There would be nothing stopping Trump himself from running again, either. I wouldn't count it out.

You feel bad for a lamp robot. That is because you are crazy.

As incredible as it sounds, I believe he actually has 22 different lawyers facing criminal charges, license suspensions, and/or disbarment.

I mentioned in another comment, but Time Enough for Love stands out for having a number of "unconventional" relationships.

"Don't certifie those electors."

-Dan Quayle

Robert A. Heinlein is on par with Asimov for being known as a progenitor of the genre. He also had an awful lot of questionable content along these lines, like Time Enough for Love and other works that were quite popular. For more modern authors, I'd argue that Scott Card gets into some questionable content as you get further into the Ender's Game sequels. In any case, more questionable content becomes more likely as you explore potential alien realms with unique and challenging social mores, so it may just be baked in as a feature of the genre even if the genre doesn't specifically advocate for or endorse such activity.

Time Enough for Love was a pretty popular one.

Missed out on reading Heinlein, did you?

not how it works. you have to refer to them by name.

It generally is, actually. Anyway, I went on to name some, so it really seems like time to simply drop it.

strategy is not meta. meta is a specific strategy that is en vogue. single player or two player games can't have it because it's a group thing.

This is just wrong. Any competitive game will have styles of play and strategies that work well against particular players. Chess has an evolving meta, for instance, with certain opening moves falling in and out of vogue. Again, just because you're not familiar with it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

but it is not casual, no matter how much you want it to be

My neighbour's 7 year-old plays. It's not that complex, no matter how much you want it to be. It is, at its core, a casual game designed with a time limit to keep matches short so you can play between other activities.

you're trying to redefine words to suit your argument. stop that

No, that's been you from the very beginning of this argument. So take your own advice and cut it out.

you barely understand the terms, get real.

"The terms." What does this even mean? You are the one arguing that if you don't give a specific example, then you're just making shit up, so I can only assume you're being vague in order to create an argument out of thin air. You haven't used a single term I didn't understand. You are just hand-waving away legitimate points with spurious criticisms.

that was a speific example of a company taking a boy brand, chasing the 'girl audience' and losing the boy audience. so, bad execution.

Yes, it was a poor execution. That was my whole freaking point. Talk about displaying a lack of understanding. Yikes.

i'd probably say that they have low overall player counts, proving my supposition that women don't really play as much as you want

First, whatever you'd say based on pure speculation is neither here nor there. Second, the numbers who play weren't the point -- the demographic split was. Again, you are making up excuses to avoid the actual point.

oh please, you have to support that.

You already did support that with the numbers you provided.

you didn't. because you just made a broad reference and never named anything.

I did refer to them. You claimed I didn't, so I elaborated by naming some.

fortnite isn't casual. it has a damn meta

So do most puzzle games. There's a ton of strategy for most of them. You don't play, so you don't appreciate them. Similarly, Fortnite is a basic game that children pick up to play for short, casual matches. It also has a more complex side, but at its core it is a casual game that you pick up for short matches.

i'm dismissing casual because it's casual. only that. try harder

No, you're dismissing casual you don't understand as casual and inflating the casual that you do understand as deeply complex. Simple as that.

already told you why. you don't understand it, it's fine.

I didn't need you to tell me anything. I already understand your argument. You're the one who seems to be lacking understanding.

so you can claim games for women like has been done with star wars? because it won't get more women actually playing.

Yeah, that was a specific example in that Atari article that explained how not to make games for girls, so we're agreed that it won't work.

you would think that you could name... any of them.

You'd just sat you've never heard of them, so they don't count. If you were interested, you could easily look it up. For instance, here's a list that Steam recommends for female gamers

and this started in the 70s. imagine a pioneer like atari being hung up on not producing a game for women.

