7 ms·

> “If we allow the future of the web, software, hardware, video games, etc. to be conceptualized, created and maintained by just one sector of the population, i

by antirez 15y ago

> “If we allow the future of the web, software, hardware, video games, etc. to be conceptualized, created and maintained by just one sector of the population, it’s impossible to expect that it will serve the needs of the entire group. I don't think it is so bad, if there is an user base soon or later a web site will be created serving the needs of this user base, because this means profit for the site creator. It seems strange to think that to represent everybody's need the web needs to be developed by everybody. Just to make a more concrete example, games appear to be really developed with men in mind, but this is because the population of players is mostly dominated by teenager males.

rabidsnail 15y ago
The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind. Game developers have teenager males in mind because the original game developers _were_ teenager males. Farmville and Wii Sports show that there is a vast market for video games aimed at women that is only now starting to be explored.
- mekoka 15y ago
  The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind. I would not be so sure. We all played games like pac-man, goonies, super mario and such. I remember when we were kids that we had tons of somewhat gender neutral games, but boys were the ones mostly interested in playing. Looking back, I'm more convinced today that it was a cultural issue. Girls were simply conditioned to do "girl things". Eventually, game developers skewed their production toward their dominant market. This conditioning still exists today, but is slowly disappearing and game developers will, in time, adjust accordingly.
  - ceol 15y ago
    Look at the three games you listed. Pac-Man, Super Mario, Goonies (a game about young men).
    - mekoka 15y ago
      Are you making the point that characters in the games were male, hence they were guy games? There have been a number of famous female protagonists in games, it hasn't necessarily made them popular with girls, or unpopular with guys (Samus Aran, Lara Croft, etc). My Dad actually bought me Ms Pac-man with my atari 2600, I never had the original Pac-man (there was no point, it was the exact same game). I only listed Pac-man because it's the more renown title of the series. I also fail to see what makes a game like pac-man, goonies or super mario gender specific. I was introduced to the Mario character by my much older sister when she had these little electronic games that Nintendo used to make (she had the classic Donkey-Kong). Nintendo eventually entered the video game arena and released their adaptations of such classics as Tetris. Even back in those days the spectrum of game themes was already large enough to cater to a diverse audience. I'm not denying that there was a gradual predominance of male oriented themes, but many of the classics were pretty much gender neutral and I don't hear many females reminiscing on them. I don't know why it should be difficult to consider that girls were simply conditioned (parents? society?) to believe that it was a guy thing.
      - ceol 15y ago
        I have a female friend who enjoys the Mario series. That doesn't mean it's not gender-specific; it means there exist some women to which that game appeals. Super Mario is extremely gender-specific: the main characters are male attempting to save princesses. Pac-Man was less specific aside from his name, but even then, Ms Pac-Man was a hyper-gendered incarnation of her male counterpart. Take a look: Pac-Man logo: http://images.wikia.com/logopedia/images/6/60/Pacman-logo.jpg http://images.wikia.com/logopedia/images/6/60/Pacman-logo.jp... Ms Pac-Man logo: http://sherisays.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/ms.jpg http://sherisays.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/ms.jpg This is exactly what all those blog posts are talking about with regard to Arkham City and the DC New 52. The women are male fantasies of women. Ms Pac-Man doesn't appeal to women; it appeals to men.
        mekoka 15y ago
