12 ms·

No Girls Allowed

199 points by galaktor 13y ago

romanovcode 13y ago
Not another one of these posts..
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- adamors 13y ago
  You're right, we need more posts about Bitcoin and Something.js.
- alex_c 13y ago
  It's actually not. This one was a good article.
k_os 13y ago
I myself believe in market dynamics. If girls were interested in what boys had they'd pursue it. If girls hated barbies they would nag parents about getting a train or a car and market demand for barbies would dry up. The fact that toy dolls are a billion dollar industry should make one sceptical about the supposed 'girliness that society instills in girls'. I find that premise as silly as thinking boys were somehow 'indoctrinated' into liking computers.
- rayiner 13y ago
  We have a house full of Disney princess stuff for our one year old. It will probably still be true when she's 5 and can actually influence our purchasing choices. But what will the "market dynamics" tell you about her preferences, other than they are stable once we established them? Anyone who still believes in a simplistic rational actor desperately needs to read the work that's been done on behavioral economics. Dan Ariely's work is an approachable way to start. He hasn't tackled socialization yet, but it still gives you an idea of how human actors don't resemble the platonic ideal at all.
  - k_os 13y ago
    I believe feminism is most prevalent today than it ever was in history, are there any statistics showing that girl toy sales have declined? From a quick search i find this : http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mattel-net-falls-24-as-barbie-sales-decline-2013-07-17 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mattel-net-falls-24-as-barb... Barbie sales declining but American Girl is up 14%. You'd think that half a century of counter-culture would almost drive to the ground gender specific toy manufacturers.
    - mdisraeli 13y ago
      Surely you're just ignoring the other possibility - that increasingly gendered marketing is helping to drive feminism (which, from the people I know, does look to be the case!)
    - rayiner 13y ago
      First, "feminism" is too broad of a concept to apply in this context. The subset of "feminism" you're probably talking about, a counter-culture push back against gendered socialization, never got much traction to begin with and is certainly not more prevalent today than it was say in the 1960's and 1970's. The mainstream of modern feminism embraces gendered socialization, and indeed there is a major contingent of modern "feminists" that are quite reactionary (extolling the virtues of stay at home motherhood). Moreover, birthing and medical trends have also gone backwards. For example, formula feeding, which unshackles mothers and allows fathers to assume the primary role in feeding infants, has been on the decline since the 1970's. In 1972, only 22% of women breastfed in the U.S., by 1995 it was back over 60%. We're still limping towards gender equality, but "feminism" as it used to exist is quite dead. Second, it's ridiculous to think that "half a century of counter-culture" would do anything to impact a sociological phenomenon that has roots in human society dating back hundreds if not thousands of years. Girls are given dolls to play with because the historical role of women has been primary caregivers to children. That was true a thousand years ago, and it's less true but still very true today. In the 2000's, almost 25% of families with children under 15 had stay at home moms, and out of the families where both spouses worked, the mother was the primary caregiver in 70%+ of cases. This sociological fact is reflected in the market. Household products are still marketed to women, and unsurprisingly, so are dolls marketed to girls.
- octo_t 13y ago
  Adult human beings are not rational actors, why on earth would you expect prepubescent children to be? the age group that is most targeted by advertising (because they're the most impressionable).
- lclarkmichalek 13y ago
  That argument kind of ignores marketing. If I spend several million (probably billions cumulatively at this point) telling people that product X should be associated with characteristic Y which is traditionally assigned more to one gender than another, then I'm likely to be modifying the market to an extent that you cannot truthfully say that market dynamics provide a reason for the disparity that will emerge.
  - crusso 13y ago
    I'd be willing to bet that you don't have at least 2 non-twin children. They want what they want. They have desires to be boys, girls, rough, quiet, loud, masculine, feminine, etc. all without (and often in spite of) being influenced to the contrary. Advertising just showcases things that they already mostly want. It doesn't completely change their desires.
    - chalst 13y ago
      You moved the goalposts there a little: why the "completely" in "It doesn't completely change their desires"? What children want is influenced by what their peers want, and what peer groups find desirable is influenced, among other things, by merchandising-related children's TV programming. When I was young, there was far less difference between boys toys and girls toys than there is now.
      - booyaa00 13y ago
        Woah there. Even when a child is 1 or 2, they start to exhibit the traits that show what they want. Way before they have any peer group, before they can be advertised at etc etc. Girls want to care for things, communicate, etc, and boys want to blow stuff up or build stuff. It's preprogrammed into our DNA.
        AlexandrB 13y ago
        Whoa. Programmed into our DNA, that's a pretty extraordinary claim. Consider feral children: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_children#Reality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_children#Reality http://planetark.org/wen/53118 http://planetark.org/wen/53118 > "When carers leave the room, the girl jumps at the door and barks," the police said. An extreme example I admit, but if it's preprogrammed into out DNA shouldn't she be "caring for things" instead?
- mdisraeli 13y ago
  Children have no buying power. Parents and guardians actually perform the purchasing, and will only buy items that they consider acceptable. This is governed not just by their own personal values and media consumption, but importantly by the views of their family, friends and peers. Children themselves are not immune to peer pressure, especially as they get older. They also want to meet the expectations of their parents and guardians. They too consume media, and like all of us make decisions based on both what they are told to want, and what they are told it is acceptable to want
  - knowitall 13y ago
    I suspect most parents hate pink, though - they just give in to the wishes of their daughters.
    - rmc 13y ago
      But very definitely not give into the wishes of their sons who want pink. Parents apply pressure too.
      - knowitall 13y ago
        True :-) More people seem to be concerned about girls liking pink than about boys not liking pink, though.
        rmc 13y ago
        Boys will physically assault boys who like pink. It'd say that counts as "people concerned that boys don't display their liking of pink".
        knowitall 13y ago
        Hm, is that a general rule? My son is not yet in school, so I don't know what it is like these days. Also "like pink" is different from owning the occasional pink thing. I suppose a boy who would dress exclusively in pink would stand out, and maybe the bullies would try to cut him down. Still, I suspect it is not a large scale problem - obviously I don't condone the actions of such bullies, I mean there are probably not that many boys who would prefer to dress all in pink. (I didn't research that, though - in any case everybody should be allowed to like/wear whatever they want).
- runarberg 13y ago
  According to your theory --of children as free thinkers whose actions represent their own 'free will'-- doesn't account for why advertizement works. If it were true, nobody would spend money on advertizement because everybody's actions is fully controlled by rational thinkers. Nor does your theory account for insanity or stupidity (why do something stupid if you have full control of your actions?) In fact your theory implies that children somehow are agents not affected by outside stimuli. Which would make them unique in nature. Your theory in fact is by far more unbelievable then any theory of the powers of marketing.
  - bcoates 13y ago
    Advertising can perform a signalling function without anybody involved being irrational.
    - runarberg 13y ago
      Doesn't falsify my point. If everybody was rational, then no advertising would perform signalling function if it wouldn't serve to maximize our utility.
- rmc 13y ago
  Society was able to convince millions of LGBT people to suppress some pretty fundamental desired and wishes. It takes a lot of strength to overcome it, many people used to just kill themselves instead. And you think children are stronger than that when it comes to toys?
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  Barbies are fun. But that's not the point. Marketing is about identity at least as much as it is about the product. You look at beer adverts, how many of them directly bear on the beer? http://youtu.be/MX145Tu4MHY http://youtu.be/MX145Tu4MHY That could be any beer, or a magic potion, you know nothing about it. Or shower gel http://youtu.be/DVm00UBdS0Y http://youtu.be/DVm00UBdS0Y Or cars http://youtu.be/ox_uDBrkp-M http://youtu.be/ox_uDBrkp-M "You can have this car, and everything that goes with it." "Now you can drive the story." There's certainly an element of information there, at least when you start getting onto companies that have an advantage in a technical area. But often, you're being sold a role: Buy this and you'll get women, wealth, etc. When I was a girl, and still to an extent now I'm older, I wanted the things I was told I was going to like, and which it was expected that I was going to. You look at something and you see someone like you, or with some aspect of life that you want to have. A lot of the pitch towards us isn't dolls, it's friendship, or fashion, or something like that - broadly speaking, group identity. The problem is you don't see the comparisons. If there aren't people like you being forwarded as enjoying and having fun with something, you may never try it, and even if you do the chances are that few people like you will, so you lose a lot of the social enjoyment that goes along with a thing. Of course you're right. If girls all really hated barbies, we probably wouldn't have played with them - though I've no doubt some of us would have out of a desire to fit in. But that's not really the point. The question is how closely that approaches optimal; the most enjoyment that we could have got from a range of options, only a narrow range of which are promoted to us and will allow us to still be accepted by our friends who have also had these identities sold to them.
  - numeromancer 13y ago
    Barbies are fun. [Citation needed] /Manly man
