not consider broader social consequences.

--- To email me convert phonetic username & remove nonkosher meat.

I've pursued a similar tactic in hardware sales. When buying my first PC, Mesh [check the link, they're as good at server admin as at marketing :) ] were on my shortlist, but had bikini-clad women draped over all their press ads ... I called the marketing dept. & told them they'd lost a sale on the basis of their terrible advertising. Flame me as PC if you want, but I did what I thought was right.

Perhaps this approach could/should be taken with games ads -- insofar as any gamers in /.land care about such things ...

--
sig, and you will find.

Socialism: "someone ought to do something about this."

Capitalism: "_I_ am going to do something about this, and make a boatload of cash in the process."

Where are the female coders? Why don't they write some games for female gamers? We've got a ton of guys coding games for guys, what the women need is for women to start writing games for them. Why? I'll tell ya why... err no.. you already said it:

This crud is selling because girls are growing up pushed towards this stuff. It is a symptom of a much larger problem. ... Whole generations of women have been growing up under this brainwashing. No /wonder/ we have so few women in science and technology.

Hmmm.. (Digging through pile of computer magazine...oh look, Maxim, [toss])Ah. Here's one.
(Shuffle Shuffle Shuffle)

Nope. I can honestly say these ads don't do a thing for me either. About all they're good for is making sure I WON'T buy their game.

Now before we get off on the wrong foot, I'm running a Windows platform just for games. Loki is making it possible for me to run a Linux only PC next year and I'm happy as heck. I go to LAN parties on a regular basis, including a small one last weekend. I'd buy Quake IV based on the name alone and I have to visit Bluesnews on a daily basis. Id, Bungie, and Blizzard are my current favorite companies (Firaxis took a big dive after betatest Centauri).

My point? I'm not surprised that the ad companies, and everyone else seems to have some horrible sterotypical views of females. Their veiws of me as a male computer programmer suck even more.

Off to the gym. Have fun everyone.

-----
Want to reply? Don't know HTML? No problem.
Why won't NSI return etoy.com?

Hey, lets march on Washington and DEMAND they "put a stop to this". Then they can form a "Task Force" to end this "injustice". More regulation is always a good thing, right?! Also, I am offended by Unix's command to "MOUNT" my cd-rom. How disgusting is that?! And my floppy/zip drive is a slot that looks sort of like, uhhh, well if you don't know I ain't tell'n ya! And that whole "male and female" way of describing connections has got to go. I don't like my vertical case referred to as a "Tower". And memory should not be referred to as "RAM" (Mainly becasue a ram is a male) And, what about the trackBALL?! OH! The inhumanity!

"I look all around me and see conspiricies, more of them each day... until I wake up one morning, and they're all gone. It is then I realize I have been a part of the conspiracy from the beginning"

Given all this nature vs nuture crap, upbringing, envrionment, blah blah blah, wait about 20 years, and we'll see what happens.

My daughter is 2 years old, and she watches me play computer games, has her own keyboard and mouse, likes to chase me around, and be chased by me, with nerf guns, but also likes to play with her big-ass doll house, her tea set, and all that stuff. I'm just as likely to read to her from a C programming guide as I am from 3 Little Pigs, and she knows exactly how her DVD of A Bug's Life works.

So, in 20 years, when she's as old as I am now, she either will play VGs, because she learned it from Daddy, or she won't, because her personal temperment or her female temperment doesn't jive with it.

Well, here goes, my first ever post to Slashdot and it just happens to be on a topic that I spend a lot of time wrestling with. You see I work for a website that reviews games and I am the only woman in the company, so I feel that I have a unique perspective in the company.

We review everything, windows, linux, mac, console games, so I never know what sort of a title will cross my desk. I have been introduced to some very interesting games so far and I have found most of them to be a lot of fun, including car racing, boxing, first person shooters, puzzle games, adventure games, you name it, I've tried it and enjoyed it.

