Civ6 Gender Biased?

[God of Kings]

There's the Outback Tycoon scenario that is available with the Australia DLC; civs cannot attack each other in that scenario (and there's no barbarians either). It's a purely economic scenario.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Well, maybe the OP's presentation of the idea she was trying to discuss was flawed, but that does not give us the right to attack her. She's likely gone, to which point I suppose that her argument is moot.

Her argument may be moot, however there is some basis in fact as to what she was saying about gaming in general and women preferring non-violent games. From a paper here:

http://www.radford.edu/~mzorrilla2/thesis/differencesinplay.html

Bonanno and Kommers’ (2005) study on Maltese men and women found a “high percentage of females opting for puzzle, adventure, fighting, and managerial games” that indicates “females’ top reasons for playing include challenge and arousal” (p. 36).

They also found that “males’ preference for first person shooters, roleplaying games, and sport and strategy games indicates gratification of different needs – challenge and social interaction” (Bonanno & Kommers, 2005, p. 36). Their study identifies possible underlying reasons for these preferences:


The preferred games of females capitalise on their natural propensities and skills such as perceptual speed, fine motor skills, and sequenced hand movements (Watson & Kimura, 1991). Games preferred by males demand a higher visuospatial ability involving localisation, orientation, mental rotation, target-directed motor skills, greater reaction speed, increased aggression, and greater risk taking (Bonanno & Kommers, 2005, p. 36).

Bonanno, P., & Kommers, P. (2005). Gender Differences and Styles in the Use of Digital Games. Educational Psychology, 25(1), 13-41. doi:10.1080/0144341042000294877.

And here:

http://usabilitynews.org/video-games-males-prefer-violence-while-females-prefer-social/

Males were more likely than females to be drawn to games from the Strategy, Role Playing, Action, and Fighting genres whereas females were more likely than males to play games from the Social, Puzzle/Card, Music/Dance, Educational/Edutainment, and Simulation genres.

“Examining the Role of Gender in Video Game Usage, Preference, and Behavior” in the Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society, Boston, MA 2012.

For those slamming the OP for her generalization, we can only draw from our own experience. Sometimes we project our tendencies on the population at large. Is this wrong? No. But it is certainly subjective thinking. We tend to treat the world as we think about it and experience it.

I disagree with the OP that Civ is gender biased. The point has been raised that you can't escape a certain level of violence in a game about human history. Wars did and will occur. But for those of you who think that there aren't differences in the way that women see and approach the world, and find that way of thinking sexist, I have one question for you:

Are you a woman? Do you have intimate knowledge of the female experience? If you aren't and don't, you can't really judge the OP's feelings about violence in video games, or the preferences in women toward or against a certain genre of game. And you also can't know how a woman sees the world. Just as I can't intimately know how a man sees the world. There are fundamental differences between the way that men and women think. We can use all of the politically correct haughtiness that we wish to use, but there are still differences between the genders.

 

[Ryika]

however there is some basis in fact as to what she was saying about gaming in general and women preferring non-violent games.

The basis of her argument was not violence in games though, the basis of her argument was that males prefer war, while females prefer "rational" solutions. ("at least Civ product accommodated a female (rational) perspective of rationality over war") And that's certainly not true in the binary way that she phrased it. While women (using women here because there's no study I could find that asks for gender instead of sex) do tend to have lower rates of acceptance for wars, the differences are usually not THAT big and hover at around ~10-15% for wars that have a high or medium acceptance in the general population of a given country.

Are you a woman? Do you have intimate knowledge of the female experience? If you aren't and don't, you can't really judge the OP's feelings about violence in video games, or the preferences in women toward or against a certain genre of game. And you also can't know how a woman sees the world. Just as I can't intimately know how a man sees the world. There are fundamental differences between the way that men and women think. We can use all of the politically correct haughtiness that we wish to use, but there are still differences between the genders.

I don't know about this. It seems to me that there are traits that we can have, and that between the genders, certain traits occur more often than other traits, because of inherent differences and cultural upbringing.

