Gender in game mechanics

What makes a man masculine? I would like to know the answer to that, honestly.

I like men, not too much though, since I do have a husband. lol But I don't get why men can't realize that if we don't like you, it is probably for another reason, not because you are masculine. Although, I am not sure what you mean by that term so please define. I will tell you my opinion of masculine men..but not until you tell me your definition.

 

But no one is heated here but you. I am sorry about that. I wish I could get angry or heated because I think that would make you feel better. But unfortunately, I am not an archetype, if that even exists in real life.

Oh and my son, who is a computer science major in college, is making me gluten free chocolate brownies with chocolate chips. He is not an archetype either.

 

Because when a man disagrees with a woman he is "heated". It works both ways. I guess we can all learn its hard to read emotions over a computer screen.

Oh and my son is a 2 year old boy and his favorite colour is pink.

 

oh he's a keeper! Bringing chocolate is definitely a good masculine trait... One of the more IMPORTANT masculine traits to be sure (not like stinky armpits - but if I had to make a game where stink armpits are the trait of a hero, I think that would be awesome.... In fact I'm writing that one down for my game ideas suggestion box).

 

You'll be in even deeper waters if you don't put an apostrophe in your "dont". Tonight is a full moon.

But why are they disagreeing in the first place..?

50% of marriages end in divorce. 5-0 = 5. It takes 2 people to fall in love. 5-2 = 3.

Illuminati confirmed.

Physically? Testosterone and myostatin quantities. Mentally? Whatever role they choose to adopt in their environment.

From observing nature, the best definition of "masculinity" is definitely... being stupid in the presence of women. Introduce a woman into any natural setting. What will the uninhibited lesser species of this planet do? Fight to the death over her.

Fact

Stop drawing our attention away from the post where you left an apostrophe off of your "dont"! lol

Lymph nodes gotta vent, yo!

 

Awww, how cute! I love pink although prefer purple. But pink goes better with my red hair. lol

It is very difficult read emotions over the computer, so I think we all have to stop telling others what they are feeling.

 

Uh, this thread is disengaging from reality and seeking to incite anger and hostility. I disagree all the time, and most of the time with my own conscious before opening my mouth.

Disagreements can be used to build or they can be used to tear down. Which are you doing here by generalizing men and women on some false stereotype that 99.99997% men and women are disproving, all day and everyday, through their own civil behavior? That's Ivory Pure.

Do read the anti-social behavior of the newspapers and on these violent television shows and games and to then try and generalize that behavior as having been created and a quality of each individual the general populace is wrong. It's bigoted. And I don't need a qualifying adjective to tell you that bigotry is wrong. Furthermore, a qualifying adjective, in terms of government interest (danger! danger!) or the interest of big business (danger! danger!) or your own personal adjectives that interest you (danger! danger!), does not entitle one to be bigoted either.

Vultures have it so easy, waiting in the trees for carrion. And they didn't even have to hurt anyone to get what they need.

 

I'm making lasagna tonight!
Does that make me less masculine? (If i don't cook we don't eat so, and yet my kids haven't died yet )

 

I was at my brother-in-law's 4th of July BBQ one year, and my hubby ended up doing the grilling.... At one point I had a bizarre, very sexualized attraction for him because he controlled the food.... Hahaha. Totally surprised me, but there you go. "gold digger cavewoman instinct". LOL

 

Really? I think it is a rather nice discussion. No one is insulting anyone else, we have worked through several things, and I, for one, am having fun.

Compared to past discussions about gender, this one is full of sunshine and rainbows. Lots of women here too, which is really great compared to the one where I was the only woman. lol

No one is angry. We all confirmed that. And this is the off topic Discussion thread. Easy to ignore.

 

Oh you are so masculine, Archania! I have seen a picture of you in your pajamas, I know how masculine you are!

 

Yes, it does actually. It's not a bad thing though, times have changed. If you were a real man you'd be hunting down your food and wives with a club. Pure masculinity doesn't exist anymore

Yes, yes. You clarified that very nicely. Your head wasn't on fire with rage, your hair is simply red.

 

lol

 

Fire and meat. Proper masculine.

