Prime World, a game by the Russian software company Nival, plans on instituting a gender based discount scheme for female customers who stick to their gender by playing a female character. Through Facebook, Prime World‘s game masters will determine if they believe that the customer is in fact a female, which will enable them to tag the account as available for such gender discounts. In essence, female customers will pay less for in-game female “heroes”, then male customers will pay for in-game male “heroes.” Furthermore, female characters will be given in-game power bonuses and abilities to their avatars, which will not be available for male customers. The game site NeoSeeker writes:

“If you’ve ever been to a totally happenin’ bar or club, then you probably already know about the male-to-female ratio problem and the tactics such establishments employ to maintain a comfortable balance. For those of younot in the know, such tactics tend to involve letting girls in for free or giving them discounts on beverages; groups of male patrons must pay full price or, in some cases, be denied entry. Nival Interactive is taking this same idea and applying it to their next game, a MOBA by the name of Prime World. How? By awarding female players discounts on playable characters and gender-specific in-game bonuses. Nival’s intent, according to creative producer Larisa Nuretdinova, is to cultivate a more diverse demographic for Prime World.”

Penny Arcade also confirmed the company’s strategic gender plan for Nival’s Prime World:

“Players in Prime World have talents, like other games offer abilities or spells. You’ll be able to select a gender-based talent that goes into effect when you’re playing with someone of the opposite gender who is also using an in-game character of their own gender. So I would need to team up with a female player using a female character. The talent will offer a shield that protects the other player when you’re in close proximity, so a mixed-gender fighting force is going to be more effective than a single-gender team. If a character is being overwhelmed, simply make sure you have the needed talent and are playing a character of the opposite gender, and you can offer a defensive buff. The game will offer three female and three male heroes to start. Players can buy new heroes, just like League of Legends, and female players will actually pay less for more characters. “To do the very best, you’ll want a female player on your team,” Nuretdinova said. You don’t need to have male and female players on the same team to win, but it will certainly help. The game will be connected to your Facebook account, so it will actually be able to check that your real-life gender, and the bonus is only available when a team is made of mixture of male and female players who are playing as characters of the required gender.”

The issue of attracting more female video game players isn’t a new concept, and indeed, has been the subject of intense discussions surrounding the issue of women in STEM careers. Get more women interested in gaming, increase the number of women in the STEM fields was the theory. The real discrimination isn’t in some video game sold by a private company, but by the continued efforts of the US Government to attract more women into STEM fileds by doing the exact same things as Nival.

In the on-line gaming worlds of the 1990’s and early 2000’s, with games such as EverQuest, female players had traditionally been a small minority of the player base; about 15%. However, in the last 10 years, the number of women that have begun playing online games, such as Blizzard’s mega-hit World of Warcraft, has begun to skyrocket, with many surveys showing between 35-42% female participation. Needless to say, due to the emphasis on moving women into STEM jobs and environments, the most comprehensive study was completed by the 2010-11 Congressional Caucus for Competitiveness in Entertainment Technology; a US Congressional panel set up to explore, study and promote diversity within the video game and technology industries.

Congressional STEM funding for education and job placement for women has not slowed despite the recent recession. Indeed, directly behind education programs designed to aid single mothers (which conveniently are almost never available to single fathers), STEM affirmative action programs have become the second biggest source of gender specific grants for women. While overall funding for math and science programs which include both male and female students has also increased, due to fears of foreign countries out performing US students in all technology fields, lobby groups, most notably the National Organization for Women, have continued to pressure Congress and the President to increase funding towards education grants for women under the STEM initiative.

Organizations such as Association for Women in Science (AWIS) , Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science (IWITTS) and American Association of University Women (AAUW), which have lent their weight to passage of these affirmative action programs for gender specific STEM initiatives, has meant there certainly isn’t a shortage of opportunities for tens of thousands of women each year to receive over $100 million dollars in federal funding not available to men. And with American Universities now overflowing with education money for women for STEM fields, much of which has gone unused due to a low enrollment rate in these majors, these same organizations have now begun to demand Congressional action to change the staffing dynamics in colleges and universities to hire more female teachers. The belief is that more STEM female professors will attract more STEM female students. The feminist lobby group Turner Strategies stated:

“Number-crunching revealed that although the number of female Ph.D’s in technical fields had increased by nearly one-third in the four decades since the passage of key protections for gender equity in education, there had been almost NO increase in female tenure and tenure-track faculty in math, science and engineering. Education, however, was not a subject in the headlines as there was no relevant legislation making its way through Congress, nor was there a shocking personal story to attract media attention, nor was this considered a crisis, and women’s issues typically receive scant coverage. Thus, our first barrier was to determine whether we could shape the story in a way that could garner coverage.”

Scant coverage to the tune of over $100 million dollars.

The reason I bring all this attention to the focus that has been placed on furthering women in high school and college, is to compare the stark contrast of less than zero focus on men in education and employment. This is despite the very present low high school and college graduation rates, and increasingly high unemployment rates, which has for the past 5 years exceeded that for women. As always, clear evidence of men and boys falling to all time lows in education are evident almost everywhere, as just over 41% of all college enrollees are men, who also have about an 8% overall lower high school graduation rate.

Yet for our society, this isn’t an issue worth exploring. Despite college rates that are below those of women in 1967, when a flurry of high priority affirmative action initiatives rolled out, the drastic discrepancy for men doesn’t seem to be a national crisis as it was for women. Worse, the federal government continues to be hustled by feminist lobby groups that seek funding which by definition, is consciously meant to exclude men. They have hung on to the taxpayers money by carving out new niches in education where female victim-hood can be parlayed into legalized and heavily funded discrimination. It seems ladies night isn’t just a pick-up bar’s gimmick anymore, as software companies and the federal government have introduced their own high dollar free beer campaigns to attract women as well.

But what happens when the men don’t come anymore? What happens when the price of admission is more than they can afford? What happens when men and boys problems go forgotten?

Never-mind, that’s already happening.