Since extra people have moved into my house, my main computer has lost it's home. I'm currently just using a laptop for home computering. 'Big' games are not really doable, but Hearthstone is quite handy on the laptop. Consequently, I've been playing a lot.
Apparently, this issue floated to the top of e-gaming news when a Finnish Tournament disallowed females. They claimed that they had to do this because if a female should win, they'd advance to the international tournament in Korea which also doesn't allow females. See this e-sports association thinks it's a good idea to 'segregate' the sexes.
Please, you can call video gaming a sport if you want, but to then imply that the two sexes can't compete on equal footing is absurd.
I'm counting on Blizzard to step in. They have clout.
"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." — James D. Nicoll
Women can come, but they have to be healers or ranged DPS.
As a serious question, has anyone ever shown a difference in abilities between the sexes in any e-sport? I mean, the whole reason to segregate other sports is because something like men can lift bigger rocks than women, throw them farther, etc. Obviously virtual rocks don't weight as much, so that concern is out the window. I'd be surprised if I heard women were shown to not be able play Starcraft as well as men, or vice-versa. However I have to admit I'm pretty ignorant of all that stuff at the moment.
Maybe I could waste a morning on researching it? It'd look just like work, but be a lot more entertaining...
Edited, Jul 2nd 2014 8:54am by someproteinguy
____________________________
That monster in the mirror, he just might be you. -Grover
Maybe I could waste a morning on researching it? It'd look just like work, but be a lot more entertaining...
It might not take that long. there really isn't much on this.
All the concern I could find seems to be around what happens when a girl competes with and/or beats a guy. The competition with a female apparently confuses the guy, and then everyone gets grumpy because people aren't sticking to social norms. That happens more in e-sports, of course, so there's more grumpiness. At least that's the gist of the argument from what I can tell tease out.
This article was a nice one, on the off chance anyone can access it. Of course since that probably isn't the case, excerpts are below.
Quote:
'You Play Like a Girl!' Cross-Gender Competition and the Uneven Playing Field
Many reasons have been suggested for the lack of female participation in technologically complex digital game play. A previously unconsidered factor is that of cross-gender competition. Rigid gender divisions are the norm in most analog/traditional games and sports. Societal penalties for breaking these norms are severe for both males and females. This article suggests that the virtual certainty of cross-gender competition might be a factor in deterring females from digital game play. The ease of transgressing traditional play taboos in virtual words, however, allows both males and females to explore and possibly transform rigid gender configurations. Policy implications for using play as a way to break down stereotypes and encourage the participation of females are discussed.
She says the problem for guys is this:
Quote:
A boy on a coed football squad – or playing against a coed squad – faces an irreconcilable conflict between his duty as a man and his duty as a player. As a man, he must never strike a woman. As a player he must strike teammates during scrimmages, and opposing players during games, fairly and within the rules but with all the force he can muster. (Jeffrey, 2004)
and the problem for girls is this:
Quote:
If the female loses against the male, she is still admired for having dared to challenge someone ‘superior’ to her. If she wins, however, her victory has a different sort of taint to it. There are several terms in western culture for women who dominate men: ‘shrew’, ‘*****’ and ‘ballbreaker’ are examples. A man who is dominated by a woman, can be called ‘@#%^-whipped’ among other such terms.
Does anyone even use those terms?
And unfortunately for those wanting to segregate the biggest suggestion from the paper is:
Quote:
1)Normalize cross-gender play and competition by making it frequent, routine and pleasurable In game worlds, this can be accomplished by having many more female characters present in game narratives and by having them engage with player avatars across a wide range of activities. Stereotype threat can be countered by increasing the number of the members of a minority population present in the majority population and by providing numerous examples of characters that counter stereotypes
That and providing better role models for women in gaming, and exposing men to those same role models to breakdown their stereotypes.
TL;DR = An e-sport is a competition in which men don't have the traditional dominance, so it tends to cause more problems on the mental/social/whatchamacallit side. Hence the urge to segregate things.
Edited, Jul 2nd 2014 9:39am by someproteinguy
____________________________
That monster in the mirror, he just might be you. -Grover
Please, you can call video gaming a sport if you want,
Nope. Don't care about reasons.
someproteinguy wrote:
As a serious question, has anyone ever shown a difference in abilities between the sexes in any e-sport?
