I think that I should post my reply rather here :
No one likes EA's joke about singleplayer games, even EA
They’re a 10 but they only like playing single-player games
I think I see a pattern beneath that saying.
It gooes like this :
"If you're playing only singleplayer games, then you are a introvert person, and that means that you are ... weird.
That means that no-one playes with you, because you don't play multiplayer games, and that probably means that no-one *wants* to play with you in multiplayer games, too."
This also leads - in my opinion - to the train of thought that multiplayer games = games for extrovert people, and being extrovert is, as far as the "Big Five" are usually interpreted, something good. And introversion is something bad.
Wikipedia uses this wording :
extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
It uses the word "extraversioN", not the word "introversion", which puts the word "extraversion" into bei ng the headline, so that it is something wanted.
Introversion isn't even mentioned there, so it is not wanted / unwanted.
The whole article is worded so that introversion is something ... people would not like.
Extraversion/positive emotionality
This implies that "Introversion/negative emotionability".
Or, in other words, introversion is either socially unwanted, or even considered as an illness, to put it cynically.
I think that this joke is ... so to say ... the iceberg of 10 or even more years of following the vocal multiplayer gamer population.
I repeat myself, I know, but I still do remember it when people suddenly appeared in forums of dedicated singleplayer games - like later Drakensang - and wanted multiplayer games being made out of them.
And when gaming corporations realized that multiplayer = DRM, they followed them. Not the singleplayer games lovers.
This is the first step of badmouthing singleplayer games. "We could have so much *more* fun if we played it all together !"
Like with ... introverts - who play singleplayer games, being weird, and strange, and overall socially ... unwanted. Because they do not want to socialize with others. Like in "We see that they do not want to socialize with others because they do not play multiplayer games."
Modern games are made for extrovert people, I believe, and
are being made by extrovert people.
Which is true even for some kinds of single player games.
So, to me, this is kind of an iceberg of a social development within "western" - and especially within american (the U.S. still one of the main developer countries of games) - societies. Especially of developments within gaming societies.
I fear that this all might lead into a "social distinction" of gaming groups in the end.
On another story, I found something which was ... kind of disturbing me a bit.
In a list of game genres, I found ... I think it was 20 genres. Or so. I don't remember the correct number anymore.
These were game genres which I considered to be neutral.
And then I saw it. ""Women oriented games".
I don't remember the exact wording anymore; however, I tried to reconstruct it here as far as I can remember it.
This means 2 things :
1. That there is explicitely the word "women" in that genre name, means that everything else is not explicitely directed at women as a game genre.
Those other genre names were *not* neutral, then.
Out of these let's say it was 20 genre names, 19 were of the one kind - and this single one was "women oriented game".
2. Men do not play "women oriented games".
Men play anything else - but this.
Had the wording been more neutral - but it was not - it would have been different in realization.
I see some kind of "social distinction" there. Gamersgate would be proud of that.
To me, this "social distinction" feels like racism. Or, to be more exact, like misogyny.
This is like what I have often read in PvP sub-forums (in SWTOR, for example) : "Go play Hello Kitty."
Men don't play "women oriented games". They play competitive games. Either PvE or PvP.
Hello Kitty is not competitive, so it is considered "weak".
This kind of misogyny can often be found. Only 2 or 3 days ago, an apparingly female player wrote to me in a chat : "When men encounter a woman who is stronger than them, they get fear." (Translated by me.)
In several societies, women are controlled and pushed so that they must ot be strong - if they were, they could easily take away the "competition", and competition is - according to a lot of societies - the main way to get a woman. Sometimes even the ONLY way to get a women : To show everyone else how strong and therefore manly a man is.
This leads to bizarre consequences. Like that extreme "cuteification", which I often see in screenshots of games developed in asia. Or events like that father who tried to end the career of his daughter, who was a boxer, by focibly crashing a club against her daughter's knees. I read about that incident many years ago. And both were members of a islamic cultures, in which women are forced to be pretty, not to be strong. A thing which Europe had as well. The "man in the house" was the master, and the woman had to obey, to be pretty, silent, and do nothing but housework.
Meanwhile there appears to be a category of "women oriented games", it is still kind of tragic that a lot of men - Gamersgate would be proud ! - despise games which contain social interaction, for example. Like The SIMs games have a reputation of being "notoriously women oriented games".
I still don't understand why male gamers despise social interaction in games so much, and vastly prefer brutal, grim, ugly-looking competition (like in combat sitiations) over everything else. Hence so few NPC interactions.
Maybe the current "manliness mania" is a backslash regarding the emancipation movement.
Maybe men indeed fear that women "might take over", and take away the - to them - only way to prove themselves : As strong, competitive men.
To quote Haegar The Horrible :
"[For this plunder voyage] I need strong men ! Men who can stand everything ! Men who can go through everything ! I need
married men !"