I think the best thing to do is for the marketers to stop saying, well there's the gaming industry and over there is the female gaming industry. They are one and the same thing. I find women generally like all the same sorts of games as men, just sometimes in different proportions. There may be less Quake players, for example, that are women, but they are there.

Personally, my favorite games right now are Half Life: Counterstrike and Railroad Tycoon II. I started gaming on a diet of Amiga adventure games, Doom eventually, and all sorts of others.

Cheers everyone!
The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angele

The advertisements are very male oriented and mildly offensive, but seriously, what isn't anymore? If I stopped to complain about everything I thought was unfair, I would never get anything else accomplished :) Besides, wh00pin some male-tail is always a good thing!


Faith[CBD]

Gaming magazines seem to focus on a particular type of game: the kinds that are graphic, gruesome, and military or battle-oriented. Taken as a whole, most of the ads in gaming magazines are quite dark. They deal with death, evil, and destroying things, whether it is space ships, souped-up cars with rocket launchers, or demons. This leads me to believe that these computer gaming magazines focus more on the war gaming genre than any other. Is this a bad thing? Well, if you are not interested in combative games, or if you prefer non-violent games, you will probably be a bit put off by all this. For many gamers, the focus on violence and war and the failure to target the female market constitute several strikes against signing up for a magazine subscription. -- quote from article

Oh, and how, exactly, do you limit coverage of war or combat games (incidentally, the popularity of these games is not due to magazine coverage, the coverage is due to their popularity) without alienating people who like them. I'll tell you how, you don't. You lose subscribers in far greater numbers than the ones you alienate by portraying combat oriented games. The safe magazine you are talking about, the way you've described it, wouldn't sell. Now, I think there should be a gaming magazine for pre-teens, I think it would sell (it would also mostly be about Pokemon). But if I read you right, you want a non-violent gaming magazine for adults (your definition of safe.) I hope you have a charitable organization set up to fund it...

My Signature: Join the EFF DeCSS, view source!

Want to know why?

We all had the internet.

All of us, the gamers, looked at reviews on the net, because they are free and more likely to be useful. Noone read the game magazines, because when we looked at their reviews for games we already had, they gave good reviews to bad games and bad reviews to Great ones in our opinions. Why read something that you have to pay for and is not targeted at you, when you can get something better for free?

B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."

I'm a female geek and I have the CS degree to prove it. I enjoy playing computer games. I actually subscribe to a computer game magazine. I ignore the ads that rely on sex to sell. Those ads don't give me any reason to check out the game. The computer game magazines aren't the ones to blame for the sexual content of their ads, they just print what the game companys submit. I subscribe for the reviews and such, not the ads anyway. The magazines are responsible for their actual articles however, and I will never be subscribing to a magazine like PC Accelerator. They blatantly use sexy women in their articles. That does not appeal to me, and thus they don't get my business.

I'm an avid Q3A player, and my boyfriend and I love to play computer games over our home network. Actually a lot of my favorite computer games are sports games! Strategy games, flight sims, rpgs, adventure games, I've played all the genres. I realize that I may not be typical, but I thought that I would speak up, and be counted.

Something Awful

Question, is this page a funny parody of the sort of things this article is against, or an example?

P.S. My apologies if this was duplicated.

The interesting fact wedged in there -

50% of gamers are female!

The point of the article is that the women (and the market) are out there - in the cold. If the magazines removed their sexist bias, they could increase their circulation.

A very cool game, and one that appeals to all, is Sonic Adventure. It's for Dreamcast, and manages to be a very fun and interesting combination of rocking 3D graphics, fast play, and adventure playing. I think there's plenty of room for more games like this - the games gets consistently great reviews.

Have fun,

• Were they buying for themselves or someone else (i.e. Christmas gifts etc.)?
• Would they be interested in reading computer gaming magazines?
• How much do they plan to spend on games?
• How much on a game are they willing to spend?
• Is gaming a primary motivation behind their using a computer?