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I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

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Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#21

Post by enneff »

opso wrote: post #9

This is a bit tangential to the article, but the first paragraph stuck out to me. For a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side. Back in my day, I was playing video games all the time, hacking them with debug cheats and GameShark. This was universally called a waste of my time by e…

It's interesting. When I first started using computers it was to play games, and in those days the only way to play those games was to either type up the BASIC code by hand, or learn the incantations to load the programs from disk or tape. In either case, you needed to (rote) learn some technical skills to have a bit of fun.

In retrospect, I see I was lucky enough to come into computing at exactly the right time. When I was young I was capable of understanding (practically) my entire computer system, because those systems were so simple. As the complexity increased, so did the depth of my understanding. Today, I understand most of what my computer does (the most important parts, at least).

What a tough road it must be for a newcomer to cope with all this complexity, the very complexity I have literally spent my whole life learning.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#22

Post by userbinator »

lkbm wrote: post #13
opso wrote: post #9

This is a bit tangential to the article, but the first paragraph stuck out to me. For a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side. Back in my day, I was playing video games all the time, hacking them with debug cheats and GameShark. This was universally called a waste of my time by e…

It's still seen as a waste of time, I think. Just has finally been accepted as normal. And while you may have been firing up hex editors, that probably wasn't the norm. YOu are right, though, that the computer games of the nineties offered a lot more hackability than iPhone apps. ZZT was an introduction to OOP for many kids, Red Alert had rules.ini that defined the stats for each unit, and Duke3D had configuration fi…

The "hackability" (and decrease thereof) isn't something exclusive to games - just look at what happened to the UIs of popular programs like browers, for example. Everything is becoming hidden away and more difficult to configure.

In contrast to the many menus and dialogs we had before that encouraged users to explore and customise, it seems that apps now are far more opaque to the point that many users don't even realise some things are options that can be changed.

That ecosystem isn't just unavailable in mobile games, but would probably be hated by many companies who want full control over their product

Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch, but I think the whole "war on general-purpose computing" has played some part in this too.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#23

Post by _bfhp »

ekanes wrote: post #19

The comments critiquing her research make me so sad. I don't think anyone wouldn't agree with her basic, essential point; Many, many more games have only a default male character. It is interesting that often we don't see others' points of view until they're put in front of us. My entire life, I've played games with male defaults and never noticed the lack of females. Only when my 8 year-old girl said, "Why can't I p…

It is indeed sad; I think history has shown that most people who benefit from a system of advantage just reflexively don't like when others talk about how it works, but that's just how I see it.

I'm playing OlliOlli (edited the name in since a user asked), a really awesome and successful game right now from a small (ish?) company (they're even making a sequel) where you only get one character to play as, and he is definitely male -- you couldn't even spin him as possibly being female. I'm male too and I'm afraid to point this out to the company, because of the backlash that usually happens, and I think the company is pretty much all male staff. It's not a huge deal but if the sequel is just as limited I'll express my disappointment, as it's a great game otherwise.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#24

Post by DownvoteMeToWin »

For the same reason characters in your apps don't look like Icelandic sea birds: you aren't the one making the purchase. It's your parents. Your app's fictional characters that don't actually exist will look like whoever your parents are willing to associate with.

And your parents don't associate with you. They do, however, associate with people they've never met, exotic archetypes, and victims-of-the-day. Whatever pixel helps them forget their own loss of childhood they'll buy. And you don't help them remember that. In fact, you are the living breathing symbol of their loss of childhood.

Sorry, kid, life's tough. Don't let the existential loneliness bother you too much, it's actually healthy for you in controlled doses.

Besides, fuck the previous generations. The sooner you throw away their bullshit moral systems, the sooner you can start doing things that actual matter.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#25

Post by ChazDazzle »

opso wrote: post #9

This is a bit tangential to the article, but the first paragraph stuck out to me. For a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side. Back in my day, I was playing video games all the time, hacking them with debug cheats and GameShark. This was universally called a waste of my time by e…

This is a prevalent meme on Hacker News but it's nothing more than the tech version of Old Man Yells At Cloud.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#26

Post by bramgg »

> In one game, “Survival Run with Bear Grylls,” you can put the character in a Santa Claus suit for $1.98, but there is no girl to be had at any price. Does this mean that girls aren’t capable of escaping a bear, but Santa is?

