No one was restricted from voting.

This is patently false. Just skim this briefly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage

How on earth, do you go from talking about being a gamer to female gamers and a pic of an article comparing killing female gamers in games to rape? Last I checked a gamer is a gamer no matter the sex and stressing over who runs the company has little to do with sex in games as they are looking at it from a business stance.

No one was restricted from voting.

This is patently false. Just skim this briefly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage

While it is true that some people did find ways to do it. I have found no actual legal restriction and indeed women voted long long before women's suffrage. It's easy to make people believe things are the case if people want to, and people want to always believe that things they are agree with in the slightest are justified and things were worse in the past. I have no doubt there were some people that restricted women from voting directly because they were women, but that was not an institutional thing and I'm more willing to bet that any keeping women from voting was more of a family thing much like sunandshadow's belief that there is prejudice against girly game or women due to her boss not wanting to risk things that have no history of selling. It could be the case that it's a sex thing, but it is much more reasonable, respectful, etc to presume that no one is acting with ill will and thus it is likely something if we knew what the actual reason was it would be something understandable and not bigoted.

We actually do have an analog to it in the modern day which is gay marriage. It's not actually "illegal" or whatever you want to call it. There was no prohibitions against it, but because there was also no protection from people being bigoted people could arbitrarily reject the acceptance of a marriage. What I find upsetting about the situation is that people aren't being careful about the laws they make and not making them universally applicable so what we have is things that when you read it, if you just rush through it you think it says something like "You can't discriminate based on race/gender/sexuality" but what happens is that it says "You can't discriminate against anyone other than straights/whites/males" This problem appears enough all over the place that it leaves the door open and creates the situation we find ourselves in here where some people think it is ok to be bigoted towards a specific group, but not towards another group. And we have seen these types of laws being abused and people pushing for this type of thing in recent times.

So I have no doubt that some form of what is happening today with the loose laws and abusing the loopholes happened in the past and due to how people think and act it is easy to see how a group might think it is a given way, even if it isn't actually that way, on both sides. So what I should say is "no one was actually legally restricted from voting, but we don't know enough of the other interacting circumstances to say if the laws were violated or not" Someone might chime in and say "we know that women were stopped from voting"... and that is true. It's just you didn't complete the sentence. Women were stopped from voting illegally. Not because they were women, but because they weren't registered voters or the votes that were representative of them were already cast or what not. That's why the particular women referred to were in court to begin with so that we can hear recordings of these people who were only for specifically them, upper class women, to have more rights than anyone else.

Of course, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt, knowing human psychology all that, but if we were ever able to figure out how to time travel or find more documents of the time we might just find that the reason that women didn't exorcise their rights might very well have been do to similar reasons as to why blacks didn't. They were being held in slavery and thus couldn't hold property or sign up for war. I find that highly unlikely in the case of women and even if it was it would imply quite an amazing thing which is that somehow the majority of the species was held in slavery by the minority for a time span greater than all of history and never rose up and when they asked for something they got it...which is impressive considering all other slavery and oppression took blood shed to end and once a majority was reached for a decent amount of time it ended... and it was such a tight grip that it happened the world over. That idea does nothing but casts both men and women in a poor light.

Sooo what I'm saying is I have looked into it, and if it held any water that women were oppressed and didn't have the ability to vote (at least in the western world) I wouldn't say other wise. I could be wrong, but the current amount of evidence I have seen lend nothing to the claim, not even the US constitution which is expressly worded in such a way as to say "can't be refused" rather than "now have these rights" which means from a purely legalistic way of looking at things, really only women/men who sign draft papers or own property should be able to vote, but we don't hold to that... less the government wants to pick on a guy... even though that is the actual law of the land. Like I said gay's never didn't have the right to marry (till after it was an issue) and so laws stating they have right are kinda silly as the laws are actually that you have the right less specifically restricted which they weren't/aren't so the laws is actually the restriction of the restriction and not the restriction being lifted. It's just we don't really express things the way they really are a lot of times and as time passes and things get passed along there is quite a bit of miscommunication that makes it look different than it actually was.

So, you are now stating that people who play games aren't poisonous. The people who are poisonous are...

Let me just try to parse this out...

A minority of developers you have only defined by being white males.

[...]

Perhaps English isn't your first language, I don't know. I do know that you haven't understood a word I said. Instead you've substituted your own version and used it as a springboard to go on a sequence of massive rants attacking groups who you feel are in the wrong, primarily focused around feminism for whatever reason. Then you've gotten offended that people are calling you out for it. There's so much implied sexism/misogyny in your posts that I don't even know where to start, and most of your claims are inaccurate, incorrect, or just completely made up. And that set of attitudes -- YOUR attitude -- is very common and it's exactly what I consider poisonous. You're a detriment to the industry. Unfortunately you will most likely continue to not actually read and comprehend what I'm saying.

Back on the original topic - I consider playing current games to be somewhat important as a developer. It's necessary to be aware of what's going on in the industry. Squeezing in the time for it is difficult, I've got a mile long backlog of games I want to look at. But I think the more games you try, the more it creates ideas and experiences that are useful in making your own games.

How on earth, do you go from talking about being a gamer to female gamers and a pic of an article comparing killing female gamers in games to rape? Last I checked a gamer is a gamer no matter the sex and stressing over who runs the company has little to do with sex in games as they are looking at it from a business stance.

Someone made bigoted statements that they used to justify their reason for not using the label as a way to disassociate from those people. Explaining why those bigoted statements are false leads to where they come from and thus feminism and blah blah blah...

