General Chat / Girls at nedesigns / NE and real life

well I was recently writing a little joke in the fafnir screenshot where I told transfer nazis to suck my dick. then I thought about whether that joke was the right level of appropriate to still be funny, because in my real life I have some quite sexist-aware friends who might not always find that language so funny. I guess that stuff rubs off on you- not that I don't find things funny, that I just notice it more. anyway, a bit irrelevant
 
so that got me thinking... why are there no girls at nedesigns? There was like emergo, and maybe a couple others I can't remember (their names always get thrown out after questions like this). I like to think that women could and should get as into rct as we do, but it just doesn't seem to happen (or do they just keep it quiet?) Was rct originally billed or perpetuated as a "boy's game?" Or is it part of a larger "nerdy" stigma about computer gaming and internet participation that also is a like a "boy" thing to do?
 
(I'm also aware that I haven't actually checked the gender section of every member, so I could just be imagining a majority that doesn't exist, but I'm pretty sure I'm right)
 
Maybe our community, at least the active one, is just too small to really judge. 
 
Similar question: do you guys talk about rct to other people? specifically girlfriends? whats the response? is it different than the response you get from other people (if you talk about it?)
 
I don't really talk about rct to anyone, I guess I'm sort of embarassed? Which is unusual for me, this is probably the only thing I've ever kept from my friends/girlfriend in my life. I don't really talk about real life rollercoasters and theme parks either but that's because it bores people. My friends know I'm... 'enthusiastic'... at some level
 
I don't really know what I want from this topic, maybe just a nice discussion of what you guys think about this community and its relationship to your life, and maybe weigh in a bit on the feminism stuff if you have anything to say. just wanted to get some thoughts off my chest I guess.






edit by Liampie: changed the topic title to include the RCT-real life discussion.

Well, girls are generally not into computer(games) that much and prefer to spend their free time calling with their friends and shop

You see it on Twitch too, as there are usually not that much female (hardcore) streamers online, and the female streamers that are on usually have their tits hanging out for a few more bucks from donations or to get more subscribers to their channel

I think you can relate that too rct too. You see almost no rct 1/2/3 streams on twitch, and the ones that are usually have only a handful viewers, so rct unfortunately isn't very popular to the general gaming market. And from those active rct streams I have yet to see a girl stream and I look pretty regularly..

 

About the irl thing, I haven't really told anyone apart from a friend of mine who also is really into themeparks. Oh and I showed my parents a while back some park, but yeah it's not something you go tell people about as people generally see it as a thing for children.. Maybe I'm embarrassed too

Interesting point, definitely not a game for the girls. SF has described it perfectly, of the gaming market most is male, and certainly where strategy games are concerned. Even within the male market though this game is a very tailored sort of game, I would imagine there is very few people remaining who still play it. Me personally it is the only game I actually do play, and no thats not something I regularly disclose to others as you say it is fairly embarrassing! Although my ex girlfriend used to moan at me for playing it, and neglecting her. But I did notice a few save files that I certainly hadn't made and it appeared she had been playing it behind my back! I felt as though I had been cheated on haha So yes at least one female has played it. As one would expect though it wasn't the finest of creations  just rides and queue's mostly lol

We had a girl here a few weeks ago. She streamed a few times (posting it on reddit, not here, but made an account here and commented on a few things before disappearing. 

 

RCT play isn't embarrassing. It's just awkward to talk about, because we're proud of the work we do, and know how much effort it takes to make some of the crazy shit we make, but outsiders typically see it as an easy game for kids, not the sandbox we use it as.

 

I think girls are few and far between here for a few reasons. The "Coaster Culture" is inhabited mostly with males, and that feeds heavily into our culture. Additionally, games culture has a preponderance of males, and the females that are into games are more drawn towards console and party style games, and see gaming as a social phenomenon. This means that pouring hours upon hours into developing a theme park, alone, in front of a computer, doesn't really appeal to "the average girl". 

