StarTrotter wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
Alot of people have delusions about GG

Especially the GG activists themselves. Anyway, back on topic:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 VorpalBunny74 wrote:
'top selling games of 2013'

Yeah. Many video games means even 2% of them represent a huge numbers. Still, having only 2% means having very tiny proportion. Something those videos failed to address.

Considering we still have producers whom don't hire women to playtest and exclude women in the focus tests for their games, and whom think having a woman's face on the box art will reduce sales even when that character is a vital part of the game, and whom say things like "we can't have a woman protagonist in a relationship with a man, guys don't want to imagine kissing men"... it's not surprising at all that so few get produced. It's more surprising that so many do...

Honestly I don't quite see the point in not hiring an individual for playtesting because they are a women. Also the rest is stupid. Just stupid in general (apologies just stuff like this kinda makes me scratch my head and just confound me to no end)

(Also GG is like some hydra that's charging blindly through the internet. It's got good heads, it's got bad heads but none of them are looking one way and some are chowing down on others. The glories of hoard combat!)

 Kali wrote:
wholly alien masses

 Kali wrote:
It means that I don't see the portrayal of women in games as a problem that merits reform.

 Kali wrote:
There's no problem with the expansion of the playerbase if that's all that happens, but the point here is that you think it's good to change things in order to get more people playing - I could not disagree more about this.

 Kali wrote:
They're effectively fixed, since the pool of creative directors is very limited due to legacy costs that don't vanish with an increase in market size or profitability.

 Kali wrote:
That's hardly my point. I don't demand the presence of scantily-clad babes in all games

 Kali wrote:
but I'll be damned if I surrender the chance, simply to assuage the concerns of people who don't even play them.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

Spoiler:

 LordofHats wrote:
Biggest complaint is that one again, they found a way to show some cleavage (the rest of the sit is just awesome enough I'm willing to overlook it).

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
This get's a lot of hate on polygon it is no different than other "sexy" DC Characters, it is designed by Tesuya Nomura (Kingdom Hearts creator)

Spoiler:

Yes it got that latex dominatrix vibe, but she looks lethal.

What i don't get what is the problem in games that differentiate between females and males characteristics? I agree in social interaction and in normal (work) life the sexes need to be treated equally, but male and females are physically and mentally not the same, there are area's that males are better and other where females are better (i saw or read that females are better at withstanding high G turns) . So in the Olympics should not have a different competitions for males and females?

 AdeptSister wrote:
The problem that I have is not that there are differences in characteristics between men and women, how they are used. There is a bad habit that the stats they use are based on social stereotypes.

Also, games that use stats usually have optimal builds. If a specific sex gives a beneficial stat boost then there will be optimal sex-class combinations (like the optimal race-class builds in DnD). I can see that as limiting.

 Melissia wrote:
Meh, it's a sexy robot catgirl. When you've watched as much anime as I've been made to watch, that no longer impresses you.

Spoiler:

 AdeptSister wrote:

Bishop F Gantry wrote:

 AdeptSister wrote:
I just want games that aren't so embarrassing to play due to their usage of women characters and design. Or that cling to certain image of their audience. I also like personalization of my PCs when appropriate.

But I would love to get to the time when feminism stops being used as a four letter word. Being as gamer and a feminist is not mutually exclusive. It's not "censorship" to ask for something new or ask for your hobby to be more inclusive. Why is this so vilified? Does removing sexualization really hurt a game experience for some people?

Well you have the choice of not playing that types of games, just like I choose to not play games that requires Origin.

Being inclusive isn't being vilified from what ive observed, its what comes next that is the hypocritical double standard that people react to, Its the claims of wanting equality but then demanding special treatment for female characters in the next breath, finally culminating in total oppression of female charactisation in appearance, personality followed by the constant denial of the gaming industry is improving. And this is the same pattern every single time this issue crops up.

Like all media gaming is not exempt from exaggeration, just like the worst soap show imaginable to the humblest of documentaries they are all exaggerated to make them more intresting.

So your first line sounds like "Deal with it or Leave." Which if I am misconstruing your statement, I apologize. But, you know that this reminds me of the arguments that are used against someone who complains about GW. People usually complain about something because they care.

