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This explains quite a bit really. Male and female gamers.
rnor6084
Member UncommonPosts: 111
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Already knew misogynists were insecure. Interesting read still. Thanks for the link
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
There are many studies about the stress of social defeat triggering aggressive behavior that is typically targeted at other real or perceived socially defeated peers. It's seen in any social setting whether we are looking at humans or lower animals. The winners just don't have the same stressors and the defeated are just trying to establish some kind of dominance over any "weaker" target.
And yes, of course we've all seen it in real life aimed at women and visible minorities - it happens every day in workplaces and playgrounds.
Cheyane above is on the right track - it does come out of our reptilian, limbic, primal brain and is modified by social inhibitors. It's not surprising at all that it's more noticeable in less inhibited interactions - such as on-line activities.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Studies including this one can be construed to give whatever result you want it to have.
First of all they are way out to lunch it is actually the exact opposite,i see personally for way longer than their study and Twitch is the obvious place top see it.
It is the female gamer that resides under this topic that is actually the bad gamer.They also like to flaunt sexism to attract male gamer's and to get money or other rewards perks from them.There are a few exceptions but rare do i see a good gamer.I have seen those same female gamer's for example on Hearthstone get top male players to play the game for them so they can be ranked higher.
Most of the time i see these female gamer's just choosing EASY games,that really take no thought and could never make them look bad.
The overall truth is that yes you will have several bad male gamer's as well but this study was aimed at proving the female gamer is legit a top notch player and were surrounded by terrible male drooling gamer's.Basically you will have ALL types of male gamer's because the female gamer is TRYING to attract as big an audience as they can,no different than filling up their Facebook friends list with more people than they could ever call a real friend.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
"Social defeat" is not just about aggressive competitive activities... but you knew that.
As to your last point... yeah, true. But why stop there? Who is strapping on those suicide vests? Did they lose a game or are they maybe stressed because of some other form of social defeat?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I self identify as a monkey.
This is what all intelligent humans learn as they get older. I cannot even enter general zone chat anymore in any game. I logged into ESO again this weekend and the first thing I saw was several players in gen chat talking about anal sex with extreme language clearly from a mail dominated perspective. This idiots go on and on with this sort of discussion completely without care of anyone else reading it including women. They openly insult women and discuss them as sexual objects when women are clearly reading and even requesting them to stop. This is a cultural thing withing video gaming which is a HIGHLY misogynist and male chauvinist hobby due to it's history of male youth dominance and anonymous social interaction.
Sadly it is entirely this social behavior that has turned open and social mmos into the solo and highly exclusive for of mmo today. When old school mmorpg players discuss niche gaming it is entirely based upon this issue. Niche hobby gaming means a SPECIFIC social group wants to play along side each other in a specific style of game. This means: if you can't get along or don't like the mechanics ... LEAVE!
Sadly today's "everyone gets a prize!" mentality only leads to the problems we see within modern gaming. What happens when men and women of all ages, interests, backgrounds and sexual orientations get together in one place? They fucking argue until the end of time. It is human nature. Social sub groups are created because humans simply cannot interact on such a global scale unfiltered. We never evolved or will ever adapt to such massive social groupings when individual interests are both supported and allowed to be vocal (this leads to religion as a social glue but I won't get into that). We see this now as a major issue in social media as well.
I continue to tell women in gaming to seek out communities built upon balanced and mature mixed gender groups where both men and women are accepting of each other's presence.
I keep stating time and time again that community gaming will have to start proving more social management tools within games. Mmorpgs will die out and the concept lost if the players themselves do not have the tools to moderate social behavior. The developers have tried to take this upon themselves by turning mmos into solo path arcade games but this destroys the very concept of social gaming. Mmorpgs can only exist when jack ass players are penalized for their actions by the community itself. This is the very reason why old school mmos succeeded despite their many mechanical flaws. The industry lost touch of this and stripped all powers from the victims of abuse. Developers tried to protect everyone but have instead hurt those they most wanted to protect and destroyed a genre.
You stay sassy!
I have personally seen more males doing this then females. The top 2 reasons male friends have given me when I ask them why they choose to have a female characters would probably be (And I have asked every one of them that does it over the years as I find it interesting given I tend to want to play my own sex): They would rather look at a female for the duration of their play session then a male. And People give them stuff and special treatment when they think that they are a female.
Now I have never known as many female gamers as I do males. If I had to guess I would say that the female gamers vs. the male gamers I've know would probably be around a 1:3 ratio. But interestingly enough. They seem to be just as likely to play a Male character as they are to play as their own sex. When I have asked about this they really only have one reason it seems. That being that as a male character they feel that they get treated more like a peer. Whereas when playing as a female they get treated like a female first and a gamer second.