- alex_c 13y ago
  Counter-example: can you honestly say that you have never, not once in your life, paused to consider whether an item (a jacket, an accessory, sunglasses, whatever) is for males or females before deciding to buy it?
crntaylor 13y ago
I like the article. I think it's well written, an important subject, and the world would be better if more people read it and digested its message. I still wish it didn't repeat the myth that Coca-Cola invented the modern image of Santa Clause, though. http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp
- dasil003 13y ago
  I think Tim Allen invented the Santa Clause.
- chongli 13y ago
  No, it didn't invent the image but it popularized this one particular incarnation out of the many that existed.
- joshguthrie 13y ago
  You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!
xmonkee 13y ago
I dunno if it's just me, but I usually skip an article that starts with something like "Four-year-old Riley Maida stands in a toy aisle of a department ...." and then there's a mile of scrolling to do. At least tell me what your central thesis is going to be if you're asking me to invest so much time and emotion into a story.
- Ambrosia 13y ago
  Try reading the header
- rmk2 13y ago
  The underlying thesis is literally expressed in the subtitle, even above the beginning of the article: > Unraveling the story behind the stereotype of video games being for boys. This tells you that there exists a stereotype. This stereotype suggests that video games are for boys. It also suggests that an unravelling is intended, i.e. a disentanglement of multiple connected strands related to the persistence of a stereotype. Furthermore, calling something a stereotype outside psychological research suggests that something is regarded as "a preconceived and oversimplified idea of the characteristics which typify a person, situation, etc." (as defined by the OED). This suggests a thesis that a) disagrees with the premise that video games are, indeed, only for boys b) will try to portray how this stereotype came into existence, i.e. it will try to trace its genesis.
  - xmonkee 13y ago
    Thanks for all the condescension. That a gender stereotype exists in gaming is hardly new information. I would've liked something like "Shaky marketing in the 80's helped establish the current stereotype" and then I would've known that the article presents arguments to support this.
- galaktor 13y ago
  I tried to squeeze the subtitle into the title of this post, too - but it didn't fit so I just left the main title there, assuming one could simply read the subtitle on the main site...
hownottowrite 13y ago
In 1983, North America experienced a massive recession in the video game industry, now known as the video game crash. The crash had devastating effects, bankrupting game company after game company. At its peak, the revenues for video games in the U.S. sat at $3.2 billion in 1983. By 1985, revenues fell a whopping 97 percent to approximately $100 million. There are many factors behind the crash. The key factor is that by 1983, the video game market was saturated with low-quality games, which resulted in a loss of consumer confidence. Anyone who could make a game was making a game, and there was little to no regulation on the part of the console makers. Players got burnt. Retailers got burnt. People stopped buying video games. The crash marked what many believed to be the end of the video game industry. Sounds like today's "casual gaming" market.
- nwh 13y ago
  More than that, it's things like "free to play" also sucking the will out of the consumer.
- Fomite 13y ago
  That was my thought exactly.
- Jare 13y ago
  Appearances can deceive. The current casual gaming market is also flooded with fantastic games, and with games that, despite being accused of low quality under certain criteria, have millions of fans and regular players that love them. There's a great game waiting for anyone who may want to play something. Low prices, Steam/etc sales, and free-to-play games mean that getting the wrong game is not painful to the consumer, and remove the problem where consumers stop buying games. The games industry (including casual and hardcore) has many problems and pitfalls for individual studios or teams. But in terms of market size, it is pretty healthy and likely to stay that way.
- anonymousab 13y ago
  The crucial bit is that the public had almost no way of knowing if a game was even playable before buying. Complete opposite today, except for people who preorder every big name game and are likely satisfied regardless. I can see some resemblance in the freemium market - consumer awareness and protections have not caught up with how bad everyone is getting gypped.
spindritf 13y ago
Is there any non-anecdotal evidence that marketing has anywhere near the power this article ascribes to it? I hear this a lot lately. Some people believe that media have an almost magical power of shaping culture and behaviours. Beauty? Cosmo propaganda. Boys liking different toys than girls? Marketing. Yet when you dig a little deeper, studies on priming usually get wee p-values and barely significant, temporary changes in behaviour, if any. And when they do show something more, they're impossible to replicate, or straight-up fraud. I don't buy it.
- tomp 13y ago
  I remember all the fear mongering about violence in computer games (especially first-person shooters). Now, there is a whole generation of 20-somethings that grew up staring at the screen and shooting people and monsters, and crime rates have not gone up (in fact, they are falling IIRC). Accordingly, I don't think marketing can change our desires and behaviour. Sure, it can change what we buy through brand-perception, but the desire to buy must already be there (e.g. we want shiny rare objects -> we buy diamonds (due to marketing)).
  - samastur 13y ago
    Your example may be a proof that violence in games does not cause violence in person, but it isn't a proof that it has no effect. In essence I may be fearful of the wrong scenario, but that isn't the same as me not having a good reason to fear. Personally I think opulence of violence in media makes us number when confronted with images or stories of real violence then we would be otherwise.
  - ajitk 13y ago
    Don't ads create false memories[1] and consequently our behavior? [1] http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/ads-implant-false-memories/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/ads-implant-false-...
    - pit 13y ago
      > We steal our stories from everywhere. Marketers, it turns out, are just really good at giving us stories we want to steal. What's interesting about this is that marketers are now stealing stories from consumers and selling them right back, either by monitoring our behavior (both on- and off-line) or direct solicitation. "Tweet your favorite Dunkin' Donuts memory with #DunkinMemories!" There are even promotions that encourage consumers to write and produce their own commercials for a product -- there was one a while back where the winning ad was shown during the Super Bowl.
znt 13y ago
White font on bright pink background is not a pleasant combination. Maybe use paler colours next time?
- watty 13y ago
  Are you a designer (serious question)?
knowitall 13y ago
While I think the history of marketing of games is interesting, to be honest to me this read like "bla bla bla... Video games were heavily marketed as products for men, and the message was clear: No girls allowed.... bla bla bla" Meaning the conclusion "no girls allowed" is just randomly inserted somewhere in the middle of a wall of text. Just because boys and men were identified as a large audience and targeted with marketing does not imply that girls are not allowed. Nobody is forcing you to choose either aisle in the toy shop. Just the other day I bought a playmobil horse for my son that came in a pink box. Whatever... What exactly do they mean by girls not allowed? Girls are not allowed to play first person shooters? How would such a rule even be enforced? Or the right games are not being made for girls, then there would be more female gamers? I think whoever believes that should go out and make those games. Put their money where their mouth is. Never mind that there are already lots of games that are being played by lots of girls/women. "No girls allowed" simply has no foundation in reality whatsoever.
- dsirijus 13y ago
  To my eyes, they're trying to bring attention to a non-existant problem (that has been solved pretty darned well with casual games ages ago) to increase readership on a pretty flamey topic, together with their twitter buddies. I believe there are very fundamental differences between males and females and that the optimal game design would target very specifically those differences (or at least be very aware of them), unless the core of the design is the actual male-female dynamic or ecosystem. It is also more optimal to target one or the other because of the ad networks in today's world.
  - knowitall 13y ago
    Psst, you are not allowed to say that :-) I don't know - there certainly are women who play "hardcore games". The more I think about it, the less understand what the problem is? For whatever reason, women seem to play less hardcore games. OK - but what is their problem? Do they think women unfairly miss out on all the fun? Then why don't they just tell women "hey, there is this thing called games, it's fun, try it" instead of whining that society made them miss out? Or do they complain that the wrong games are being made - which would be rather weird, because people are apparently buying these games. Or in other words, to me it seems a bit like saying "I would really like spinach, if spinach would taste like chocolate". Yeah, but spinach doesn't taste like chocolate, if you want chocolate, eat chocolate, but leave people who like spinach to their spinach. No need to convert all spinach to chocolate.
kyberias 13y ago
Very difficult page to read due to ugly color combinations. White on pink, next white on green. It literally hurts my eyes.
- watty 13y ago
  It sounds like you have some eye issues or perhaps it's just aging. Try readability, it's great for older folks. You should avoid magazines though, they often have similar designs yet lack a real world "readability" :) http://www.readability.com/ http://www.readability.com/
  - gabemart 13y ago
    A color combination that works for a printed page may not work well for a luminescent display due to the inherent superiority of printed material in terms of readability and eye comfort. I don't have any eye issues and am not in the "older folks" demo. I still found the page annoying to read.
  - kyberias 13y ago
    To be honest, you may be right, although I'm not that old. ;) Quit with the downvotes, people.
knowitall 13y ago