Statistically, males may enjoy violence more than females, but that does not mean that a specific male and a specific female can't have the exact same preferences when it comes to violence. There's females who love violent video games, and there's males who detest them, therefor the claim that a man cannot know "how a woman sees the world" isn't really a thing, at least not when it comes to this specific topic. All you have to be to understand where she's coming from is somebody who prefers peaceful play over violence yourself, or even just somebody who can empathize with it. Your gender and sex don't play a role, because we're talking about individuals, not statistics.

 

[Tigranes]

Completely agree. Stating males are more disposed to violence is completely unbased.

2) I think you don't know what androgyny means (quick google result: "Androgyny is the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics." So, you want to say male humans are more disposed to having impulses of a combined male and female characteristic. Your words are illogical.)
I really have the feeling you're using fancy words to try to make a point, but don't really get what you want to say yourself. Using simple words to convey a message isn't dumber. The easier you can state your point, the easier people will get your point.

I honestly cringe seeing how enthusiastically you are pushing foot into your mouth. confusing two similarly looking words, while lecturing to one of the very few female posters here. Even if later you apologize for semantics -- your tone was unwarranted and you never addressed this later.

1. "Androgenic" is the adjective form of the noun "androgen," a word referring to any of the male hormones, including testosterone and androsterone.
2. Androgyny as a noun came into use c.1850, nominalizing the adjective androgynous. The adjective use dates from the early 17th century and is itself derived from the older French (14th Century) and English (c.1550) term androgyne. The terms are ultimately derived from Ancient Greek: ἀνδρόγυνος, from ἀνήρ, stem ἀνδρ- (anér, andr-, meaning man) and γυνή (gunē, gyné, meaning woman) through the Latin: androgynus,
3. It's ok to be smart and get to the very essence of things.

 

[Tigranes]

I've played several CIv 6 games and am underwhelmed. Everything but war is harder to work towards. The game is so slow I'm losing interest. The barbarians are so much more powerful and prolific that my efforts to create a balanced civ are utterly thwarted. Unhappy that I've spent USD$70/$90 aussie bucks.

I can recommend Civ4 with one particular mod: RFC Dawn of Civilization (DoC). I have started with Civ 1 and played all 6 installments and most of the major mods. This is the only game I play through my entire adult life and I can assure you that DoC comes as close to actual history simulator as it gets without compromising replayability. Civilizations there do not start at the same time together but rather can rise and fall. Each of them can win by accomplishing unique historical goals, many of which are quite peaceful. With some civs you can actually win with zero violence. YOu can also win by pursuing unique religious victories by any civ, including secularist victory. Civ4 with hamble bundle costs few bucks and the mod is free. Some of the best things in life are free.

 

[Depravo]

I don't consider Civ a violent game anyway. The depiction of warfare is one step up from chess in its simplicity and stylisation.

The TW series and others are different, but even operational and tactical sims tend not to dwell on the actual blood and guts aspect, which I for one find uninteresting and slightly distasteful. Never liked shoot 'em ups.

A lot of the best map games are effectively puzzle games anyway, whether you're moving bobblehead SS formations around the map in Unity of Command or begging for enemy 'morale drops' in Pike and Shot - where casualties are represented by little red numbers rising from the unit and the battlefield is left squeaky clean.

 

[Balerune]

Isn't it sexist to claim that rationality over violence is an inherently female trait?

It most definitely is sexist to claim that rationality is an inherently female trait .

I am also distressed to see that anyone would talk in such a manner and I have not read any further in this post and will not.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Alrighty, I wanted to stick to the creative avenue of, "there's a complaint, or call for change, in a certain element of the game from a certain portion of the demographic. What can we add or change to make this a more enjoyable game for everyone?" But some of this sexist argument is starting to bother me.

For those slamming the OP for her generalization, we can only draw from our own experience.

The reason that people are not accepting this as a legitimate argument is not because she is making two points that are legitimate, it's because it is sexist to conclude that those two points are related:

POINT #1 - THERE IS VIOLENCE IN CIVILIZATION GAMES.
-Agreed. Almost irrefutable.

POINT #2 - CIVILIZATION IS GENDER BIASED
-Maybe, maybe not. What's your evidence? ...

