Same, and also it seems quite sexist to imply that women are more easily scared off of a forum by arguments over the relative merits of different games, than men would be.

I think it would be great to have more female rpg gamers here, but as you noted, they aren't attracted to the genre itself as much as males, for whatever reason.

I think its true that "Do men post, and women view?" (the title of an interesting study I found online about this) in terms of general participation of forums and message boards. Of course, there are female-centric ones where that isn't true. But on average, I do think men are much more active on say, gaming message boards than women.

Apparently, there are several reasons having to do with psychology and emotions and other complicated things such as if one is extroverted or not, and according to this particular study, men use forums more to express their opinions while women are more interested in maintaining social connections and just using the social media for passing time and entertainment.

https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/11564/10364

Any truth to this is down to harassment from gatekeepers. There is NOTHING inherently more appealing about RPGs to males. In fact, this whole statement strikes me as blatantly sexist. This is why males and females both end up censured and ridiculed for what they like if it doesn't fit into strict socially defined gender norms (like a guy who knits or a woman who likes to work on cars).

I agree Eye does a bang-up job, and I totally knew Zloth is a dude.

Nice to know we have someone on the site who's fully proficient in the latest nonsensical jargon :D

In fact, the use of the word gatekeeper in this form is in itself a perfect example of gatekeeping as meant by this use. Which I always find hilariously ironic.

[dictionaries are also a form of gatekeeping]

Can't wait to find out what the new jargon will be next year, I'm sure it'll be as funny as all the previous attempts to re-brand someone's already debunked attempt at self-advancement via cult-formation.

@Arkadia7
@Capt. Huggy Face

Thanks guys, for your kind words, your support. Nice tot read, nice to know. Much appreciated. :]

Since your days as a reviewer, editor, moderator, things have changed. I remember those days well (I have been around since 2007) I specifically remember two nasty occasions vividly, and I can tell you that in the aftermath the general attitude and understanding took a turn for the best. Things had to change if the Watch wanted to keep and attract female players. (And I made a strong case for that change.)
The new TOS in 2016 was one of the results.

I remember once working at an all male office where pin-ups were on the wall. I was new and was introduced to every co-worker. The boss saw those pin-ups and said: ‘Get away with them right now, we don’t want this environment for a woman’. Being a young rookie and eager not to get any annoyance from my new colleagues I muttered: ‘I don’t mind!’. And I really did not mind.
But off they went, those posters, and no one ever uttered any negativity about it.
I guess they knew better than young me that the ambience, the appearance, says something about how women are treated there.

As a moderator I am very keen to make sure RPGWatch is a neutral place were women are less likely to have reservations retaining them from participating.
As a woman arriving at an unknown place full of men it will always be a bit scary when taking the first jump, but having sexism, objectification or harassment as clear flags in threads certainly does not help, so when moderating I always try to imagine how a new visitor would assess the situation, without knowing anything about the person making the specific remark.

In short, I think your words mostly apply to the past. Having (again) a female moderator at the power buttons helps as well. :)
Mind you, as a moderator I don’t get any opposition from what you call ‘the management’, on the contrary, I feel nothing but support from @Myrthos and other team members. Yes, there are debates, there are differences in opinion, but not about the importance of how women here are to be treated and what (not) to condone in that area. That, I think, seen from my perspective, has changed in any case.

Interesting discussion.

I've seen many gaming communities having problems like this over the years. For some reason, a fair few boys/men have a very aggressive style online that does not correspond with their actual personalities. It's hard to figure out why. I'm guessing psychologists who specialize in that sort of behavior are needed to explain exactly why that keeps happening.

That being said, I do think it's changing. Sure, there are still douche bags online, but it's the same douche bags that were there 10-15 years ago. At least it feels that way to me. Either that, or I've simply become so used to ignoring their nonsense that I don't register it any more. That would actually be a bit worrying, if true..

Yes, there's been lots to reply to in this thread already, it's difficult to know where to start, but I shall start by agreeing with both you and eye, in that I haven't really noticed much change in the nature of the site over the last 2 years at the very least and if anything it seems generally calmer than it used to be to-boot.

Someone else has said something along the lines of "another long-time poster going, sad face", but, again, I can't say I've noticed any major changes in poster names over the last 2 years and if it's older than 2 years then it's hardly a situation which deserves a suggestion that it's some recent and on-going thing.

If people are dropping off without much notice then they likely never posted much anyway in the year or two leading up to their withdrawal, which puts the timing of any actual incidents way back beyond even 2 years.

As regards RPGWatch, it's always struck me as a very female friendly environment that, if anything, has a disproportional amount of women in positions of power rather than the opposite :D . I can name loads of female team members, both past and present, who can dominate practically any thread they want should they get the urge and I can't say I've ever seen a backlash against that based solely on their status as a woman. Maybe in the P&R section? But even that's quietened down a lot ever since HHR and Ripper have left.

