Another debate on female space marines but humor me for a second

[Deadlift]

EG Do you remember that cosplay picture you posted of the 2 girls you claimed were actually the same person but actually weren't I do.

Empirical fact, I think not

Back on track, I think as much as GW keeps telling us it's our game and we can play it how we want, the same should really stand with our armies too. You want girlie space marines, do it. But you can bet your life when Sisters do get the much needed plastic revamp, I'm going to all over that army right away.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

So do I Deadlift.

I already have Sisters. So I'll probably scrap them when the plastic revamp hits.

[Psychosplodge]

Empirical fact, I think not

You can prove anything with facts

[eldargal]

The Imperium might not be, but the Chapters may well be, recruiting from warrior-cultures. And, historically speaking, how many warrior cultures featured women in any significant numbers?

Scythians, Mongols amongst others. Then you have the mythological amazons of course.

I would certainly hope note. In my case, the two women involved are the wife and fiancée two of the other guys respectively. And they took it upon themselves to investigate the hobby, they weren't forced or even coerced into it. And they have no problem letting us know their opinions on a number of other topics so I can't imagine why they would be coy about supposed gender imbalances.

I would hope not too and I do not mean to speak on their behalf. but you would be surprised how many women are not open about these things with men they love and respect simply because some offhanded comment or joke about feminism or whatever ma have made them feel they can't bring up the issue with them and receive a fair hearing. It is, sadly, a thing. but again the main point really is that just because some women do not care about a problem doesn't mean others who do are wrong. Which you haven't suggested, just making the point. Women aren't a hive mind.

Why would this be the case? Maybe because traditionally boys have been more interested in these types of games, and therefore from a business perspective you go after a target audience. Or is that sexist?

Traditionally boys have been told to be interested in more violent/manly areas while girls are told not to be. This did break down at various points in the 20th century but since the 80s there was a huge refocus in geeky areas to market solely towards boys. Lego, video games, comics you name it and GW became a big thing at this time when this culture was growing. they aren't as bad as others, quite the contrary, but there is still a strong element of just not seeing women as a market. I've had some conversations with people at GW and BL and they are aware of this and that it needs to change so I'm hopeful it will. I becomes a self fulfilling prophecy though. You market at boys, boys buy the product, girls don't because the community is often hostile and the company indifferent, so you continue to market at boys because girls aren't as visible an audience, so you keep marketing at boys etc.

I've heard this figure bandied about a lot. Where is the original source? And does this include everything from Call of Duty to Candy Crush? because Those two games are different ends of the video game spectrum.

The Entertainment Software Association of America is the source, there surveys over the past few years have seen a distinct rise in the number of women buying and playing video games, from 42% a few years ago to 47 or 49% in the last year or two. there was another survey which found that 40% of console owners back in 2007 were women, to help counter the 'yeah but they only play casual games' argument. It doesn't differentiate between casual and 'proper' video games but then it doesn't need to. Men play casual games as well as women and while some genres are more popular amongst women estimates of female demographics in genres such as FPS and RPGs still range from 30-45%. There is absolutely no evidence that the 47% overall demographic is represented primarily in casual games.

Is it really the case that having a feminine army will bring in female players to non-feminine armies? My friends would consider it pandering if GW introduced a more female army.

Not necessarily a feminine army, no. Better representation doesn't mean another army. As I've said things like having more women on covers, in artwork, as characters in codices and in the main cast of more books would do the trick. The only pandering is really that white guys get representation completely out of proportion with their actual numbers and even their presence in the demographics.

For the sheer physiques of Space Marines, the female body, on the whole, just doesn't seem suitable to take that kind of build. I was going to say it's unrealistic, but then we are talking about space men and space elves and space bugs all shooting at each other here.

