Along the lines of this afternoon's lecture:
Monday, August 2, 2010
Makes you wonder...
An interesting article that I chanced upon. Definitely worth a read.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10796584
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10796584
Facebook...One for the stalkers
Let’s FACE it; Mark Zuckerberg has created a contemporary voyeuristic monster! In other words we are all stalkers on a day to day basis, having a sly peak at peoples’ lives behind their back, some of whom we have never met or have no intention of meeting. Just the pure satisfaction of seeing a hot girl pout her lips in her profile picture with two of her best friends, or to see a 'jacked' guy on steroids flexing his muscles for the tiny 5x8cm box is so worth the 5-10 hours we all spend on facebook a day.
We are instantaneously informed of a person's persona by their facebook profile pictures. This vomit on the page display of personality is further emphasised by their favourite songs, movies and things that other people have created but that individuals use to express their individualism.
Have you noticed that girls are always with two or three or twenty friends in their profile pictures? This can be taken from evolution as females evolved as social animals. However it becomes clear that the 'hotter' or prettier the female, the less friends occupy the little box as it is blocked by a singular (full make-up and hair done with clevelage at its peak on display) female face...striking a pose. The same generalisation can be said for males who strive to project their masculinity by either flexing their muscles, capturing themselves in a hard rugby tackle, or simply having a few beers with their mates.
The funny thing is that people will often argue that their profile pics reflect their everyday lives and they are not staged at all, but we all spend most of our time working, studying and sleeping but yet none of us have profile pictures of these three things or any other normal activities that comprise for a vast majority of our everyday lives. We always project ourselves in a strange, amazing, awkward and above all things else, stunning form. We are not all models, celebrities and athletes, so why do we project ourselves in this manner?
We are instantaneously informed of a person's persona by their facebook profile pictures. This vomit on the page display of personality is further emphasised by their favourite songs, movies and things that other people have created but that individuals use to express their individualism.
Have you noticed that girls are always with two or three or twenty friends in their profile pictures? This can be taken from evolution as females evolved as social animals. However it becomes clear that the 'hotter' or prettier the female, the less friends occupy the little box as it is blocked by a singular (full make-up and hair done with clevelage at its peak on display) female face...striking a pose. The same generalisation can be said for males who strive to project their masculinity by either flexing their muscles, capturing themselves in a hard rugby tackle, or simply having a few beers with their mates.
The funny thing is that people will often argue that their profile pics reflect their everyday lives and they are not staged at all, but we all spend most of our time working, studying and sleeping but yet none of us have profile pictures of these three things or any other normal activities that comprise for a vast majority of our everyday lives. We always project ourselves in a strange, amazing, awkward and above all things else, stunning form. We are not all models, celebrities and athletes, so why do we project ourselves in this manner?
Just to kind of reiterate..
..That girls do play games. There have been at least two mentions of Starcraft II on this blog, and here's a third. I play Starcraft II and I am a girl. To go on a tangent away from the intention of this blog I feel all those in the world of Blizzard and battle.net should exchange usernames so we can create a super-army and take over the world.
Back to my cave now..
OMG IT'S A CHICK ?1?!
Firstly, to avoid confusion/excitement, I am a male, but the nonsense in the title is unfortunately something that most online gamers would have come across at one point or another. Sadly some gamers are so excited about the prospect of a female talking in a game they are playing on that they are oblivious to the fact that the voice is clearly that of prepubescent boy rather than a girl.
I am an ex WoW (World of Warcraft) addict. I was in a fairly serious raiding guild and played a part in the recruitment of new members so would generally have some relationship built up with the newbies in the guild. Our guild leader, being quite the joker, had a voice masking program to make him sound like a chick when he spoke, he wasn't some freak trying to pass off as a girl for anything sexual, he just did it once in awhile for a laugh. I won't lie though, the voice sounded pretty hot. Whenever we would take newbies on a guild raid he would turn the voice on, almost every time when the newbie would hear his voice, I or someone else would get a private message saying something along the lines of "woah, the guild leader is a girl?" I would play along and say yes etc and then usually get a follow up message of "is she hot?" and depending how much effort we felt like making at the time, we could usually make these people get very interested in this supposed "chick" and they were willing to accept all kinds of ludicrous stories we came up with simply because they were to stoked that they were potentially living out some fantasy of finding a hot girl on WoW.