...If the evidence to point #2 is just point #1, then it is a sexist stereotype rather than a legitimate argument. Saying that men not only approve of but are also drawn to violence whereas women are (more morally sound and) opposed to it is simply prejudicial. The two articles that are listed in an attempt to say that it's fact rather than a sexist statement are nothing more than attempts by the sexist authors to prove that their own discriminatory view are fact rather than opinion, and they do so by trying to manipulate the reader by how the evidence is presented:
-Simply look at the pictures the author selected for the article "Video games and Gender." It says that males are more likely to be drawn to sports games, so what picture did the author select as representative of sports game? Did they show a picture of a hockey player scoring a goal? No. Did they show a picture of a basketball playing dunking? No. They selected a picture of an MMA fighter kicking another MMA fighter in the face. Not only that, but a MALE mma fighter kicking another fighter in the face. It's very convenient that while female MMA wants to be considered as legitimate as male MMA, whenever these discussions or articles come out about gender relations, they conveniently forget about female MMA. So why did the author select a picture of a fighter kicking someone in the face instead of a pitcher pitching a baseball? Because the sexist author thinks, and wants you to think that men are bloodthirsty savages.

And the statement of "you're not a woman, therefore you can't understand what the point is" is a cheap attempt to win a debate by not letting the opposing debater have any input. Yes, I'm a male, and as a 6'2" 220 pound male who is well versed in martial arts, there are several perspectives that I can't easily relate to, all of which happened to have been pointed out to me by females.
But I do have the observations made by this male. Such as I really don't have a big desire to see horror movies, and most of my male friends don't either. However, I have seen (and many of my male friends have seen) plenty of horror movies. Why? Because the female that we are with wants to see it and want to see it with us. Even more than horror movies is this new (edit: I'm old) genre of movies that's just gore-fest, like Hostel. It was just gore for the sake of having gore, seeing how grotesque they could be in a movie, I thought it was worse than a complete waste of time, it was an assault on the senses. Yet, SHE wanted to see it. I wonder why?

 

[DJ_Tanner]

Her argument may be moot, however there is some basis in fact as to what she was saying about gaming in general and women preferring non-violent games. From a paper here:

http://www.radford.edu/~mzorrilla2/thesis/differencesinplay.html



And here:

http://usabilitynews.org/video-games-males-prefer-violence-while-females-prefer-social/

If you are going to use research to support your arguments, you may want to be a little more careful about what you pick. I have read what you linked and found those to not be great examples.

Your first example is an undergraduate thesis, it is not a peer reviewed piece of scholarly work. Further, the conclusions drawn were about the gender differences in representation of character, not their inclination to violence.

As for your second article, it is a peer reviewed piece, but not from a very high quality journal (especially in 2012, when the paper was published), as such the conclusions drawn are very weak. The subjects were basically all college students so it does not generalize well to the population. Additionally, there is a huge problem with their methodology, for their suggested results. Males tended to enjoy both the action and fighting genre more, those genres have more inherent violence. Therefore, when asked which game they played most often then the results are not surprising. While it does suggest the genre that is enjoyed more by the two genders it does not address the underlying cause to why they are interested in the genre itself.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

You guys have missed my point entirely, however, I'm not going to bother elaborating in a thread where the main issue has already been decided and nailed shut and is not open for discussion. My faux pas in broaching the subject in the first place.

I chose the examples I did because they were easily accessible to anyone who wanted to look, and to a degree, they discussed the issue I was talking about. I suppose that I could go down to the hospital's library, or across the street to the university's library and dig up more relevant (and peer reviewed) examples of what I mean, but it would be pointless and a waste of my time. Time I could better spend dealing with a patient backlog, and the endless paperwork that goes with it.

I'll leave you internet experts to your debate.

 

[MantaRevan]

To move the discussion away from OP and towards her question, I don't think Civ 6 is gender biased. That argument could have been made well about Civ 4, but from Civ 5 onward the series tends to present a quite high number of female leaders, and adopts a more "whig" perspective of progressive history. More on that here in this rather interesting video.