My first girl-friend threatened to leave me in case I bought a game boy. It's not just stereotypes from the media, it's also an experience that lots of men have made in their lives. But that doesn't mean we don't like the idea of women playing games. Quite the opposite. I still remember the first time I saw a woman wearing an Atari T-Shirt. I could hardly believe my eyes... Turns out by then Atari didn't really exist anymore and was being rebranded by whoever bought the Trademark, but still (I was attracted, but I didn't talk to her, so no further story to that). It's just that it feels like a waste of time trying to get women interested in games. If they want to play, fine, but why try to make them? (Speaking from the consumer perspective - game makers of course have different incentives). Next week I plan to have a C64 revival party. I will invite women, curious to see how many of them will also play... My advice for women interested in computer games: just do it/try it. Don't waste time wondering if you are allowed to do it.
- xerophtye 13y ago
  Yep, gamer girls = supremely attractive! I always get jealous of gamer couples i encounter on real life and online. My own gf is a hardcode mobile gamer (there hasnt been a single app game that i can beat her at. and i have been gaming all my life!) But i wish she'd try the more complex games... like FPS or top-down strategy or atleast LoL!!
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - antimagic 13y ago
    Tower defence games are the gateway drug to top down strategy games. Just sayin'.
  - berrypicker 13y ago
    "Girl gamers" are well-known on the Internet for being some of the most obnoxiously annoying people on the planet.
    - 13y ago
milliams 13y ago
No GirlS... we're allowed one.
thejteam 13y ago
Okay, so girls get princesses and My Little Pony. Now listen to what they do with them. My 3 year old is in the next room playing playing with her My Little Pony dolls right now. Story lines more complex than the typical evening sitcom. Action and violence. Shouting and passion. They are learning story telling and narrative. And the narrative is not all tea parties. If the toys do not inherently give them plots and conflicts, they will build it up for themselves.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
I thought the more important point was how much these differences were in the eye of the beholder rather than actual objective facts. For example, the various farm sim, candy crush, peggle, word game, social things that many "non-gamer" women in my life seem obsessed by get quietly excluded from discussions about games and gamers because they don't fit the stereotype. Similarly, Barbie is a "doll", she lives in a "doll house", and boys don't play with dolls or doll houses. No, the small minature people my son plays with are action figures and have "bases", or are "knights" and have "castles", or are lego people, who do have houses (though usually of fairly avant-garde design). Could you explain to a martian why these are supposedly such different activities that were encoded for back in the hunter-gatherer days?
- PeterisP 13y ago
  Hah. My kid (3yo boy) got strange questions about going to kindergarten with a baby-doll in a pram - but that's just naturally "following male role models", doing as the father does pushing his little sister around. I mean, in an entirely sexist manner, men should be the ones primarily pushing baby carriages because, say, pushing them through snow-covered sidewalks at any reasonable distance requires physical effort that's simply too tiring for most women, especially soon after childbirth or cesarean. (If you drive everywhere like in much of USA, then it might be different). And the current modern society expects grown men to do so... but the same society doesn't expect little boys to play the same role. How does it make any sense?
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    >men should be the ones primarily pushing baby carriages because // Use a baby-sling. They use far less resources to make, far far less. They can aid the child in learning to talk quicker (face-to-face position). They're easy to take anywhere you can walk. They pack down almost to pocket-size. [Though no-one ever held a door open for me like they do for pram/stroller users]. Both our boys imitated carrying children in slings. They also both loved playing with toy push-chairs when they were available to them but they did so in a distinctly different manner to other kids, they never bothered with having "passengers" on theirs. Soon after birth or a caesarean a woman should be resting, not pushing a buggy around just as anyone should be resting after a massive pelvic dislocation or abdominal surgery.
analog31 13y ago
I wonder if it's a simple market differentiation factor, like why there are 100 different kinds of breakfast cereal. Creating two immiscible classes of toys effectively doubles the variety, and the floor space devoted to toys in stores. It makes hand-me-downs less appealing if you've got one kid of each kind. That factor alone would create a noticeable sales bump for toy stores, even if the differences were totally arbitrary. But the differences have to be strong enough so that the toys of each sex invoke the yuck response in the other sex.
jccalhoun 13y ago
If you look at the early atari 2600 commercials it is clear they were just throwing stuff at the wall with no clear audience in mind. One that sticks out in my mind features a "Valley Girl" that is so stereotypical it is hard to tell if it was supposed to be a parody or not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ze1neVziE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ze1neVziE
- dsirijus 13y ago
  Oh, you'll love this one then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufYYOXiEtxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufYYOXiEtxM
LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
This is idiocy beyond comprehension. Why not to complain that there aren't as many dresses or boys in department stores. Maybe sue them to, huh?
- normloman 13y ago
  Nobody's complaining in this article, and nobody's suing anybody. It's just an article about video game marketing. Why do you feel threatened?
  - LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
    All this Political Correctness BS is a threat. We have to deal with Al-Quaida and others who want to destroy our Western Civilization from outside and then we have Leftists who do all they can to destroy it from inside. Boys are usually more interested in computers. Males are more inclined to manipulate things (manipulate like in play, try to understand how they work, etc.) and relations that have to do with things. Females are more inclined to manipulate people (manipulate like in play, try to understand how they work, etc) and relations that have to do with people. And no, I don't have a scientific research to "prove" that. It's an observation that derives from common sense. Ever noticed how women enjoy watching soap operas, but don't give a damn about a football game? Ever notice how men enjoy watching football game, but don't give a damn about a soap opera? Because what men see in a football game that women don't is: strategy, tactics, manipulations, doing everything to win the game. Females don't see that there. They just see a bunch of brutes running around trying to get hold of a some stupid ball. But women can definitely appreciate a soap opera. Because there they will see: strategy, tactics, manipulations, doing everything to win the game. Males don't see it there. Because this is not about things. It's about people and their relations. They are blind to that as females are blind to see interactions among objects. Males just see there a bunch of crazy people dramatizing. Now, to expect this little girl not to play with dolls to mimic social interactions but to play with objects is BS. And pure Politicall Correctness. And that's a threat. I don't need my daughter to waste her life trying to compete in a game where males have natural advantage in their DNA. I'd rather have her spend her time analyzing people. Not objects. That's all common sense dude. I'm threatened by you spreading enemy propaganda in my country. What about that? Go and teach that in Russia. Mess up their country. Not our own.
bryanlarsen 13y ago
As a parent of two pre-school girls, this is a concern of mine. But in some ways I think this issue is worse for boys than girls. Girls are "allowed" (but not encouraged) to shop from the boys section. My daughters have and use some boys' clothing, toys, furniture, etc. But a boy wearing pink clothes or dancing or playing with dolls is setting himself up for extended teasing.
- dsirijus 13y ago
  I was in a heated debate about this few nights ago and a drunken conclusion was that Tesla was right and women are due to dominate pretty soon. Amongst the terms in the winning argument lines were, in no particular order: trousers, Candy Crush Saga, online marketing, e-commerce, uterus, toys, hipsters, self-modification. Biker dudes will be a museum exhibit in 50 years. All arguments fall flat on its face if we're due severe population cut due to war, disease, whatever.
- aestra 13y ago
  This is annoying. If anything because "too girly" boys can't use it anymore too. For example, the formally boys names of Alexis and Evelyn. Girls started to outnumber boys with that name and suddenly you couldn't give your boy a "girl's name."
- romanovcode 13y ago
  >As the daughter of two pre-school girls.. Wait, what? ))
  - bryanlarsen 13y ago
    Fixed. thanks.
- dsego 13y ago
  Surely, you meant father? I think it's all in the environment. Me and my brother as kids used to play with a lot of girls. And after a while we asked our parents to buy us barbie dolls, and they did. Some of our parents' friends were a bit concerned that we were playing with girl toys, but they soon got used to it, and this was the early 90s in a more conservative country. But we also had wooden pistols and rifles and ran around the village "playing war" with other boys.
probably_wrong 13y ago
Sorry about the off-topic: does anyone knows whether the caricatures that illustrate the article belong to a concrete category and/or are associated with a particular style? I'd really like to read more about it, but the books I've found about cartooning are very different from this style.
- gk1 13y ago
  It can be called illustration or cartoon illustration. "Cartooning" alone usually refers to strip comics, gag cartoons, or political cartoons. I'm not aware of a more specific term for this style.
6cxs2hd6 13y ago
Although the site looks snazzy, it's annoying that page-down goes one line too far. Page-down. Huh? Oh. Line-up. Ah. Page-down. Huh? Oh. Line-up. Ah. . . . Frustrating reading experience that distracts from the message.
- dsirijus 13y ago
  For me, it was annoying in a general sense (can't pin-point it). I was going to article and out of it 3 times. trying to read it / gah, can't / but there's interesting comments on hn about it / trying to read it / dammit! / it's being upvoted almost to #1 / ok, ok. i'll go through exruciating pain of reading it / it wasn't worth a read anyway
xradionut 13y ago
I'm not seeing the big issue being raised here. I think much of how a child turns out in life depends on their parents. My wife likes pink, but she's also better at repairing cars, playing video games, repairing smart phones and target shooting than myself. She would be an awesome programmer or system admin, but likes project management and people more than I do. She is the one in her family that bought the gaming consoles starting with the NES.
