Diluted Dante wrote:

How many game designers are former soldiers, cops, Conan's?

If we're basing on experience, every protagonist would be an early 20's nerd who lives in Swansea.

I think it's easier to research the profession of someone, gender is a bit hard. And I'm not saying a man couldn't or shouldn't write these roles, I'm very much pointing them as being scribbled down roles that until maybe the last ten years of western game design were really just toys for the player to control. I don't think they were predominantly male because of some sexist view that it couldn't be a woman, more that most games designers were male and the market was viewed (Maybe inaccurately) as mostly male. I don't buy into a concept where a games company won't market and sell it's product to woman because it believes games are a male domain.

Diluted Dante wrote:

nick_md wrote:

I don't think you understand. It's easier to write from a male perspective because we've grown up as males. I'm not talking about professions here. It's of course perfectly fine to write female characters, but, imo, this could be considered more difficult as a man, because we don't have that experience of growing up as a woman in this world.

What this is coming across to me is as follows: "We need you, who's life experience is sitting in a cubicle tapping away at a keyboard and getting pissed in the Nags Head to create a character who is fighting in the middle of a warzone." Not a problem. "They also have tits." I have no frame of reference for this.

I can't tell if you're doing this on purpose, or if you actually fail to understand the concept of being able to write from a different mindset / life experience.

It's like saying someone who grew up in Runcorn can write an Ethiopian character as easily as someone who grew up in Ethiopia; both can write the character just as well, assuming both writers are of equal writing ability, but surely it's easier for the person who lived and grew up there.

Likewise for women. How do I know what it's like to have the brain of a woman and all the life experiences that go into constructing your sense of self, as a woman? I don't, because I've lived as a man. This doesn't mean I can't write women, it just means that I believe it would be more difficult than writing men.

Not sure if that all made sense.

No, Im saying someone from Runcorn and someone from Baltimore can write an Ethiopian character as easily as each other.

How does someone who has never been in the middle of a war zone know what its like to be in the middle of a war zone? They can't. You could talk to someone who has to get their perspective.

This also applies to women.

Diluted Dante wrote:

No, Im saying someone from Runcorn and someone from Baltimore can write an Ethiopian character as easily as each other. How does someone who has never been in the middle of a war zone know what its like to be in the middle of a war zone? They can't. You could talk to someone who has to get their perspective. This also applies to women.

That's not a good analogy though.

Someone from Runcorn / Baltimore can both write an Ethiopian the same because yeah, they're equally not Ethiopian.

A man *can* write a woman as well as a woman, but would (I'm suggesting) find it more difficult than writing a man, because they've never been a woman. A woman would find the opposite true.

Also - 'You could talk to someone who has to get their perspective.' EXACTLY!!!! that's what I've been saying. Someone who has never had xyz experience will find writing about that thing more difficult and would have to do more background research.

Its nothing to do with being woke. Its about not seeing the difference between writing about 2 things that youve never experienced.

Writing a character who is something outside of your own experiances.

I'm not sure that 'writing' characters has much to do with this, since its origins are in the game designs of the 80s and 90s, where a character was usually a sprite that hit or shot things.

Surely it's more a power fantasy thing. Man making computer game gets to imagine himself as man with big muscles saving the world/woman with big knockers from danger. And as the target audience increasingly became teenage boys who wanted that too, the publishers put their money there.

Nowadays it's more sophisticated and some of us appreciate the different experience of playing as fem Shep or whatever, but there's still a load of boys looking to be the archetypal hero, and plenty of people making games who are happy to give it to them.

Dante, I think you're being deliberately obtuse here.

I have a lifetimes experience of being a man. Therefore I would probably be able to write a male character more easily and convincingly than a female would. Similarly, a female writer has a lifetimes experience being a female, therfore they would probably be better a writing a female character than me.

We may both be terrible at writing a character that is an astronaut because neither of us has any experience of that, but I woulb be better at writing a male astronaut than I would a female one, and vice versa. And I think you know this.

Facewon wrote:

I think @reddave2. Not sure that a "both sides" approach is always in order.

both sides of gamergate? No thanks.

I don't know, an article that is claiming to explain all these terrible people without some type of input from that side seems inherently flawed. You don't have to justify both sides to present their views. It might help to point out why one side is so flawed. I'd also be very curious how the generate gang perceive themselves. I'd be interested in an interview with them if the interviewer pushed then on some of their actions.

I also would like to hear from developers and publishers because the article does throw some blame on them for creating this culture (or at least adding fuel to it) how do they feel about the criticism, both from those who agree things need to improve or those who don't.

In a nutshell the article just feels very unbalanced - every expert is taking the view that the men are just terrible. There is no voice sounding out that while the men's behaviour is terrible but what brought them to this. Imagine reading a similar article where a group of experts all told you how awful drug addicts where.

Brooks wrote:

I am quite sure women write better men than the reverse.

Yep.

Given that it was my point that brought up the who writes whom best, I was more going from the point that in a situation where you just need a basic aviator for a game , I would guess that a person will usually just go with the norm for them. A man is more likely to just assume the pilot of the fighter is a man etc.

Hence if most videogame programmers were white and male then it was likely that unless there was a deliberate intent to character a specific character, most probably just went with the obvious in their head and hence my point that it wasn't quite the sexist patriarchy agenda at play, especially in the formative 80s when video games were mostly made by a single programmer.

Brooks wrote:

I am quite sure women write better men than the reverse.

I dunno, men write women with really big breasts.

I am a damn scrub. Why would I be interested in a body part that I have my own (admittedly shiter) version of?

And just like that the toxic masculinity of the forum turned the misogyny thread into the new incarnation of the sins of the flesh thread.

RedDave2 wrote:

I don't know, an article that is claiming to explain all these terrible people without some type of input from that side seems inherently flawed. You don't have to justify both sides to present their views. It might help to point out why one side is so flawed. I'd also be very curious how the generate gang perceive themselves. ...

One of the people interviewed/quoted was a reformed gamergater - Thom something or other iirc. Have a read of his POV, but it pretty much amounts to “I was a kid, fell into the echo chamber and it seemed to make sense, then I grew up a bit and used my head”.