As to the OP, I think CRPGnut was kind-of just having a laugh anyway, I don't think his post was even meant to be serious, I think he just fancied a bit of pot-stirring entertainment because that floats his boat. So I find it quite amusing how many people have even taken the thread quite so seriously. Or perhaps they haven't and they too are just digging for lols? Lol. I mean, the last person to do a leave thread was fluent I think? And that certainly didn't result in a secondary thread about the site being unfriendly to men :D

Given that for the most part I don’t know who is a female and who not, I don’t know if we are scaring off female members. Could also be we are scaring off many more male members, even percentage wise. Perhaps we are just scaring off people in general.

It is easy to draw conclusions based on assumptions and on own experiences of which the statistical relevance is debatable. Given that the sample size is probably close to N=1, which makes it an opinion and not some universal truth.
As with any opinion, others don’t have to share it and as long as that exchange is not out of bounds, it isn’t moderated.
That said, I don’t think any moderator has the time to check out all the posts that are made, so we probably miss some exchanges. But, we do have a report option with every post, so if you feel that you or someone else is being unfairly treated, hit that report option and a moderator will check it out and decide if an action is needed.

I want to report that crpgnut is nuts for thinking we're scaring off females. It is obvious that his shell has cracked and his seed is spilling out. He's so confused he thought Zloth was a girl! If he can't tell the sex of a sloth, perhaps he is also confused with human-kind as well.

To me this environment seems a little less toxic than, say, the Codex. But communicating through text posts isn't always the friendliest of methods in general. One has to go a little overboard sometimes not to come across as hostile.

Not worth it. The boss showed he was clueless and would never do anything, why am I bothering. It never worked before, never will.

Through colored glasses everything looks different.

I think it is a matter of Mike/Purple taking things too personally, which is understandable as it happens to everyone now and then. SirJames made a pretty reasonably argument and was speaking his own opinion, not making a blanket statement that RTwP is flawed and everyone must think that - although I personally didn't agree with it. Some times it is best to take a break and clear your head and I hope Purple comes back to keep us informed about the latest developments with Pathfinder:WotR :)

I 100% agree with Purple that Pathfinder Kingmaker and WotR should be RTwP as it is a spiritual successor to BG2 which was also RTwP. BG2 was also heavily inspired by Darklands which is one of the godfathers of the modern cRPG - and it is also RTwP. It would be freaking boring if every game was turn based. The key strength of RTwP is it allows epic battles to be realized in a very visceral way that you can't get with a turn based game. Nothing beats the feeling of having a squad of characters wailing on a dragon all in real time. Turn based just doesn't have the same urgency as RTwP. I like and want more of both systems - neither is flawed and both are great for different reasons.

I am as old school as cRPG gamers get. I grew up playing Demon's Winter and Temple of apshai and every other cRPG under the sun. I have literally played and completed almost every western cRPG ever released (even the obscure ones you Europeans love like Ambermoon and Ishtar), the only ones I haven't played are a bunch of Russian ones that have never been translated. I love RTwP and I have backed every Infinity engine inspired game with plenty of cash and I will continue to do so.

A little? Compared to the Codex this place is full of only Hipsters, Hippies and Hugs. Compared to the Codex most forums are though.

Source: https://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_…efinitely-end/
https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/…/723829_v2.jpg

Being a hipster is not supposed to be negative - without hipsters there is no pushing forward. The problem are trenchasing hipsters that change skin several times per day based on the current flow.
Nothing wrong with hippies either, enjoying life while not hurting anyone can't be bad except when a tyrant wants hippies to wage wars for his personal psychopatic interests.
What's hugs? If that's a person that loves and hugs everyone when drunk, well, that's me. :)

Oh yes, when I suggested that the attacks on Purple stop, that people accept that not everyone likes the same things (remember that SEVERAL people were out saying that people were objectively wrong and not likely REAL RPG fans for liking RTqP), that the whole 'game system' thing get moved into its own thread … yes, of course in fact *I* was the problem.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DmV9Y7TU…g&name=900x900

About that… I didn't follow the thread in question much and wasn't involved in gameplay style "wars" so count me not informed enough in the specific matter.
But once again I have to repeat that combat is something of not much importance to me. Everything works in my case. Sometimes though it's made so bad I can't adapt to it (example: Earthlock controls), but one fail doesn't mean other games with the same combat style suck.

To return on topic, unless one of females who left the site doesn't return and state "I was scared off and felt it was because I'm female", I find it hard to believe being scared of anything here is gender based.

First off, PLEASE stop trying to find the 'one thing'. Because while we can talk about a few posts on a single thread, my point is that the misogyny here is systemic and comes straight from the top on down - with a very few people trying to actually do anything about it and typically getting berated and attacked for doing so.

I have never issued a 'I'm leaving' statement, but have taken multiple 'breaks' - and EVERY SINGLE ONE has been related to having 'had enough' of the sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia and assorted bigotry of a large amount of the predominantly male members … including some of the most prolific posters.

The only reason I come back is that in spite of everything, there is simply no better place to discuss the assortment of RPG (and FPS) games I love.

Of course *you* wouldn't, not a surprise. I have had people reach out to me personally in the past, mostly people who were short term members who decided it just wasn't worth it. The fact that they do not return to their abusers … well, yeah.