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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?

#41

Post by EGreg »

Aside from the point being made in the article, the language and expressions used in it suggest to me that it's gone through a fair bit of editing / authorship by an adult writer before being published. Either that or I am seriously underestimating the writing style of a 12 year old girl.

I understand that every article goes through a revision process. But it started by saying "I am a 12 year old girl" and I wonder how many filters the text and the thesis went through before being published. I just find something strange about adults using the identity of a child to inject their own words, if this is indeed the case.

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

#42

Post by userbinator »

NoPiece wrote: post #17
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.

Even if that's true, that's a lousy way to make a game (they should be fun first, right?). I know first hand this sucks. I have a daughter who just a couple days ago had me to download the Oz Temple Run game. She was very disappointed that the main character was a boy, that only 1 of 4 available characters was a girl, and that the girl was the hardest to unlock. We aren't spending running on virtual currency, so odds…

I think that would be a great time to introduce her to gamehacking... attempt to turn that annoyance into a learning experience instead of a learned helplessness. Teaching her that she can make her device do what she wants is the first step (and that corporations seem to be slowly trying to take that freedom away might be a good lead-on to the perils of locked-down devices... if she understands enough, that is.)

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

#43

Post by michaelbuddy »

tessierashpool wrote: post #34
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…

plenty of games have tremendous educational value, and I'm sure every pro-gaming argument you ever thought of which didn't involve hacking still remains as valid as ever. tetris teaches geometry, word games teach vocabulary, strategy games teach strategy - I don't even understand how you got upvoted. you kind of just sound like the guy who hates his favorite band because they got popular. kids can get so much more at…

Tetris teaches geometry? Bit of a stretch there. It may use geometry but it's not teaching anything I ever learned in geometry. Wife loves Tetris and she can't geometry for nothin'

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

#44

Post by ars »

jessaustin wrote: post #18
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.

Perhaps at the initial stage of analysis this situation is not "because of bias", but don't stop thinking after just one thought. Why are boys like that? (Ignoring the exception that would seem to have been made for Lara Croft.) Why are girls like that? Do you really think it's biology, or is there perhaps some cultural reason why one group of children would be somewhat comfortable undermining their identity while a…

> Do you really think it's biology

Yes.

When something is virtually identical the whole world over, I think I can comfortably say biology and not culture.

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

#46

Post by code_duck »

m_mueller wrote: post #31
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…

There's hope though - Minecraft seems to be immensely popular with children, and for a good part because it's so hackable and moddable.

Definitely. Minecraft and modding it are so popular that I've had a hard time finding an up to date guide for adults who want to make Minecraft mods - Google searches on the topic are filled with pages of sites oriented towards helping teens learn Java.

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

#47

Post by nitwit005 »

It's clearly not true that female lead characters don't exist. What seems to be the issue for this girl is that they don't exist in games she actually wants to play.

I'd note that she complains about games where the protagonist has no identifiable gender, or is an animal. That's often done quite intentionally to dodge try to dodge this problem.

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

#48

Post by hasenj »

I am a male. When I would play RPG games (not that I play them that much ..) I'd always choose a female character if there was any. Specially when I was younger.

I always thought it was the boys who wanted to play as a "kickass chick". e.g. Tomb Raider

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

#49

Post by tessierashpool »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #43
tessierashpool wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plenty of games have tremendous educational value, and I'm sure every pro-gaming argument you ever thought of which didn't involve hacking still remains as valid as ever. tetris teaches geometry, word games teach vocabulary, strategy games teach strategy - I don't even understand how you got upvoted. you kind of just sound like the guy who hates his favorite band because they got popular. kids can get so much more at…

Tetris teaches geometry? Bit of a stretch there. It may use geometry but it's not teaching anything I ever learned in geometry. Wife loves Tetris and she can't geometry for nothin'

"Even computer games that were not developed with the explicit intent to provide such training, such as Block Out and several versions of Tetris, have been found to contribute to enhancing spatial skills."

http://web.jhu.edu/cty/STBguide.pdf

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

#50

Post by hackuser »

_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…

Definitely point it out, here and to the game developer. To a great degree it just comes down to awareness, and the best fix for that is to talk about it. The beneficiaries don't want to be sexist (of course there always are exceptions); people just don't notice it unless it happens to them -- just as people ignore most risks in other areas of life, such as lack of backups or weak passwords, health risks, etc. until they get burnt. As one commenter here said, he didn't notice until it affected his daughter.

Just don't assume maliciousness and others won't either. There are plenty of things in the world I don't know about and I learn from everyone else; I just try pull my weight by sharing the things I've learned.

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