jheriko 13y ago
i am a liberal fan of freedom and equal rights - within reason. i applaud the sentiment but this is just one of many symptoms of 'women don't like taking risks and don't like stem fields' whats more i like to think that women are allowed that freedom of choice - so its a double edged sword. the side effects suck but these scenarios /come from/ freedom and equal opportunities for women. why is nobody looking at cultures which are oppressive to women or have lower quality of life as counter examples? not only do they not have this kind of marketing... but actually more women enter stem fields and do 'male' traditional roles out of necessity or societal pressure. its a horribly complicated problem. extra sad that i can't make a 'sexist' joke here as a punchline for fear of reprisal...
- normloman 13y ago
  Did you even read the article? This has nothing to do with women entering stem fields. It's about how video game marketers exclude women from their target demographic. Poor guy can't even be sexist. Boo hoo.
  - jheriko 13y ago
    Yes, I read it in its entirety. The key point it seems to make is that men made games for men and the marketers cottoned on to the trend and ran with it - this is precisely to do with women not entering stem fields (computer games development). Also, since we are picking faults its about /why/ they are excluded. Its pretty damned obvious how it happens... ... and yes it is a shame that I can't make a joke about women complicating things. They do, its measurable, its funny, its not sexist unless you somehow assume that men are exempt from the same criticism, which they are not.
Pxtl 13y ago
That was really freaking long. I can't help but notice the recurring theme that the actual game designers are trying to make fun gender-neutral products but the marketing and leadership is the source of misogyny. I mean, when they start talking about the PS1 era their examples are WipeOut (the only "gendered" thing in the game is the announcer) Tomb Raider (Croft has somewhat absurd proportions but she's a far cry from the kind of exploitative stuff you see in the Dead or Alive games and whatnot) and Gran Turismo (masculine only by the technicality that it's about cars). I'm a guy, so this is obviously a "check my privilege" thing, but I feel like the misogyny of the gaming industry (and geek culture at large) didn't really take hold until console gaming went online and the collective sea of poop-throwing 4channers got their he-man-woman-haters club into games. The games were targeted at boys well before then, and the themes got heavily masculine in the mid-'90s with the FPS revolution... but the active You Are Not Welcome thing seemed to take hold later. I mean, obviously geek culture was a bit unsettling for women before then because the combined awkward sexual frustration of a zillion nerds isn't exactly comfortable to be around, but I don't think the outright hatred of women had taken hold. It seems like the door was open... not so much, anymore.
- alex_c 13y ago
  Funny, I don't think of it as misogyny as much as wasted potential in the industry. I greatly enjoy many of the male-targeted games today and have zero interest in a game like The Sims, but looking back I realize that many of my all-time favorites were fairly gender neutral. This wasn't because of any political correctness or some great social mission as much as simply games that were made to be fun without targeting to a specific demographic. Thankfully, the PC indie game market seems to be recapturing much of that lost innocence in the industry (partly due to lack of marketing budgets which means they have to focus on the game being fun, first and foremost). I find myself playing a lot more indie games than AAA titles lately.
- johnbm 13y ago
  What articles like this completely ignore is that toy stores are not divided into a blue boy's section and a pink girl's section. There's the "girl's section", and then there's "everything else". They are taking the fact that some things are marketed explicitly to women as evidence that everything else is marketed to men. It's absurd, but that's feminist navelgazing for you. Same reason they blame men for women's beauty standards, even though it's women and women's magazines who enforce them. Things marketed to women by women as being for women. And then something like Goldieblox comes around that's like shitty pink meccano with dumb girlie stories attached to each box set, and behold! It's somehow going to set girls free of the pink tyranny... by being stereotypically aimed at girls. Or you could just buy them ordinary gender-neutral LEGO. The one that boys and girls alike can enjoy.
scardine 13y ago
The text is too long, but I really enjoy the cartoons from David Saracino. http://davidsaracinoart.com/ http://davidsaracinoart.com/
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
tsax 13y ago
The Nurture Assumption -> http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised/dp/1439101655 http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revise...
Pxtl 13y ago
Brevity.
cameldrv 13y ago
Thank god. Video game addiction is destroying an entire generation of boys. We see the results in declining male college enrollment and graduation. Games have been tweaked and adjusted until they have become electronic cocaine, and the result is that boys spend virtually their entire time at home playing them. The last thing we need is for the girls to go the same way.
numeromancer 13y ago
I, for one, look forward to the glorious day when all children are grown in vats and reared in communal nurseries by hermaphrodites, so girls will never have to be subjected to the horrible sight of a mother nestling her baby, which unjustly conditions them to prefer baby dolls to Tonka trucks.
C1D 13y ago
It was a very interesting and eye-opening article though I don't think we can wholly blame this on the marketing of video games. I have a sister who has never liked video games and instead spent her time with dolls even though me and my brother had always tried to get her into video games. I remember when we got our first Tamagotchies. My sister fried her's by sticking it in a bucket of water. When we got her another one she used it for a few seconds and then played with her dolls. I think -as seen in a article recently posted- that since boys brains are wired differently we are into different things and that is natural. Also there isn't anything stopping girls from playing video games. To be honest I think a girl that plays video games is more attractive and I bet most men would. NOTE: I am in no way saying "toys" are limited to boys or trying to imply anything sexist but what I am saying is that the division of boy toys and girl toys isn't wholly because of marketing.
pistle 13y ago
They get the 80's crash analysis all wrong. There was never a demand implosion due to uncertainty of quality. These were 8 bit sprites. Crap was standard. Crap was good. All 8-bit console games look low quality compared to the first 8-bit computer games. We still bought. Something way more important was the first widely-available consumer 8-bit computers. Compare Atari 2600 Pac-man to Atari 400 Pac-man... and that's not the Atari XL line. No consideration of a sudden shift in early adopters to Atari XL and Commodore 64 computers?? What year did those drop 82-83? The games for those PC-precursors were 1) way better and 2) pirate's booty. The abilities of those machines moved beyond what could be packed into consoles and the margins seemed higher. The price for a game went to free. That meant you could buy second floppy drives, 300 baud modems, dot matrix printers (24 pins FTW!) instead of games. Computer clubs were not uncommon and literal swap meets of 5.5" floppies. Early modems gained access to BBS's and created cornucopias of free software - legit and not. They should also review Master's of Doom and get insight into the personalities behind the seminal FPS. There were no marketers outside of the dev team there. They were making something they loved to play and they loved the thrill/hilarity of over-the-top power and gross-out humor. If you want to empower or blame the feedback loop of marketing driving development, you shouldn't ignore all the history prior to the present-day machine. Thank goodness they are writing an article which confirms that the world is changing because women aren't sitting quietly by, letting history be written by loud-mouthed men any more. But it's an awkward dance to read trying to fill enough space to provide ample vertical scrolling to get a sense for why it took so many people to construct the page...
etler 13y ago
Outside the fps genre are video games really that gender based? Pretty much every Nintendo game is enjoyable by boys and girls. Many ubisoft games are gender agnostic, all puzzle games are. I'm not a big fps guy so looking at my personal library, almost all my games are gender neutral.
mankypro 13y ago
There's a reason most boys gravitate towards guns, monster trucks and blow-em-ups. There's a reason why most girls gravitate towards dolls, ponies and puppy dogs. It's called evolution aka 200,000 years of it. Many iterations, regression testing etc. Put quite simply, it works for the propagation of the species. You can argue all you want with 200k years of evolution and or civilization, isn't going to change a thing. We are first and foremost made to procreate and natural systems are all about efficiencies - White Knights and Jezebels notwithstanding.
memracom 13y ago
For the first several years of her life, I would not buy anything pink for my daughter. Her baby clothes were white and yellow and powder blue ( a great color for a red headed girl with blue eyes). Then when she got older it became harder to avoid pink in new clothes shops, so we went to second hand shops instead and found wonderful things like a dark purple dress with a metallic green waistband. We also always check the boys section for clothes that are not blatant marketing stuff and buy a few items for her, mostly darker colors.
- DanBC 13y ago
  There's a niche in the market for gender neutral clothing with positive messages. "HERE COMES TROUBLE" or "DADDY'S LITTLE PRINCESS" are sub-optimal.
johngalt 13y ago
These articles always walk a very fine line between opposing views. How do you simultaneously claim that pink dolls are marketed to girls and that's bad. Then also claim that there are no video games that have pink dolls, so therefore girls are excluded. As a father, I worry that if we 'encourage' our girls too much to discard girly pink things, they might receive the message that girly things are inherently worse. It's perfectly ok to ensure your kid isn't forced into some role because of their gender, but be careful not to preclude/deride things they may genuinely desire. Don't be worried about attending a tea party with your girls. The 'message it sends' is that you care enough to play what they want.