While we look at reasons why girls may not be as much into games as guys, I think examples of things such as the above are potentially one of the key turn offs. I have no idea what it's like to be female, but I imagine having every second person gush over my gender would be less than appealing. Not to sound like the "White Knight" but I've seen many a conversation where I have put people onto ignore lists etc simply because of the rubbish that starts flowing from some people when a female enters the fray so I can only imagine it sucks even more to be the female. What doesn't help is the huge number of guys using female avatars, trying to cyber people or other rubbish in attempts to score free gold. This is something touched on in the reading where I believe they are called "starfuckers", I'm pretty sure most "starfuckers" I came across in WoW, whoring their avatar out in the middle of Orgrimmar, were males, either that or WoW has the most forward women in the world in terms of sexual advances. Female players that I actually regularly played with on WoW tended to keep their gender pretty much on the low, some choosing male avatars just to avoid the immaturity and not having to deal with PM's whenever they walked through towns asking for cyber etc
While WoW does have a huge user base of highly intelligent people (perusing the forums you come across some really, really bright people) it is also notorious for having some terribly immature people also, so I don't want people who don't game online to get the idea that all online gaming is full of people like the above. What I wonder is that, when looking at the numbers of girl gamers in comparison to guy gamers, is how many girls did we lose from that list because they were turned away from the environment and how many are masquerading as guys so as to avoid it. Obviously I can't get much concrete evidence on that, but this is just what has been on my mind with the gender/gaming topic so I thought I'd throw it out there.
Double clicks starcraft2.exe
Friday, July 30, 2010
You want to be my friend?
After our lecture from a few weeks ago that discussed gender and how we represent ourselves with photos on such social networking sites such as Facebook (is even owning a bebo account cool anymore?) got me thinking of how we use these sites as a social tool amongst our friends. With a conscious view of Facebook I started to take a more critical stance in how we portray and interact through this technology. It seems this social tool is almost abused or exploited to place individuals into a social status ranking. Just browsing through my friends on Facebook its revealed that a large amount have at least 300 contacts... and counting. Who actually talks to 300 people on a daily or even weekly basis? Are these people actually connected with a "friend" in a physical, tangible friendship in the real world? Maybe this social activity is redefining the term of friendship. Many occasion, people I know vaguely add me as a "friend" on Facebook yet when seen in the flesh simply ignore you or avoid the awkward interaction with some one they knew from high school or a party but are apparently friends through the cyberspace world. Maybe this dependency on facebook as a social networking tool is creating a phobia of real life human interaction, or maybe just a statement to boost the egos of the socialites amongst us.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
YOU PLAY STARCRAFT?!
So Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty came out this week.
-cue fanboyism-
OR, in my case, fangirlism
Yes, I happen to be female.
I am by no means an expert on this game, or games in general, really. And I really wouldn't call myself a 'gamer chick' (somehow I find this title slightly degrading) but I have to say, I was as excited about this game as my brother or my male friends.
I grew up on the original Starcraft as much as any male gamer did.
However, apparently, Starcraft + girl = shock and confusion (and very occasionally, admiration).
Every time i engage in a conversation with a group of males about starcraft strategies or even just indicate that I know the names of the units, literally everyone freezes and the heads turn towards me in slow motion.
"YOU PLAY STARCRAFT?!"
On Tuesday(the day it came out), I was lining up for my copy of Starcraft II (incidentally, the line was filled with males) I received quite a few odd stares and one guy even did a double take when he saw me holding a copy of the game. Their expressions were easy to read: "YOU PLAY STARCRAFT?!"
SO I thought it would be a very good starting point for a discussion on gaming and gender and the supposed lack of female gamers.
I think it would be worthwhile considering briefly what it means to be a 'gamer'.
Does one qualify as long as they play games?
"NO" would be the outraged answer of a 'hardcore gamer'.
So what games do you have to play in order to be considered a gamer?
Do games like Super mario brothers, Final Fantasy, Pokemon or Tekken (to name a few) count? Because I see no lack of a female audience for these games. Gaming consoles are common nowadays in most households and played with my females as much as males.
I see social norms/stereotypes as well as the deeply ingrained social psyche as the root of the problem of the lack of females in games like Call of Duty, Halo or Starcraft. To put it simply, war games. Most girls seem to naturally not have any interest guns, machinery, armour, aliens or intergalactic war. But perhaps it is because they are taught, subconsciously, not to? As children, they are not given transformer robots, toy soldiers, toy guns or spaceships to play with. They are given soft toys or barbie dolls. Social norms mean that girls cannot identify with such games because they did not grow up being encouraged to have an interest in such things.
