Why don't more girls play RTS games?

site just deletd my entire reply, gonna be shorter now

However the problem really rests with the term "many". Would 5% qualify as "many"? Because that's a small proportion, but would still be millions of people.

in mathmatics >32% is normal. the percentage is important

The claim that you can just look at culture, and see nature expressing itself automatically, doesn't hold up.

if the same pattern is about true across 1000 cultures far apart and through all times, its nature expressing itself. you said yourself that this isnt true for clothing...

Even if something is 'uncommon', that doesn't mean that it is invented, or 'unnatural', or provide any argument for why people should be prevented from doing whatever they choose to do, no matter how unusual we may find it.

you got me all wrong. im not preventing anyone from doing anything (hell, im a liberal) and so shouldnt anyone else, but unlike you im not screaming "opression" when they follow the most likely path

This is a classic demonstration of the 'is-ought' logical fallacy: the presumption that because something is a certain way, it *should* be that way.

if its a certain way for long enough, "is" becomes "ought" though genetics. and btw, if something is very off between "is" and "ought", a culture is inefficient and evolution stops that aswell

But this was the very point that The Machines videa addressed 0 not the incidence of women in combative gaming overall, but the difference in participation between RTS as a genre and the likes of FPS as a genre.

well, women are very scarce in every competetive scene. that is the interesting thing

And as for competition more generally, if you don't think there;s a huge amount of competition between women, you're missing the boat.

a competetive man could have many wives, a competetive women could still only have one man. therefore it is more important for a man to be competetive.
and ime, that is the case

Why don't more women play RTS games?

...unless of course you get all your "facts" from delusional feminists like Anita Sarkeesian and Lena Dunham. If you want to refute anything I said, you better bring more compelling evidence than something your dumbass dyke of a gender-studies professor said.

Thank you for teeing that up Baz. But let's explore this point a bit - why would a woman reading this thread, or the general tone of gaming forums like this one, not feel like speaking up? Perhaps because she'd either be dismissed as delusional or a dyke?

Let's face it as pointed out when I streamed on Relic streams I was ~100 pounds overweight but my appearance was only mentioned when someone wanted to insult me and couldn't think of anything clever to say. When Cynthia streamed her appearance, despite being far more standard in terms of height and weight, than me was constantly commented on. Even people who thought they were being polite or giving her a compliment were being insulting.

"You're cute" = I don't really care what you're talking about your appearance means more to me.

And I mean that's just a surface level of the kind of stuff she had to deal with. That every visible woman as either a developer or gamer has to deal with. The shit that Cynthia deals with day-in-day-out is just astonishing, and is stuff that I don't have to deal with.

There's also, as mentioned, a cultural component to it. Women are consciously and unconsciously directed towards certain past-times. Gaming increasingly is one of them, more than half of players are now female, but historically it's been a more male pursuit. That's changing and there's fantastic opportunities for the RTS game that figures out how to break into that market. Doubling sales or more, for example.

The competitive question is interesting. Women compete in sports and do so at a high degree of excellence. Yes biological differences mean they largely don't compete with men, since physically men are bigger and stronger, but that doesn't really apply to games. However the kind of caustic reaction women naturally attract in gaming communities isn't exactly the sort of thing that makes women want to be open about that.

Take the site Fat, Ugly or Slutty which highlights abuse women receive on Xbox Live. Why would anyone want to really draw attention to themselves and that abuse? This isn't just an RTS thing, or a CoH/Relic thing. It's an industry wide issue.

As mentioned by Lucas Troy another issue is that there's relatively few "female" units to play in RTS games. Based on WWII there's not much opportunity for Relic to add them to CoH2 (snipers and medics are exceptions) and while women don't need to play as female characters just like men don't need to be Space Marines to or Trolls to play DoW, the lack of any female representation is an issue. Historically the DoW community has been a bit more female heavy because WH40K (Eldar mostly) has some stronger female characters / units.

This representation overall speaks to a focus and intended audience for a game, studio and the industry. If 95% of all (gendered) RTS units are male it means that studios are aiming for mostly men and that will extend to game design, marketing and community efforts.

Another thing to keep in mind is that CoH2.ORG isn't the CoH playerbase. The number of women who are fans of the CoH Facebook page or follow the account on Twitter is still a minority (by far) but much higher a percentage than who take part in CoH2.ORG.

Which I don't want to be read as a criticism of this particular site. I honestly think that in general Ami and the site staff do a good job with curbing harassment here. Could it be better? Sure, but I know that the official Relic forums could have been better under my watch for some of that too. There's always room for improvement.