No Girls Allowed

199 points by galaktor 13y ago

romanovcode 13y ago

Not another one of these posts..

steveklabnik 13y ago
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
adamors 13y ago
You're right, we need more posts about Bitcoin and Something.js.
alex_c 13y ago
It's actually not. This one was a good article.

k_os 13y ago

I myself believe in market dynamics. If girls were interested in what boys had they'd pursue it. If girls hated barbies they would nag parents about getting a train or a car and market demand for barbies would dry up. The fact that toy dolls are a billion dollar industry should make one sceptical about the supposed 'girliness that society instills in girls'. I find that premise as silly as thinking boys were somehow 'indoctrinated' into liking computers.

rayiner 13y ago
We have a house full of Disney princess stuff for our one year old. It will probably still be true when she's 5 and can actually influence our purchasing choices. But what will the "market dynamics" tell you about her preferences, other than they are stable once we established them? Anyone who still believes in a simplistic rational actor desperately needs to read the work that's been done on behavioral economics. Dan Ariely's work is an approachable way to start. He hasn't tackled socialization yet, but it still gives you an idea of how human actors don't resemble the platonic ideal at all.
- k_os 13y ago
  I believe feminism is most prevalent today than it ever was in history, are there any statistics showing that girl toy sales have declined? From a quick search i find this : http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mattel-net-falls-24-as-barbie-sales-decline-2013-07-17 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mattel-net-falls-24-as-barb... Barbie sales declining but American Girl is up 14%. You'd think that half a century of counter-culture would almost drive to the ground gender specific toy manufacturers.
  - mdisraeli 13y ago
    Surely you're just ignoring the other possibility - that increasingly gendered marketing is helping to drive feminism (which, from the people I know, does look to be the case!)
  - rayiner 13y ago
    First, "feminism" is too broad of a concept to apply in this context. The subset of "feminism" you're probably talking about, a counter-culture push back against gendered socialization, never got much traction to begin with and is certainly not more prevalent today than it was say in the 1960's and 1970's. The mainstream of modern feminism embraces gendered socialization, and indeed there is a major contingent of modern "feminists" that are quite reactionary (extolling the virtues of stay at home motherhood). Moreover, birthing and medical trends have also gone backwards. For example, formula feeding, which unshackles mothers and allows fathers to assume the primary role in feeding infants, has been on the decline since the 1970's. In 1972, only 22% of women breastfed in the U.S., by 1995 it was back over 60%. We're still limping towards gender equality, but "feminism" as it used to exist is quite dead. Second, it's ridiculous to think that "half a century of counter-culture" would do anything to impact a sociological phenomenon that has roots in human society dating back hundreds if not thousands of years. Girls are given dolls to play with because the historical role of women has been primary caregivers to children. That was true a thousand years ago, and it's less true but still very true today. In the 2000's, almost 25% of families with children under 15 had stay at home moms, and out of the families where both spouses worked, the mother was the primary caregiver in 70%+ of cases. This sociological fact is reflected in the market. Household products are still marketed to women, and unsurprisingly, so are dolls marketed to girls.
octo_t 13y ago
Adult human beings are not rational actors, why on earth would you expect prepubescent children to be? the age group that is most targeted by advertising (because they're the most impressionable).
lclarkmichalek 13y ago
That argument kind of ignores marketing. If I spend several million (probably billions cumulatively at this point) telling people that product X should be associated with characteristic Y which is traditionally assigned more to one gender than another, then I'm likely to be modifying the market to an extent that you cannot truthfully say that market dynamics provide a reason for the disparity that will emerge.
- crusso 13y ago
  I'd be willing to bet that you don't have at least 2 non-twin children. They want what they want. They have desires to be boys, girls, rough, quiet, loud, masculine, feminine, etc. all without (and often in spite of) being influenced to the contrary. Advertising just showcases things that they already mostly want. It doesn't completely change their desires.
  - chalst 13y ago
    You moved the goalposts there a little: why the "completely" in "It doesn't completely change their desires"? What children want is influenced by what their peers want, and what peer groups find desirable is influenced, among other things, by merchandising-related children's TV programming. When I was young, there was far less difference between boys toys and girls toys than there is now.
    - booyaa00 13y ago
      Woah there. Even when a child is 1 or 2, they start to exhibit the traits that show what they want. Way before they have any peer group, before they can be advertised at etc etc. Girls want to care for things, communicate, etc, and boys want to blow stuff up or build stuff. It's preprogrammed into our DNA.
      - AlexandrB 13y ago
        Whoa. Programmed into our DNA, that's a pretty extraordinary claim. Consider feral children: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_children#Reality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_children#Reality http://planetark.org/wen/53118 http://planetark.org/wen/53118 > "When carers leave the room, the girl jumps at the door and barks," the police said. An extreme example I admit, but if it's preprogrammed into out DNA shouldn't she be "caring for things" instead?
mdisraeli 13y ago
Children have no buying power. Parents and guardians actually perform the purchasing, and will only buy items that they consider acceptable. This is governed not just by their own personal values and media consumption, but importantly by the views of their family, friends and peers. Children themselves are not immune to peer pressure, especially as they get older. They also want to meet the expectations of their parents and guardians. They too consume media, and like all of us make decisions based on both what they are told to want, and what they are told it is acceptable to want
- knowitall 13y ago
  I suspect most parents hate pink, though - they just give in to the wishes of their daughters.
  - rmc 13y ago
    But very definitely not give into the wishes of their sons who want pink. Parents apply pressure too.
    - knowitall 13y ago
      True :-) More people seem to be concerned about girls liking pink than about boys not liking pink, though.
      - rmc 13y ago
        Boys will physically assault boys who like pink. It'd say that counts as "people concerned that boys don't display their liking of pink".
        knowitall 13y ago
        Hm, is that a general rule? My son is not yet in school, so I don't know what it is like these days. Also "like pink" is different from owning the occasional pink thing. I suppose a boy who would dress exclusively in pink would stand out, and maybe the bullies would try to cut him down. Still, I suspect it is not a large scale problem - obviously I don't condone the actions of such bullies, I mean there are probably not that many boys who would prefer to dress all in pink. (I didn't research that, though - in any case everybody should be allowed to like/wear whatever they want).
runarberg 13y ago
According to your theory --of children as free thinkers whose actions represent their own 'free will'-- doesn't account for why advertizement works. If it were true, nobody would spend money on advertizement because everybody's actions is fully controlled by rational thinkers. Nor does your theory account for insanity or stupidity (why do something stupid if you have full control of your actions?) In fact your theory implies that children somehow are agents not affected by outside stimuli. Which would make them unique in nature. Your theory in fact is by far more unbelievable then any theory of the powers of marketing.
- bcoates 13y ago
  Advertising can perform a signalling function without anybody involved being irrational.
  - runarberg 13y ago
    Doesn't falsify my point. If everybody was rational, then no advertising would perform signalling function if it wouldn't serve to maximize our utility.
rmc 13y ago
Society was able to convince millions of LGBT people to suppress some pretty fundamental desired and wishes. It takes a lot of strength to overcome it, many people used to just kill themselves instead. And you think children are stronger than that when it comes to toys?
6d0debc071 13y ago
Barbies are fun. But that's not the point. Marketing is about identity at least as much as it is about the product. You look at beer adverts, how many of them directly bear on the beer? http://youtu.be/MX145Tu4MHY http://youtu.be/MX145Tu4MHY That could be any beer, or a magic potion, you know nothing about it. Or shower gel http://youtu.be/DVm00UBdS0Y http://youtu.be/DVm00UBdS0Y Or cars http://youtu.be/ox_uDBrkp-M http://youtu.be/ox_uDBrkp-M "You can have this car, and everything that goes with it." "Now you can drive the story." There's certainly an element of information there, at least when you start getting onto companies that have an advantage in a technical area. But often, you're being sold a role: Buy this and you'll get women, wealth, etc. When I was a girl, and still to an extent now I'm older, I wanted the things I was told I was going to like, and which it was expected that I was going to. You look at something and you see someone like you, or with some aspect of life that you want to have. A lot of the pitch towards us isn't dolls, it's friendship, or fashion, or something like that - broadly speaking, group identity. The problem is you don't see the comparisons. If there aren't people like you being forwarded as enjoying and having fun with something, you may never try it, and even if you do the chances are that few people like you will, so you lose a lot of the social enjoyment that goes along with a thing. Of course you're right. If girls all really hated barbies, we probably wouldn't have played with them - though I've no doubt some of us would have out of a desire to fit in. But that's not really the point. The question is how closely that approaches optimal; the most enjoyment that we could have got from a range of options, only a narrow range of which are promoted to us and will allow us to still be accepted by our friends who have also had these identities sold to them.
- numeromancer 13y ago
  Barbies are fun. [Citation needed] /Manly man
alex_c 13y ago
Counter-example: can you honestly say that you have never, not once in your life, paused to consider whether an item (a jacket, an accessory, sunglasses, whatever) is for males or females before deciding to buy it?

crntaylor 13y ago

I like the article. I think it's well written, an important subject, and the world would be better if more people read it and digested its message. I still wish it didn't repeat the myth that Coca-Cola invented the modern image of Santa Clause, though. http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp

dasil003 13y ago
I think Tim Allen invented the Santa Clause.
chongli 13y ago
No, it didn't invent the image but it popularized this one particular incarnation out of the many that existed.
joshguthrie 13y ago
You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!

xmonkee 13y ago

I dunno if it's just me, but I usually skip an article that starts with something like "Four-year-old Riley Maida stands in a toy aisle of a department ...." and then there's a mile of scrolling to do. At least tell me what your central thesis is going to be if you're asking me to invest so much time and emotion into a story.