Atari was one of the few games producers who (after Pac-Man proved to be popular among both boys and girls) took an interest in potentially marketing games towards a female audience. However, they explored that possibility by conducting focus groups of what boys thought girls might like to play. This basically resulted in games that were designed and test marketed for boys simply getting a female character slapped on as a lead character, which generally resulted in games that were flops.

A lot of that early history of gaming, though, was brought about by how gendered toys were in general at the time. The companies producing consoles literally had to choose whether they would go in the aisle for boys or the aisle for girls. There were no separate games stores or even games sections, just gendered aisles. So since video games were seen as related to computers and computers were seen as related to maths and maths were seen as a make thing (though more neutral analysis shows this core argument was flawed in many ways), companies chose to fairly aggressively market their product exclusively towards boys. Now time has shown that not only do girls enjoy games that are made to appeal to them, but adults also enjoy games that are made to appeal to them. If you went exclusively by early industry demographics to determine that girls don't like games, then you'd have to also assume that adults don't like games, but both of those incorrect assumptions have been shown to be demonstrably false as new games are marketed towards different demographics.

30% for one game that had work specifically intended to court women. nope.

It was over 40% in one of your previous examples, and those were both gender-neutral. The games that appeal most to women have already been eliminated as "games" by you, but overall...yup. As games are marketed more towards women, the numbers come closer to parity or even past it.

no you didn't.

Yes, I did. Those were the games I was referring to when I made mention to games on early consoles. Again, you are deliberately ignoring things in order to make your argument.

it's casual

Plenty of puzzle games have tournaments. Only as casual as Fortnite or any other basic battle game.

we're talking about video games.

Yes, and there are video versions that appeal to women just as a video version of paintball appeals to men. Again, you are dismissing a game that was designed, programmed, had art created, likely has multiple game modes, and possibly has competitive online play as "not a real game." It absolutely is a real game, though.

you are invested in a narrative where women aren't playing because they've been excluded

There is real truth to it, while you're invested in a narrative not only that factual events didn't exist, but also that the games you see before your own eyes don't count as games because you don't want to count them.

really, for the past 10 years, making a game of any kind has been stupidly easy. you'd think that with this huge market you think exists, people would be making games like mad.

...they do make games like mad. There are also indie games that have female-dominant audiences. Again, this is why you're starting to see numbers closer to gender parity in modern gaming as opposed to in the past.

one thing you kind of skipped over was that this is after a concerted effort to get more women. for men, they just made a game, and guys bought it, back when it wasn't particularly accessible or accepted

Yeah, no, those games were very specifically marketed towards boys, and the games companies killed a lot of projects that would have been marketed towards girls because they decided before the genre of video games was established that it was going to be "for boys." As you pointed out, as soon as games were marketed more towards girls, the numbers started shooting up closer to parity. Now the culture needs time to shift away from the narrative that video games are for boys, and the numbers will shift even further.

yes it is. phone game match 3 is the subgenre where women dominate. it's viewed as not real because it's just so casual and shallow. handy for burning 10 minutes of downtime, though

You're conveniently ignoring a lot of history here, and quite intentionally, I may add. I just pointed out that games like Columns, Dr.Mario, Tetris, Shove It!, and most of the NeoGeo lineup were more puzzle oriented, and they all tended to appeal more to women. Match 3 is not just a phone thing.

more strategy and depth

Women play Mahjong and other games with plenty of strategy and depth. You just don't see the strategy because you don't play, and you don't see them as games because women dominate them.

I dislike the narrative that women only like puzzle games and "cosy" games so much.

I didn't mean to imply that those are the only games that women play, but they are the games where women are the dominant demographic, and they're also generally considered not to be "real games," which I think is notable.

Women are out there playing the same mainstream games as men, we just generally don't announce we're women, especially via voice chat, because it's not worth the griefing.

Agreed that the numbers are higher than they appear at first blush, but anonymous polls indicate that women are a smaller number of most fps demographics. I play an online RTS that seems to be a pretty even split, though. Lots of women in games like WoW, as well. A lot has to do with the culture of the game in question.