And when did I say the gaming industry was not getting better? I think that most people agreed that it has. And "total oppression of female characterization?" What do you mean by this? I thought I was asking for greater characterization. Like using women differently in games instead of making them the same token "woman " role. What special treatment am I asking for over male characters? I just am hoping for the same character diversity for women as there are for men. No special treatment.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
I agree in social interaction and in normal (work) life the sexes need to be treated equally, but male and females are physically and mentally not the same

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
I agree in social interaction and in normal (work) life the sexes need to be treated equally, but male and females are physically and mentally not the same

Yep, totally mentally different. There is a huge mental difference between men and women. Sure thing.

Scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains.

Maps of neural circuitry showed that on average women's brains were highly connected across the left and right hemispheres, in contrast to men's brains, where the connections were typically stronger between the front and back regions.

Ragini Verma, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said the greatest surprise was how much the findings supported old stereotypes, with men's brains apparently wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking.

"If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better," Verma said. "Women are better at intuitive thinking. Women are better at remembering things. When you talk, women are more emotionally involved – they will listen more."

She added: "I was surprised that it matched a lot of the stereotypes that we think we have in our heads. If I wanted to go to a chef or a hairstylist, they are mainly men."

Female brain
Neural map of a typical woman's brain. Photograph: National Academy of Sciences/PA
The findings come from one of the largest studies to look at how brains are wired in healthy males and females. The maps give scientists a more complete picture of what counts as normal for each sex at various ages. Armed with the maps, they hope to learn more about whether abnormalities in brain connectivity affect brain disorders such as schizophrenia and depression.

Verma's team used a technique called diffusion tensor imaging to map neural connections in the brains of 428 males and 521 females aged eight to 22. The neural connections are much like a road system over which the brain's traffic travels.

The scans showed greater connectivity between the left and right sides of the brain in women, while the connections in men were mostly confined to individual hemispheres. The only region where men had more connections between the left and right sides of the brain was in the cerebellum, which plays a vital role in motor control. "If you want to learn how to ski, it's the cerebellum that has to be strong," Verma said. Details of the study are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Male and female brains showed few differences in connectivity up to the age of 13, but became more differentiated in 14- to 17-year-olds.

"It's quite striking how complementary the brains of women and men really are," Ruben Gur, a co-author on the study, said in a statement. "Detailed connectome maps of the brain will not only help us better understand the differences between how men and women think, but it will also give us more insight into the roots of neurological disorders, which are often sex-related."

It’s no secret that boys and girls are different—very different. The differences between genders, however, extend beyond what the eye can see. Research reveals major distinguishers between male and female brains.
Scientists generally study four primary areas of difference in male and female brains: processing, chemistry, structure, and activity. The differences between male and female brains in these areas show up all over the world, but scientists also have discovered exceptions to every so-called gender rule. You may know some boys who are very sensitive, immensely talkative about feelings, and just generally don’t seem to fit the “boy” way of doing things. As with all gender differences, no one way of doing things is better or worse. The differences listed below are simply generalized differences in typical brain functioning, and it is important to remember that all differences have advantages and disadvantages.

Processing

Male brains utilize nearly seven times more gray matter for activity while female brains utilize nearly ten times more white matter. What does this mean?

Gray matter areas of the brain are localized. They are information- and action-processing centers in specific splotches in a specific area of the brain. This can translate to a kind of tunnel vision when they are doing something. Once they are deeply engaged in a task or game, they may not demonstrate much sensitivity to other people or their surroundings.

White matter is the networking grid that connects the brain’s gray matter and other processing centers with one another. This profound brain-processing difference is probably one reason you may have noticed that girls tend to more quickly transition between tasks than boys do. The gray-white matter difference may explain why, in adulthood, females are great multi-taskers, while men excel in highly task-focused projects.

Chemistry

Male and female brains process the same neurochemicals but to different degrees and through gender-specific body-brain connections. Some dominant neurochemicals are serotonin, which, among other things, helps us sit still; testosterone, our sex and aggression chemical; estrogen, a female growth and reproductive chemical; and oxytocin, a bonding-relationship chemical.

In part, because of differences in processing these chemicals, males on average tend to be less inclined to sit still for as long as females and tend to be more physically impulsive and aggressive. Additionally, males process less of the bonding chemical oxytocin than females. Overall, a major takeaway of chemistry differences is to realize that our boys at times need different strategies for stress release than our girls.

Structural Differences

A number of structural elements in the human brain differ between males and females. “Structural” refers to actual parts of the brain and the way they are built, including their size and/or mass.

