i think its laguahble that she thinks she can control a multination industry.

I think it's laughable that you think that she's aiming to.

I thought Prometheus was a stupid movie. I will rant at length about it to anyone who cares to listen. By your rationale, I am attempting to "control" Hollywood.

Learn the difference between critique and censorship.

Erm... Is BHX's avatar missing for anyone else? I know that BHX mentioned leaving the thread, but...

Ravyne, I think that I partially disagree: I think that being truly colour/sex/whatever- blind--that is, pretending that sex, race, etc. don't exist--probably does go a bit far; instead, to me, the idea is rather to treat such classes as, in most contexts, unimportant--something like hair colour, or eye colour.

There are likely contexts in which they are relevant--one would presumably limit candidates to women when looking for a surrogate mother, for example--but far more in which they aren't, I believe: when hiring a business manager, it doesn't really matter whether they're male or female, just as it doesn't matter whether they have brown hair or yellow, for example.

By analogy, if I were looking for someone to lift a heavy object, I would look for someone with physical strength; in most other contexts their strength would likely be irrelevant. I feel that it is so too with race, sex and so on.

This view, I feel, doesn't decrease individuality--indeed, I argue that it increases it, as perceptions of individuals are no longer coloured disproportionately by a few traits, allowing their other traits to differentiate them.

This will be my last reply ...

Ah, I'm sorry to read that (genuinely). :/

In that case, since you may not be reading this, I'll keep my responses brief:

My problem with the study is that it focuses on it having positive benefits, but doesn't say much, if anything (from what I've seen), about whether it affects the person negatively which is the center of the claims.

(I'm presuming that "positive" here refers to "being accepting of others" while "negative" refers to "being bigoted in some way"; if we're talking about morality or ethics then this becomes a slightly more complex discussion, I feel.) While I suppose that it's possible that fiction only affects people positively, that seems rather unlikely to me. In any case, the example of propaganda again provides evidence of fiction producing a negative effect.

Show me a study that backs up games have a negative impact on society like the claims state.

As I said, it looks like at least some work has been done in this field, but I don't feel qualified to assess what results I found, and am thus even more hesitant to present them than I was with Wikipedia articles. (The latter I'm more comfortable with because they have at least likely been somewhat digested and seen by others.)

I've seen many female gamers respond to the claims and state via vlogs and blogs that they don't care about playing male or female characters, but rather they just want to play the game to see the story, visuals, and be entertained.

But was this a representative sampling?

The question is at what point does it cross the line from harmless critiques into censorship?

A tricky question, but perhaps when the critic has the power to actively prevent the artist from doing something that they want to do (as opposed to merely influencing the artist's opinion). I don't believe that Anita and company wield anywhere near that power.

"We'll hire more women and people of color because a diversity of experiences and perspectives will make us a stronger, more-effective organization."

What. Can you cite a peer reviewed study that has reached that conclusion? I've spoken on this while discussing hiring with several CEO's (from mid cap to startup to large-cap where I've worked), and all of our research has always determined that diversity has no effect whatsoever on productivity (While discussing diversity can lead to positive employee morale).

http://www.norface-migration.org/publ_uploads/NDP_22_11.pdf

It's like you guys live in a completely different world then the places I've worked. "Sexually offensive" jokes are common in every office I've worked but 1 (Which was a very stuffy corporate environment).

Are game development companies really that PC or what? What kind of environments do you work in?

"We'll hire more women and people of color because a diversity of experiences and perspectives will make us a stronger, more-effective organization."

What. Can you cite a peer reviewed study that has reached that conclusion? I've spoken on this while discussing hiring with several CEO's (from mid cap to startup to large-cap where I've worked), and all of our research has always determined that diversity has no effect whatsoever on productivity (While discussing diversity can lead to positive employee morale).

http://www.norface-migration.org/publ_uploads/NDP_22_11.pdf

It's like you guys live in a completely different world then the places I've worked. "Sexually offensive" jokes are common in every office I've worked but 1 (Which was a very stuffy corporate environment).

Are game development companies really that PC or what? What kind of environments do you work in?

There are different corporate cultures depending on the company. Like minded people tend to band together and work together, and people who don't share that mindset either don't join them in the first place, or they don't last for long. Some companies do a very poor job of managing their internal culture, which in turn causes issues that lead to the company failing.

I've worked with a few companies that functioned mainly as sub-contractors, so I would get to dip my toes in half a dozen different companies across North America in any given week. While not the same as being in the office itself day to day, it did provide a glimpse into their company cultures. Some are truly 'stiff and formal', I've worked in some directly, and contracted with dozens more. Very business focused, tend to collect people who are either generally not overly social in nature, or prefer to keep work and socializing as two distinct parts of their lives. Then there are companies that tend towards more friendly exchanges. You join them and you're expected to be good friends or almost family in nature. Chatting about each other's lives is a day to day thing, and it just seems natural to go out for dinner or drinks with all the co-workers, or help someone move. Then there are also companies that act like jerks to each other. Constant name calling, and profanity filled comments in code or project trackers. If someone had a bug in their code, then it was expected that you would call them something that would get you sent to sensitivity training in a stiff and formal company, if not fired on the spot. If the bug was your fault, then you were expected to accept the name calling and near bullying. Even if things were going well you were expected to refer to each other with various profanities.