It's true that Civ 5 doesn't have perfect gender equality in the leaders, but historically women have been shut out of positions of power (just think about the US!), making it very difficult to find female leaders to include. For what its worth, Civ 5 did a very good job attempting to balance gender representation with historical accuracy and significance. Most female leaders (and male ones) in Civ 5 deserve their spots due to historical accomplishment, significance, fame, ect. Maria Theresa, Catherine, Theodora, Boadicea, Elizabeth, and Isabella are all arguably the best picks for their civs.

Others though, like Dido or Maria feel more forced for the sake of having a more balanced cast of characters. The history of Carthage is fairly well-documented. Dido's main historical significance is as a 2D love interest from the Aeneid, not as a noteworthy historical leader. This does not particularly bother me, though, since Firaxis does this for male leaders too (see: Gilgamesh) and because its nice to have a well-rounded cast.

But I think Civ 6 moves the needle a little too far in this direction, as it sometimes seems like entire Civ choices are made based around an attempt to force a change in leaders. When it comes to dark horse launch civs, Siam and Songhai were really solid choices for Civ 5. Both have long and interesting histories, and are significant enough to warrant inclusion. But Scythia? Come on. The Huns were a step too far due to not being a civilization in a literal sense, but Scythia is worse. Tomyris's significance seems to be near-exclusively related to Cyrus. Her ability is literally called "Killer of Cyrus."

Cleopatra was a member of the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty, and most of her fame comes from her tangles with Antony and Caesar. Wouldn't it be better to, if we wanted to include a historically powerful female Egyptian monarch, include Hatsheput? By Cleopatra's day, ancient Egypt was pretty much done for. I'm not saying they should have played it safe with Ramesses or a male Pharaoh again, but if they wanted to include a female one they could have done better.

Casimir is more admirable than Jadwiga due to his history of Jewish protection in my personal opinion, but I don't necessarily take umbrage with the pick. But don't even get me started with Catherine de Medici.

It looks as though recently Firaxis has tried to pilot the games towards a more 50/50 gender ratio, which is admirable in theory, but leaves us with a sub-par roster of leaders in practice. Sorry if this turned into a "Civ 6 has bad leader picks" rant (they do though). Additionally, pushing more women onto the roster creates the illusion of history as more gender-equal than it actually was. Civ games have very little in terms of results of gender discrimination portrayed in their games, with the exception of a universal suffrage civic here or there. So it seems to me that forcing leaders like de Medici to the launch state of France over several more notable (and might I add, French) leaders inaccurately portrays France as a historically more gender-equal society than it actually was, to give an example.

That's just my 2 cents on OP's question. Civ games may have been gender biased at one point, but today it looks as though the developers try to put a sizable amount of effort into making the games more gender-neutral than they actually should be for what they attempt to portray.

 

[MantaRevan]

You guys have missed my point entirely, however, I'm not going to bother elaborating in a thread where the main issue has already been decided and nailed shut and is not open for discussion. My faux pas in broaching the subject in the first place.

I chose the examples I did because they were easily accessible to anyone who wanted to look, and to a degree, they discussed the issue I was talking about. I suppose that I could go down to the hospital's library, or across the street to the university's library and dig up more relevant (and peer reviewed) examples of what I mean, but it would be pointless and a waste of my time. Time I could better spend dealing with a patient backlog, and the endless paperwork that goes with it.

I'll leave you internet experts to your debate.

I agree here that it seems as though many commentators are allowing argumentum ad consequentium to occur here. Men prefer violence compared to women, and are innately more violent. The literature supports this conclusion fairly robustly. I don't like it, I don't wish it were true, but that is the case. Are women more rational? I don't think so, but that horse has been beaten to death already, and OP has responded reasonably and in good-faith to those who make this point.

 

[0R4NG3]

The OP is an obvious troll....
CIV is a historic simulation, our history is plagued by war, taking war out of the game would make it a complete fantasy.

Moderator Action: Accusing another poster of trolling is itself trolling under our rules. If you have a problem with someone else's post, please report the post, and do not post in this manner. -- Browd
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[DJ_Tanner]

You guys have missed my point entirely, however, I'm not going to bother elaborating in a thread where the main issue has already been decided and nailed shut and is not open for discussion. My faux pas in broaching the subject in the first place.