Now if you think about this... Because it might seem that females who choose to play male characters are doing so to get away from the potential negatives of being openly female in that environment. However, males who play female characters do it for the potential benefits. This tells me that actual male gamers prefer fake females. Males who can pretend to be the kind of female that (potentially otherwise non-tolerant) males will indulge. It comes back to that joke about MMORPG standing for Many Men Online Role Playing Girls. To me that is hilarious. That a Man is potentially better at being a woman (with respects to the environment) then an actual woman. Maybe it's just because men know how other men think. Being a man gives you an unfair advantage at being a woman in that environment.
However, this is all just personal experience and speculation on said experience. But it still makes me chuckle.
I've played with on a consistent basis and known personally(as in REAL LIFE) quite a number of female gamers...across some genres, like FPS and MMOs. There are some good ones and well, a lot of bad ones. But generally they aren't that good.
I'm saying it just as i see it so no point getting hurt or offended.
It may be cause they were perhaps not THAT hardcore in games so they don't train as hard or spend as much time getting good at it. I've seen VERY GOOD female players that can almost stand toe-to-toe with top male gamers but they are very very VERY rare.
Thats skill wise.
Behavior wise?
I've seen some shit behaviour from female players too. You think male players are the only ones masquerading as females to get free stuffs and things? I guess some females don't even have to pretend, they outright abuse their gender knowing they can get special treatment. And some pull shit on other female players as well. 1 female gamer i know pretended to be a male player and tricked another real life female player into liking "him"...and get free stuffs from her. For shits and giggles.
I guess point being, both males and females can be bastards. No difference in gaming than in real life. Don't you guys ever stepped outside your houses?
I've always felt this was way over-thought, and people invest far too much energy into trying to analyze why some males will play female characters.
In summary: Why does it matter so much?
I've played a female character for most of my gaming time, going mostly back to Neverwinter Nights (the Bioware/Atari one). Why? Well, because back then, male characters ran like they had a 2x4 shoved up their ass - and it was awful. The females, however, were animated much better. So, I stuck with the gender whose models were properly animated, and didn't look like they were desperately seeking a bathroom.
Point is, gender didn't come into play.
I created a character and, through playing on different servers, came to enjoy that particular "persona" (in much the same way I can appreciate Lara Croft or Samus Aran or Jade, etc). I could enjoy and appreciate the character, without actually having to "identify" with them. It became a character I enjoyed playing. So I carried that character, and that "persona" into different games, right on up 'til today. I never attempted to role-play them. But I'd imbued them with a personality and such of their own, in much the same way an author does for characters in their stories, etc.
I have experienced a lot of negative reactions from people when they learn I'm a guy IRL. Every time, the problem was on their end... and often, it was after they'd tried to hit on me, or treat me "special" because they assumed I was female IRL. I'd say "Just so you know, I'm a guy in real life". Their entire attitude would change. I would be called all kinds of lovely slurs and insults, be accused of playing a female to get special treatment... basically just a tidal wave of embarassment and projection coming at me. I'd just say "Look, I've given no indication of my RL gender one way or the other. You assumed I was something I'm not. I can understand you're embarassed, but don't blame it on me. Just take it as a reminder to never assume anything about anyone".
For me personally, I address people in an entirely gender-neutral way, until or unless I come to learn their actual gender (on voice chat, or they indicate it in something they say, etc). Beyond that, I make no assumptions about anyone; their gender, race, etc. And, wouldn't ya know it... in over 13 years of MMO/Online gaming, I've never found myself in such awkward/embarrassing situations.
If people would just treat others online as people, and assume nothing more about them than that, I think we could eliminate a lot of these problems that seem to crop up.
Alas...
It's not an instinctive reaction. Humans aren't born with enough instincts for that. We are born with the instinct to suck on stuff put in their mouths, to grab things put in their hands, to curl our toes when our feet are tickled and to do the Heisman pose when our backs are tickled. That's pretty much it. Oh, except for the instinct to learn, which is the important one. Pretty much everything after those first five things is learned, including aggressive behavior after social defeat, and a disproportionate amount of that aggression aimed at women and PoC. The feeling is a base thing, but the reaction and behavior are learned.
Viewing this behavior as something "built in" is a cop out, giving people an excuse to ignore or condone the behavior.
Well there we go. It has finally been answered, it's nurture not nature. Now we can move on to other things
I guess this explains why twins separated at birth are...
"We were surprised by certain behaviors that showed a genetic influence, such as religiosity [and] attitudes," said Nancy Segal, an evolutionary psychologist at California State University, Fullerton, who was part of the study for nine years. "Those surprised us, because we thought those certainly must come from the family [environment],"
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The ensuing drama of all the guys on the team trying to score with her would ruin their teamwork. =P
I can easily imagine their sponsors going "Hell no! That's not happening!"