When my girlfriend was over a while ago, we played RCT2 together and she completed two scenarios  She has a copy of the game herself and said that she used to play when she was younger, shooting the coasters off the track and stuff like that, but she doesn't really play any PC games at all now. We're still very much into Pokemon and occasionally play some multilayer racing/fighting games though.

 

As for talking about the game to others, I've mentioned it with great praise to my friends from time to time, along with talk about real theme parks, so they're well aware that I play. My family knows too, and my brothers play a bit when they feel like it. I've never been embarrassed to talk about it, but then again I'm not embarrassed about any of my hobbies (Pokemon, Lego, RCT etc.) My girlfriend and family are also aware that I'm a member on this forum, and again, no problem there

I'd say one part "coaster culture", one part "gaming culture", one part historical biases.

 

I mean, to get into it, i'd say, historic inequalities favored males learning, using, and further developing technologies, both in the workplace (the glass ceiling mean that women couldn't get the high paying jobs which benefited from the "first" computers), in institutions (historically women were not supposed to get degrees or learn science, there place was the home), and in hobbies (boys were stereotypically supposed to play games, fight, be competitive for dominance, while women were supposed to learn homeskills, like knitting or taking care of their baby, aka, dolls). 

 

While not necessarily true today, a historical propensity for technology and science as "male" has painted modern things like competitive video games as "masculine."

 

I'd also add that the dominance of men in the gaming world can be a huge barrier. I mean, imagine you really wanted to play rct, but it meant you would be the only boy in a room full of girls. In addition, many men (and women too) feel free to act out on the internet in ways they would never in social situations, because its their "avatar", not them, and thus its removed from their person. This creates a daunting amount of sexism, racism, and homophobia. Some of the studies done on gaming communities are atrocious, things like players entering Halo servers with "girly" names and getting sexually harassed constantly, as well as entering Halo servers with "gay" names and entire servers stopping play just to gang up on the player. Gaming can appear as a boys club, just in the way that most of us would probably never go to the fashion club.

 

I think rather than saying "rct isn't a girl game" or "girls are social, and rct isn't," its more of a historical imbalance. Even if girls want to play rct online, many would not, or haven't considering the idea, as it doesn't fall into the allotted sphere of hobbies that society has given to women. In the same way, i'm sure many of us have "girl" hobbies that we like, or potentially would like, however because these are gendered as feminine, we haven't even considered them. 

 

AND that, everybody, is called Gender Norms. BREAK FREE AMERICA!

In my experience, girls just do not like RCT. All of my girlfriends have been very creatively minded yet two looked down upon RCT as a kid's game that I wasted my time with and my most recent one appreciates the stuff I do but she has less than zero interest in playing. I think it's like Minecraft but to a more extreme extent - the girls I know that like Minecraft don't tend to play it the same way the guys I know do. My girlfriend loves Minecraft but can't stand playing it on Survival, whereas I don't bother with Creative just because there's no challenge in making your stuff. Maybe it's a psychological thing.

I think i agree a lot with fk about gender norms. I would be a bit uncomfortable saying theres something physiological that makes males better at gaming/technology/etc and i think fk summarized my thoughts really well. its the sort of stuff thats good to keep in mind as we do everyday stuff. Just an awareness of how someone may subconsciously be propogating gender roles goes a long way in helping create equality imo

Yeah, when I pointed out "gaming culture" I wasn't trying to imply that girls don't belong in it, just that they're not present in it. That's mostly due to what FK outlined.

Culture seems to be the main one as Fk explained, but I don't really think that RCT is strictly a 'boys game'. I think that the creative elements should appeal to both guys and girls. But I think that because RCT is already quite a niche market, you have to consider that even if girls enter into the somewhat restrictive market of 'generic gaming' [unisex games], manage to find, play, and enjoy RCT, and then take it seriously enough to seek out forums to share their work, before finally coming to a quite prestigious [reputation-wise] community such as NE severely limits the number of girls who might join/post in this kind of setting.