Females often have a larger hippocampus, our human memory center. Females also often have a higher density of neural connections into the hippocampus. As a result, girls and women tend to input or absorb more sensorial and emotive information than males do. By “sensorial” we mean information to and from all five senses. If you note your observations over the next months of boys and girls and women and men, you will find that females tend to sense a lot more of what is going on around them throughout the day, and they retain that sensorial information more than men.

Additionally, before boys or girls are born, their brains developed with different hemispheric divisions of labor. The right and left hemispheres of the male and female brains are not set up exactly the same way. For instance, females tend to have verbal centers on both sides of the brain, while males tend to have verbal centers on only the left hemisphere. This is a significant difference. Girls tend to use more words when discussing or describing incidence, story, person, object, feeling, or place. Males not only have fewer verbal centers in general but also, often, have less connectivity between their word centers and their memories or feelings. When it comes to discussing feelings and emotions and senses together, girls tend to have an advantage, and they tend to have more interest in talking about these things.

Blood Flow and Brain Activity

While we are on the subject of emotional processing, another difference worth looking closely at is the activity difference between male and female brains. The female brain, in part thanks to far more natural blood flow throughout the brain at any given moment (more white matter processing), and because of a higher degree of blood flow in a concentration part of the brain called the cingulate gyrus, will often ruminate on and revisit emotional memories more than the male brain.

Males, in general, are designed a bit differently. Males tend, after reflecting more briefly on an emotive memory, to analyze it somewhat, then move onto the next task. During this process, they may also choose to change course and do something active and unrelated to feelings rather than analyze their feelings at all. Thus, observers may mistakenly believe that boys avoid feelings in comparison to girls or move to problem-solving too quickly.

These four, natural design differences listed above are just a sample of how males and females think differently. Scientists have discovered approximately 100 gender differences in the brain, and the importance of these differences cannot be overstated. Understanding gender differences from a neurological perspective not only opens the door to greater appreciation of the different genders, it also calls into question how we parent, educate, and support our children from a young age.



Gregory L. Jantz, PhD is the founder of The Center • A Place of HOPE and an internationally recognized best selling author of over 26 books related to mental wellness and holistic recovery treatment. He is also co-hosting the first-ever Helping Boys Thrive Summit on May 24th to discuss how brain science influences raising and educating boys. This article features excerpts from Dr. Jantz's book Raising Boys by Design

Summary: Subtle observable differences exist between male and female brains, but how exactly these relate to differences in behaviour is unknown. Such gender variations in the brain are often exaggerated and misappropriated, not only by the mass media but also by scientists, to reinforce stereotypes and perpetuate myths.

The science of sex differences has always been – and still is – fraught with controversy. Some believe that behavioural differences between men and women are mostly due to cultural influences, while others argue that sex differences are largely determined by biology. In reality, the situation is far more complex. It lies somewhere in the middle, and involves two related but independent factors, which are often confused or conflated.

One of these factors is biological sex, which is determined by chromosomes. Most people have either two X chromosomes, which makes them female, or one X and one Y chromosome, which makes them male. The other is gender, which is influenced largely by the socialization process. As we grow up, we learn society's norms about how males and females look and act; for most people, sex and gender are matched, and so they inadvertently conform to these norms.

Men and women's brains differ in subtle ways, and these differences are probably established in the womb, due to the effects of sex hormones, which masculinize or feminize the organ as it develops. However, we still do not understand the effects of sex hormones on the developing brain, or how the subtle differences observed between men and women's brains are related to differences in their behaviour.

Battle of the sexes?

The most obvious difference between the brains of men and women is overall size – men's brains are, on average, between 10 and 15 per cent larger than women's. In one recent study, neuroscientists compared the brains of 42 men and 58 women postmortem, and found that men's weighed an average of 1,378g (3lb), compared with 1,248g (2.75lb) for women. These size differences have been found repeatedly, but they emerge only when comparing large numbers of people, so some women's brains are larger than the average whereas some men's are smaller. These differences partly reflect the fact that men are generally bigger and taller than women, but they are not related to differences in intelligence.

Men and women's brains also differ in overall composition. Male brains tend to have a slightly higher proportion of white matter, whereas those of females have a higher proportion of grey matter in most parts of the cerebral cortex. Consequently, the cortex is slightly thicker in women's brains than in men's and, according to several studies, is slightly more convoluted as well. There are also sex differences in the size of individual brain structures. The hippocampus, a structure involved in memory formation, is on average larger in men than in women, as is the amygdala, which is also involved in memory, as well as emotions.