I chose the examples I did because they were easily accessible to anyone who wanted to look, and to a degree, they discussed the issue I was talking about. I suppose that I could go down to the hospital's library, or across the street to the university's library and dig up more relevant (and peer reviewed) examples of what I mean, but it would be pointless and a waste of my time. Time I could better spend dealing with a patient backlog, and the endless paperwork that goes with it.

I'll leave you internet experts to your debate.

I did not miss your point, I was simply pointing out that you presented evidence that did not actually support it. The reason I mentioned the prestige of the examples is that it is important. Because if you use a low quality source it is no better than stating "I know this guy and he said...". So when you pointed out the paper that supported your statement it is important to note that the paper doesn't actually find that. They said they found that, but due to faults in their method they do not have the data to support their conclusion. A high quality journal would be far less likely to allow that to be published, which is why it is important to understand both what and where you are finding your evidence.

Many people people will look to a scholarly paper and use it as more substantive proof, but it is important to understand that simply because it is a scholarly paper that does not mean what it says is true. So it really is imporant to understand what you are using as evidence. For instance here is a paper that was published by two researchers from NYU and UCLA in the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology (be warned there is some strong language in the link): http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf

If you were unaware, there is a great source for scholarly work here: https://scholar.google.com/
While some works may be unacceptable without library permissions it does give you a much better search engine for works found in both peer reviewed and trade publications.

 

[CPWimmer]

I haven't used them, because my games haven't played out this way; but do Privateers give you any flexibility along these lines?

Honestly don't know for sure. Play mostly pangaea, haven't invested in naval strategy too much. But from the reading, privateers and coastal raids are invisible to opponents until it's too late, but they still fly under you country's banner, so according to the rules as I understand them, you wouldn't be allowed to do this to a player that you're at peace with. But as I said, never tried it. someone else will have to confirm/refute.

No Privateers (and Subs) in Civ 6 still require you to be at war with a civ to use them for hostile actions (which includes entering territory that you do not have an Open Agreement for). They do have a few unique traits over other naval units. They are stealthy, so you can't see them unless you are adjacent. They can capture un-escorted civilian units along the coast. They can pillage improvements along the coast. They can destroy unmanned barb camps along the coast. They can capture goody huts along the coast.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Cleopatra was a member of the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty, and most of her fame comes from her tangles with Antony and Caesar. Wouldn't it be better to, if we wanted to include a historically powerful female Egyptian monarch, include Hatsheput?

Agree and disagree.

-Agree because historically Hatshepsut would be a better example of a leader of Egypt than Cleopatra.

-Disagree because Cleopatra is more familiar to the general populace than Hatshepsut. Furthermore, There are many historical people, classes of military, technological innovations, etc. that invoke a certain aesthetic to the game, a certain state of mind, a different flavor to the experience of playing. Examples would be samarai, vikings, playing as Alexander the Great, and so forth. Cleopatra is certainly a historical figure that adds that element to the game.

-Agree because people learn things from Civ games, and learning about Hatshepsut and why she would be a better example of an Egyptian leader than Cleopatra would be good for the audience. I know there's a fat disclaimer that the game is not historically accurate and shouldn't be viewed as non-fiction, but it does drive the player to go and do some research on the materials. For example, if it wasn't for civ games, I probably never would have known that Nebuchadnezzar was anything more than the spaceship they flew in the Matrix.

 

[MantaRevan]

Agree and disagree.

-Agree because historically Hatshepsut would be a better example of a leader of Egypt than Cleopatra.

-Disagree because Cleopatra is more familiar to the general populace than Hatshepsut. Furthermore, There are many historical people, classes of military, technological innovations, etc. that invoke a certain aesthetic to the game, a certain state of mind, a different flavor to the experience of playing. Examples would be samarai, vikings, playing as Alexander the Great, and so forth. Cleopatra is certainly a historical figure that adds that element to the game.

-Agree because people learn things from Civ games, and learning about Hatshepsut and why she would be a better example of an Egyptian leader than Cleopatra would be good for the audience. I know there's a fat disclaimer that the game is not historically accurate and shouldn't be viewed as non-fiction, but it does drive the player to go and do some research on the materials. For example, if it wasn't for civ games, I probably never would have known that Nebuchadnezzar was anything more than the spaceship they flew in the Matrix.