 

I was very similar to both Cocoa and Six Frags regarding talking about RCT, because like Tim said; it's kind of awkward to talk about. Yet it's become such a huge hobby that I've started to talk about more often. I think that awareness of the game itself [it is almost 15 years old] and the reliance on people to continue playing a game for such a long period of time would kind of weed out the more casual gamers [which, without trying to be sexist, I feel that girls predominantly are] and therefore limits the chance of activity on forums such as this one.

 

Just my two cents. Also, Cocoa I laughed at your comment so either it was funny or my maturity is much lower than it perhaps ought to be.

Here is my conversation with my girlfriend after showing her this thread.

I'm happy that you recorded that conversation, interesting stuff. I had thought this thread was going to pull us more into the feminist side rather than highlight our sexism, and I was disappointed that your girlfriend wanted less to do with the community after reading it. I consider myself someone who is relatively involved in feminist circles normally and I wanted to maybe bring the discussion to other things in my life I care about... I guess I failed based on that conversation. I guess I fucked up. But I still think its an important conversation to have, regardless of whether I communicated my intentions poorly.

I'm wanting to write a long and well thought out post but I'm having trouble so I guess I'll just hit a few thoughts I had reading through this.

 

1. I find it interesting that NE as a community has held on to the, sometimes harsh, "constructive criticism" aspect of the community and anyone from TPR or rct2.com or casuals from reddit can "harden the fuck up and build some bitchin architecture or go back to their scenario player culture". Yet when gender enters the discussion, suddenly we're all potentially hyper-masculine assholes... about roller coaster pixels no less. This discussion has already [unintentionally] crossed the line into treating women in the community differently because they are 'girls', and that's usually the main thing that spooks women away from participating in online communities, or in any group where men outnumber women. 

 

2. I dislike discussions like this because emotion takes over and suddenly it's about what we as a community can do differently and how we all have to go through a guilt trip because suddenly we don't feel inclusive enough. NE is a highly niche community for an old game in a broad gaming community that has its issues with maturity levels and dealing with girls/women who participate. And NE has been smaller than it 'could' have been because of the ways we have conducted ourselves over the years; some of the ways haven't been positive. It's a bit late to start feeling guilty because girls/women/transgenders/that gay guy across the street aren't particularly interested in rct. Few people in general are. I just don't like when things go the direction of meeting some arbitrary quota of 'girls in the community' so some people can feel better about themselves.

 

3. I've never had issues discussing rct or other video games with people. I don't wear my LLLL t shirt to the bar every night (I don't go to the bar every night... or very often) but it hasn't been an issue to play on a laptop in public or look at NE at school or work. I'm not going to berate anybody who has admitted to having issues talking about it but I have to ask, where is the fun playing rct hunched over your computer trying to hide it, sequestered alone in your room or quickly changing the subject when asked what you do in your spare time? Almost every conversation about rct I've had, even with complete strangers has gone this way: 

 

"what game is that?"

 

"roller coaster tycoon"

 

"really, I used to play that game. I loved to crash the coasters and drown people."

 

"same"

 

With friends and family it may get to "I play by using other programs to break the game and make it a sandbox 3d modeling tool to design crazy theme parks and ideas". And that's usually the end of it. 

 

4. From what I remember, Emergo wasn't here because of some superhuman mental toughness. She simply enjoyed playing the game

That's precisely why this is all bullshit. I don't care what ][ntamin's girlfriend thinks about this because she's accusing us of shit we're not doing and clearly projecting an image onto this community without knowing anything about it.

 

We don't give girls special treatment one way or the other. It's blatantly stupid to imply so. And on the subject of the usage of "girls", I'm fucking 23 and I refer to everyone within about ten years of my age as "girls and guys", so this PC argument is bullshit and everyone knows it. All of this in the same conversation as "fuckboys" and "the dungeon of girlfriendless nerds".

