Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Loud Whispers on April 26, 2016, 07:29:44 pm

A clash of Kings

Her monster poo is actually a significant plotpoint

I've read that book twice and I don't remember the scene. Praise be to brain bleach.

I would tell you when it is, but spoilers and laziness.

It's either toward the end or the beginning (the books kinda run together. Pun not quite intended)

Presumably no counter-claims? Only person yet to post is Tiruin.

We are here for your entertainment only, Odub.

That's acceptabubble.

I take it y'all don't mind if I don't partake?

I'm curious who is scum though. I did think it was FoU after D1, but now I'm not so sure.

Evidently you didn't finish reading that sentence regarding cherry picking, as it said I wasn't going to discuss it further.

I responded to that part because you put words in my mouth. I did not say to exclude DF from forum gender distribution, I did not say that LCS was solely responsible for forum gender distribution and I certainly did not understand how you could draw those conclusions from what I said.

If I wanted someone to misinterpret everything I said, I'd play Mafia, and would prepare myself mentally for it. This isn't Mafia, so I'm not really in the mood to deal with it, thanks.

Quote

DF isn't the only game that Toady has made.

What exactly is the argument here? Are you saying that LCS could account for the gender-skew, but not DF? It seems kind of silly to say other Toady games are responsible for the forum gender skew.

Yes, those are the exact words that made up that sentence I don't even know how you inferred that from what I said

Anyway, you now seem to be cherrypicking the argument, so I see no point in continuing. The three factors you provided statistics for are not the only factors that are going to influence the gender distribution on the forum, and my argument was that you were using statistics to suit that particular data point.

Pfft, pacifist.

Quote from: Shadowlord on April 26, 2016, 11:42:22 am

"Novice, Occasional, Frequent, Expert"

Expert? :V

It's relevant because these are self-assessment categories. e.g. people who ticked "expert" consider themselves "expert" gamers. And those types of people are much more likely to be the ones playing idiotically nerdy games like DF.

Quote from: hector13 on April 26, 2016, 11:41:28 am

I shall now use this as an example of how you can make statistics say whatever you want them to say

- If twice as many men play on PC, and Dwarf Fortress is only on PC, there's no twisting of logic to say that all else being equal, twice as many men as women will end up as Dwarf Fortress players. "Playing on a PC" isn't a gender-bias, it's just the raw numbers.

- If three times as many men consider themselves non-casual players as women, and being a non-casual player is a good predictor of liking obscure genres such as Ascii roguelikes, then you'd find that this skews the numbers 3:1. These are self-reported numbers too. I'm not calling women casuals, they self-report as casuals much more than men.

- If a game has a violent theme, and about twice as many men prefer games with a violent theme, then that would also skew the numbers 2:1, all else being equal. Again, this is about a thematic preference each gender self-reports, and not any assumption about what men and women should like.

- any independent factors would presumably be multiplied together. If you look at the data, then calculate the amount of male "non-casual PC players who like violent games" it's about 12 times the number of female "non-casual PC players who like violent games". And I'd argue those demographic groups form the core of potential DF players.

Those are all very broad things, however. There are also issues with self reporting, and the broad groups involved (men and women) are likely to skew things too. Are women less likely to report indulging in masculine behaviours like gaming, for example.

It doesn't say anything about independent games, nor ASCII games, nor genre, nor how likely people are going to go out of their way to try something different. You may find hardcore gamers are more inclined to play games like DF, but that doesn't mean they will, or go out of their way to find it (I found DF through a roguelike database thing)

Then there's consideration of joining the forum, too, which was what encouraged you to go to the stats. I don't think all the DF players are going to join the B12 forum, and even then, DF isn't the only game that Toady has made. So... yeah. I think it's reasonable for someone to say you might be interpreting stats to suit your argument.