Also, I think girls find it more difficult to get into games such as Starcraft or Call of Duty is that they cannot relate to the characters. It is dominated by male characters becasue women traditionally do not take military roles. Consequently, girls do not gain any sense of empowerment in playing such games.
This brings forth the issue of female characters in games. They usually take on a more passive role as either healers or, if they are part of the attack force, mages (which relates to the age old idea of women as witches). Examples include Aeris in Final Fantasy VII and Lulu in Final Fantasy X.
In Starcraft, there are not many female units. The medics are female. They speak girlishly and of course, allude to nurses who are also traditionally female. Dropship pilots are also female. They cannot deal any damage, it is again a passive role.
Of course it is not to say that female characters do not have more active roles in games. However, they are still a minority and there are not enough to attract a large female audience.
I'm rambled on long enough. One last thing:
It was mentioned in the lecture this week that perhaps the reason males play more/are better at games is because of growing up with older male role models such as older brothers. I think this is also a truth for girls with older brothers. They are, it seems, more likely to have an interest in games.
I am one of those people i guess.
_
-cue fanboyism-
OR, in my case, fangirlism
Yes, I happen to be female.
I am by no means an expert on this game, or games in general, really. And I really wouldn't call myself a 'gamer chick' (somehow I find this title slightly degrading) but I have to say, I was as excited about this game as my brother or my male friends.
I grew up on the original Starcraft as much as any male gamer did.
However, apparently, Starcraft + girl = shock and confusion (and very occasionally, admiration).
Every time i engage in a conversation with a group of males about starcraft strategies or even just indicate that I know the names of the units, literally everyone freezes and the heads turn towards me in slow motion.
"YOU PLAY STARCRAFT?!"
On Tuesday(the day it came out), I was lining up for my copy of Starcraft II (incidentally, the line was filled with males) I received quite a few odd stares and one guy even did a double take when he saw me holding a copy of the game. Their expressions were easy to read: "YOU PLAY STARCRAFT?!"
SO I thought it would be a very good starting point for a discussion on gaming and gender and the supposed lack of female gamers.
I think it would be worthwhile considering briefly what it means to be a 'gamer'.
Does one qualify as long as they play games?
"NO" would be the outraged answer of a 'hardcore gamer'.
So what games do you have to play in order to be considered a gamer?
Do games like Super mario brothers, Final Fantasy, Pokemon or Tekken (to name a few) count? Because I see no lack of a female audience for these games. Gaming consoles are common nowadays in most households and played with my females as much as males.
I see social norms/stereotypes as well as the deeply ingrained social psyche as the root of the problem of the lack of females in games like Call of Duty, Halo or Starcraft. To put it simply, war games. Most girls seem to naturally not have any interest guns, machinery, armour, aliens or intergalactic war. But perhaps it is because they are taught, subconsciously, not to? As children, they are not given transformer robots, toy soldiers, toy guns or spaceships to play with. They are given soft toys or barbie dolls. Social norms mean that girls cannot identify with such games because they did not grow up being encouraged to have an interest in such things.
Also, I think girls find it more difficult to get into games such as Starcraft or Call of Duty is that they cannot relate to the characters. It is dominated by male characters becasue women traditionally do not take military roles. Consequently, girls do not gain any sense of empowerment in playing such games.
This brings forth the issue of female characters in games. They usually take on a more passive role as either healers or, if they are part of the attack force, mages (which relates to the age old idea of women as witches). Examples include Aeris in Final Fantasy VII and Lulu in Final Fantasy X.
In Starcraft, there are not many female units. The medics are female. They speak girlishly and of course, allude to nurses who are also traditionally female. Dropship pilots are also female. They cannot deal any damage, it is again a passive role.
Of course it is not to say that female characters do not have more active roles in games. However, they are still a minority and there are not enough to attract a large female audience.
I'm rambled on long enough. One last thing:
It was mentioned in the lecture this week that perhaps the reason males play more/are better at games is because of growing up with older male role models such as older brothers. I think this is also a truth for girls with older brothers. They are, it seems, more likely to have an interest in games.
I am one of those people i guess.
_
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