Hmm. Good point, especially considering how much publicity Firaxis gets from all the Gandhi memes. It is useful to build a certain aesthetic even for people who don't necessarily take the educational approach to these games a lot of the base does.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Are you a woman? Do you have intimate knowledge of the female experience? If you aren't and don't, you can't really judge the OP's feelings about violence in video games, or the preferences in women toward or against a certain genre of game.

OP caught flak for presenting the case in a poor manner, not for preferring peaceful play. There are many posters who don't like war in this game for a wide variety of reasons stated, and they didn't draw the reaction in this thread. The difference is not because those other posters are/are not women, the difference is presenting an irrational case while simultaneously questioning the rationality of those who think differently. I'd hear plenty about it if I did that too, isn't that the common expectation?

There are fundamental differences between the way that men and women think.

The studies you quote support the assertion that there are differences, but they don't support that the differences are "fundamental". For that, we need to see that the "male" and "female" minds operate differently *independent of circumstance*...IE separated from social pressures and cultural upbringing and given identical training/learning experience. It could be there is truly a fundamental genetic difference outright, I just haven't happened on that literature to this point.

Don't get me wrong though, social differences are still important. Social constructs are all we have for many human concepts, and ignoring them won't change them or make things better. Nevertheless, you would approach a state of reality differently if there is some outside-human-construct fundamental difference in the brains vs if there is not. The options you'd consider to change things are contingent on the answer to that.

A high quality journal would be far less likely to allow that to be published, which is why it is important to understand both what and where you are finding your evidence.

You are overrating "high quality" journals. Although I don't use it much, I happen to have access to some of the highest quality journals in a higher stakes field (medicine). At one point, due to a medical issue, I used it to read through hundred+ of articles published at varying levels of prestige. It was unpleasant, to get a taste of how bad it can be for myself. I rarely engage in anything with quite that level of motivation, but I pushed on this one.

Random bodybuilders willing to experiment on themselves and studies done on rats from 20 years earlier had more knowledge of what some of the hormones did than some of the "prestigious" journal articles, which didn't even bother considering them. Trained professionals with years of experience make assertions that ignore evidence outright in some cases. It's a lot to sift through, and worse when you're not a content expert because you need even MORE evidence to avoid dangerous conclusions...then again when present treatment isn't working/has side effects over half the community refuses to acknowledge, you lose a certain element of trust anyway.

Bias and motivation don't disappear. You are more likely to get something credible when it is peer reviewed vs not. Prestige means almost nothing, what matters is the study design, execution, and honesty of the article in question. If we were trying to prove something beyond "men and women have different behavior patterns", I would want to look at evidence from a lot of different angles before making any conclusions. However, most of us would concede that yes, men and women really do act differently on average. Expecting different preferences to align with different behavior patterns is a reasonably anticipated outcome.

What that doesn't do is make a valid case for changing civ 6 specifically one way or another. If you wanted to get somewhere, maybe you'd push policy to alter social constructs. That process tends to be unfortunately gradual, probably because our outcome measures are so noisy.

 

[ronehjr]

Any civ game that tries to approach a 50/50 male/female representation for heads of nations is obviously biased in favor females because of the overwhelming historical disparity in favor of males. But of course actual historicity is not important in these types of arguments because the point is somebody's feelings have been hurt by reality.

 

[Ryika]

Any civ game that tries to approach a 50/50 male/female representation for heads of nations is obviously biased in favor females because of the overwhelming historical disparity in favor of males. But of course actual historicity is not important in these types of arguments because the point is somebody's feelings have been hurt by reality.

But that's a pretty weak argument.

In the same way there is an argument to be made for favoring Europe over other places because that's where the most players are from, there can also be an argument for a 50/50 gender split because <something something progressivism>, or even just because having 50% of both genders leads to a slightly more diverse (and thus hopefully more interesting) cast of characters than for example having 80% males. Representing history is just one of many factors that can influence the selection of leaders.

Not that it really matters anyway, Firaxis is not trying to achieve a 50/50 split, and I'd say they've found a good middle ground between clearly over-representing females in terms of the male-to-female ratio we'd expect from a historical perspective, but still having them be a clear minority among the leaders.