        It seems to me that you're arguing only for the sake of it. In my original reply I addressed the perceived cause and effect of why women are under-represented in the videogame industry. I disagreed with the quick and easy finger pointing toward game designers as the original culprit. I redirected attention to historic games that were gender neutral and that were shunned by the female gender, due most likely to social prejudices, that videogames are a guy thing. You replied to my arguments by implicitly inferring that the games I cited as examples were somewhat gender biased. I added some arguments to the contrary. Now you use Ms Pac-man's logo as the basis of your argument about the genderization in the game? Have you actually played any of these games? The last thing I remember from any of them was the packaging. Do you remember what the actual graphics or game-play was like at all? You force yourself to see "hyper-gendered incarnation" and to me, this is an example of what I believe the problem was originally with games: adults meddling in kids business, because they thought they saw something, that would normally have gone unnoticed to children. That's how we ended up with girls thinking that videogames are for boys. Someone had to tell them that. Mario could have been after the golden treasure, or the secret chamber, or delivering the princess, or whatever, it made absolutely no difference to game play. People (boys and girls alike who enjoyed these games) didn't care. Ms Pac-man was a round yellow dot walking around in a labyrinth and swallowing ghosts. My friends and I played these without even knowing any English, so we had no idea what was being said in all the written messages, nor did we really care about the objective, we just enjoyed going stage after stage and defeating the "boss". In the case of Mario, we had no clue that the little person at the end of the stages was a girl, let alone a princess that we needed to eventually deliver. That's definitely not what enticed us to play and I don't believe that's what deterred girls to do the same. Mario could have been an old wizard, some type of sea monster and yes, a girl, the outcome would be the same, if there was game play, we would be there. I haven't played any games in eons, but a quick look in a videogame store showed me evidence that today the offering in games is rather skewed toward young male. I am absolutely not in disagreement and actually agreed with the observation previously, but this was not the argument, but rather what's the root cause of the situation, since it pertains to aspect of the main debate on the thread: women and technology. The 2 games that you cited Arkham City and DC New 52, I've never heard of, so I won't dispute your claims. I would however underline the fact that they're recent releases and bear no weight in our current discussion.
  - hengli 15y ago
    The first thing my mom said when I showed her StarCraft was, "but why do you want to kill the aliens, why can't you be friends with the aliens." That's the kind of game we need.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  > The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind. As of 2011, the average age for a video game player is 37, a number slowly increasing as people who were children playing the first arcade, console and home computer games continue playing now on current systems. Plus, video games (and consoles) are expensive. It helps to have a job. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture#Demographic...
nupark2 15y ago
> It seems strange to think that to represent everybody's need the web needs to be developed by everybody. It's not that strange. It's hard to represent the needs of people that you don't fully understand. When it comes to an under-represented cultural/social/racial group, I simply don't understand the market, what they want, or what is important to them. I don't come up anything like the ideas that entrepreneurial members of that group will come up with, and even once I've heard the ideas, it often takes a radical shift in my thinking to see the advantages. Women make up roughly 50% of the population, but many industries repeatedly fail to provide the products that women would prefer -- as you've almost accidentally elucidated above with your comment regarding video games.
politician 15y ago
So, I know a few developers at theknot.com, the life events site whose entire market is women. Apparently, most of the ~40 developers are men, yet they seem to serve the needs of their target market successfully. The idea that men can't write code which women can feel comfortable using is absurd.

