As the other “Actual” girl in the podcast I feel like I ought to reply or at least hang my head out there for commenters.

I agree with many here that it would have been great to stay focused on more strategy-related topics. In the midst of everything, it seemed like the questions veered into topics related to gaming in general, our personal experiences with games, and our social gaming. I think this was a natural thing to happen when you get podcast hosts who are thinking of the best questions to ask three female panelists. You gotta start at square one: Who the heck are we? What makes us gamers? Because we’re such weirdo outliers these things are important to address.

You can argue that in fairness women shouldn’t be made to explain themselves as gamers, but the perception is that we’re oddities, and the premise of the podcast was to discuss the female gender gap with regard to strategy. It’s not insulting to want to know these things if the premise begins with “Hey, females, why are you playing these games if our perception is that your people do not engage in such practices?” (Like my paraphrase?).

I was surprised to find that from my experience few women seem to play strategy when that was among the first loves for me in PC gaming. My “chick games” were far from that. I don’t think we’ll see any good research on the gender divide–I agree that one generation from now it will be an obsolete question to ask.

PS:
Troy, Tom, I re-re-assert that I’m not a tomboy!
(I own enough shoes to prove it!)

Alan Au: “After all that, I’m still left wondering to what extent gender preferences influence a gamer’s attraction/avoidance of strategy games… If it’s a subject-matter issue, then that’s a different problem.”

Excellent question! I avoided them since, between elementary and high school, I wasn’t interested in managing every little detail to fight a war I had no interest in. It didn’t matter if it was historical or futuristic or Warcraft II. I’d start the game, play a few missions, then go back to my beloved consoles where games didn’t run like crap because I had a lousy computer. This ties more into the “PC gaming r d0med” rants that happen every day but, until this past summer’s upgrade, I ignored all non-Portal PC games. I see console ads everywhere, all the time. Strategy? If I didn’t hear about it from Tom and Troy, I didn’t hear about it. People who don’t look for game news probably have no idea that there are awesome hex or real-time or whatever strategy game out there with their name on it! These days you don’t even (usually) need sweet specs to enjoy solid games like Rise of Nations and it’s a pity more people don’t know that.

Alex2000: “How can a game company get the female audience who enjoyed The Sims to play a game strategy game like Rise of Nations?”

I wish I knew. Even with Troy telling me how fantastic RoN was it took him physically mailing me a copy to get me to install and give it a shot. Yes, I am totally spoiled with Troy as a friend. I had one local friend hardcore into The Sims. They made copies of people they didn’t like and, uh… yeah. Let’s call that person an ‘outlier’, too. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more crossover between the two games. Surely tactics learned would cross over quite well! Advancing through the ages and getting your Sims to keep up their tasks to build a better home (cheatcodes aside) require many of the same skills, only I get to crush opposing factions in RoN. Not sure if you’d be penalized for burning down your neighbours house if you didn’t like them anymore in The Sims. I trust someone can fill me in on that ;)

Justin Fletcher: Valkyria Chronicles, woo. That game needs more love. I wish it wasn’t an exclusive so it could reach more people.

Did we outright dismiss gender differences? I haven’t listened to the show since recording it but it’s entirely possible. None of us could speak of all females or gamers or females gamers and could only approach from our own unique points of view. Before the show Tiffany and I discovered through text that our present favourite games list basically mirrored each other. Oops, so much for different there! My problem is that I am entirely too laid back about the issue, which is not something I’ll blame on being Canadian. All my life I’ve done what I’ve been told wasn’t for girls. I played on internationally touring male contact hockey teams, excelled in tech, & schooled people in games. I don’t even hear it anymore or get riled up by it right in front of me. People base their opinions of women based on video game stereotypes? Well, those people obviously have bigger social issues to deal with first. Girls are turned off by the marketing for games like Bayonetta? It’s their loss.

Though this dismissive attitude may seem to sidestep the issue, I feel there are better ways to work towards genders being better represented in games, both on screen and among players, than rushing in for a fight. The view of gaming in society, well, mainstream media, has not yet evolved to the same level as books or movies. There are far more examples of sexist and vile content in literature or on screen that are never used to persuade people that the written word is not for ____ (insert class or race or gender here). There are so many factors in play that it’s impossible to pick one thing that can change this perception. General media has to catch up to the medium. The medium needs to pay the same sort of attention to scripts as it does to physics. Marketing needs to acknowledge that there’s often more to games than T&A and slo-mo explosions. For the record, I like both just fine! Gaming coverage needs to pull itself together and take it seriously enough to earn a seat at the big kid table. To use the most handy examples: you may not always (or ever) agree with Tom and Troy but you know that they’ve done their homework and presented their findings in a well-written and engaging package. The lack of sensationalism is refreshing and I hope it can soon be the norm. The end of Crispy Gamer puts a dent in the dream but it will not die!

Whew. Now how far did I push us off topic this time?

Here are some links from my wife:

http://eje-online.org/cgi/content/full/155/suppl_1/S115
This is a review of research on pre-natal testosterone exposure and the effects it has on gender-related behavior.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118876147/abstract
This is an example of a specific experimental paper on the same topic as the above review.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118733886/abstract
This is an experimental paper that explicitly compares the effects of prenatal androgen exposure to those of socialization.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/?tool=pubmed
This is the monkey toy preference study I mentioned. I got mixed up earlier, it is actually with rhesus monkey’s, not chimpanzees.

http://tinyurl.com/yzked7l
This is another monkey study, this time using vervet monkey’s, that used a somewhat different method, and found a stronger effect.

My wife also suggested that if you are particularly interested in this stuff, Melissa Hines (the/an author on most of those linked articles) also wrote a book about sex and gender differences called “Brain Gender” that is intended more for general audiences. Here is a link to it on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Gender-Melissa-Hines/dp/0195188365/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264215012&sr=8-1

“Nature vs Nurture” is an interesting question. It is also a very hard one to answer, as the two are really so intertwined. People often think of genetics in a very deterministic way, i.e. you have this gene you will do this. But especially in areas as complex as human behavior it is rarely anywhere near that cut and dry. Most behaviors will involved multiple genes, and will also involve the question of gene expression, beyond just presence or absence of a specific gene. So you end up with tendencies and influences more than any sort of explicit deterministic effect. Then there is the issue that genetics/biological factors can influence you to seek out or create certain kinds/types of environments as well. There is also the growing field of Epigenetics which studies changes in gene expression controlled by mechanisms other than changes in the actual DNA, changes which can even be multi-generational (i.e. heritable) without changes in the underlying DNA. So it is a very complex question, and one that is unlikely to be fully answered for a long time, but people are working on slowly working their way into it.

Hopefully you find this interesting and I didn’t go overly wonky on you there!