Intrepid Homoludens

Tell that to Twilo. Oh, wait..............you ARE Twilo. WTF was I on? Oh, Treesus probably rubbed off on me. Or something.

Oh, so you've read The Fountainhead, yes? I was into that shit years ago by my ex. Seemed a good philosophy at the time until I realized my ex was using it as a means to avoid dealing with deep issues in him. And the fact that Ayn herself had used it to brainwash one of her handsome followers into sleeping with her (at the expense of his wife going into turmoil). And she was one ugly beeyatch. Well hey, I'm a veteran at discomfort. Do go on, hon.

< waits for a certain more-virgin-than-thou-thus-superior female who seduces customers to buy PCs and wants to Tim to make her yawningly long post >

You mean you're not actually a boy?!!

That's why they're called 'Truisms', hon. They're arguable, but there's something disturbingly spot on about them.

Treesus, what exactly were you on when you wrote that?

You are? wormsie may be pregnant. Could you please check?

No, I'm not saying that it's the only hinderance to women. But it is one of the main obstacles. You can figure in all the other obvious symptons - women as sex objects, gratuitous violence, etc. If you read the NYT article in its entirety you'll see that the women featured therein mention the hostility towards them, much less the apprehension, however veiled. There is progress being made to counter this, but it's a slow process.

Yes, that would be the perception of guy gaming geeks. But I think the truth is that the industry has ended up being more exclusive towards men at the expense of women. The very architecture of the industry itself seems unwelcoming to women, down to how gaming and its world and culture are dealt with psychologically. Many women don't tend to be techno savvy, and games are all about technology. There hasn't been much work, for example, in marketing user friendly hardware and software in terms of games, which has an alienating affect on a potentially large female market (which is how I imagine how a lot of the men want it). That is, hardware and software that's specifically tailored to make implementation as effortless as possible for those who don't have PhD's in Computer Science, much less know the difference between a disk drive and a hard drive. From my observation this looks to be how a lot of men prefer it - to keep the girls from muscling in on their territory by making it as difficult as possible for them. What few women there are in the games industry are more the exception than the rule. Check out this Thumbs news report from not too long ago:

"Aw Moos honey, I'm anything but a joke...I heard you're into cats...."

Don't bother, it's worth getting getting it.

Are you sharing some of that?

There she goes again, folks.

Ask Yufster.

This isn't another one of your Freudian sexual Tim references, is it?

Even nerds have libidinal drives, you know. What's to deny?

Depends on if you're anatomically complete down there.

I never entered your house in the first place. You stock Beefeater Gin in your cupboard. How cheap!

No. Most likely you're a lesbian in a man's body.

Ever heard of Barbie? Of dress-up and dollhouses? Same thing, but the 'grownup' version. Whereas Half-Life 2 and GTA3 are the grownup versions of Cowboys & Indians and Cops & Robbers for men. Which means women will eventually take an interest in games en masse. This is one reason why I'm so disgusted by the adventure game genre in terms of how they're currently being marketed. If anything the adventure game is the one game type that women by and large could be getting totally involved with, but the marketing isn't there. Also, the current technology (Half-Life 2 characters' emotive faces and body language, for example) is not being expoited for adventure games, it's these little details and subtleties that matter most when you're working with story, character, and social situations in-game, what many women instinctively are drawn to. The technology is already there waiting to be taken advantage of, but until developers and publishers become smart enough realize how to use it to tap into a potentially huge market of women (who are very powerful consumers), it's basically worthless. Here's one of a bunch of articles on this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3615278.stm This is another gap in games development I noticed. In such a male dominated industry the focus - obsession, really - is on pushing technology further and further for its own sake, for the 'Wow!' factor, at the expense of working on better content. Gaming, particularly on the PC, is ridiculously complicated, alienating those who aren't tech savvy by nature, and this includes many women. In a sense it's like a boys club where girls are treated objectively, demonstrative both within the industry itself as well as in the culture of gaming.

You seem surprised.

Would you rather it turn into another sexually suggestive thread? Wait.... .....it already is!

Before humble tech employees were forced to work 80+ hour weeks and were fired anyway if the game failed to meet projected sales quotas.

Are you possibly nude? Do you like nail polish?