And, to add to this, gender roles and behaviour isn’t a matter of evolution. To claim it is and to throw around terms like “anthropology” when you clearly don’t know what it’s about at all is perpetuating generally sexist excuses for the learned behaviour that is gender.
I don’t think I made myself clear. My apologies I see how it could of been misread.
I was saying basically trying to mean that “Just because someone thinks something; doesn’t make it true. Even if it makes sense to you”. That wasn’t directed at you.
I am in no way a supporter of continued ‘gender roles’. If you asked any of my friends, they would say I am probably the most feminine male that they know. And if there is anyone 100% for the ripping up of ‘old-ingrained instincts based on tradition’ and installing new operating systems in our brain, that is me.
But to deny the biological predispositions of a given gender as a contributing factor to the naturally developed gender roles in ancient cultures is absurd.
Which don’t misunderstand me, I completely understand that in modern culture gender roles are ‘taught’ by our culture, and any supposed arguments of ‘biological predisposition’ are outdated and unnecessary in the modern world.
But the initial defining of the gender roles that occurred thousands and thousands of years ago were due to biological predispositions between the genders.
Gender roles are now generally completely unnecessary and absurd. But we do carry primal instincts from our evolutionary ancestors, due to them repeating habits for over a million years. Our genetics did not just reset on our birth, we carry millions of years of genetic information encoded in us, it is our primal instincts.
I love shopping and dressing fancy, and doing things typically considered ‘feminine’ more than most males, I abolish gender roles myself. But I don’t deny that killing something in a video game produces some very deeply ingrained primal satisfaction, and I generally don’t see women respond to killing things in video games with as much satisfaction or excitement. I certainly was never ‘taught’ to enjoy killing of things, I never hunted, shot guns or even fished as a child, the deep satisfaction from FPS games comes from something that was not taught to me by culture.The FPS market is one largely dominated by males and based on everything I’ve read, and everything I have analyzed of my own primal instincts, it appears to me this popularity among males is because FPS games tend to satisfy more masculine primal urges retained at a genetic level from the prior million years of ancestral habits.
There does appear to me to be a correlation between successful game play mechanics and game play mechanics that satisfy some primal urge. That is why I think on these terms. It appears to me there is a correlation, this is not because I support gender roles or want to enforce them, but I can’t deny there is a correlation there. Farmvile is more popular with females, and shooting stuff is more popular with males. I personally try to envision my personal projects as being inherently ‘non-dualist’, not dependent on any side of anything, appealing to both male and female equally. But I can’t help but fantasize a little about making a ‘girlie game’, that so easily generates millions.
I thought we were having a civil productive discussion concerning the potential relations of biological predisposition to the enjoyment of certain game mechanics, and I was personally eagerly anticipating some consensus or refinement of the idea. It is something I have pondered about considerably with a lot of interest.
I’m sorry if I offended anyone. I never thought the subject would would be controversial, I don’t really understand what emotional connection I am trampling to induce such a response, but if it is such a controversy then I won’t bring it up again.
For everything I have seen: only point where the sex of the player makes a difference in game demographics is precisely when it comes to games that overly-sexualizes women. Games like Dead or Alive and the upcoming NCSoft Blade and Soul are good examples of this. In fact I think a census of that game in Asia showed they had an insanely low percentage of women, something to expect from a game that spent a lot of resources into breast physics and none in hair or cloth physics.
As for the game in question: would be a good idea to download it and try it out. I been playing it (Hay Day, the farming one) since I got this thread came up just to have an idea what is going on… got to admit the RPG elements of progress are very addictive (VERY similar to an MMO) and it really plays with your mind. The desire to advance faster is very very strong and I can see how some others may be willing to spend money to accelerate. Unfortunately the game seems to be a bit crippled if you are not fond of Facebook, as many things are greatly accelerated by having Facebook friends.
There may be an opportunity here for a similar game that uses GameCenter for friend connections instead of (or in addition to) Facebook…
The online-requirement is also a big boomer. I get horrible signal at work and it’s very very hard to keep engagement when you can’t casually poke with the game during work downtime.