 

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

The women in israel's defense forces are largely a publicity stunt to bolster their international image

 

As what can best be describes as an agnostic polytheist, I think you are misunderstanding what an archetype is. The goddesses represent me just as much as the gods do. Your son baking cookies might defy stereotypes, but it does not defy archetypes. Archetypes are different aspects of one's self. They are not the sole definition of one's self. Connecting with, or relating to one archetype does not in any way shape or form take away from the existence of the other archetypes. Each serves a different purpose in different situations at different times. And there are calm, level headed archetypes, so you very well could be one.

 

The mother archetype imo. Cortana fits it, that's what I was getting at earlier with the whole "what if cortana was a sweaty man" thing. Thanks for being more articulate than me.

 

Ok, so its been put forth that women on average are physically weaker than men, and as @Nanako pointed out a lot of that has to do with testosterone. I have direct experience in that realm, since I've been on hormone therapy for years now, and have testosterone and estrogen levels consistent with your average female.

Just recently I said to my wife that it's so weird to feel weaker as a result of the changes the hormones have made to my body. My fat distribution has changed, my muscle mass has chaned, my center of balance has changed. It's wild. And I feel it and I know how it felt before. There is a difference there, most definitely, I agree. That doesn't mean it applies to all women but yes, I'm physically weaker than an average male of my height and general build.

The original post, however, did not bring up physical strength. We got on this strength kick and ran with it. The original post said that men have faster reaction times whilst women are better at dealing with large amounts of information at once. That is the assumption given by the OP, but that line of thought has been derailed by a weight lifting contest.

Does anyone have any links to papers, or personal anecdotes even, or anything that pertains to that assumption? Because it's that assumption that appears to be guiding some deveopers in the ways they make games. Last I checked, a controller wasn't that heavy, so can we stop flexing our muscles and get back to the original hypothesis?

 

Yeah, you are right, I was being silly and sarcastic. Thanks for clarifying though. I wouldn't want my joke to counter the true definition.

 

lol.. leave my turtle pj's out of this!
I swear I am a child trapped in an adult body....

 

Very good point, Ony. I can see how that would affect the way people make games for their intended audience. I would like to learn more about this as well. It could help us make better more diverse games.

 

I found this:
http://www.colorado.edu/eeb/courses/1230jbasey/abstracts 2008/4.htm


That only seems to cover a couple of studies though.

 

@Ony wow, that's fascinating! I did not think that would be the case for individuals undergoing hormone therapy. That really is interesting on so many levels!

Well after what you just said, I'm pretty sure all of that goes out the window. I'm sure you dislike feeling like a freak, but your life sounds like an incredibly valuable study. Sorry if that isn't coming out as positive haha, please read it in the context of a nerd.

Hormone therapy changed the work the testosterone had done previously. I've never heard of that going so well for female -> male. I wonder if it has something to do with both males and females having an X chromosome, because the Y chromosome is really what separates the sexes physically.

Well, it is interesting, but I'm sure we'll be back to arguing about something stupid in another page or so. Carry on, thread, I can't procrastinate without you all!

 

@Tomnnn I must know this now! because I'm gonna die if I don't...

Are you from Japan??? cause you'r profile pic looks like it XD

 

Excellent. That's what I'm interested in seeing. I do wonder though, given that males were shown to react faster, what the rate of correct answers was. The study doesn't appear to say.

 

Not sure I agree with this conclusion, but I had a friend who was in the IDF and she wanted to do the paratrooper training which isn't allowed for women, but she is a certain type who can be very aggressive about what she wants and most of the guys didn't have a problem with it (physically she is tiny, but very aggressive in every way) so she got to go through with it up to a point... As she tells the story now, she says it was a shameful thing to do because she took "resources" that would never be used in actual combat, therefore from her (nationalistic) POV it was wrong of her to to have pushed them into accommodating her.... This is all from her version of the story, and I kind of have no doubt if she wanted to do something she would just do it and regret it later. LOL

Anyway, as has been said by Teila above, "heroes" usually start off as underdogs with "no hope" of achieving their goal.... so again I think a lot of the resistance in this thread is less about anger and more about what is percieved as in-game "norms" - and also the thing where men don't like to play as women characters which (sorry) is not a good enough reason for me personally to not do it. Especially when it is so easy to plug in a woman as an underdog.