Another sexual variation is found in a structure called the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus. The function of this tiny structure is unknown, but research from four different laboratories has repeatedly found that it is almost twice as large in males than in females. It has also been linked to sexual orientation and gender identity: one study showed that it is more than twice as large in heterosexual males than in homosexual males, where it more closely resembles that of women; another found that it is smaller in male-to-female transsexuals, and larger in female-to-male transsexuals. These studies have been criticized for their small sample sizes, and the findings have not been confirmed.

Stereotypes and myths

Numerous studies show subtle differences in male and female behaviour and in cognitive functions, too. Men tend to be more aggressive and outperform women on mental tasks involving spatial skills such as mental rotation, whereas women tend to be more empathetic and perform better on verbal memory and language tasks. Findings like these are often exaggerated to reinforce the stereotypes that women are bad at reverse parking and that they love to chat!

In some cases, individual studies purporting to show sex differences in certain tasks are misappropriated. For example, according to a tiny postmortem study published in 1982, the corpus callosum, the massive bundle of nerve fibres connecting the two brain hemispheres, is proportionally larger in women than in men. This was widely reported to mean that women are better at multitasking, even though subsequent work has failed to replicate the results. A more recent study showed that women are marginally better than men at paying attention to sounds presented to both ears simultaneously – this was interpreted by some as evidence that 'men don't listen'.

Many of these claims are accompanied by the assertion that the observed differences between men and women's brains are 'hard-wired' and, therefore, irreversible. We now know, however, that brain structure and function change in response to experience, so any observed differences between the brains of men and women could also be due to differences in upbringing and socialization. To date, though, very little research has been done to investigate how different nurturing styles might influence brain development.

Box: The extreme male brain hypothesis

People with autism tend to perform poorly on tests of empathizing, or the ability to put oneself in somebody else's shoes, but do well on tests of systematizing, or finding repeating patterns. Similarly, women tend to score higher on the empathy scale, and men on the systematizing scale. These observations led one researcher to propose the highly controversial 'extreme male brain' hypothesis of autism. The hypothesis states that autism is an extreme form of the normal male cognitive profile, which occurs as a result of high testosterone levels in the womb. Accordingly, people with autism can be considered as 'hyper-systematizers' who focus more on patterns and fine details than on other people's thoughts and actions. The extreme male brain hypothesis has been used as an explanation for why autism is four times more prevalent in males than in females, and why people with autism can excel in disciplines such as maths and engineering.

 Chongara wrote:
The whole "Men and women are different!" argument is so incredibly lame I can't believe anyone goes trotting out it seriously.Of course there are both concrete differences and diverging trends in men and women, anyone with functioning eyes and a basic understanding of high school biology can figure that one out. However it's a lame argument because:


A) Men and Women are more similar than they are different. That is to say for every clear divergence between the sexes, many more commonalities exist.
B) Culture & Experience play a huge role in how we both as individuals and as groups experience the world.
C) Even given the same culture and biology individuals still have greatly diverging beliefs, tastes and experiences.

Sure you'll probably be able to drill down to some biological differences that might indicate possible contributing factors to broad trends that can be accounted for by sex difference, but that's about it. Trying to extrapolate those out into some kind of grand truth that neatly accounts for complex high-level aspects of humanity is absurd.

 Ashiraya wrote:
It doesn't actually matter, though. We are not identical, but we are equal.

Also, that was in response to Hybrid's claim that Men and Women are mentally identical. Studies have shown that is false.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


All I was doing is countering Hybrids assertion that there are no mental differences between men in women. Research shows that there are, in fact, slight mental differences between the sexes.
.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
All I was doing is countering Hybrids assertion that there are no mental differences between men in women.

 Melissia wrote:
*mutter* ... and yet atheist activists try to tell me religious folk are the source of all sexism... *mutter*

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
All I was doing is countering Hybrids assertion that there are no mental differences between men in women.

And it worked! I am now completely convinced that there are huge mental difference between men and women, much bigger than between two men or two women.

 Chongara wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


All I was doing is countering Hybrids assertion that there are no mental differences between men in women. Research shows that there are, in fact, slight mental differences between the sexes.
.

Oh. In other words:




How very productive.