My sample size is probably not large enough to constitute a real research project, but every female I've seen play video games seem to think controllers are motion sensitive. Like holding it over their head to make it go faster. I mean, some games do have it now but my observation started during like NES.
Oh, and one case of screaming really really loud at Mario to run faster. But I think that's less to do with being female and more to do with Eyetalian DNA.
____________________________
George Carlin wrote:
I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." — James D. Nicoll
Women can come, but they have to be healers or ranged DPS.
Mindel was a pretty good Tnak.
My wife tanked quite a bit, and faced the all the usual problems. Hardest part was getting people not to question her decisions. Eventually we were able to pair her with a guy that recognized the issue and she simply used him as a relay for a lot of things. Things got better after that, and the few of us who knew what was happening got a nice glimpse into inadvertent sexism.
Will be nice to move away from that.
____________________________
That monster in the mirror, he just might be you. -Grover
So, questions for the lady gamers: Why does the gender topic even come up during gameplay? Do you find yourselves bringing it up more often or being asked? And if you're being asked, why even answer?
And I mean these questions for when you're in random groups, not people you know decently and are familiar with.
Edited, Jul 2nd 2014 3:02pm by lolgaxe
____________________________
George Carlin wrote:
I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
So, questions for the lady gamers: Why does the gender topic even come up during gameplay? Do you find yourselves bringing it up more often or being asked? And if you're being asked, why even answer?
And I mean these questions for when you're in random groups, not people you know decently and are familiar with.
I was thinking on the tank thing being mentioned. One of the main tanks I played with frequently in EQ was a paladin - a female paladin. I never knew if the driver was male or female. Nice individual, but gender never mattered enough to pry.
Pick-up groups are a thing of the past for me.
I usually participate in forum-chat for multi-player or pvp games. Posting name Elinda isn't a dead give-away but it certainly is a strong hint.
I suppose because of my age, I don't make a secret of my gender, and my toons have very girly names. Many girls have taken to keeping their gender under wraps because of harassment.
I just assume all players are male. And if they say they are female I assume they are male and looking to scam some loser out of free **** with promise of female companionship and boobies.
I'll fall back to more stereotypical interactions if I ever do know someone's gender, for better or worse. However after all these years of online gaming I seem to have developed a pretty good "gender unknown" rule set as well. You know, it's one of those things you don't see much in real life as you nearly always know the gender of the person you're interacting with. I can't say it's "everyone is male" really, as those "known-to-be-male" interactions are different.
I'd imagine some sociologist probably found that kind of thing fascinating at some point.
Edited, Jul 2nd 2014 1:09pm by someproteinguy
____________________________
That monster in the mirror, he just might be you. -Grover
Ive never had a problem with gender in video games. Ive played with plenty of capable people from healers to some girls who kick *** in Call of Duty. And i mean regularly kick *** at CoD. Many women ive played with were really good in EQ havent run into to many in WoW and only personal friends I know of in CoD, but all are good.
It boils down to that you're not going to have a problem playing a game as a female if the other people aren't sexist ********. Women are perfectly capable of performing as well in a game as men. There is literally no reason they wouldn't.
The issue arises when you realize that all these "eSports" (a term I think is still completely ridiculous) are mostly populated by these aforementioned sexist ********.
We've got a good number of women in my guild on WoW, and we're top guild on the server currently. Never once has there been a time when our healer went "Oh, sorry guys, I can't heal all of a sudden because of my ovaries," or our warlock went "I just can't kill that boss tonight, I have women things to do."
I honestly find this a little appalling that this is still an issue in 2014.
I was thinking on the tank thing being mentioned. One of the main tanks I played with frequently in EQ was a paladin - a female paladin. I never knew if the driver was male or female. Nice individual, but gender never mattered enough to pry.
Same here. Normally didn't know or care about the gender behind the character. Our guild Main Tank is female in RL. Something I literally wasn't aware of for like 8+ years. Never even considered it important. GL is female, a fact I only knew because she was married to a co-worker of mine. My experience has been that there are fun mature players and then there are immature twats. And the sexism tends to go hand in hand with the latter.