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INTEREST: Artist Hiroko Yokoyama Discusses Sexism in Japan's '90s Game Industry


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TheAnimeRevolutionizer



Joined: 03 Nov 2017
Posts: 329
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 12:51 pm Reply with quote
And now I learned why SNK crashed in 1999.

You deserved it SNK
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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5521
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:00 pm Reply with quote
read this on twitter and it's just all very sad. and from what I can gather, not much has improved in many other gaming companies.

Quote:
a response to the recent discovery that Tokyo Medical University has been lowering the entrance exam scores of female applicants since at least 2011.


WTF? Why would they do that? I mean, I'll google that since it's not the actual topic here but wow...
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Lemonchest



Joined: 18 Mar 2015
Posts: 1771
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:02 pm Reply with quote
Kougeru wrote:
read this on twitter and it's just all very sad. and from what I can gather, not much has improved in many other gaming companies.

Quote:
a response to the recent discovery that Tokyo Medical University has been lowering the entrance exam scores of female applicants since at least 2011.


WTF? Why would they do that? I mean, I'll google that since it's not the actual topic here but wow...


Same reason as given here: Education is wasted on women since they'll just drop out & get married (also they were fiddling the results so well connected sons could get in).
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TheAnimeRevolutionizer



Joined: 03 Nov 2017
Posts: 329
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:17 pm Reply with quote
Lemonchest wrote:
Kougeru wrote:
read this on twitter and it's just all very sad. and from what I can gather, not much has improved in many other gaming companies.

Quote:
a response to the recent discovery that Tokyo Medical University has been lowering the entrance exam scores of female applicants since at least 2011.


WTF? Why would they do that? I mean, I'll google that since it's not the actual topic here but wow...


Same reason as given here: Education is wasted on women since they'll just drop out & get married (also they were fiddling the results so well connected sons could get in).



On another note, I think Japan has to stop trying to chase the bubble boom nostalgia train and face reality. I'm sure there are a lot of close families, but Japan and its family culture is way much unlike its neighbors. In my family, the grandparents get the opportunity of watching the kids while the mother and dad go off to work if they both have jobs. Infact, that's the situtation as I am typing RIGHT NOW. If Japan's strict western nuclear family system isn't doing so well with them, then maybe they should lay off that along with the smug, materialism, and the game of catch up with the first world joneses. There's no excuse for Japan to pull this backass policy off.
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Zeino



Joined: 19 May 2017
Posts: 1098
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:20 pm Reply with quote
Yet more proof that ethics in the video game community are and have been terrible for a long time and the problem of sexism was always there.

Last edited by Zeino on Thu Aug 09, 2018 3:43 pm; edited 2 times in total
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TheAnimeRevolutionizer



Joined: 03 Nov 2017
Posts: 329
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:24 pm Reply with quote
Zeino wrote:
Yet more proof that ethics in video game community are and have be terrible for a long time and the problem of sexism was always there.


Heh, you aren't even getting into the thick of it...
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Chester McCool



Joined: 06 Jan 2016
Posts: 322
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:59 pm Reply with quote
TheAnimeRevolutionizer wrote:
And now I learned why SNK crashed in 1999.

You deserved it SNK


I'm fairly certain SNK went under because of the low sales of the Neo Geo in the free-for-all that was the 90s console war, not some random middle-management guy.

Kougeru wrote:
WTF? Why would they do that? I mean, I'll google that since it's not the actual topic here but wow...


American universities do it to, and all for the same reasons. They want a certain percentage of admissions across certain demographics.
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ChrissyC



Joined: 17 Jun 2015
Posts: 542
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 4:04 pm Reply with quote
I'm actually proud of the comments in this thread.
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H. Guderian



Joined: 29 Jan 2014
Posts: 1255
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 4:32 pm Reply with quote
ChrissyC wrote:
I'm actually proud of the comments in this thread.


I too expected fire and brimstone.

