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

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

#111

Post by ianbicking » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:25 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #40

MichaelGG wrote: post #29

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 cont…

> (We severely restrict the amount of shitty girls kid's TV shows, no Barbie, no Disney products, biggest toys are LEGO, etc.) If they go to public school peer relations and student body culture will override prior teaching. When presented with the girls sitting next to them talking about the shows and toys you never exposed them to, they are met with the decision to have faith in their parents or seek to fit in with…

> If they go to public school peer relations and student body culture will override prior teaching. When presented with the girls sitting next to them talking about the shows and toys you never exposed them to, they are met with the decision to have faith in their parents or seek to fit in with the status quo.

I don't think it's quite that hard. If you expect to counteract the influence simply by removing offending messages, then yes, it will not be successful in the face of peers. But if you explain and teach your family's value system that explains WHY you avoid Barbie and the like, that can be much more sticky.

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

#112

Post by howlingfantods » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:38 AM UTC

UUMMUU wrote: post #107

It's articles like this that make me wonder if I should just always be sorry for being born a male. There are two kinds of responses to this article. Either you agree that all men are chauvinist pigs and only out to further the male-dominated agenda or you are a sexist bigot. In all honesty if the game developers only make a male characters, that's their prerogative, calling them sexist for not making a female charac…

Did you read the article? It's written by a 12 year old girl pointing out that many popular games lack an option to select a female character.

Nowhere does it imply men are chauvinist pigs out to further a male-dominated agenda. The fact that you have extrapolated as such is probably more indicative of your own personality and prejudices than anything else.

No one is saying men should be sorry for being men. My takeaway is that the world would run a bit better if we all had a bit more empathy and more awareness of how our actions might perpetuate institutionalized biases.

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

#113

Post by A_COMPUTER » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:41 AM UTC

_bfhp wrote: post #70

morgante wrote: post #63

Unfortunately, this is likely a side-effect of the majority of game developers being male. A male making a female character is an altogether dicey proposition. Not only do they have to go through extra effort to imagine said character, but they also run the significant risk of being castigated if said female character doesn't perfectly align to various norms.

>they also run the significant risk of being castigated if said female character doesn't perfectly align to various norms I'm interested in this apparent phenomenon, can you an example?

I can't find the article now, but I remember a quote by Brianna Wu expressing frustration at having the characters of her game said to be "promoting anorexia" because of their wispy tall character designs (just recently she ended up changing them in the PC port of her game, in fact, after endless criticism.) The characters are exaggerated, but honestly to the point that they (intentionally) aren't realistic.

Anita Sarkeesian's graduate thesis and the subject of more than one of her videos is an extensive criticism of how "strong female characters" in fiction reinforce binary gender stereotypes by requiring that their definition of strength conform to masculine ideals of it rather than feminine alternative models (strong female characters have to be "badass".) I don't think she's wrong, but the argument has been leveraged often enough that it's made even me wonder what would be good enough to satisfy some people. Please note that you can trip this criticism simply by adding additional female characters, which is exactly what some people here are complaining about. You add a female sprite, the female "acts like a male". It's not as simple as just adding female characters.

Women's portrayal in video games is an ideological battleground, to an extent that men's portrayal is not. This is why it's potentially a risk. You can't even win by not playing, because lack of women is a problem too. But you can lose the least by not playing or not caring. I think that is why the two default states for female representation in games are "nonexistent" and "terrible".

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

#114

Post by clay_to_n » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:45 AM UTC

ChazDazzle wrote: post #25

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.

I totally agree. People are arguing that video games going mainstream is making LESS people interested in tech? Bizarroland.

Kids today are going to be more likely to get into tech, and it's going to be far far easier for them to do it. We don't need to get nostalgic for how much more "authentic" it was back in the day when the tools sucked a lot more.

(the GameShark comparison may be valid - but in my experience, a GameShark was just a thing you bought to cheat in a game. None of my friends who got them got into learning about programming because of it)

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

#115

Post by howlingfantods » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:47 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #15

Maybe they sell Girl characters because girls are willing to pay for them, and boys aren't? Or because girls are willing to play as boys, and then pay to play as a girl? But boys are unwilling to even play as a girl? I prefer to look for rational (for example economic) reasons for things, and not assume everything is because of bias.

Bias is perfectly rational, just like murdering your neighbor for his land. That's why we have a social contract, to prevent things that are individually rational yet socially ruinous.

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

#116

Post by mcphage » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:47 AM UTC

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…

Check out the LittleBigPlanet series... it's got a modding system that would have blown your mind as a child. I'm an adult and a programer and it still blows my mind. It's not just an incredibly powerful modding system, but that's an intended part of the game—there are levels, and tutorials with real voice acting, teaching you how to use it; and an easy to use online system for sharing your levels, or viewing the levels other people have made.

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

#117

Post by albemuth » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:47 AM UTC

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…

I didn't get into programming until college, but I remember spending hours creating my own winamp skin as a teen.

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

#118

Post by token78 » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:51 AM UTC

So, has it completely escaped the attention of the makers of mobile games that almost 60% of gamers on mobile platforms are women? Seriously - It's kinda odd that one of the defining characteristics of the mobile gaming market doesn't actually seem to be reflected in what the industry is releasing.

It's one hell of an omission, and actually, there's got to have been a lot of opportunity missed.

And the icing on that cake? On mobile, female gamers are actually way more loyal players (42% higher 7-day retention on average versus males), they also spend about 35% more time in gaming appss, oh and they're also spending around 31% more on In-App-Purchases than their male counterparts too.

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/10/27/report-men-play-more-mmos-...

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

#119

Post by _bfhp » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:51 AM UTC

A_COMPUTER wrote: post #113

_bfhp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they also run the significant risk of being castigated if said female character doesn't perfectly align to various norms I'm interested in this apparent phenomenon, can you an example?

I can't find the article now, but I remember a quote by Brianna Wu expressing frustration at having the characters of her game said to be "promoting anorexia" because of their wispy tall character designs (just recently she ended up changing them in the PC port of her game, in fact, after endless criticism.) The characters are exaggerated, but honestly to the point that they (intentionally) aren't realistic. Anita Sa…

I'm not sure how "not having a body that implies anorexia" is a "norm" in itself, any more than having two feet is. If female characters are created that adhere to destructive norms, the creators should expect criticism; I'm not sure why this is a bad thing, when almost everyone would criticize people for making racist caricture characters or doing blackface.

I think we can agree that the "strong female character" trope is complicated in terms of why it exists and how it works, and every single person isn't going to "leverage" criticism of it perfectly. I accept this as a fact of life and don't think it's relevant to OP's statements.

Choosing to "lose the least" strikes me as silly at best, when contacting a few women in your life (hopefully you have as many in your company) and consulting them about the character you're creating is not hard. If you are still criticized after consulting them, you listen to the criticism, maybe write about how you listened to it, and try again in your next game, which is still not hard -- it doubtlessly happens all the time with criticism of all other sorts.

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

#120

Post by howlingfantods » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:55 AM UTC

JDiculous wrote: post #62

A huge reason why there aren't as many "girl" characters is because most games are made by men. Thus the games naturally caters to themselves. I'm male. Back when I experimented with game development, all the games I wanted to make involved the main character being male. It's not something I ever consciously thought about, it's just how it happened to be. Does that make me sexist? Of course not. I can make whatever t…

>It's not something I ever consciously thought about

I think that's the point. Perhaps it's something that you might want to think about. Institutional bias is insidious because it's so pervasive as to be normal, banal. No one gives it a second thought.