Anecdotally I have a list of game ideas that would be from a female POV, Like Stagecoach Mary.... I'd like to believe that men would not be offended by this game just because it features a tough female protagonist - who just happened to be a real person.

 

I am only one person, not representative of all females, but my reflexes on the controllers is much slower than the men around me. On the other hand, I am a wicked typist, so much so that as I get older, I make more typo mistakes because I am speeding along too confidently. My husband and son are not nearly as fast as me...and neither were male teamates I worked with in the game industry.

My problem with controllers and other repetitive motions are injuries over the years, from typing and playing games most likely, although I have never really played a lot of console games. I do believe I read something that said women are more likely to have repetitive motion injuries so that might be a factor here. Don't quote me on that though...I really should cite but I am lazy.

Information processing is something I am good at. Not sure it is because I am woman, but I know my very bright son and husband both do not process things as fast as I do, causing me frustration at times. Again, that is just me, and I do not represent all women.

But...I don't like action games that depend on reflex. I do not play them and if I play a game like Dreamfall that requires something like that in parts of the game, I call my son over to play that part for me.

Which proves to me that we all need each other. I keep my son from forgetting that he has an English paper due next week and he keeps my character from getting killed over and over again.

 

Knowing how to subvert tropes, and to execute it well, still requires a deep understanding of the trope. Sure, the hero archetype is overused, but that hasn't stopped Marvel from cranking out hits. At the core of every hero's journey is still a story about overcoming adversity and self-discovery, but how many stories fail miserably at that?

More often than not, trying to be original ends up as a recipe for disaster as it loses all notions of where it's going. I perfectly understand not trying to stick too close to well known archetypes, but to outright ignore them is to also be unaware of their meaning. The hero-king, for example, is about becoming the arbiter of your own fate, becoming self-actualized in essence. If the character needs to become that, it's important to know how to create that kind of transformation, otherwise the character ends up hollow. If it's the protagonist, then the whole story can end up hollow.

 

I agree with your first part but not this part. I have already said all this again but I guess you must try to change my mind.

A good experienced writer can write without using archetypes. I have seen it done many times successfully. It does not fail more often than not unless in the hands of an unskilled person. I have seen archetypes used badly more often than I have seen them used correctly.

Btw, I happen to be a writer, who wrote for indie video games for 10+ years and led a team of about 12 writers. So I am a bit biased on this. I saw my team break stereotypes, move away from archtypes and do it successfully. The game had 100k followers just for the stories and the lore. It failed only because of funding and issues with the programmers.

 

I'm definitely weeb enough in my life style and life threatening anime binges, but no, I'm actually German (and some other things). I've got the DNA of monsters, let's leave it at that. My profile picture is actually of James Franco... haha. And now the real question that will be the start of your next internet quest: "When the hell did James Franco make this face!?"

That should be all the clarification you wanted though. Tenacity, ferocity, brawn and brains, etc. Stereotypical male behaviors. I don't recall what the study was... but there was this thing about male and female babies and their reactions to pulling a string that appeared to be turning a light on and off.

At some point in the experiment, pulling the string does nothing. How do the male and female reactions differ? The males become frustrated and pulled the string harder while the females dropped the string and cried.

@Teila I can type pretty fast when I have in mind what to say, but for unrelated reasons I have an incredible long / slow time needed to process information You should have seen me at my first sales job. While lost in thought because of disinterest in life and other circumstances, I'd have up to a 2 second delay on responding to people. My boss was very annoyed

I give that same explanation for the telling of a good racist joke. Not that I'm going to ever demonstrate that publicly on the forums, but the more thought and understand you have of a culture, the better the joke!

 

Okay It was just funny and bothering me lol. np

 

I thought you were Korean! Not sure why. lol

My grandfather was German. Maybe we are related after all! lol

 

My last name signifies that I indeed have many relatives scattered around the globe. And you probably got the [insert-your-favorite-kind-of-asian-here] impression because my life consists of daydreaming, anime and video games. I watched the entirety of death note yesterday. Wasn't a fan of the ending.

A brief guide to the reasoning of every action I commit in this life: Was it funny? And the movie this screenshot is from is "The Interview"

 

lol. I'm part scott land. I can also speak scottish verty well.

 

lol never heard of her before but she looks like she's ready to take names.