So, you are now stating that people who play games aren't poisonous. The people who are poisonous are...

Let me just try to parse this out...

A minority of developers you have only defined by being white males.

[...]

Perhaps English isn't your first language, I don't know. I do know that you haven't understood a word I said. Instead you've substituted your own version and used it as a springboard to go on a sequence of massive rants attacking groups who you feel are in the wrong, primarily focused around feminism for whatever reason. Then you've gotten offended that people are calling you out for it. There's so much implied sexism/misogyny in your posts that I don't even know where to start, and most of your claims are inaccurate, incorrect, or just completely made up. And that set of attitudes -- YOUR attitude -- is very common and it's exactly what I consider poisonous. You're a detriment to the industry. Unfortunately you will most likely continue to not actually read and comprehend what I'm saying.

I'm offended that you continue to say bigoted things, think it is alright, and people let you get away with it.

Firstly, even if I'm wrong, you're using words like misogyny as if it were wrong. Since you subscribe to feminism you should know that hatred is an emotion and by feminist logic you're always wrong to say that someone's emotions are wrong. That means even if it were the case that I hate women, you belief is that it is justified and you shouldn't be saying it is wrong.

Those long rants are not rants. They are explanations of why what you have said is bigoted, why you shouldn't use such lies to justify taking the label as gamer or not, and they are clarifying of points or explanation to someone that didn't know what feminism to begin with.

As far as not understanding what you said. How else should one interpret you specifically saying that minority community of white males who are mentally stunted are poisonous without giving examples, or justifying why you are saying white, males, or that they are mentally stunted as anything other than bigoted. And you have been outright refuted by a number vectors that what you are saying is even remotely possible. As I pointed out, replace white male with any other gender/race and you would be taken as the bigot that you are.

Though it is impressive after all those explanations your argument is "You're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. And you hate women so you're wrong." Even if I'm 100% wrong, that's not going to convince anyone and considering you think that we're all poisonous then it would be in your best interest to put forward a good argument to change our minds, not act like a petulant child.

Seriously, how dumb do you have to be to think gay marriage wasn't prohibited prior to the recent changes in law?

Nobody cares about your narrow minded views, unless you consider disgust to be caring.

dyed-in-the-wool true blue hard core lifelong gamer here.

i was a gamer before the PC was even invented.

D&D in Jr H.S.

president of the wargame club in high school.

microsoft flight simulator 1.0, 1916 option was the first PC title i played. i was at a friend's house, and his dad had a PC with MS flightsim 1.0. i started playing at midnight, and was still at it at 8 am when my buddy woke up again.

wrote my first PC game on another buddy's mom's pc in 1982.

VLSI chip design in SIMCity 1.0 (1 million population).

Panzer Leader was a favorite.

Aces of the Deep, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, Deathtrack, Aces of the Pacific. i was a big fan of Dynamix games.

Xwing - Tie fighter, etc. And of course, TOTAL WAR. Some rts's, but they're not exactly a REAL wargame (too contrived and balanced) . but they are a good AI challenge on a (supposedly) level playing field.

PC games are my preferred form of entertainment, over tv, movies, etc.

And yes, to be a good gamedev, you should be a gamer first, and a dev second.

its no wonder the industry is in the state its in, if the gamedevs are not passionate gamers.

if you don't care, and its just a job, it will be reflected in the quality and passion (or lack thereof) shown in the work produced.

OTOH, i can also sympathize with those who like to build more than play. To me building games is like playing with lego blocks when i was a kid. Its the natural born engineer in me. i like to build stuff. take me to the beach, i make sandcastles!

I find that playing games also motivates me to make games that are better than what i'm playing.

thats how i got into game development. me and a buddy were DLing star trek games. they were all the same old top down sector quadrant thing, 2d, turn based, text mode. at the end of the night, having DL'd and checked out 14 versions of essentially the same game, i said, "these all suck! _I_ could write something better than _THIS_ !". in six weeks i had. in another month the demo became a top ten download on AOL, 10,000+ copies the first week. this was before the web. AOL, COMPUSERV, GEnie, and software creations BBS were pretty much it in the way of online games to DL. then checks started pouring in, in the mail. the rest is history, as they say.

when i need motivation for Caveman, i Play Skyrim. a little time sitting through loadscreens for a world that doesn't change unless you move forward to the next spawnpoint, and simulation so poorly thought through that "random encounters" eventually kill all merchants in the game, rendering it rather unplayable, and i'm ready to get back to work on Caveman. i think skyrim is good motivation because i want it to be an indepth rpg, but its really just a really big shooter. peel away the pretty graphics, and there's not a hell of a lot of simulation going on underneath.

Seriously, how dumb do you have to be to think gay marriage wasn't prohibited prior to the recent changes in law?

If you look, in some states it wasn't even legal for interracial marriages til mid- to late-90s. So yeah, you are right, gay marriage has only recently been gaining headway in states. I say it is about time as there are more important things in this world than stressing over the definition of marriage (like all the countries where starvation and disease are running rampant).

Seriously, how dumb do you have to be to think gay marriage wasn't prohibited prior to the recent changes in law?

If you look, in some states it wasn't even legal for interracial marriages til mid- to late-90s. So yeah, you are right, gay marriage has only recently been gaining headway in states. I say it is about time as there are more important things in this world than stressing over the definition of marriage (like all the countries where starvation and disease are running rampant).

And yet I doubt you could actually find a law that prohibits same sex marriage before relatively recently. Say before 30 years ago.