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Message: <blockquote data-quote="V-2" data-source="post: 92339" data-attributes="member: 2005">A couple of things:I posted this article on that Other Site because a cursory read seemed to show there was something valuable in there. On second thought, there isn't, at least not much--but I seem to have different qualms with it than most people. Here's what I disagree with:Re. women DO play RPGs: Please. Generally speaking, they don't. Dancey cited the latest statistics in one of his recent posts on this site, and IIRC the figure was somewhere below 20%. Yes, you are an exception. Which proves the rule.Re. men can't write about women coz they're men: <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> And re. Tolkien et al. wrote about the "human conscience": a) What's that? b) Whatever it is, it's male, right?Now, what I agree with:I'm not an IT professional, but I've seen a friend of mine designing PC games, and I agree with redmage that the last thing this "computational aesthetic" is is binary. That's just silly. It's complex, multi-layered, and involves constant decision-making on several levels simultaneously. If anything, I find both the designing and the actual playing of computer games way more fascinating than a Tolkien novel. The second weakness of her argument is the "risk-taking" metaphor. If Turtle (sp?) were right, then how come this board isn't dominated by hackers? Or why doesn't D&D appeal to all those others who take risks on a daily basis: how come so few Wall Street traders are posting here?So, what I'm saying here is that unlike Turtle (sp?) and her critics I don't see a parallel between programming, computer game desiging/playing and RPGing on one hand, and fantasy novels on the other--I see a discrepancy. Fantasy novels may well be as dull as she says. But the other stuff isn't. What literary critics (and she's being one in that respect) don't get--because they're so fixated on books, and hence will go for the novels first--is that those are possibly the most traditional and conservative part of geek culture. But that's a huge subject...</blockquote>

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