Ambrosia 13y ago
Try reading the header
rmk2 13y ago
The underlying thesis is literally expressed in the subtitle, even above the beginning of the article: > Unraveling the story behind the stereotype of video games being for boys. This tells you that there exists a stereotype. This stereotype suggests that video games are for boys. It also suggests that an unravelling is intended, i.e. a disentanglement of multiple connected strands related to the persistence of a stereotype. Furthermore, calling something a stereotype outside psychological research suggests that something is regarded as "a preconceived and oversimplified idea of the characteristics which typify a person, situation, etc." (as defined by the OED). This suggests a thesis that a) disagrees with the premise that video games are, indeed, only for boys b) will try to portray how this stereotype came into existence, i.e. it will try to trace its genesis.
- xmonkee 13y ago
  Thanks for all the condescension. That a gender stereotype exists in gaming is hardly new information. I would've liked something like "Shaky marketing in the 80's helped establish the current stereotype" and then I would've known that the article presents arguments to support this.
galaktor 13y ago
I tried to squeeze the subtitle into the title of this post, too - but it didn't fit so I just left the main title there, assuming one could simply read the subtitle on the main site...

hownottowrite 13y ago

In 1983, North America experienced a massive recession in the video game industry, now known as the video game crash. The crash had devastating effects, bankrupting game company after game company. At its peak, the revenues for video games in the U.S. sat at $3.2 billion in 1983. By 1985, revenues fell a whopping 97 percent to approximately $100 million. There are many factors behind the crash. The key factor is that by 1983, the video game market was saturated with low-quality games, which resulted in a loss of consumer confidence. Anyone who could make a game was making a game, and there was little to no regulation on the part of the console makers. Players got burnt. Retailers got burnt. People stopped buying video games. The crash marked what many believed to be the end of the video game industry. Sounds like today's "casual gaming" market.

nwh 13y ago
More than that, it's things like "free to play" also sucking the will out of the consumer.
Fomite 13y ago
That was my thought exactly.
Jare 13y ago
Appearances can deceive. The current casual gaming market is also flooded with fantastic games, and with games that, despite being accused of low quality under certain criteria, have millions of fans and regular players that love them. There's a great game waiting for anyone who may want to play something. Low prices, Steam/etc sales, and free-to-play games mean that getting the wrong game is not painful to the consumer, and remove the problem where consumers stop buying games. The games industry (including casual and hardcore) has many problems and pitfalls for individual studios or teams. But in terms of market size, it is pretty healthy and likely to stay that way.
anonymousab 13y ago
The crucial bit is that the public had almost no way of knowing if a game was even playable before buying. Complete opposite today, except for people who preorder every big name game and are likely satisfied regardless. I can see some resemblance in the freemium market - consumer awareness and protections have not caught up with how bad everyone is getting gypped.

spindritf 13y ago

Is there any non-anecdotal evidence that marketing has anywhere near the power this article ascribes to it? I hear this a lot lately. Some people believe that media have an almost magical power of shaping culture and behaviours. Beauty? Cosmo propaganda. Boys liking different toys than girls? Marketing. Yet when you dig a little deeper, studies on priming usually get wee p-values and barely significant, temporary changes in behaviour, if any. And when they do show something more, they're impossible to replicate, or straight-up fraud. I don't buy it.

tomp 13y ago
I remember all the fear mongering about violence in computer games (especially first-person shooters). Now, there is a whole generation of 20-somethings that grew up staring at the screen and shooting people and monsters, and crime rates have not gone up (in fact, they are falling IIRC). Accordingly, I don't think marketing can change our desires and behaviour. Sure, it can change what we buy through brand-perception, but the desire to buy must already be there (e.g. we want shiny rare objects -> we buy diamonds (due to marketing)).
- samastur 13y ago
  Your example may be a proof that violence in games does not cause violence in person, but it isn't a proof that it has no effect. In essence I may be fearful of the wrong scenario, but that isn't the same as me not having a good reason to fear. Personally I think opulence of violence in media makes us number when confronted with images or stories of real violence then we would be otherwise.
- ajitk 13y ago
  Don't ads create false memories[1] and consequently our behavior? [1] http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/ads-implant-false-memories/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/ads-implant-false-...
  - pit 13y ago
    > We steal our stories from everywhere. Marketers, it turns out, are just really good at giving us stories we want to steal. What's interesting about this is that marketers are now stealing stories from consumers and selling them right back, either by monitoring our behavior (both on- and off-line) or direct solicitation. "Tweet your favorite Dunkin' Donuts memory with #DunkinMemories!" There are even promotions that encourage consumers to write and produce their own commercials for a product -- there was one a while back where the winning ad was shown during the Super Bowl.

znt 13y ago

White font on bright pink background is not a pleasant combination. Maybe use paler colours next time?

watty 13y ago
Are you a designer (serious question)?

knowitall 13y ago

While I think the history of marketing of games is interesting, to be honest to me this read like "bla bla bla... Video games were heavily marketed as products for men, and the message was clear: No girls allowed.... bla bla bla" Meaning the conclusion "no girls allowed" is just randomly inserted somewhere in the middle of a wall of text. Just because boys and men were identified as a large audience and targeted with marketing does not imply that girls are not allowed. Nobody is forcing you to choose either aisle in the toy shop. Just the other day I bought a playmobil horse for my son that came in a pink box. Whatever... What exactly do they mean by girls not allowed? Girls are not allowed to play first person shooters? How would such a rule even be enforced? Or the right games are not being made for girls, then there would be more female gamers? I think whoever believes that should go out and make those games. Put their money where their mouth is. Never mind that there are already lots of games that are being played by lots of girls/women. "No girls allowed" simply has no foundation in reality whatsoever.

dsirijus 13y ago
To my eyes, they're trying to bring attention to a non-existant problem (that has been solved pretty darned well with casual games ages ago) to increase readership on a pretty flamey topic, together with their twitter buddies. I believe there are very fundamental differences between males and females and that the optimal game design would target very specifically those differences (or at least be very aware of them), unless the core of the design is the actual male-female dynamic or ecosystem. It is also more optimal to target one or the other because of the ad networks in today's world.
- knowitall 13y ago
  Psst, you are not allowed to say that :-) I don't know - there certainly are women who play "hardcore games". The more I think about it, the less understand what the problem is? For whatever reason, women seem to play less hardcore games. OK - but what is their problem? Do they think women unfairly miss out on all the fun? Then why don't they just tell women "hey, there is this thing called games, it's fun, try it" instead of whining that society made them miss out? Or do they complain that the wrong games are being made - which would be rather weird, because people are apparently buying these games. Or in other words, to me it seems a bit like saying "I would really like spinach, if spinach would taste like chocolate". Yeah, but spinach doesn't taste like chocolate, if you want chocolate, eat chocolate, but leave people who like spinach to their spinach. No need to convert all spinach to chocolate.

kyberias 13y ago

Very difficult page to read due to ugly color combinations. White on pink, next white on green. It literally hurts my eyes.

watty 13y ago
It sounds like you have some eye issues or perhaps it's just aging. Try readability, it's great for older folks. You should avoid magazines though, they often have similar designs yet lack a real world "readability" :) http://www.readability.com/ http://www.readability.com/
- gabemart 13y ago
  A color combination that works for a printed page may not work well for a luminescent display due to the inherent superiority of printed material in terms of readability and eye comfort. I don't have any eye issues and am not in the "older folks" demo. I still found the page annoying to read.
- kyberias 13y ago
  To be honest, you may be right, although I'm not that old. ;) Quit with the downvotes, people.

