“otome” as a genre by the way is little more than living out a phantasy of being highly sexually desirable. It's part of the bizarrely popular “harem” genre in Japan, which comprises fiction and video games whose entire plot can be surmised as “The entire cast of attractive characters all fall in love with the protagonist and seem to exist for no other reason than to fall in love with the protagonist.”. — there seems to be a somewhat larger male than female market for this, but the female market is still quite large, and it's as much trash as my description would suggest. — it is really nothing more than plotless wish fulfillment.

The drawing in the article of the many is very indicative of the otome harem, indeed.

In any case, this article speaks as though they hit some kind of untapped hole in the market, but it's a drop in the bucket.

> auctor [from another comment of yours]

Where did you learn this style? What effect are you going for here? Are you from a non-English speaking country? An especially fussy part of Britain?

Your English looks flawless, except that you seem to wish you could replace some English words with related Latin words.

Similarly, you will find me favor the spelling of “lim” over “limb” or “hole” over “whole”.

I actually object less to “author”, than I do to “limb”, as many actually pronounce it as it is spelled, but with “limb” it is introducing a silent letter without any etymological justification, simply because other similar words such as “lamb” are spelled as such with etymological justification, as the “b” was once pronounced there.

> phantasy

As well.

I'm also really curious about the writing style and choices.

... Or pretending to be one? It's that too meta?

It reminds me of savvy car companies in the 1980s who realized there was a huge untapped market for cars that appeal to women. So the best way to deal with that was to bring in female designers.

I'd imagine the effect is similar here.

After all, this was never the case in old media; the investors/producers, directors/editors, writers, etc. of most women’s magazines, TV shows, etc. are mostly men.

Why wouldn’t the boy’s club carry on?

Maybe they're not calling the shots on content in quite the same way as TV executive, but they're definitely the ones getting rich off of it, anyway.

From run-of-the-mill influencers to professional makeup artists and drag queens.

I found that unexpected and very fascinating.

That said, it doesn't mean that those new creators couldn't still be "successful" in such a situation. Just that someone else with more money is still making more money than them.

For context about this, the overwhelming majority of female-targeted Japanese fiction is written by females and with that I mean that I do not know of but a single example of a male auctor having published anything in the female demographic.

The reverse is not true; — there are a great many highly successful male-targeted works produced by female auctors, by which I mean some of the most seminal and influential works in both action and romance.

I'm not usually a gender essentialist, but there's a certain style of some Japanese media of which I often feel that without knowing for sure I can say with 95% certainty that the auctor is female, but I can never be certain of that the auctor is male.

I'm also not sure as to why it would be cynical. If anything, I would feel that it would be good for marketing if it were known that a male wrote it, because it's as said a novelty and many would want to see it because of that. Perhaps you believe that, as the article suggests, this is actually some kind of new development? Be not misled by spectacular news reporting, as otome games and fiction are a very old and commercially viable market rather than some new innovation. — it is certainly not some new development that someone realized this and there are thousands of such games, novels, strips, television series, audio dramata, and whatever other medium, nigh all of them written by female auctors.

I assume you don't mean Ikuhara, so I'll say that many of the things people like about Sailor Moon worldwide were invented by Ikuhara (a man) rather than the manga author, who was more into adding the things Japanese romances have that tend to offend worldwide audiences like romances with way older men.

Although there's certainly other men who try writing anime for women with LGBT content, I don't know if any of the others are actually very good at it, maybe some KyoAni directors.

What tends to happen is that women start products/media that appeal to women, then as it grows, men take notice. They get brought on in management and finance roles, because they have established connections in those fields (where connections are crucial). And too often, that means importing the cultures that drove women out in the first place, in both old and new media.

I hope we get more stories like this, where the women can maintain control. The article points out that they never took VC money. But it's also because they started out moderately wealthy; they were effectively their own VCs.

Female-specific VCs are going to take enormous amounts of flak if they try, but it may be a route to reach whole new markets. Rather than just turning things pink and or making more dating sims.

the people in the article identified a market and took a risk to tackle it and have success in it, others did not. their experience in understanding the market is likely because of their background. other organizations could benefit from the same thing with inclusion that ignored pedigree, which literally means elevating people to decision making roles that have unfamiliar backgrounds and unfamiliar experience (this is in addition to underrepresented people that do have familiar backgrounds and experience), yes, the worst nightmare for some of you all. corporations are about addressing a market, not placating its employees.

The “old guard” in business don’t take risks. They let others de-risk ideas for them (by executing on them successfully until they find repeatable patterns for success that don’t require a “spark” of creativity), and then come in as a fast-follower with far larger pocketbooks to do the same thing, but better and more polished and at higher scale.