 

"They create this hostile community and don't understand why girls won't play with them and get mad at them for not ~playing with the big boys~ but if they DO then nobody takes them seriously"

 

Can you point to one single instance of this, or are you just projecting an assumption? Because I think it's the latter. No one has this mentality but you, and you're not even a part of this community.

 

On the subject of Twitch streamers, and the attention-whoring sex-sells mentality some of them have, it's undeniable that it's happening. GIFs of streamers taking clothes off for donations are all over Reddit whenever they happen to pop up and I've seen a handful of LoL or DotA streams where the streamer has deliberately placed the webcam at a high angle to show off their low-cut-top, but not high enough to see the keys (which is normally what you have when streaming, particularly an RTS or MOBA). However, this isn't a generalization - this is on the same level in my mind as the streamers who only get views because of all the whining and bitching and BM and drama they do on stream (looking at you avilo, MaximusBlack, IdrA before being let go from Evil Geniuses). Both are pathetic and only damage the community, yet they're popular all the same. ZombieGrub (Rifkin's co-caster on BaseTradeTV), Livibee, and Scarlett (though sadly she only plays DotA now instead of the clearly far-superior SC2) are all good examples of female streamers I enjoy watching and listening to. Also AxCrank's wife who plays with the BTTV team on occasion, but I don't actually know her name.

 

My point is this: if you create a straw-man out of the community, it's incredibly easy to attack. Do not feel bad about this thread Cocoa. While there have been some dumb and poorly-worded responses, I don't believe this community is or has ever been any more daunting to females than to males. The barriers for entry are high regardless of gender. For fuck's sake, we don't even know your gender until you mention it in a post. I will say this a million times over. This community is not at fault for women not being a part of it. We can't force girls to pick up the game and play it our way. Maybe a small handful do, but the simple fact is a larger percentage of guys do and have done - the source for this can be debated (how RCT was marketed, how girls or guys think about/play video games, gender "norms", etc.) - and this means that this is just the way the community is today.

I can't recall Emergo, Mama Bear, Buckeye Becky or probably any other women being treated differently from men.

I think the topic of RCT and real life is far more interesting and relevant. I've been wanting to talk about that for a while actually, but you beat me to it Cocoa...

I'm quite secretive about my RCT hobby.

Strangers: I definitely don't mention it to strangers. I think they wouldn't understand. To me RCT is not a game, but a tool to recreate the ideas and visions in my head. The game aspects of RCT have become completely irrelevant for me and it's all about the aesthetics. If I tell people RCT is a major hobby of mine, they'd see me as a weird gamer rather than a creative mind.

Friends: close friends know it by now, but we don't really talk about it. I only showed a friend the poop themed micro I made last year and it sadly didn't make much of an impression, guess that's the last time I show RCT to him.

Family: I showed my mother my H2H5 parks when she started wondering why I suddenly spent so much time in my room. She knew I played the game, but she thought I was playing the game. She was actually impressed! Eventually that turned out to be meaningless, because she argued that my RCT activities were no different or more creative than her Farmville activities. No, designing a theme park or city in miniscule detail is not exactly the same as repeatedly harvesting crops. Felt a bit sad that she wouldn't understand what I'm doing.

Crossovers: This is where it gets interesting: RCT life and real life started to blend when one guy from the Dutch community turned out go to the same school as me. After months of awkwardly avoiding eachother, we eventually met and attended some meetings together... Now that we're all adults, I consider some of the guys I met that way non-RCT friends. I've been to housewarming parties, birthdays, concerts, casual hang out sessions, and I actually went bowling with Marino's girlfriend and father for example. RCT is not quite my first association with those guys, but of course the topic comes up regularly. It was awkward at first to talk about it so open and casually; probably that's why it was an unwritten rule to not talk about RCT during the meetings in the old days. It was really really weird when Faas told me how much he loved Legacies to my face. I'm only used to stuff like that in online comments... But I like how the two blended. Except for that one time when someone invaded my personal life and I felt I had to contact the police, that's when I wished I kept the two lifes more seperate.