knowitall 13y ago

My first girl-friend threatened to leave me in case I bought a game boy. It's not just stereotypes from the media, it's also an experience that lots of men have made in their lives. But that doesn't mean we don't like the idea of women playing games. Quite the opposite. I still remember the first time I saw a woman wearing an Atari T-Shirt. I could hardly believe my eyes... Turns out by then Atari didn't really exist anymore and was being rebranded by whoever bought the Trademark, but still (I was attracted, but I didn't talk to her, so no further story to that). It's just that it feels like a waste of time trying to get women interested in games. If they want to play, fine, but why try to make them? (Speaking from the consumer perspective - game makers of course have different incentives). Next week I plan to have a C64 revival party. I will invite women, curious to see how many of them will also play... My advice for women interested in computer games: just do it/try it. Don't waste time wondering if you are allowed to do it.

xerophtye 13y ago
Yep, gamer girls = supremely attractive! I always get jealous of gamer couples i encounter on real life and online. My own gf is a hardcode mobile gamer (there hasnt been a single app game that i can beat her at. and i have been gaming all my life!) But i wish she'd try the more complex games... like FPS or top-down strategy or atleast LoL!!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- antimagic 13y ago
  Tower defence games are the gateway drug to top down strategy games. Just sayin'.
- berrypicker 13y ago
  "Girl gamers" are well-known on the Internet for being some of the most obnoxiously annoying people on the planet.
  - 13y ago

milliams 13y ago

No GirlS... we're allowed one.

thejteam 13y ago

Okay, so girls get princesses and My Little Pony. Now listen to what they do with them. My 3 year old is in the next room playing playing with her My Little Pony dolls right now. Story lines more complex than the typical evening sitcom. Action and violence. Shouting and passion. They are learning story telling and narrative. And the narrative is not all tea parties. If the toys do not inherently give them plots and conflicts, they will build it up for themselves.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago

I thought the more important point was how much these differences were in the eye of the beholder rather than actual objective facts. For example, the various farm sim, candy crush, peggle, word game, social things that many "non-gamer" women in my life seem obsessed by get quietly excluded from discussions about games and gamers because they don't fit the stereotype. Similarly, Barbie is a "doll", she lives in a "doll house", and boys don't play with dolls or doll houses. No, the small minature people my son plays with are action figures and have "bases", or are "knights" and have "castles", or are lego people, who do have houses (though usually of fairly avant-garde design). Could you explain to a martian why these are supposedly such different activities that were encoded for back in the hunter-gatherer days?

PeterisP 13y ago
Hah. My kid (3yo boy) got strange questions about going to kindergarten with a baby-doll in a pram - but that's just naturally "following male role models", doing as the father does pushing his little sister around. I mean, in an entirely sexist manner, men should be the ones primarily pushing baby carriages because, say, pushing them through snow-covered sidewalks at any reasonable distance requires physical effort that's simply too tiring for most women, especially soon after childbirth or cesarean. (If you drive everywhere like in much of USA, then it might be different). And the current modern society expects grown men to do so... but the same society doesn't expect little boys to play the same role. How does it make any sense?
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  >men should be the ones primarily pushing baby carriages because // Use a baby-sling. They use far less resources to make, far far less. They can aid the child in learning to talk quicker (face-to-face position). They're easy to take anywhere you can walk. They pack down almost to pocket-size. [Though no-one ever held a door open for me like they do for pram/stroller users]. Both our boys imitated carrying children in slings. They also both loved playing with toy push-chairs when they were available to them but they did so in a distinctly different manner to other kids, they never bothered with having "passengers" on theirs. Soon after birth or a caesarean a woman should be resting, not pushing a buggy around just as anyone should be resting after a massive pelvic dislocation or abdominal surgery.

analog31 13y ago

I wonder if it's a simple market differentiation factor, like why there are 100 different kinds of breakfast cereal. Creating two immiscible classes of toys effectively doubles the variety, and the floor space devoted to toys in stores. It makes hand-me-downs less appealing if you've got one kid of each kind. That factor alone would create a noticeable sales bump for toy stores, even if the differences were totally arbitrary. But the differences have to be strong enough so that the toys of each sex invoke the yuck response in the other sex.

jccalhoun 13y ago

If you look at the early atari 2600 commercials it is clear they were just throwing stuff at the wall with no clear audience in mind. One that sticks out in my mind features a "Valley Girl" that is so stereotypical it is hard to tell if it was supposed to be a parody or not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ze1neVziE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ze1neVziE

dsirijus 13y ago
Oh, you'll love this one then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufYYOXiEtxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufYYOXiEtxM

LekkoscPiwa 13y ago

This is idiocy beyond comprehension. Why not to complain that there aren't as many dresses or boys in department stores. Maybe sue them to, huh?

normloman 13y ago
Nobody's complaining in this article, and nobody's suing anybody. It's just an article about video game marketing. Why do you feel threatened?
- LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
  All this Political Correctness BS is a threat. We have to deal with Al-Quaida and others who want to destroy our Western Civilization from outside and then we have Leftists who do all they can to destroy it from inside. Boys are usually more interested in computers. Males are more inclined to manipulate things (manipulate like in play, try to understand how they work, etc.) and relations that have to do with things. Females are more inclined to manipulate people (manipulate like in play, try to understand how they work, etc) and relations that have to do with people. And no, I don't have a scientific research to "prove" that. It's an observation that derives from common sense. Ever noticed how women enjoy watching soap operas, but don't give a damn about a football game? Ever notice how men enjoy watching football game, but don't give a damn about a soap opera? Because what men see in a football game that women don't is: strategy, tactics, manipulations, doing everything to win the game. Females don't see that there. They just see a bunch of brutes running around trying to get hold of a some stupid ball. But women can definitely appreciate a soap opera. Because there they will see: strategy, tactics, manipulations, doing everything to win the game. Males don't see it there. Because this is not about things. It's about people and their relations. They are blind to that as females are blind to see interactions among objects. Males just see there a bunch of crazy people dramatizing. Now, to expect this little girl not to play with dolls to mimic social interactions but to play with objects is BS. And pure Politicall Correctness. And that's a threat. I don't need my daughter to waste her life trying to compete in a game where males have natural advantage in their DNA. I'd rather have her spend her time analyzing people. Not objects. That's all common sense dude. I'm threatened by you spreading enemy propaganda in my country. What about that? Go and teach that in Russia. Mess up their country. Not our own.

bryanlarsen 13y ago

As a parent of two pre-school girls, this is a concern of mine. But in some ways I think this issue is worse for boys than girls. Girls are "allowed" (but not encouraged) to shop from the boys section. My daughters have and use some boys' clothing, toys, furniture, etc. But a boy wearing pink clothes or dancing or playing with dolls is setting himself up for extended teasing.

dsirijus 13y ago
I was in a heated debate about this few nights ago and a drunken conclusion was that Tesla was right and women are due to dominate pretty soon. Amongst the terms in the winning argument lines were, in no particular order: trousers, Candy Crush Saga, online marketing, e-commerce, uterus, toys, hipsters, self-modification. Biker dudes will be a museum exhibit in 50 years. All arguments fall flat on its face if we're due severe population cut due to war, disease, whatever.
aestra 13y ago
This is annoying. If anything because "too girly" boys can't use it anymore too. For example, the formally boys names of Alexis and Evelyn. Girls started to outnumber boys with that name and suddenly you couldn't give your boy a "girl's name."
romanovcode 13y ago
>As the daughter of two pre-school girls.. Wait, what? ))
- bryanlarsen 13y ago
  Fixed. thanks.
dsego 13y ago
Surely, you meant father? I think it's all in the environment. Me and my brother as kids used to play with a lot of girls. And after a while we asked our parents to buy us barbie dolls, and they did. Some of our parents' friends were a bit concerned that we were playing with girl toys, but they soon got used to it, and this was the early 90s in a more conservative country. But we also had wooden pistols and rifles and ran around the village "playing war" with other boys.

probably_wrong 13y ago

Sorry about the off-topic: does anyone knows whether the caricatures that illustrate the article belong to a concrete category and/or are associated with a particular style? I'd really like to read more about it, but the books I've found about cartooning are very different from this style.

gk1 13y ago
It can be called illustration or cartoon illustration. "Cartooning" alone usually refers to strip comics, gag cartoons, or political cartoons. I'm not aware of a more specific term for this style.