So one big issue is that we have developed a feedback loop due to the kind of personalities that originally founded our industries. Many of the company cultures strongly clash with a range of mindsets which aren't commonly found in our industries, which in turn discourages such people from learning and advancing within them, which then reinforces the lack of their mindsets within the field as a whole and discourages the "next generation" for entering the field.

What. Can you cite a peer reviewed study that has reached that conclusion? I've spoken on this while discussing hiring with several CEO's (from mid cap to startup to large-cap where I've worked), and all of our research has always determined that diversity has no effect whatsoever on productivity (While discussing diversity can lead to positive employee morale).

Productivity is not an effective measure -- as far as CEO types are concerned, productivity is a dumb measure of Work Out / Dollars In.

But productivity is myopic and not at all what I'm talking about -- and also we're not talking about games industry specifically. Also, that statement wasn't really meant to stand alone, to seem like hiring people with minority status is a magic bullet, but to say that we should recognize diversity of all kinds as potential strengths. Most places tend to hire for skills first, and "team fit" second(ish) -- and the effect is then that all the workers start to look mostly like each other; that is, if your company is full of brogrammers, you'll probably keep hiring programmers, and eventually only brogrammers will want to work for you. In other words, a mono-culture comes into being unless you take care to foster your corporate culture more thoughtfully. Maybe its not brogrammers, maybe its middle-aged white guys or studious nerds -- its not really the cross-section that's the problem, its that everyone looks the same.

You'd be right to assert that a person's skin-color has not a wit to do with how capable a programmer they are. Lets make an example that's not about race -- lets say you've got a team of 10 C# programmers, and you're hiring. Your top two candidates are equally skilled in C# -- one has a similar level of experience in Java, the other has a similar level of experience in Haskell. Assuming no objectionable personality traits, who's the better hire? For my money, the Haskeller is hands-down the better hire -- you can take any one of your 10 C# programmers and turn them into a Java programmer with relatively little trouble, but Haskell not so much. That Java guy is going to not think about things differently than your stable of C# programmers, but the Haskeller sure will -- in fact, the way a Haskeller might approach certain problems is almost bound to cause strife with those C# programmers. In the short term, the Haskeller will almost certainly be a detriment to productivity because they're going to argue in favor of some solutions that the C# programmers are going to be uncomfortable with -- but sometimes those solutions will be better solutions, and over time those C# programmers will absorb those approaches and grow stronger for it, so in the long term its a win.

Monocultures are always weaker than diverse cultures. They're less susceptible to whims that are beyond their control, and more agile to adapt to changing demands.

There are lots of good business reasons to prefer diversity in your workforce that don't have anything to do with productivity. Hiring is a big one. As I've already touched on, if your staff is predominantly or entirely comprised of brogrammers, eventually only brogrammers will want to work for you. So your local hiring pool is now maybe 1/10th of its true size and maybe you start having trouble finding people that want to work for you and also have the skills you need. This has all kinds of knock-on effects -- firstly, you might have to start paying substandard workers wages that are higher than they're worth because you're desperate and simply need more bodies. Secondly, you only have brogrammers to promote from within, and maybe brogrammers don't make the best managers or VPs of development. Thirdly, once a mono-culture takes root, its really hard to change it, because as I said, eventually no one different will be interested in working for you.

Simple variety of perspectives is good too -- it can be argued that the game industry's typical poor portrayal of women just might have something to do with the typical lack of women in the industry. There is a near monoculture of men, and so they have a hard time appreciating why their portrayals of women might be offensive or belittling or just plain lazy and one-dimensional.

Erm... Is BHX's avatar missing for anyone else? I know that BHX mentioned leaving the thread, but...

Just trying to find something better than my face to stare at.

I've enjoyed this guy's videos that critique Anita and all her points without being rude about it: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbGeY5L25KBr_OtPsRJWfKoNslm2UZA6a

I've not seen anything to change my views so I don't see any reason for me to keep beating a dead horse. I can only state my views before I sound like a broken record, which I think I sounded like one by the third page (if not sooner). It's clear my views are considered outdated and idiotic by everyone except me so there is no point in continuing to voice my views or concerns. Thus I stated I was leaving the discussion and only came back to let you know that my avatar is gone because I'm just trying to find a better avatar than my bald head.

The paraphrased paraphrased list:

1: The world is very sexist and it shouldn't be.

Gamedevs balancing out sexuality as Anita suggests won't do anything to stop this. It's a greater problem, both genetically and in society as a whole. =/

Just trying to find something better than my face to stare at.

Fair enough, and thank you for returning to explain. ^_^

Fair enough, and thank you for returning to explain.

I didn't want you to think I left the site of this disagreement.

I was so hung up on her language thinking she was calling for censorship, but watching the playlist I linked above (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbGeY5L25KBr_OtPsRJWfKoNslm2UZA6a) in one video he pointed out something I hadn't caught during my watching of Anita's videos. Anita makes all her good points void in her own series. She calls for these changes and everything, but then turns around and states that there are companies that are already making games that do what she states she wants. Games are an form of artistic expression and if there are companies that make games that don't use damsels in distress, don't misrepresent women, don't objectify women and don't use them as background objects already then her whole platform has been destroyed by her from the start.