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I bet if there were player cams that allowed people to see a fat male or "manchild" that person would get just as much hate if not more than a female.
The reason the reaction is different is because a female voice is easy to identify and females in competitive games are rare, whereas everyone else is just the typical anonymous male you know nothing about.
Waiting for:
The Repopulation
Albion Online
What MMO's do you play that don't have a chat block function? I seem to recall those being a feature of MMO's back in 2002 when I started playing them. Hell, many of them also have chat filters. What more are you expecting out of dev's? Do you really want them placing someone in your game who act's as the censure. Someone you don't know who likely will not share your priorities and likely has there own biases who then has complete control over speech in game. Someone who can ban people for whatever speech they decide isn't acceptable. Inevitably this power will be abused as it always does. What you find offensive is not universal. I would personally rather risk dealing with a server who only discusses anal sex online in crude terms than run the risk of being banned from a game because I said something that turned out to represent an unpopular opinion that ruffled the feathers of the powers that be.
Now I will acknowledge that it has become more of a problem since the old school days but that has more to do with technology getting better which has allowed for better servers since then as well as the popularity of the genre. Back in the day it took several servers to compose one digital game server of the first mmo I played. The limits on the number of players that could be in a server were much lower. I played on a server that only had around 200-300 players on at a time typically. As a result, we all got to know each other really well and actually had personal reputations to uphold. It was also a sub game which kept people tied to their accounts. We also had 4 faction open pvp and shared the same general chat. If someone got out of line in chat, others had the option to hunt them down and pwn them. Not that that ever stopped the general chat discussions about things we probably wouldn't be allowed to have these days in many games like our guild leaders meth habit. Though trolls simply invading the game chat was pretty unheard of.
In order to go back to that, we would have to limit server sizes and not allow any cross server systems for group play to avoid people simply blending back into the crowd of people that you will never see again. We would have to go back to full sub games so trolls couldn't just jump in the game and troll chat without having to financially support the game in the process(or B2P might work too). And we would all have to go play games with open pvp with shared general chat(rather than faction locked) so that the community could provide it's own punishments against players that step out of line, which would also have the side effect of providing yet another reason to pvp.
I don't realistically see much if any of those things happening. Most game companies will not add more money to support hardware for more servers unless they absolutely need to, so artificially capping server sizes like that would eat into their bottom line which I don't see them ever lining up for. F2P has proven itself to be too profitable in most cases to see a lot of sub only games coming back. And open pvp is incredibly unpopular among most mmo players.
So I guess my question is, what is your solution?
"Hey guys, these researchers, that you know probably have PhDs, masters, spent their whole freaking lives studying psychological phenomenon, whatever man I watch Twitch streams all the time and these girls gamers are the ones that suck....."
As a scientist, I hate to break it to you but no you can't just construe these results however you want to.
Could you imagine if someone said the things you did about female doctors instead. "It is the female doctor that is really the bad doctor. They like to flaunt their sexuality to attract males in need of medical services to get money or other rewards and perks from them. There are a few exceptions but rarely do i see a good female doctor. I have seen those same female doctors for example get their male co-workers to do their surgeries for them so that they can get promoted." Sounds really stupid now, huh?
I also have to point out that you forgot to include the part of your opinion where women are only good for cooking and having babies or that they have no use for umbrellas since it never rains between the kitchen and the bedroom.
Steam: Neph
More soft discipline hackery.
Nothing to see here.
The 138 person sample size is lol worthy.
I'm a MUDder. I play MUDs.
Current: Dragonrealms
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
This is worse than I thought. An actual "scientist" is engaging in the same kinds of conjecture that the authors of the study are. No one is arguing about the actual results of the study. It is the presented conclusions that those results do not actually prove in any definitive way that are being promoted by the studies author that are the crux of the debate here. Their study only shows that X happened. It does not definitively explain why it happens within the confines of the study itself. It's at best promoting a working hypothesis and presenting it as fact. Conjecture is not the same as a conclusion. If these "researchers" want to be taken seriously, they need to provide some actual evidence for the conclusion that they are proposing that negates the possibility that it could be anything other than that bad players hate women because they are women and seen as beneath them.
I have seen nothing in the method of the study to indicate that they have even considered other dynamics, both social and otherwise. They also made no attempts to collect all of the data involved in the dynamic. For example they made no attempt to interview any of the other subjects involved in the matches to ascertain their own conscious reasons for reacting as they may have. Some may have had mitigating reasons that fall outside the "researchers" preformed conclusions for their personal behavior. Such as a reaction to poor overall gameplay.
In the end with additional and more exhaustive research their conclusion may be warranted, but with this level of information presented the finding is premature. It reeks of bias and attention grabbing click bait.