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by dahart 3508 days ago
> Or rather, she uncritically brought up the white male gamer stereotype, which is worse.

Would you mind quoting what you're talking about? And would you mind explaining how something she said that is true, and has data to back it up, and that you've already acknowledged, is "worse" than what @tnones said, which has no basis in fact? Is this more a problem of style than of content, like with my comments? You complained about my condescension, and yet agreed with my facts and disagreed with @tnones.

You realize that complaining about feminist schtick is a sexist male chauvanist thing to do, right? @tnones is being a hypocrite, doing the very thing he's complaining about.

> I acknowledge bias in who pays for videogames, not who plays them.

Still, despite the evidence I provided? All four of the links showed biases in players separate from purchasing. Even though you didn't like the quote about who buys games, the first link still had separate demographics data about who playes games. If you follow the link, you will find separate sections on "demographics" and "buying habits".

The data does show a clear bias in who plays games, not just who buys them. Why would there be huge a gender difference in purchasing patterns, and not in playing patterns? That doesn't make sense, but I'd love to see some supporting data. There's plenty more data on game demographics, btw, I Google searched for all of 5 seconds just to have some links to back up what I already knew from 15 years working in games and films, that cultural sexism exists in games. Nobody who's actually working in the games industry is disputing the existence of cultural sexism in games. It's not one group or one thing, it's all of us, the makers, the marketers, the players, the buyers, the publishers. The good news is problem is being slowly solved, it is becoming less of a problem over time, thanks to the people that are acknowledging the situation and helping to fix it. Not helpful at all is denying that it exists like @tnones.

1 comments

Your own sources say that playing games is fairly equal. Two of them say it's fifty-something to forty-something. The bias is too small, and the difference in wealth between privileged-straight-white-males and the rest of us is enough to explain it. Notice also that according to source two, women who play videogames are in average older than men who play videogames, suggesting another wealth correlation.

> I Google searched for all of 5 seconds just to have some links to back up what I already knew from 15 years working in games and films

That is precisely the problem. You already knew what you wanted to find, so even though we are looking at the same data, we are interpreting it differently based on our different experiences.

>You realize that complaining about feminist schtick is a sexist male chauvanist thing to do, right?

By saying things like that you reinforce @tnones point. I disagree with him but your dismissive attitude is not proving him wrong.

> Why would there be huge a gender difference in purchasing patterns, and not in playing patterns

That's what the data you found says, so don't dismiss it just because you can't easily explain it. The explanation I can come up with is that games are expensive and wealthy people buy more of them. Straight-white-male-privilege correlates to wealth.

EDIT: I think your mistake could be that you believe people who can't afford games don't play them. As a person with 25 years of experience in being poor, I can assure you that is not the case.

> Not helpful at all is denying that it exists like @tnones.

If @tnones is right then complaining about sexism is a waste of time and effort that detracts from the effort we should be applying to the "real issue", whatever it is. Like you say, the problem seems to be going away on its own (just like the gender wealth gap, further supporting my theory that we are looking at wealth correlates).

I don't think discussion about the "real cause" of the problem or even about whether the problem exists at all is unhelpful, as long as it is kept civil and does not detract from the real work of people like the author.

EDIT: Forgot you asked me about quotes! Just search for the words white and male in the article. Almost every time she mentions those it's to put forward a stereotype.