So where do you see women more equally represented in gaming? Player numbers clearly show that many women play but don't partake in communities and try to remain invisible.

But where you see them tends to be in co-operative games or focusing around narrative and character elements of games. I'd imagine a woman helping a successful Destiny raid is called 'bitch' a lot less than a woman killing men in a CoD game. And doing fan art or talking about the character arc of someone in a BioWare game is less likely to meet with being called a "dumbass dyke" than arguing about balance in an RTS game.

There's no silver bullet or easy answer to the question. If I had it I'd have solved the problem while at Relic and doubled or more the sales of CoH2 and every game they make from now on. Having visibly female developers helps, and creating environments where female fans can share their love of a game without being insulted or hit on also helps.

Again in general I think CoH2.ORG is pretty good at this part.

But everything is baby steps. Relic, or anyone else, isn't going to solve the problem overnight.

Why don't more women play RTS games?


Thank you for teeing that up Baz. But let's explore this point a bit - why would a woman reading this thread, or the general tone of gaming forums like this one, not feel like speaking up? Perhaps because she'd either be dismissed as delusional or a dyke?

Let's face it as pointed out when I streamed on Relic streams I was ~100 pounds overweight but my appearance was only mentioned when someone wanted to insult me and couldn't think of anything clever to say. When Cynthia streamed her appearance, despite being far more standard in terms of height and weight, than me was constantly commented on. Even people who thought they were being polite or giving her a compliment were being insulting.

"You're cute" = I don't really care what you're talking about your appearance means more to me.

And I mean that's just a surface level of the kind of stuff she had to deal with. That every visible woman as either a developer or gamer has to deal with. The shit that Cynthia deals with day-in-day-out is just astonishing, and is stuff that I don't have to deal with.

There's also, as mentioned, a cultural component to it. Women are consciously and unconsciously directed towards certain past-times. Gaming increasingly is one of them, more than half of players are now female, but historically it's been a more male pursuit. That's changing and there's fantastic opportunities for the RTS game that figures out how to break into that market. Doubling sales or more, for example.

The competitive question is interesting. Women compete in sports and do so at a high degree of excellence. Yes biological differences mean they largely don't compete with men, since physically men are bigger and stronger, but that doesn't really apply to games. However the kind of caustic reaction women naturally attract in gaming communities isn't exactly the sort of thing that makes women want to be open about that.

Take the site Fat, Ugly or Slutty which highlights abuse women receive on Xbox Live. Why would anyone want to really draw attention to themselves and that abuse? This isn't just an RTS thing, or a CoH/Relic thing. It's an industry wide issue

There's some genuine creeps and douchebag harassment going on. People that would give someone like Cynthia a hard definitely fall in to that category. But a lot of the "sexism" in online gaming isn't really sexism. A lot of girl gamers say they want to be treated just like the guys, and then so thats what they get, and then they complain about it. They have no clue how a lot of guys talk to eachother, and when they are on the receiving end they wrongly assume its because they are a girl.

That said there probably is a bit more sexism in gaming recently and I think the trendiness of twitch sluts is to blame. To clarify I mean girls that prey on lonely guys by intentionally wearing pushup bras and low cut tops, and get a unreasonably high rate of views/donations despite having no skills or personality.

...

wow great post and glad to see you are still on the forum.

I agree with Noun and he provides and industry insider look that is backed up by stats and research. But I think you are being too nice in not calling out ridiculous arguments in this thread.

Too many people on this forum jump from the fact - man and woman are different, to a false logic - man are more competitive, have more qualities that attracts them to the complex RTS genre. And somehow saying this thread will attract Feminazis when 99% people on this dude is a pathetically low blow to people who virtually do not exist in this realm.

No, I am not those people who say man and woman are equal or woman vote smarter than man BS PC crowd.

Citing the old civilisation to prove man are whatever other than physically stronger than woman is just simply stupid. Until very recently, it was might=right. Today's society, whether you are on the left or right, is all about denying that same physical natural order of might=right or survival of the fittest. To cite today's STEM industry to prove anything is also a moot because it wasn't too long ago until women were heavily socio-pressured into "traditional" roles. A great example would be WWII when many women were forced to fill the gap that was made by conscripted men. They did their jobs as good as the men but when the war was over, everything was just reverted just because it was the way of the society not because female hormone or gene made them worse at the industry. The stigma still exist today of course. It's like me saying Asian Americans earn the most in America because we just have better gene. That is bullshit. It's the culture of tiger moms and ancient tradition that equate wealth to happiness.