by antirez 15y ago

rabidsnail 15y ago

The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind. Game developers have teenager males in mind because the original game developers _were_ teenager males. Farmville and Wii Sports show that there is a vast market for video games aimed at women that is only now starting to be explored.

mekoka 15y ago
The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind. I would not be so sure. We all played games like pac-man, goonies, super mario and such. I remember when we were kids that we had tons of somewhat gender neutral games, but boys were the ones mostly interested in playing. Looking back, I'm more convinced today that it was a cultural issue. Girls were simply conditioned to do "girl things". Eventually, game developers skewed their production toward their dominant market. This conditioning still exists today, but is slowly disappearing and game developers will, in time, adjust accordingly.
- ceol 15y ago
  Look at the three games you listed. Pac-Man, Super Mario, Goonies (a game about young men).
  - mekoka 15y ago
    Are you making the point that characters in the games were male, hence they were guy games? There have been a number of famous female protagonists in games, it hasn't necessarily made them popular with girls, or unpopular with guys (Samus Aran, Lara Croft, etc). My Dad actually bought me Ms Pac-man with my atari 2600, I never had the original Pac-man (there was no point, it was the exact same game). I only listed Pac-man because it's the more renown title of the series. I also fail to see what makes a game like pac-man, goonies or super mario gender specific. I was introduced to the Mario character by my much older sister when she had these little electronic games that Nintendo used to make (she had the classic Donkey-Kong). Nintendo eventually entered the video game arena and released their adaptations of such classics as Tetris. Even back in those days the spectrum of game themes was already large enough to cater to a diverse audience. I'm not denying that there was a gradual predominance of male oriented themes, but many of the classics were pretty much gender neutral and I don't hear many females reminiscing on them. I don't know why it should be difficult to consider that girls were simply conditioned (parents? society?) to believe that it was a guy thing.
    - ceol 15y ago
      I have a female friend who enjoys the Mario series. That doesn't mean it's not gender-specific; it means there exist some women to which that game appeals. Super Mario is extremely gender-specific: the main characters are male attempting to save princesses. Pac-Man was less specific aside from his name, but even then, Ms Pac-Man was a hyper-gendered incarnation of her male counterpart. Take a look: Pac-Man logo: http://images.wikia.com/logopedia/images/6/60/Pacman-logo.jpg http://images.wikia.com/logopedia/images/6/60/Pacman-logo.jp... Ms Pac-Man logo: http://sherisays.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/ms.jpg http://sherisays.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/ms.jpg This is exactly what all those blog posts are talking about with regard to Arkham City and the DC New 52. The women are male fantasies of women. Ms Pac-Man doesn't appeal to women; it appeals to men.
      - mekoka 15y ago
        It seems to me that you're arguing only for the sake of it. In my original reply I addressed the perceived cause and effect of why women are under-represented in the videogame industry. I disagreed with the quick and easy finger pointing toward game designers as the original culprit. I redirected attention to historic games that were gender neutral and that were shunned by the female gender, due most likely to social prejudices, that videogames are a guy thing. You replied to my arguments by implicitly inferring that the games I cited as examples were somewhat gender biased. I added some arguments to the contrary. Now you use Ms Pac-man's logo as the basis of your argument about the genderization in the game? Have you actually played any of these games? The last thing I remember from any of them was the packaging. Do you remember what the actual graphics or game-play was like at all? You force yourself to see "hyper-gendered incarnation" and to me, this is an example of what I believe the problem was originally with games: adults meddling in kids business, because they thought they saw something, that would normally have gone unnoticed to children. That's how we ended up with girls thinking that videogames are for boys. Someone had to tell them that. Mario could have been after the golden treasure, or the secret chamber, or delivering the princess, or whatever, it made absolutely no difference to game play. People (boys and girls alike who enjoyed these games) didn't care. Ms Pac-man was a round yellow dot walking around in a labyrinth and swallowing ghosts. My friends and I played these without even knowing any English, so we had no idea what was being said in all the written messages, nor did we really care about the objective, we just enjoyed going stage after stage and defeating the "boss". In the case of Mario, we had no clue that the little person at the end of the stages was a girl, let alone a princess that we needed to eventually deliver. That's definitely not what enticed us to play and I don't believe that's what deterred girls to do the same. Mario could have been an old wizard, some type of sea monster and yes, a girl, the outcome would be the same, if there was game play, we would be there. I haven't played any games in eons, but a quick look in a videogame store showed me evidence that today the offering in games is rather skewed toward young male. I am absolutely not in disagreement and actually agreed with the observation previously, but this was not the argument, but rather what's the root cause of the situation, since it pertains to aspect of the main debate on the thread: women and technology. The 2 games that you cited Arkham City and DC New 52, I've never heard of, so I won't dispute your claims. I would however underline the fact that they're recent releases and bear no weight in our current discussion.
- hengli 15y ago
  The first thing my mom said when I showed her StarCraft was, "but why do you want to kill the aliens, why can't you be friends with the aliens." That's the kind of game we need.
cpeterso 15y ago
> The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind. As of 2011, the average age for a video game player is 37, a number slowly increasing as people who were children playing the first arcade, console and home computer games continue playing now on current systems. Plus, video games (and consoles) are expensive. It helps to have a job. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture#Demographic...

nupark2 15y ago

> It seems strange to think that to represent everybody's need the web needs to be developed by everybody. It's not that strange. It's hard to represent the needs of people that you don't fully understand. When it comes to an under-represented cultural/social/racial group, I simply don't understand the market, what they want, or what is important to them. I don't come up anything like the ideas that entrepreneurial members of that group will come up with, and even once I've heard the ideas, it often takes a radical shift in my thinking to see the advantages. Women make up roughly 50% of the population, but many industries repeatedly fail to provide the products that women would prefer -- as you've almost accidentally elucidated above with your comment regarding video games.

politician 15y ago

So, I know a few developers at theknot.com, the life events site whose entire market is women. Apparently, most of the ~40 developers are men, yet they seem to serve the needs of their target market successfully. The idea that men can't write code which women can feel comfortable using is absurd.