Another thing about the crossover relations... I know person A from the community. We both know person B, who asks me how I met person A. I used to come up with an excuse to not explain like 'well, that's a really long not so interesting story' or just 'via via' (don't know how well that saying translates into English). This ruined the conversation with Jorran's girlfriend at the time. Another time I told the truth: "From an online community", because I was tired of making op childish excuses. He thought it was weird. Never done that again. With Faas and Marino not giving a fuck about it towards their friends it has become easier lately. My mother is familiar with the names enough now that I don't have to bring up RCT whenever I'm meeting up with someone.

edit: Also, I don't get how some people like, comment and share so easily on Facebook. I haven't liked NE deliberately. I'd like to keep it private. Why would I spam other people's news feeds with an announcement about a new accolade winning park!?

i only share my rct with my best friend who i've known since i was 6. other than that i only mention me playing the game when the game i actually discussed, but more in a way as in 'i used to'. i'm not ashamed of it or anything, but it's not really an interesting fact about me and because of the scenario's and killing guests it's considered a totally different game than what we see it as

I think we're all in agreement that the lack of "Girls at nedesigns" is basically just because NE is such a tiny niche gaming community that the sample size is very small and other obscuring factors come in.  

Who knows how many potential Spotlights we've lost because somebody's mom thought they needed more spanish lessons and less computer time.

 

 

Milo-

 

If I'm understanding your points correctly here, I'm pretty much in agreement that the NE culture is one that puts your work first and judges you on that regardless of any other demographic criteria - that is to say, not much wrong.  

 

I'd like to suggest that part of giving everybody the same brand of trademark mildly-scornful NE treatment is not dismissing them before they even have a chance to submit work, and that it is never too late to do a self-checkup and make sure we aren't building artificially higher barriers on top of our already-formidable built-in ones.  That basically means not assuming no girls are interested and being careful to maintain our obnoxiously stringent standards equally.

 

also -fuck, where do I get an LLLL shirt?

 

 

Cocoa- 

 

No worries man - this is a good discussion to have.  The facts of wanting less to do with the community are largely because the nature of some comments - more in the dating thread than here - indicates it wouldn't be a great idea to be the only woman on the site.  Think about it as if you've just read a group text where everyone is casually discussing how gross pineapple is on pizza - if you love pineapple on pizza, you're probably not going to suggest ordering a pizza to share with that group.

 

That's precisely why this is all bullshit. I don't care what ][ntamin's girlfriend thinks about this because she's accusing us of shit we're not doing and clearly projecting an image onto this community without knowing anything about it.

 

We don't give girls special treatment one way or the other. It's blatantly stupid to imply so. And on the subject of the usage of "girls", I'm fucking 23 and I refer to everyone within about ten years of my age as "girls and guys", so this PC argument is bullshit and everyone knows it. All of this in the same conversation as "fuckboys" and "the dungeon of girlfriendless nerds".

 

"They create this hostile community and don't understand why girls won't play with them and get mad at them for not ~playing with the big boys~ but if they DO then nobody takes them seriously"

 

Can you point to one single instance of this, or are you just projecting an assumption? Because I think it's the latter. No one has this mentality but you, and you're not even a part of this community.

 

On the subject of Twitch streamers, and the attention-whoring sex-sells mentality some of them have, it's undeniable that it's happening. GIFs of streamers taking clothes off for donations are all over Reddit whenever they happen to pop up and I've seen a handful of LoL or DotA streams where the streamer has deliberately placed the webcam at a high angle to show off their low-cut-top, but not high enough to see the keys (which is normally what you have when streaming, particularly an RTS or MOBA). However, this isn't a generalization - this is on the same level in my mind as the streamers who only get views because of all the whining and bitching and BM and drama they do on stream (looking at you avilo, MaximusBlack, IdrA before being let go from Evil Geniuses). Both are pathetic and only damage the community, yet they're popular all the same. ZombieGrub (Rifkin's co-caster on BaseTradeTV), Livibee, and Scarlett (though sadly she only plays DotA now instead of the clearly far-superior SC2) are all good examples of female streamers I enjoy watching and listening to. Also AxCrank's wife who plays with the BTTV team on occasion, but I don't actually know her name.