Recent researches on gender differences go both ways. Sometimes it goes both ways, point to men or point to women. But they are limited and not widely publicised.
This is why need absolutely need more studies in this area however insignificant it maybe. Because when we are left ignorance, pure non-science and assumption assume to role of facts.

Thank you TheMachine for your video. I think this heated thread proves that your video was indeed needed.

Too many people on this forum jump from the fact - man and woman are different, to a false logic - man are more competitive, have more qualities that attracts them to the complex RTS genre.

Well my own observations was enough to draw a correct conclusion about the matter, but since you want some science here you go:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3049126/Men-competitive-women-Sportsmen-driven-greater-desire-win-regardless-ability-claims-study.html

And like I said, some women are more competitive. But they are more competitive at sports and/or education. I know literally zero female athletes that are serious gamers, most of them don't even own consoles for casual entertainment and kill time reading or binging netflix. Inverse was a very high level COH player and played collegiate baseball. One of my old roomates plays football for the university team and we played a lot of NBA 2K15 together.

To cite today's STEM industry to prove anything is also a moot because it wasn't too long ago until women were heavily socio-pressured into "traditional" roles. A great example would be WWII when many women were forced to fill the gap that was made by conscripted men. They did their jobs as good as the men but when the war was over, everything was just reverted just because it was the way of the society not because female hormone or gene made them worse at the industry.

There is a big difference between working on an assembly line and being a petroleum engineer or nuclear physicist. "Rosie the Riveter" wasn't inventing the cutting edge technology of the war. Oppenheimer, Fermi, and von Braun were.

The stigma still exist today of course. It's like me saying Asian Americans earn the most in America because we just have better gene. That is bullshit. It's the culture of tiger moms and ancient tradition that equate wealth to happiness.

Off-topic that is mostly true in major western countries. Its not that all Asians are smarter, but the days of average joes migrating across oceans by the millions to north America in a boat to escape potato famines or other hardships is over. It takes a lot of money to migrate internationally by plane. These exceptionally smart Asian American immigrants aren't triads or blue collar working class people, they have money to get here because they were very successful back home and they relocate to take a nice job. Intelligence is hereditary, so when smart immigrants are procreating with other smart immigrants, and instill good work ethic in their children, its no surprise that you see so many brilliant young Asian Americans, Canadians, or whatever. I come from a city with a mix of blue collar rednecks and many upper class gated country club communities, and the latter group are all clustered in the same part of town and zoned for the same high school. Unsurprisingly that school sends way more kids to nice universities.

...

searching "woman are just as competitive study" on google finds me other studies that find women are just as competitive. But all these are individual research and as far as I know, no credible body of science has analysed all these studies to come to a clear conclusion. So no, these claims of men are more competitive backed up by anecdotes from societies where men were/are more privileged in majority of the fields are not credible AT ALL.

Assembly line example shows that social stigma kept women away from these jobs not because it was scientifically proven that women are worse at fields dominated by men or vice versa but because society as whole believed their unscientific assumption as a fact partially due to little research in this field. Saying men are more competitive because they dominate in more competitive field is like saying 15 year olds are better at baby sitting, women do better housework etc etc...

...These exceptionally smart Asian American immigrants aren't triads or blue collar working class people, they have money to get here because they were very successful back home and they relocate to take a nice job. Intelligence is hereditary, so when smart immigrants are procreating with other smart immigrants, and instill good work ethic in their children, its no surprise that you see so many brilliant young Asian Americans, Canadians, or whatever...

There are very important environmental and cultural factors as you state: money and positive environment and culture. Combined with heredity which are proven to be very important in child's intelligence. you are not using the same train of logic when it comes to the main topic. I am not arguing that genes have nothing to do with this. That would be stupid because no conclusive set of studies have been tested about this. Same goes to whether girls are more or less competitive than men.

Girls don't play games because women don't like games. Its as simple as that.

The notion that gender stereotypes are because of enviroment is complete and utter bogus.

The enviroment in general has very little to do with human intelligence, behaviour , or whatever. It is all in fact, genetics.

this is so painful it numbs me. its like saying saddam hussein's son would've tortured no matter who would've adopted him.

this is so painful it numbs me. its like saying saddam hussein's son would've tortured no matter who would've adopted him.