 

Whoa there. This thread is about ungrounded stereotypes. I won't believe you're scottish until you can down a gallon of alcohol mixed with oil and molasses.

 

I'd completely forgotten game of thrones. That's a great example of the differences between male and female characters done right. Well, rightish, he does take things to pretty long extremes.

What makes Aria Stark interesting is that despite her desire and capability to fight, she is still a girl child. She doesn't magically become stronger and able to beat any of the adult males that surround her. She uses 'needle,' no match for a broadsword, but deadly if she is fast enough. She uses poison and deceit. It will also be interesting to see how she reacts to puberty, (if she survives that long).

Another interesting female character from the books is Brienne. Her mother dies pretty early in her childhood, and she is left surrounded by men. You could go as far as saying she is trying to become a man, following the martial traditions of the period. She has quite an interesting internal struggle trying to resolve her place and gender identity. Again it will be interesting to see how this goes. Or she might die.

 

I don't really drink lol. But My speech is quite scottish.

 

Speaking Scottish lol

But I haven't seen you swear yet.

 

I don't like swearing

 

They all die, some more than once. lol

That is a fabulous game with lots of examples of interesting characters, some that break all the rules. I love it for that very reason, though I find the author exasperating. lol

 

Is it possible... that the guys are mostly liking archetypes because it works in their favor - while women and minorities want to "break" the archetype because it more or less flatters them? (Mary Sue part 2)

There's a lot of reduction of the Joseph Campbell "hero" myths (Star Wars, etc) that have become so formulaic in Hollywood.... and sadly at age 45 I see a world that seems a lot LESS sophisticated now than the one I grew up in. In the '80s we had Boy George and Annie Lenox openly flaunting "new" gender expressions that felt original and experimental.... Now we have RuPaul which seems like a sexist caricature throwback based on the worst cliches - and that "angry inch" thing on Broadway just seems like a version of blackface to me.... so not progressive.

OK vearing all over the map but getting back to Joseph Campbell, he said that that lecture was all inflated out of proportion and there were PLENTY of other hero architypes that just didn't happen to be Hollywood cliches. There is a "female hero" archetype called Inana's Journey, and I think it's interesting for discussion because I haven't figured out how it could work as a game.... Basically it's the oposite dynamic of an adventure game. Instead of collecting things and exploring the world, Inana descends into hell. at each gate she is forced to pay a bribe so she loses her jewelry, then her armor, then her clothing... until eventually she gets to the deepest room in hell and has to endure torture and humiliation (naked of course) before she "wins".... Ironically this is KIND OF the main character's journey in 50 SHADES OF GREY, she "wins" by being super-passive and surrendering.... Like I said, I never figured out how to make that interesting as a game, and I can't say that archetype appeals much to me.... Probably because it does not flatter my ego.

 

There are still a couple characters that haven't died yet. I'm struggling to think of one off the top of my head.

My biggest trouble is the books are so widely spaced. I'm going to have to start reading from the beginning again when the next one comes out just to remember what happened.

 

RuPaul is annoying and over the top but why would you say he's sexist? Doesnt he just wear a dress? I thought you would consider something like that a good thing since he isn't conforming to typical gender roles.

 

It could have been a great game. Damn it, telltale!

Drinking is for scrubs who defy evolution and seek not-so-fresh berries.

@BoredMormon She is quite the character. She should marry Tyrion

Of course. People don't fight positive stereotypes or archetypes if it doesn't put unnecessary pressure on them.

There is no greater can of worms than gender. Male? Female? A combination of the two, or none of either? Facebook let me identify as a toaster. What is my gender role?

 

Agreed!

 

I taught a goddess class once, where we studied art and anthropology related to ancient women. It was fascinating and the stories, especially ones that were outside of the common western cultures, were interesting, very different from what I expected. I remember finding ones I identified with more than any in my own culture. I even named my cat Kali.

I do think that culture plays a huge part in how we define various archetypes. Love the concept of Inana and that could be a great game. Maybe the trick is for game designers to start looking into less common myths and stories, under represented cultures, such as from African and some Asian cultures.

I love Campbell by the way, and enjoyed his lectures.

 

For the same reason I don't consider Al Jolson to be a civil rights icon...