[kX4A8o4mVmX8aW]

> If you want a concrete example of that, A lot of media that features Australian characters are played by Americans doing bad Paul Hogan impressions. It's dumb, but didn't make me want to play Borderlands or COD instead of Overwatch or BioShock (with that damn 0126 code too - who does this!?)

Wrong weather and bad accents are pretty tame, I agree. Actual portrayals of women in games have been much worse. The "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" YouTube series by Feminist Frequency goes over a lot of these. Fortunately the industry has gotten better and games are now expected to include realistic female characters. That can be a tough ask for male game devs though. Most men couldn't accurately describe shopping for a pair of pants as a woman, let alone something more complex.

> Gamedev jobs are mostly terrible, with low pay, immense amounts of unpaid overtime and chronic, stressful "crunch time". I don't know why men stay in the industry, let alone women.

Nevertheless there are many women in much worse jobs who would take all of those terrible game dev jobs in a second if they could. The fact that they haven't suggests some systemic problem.

[AussieWog93]

>Wrong weather and bad accents are pretty tame, I agree.

Tell that to all the people complaining about yellowface/Apu. It's genuinely on an "Ahh, I am honourable Chinese man, my family is honour" level.

>The "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" YouTube series by Feminist Frequency goes over a lot of these.

Wow, using Anita Sarkeesian - widely derided for being out of touch and over-intellectual - as a source and expecting to change minds.

>Most men couldn't accurately describe shopping for a pair of pants as a woman, let alone something more complex.

Seriously? Men complaining about going clothes shopping with their wives is goes back to the days of bad 1950s stand-up.

>Nevertheless there are many women in much worse jobs who would take all of those terrible game dev jobs in a second if they could. The fact that they haven't suggests some systemic problem.

I'm being serious here - child care, admin or even retail are much, much better jobs from the point of view of living a balanced life and providing for your family than anything in games dev.

[kX4A8o4mVmX8aW]

> Tell that to all the people complaining about yellowface/Apu. It's genuinely on an "Ahh, I am honourable Chinese man, my family is honour" level.

I was referring to your Paul Hogan impression comment which I thought you meant was not a big deal to you. I can understand that a racist "yellowface/Apu" accent would be much more offensive.

> Wow, using Anita Sarkeesian - widely derided for being out of touch and over-intellectual - as a source and expecting to change minds.

I was using the series as a reference for tropes much more offensive than a Paul Hogan impression. If you don't want to listen at Anita Sarkeesian for some reason, you can find a list of tropes at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebVideo/FeministFreq... with examples linked from there.

> Seriously? Men complaining about going clothes shopping with their wives is goes back to the days of bad 1950s stand-up.

I wasn't talking about complaining but instead describing the literal process. Where to go, shopping etiquette, dressing room etiquette, cost, fit, fashion. Plus the emotional context: some women find shopping very upsetting for reasons men might struggle to understand, let alone portray accurately in fiction.

> I'm being serious here - child care, admin or even retail are much, much better jobs from the point of view of living a balanced life and providing for your family than anything in games dev.

I was thinking of home health care workers. Over 3 million in the U.S., mostly women, average age in their 40s, median wage around 30k USD per year, taking care of sick or elderly people including physically moving them and cleaning up after them, sometimes living in the patient's home. I find it hard to agree that this job would better than being a game dev, but in any case you only need a high school diploma to do it so most game devs who want to change adult diapers in the middle of the night for much less pay and for their entire working life should be able to make the jump pretty easily.

[Tade0]

> Most men couldn't accurately describe shopping for a pair of pants as a woman, let alone something more complex.

I can't help but wonder where this statement came from. Men have sisters, mothers, daughters, partners.

It's not some kind of a mysterious and opaque world, to which they don't have any access.

[kX4A8o4mVmX8aW]

Men have throughout history had the strangest ideas about women despite, as you said, having sisters and so on. I agree that is weird.

Of course a willing male game dev could research anything necessary to portraying women accurately. Or, alternately, you could hire female game devs or at least some consultants and get on with actually making the game.

[Tade0]

> I agree that is weird.

To be clear: I'm not agreeing with you. I don't think "most men" would fail at the task you mentioned.

I also think that men can generally tell if a female character is realistic, it's just not what they're going for in a game and the market responds to that.

Same with those romantic pulp novels people read on vacation. Regardless whether they're written by men or women, the men there are always hilariously unrealistic. This is by design.

[kX4A8o4mVmX8aW]

I'm not sure if we're disagreeing or just talking past each other. Most men could probably describe shopping for clothes as a woman in a literal sense, if that's what you mean. They probably couldn't connect with the experience like for example in this comedy article: https://reductress.com/post/why-i-shop-small-and-in-places-t.... If we still disagree then I'm not sure how to resolve it since it's a thought experiment anyway.

You make an interesting point about unrealistic depictions. In a way it's even harder for a man to write an unrealistic man that appeals to female readers than to just write accurately. I'm reminded of this comic: https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/false-equivalence. Of course male authors can learn to do it.

It's obvious to me that if you want to depict women accurately in art, or as you pointed out create art for women, then it would be helpful to have more women involved in the process. If anyone is seriously arguing that a typical man can write women and for women as well as a typical woman can so it's okay that most game devs are men then I'm not sure what to say. Agree to disagree.