I'm just going to ignore every single thing about evolution and biology just so that i can prove my marxist post-modernist philosophy is correct, and when someone doesn't agree with me, I'm just going to completely collapse out of pain.

Yeah, no.

Research has shown time and time that genes have far more importance for a persons personality, intelligence , behaviour than enviroment does.For example, IQ is 60-80% hereditary, considering how unsophisticated IQ tests are, its likely that actual intelligence is even more hereditary.



Regarding women in this case, it's clear to see why women are less overall competitive than men.


Only 20-40% of men ever reproduced. While 80-90% of women did (this was true until very recently when civilization started to develop). I may actually be understating it here, considering research like this https://psmag.com/8-000-years-ago-17-women-reproduced-for-every-one-man-6d41445ae73d#.ay3pckbqs

(You can even see this phenomenon in modern day dating sites, where men are generally fine with dating women that are below their social standing, and try to date women that about as attactive as themselves, meanwhile women always look to the top 15%-20% of males regardless of how attractive they are, their social standing etc.

What this means is that if you are a male, you are most likely not going to reproduce, and therefore unless you try to outcompete the other males in your group, your genes will not be carried on.

So males that weren't competitive couldn't reproduce, and the genes that were responsible for such behaviour didin't carry on.

For females it's much different. They clearly had no qualms in sharing their breeding mate with other females in the group. Which is why women never evolved to be competitive. There simply was no reason to. Even if something happened with the alpha male that everyone fucked with, chances are they would get along with whatever came next.

Infact, it's entirely plausible that being a competitive female might have been a disadvantage, because as you are physically weaker than men, you would just be killed if you would try to outcompete someone.

Why evolve genes that don't help to reproduce, and just might be detrimentary to your existance? There's no reason to.

....

you have convinced me. after more googling, it does seem more credible researches back your argument and it makes logical sense. :bowmyhead:

Girls don't play games because women don't like games. Its as simple as that.

The notion that gender stereotypes are because of environment is complete and utter bogus.

The enviroment in general has very little to do with human intelligence, behaviour , or whatever. It is all in fact, genetics.

This is still very much in contest though. in a way, having to compete more as men was also an environment factor.

I'm really heartened to see this debate happen, and it would certainly be nice to see it continue though I don't know that a) there's any obvious answer and b) a bunch of men (I mostly assume) arguing about why women do and don't do anything is that answer.

The fact is that regardless of whether it's environmental or genetic or whatever the percentage of women who play RTS games is low when compared with competitive sports or other types of video games.

I feel like I could go off into the weeds arguing with Basilone about the nature and volume of abuse that women get in gaming. It, in my experience, far outstrips what men get. I say this as someone who has received a lot of death threats as part of being a public person in gaming. Women get it worse. I can't quantify it, and the stories I've heard aren't mine to tell, but Jesus it's bad.

Broadening the popularity of RTS games is something that I assume most studios are either looking at figuring out, or should be. Games are increasingly expensive to make and being able to tap into a large audience of over half the world's population would be one way to help make up those extra costs.

Practically none of us will be able to solve the riddle. I don't work in RTS and even when I did I couldn't come up with any grand ideas.

All we as individuals can do is try to act in a way that promotes the genre to women and make women who do play feel welcome. Part of this is, as Basilone suggests, simply treat them like anyone else. If you see a woman streaming an RTS treat them like a fellow fan of the series, not like a strange and rare creature. Or like someone who's appearance needs to be commented on even if you think you're being complementary.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3049126/Men-competitive-women-Sportsmen-driven-greater-desire-win-regardless-ability-claims-study.html

lol, a daily mail link. It's so bad and untrustworthy I wouldn't wipe my arse on it. You may as well link something from /b


Addressing the topic however I think the reasons are so complex and nuanced you could write a novel on the subject but I'll have a go at it.

I agree accessibility in RTS games is an issue but I believe that it is also an issue for the gaming player base as a whole and not exclusively an issue for women.

I believe culturally there are issues. I feel that playing video games competitively is somewhat frowned upon, it's slowly becoming more accepted and there's more coverage of it in the mainstream media which is great. That straight away is an issue, if the culture as a whole is frowned upon how is a sub culture going to gain any respect from society?

I think women in gaming generally have a tough time. They are subject to a higher level of scrutiny just because of their looks. They are also treated with a high level of suspicion "lol, do you ACTUALLY play video games." It's not a great atmosphere and a lot of women don't want stick around and I don't blame them to be honest.