6cxs2hd6 13y ago

Although the site looks snazzy, it's annoying that page-down goes one line too far. Page-down. Huh? Oh. Line-up. Ah. Page-down. Huh? Oh. Line-up. Ah. . . . Frustrating reading experience that distracts from the message.

dsirijus 13y ago
For me, it was annoying in a general sense (can't pin-point it). I was going to article and out of it 3 times. trying to read it / gah, can't / but there's interesting comments on hn about it / trying to read it / dammit! / it's being upvoted almost to #1 / ok, ok. i'll go through exruciating pain of reading it / it wasn't worth a read anyway

xradionut 13y ago

I'm not seeing the big issue being raised here. I think much of how a child turns out in life depends on their parents. My wife likes pink, but she's also better at repairing cars, playing video games, repairing smart phones and target shooting than myself. She would be an awesome programmer or system admin, but likes project management and people more than I do. She is the one in her family that bought the gaming consoles starting with the NES.

jheriko 13y ago

i am a liberal fan of freedom and equal rights - within reason. i applaud the sentiment but this is just one of many symptoms of 'women don't like taking risks and don't like stem fields' whats more i like to think that women are allowed that freedom of choice - so its a double edged sword. the side effects suck but these scenarios /come from/ freedom and equal opportunities for women. why is nobody looking at cultures which are oppressive to women or have lower quality of life as counter examples? not only do they not have this kind of marketing... but actually more women enter stem fields and do 'male' traditional roles out of necessity or societal pressure. its a horribly complicated problem. extra sad that i can't make a 'sexist' joke here as a punchline for fear of reprisal...

normloman 13y ago
Did you even read the article? This has nothing to do with women entering stem fields. It's about how video game marketers exclude women from their target demographic. Poor guy can't even be sexist. Boo hoo.
- jheriko 13y ago
  Yes, I read it in its entirety. The key point it seems to make is that men made games for men and the marketers cottoned on to the trend and ran with it - this is precisely to do with women not entering stem fields (computer games development). Also, since we are picking faults its about /why/ they are excluded. Its pretty damned obvious how it happens... ... and yes it is a shame that I can't make a joke about women complicating things. They do, its measurable, its funny, its not sexist unless you somehow assume that men are exempt from the same criticism, which they are not.

Pxtl 13y ago

That was really freaking long. I can't help but notice the recurring theme that the actual game designers are trying to make fun gender-neutral products but the marketing and leadership is the source of misogyny. I mean, when they start talking about the PS1 era their examples are WipeOut (the only "gendered" thing in the game is the announcer) Tomb Raider (Croft has somewhat absurd proportions but she's a far cry from the kind of exploitative stuff you see in the Dead or Alive games and whatnot) and Gran Turismo (masculine only by the technicality that it's about cars). I'm a guy, so this is obviously a "check my privilege" thing, but I feel like the misogyny of the gaming industry (and geek culture at large) didn't really take hold until console gaming went online and the collective sea of poop-throwing 4channers got their he-man-woman-haters club into games. The games were targeted at boys well before then, and the themes got heavily masculine in the mid-'90s with the FPS revolution... but the active You Are Not Welcome thing seemed to take hold later. I mean, obviously geek culture was a bit unsettling for women before then because the combined awkward sexual frustration of a zillion nerds isn't exactly comfortable to be around, but I don't think the outright hatred of women had taken hold. It seems like the door was open... not so much, anymore.

alex_c 13y ago
Funny, I don't think of it as misogyny as much as wasted potential in the industry. I greatly enjoy many of the male-targeted games today and have zero interest in a game like The Sims, but looking back I realize that many of my all-time favorites were fairly gender neutral. This wasn't because of any political correctness or some great social mission as much as simply games that were made to be fun without targeting to a specific demographic. Thankfully, the PC indie game market seems to be recapturing much of that lost innocence in the industry (partly due to lack of marketing budgets which means they have to focus on the game being fun, first and foremost). I find myself playing a lot more indie games than AAA titles lately.
johnbm 13y ago
What articles like this completely ignore is that toy stores are not divided into a blue boy's section and a pink girl's section. There's the "girl's section", and then there's "everything else". They are taking the fact that some things are marketed explicitly to women as evidence that everything else is marketed to men. It's absurd, but that's feminist navelgazing for you. Same reason they blame men for women's beauty standards, even though it's women and women's magazines who enforce them. Things marketed to women by women as being for women. And then something like Goldieblox comes around that's like shitty pink meccano with dumb girlie stories attached to each box set, and behold! It's somehow going to set girls free of the pink tyranny... by being stereotypically aimed at girls. Or you could just buy them ordinary gender-neutral LEGO. The one that boys and girls alike can enjoy.

scardine 13y ago

The text is too long, but I really enjoy the cartoons from David Saracino. http://davidsaracinoart.com/ http://davidsaracinoart.com/

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

tsax 13y ago

The Nurture Assumption -> http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised/dp/1439101655 http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revise...

Pxtl 13y ago

Brevity.

cameldrv 13y ago

Thank god. Video game addiction is destroying an entire generation of boys. We see the results in declining male college enrollment and graduation. Games have been tweaked and adjusted until they have become electronic cocaine, and the result is that boys spend virtually their entire time at home playing them. The last thing we need is for the girls to go the same way.

numeromancer 13y ago

I, for one, look forward to the glorious day when all children are grown in vats and reared in communal nurseries by hermaphrodites, so girls will never have to be subjected to the horrible sight of a mother nestling her baby, which unjustly conditions them to prefer baby dolls to Tonka trucks.

C1D 13y ago

It was a very interesting and eye-opening article though I don't think we can wholly blame this on the marketing of video games. I have a sister who has never liked video games and instead spent her time with dolls even though me and my brother had always tried to get her into video games. I remember when we got our first Tamagotchies. My sister fried her's by sticking it in a bucket of water. When we got her another one she used it for a few seconds and then played with her dolls. I think -as seen in a article recently posted- that since boys brains are wired differently we are into different things and that is natural. Also there isn't anything stopping girls from playing video games. To be honest I think a girl that plays video games is more attractive and I bet most men would. NOTE: I am in no way saying "toys" are limited to boys or trying to imply anything sexist but what I am saying is that the division of boy toys and girl toys isn't wholly because of marketing.

pistle 13y ago

They get the 80's crash analysis all wrong. There was never a demand implosion due to uncertainty of quality. These were 8 bit sprites. Crap was standard. Crap was good. All 8-bit console games look low quality compared to the first 8-bit computer games. We still bought. Something way more important was the first widely-available consumer 8-bit computers. Compare Atari 2600 Pac-man to Atari 400 Pac-man... and that's not the Atari XL line. No consideration of a sudden shift in early adopters to Atari XL and Commodore 64 computers?? What year did those drop 82-83? The games for those PC-precursors were 1) way better and 2) pirate's booty. The abilities of those machines moved beyond what could be packed into consoles and the margins seemed higher. The price for a game went to free. That meant you could buy second floppy drives, 300 baud modems, dot matrix printers (24 pins FTW!) instead of games. Computer clubs were not uncommon and literal swap meets of 5.5" floppies. Early modems gained access to BBS's and created cornucopias of free software - legit and not. They should also review Master's of Doom and get insight into the personalities behind the seminal FPS. There were no marketers outside of the dev team there. They were making something they loved to play and they loved the thrill/hilarity of over-the-top power and gross-out humor. If you want to empower or blame the feedback loop of marketing driving development, you shouldn't ignore all the history prior to the present-day machine. Thank goodness they are writing an article which confirms that the world is changing because women aren't sitting quietly by, letting history be written by loud-mouthed men any more. But it's an awkward dance to read trying to fill enough space to provide ample vertical scrolling to get a sense for why it took so many people to construct the page...

etler 13y ago

Outside the fps genre are video games really that gender based? Pretty much every Nintendo game is enjoyable by boys and girls. Many ubisoft games are gender agnostic, all puzzle games are. I'm not a big fps guy so looking at my personal library, almost all my games are gender neutral.

mankypro 13y ago

There's a reason most boys gravitate towards guns, monster trucks and blow-em-ups. There's a reason why most girls gravitate towards dolls, ponies and puppy dogs. It's called evolution aka 200,000 years of it. Many iterations, regression testing etc. Put quite simply, it works for the propagation of the species. You can argue all you want with 200k years of evolution and or civilization, isn't going to change a thing. We are first and foremost made to procreate and natural systems are all about efficiencies - White Knights and Jezebels notwithstanding.

memracom 13y ago

For the first several years of her life, I would not buy anything pink for my daughter. Her baby clothes were white and yellow and powder blue ( a great color for a red headed girl with blue eyes). Then when she got older it became harder to avoid pink in new clothes shops, so we went to second hand shops instead and found wonderful things like a dark purple dress with a metallic green waistband. We also always check the boys section for clothes that are not blatant marketing stuff and buy a few items for her, mostly darker colors.

DanBC 13y ago
There's a niche in the market for gender neutral clothing with positive messages. "HERE COMES TROUBLE" or "DADDY'S LITTLE PRINCESS" are sub-optimal.

johngalt 13y ago

These articles always walk a very fine line between opposing views. How do you simultaneously claim that pink dolls are marketed to girls and that's bad. Then also claim that there are no video games that have pink dolls, so therefore girls are excluded. As a father, I worry that if we 'encourage' our girls too much to discard girly pink things, they might receive the message that girly things are inherently worse. It's perfectly ok to ensure your kid isn't forced into some role because of their gender, but be careful not to preclude/deride things they may genuinely desire. Don't be worried about attending a tea party with your girls. The 'message it sends' is that you care enough to play what they want.