That isn't necessarily true and there are a lot of factors why women tend not to bulk up like men. It is true that men at present find it easier to bulk up because of higher testosterone levels but then those levels have been dropping over the 20th century. Unlike men women are also actively discouraged from building up muscle, even when encouraging feminine exercise muscle isn't talked about, you aim to be 'toned' and only toned enough to be attractive. Then you have the fact that the male physique varies more dramatically than the differences between the sexes. But big framed women will often seek to be as small as possible because that is what is deemed attractive, so rather than having the 6ft woman bulk up to the extent a man might she will do the opposite.
From a skeletal perspective none of the major muscle bearing bones are diagnostic as male or female. The pelvis and skull are really the only bones that sex can be determined with any certainty and even then it isn't 100%. Archaeologists in the past have got into a lot of trouble by assuming robust skeletons are male only to find examination of the pelvis indicates they were probably female.

Now it is quite possible that without some kind of technological intervention the strongest man will always be stronger than the strongest woman. But things are so unequal in how we encourage muscle development that at present we have no way to tell what that difference would actually be. At an Olympic level between weightlifters the disparity in what they can lift is 35% BUT the sport has only been open to women since 1998 or something. In most other sports the difference is 7-15% and that is without addressing the social issues of developing muscle growth in women I talked about above.


But this is also largely irrelevant as 40k is a science fiction setting and this kind of realism doesn't mean a damn thing. Even those guys Deadlift posted earlier don't compare to Space Marine physique even if they come the closest to what we can have naturally.

EG Do you remember that cosplay picture you posted of the 2 girls you claimed were actually the same person but actually weren't I do.

The cosplay blog that posted it said they were the same.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

And if she's wrong she blames it on others.

[eldargal]

That's because I'm never wrong, only sometimes misinformed.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

And I'm actually Superman.

[iandanger]

It's not so much that I'm ïn favour"of social injustice more that I don't consider the fact that 50% of games workshop's model range is not female to be an injustice. Because it isn't an injustice, changing the model range to contain roughly equivalent numbers of female mand male miniatures in the name of "social justice" is pointless. Social justice generally believes that because roughly 50% of the world is female that everything should be 50% female (politics, corporate boards... wargaming?) although proponents of this are normally very selective; i've never seen a campaign for more male teachers or more female garbage collectors. I've also never seen any campaigns to make the barbie range more accessible to boys (more male dolls with better stories than just "barbie's boyfriend).

I don't see why you are surprised to see emphasis on corporate leadership positions and political positions, rather than gender equity across the board in every profession. When we're talking about discrimination, the issue comes down to power, who has it, how they wield it, and the implications on so-called "minorities" (women being a majority that have a minority of power and therefore fall into that classification). The % of garbage men or teachers of each gender isn't substantially impacting government policy, the low representation of women in Congress and corporate leadership both have serious implications for policy decisions, because while people in general struggle with empathy, understanding the perspective of others, etc, that problem is exacerbated by the position of dominant groups, simply put they have far fewer shared experiences vs other minorities. This tends to manifest itself in different ways in different contexts, but really its all tangential to what we're discussing here, which is a fictional setting and a product line from a company that wants to make money. And considering Barbie is constantly criticized for its portrayal of women, and those criticisms have always been ignored, I'm not sure why protest against the toy line should move on to another issue (gender representation).

There is also growing evidence that most boys and girls show a predisposition towards certain toys at ages before socialisation could have realistically ocurred - have a look for the experiment performed with reecus monkies where juveniles were given dolls and cars to play with - the males played with the cars and the females played with the dolls. It has even been noted that babies as yooung as 3 months tend to focus their attention on what might be considered gender specific toys - mechanical in the case of boys and anatomical in the case of girls. Much of this research is in its infancy but I predict, quite comfortably, that the effects of socialisation on our interests will ultimately be proven to be minimal and that the majority of it is determined by nature, not nurture. There always going to be exceptions and cross overs and these people should be given the same opportunity of expression, but they will always be a minority and, as a minority, must accept that the world has to support the majority view - that's just democracy.