As to the meat, this seems like a legit sexist using sound reasoning for a bad purpose.

Why not offer these women some job security so they will keep the skills inside the company? The part that raised my eyebrow wasn't that women would give birth, but that they would naturally leave the company and never return.

What was the Maternity package like in the 90's? What was it like when that boss was in his prime? I'm leaning on him being somewhat sexist, though without fully knowing his circumstances as well I can only half heartedly condemn.

Though this seems to be about office culture in general, and I don't think anything dependent on which industry. Pretty sure it happens across many industries in Japan.
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5294
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 5:14 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
The man's remarks relate to the expected trend—which continues in Japan today—of women quitting their jobs after marrying and starting families
Sadly given the declining birthrate, that maybe something you will have to do.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4563
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 5:46 pm Reply with quote
MarshalBanana wrote:
Sadly given the declining birthrate, that maybe something you will have to do.

No, that's probably (a small) part of why the birthrate IS declining. How many women will want to raise a family if they know it's a death sentence to their career? Things in the US are still pretty heinous compared to much of the West, especially when it comes to the lack of sane maternity leave, but Christ, at least we're not still riding the Sally Homemaker train.
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manapear



Joined: 02 May 2014
Posts: 1524
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 6:48 pm Reply with quote
I'm glad that hashtag has been making the rounds this well, but it's always terrible that these situations exist at all.

This, plus WeToo, will hopefully bring even more change.

Going to be interesting to see how many gaming sites, if any, report on this and other similar Twitter threads.
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Lord Oink



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 876
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 7:38 pm Reply with quote
Speaking from a pragmatic view, that manager guy isn't really wrong. It's the same reason companies wont put as much resources and training into temp workers as they would full-time employees. If it's more common for women to retire upon marriage of having children, then I can see the logic of businesses doing it.

Also got to point out this article uses the American boxart for the games, which Yokoyama had nothing to do with. She did the Japanese boxart.
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omiya



Joined: 21 Sep 2011
Posts: 1823
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 10:15 pm Reply with quote
The ingrained of the problem is shown in this thread:

https://twitter.com/LilithAlive/status/1027535818317955072

Quote:
My experience applying to work at Sega, as an average-looking foreign woman in Japan, a thread:


This was highlighted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's former north Asia correspondent, Rachel Mealey. (I've been really impressed with the correspondents that the Australian ABC has had in Japan, both female and male, and also particularly with one of their Japanese team, Yumi Asada, being polite and sensitive but not shying away from difficult to cover issues in Japan).
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reanimator





PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 10:32 pm Reply with quote
Lord Oink wrote:
Speaking from a pragmatic view, that manager guy isn't really wrong. It's the same reason companies wont put as much resources and training into temp workers as they would full-time employees. If it's more common for women to retire upon marriage of having children, then I can see the logic of businesses doing it.

Also got to point out this article uses the American boxart for the games, which Yokoyama had nothing to do with. She did the Japanese boxart.


I'm not going to disagree completely on what you said, it's just sad that women are the only ones who have to carry burden of raising child(ren) in Japan. At least in the West, both men and women tries to balance work and raising family however they can.

Speaking of box art, that's something that writer should've done some homework before putting it out on the web. Finding Japanese box art isn't that hard.

Quote:
If Japan's strict western nuclear family system isn't doing so well with them, then maybe they should lay off that along with the smug, materialism, and the game of catch up with the first world joneses.


I don't know about Japan is being strict nuclear family system and keeping up with Jones, but how many Japanese women are willing to marry men living with parents? Plus there is that ever present Demon-wife vs Demon-mother-in-law conflict we hear so much about. More wealthier you get, more nuclear your family becomes, i guess? And that's not limited to Japanese either. Speaking of materialism, I see my well-to-do neighbors composed of working couples with high paying jobs are hiring Latino nannies to watch their children while working their hardest to paying off their expenses.
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