Follow-Up: Gender Politics in Tamriel

Now that everyone has had sufficient opportunity to dissect my original post, I thought I would offer a follow-up post to review the fallout.

What has been most fascinating to me is how little of what I actually wrote in my original post made it into the discussion in the many re-postings that occurred throughout the gaming blogs and news sites and that those elements that were quoted were done primarily out of context.  I attribute this to two facts - the first being that my original post wasn't actually that interesting, so it became necessary to embellish what I wrote in order to make for anything newsworthy, and the second being that most of the re-posters don't appear to have read what I wrote in the first place.  Somehow these two things worked together to turn my simple, if geeky, observation about starting statistics into a blank slate upon which every contentious issue about gender and game design could easily be projected.  It certainly wasn't my intention in writing my original post, and I can't say that I feel that the discussion surrounding my piece has done anything to deepen the understanding between men and women on gender issues in game design.

I can say that the male fans of Oblivion are rabid, if ineloquent, in their defense of the game.  They may be unwilling to consider how elements of the game design might affect women differently, but at least they are passionate about something.   I have experienced a general reluctance among the male players of games to share their world with women on anything but their own terms.  I'm hoping that the people responsible for creating the actual games feel differently about this.  I'm not sure if the responses made by Pete Hines helped or hurt this discussion, since I didn't feel he actually addressed the points I made.  Many interpreted his response as being dismissive, and were thus encouraged to also disregard the original issue.

The fact is I don't think the issue I raised even deserved as much attention as it got, and I even said as much in my original post. The starting stats give male characters a power design advantage; I don't want to have to play a male character to access those advantages; I made a mod using TES Construction Set to address this issue; I am happily playing Oblivion; end of story. But I guess there is no understanding how a cross-website online discussion gets started, and no point in expecting people to stick to the original topic either.

If you would like to read some of the discussion that occurred outside of the Guilded Lilies blog here are a few links:

My original post is HERE, and the follow-up post is HERE.

The interview with Pete Hines of Bethesda on the Gamers With Jobs Press Pass website is HERE.

The Kotaku piece is HERE, which spawned THIS, THIS, and THIS, and I'm sure more of the same elsewhere.

There are a series of responses to the Kotaku post HERE, HERE, and HERE.

This isn't a comprehensive list of links, but I'm sure it is already more than you wanted to read in the first place.

 

Comments

[tekanji]

Omg yuo femanests are all men hatars. Yuo shud just git bac in the kitchen and make me some pie.

Erm, sorry, channeling idiot there. :) Thanks for the links, you included some I missed.

[Guilded Lily]

Tekanji -

Yeah, I left out a few others, but these are the ones central to most of the debate.

You know, a piece of pie would be really great right about now. Maybe I should get out from in front of my monitor and go make one. How does blueberry sound? - GL