That's an interesting detail, and I'm curious to know the name of that designer. Regardless, I do appreciate the extra context, though I do not think it undermines the broader argument.
I don't even know where to start here. I'll cite you some peer-reviewed research, news articles, and Department of Labor statistics if you really want to get that deep into this, but here's the basic breakdown: countries with robust game development industries employ women at proportions that range from 5% to around 20%; in the U.S. and Japan, the rates are presently around 19% and 12% respectively, which is actually up significantly from just a few years ago. Furthermore, women's representation in senior design positions are unequal even within the larger disparity. What's more, the figures scale even more drastically towards imbalance at larger publishers and developers.
I can cite all of this if you truly insist on making me waste an hour of my life to gather and link everything for you, just to respond to your knee-jerk accusation of dishonesty, but the truth is you can find all of it yourself by doing a simple google search for "gender disparity gaming industry". So perhaps you are not in a position to be accusing anyone else of failing to do their research/making shit up. Beyond all of that, I feel like if you didn't already basically know the story of this imbalance you almost certainly know next to nothing about the industry that produces something you care so much about.
And no, of course I am not in the know on precisely how the design came about. But I didn't say that I was, did I? I think if you review what I actually said, it was to the effect of "almost certainly was designed by a man", which, as a statistical matter, is an assertion I stand by--particularly considering it was in response to an argument that suggested that this an affirmatively gender-representation issue. It's very telling to me that you think the onus is on me to prove that this wasn't a statement by a woman as opposed to the person who originally made the tacit suggestion that it was*. But at no point did I intimate that I had first hand knowledge of the matter, clearly.
*(Sorry
@Ardenwolf, I really had not intended to criticize further and consider you a gentleman for letting the matter go despite my sharp disagreement; I was about to post and say that I was going to do the same, since it seemed to me that for all of us here, it was becoming a case of debate dragging us to more extreme positions than we had at the beginning, but that's when WuHT made his accusations, to which I feel I must necessarily respond in full.)
I didn't take this to a gendered place, homes. I was responding to a post which had already done that, for the sake of an argument that I just happened to disagree with, as a rationalistic matter, rather than an "ideological" one. As for my "shitting all over the game", you'll find just yesterday that I was saying that the most recent developments (Hilde included) make me feel this is close to becoming the best game in the history of the franchise, which I have played and adored for nearly 25 years. What's more, I have actively gushed over ~
Hilde's design~ repeatedly in the last few pages of this very thread...
So no, I was not shitting all over the game. I was having what was mostly, until now, a pretty civil and respectful discussion, one in which others had actually moved my opinion a little and one in which I would like to think I had a chance of moving others, or at least presenting them with a different vantage on the issue. What's more, all of this intellectual effort, silly as it may be, was about a a very small detail of design, a topic upon which the stakes could not be lower. If having an opinion you don't care for regarding one element of one CaS piece is your threshold for taking umbrage on behalf of the series, I don't know what to tell you, except I don't think I'm the one taking things to an out-of-proportion place.
Please quote me where I "blatantly made stuff up". Or even better, let's drop the matter for the good of the board, but if you are going to continue to make this allegation, I'd appreciate the courtesy of more specificity, because I don't think I did this or anything remotely like it, anywhere in this discussion. All I said was that I thought that the theory that this was an act of female expression of sexual liberation was highly dubious--and at the very least, not something we could presume without evidence. And again, I stand by that assertion.