Who wrote most early romance novels? Women. (After, that is, the medieval-era proto-examples that were written by men because only men were taught to read and write.) But, once pulp romance novels became a commodity, who was it that started founding companies like Harlequin to take advantage of the known market? Men. And now those companies, by sales volume or revenue, produce most of the romance-novel content in the world. They might employ many women writers at the bottom level (though sometimes those are men under pen names!) but most of the money is going to the men working for the publisher, the distribution chain, the bookstore corporations, etc.

I don’t see anything stopping this pattern from repeating with otome games. If it hasn’t happened yet, that could just mean that the business model hasn’t yet been sufficiently de-risked for the old guard’s tastes.

Look at any social media company. Employees most men, users mostly women (anyone who buys ads can check this for themselves). The only gender balanced social network is LinkedIn.

Dragon Age: Inquisition demographics (https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/NickYee/20170120/289534/Beyo...) also boasts 48% female which is very high compared to genre averages.

There is likely a lot of untapped market in the RPG and simulation genres if games want to cater more to women. Probably less so in stuff like FPS.

I noticed the girls always drew pictures of houses and family and I thought that was the stupidest thing ever.

So yeah it's definitely the genre, and dare I say definitely in part biological in origin.

What I 100% was not into was:

- all the bullying and exclusion I got from boys when I tried to do or talk about "their things" with them

- the way I was inevitably the one that got called away to help out with one chore or errand or the other

- being scrutinised (to the point of pathologising) for openly being unbothered by violence and gore

- on the flip side, the rather weird expectation that I should or would be open to (receiving) violence and aggression in real life just because I do so on a screen, or that I could not also like teddy bears and flowers and family

- the reinforcement from many of the games (and other media) themselves that these were Boys' Things for a Boys' Club that I was just intruding on

- the step beyond bullying and into actual, pretty vile harassment when I eventually started trying to play or talk about games in a bigger context (i.e. online)

As an aside to the potentially harmful aspect of stereotypes in childhood, I think I could have been more athletic. Not an athlete, mind you, but I definitely had the physical prowess to have learned to enjoy sports as a child. But adults told me I was smart, and the culture told me that smart people didn't enjoy physical activity.

Don't assume that after 3 or 4 years of full-time operant conditioning that there is anything inherently organic about your gendered behaviour.

...huh? Am i missing something? Is there a problem with telling children what gender they belong to?? Am i just being thick? Help me, anyone. Please

TLDR: males castrated at birth and raised as females still had a male gender identity.

There is no controversy behind this in science. Most of this controversy exists in gender politics. But the politics is so strong one of my repliers just assumed I didn’t do any research when the opposite is true. Research indicates gender identity is biological if you don’t know this you didn’t do the research. You can still choose to hold a different conclusion then the entire scientific community... that is your right.

Now I’m not here to start a debate. I couldn’t resist replying to you but for the sake of not starting an off topic gender flame war and violating HN rules I’m not going to respond. Just read the evidence and take what you will from it is just information to add to your existing knowledge.

The two phrases "role" and "identity" are similar enough that within this context I can use the terms interchangeably.

Also please don't go like "I find it ironic that you..." or "I find it interesting that you..." or "I find it fascinating that you still believe..." or any of that kind of language like that. It's condescending and insulting and not to mention manipulative.

If you truly are open minded you'd talk to someone who shares a different opinion than you as an equal rather than refer to them as if you were observing some "fascinating" animal with "interesting" behavior that lives in a zoo.

That's it no more replies. Thread ends here. 100% I swear. Don't ban me, Dang.

I can be definite about anything I want. Additionally, how do you know I haven't already looked at the enormous amount of research?

Either way, the research supports my views in a pretty definitive way.

I'm just saying that game genres should cater to the definite biological differences in interests between men and women.

Do you disagree? Fine. I accept your disagreement. Let's agree to disagree and not let this turn into a gender flame war. I'm not going to reply this thread.

It's somewhat ironic that your participation here consists of a) a thread where you strenuously argue that it is not possible to make definite claims of truth backed by science b) a claim that you know the definite truth about a particular scientific question.

Realistically, since the gaming market is global, no individual will be representative of the market. Japanese women aren't going to know what Mexican women want in mobile games.

Even people playing board games are still gamers. People playing sports are gamers. They just play different game genres than you.

A game is a game.

    > Playing a game is gaming.
    > A game is a game.

And,yes I am pro regulating video game, especially lootboxes.

I also am for regulating loot boxes, I still do not see how that changes the fact a game is a game.

Because gamblers aren't (video) gamers. They are more people addicted to a mechanic and less about enjoying the medium.

Just my opinion and all. Everyone thinks differently. :)

It doesn't. That's the issue. See Skinner's box. Random variable rewards cause addictive behavior, because of evolutive pressures our ancestors exprienced.

Couple that with a money extraction system and you get a way to easily extract money from people unaware of this 'exploit'.

I don't know if that's true, but it could be either men don't understand as well what attracts female gamers, or they're not interested in making those kind of games.

This seems weird to me, because the appeal is quite similar to that of van life, which has a much more diverse group of influencers.