Another classic example of girls that are capable of escaping bears being unrepresented in tech. I kid, by seriously the cause of this isn't game devs being sexest against girls, it's (IMO) society being sexist in general. Boys (not men) will not play games that look like they may be made for girls because of what society might think of them. The fear of being bullied for enjoying anything pink or featuring women is very real for most boys growing up, especially (but not only) if the boy is already feeling confused and ashamed of what his sexuality might be. Since the mobile game market is dominated by children, having the main character be female can potentially scare away a large percentage of the market. Unless the game is already clearly "girly", then the risk just isn't worth it.

TL;DR: Boys playing girls = gay, girls playing boys = normal.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#27

Post by chx »

I clicked on comments and were absolutely shocked that noone mentioned Anita Sarkeesian. In case you didn't hear, she Kickstarted a Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series of videos about gender representation in video games. Got a lot of harassment in return for those videos and when GamerGate came about that intensified enough to make her leave her home and cancel a speaking arrangement. In turn, she was interviewed on The Colbert Report.

Now a 12 year old have reached the same conclusion and if that's her real name on the article... alas I must say that was a dangerous thing to do.

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#28

Post by ekanes »

_bfhp wrote: post #23
ekanes wrote: post #19

The comments critiquing her research make me so sad. I don't think anyone wouldn't agree with her basic, essential point; Many, many more games have only a default male character. It is interesting that often we don't see others' points of view until they're put in front of us. My entire life, I've played games with male defaults and never noticed the lack of females. Only when my 8 year-old girl said, "Why can't I p…

It is indeed sad; I think history has shown that most people who benefit from a system of advantage just reflexively don't like when others talk about how it works, but that's just how I see it. I'm playing OlliOlli (edited the name in since a user asked), a really awesome and successful game right now from a small (ish?) company (they're even making a sequel) where you only get one character to play as, and he is de…

I don't see a downside to pointing it out. The worst they could do is nothing, BUT at least they'd be aware that some part of the market is paying attention (implied: have a female character option and you might make more money).

Happy to point it out on your behalf if you'd like to mention the game!

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#29

Post by MichaelGG »

My daughters are 6 and 8. One of the biggest questions they have before starting any new game is "can I be a girl?" Even in Minecraft, their favorite, they try to dress up the character as much as possible. They're terribly disappointed when where are no girl characters and offhand, they only bought/play one game without a girl character (GTA V, though we skip the missions which contain the questionable for kids content).

Even in Myst, they asked/pretend the main character is a girl (though the intro makes it rather clear that's not the case).

It's really surprising to me, since as a boy I often chose female characters and didn't really think about it. But game devs could easily be losing money by alienating so much of the market. (Though girl characters for purchase, so long clearly identified in demos or marketing materials, is probably a cynical way to fix the situation. Spending $5 to make my daughters enjoy a game is an automatic buy.)

And it extends further, too. When buying a ThinkPad for my 6-yr-old, she really wanted a colored one. Even when explaining it's a superior platform, how it'll hook into her audio hardware, etc., she was only OK with the platform after I said we could get one of those vinyl skins printed up for her ThinkPad, so it wouldn't be all black.

Maybe this is all well-known, but it's just amazing to see how strong the "feminine drive" is, essentially naturally, at such s young age. (We severely restrict the amount of shitty girls kid's TV shows, no Barbie, no Disney products, biggest toys are LEGO, etc.)

Re: I’m a 12-year-old girl. Why don’t the characters in my apps look like me?

#30

Post by zorked »

opso wrote: post #9

This is a bit tangential to the article, but the first paragraph stuck out to me. For a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side. Back in my day, I was playing video games all the time, hacking them with debug cheats and GameShark. This was universally called a waste of my time by e…

Oh, that kind of thing still exists. Took me all of two seconds to find it:

http://www.androidgamehacks.net/forums/

And just like hacking with Game Genie was unusual back then, jailbreaking devices, hacking .apk files and hand-editing save games isn't for everybody either. But all of that definitely still exists, and is far more accessible than ever.

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