Lets leave aside projection from early research, the issue here isn't about young children, its about socialized adolescents, and moreso really adults (who I imagine make up a larger portion of wargaming consumers than children), so regardless of the cause, the preferences of men and women for entertainment do impact consumption of the game. The thing is, Warhammer is not primarily mechanical, really its primarily anatomical (but in reality its both cars and dolls). 40k is best viewed in the context of wargaming, which its itself just a sub-category of board/card games. Unfortunately, I could only find publicly available market research from Germany on the topic: [url]http://www.toy.de/fakten-2009/EuroToys_consumer_summary_ge_2009.pdf[/url], but the breakdown of consumers shows a substantial portion of age 18+ sales of board games are to women. Subjectively, the board game nights I have gone to have featured a diverse mix of female and male players, and games like Risk and Settlers of Catan go over just fine with the women I've discussed them with. That's, of course, entirely anectdotal, but a lack of available data makes fools of us all. Regardless, with the recent growth of popularity of board games among older demographics, the sales *decline* that Games Workshop is experiencing tells you a lot about how it is faring. Hell, even Relic has more female characters as a portion of its options than 40k does. We're living in an era of resurgent analogue gaming, probably largely as a reaction to the socially isolating effect of playing video games in a group of people, but 40k is getting left behind. This is far from solely an issue of gender representation in the game, but you can't say it doesn't have an impact, just as we can't prove it does, we can only urge GW to consider it in their strategy and try to make the game attractive to more players in general, but also women in specific.

So a lack of female miniatures isn't what puts most women off wargaming, it's that three letter word in the name, "war" - war just doesn't interest women in the same way as it interests men. While it is true that there are a growing number of female wargamers and hobbyists, they are still a tiny percentage of the wargaming market and that market, like any other, caters to the majority not the minority. Should the market change to be more attractive to women, it would become potentially less attractive to men - they would lose some existing customers AND miss out on potential new male customers at the expense getting a few female customers through the door. GW is a large, established corporation (in wargaming terms) and as such is probably risk averse, updating their entire range to support gender balance is a huge risk and I think before GW made such a move, they want proof that making gender balanced forces would 1)not shrink their existing market, 2)would not affect their ability to attract new customers 3)have the desired effect of increasining their market share by bringing in additional female customers.

Again, your assumption is that making the product more inclusive in who's stories they tell will somehow hurt the appeal to male gamers, I don't see why that would need to be the case. Malifaux and Warmachine both feature a large number of female characters (Malifaux is likely where I will get the model for my female inquisitor when I get around to it), and both products are competing well against a substantially larger, established producer. That said, I seriously doubt the quality of GW's market research, as they haven't managed to increase unit sales (revenue increases for years came from price inflation, until the recent drop) even among their core demographic. GW may not be able to adapt, and in the end it may hurt them, but other companies aren't so constrained. Personally, as a GW hobbyist who doesn't really want to dedicate my time and budget to other games, I'd prefer Games Workshop were a leader on the issue, rather than the big, unresponsive sick man of wargaming that it has been the last few years.

[eldargal]

+1 Relying on the old demographic of middle class white boys is not a good business move. Inclusiveness = broader demographic = more customers = more money. It's usually a matter of doing what you are doing slightly differently rather than doing more, it doesn't cost a lot extra.

[SuperDann]

+1 Relying on the old demographic of middle class white boys is not a good business move. Inclusiveness = broader demographic = more customers = more money. It's usually a matter of doing what you are doing slightly differently rather than doing more, it doesn't cost a lot extra.

Without conducting some proper market research (which would cost money in and of itself) is this a safe assumption to make? And it's not just a question of "Would it make money?", it is a case of "How much money would it make and is it therefore worth the time and effort as well?". As a male I'm not obviously qualified to judge this, but I don't see anything about the game that actively excludes females. But then I regularly play with and against both guys and girls.