And what does that say about the men that love games like the Sims and Stardew Valley?

Personally, I don't think it says anything other than that they like video games, and maybe they'd also like Animal Crossing. Some of the people who don't consider those real games might have a different take on it, but I'm not too interested in that.

women are a minority in almost every genre.

Except for the genres that appeal to them and are marketed towards them, which is a more modern phenomenon. And every genre that appeals to them is similarly declared "not a real game."

so, if you define 'real' as anything other than a match 3 style game only the genres that women don't dominate

There are also lots of puzzle games that aren't match 3 phone games. Plus, match 3 and similar puzzle games have been on every major console release dating back to all of the originals. Women tended to play those games more than others, so it's not just a phone phenomenon.

It's also interesting that pick-up games like Fortnite are seen as more of a hobby than pick-up games like match 3 or solitaire. Again, both of these are casual games designed to fill a short period of time, but one is seen as "more real" than the other.

Rick climbing gyms are pricy I’d say

Finding a willing Rick can be a challenge.

Those free pianos are usually free because a)They need expensive maintenance, and B) Moving a piano is expensive. You'd probably spend more on a free piano than you would on any number of new instruments.

does this mean I can say shaving my beard is a hobby?

Depends how you shave it.

Yeah, that seems potentially related to hunter-gatherer roles. Women mostly stayed in a group, did childcare as a group, tended a fire as a group, hunted small game as a group, cared for animals as a group, gathered plants and berries as a group, and prepared cloth and baskets as a group, where men often engaged in either solo hunts or hunts with a group of guys all spread out and slowly walking or sitting quietly. So men may be naturally inclined towards quiet, contemplative solo activities, or activities where the men do one particular activity together without necessarily talking for long stretches of time, where women are naturally inclined towards chit-chatty group activities where you semi-casually do one or a few things simultaneously.

Obviously not everything was defined by our ancestors, and there were exceptions to those general rules even back then, but I think there's likely a basic truth to this idea.

The person you're responding to specifically mentioned that they believe this dynamic applies even in cases where both partners work full-time, so no reason to, as you put it, "Assume the man is doing his role as the breadwinner of the family."

Sure, but some people probably describe their true crime binges as "watching Netflix" because describing their interests and advertising themselves through dating profiles or otherwise isn't something they're good at or find compelling. So probably a good number of people with boring profiles or who sound boring in person do actually have some pass time that would count as a hobby, but they don't describe it with enough detail to make it sound interesting.

Hobbies: Hot Pockets

I have done my research, I know every flavour (even the special releases), and am deep into the Hot Pockets lore.

I think one of the causes is the move towards urbanization from the suburbs. When you have a garage and a yard, it's easier to have hobbies than when you're in a shoebox apartment and you have no basement or spare room, and you're not allowed to make loud noises in lest you bother the neighbours on every side of you.

Those shoeboxes are also more expensive than in the past, so people work longer hours and have less money left over after rent/mortgage, so they're often just tired and broke, and most hobbies take a fair bit of money and focused attention. The rent being higher has also made almost all hobbies cost more, so combined with lower wages, that's a factor.

I'd wager that the shift towards both partners working also plays into that, since both partners get home with just enough time to make dinner, clean up, maybe walk the dog and/or squeeze in a workout, and watch a show together. There's just no time or money left for much in the way of hobbies most days. Maybe you go catch a show or go to an event or something on the weekend, but that's not really a hobby.

This is a bit like the common argument that "women don't like video games." Then someone will point out that women actually play a lot of video games, but generally they tend to be puzzle games or things like The Sims rather than CoD, and it will be revealed that whatever games women like aren't "real" games, so they don't count.

The point im trying to convey is that we should be charged for usage.

You are expected to be a substantial draw on the system once you reach retirement age. As another commenter mentioned, you are also paying off your coverage from your non-contributing years when you were younger.

I'm a regular Bartholomew Cubbins over here.