Women & Roguelikes

[Psiweapon]

Only dicks can save us now. A HUGE BAG OF DICKS.

You mean a bag full of bloody, amputated peckers or a bag full of Krice people?

[UltimaRatioRegum]

Apologies for resurrecting the thread; I just spotted it and had something to contribute. In the interests of getting this thread slightly back on track, here are my own experiences. My flatmate is a female gamer in her 20s, and she has a very similar gaming philosophy to mine - which is to say, the tougher the game, the better. On the rare non-roguelike that allows permadeath, she puts it on a fair percentage of the time. When I started developing my game, she'd never really heard of roguelikes except in passing when I mentioned them, but as I discuss a lot of my game development with her, and she's become very interested in the genre.

Based on my experience, I'd therefore propose it is an awareness/visibility issue, not a willingness/interest issue. Roguelikes are closely tied to a lot of communities that have small female populations, and the same problems arise. Disparities in maths/"logic" groups are not anything innate; there's a vast host of historical and sociological reasons behind those demographic biases. Anyway, based upon the female gamers I know in person (flatmate and one other), 100% are interested in roguelikes. Whilst this is obviously a meaninglessly small sample-size, I don't think the "more men play roguelikes" problem is any different, ultimately, to the "more men play non-casual games" issue. No intelligent female gamer interested in a real challenge is going to be put off any more than an intelligent male gamer with the equivalent mindset.

ANYWAY, after this ramble - I think it's nothing more than an extension of the existing gender gaps in gaming. Maybe an extreme example and quantitatively different, but not qualitatively different. As for doing something about it... I'll get back to you on that.

[TSMI]

There reason there are no women in computer science is because of the men of computer science. In no other classes did I encounter such overwhelming social ineptitude as in my compsci classes. No sane woman - hell no sane man - would want to spend time among them.

There are exceptions, generalisations, blah blah

[Krice]

In no other classes did I encounter such overwhelming social ineptitude as in my compsci classes.

There are some things that require less social abilities. But why anyone would have to care about that? (women do I guess..)

[guest509]

There reason there are no women in computer science is because of the men of computer science. In no other classes did I encounter such overwhelming social ineptitude as in my compsci classes. No sane woman - hell no sane man - would want to spend time among them.

There are exceptions, generalisations, blah blah

Though anecdotal, I have to agree. The breaking point for me came during an engineering class where the teacher had us break up into groups but my classmates could not communicate effectively enough to split into groups. It was truly amazing. There were a couple of ladies in the class, but they all had the same socially inept brains.

I knew I'd rather kill myself than work with these people for the rest of my days. When people are that bad at communicating I actually get very anxious and become a bit of a boob myself. It's torture for me. Maybe you'd have to meet me to understand, I'm incredibly social. That annoying butterfly guy that wants to be everyone's friend.

So I dropped out of engineering and reset my minor as my major. My professors in History had been asking me for over a year to come over and run their archeology club programs as well as join the graduate level classes. So I did. This led to a doctorate later. Good move for me.

Different brains are good at different things. Hormones in the womb control a large amount of brain structure. With social norms playing such a huge role, it's hard to tell how much chemistry controls aptitude.

EDIT: It should be noted that though I did have some engineering aptitude, I did not have much. Does aptitude for this cancel out the social aptitude? That's a great question, I don't think there's an answer. Individually obviously it's not true (no generalization is true individually) but at the society level it might be interesting to study.

[Krice]

When people are that bad at communicating

It's not that simple. I think many people assume a certain type of communication which is closely related to social structure of mind. Many intelligent people don't neccessarily have a strong social structure. I'm an extreme example because of my high intelligence. The way I don't fit in makes most people feel uneasy. It's possibly something like meeting a being from outer space who is superior to you. I don't know how it feels, because I've never met more intelligent person than I am.

[TSMI]

In no other classes did I encounter such overwhelming social ineptitude as in my compsci classes.

There are some things that require less social abilities. But why anyone would have to care about that? (women do I guess..)

I can tell you're one of the people I talk about.

[TSMI]

There reason there are no women in computer science is because of the men of computer science. In no other classes did I encounter such overwhelming social ineptitude as in my compsci classes. No sane woman - hell no sane man - would want to spend time among them.

There are exceptions, generalisations, blah blah

Though anecdotal, I have to agree. The breaking point for me came during an engineering class where the teacher had us break up into groups but my classmates could not communicate effectively enough to split into groups. It was truly amazing. There were a couple of ladies in the class, but they all had the same socially inept brains.

I knew I'd rather kill myself than work with these people for the rest of my days. When people are that bad at communicating I actually get very anxious and become a bit of a boob myself. It's torture for me. Maybe you'd have to meet me to understand, I'm incredibly social. That annoying butterfly guy that wants to be everyone's friend.

So I dropped out of engineering and reset my minor as my major. My professors in History had been asking me for over a year to come over and run their archeology club programs as well as join the graduate level classes. So I did. This led to a doctorate later. Good move for me.

Different brains are good at different things. Hormones in the womb control a large amount of brain structure. With social norms playing such a huge role, it's hard to tell how much chemistry controls aptitude.

EDIT: It should be noted that though I did have some engineering aptitude, I did not have much. Does aptitude for this cancel out the social aptitude? That's a great question, I don't think there's an answer. Individually obviously it's not true (no generalization is true individually) but at the society level it might be interesting to study.

Congratulations on realising what I did, and doing what I *should* have done.

Oh well

[guest509]

When people are that bad at communicating

It's not that simple. I think many people assume a certain type of communication which is closely related to social structure of mind. Many intelligent people don't neccessarily have a strong social structure. I'm an extreme example because of my high intelligence. The way I don't fit in makes most people feel uneasy. It's possibly something like meeting a being from outer space who is superior to you. I don't know how it feels, because I've never met more intelligent person than I am.

  This is pure gold.

[Krice]

I can tell you're one of the people I talk about.

No you can't. You don't know me.

[guest509]

I can tell you're one of the people I talk about.

No you can't. You don't know me.

Exactly, plus there's a difference between socially inept (being a boob) and anti-social (being an asshole).

[SomeGuy]

Not surprising - as enjoying a roguelike is 99% about dealing with logical-mathematical challenges, which isn't exactly known to be women's cup of tea.

My wife is a woman (duh!) and she doesn't like roguelikes with ASCII symbols, but she enjoys isometric or graphical tiled RLs.
In fact, I presented her NetHack in ASCII mode some years ago, but she didn't like it, nor understood it well enough to play it properly. But then, two or three days after that, I presented her NetHack with Falcon's Eye mode, and she liked it quite a bit, she even played it like almost lets say, Diablo or something and enjoyed quite a lot.

She doesn't understand well an ASCII roguelike, but she can beat most Sudokus in relatively little amount of time, which have a lot of logic into it, as far as I know. So I'm not sure if the problem here is the logical-mathematical challenge, I think it is more about the abstract way of thinking and representation.

In fact, she played WoW for around 6 years, but don't ask her to play a Pen&Paper roleplaying game. I don't think she will wake up and go to computer semi-naked to play NetHack, but hell, she did that with WoW to check auction house at 4:00 am local time. ^_^

[Darren Grey]

I think it's just a matter of approaching the unfamiliar. Women are less likely to be exposed to ASCII roguelikes, and just like many male players they're instantly turned off them.

[TSMI]

I can tell you're one of the people I talk about.

No you can't. You don't know me.

Just a hunch.

More on topic, I dislike it when there's a huge gender disparity in things. A bit of balance is always good.

[guest509]

  Agreed, but with that I hesitate to advocate change in order to be inclusive. Unless that change is to stop being purposefully exclusional.