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No Girls Allowed

polygon.com

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Re: No Girls Allowed

#81

Post by minikites »

junto wrote: post #37
spindritf wrote: post #24

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 cha…

Having a daughter about the same age so it gives me a bit of insight. She doesn't get to watch TV. Her playgroup has no major bias towards pink for girls (actually even deliberate in their avoidance of such stereotyping). My wife secretly detests pink and girly stuff and is/was a tomboy at heart. We do not discourage or encourage any particular colour or style. There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that…

> There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that should bias her towards pink girly toys, yet she is absolutely obsessed with girly pink clothes and toys.

> I honestly can't fathom it. Pink attraction seems to be built in. Like a moth to a flame.

Yeah, that doesn't actually make any sense. Pink:blue::girl:boy is 100% artificial and one recent source has it the other way around:

> For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.

For centuries prior, both genders were dressed in white.

Here's the article I've quoted from:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-St...

It sounds like marketing is more pervasive than you may realize.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#82

Post by spindritf »

joosters wrote: post #79
spindritf wrote: post #24

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 cha…

Look at the gigantic sums that companies spend on advertising. They can't all be throwing their money away. You can either assume that all these companies are complete fools, or the marketing works . In fact it's getting easier to prove nowadays, with so much more data from the likes of adwords, loyalty cards and so on. Marketing has more 'real numbers' behind it to give confidence in spending the money. Everyone lik…

They can probably make Coors sell better than Miller, or vice versa, OK. But that's a minor adjustment, even if worth a lot of money, not a massive change in behaviour like stopping half the population from discovering readily available video games.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#83

Post by jccalhoun »

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

Re: No Girls Allowed

#84

Post by dsirijus »

jccalhoun wrote: post #83

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

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

Re: No Girls Allowed

#85

Post by [deleted] »

xerophtye wrote: post #47
knowitall wrote: post #35

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…

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]

Re: No Girls Allowed

#86

Post by samsonasu »

spindritf wrote: post #24

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 cha…

I think we as a group tend to underrate the power of marketing because it doesn't make s lot of analytical sense, but marketing is hugely important as anyone who had founded a business learns very, very quickly. This is just more anecdotal evidence, but the effect the hunger games movie/books have had on female enrollment in archery clubs is staggering: http://www.npr.org/2013/11/27/247379498/more-girls-target-ar...

Here's another article that purports the rise (and now domination) of women in forensic biology to be predicated on the media's portrayal of the career and the large number of female role models in the field.

There is nothing special or innately "male" about video games, and I think the real thesis of the article is that player demographics are much more evenly split than we think; we just assume video games are for boys because the video games that girls play (candy crush, the Sims, etc) aren't marketed as being "video games" at all

Re: No Girls Allowed

#87

Post by barney54 »

junto wrote: post #37
spindritf wrote: post #24

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 cha…

Having a daughter about the same age so it gives me a bit of insight. She doesn't get to watch TV. Her playgroup has no major bias towards pink for girls (actually even deliberate in their avoidance of such stereotyping). My wife secretly detests pink and girly stuff and is/was a tomboy at heart. We do not discourage or encourage any particular colour or style. There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that…

Recently we visited some friends who have a 4 year old daughter. She was wearing a "pirate princess" dress. That could bring together the pirate and pink motif your daughter is secretly searching for.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#88

Post by joosters »

spindritf wrote: post #82
joosters wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the gigantic sums that companies spend on advertising. They can't all be throwing their money away. You can either assume that all these companies are complete fools, or the marketing works . In fact it's getting easier to prove nowadays, with so much more data from the likes of adwords, loyalty cards and so on. Marketing has more 'real numbers' behind it to give confidence in spending the money. Everyone lik…

They can probably make Coors sell better than Miller, or vice versa, OK. But that's a minor adjustment, even if worth a lot of money, not a massive change in behaviour like stopping half the population from discovering readily available video games.

It's not minor. What you should be considering is how many of the coors+miller drinkers would have drunk other things without the blanket advertising.

A better example: Coke vs Pepsi. Two big brands. Lots of people will claim they choose whichever they drink without advertising making their mind up for them. Yet there are plenty of other colas out there, with very similar tastes, that hardly anyone drinks. This is low technology stuff, sugar water, it's not that hard to make a cola drink taste good. The reason why people only buy the big brands? Marketing.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#89

Post by dsirijus »

knowitall wrote: post #29

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…

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.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#90

Post by LaGrange »

minikites wrote: post #81
junto wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a daughter about the same age so it gives me a bit of insight. She doesn't get to watch TV. Her playgroup has no major bias towards pink for girls (actually even deliberate in their avoidance of such stereotyping). My wife secretly detests pink and girly stuff and is/was a tomboy at heart. We do not discourage or encourage any particular colour or style. There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that…

> There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that should bias her towards pink girly toys, yet she is absolutely obsessed with girly pink clothes and toys. > I honestly can't fathom it. Pink attraction seems to be built in. Like a moth to a flame. Yeah, that doesn't actually make any sense. Pink:blue::girl:boy is 100% artificial and one recent source has it the other way around: > For example, a June 1918 art…

I usually also bring up these arguments, but there’s also one more possibility: she actually likes pink. Like, I like pink too, and pretty sure I’m not a girl.

The problem isn’t that some girls pick pink, it’s that the pink is chosen for them. Even if 90% of girls preferred pink by default (which, as far as we can tell, they don’t), it would still be an issue if the 10% got it effectively forced upon them.

While feminists often talk against false dichotomies and essentialism, the biggest point is that even if the differences were true, the amount of „exceptions” is high enough to care.

But, finally, about the „power of marketing” thing: yes, marketing is quite terrifyingly powerful, and I’ve seen enough of it effectiveness of work to think so. That’s why I find people who think that they „ignore advertising” a bit on the ridiculous side. Maybe there’s a few cases where you noticed it and managed to overcome it, but there’s just no way you’re unaffected by it.

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