 

My point is this: if you create a straw-man out of the community, it's incredibly easy to attack. Do not feel bad about this thread Cocoa. While there have been some dumb and poorly-worded responses, I don't believe this community is or has ever been any more daunting to females than to males. The barriers for entry are high regardless of gender. For fuck's sake, we don't even know your gender until you mention it in a post. I will say this a million times over. This community is not at fault for women not being a part of it. We can't force girls to pick up the game and play it our way. Maybe a small handful do, but the simple fact is a larger percentage of guys do and have done - the source for this can be debated (how RCT was marketed, how girls or guys think about/play video games, gender "norms", etc.) - and this means that this is just the way the community is today.

 

Ling-

 

I'm speaking for her since she's asleep at the moment, but I think my GF's bit about ~playing with the big boys~ was coming from a frustration with broader gaming trends and not a specific instance at NE - no intention of attacking NE or assuming things are ugly here.  

She's been following the community for a year or so and has seen enough to know the dynamics, including the thread from when Emergo had her accident (see below); I linked it to show her how close-knit such a small community can get.

Even if she hadn't been around for a year - how many distressing posts would she need to see for her opinion to matter?  I'm guessing you don't have a five-bit-minimum rule before you decide if your apple is rotten, and I think we can all agree it only takes one Timothy Cross post to decide maybe we've had enough internet for a while.

 

The girls/guys issue is that "girls" is a word that includes everything down to toddlers while guys is unambiguously adult, and putting a "girls" label on something implies it is childlike, immature, not important, etc.  That goes more for labels on Things than people and is often nuanced/situational, imho.

 

The issue taken with the Twitch example wasn't questioning whether that really happens, but that SF seemed to be saying the "tits-out" streamer archetype was a representative sample of all female gamers.  It seems like, from your examples of female streamers you like who don't pursue a sex-sells model, you agree that this isn't the case.

 

Nerd Dungeon was totally me by the way, and I want you all to know you are my favorite nerds.

 

Liam- I actually do remember Becky and Emergo getting a small number of comments that were more based on their gender than their work.  Nothing that would be considered abusive, really, but often things like "that must be the feminine touch :p" or "I bet guys love that" in response to their theming choices or gaming habits.  That said, if the few notably female members have gotten special treatment of any kind at NE it seems to have been overwhelmingly positive.

 

 

re:  RCT IRL

 

As I've posted previously, older people I've talked to are generally impressed by my RCT stuff and younger people are generally confused and just want to talk about drowning peeps and naming stalls Poopy Landscapes.  

 

My limited NE meetups have mostly involved talking about other things we were equally nerdy about and me having some incredibly regretful awkward teenage interactions. I think MA may be scarred for life by just how well I fit the pale internet nerd stereotype when we met up.

 

My significant others and family have been, to summarize, lukewarm but supportive about RCT.  If nothing else, being involved with the community has led to learning some new skills for logo design and doing a lot of research to build my knowledge base on exhibit design, architecture, landscaping, etc., and so people who are close enough to know that see RCT as a slightly obscure but otherwise healthy hobby.

[ntamin22' timestamp='1423089396' post='649700']

 I think MA may be scarred for life by just how well I fit the pale internet nerd stereotype when we met up.

 

 

can i join the club?

This is fun

I think it's just like this:

100 people play video games. 30 of them are girls. 5 of those like rollercoaster tycoon. 1 of them is a nerd like us.

 

"MFG"