I don't believe genetics play a part, the problem is that as children you are brought up to behave in a certain way and like certain things. Shockingly it's still frowned upon and considered un-lady like for a woman to like playing video games, let alone competitively. Even in sports being competitive as a woman is somewhat frowned upon culturally, I remember the furor when women started becoming professional boxers for example.

I believe in time things will get better as children don't get pigeon holed to confirm to certain ideals and images as they grow up.

IpKai that's probably a more concise and to the point way of saying what I was trying to. I agree 1000% per cent even if that's mathematically impossible.

I agree with noun and Ipkai.

And as a PS for Basilone: never link to a Daily Mail article, if you want to cite a serious UK source. The only things relatively reliable from the DM are articles from Max Hastings, and even then some of them have to be taken with a grain of salt.

If you look at the 80 comments from your linked DM article, Basilone, you will see the flavour of the readership. Mostly, DM is consumed with things like HiddleSwift, or other superficial tripe.

Every Game are pleasant because you need to kill and up your power ( it's the base of every video-games ). It's the base of all your pleasure in Life too

They learn to girl video-games are for boys, for this reason ?

Education is a part of the key, but it is a natural key too.

I'm pretty sur that most of womans desire less the power than common mens.

But woman like power too, but less than man. Maybe that's why a man said one day : A world of peace is a world of womans

It's like this.

PS : Video-games are so violent in reality, too much violent for insipire desir for womans

And Strategy game mean intellectual superiority in our society = Pleasure of Power and Domination under others

Without in any way wanting this to move into political discussion, I have to say, Quentin, that your examples suggest you may be inhabiting a parallel universe.

Consider: Chancellor Merkel; the next POTUS may be a female; UK is about to have a second female PM by the end of August; Denmark, NZ and Australia had a female PM until recently; India had a female PM in the past, and women have even been elected to the top job in a couple of African countries.

In addition, as you know from this game, the USSR used women in the frontline of their armed forces, and some modern states do so, including the USA and UK. Have you forgotten the Maquis and the Partisans?

Noun's initial post caught the gist of it, I think: some RTS players are jurassic in their outlook to women, whilst others seem to be immature teenagers with a huge helping of testosterone, neither of which are necessarily conducive to ordinary social intercourse.

I agree with noun and Ipkai.

And as a PS for Basilone: never link to a Daily Mail article, if you want to cite a serious UK source. The only things relatively reliable from the DM are articles from Max Hastings, and even then some of them have to be taken with a grain of salt.

A university study isn't automatically nullified because of a website it gets featured on. Plus this article wasn't exactly a bombshell. You don't need "science" to make an observation, it only confirms them. I don't need to be an expert on skin biology to know that red heads don't do too well in the sun, studies of melanin only explains what is already obvious.

Noun's initial post caught the gist of it, I think: some RTS players are jurassic in their outlook to women, whilst others seem to be immature teenagers with a huge helping of testosterone, neither of which are necessarily conducive to ordinary social intercourse.

I don't see anyone saying non-sense like "yeah they should get back in the kitchen." Its a combination of fewer women liking games, and the ones that do like games preferring different types of games. If the majority of girls are actually closet hardcore gamers, enlighten us.

If the majority of girls are actually closet hardcore gamers, enlighten us.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that there's a million women who are closet elite top 20 ranked CoH / StarCraft players and are just shy. I think the real issue is building a more diverse fan base for the future. The question is why don't more women play RTS games and I think we have a lot of pretty decent answers here.

The next question is do we (and by we I mean you and Relic I have no skin in this game and I'd much rather they go and play survival horror games) want to change that?

If the answer is no, everyone is happy with the Bro-Down-Hoe-Down that the CoH / larger RTS community is then that's fine. If the answer is yes, then the question is what's next?

Again I don't have that answer. If I did I'd sell it to someone for big bucks. I did my best to highlight historic female fighters in WWII and Relic's history of strong female characters in CoH2 when we launched but obviously two blog posts didn't solve anything.

Shocking I know.

There's a lot of interesting comments on this. First of all, I didn't realize that consoles were a gateway drug.

Second, My daughter won't play it. I've never pushed any type of stereotype on her so I don't think stereotypes are a reason. I asked my daughter why she doesn't play. Her answers were:
"It's boring. All you do is move little men around. You don't have any inventory or pets like a Ranger."

She really likes Guild Wars 2 and is probably better at it than I am. I'm pretty sure there isn't a competitive problem either.

Same reason not many men Knit.