Do Girls Like Video Games?
Editorials | Gavin M. | October 20, 2009 at 4:58 pmThe video game industry has made great progress over the years and this includes increasing the amount of women playing games. While some sources may be misleading on the exact figures, it is fair to say that women comprise a very large proportion of the industry’s consumers. But while the numbers may be true many male gamers find themselves wondering where the women are hiding. Despite the presence of females in gaming today there are often instances of them being hassled during online matchups and this is a problem if we hope to include them permanently. With these things happening at the rate they do it would be understandable if women did not like gaming. Luckily this is not true but they are typically not gamers in the sense that we would like them to be. They are the casual gamers. The word “casual” is taken almost as a slur these days but it should not be. It should be viewed as a starting point.
In my eyes it seems like the vast majority of women are stuck in a sort of gamer’s purgatory where the cycle of casual gaming never ends and it pains me as I would like to see more of them join the guys. Although I am an avid gamer, I also have a girlfriend and one must understand priorities in life. Her gaming experience amounts to tower defense games. Giving priority to a console would be madness but I thought it would be beneficial to get her involved and avoid any chance of being seen as ignoring her. This exercise made me realize how painful it must be to create a tutorial for a game. Eventually I decided to let her figure it out by herself, a tactic utilized in Brutal Legend which does not have a real tutorial and because of this has been met with some criticism. The problem is that male gamers often do not have the patience to teach females about their hobby so few women become interested. All too often we throw them into something like Gears of War and expect that by telling them the button scheme that they will more or less be able to at least not die constantly. Being that we have failed to attract the females this job then falls to the developers. This is why the casual game has attracted so many females.
The act of watching others playing is pointless as it only emboldens the feeling that gaming is a boys club activity. Many of us have been to a small house party playing Madden where one of your friends has brought their girlfriend who says that she prefers to watch rather than play. During the next six hours she is undoubtedly planning on how to avoid this sort of meeting in the future. This is where casual games come in as this first taste over a period of months or years could encourage them to undertake something a little more hardcore. Simply throwing them in to fend for themselves, as in Madden, will more than likely impede efforts to get them interested. This generation’s women are much more skilled and aware of gaming culture than the previous generation and the slow process of converting them to hardcore games will continue to be arduous but worth it in the end. The Nintendo DS and simple PC games have properly introduced millions of new customers that will grow up with video games in their lives and learn to enjoy them just as the boys did as opposed to the NES/SNES and Genesis which did little to attract and develop female gamers as having a little bit of pink in the box art is not nearly enough.
Part of what developers must do to attract more females is to introduce some new themes to our games. We are over saturated with titles geared specifically at one sex or the other and this is not useful for long term growth. Adding the option to create a female character in a game does not make up for a lack of topics appealing to women. Back to my girlfriend, I met her while traveling in Sweden and she found out that I like to play games but when she asked to borrow one she was less than encouraged when she found out that many of them involved some sort of shooting in one form or another. Her distaste for war games is one that I believe resonates with a large portion of the female audience for whatever reason and it is a problem when I try to find a game to play together. The problem is that so many of the recent titles are related to war, science fiction, or sports in some way. This is not to say that she could not enjoy these elements but they should not be the focal point of the experience. Similar could be said for character archetypes as most women cannot identify with many of modern gaming’s most popular characters such as Nico Bellic and Marcus Fenix. The problem with these characters is that they only satisfy the male power fantasy and most women are not interested in this. Perhaps the worst example of the male power fantasy is the game Custer’s Revenge for the Atari 2600 which features the rape of a Native American woman. This title did little but inflame interest groups and cause people to view gaming less seriously. Further, womanizing has had a rich history in our games and this can turn off women when they see their own being used in a variety of ways to either sell a product or to cheaply move the story forward. Characters with little substance but ample curves are not the way to attract the female audience in the future and some developers know this as characters like Alyx Vance from Half Life 2 are becoming more common.
Finally, it must be fashionable for women to be gamers. Gaming has been a common hobby of males for decades now and is widely accepted as normal among them. Many women on the other hand who did not grow up playing look at our passion as a diversion at best and a nerd’s haven at worst. For the most part we have conducted ourselves well but there are a few who have hurt the image quite a bit. For female players who grew up with a brother or two gaming is accepted but when placed in a social situation the female player risks being labeled as peculiar. As a result there are many female closet gamers and few female writers and developers. The double standard is there and it is unfortunate. As with everything there are always exceptions such as the girl who enters tournaments, dominates matches, and has collectible figurines of her favorite characters but these women are very difficult to find. Luckily, mistakes from the past are being corrected with the immense popularity of handheld and PC casual gaming. We must make sure not to rush these players, continue catering to the casual market, and not to put down their interests merely because they are casual. So do girls like gaming? Yes, but not every one of them wants to be a hardcore gamer and that does not make them any less of a gamer. There is one certainty though, that casual games will encourage more and more women to venture out and try something new in the near future.
Tell us some stories about playing with girls (no you pervs not like that), gaming related of course. No registration required to comment.
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My wife and I kept our early relationship going strong playing Animal Crossing DS over Wi-Fi while I was stationed many states away (NAVY) and after getting married and now living together, enjoy late night brain teasers with Prof. Layton and the ever competitive Mario Party/Kart. She’ll even request a game of Boom Blox once in a Wii. While I’d love a little 360 CO-OP I’ll take what I can get and feel very lucky to have married a gamer chick!
buy your girlfriend PEGGLE and we will love you
Good article. Thank God my girl gets easily hooked on games. She’s played through Fallout 3 (loved it), Gears 2 (loved it), Far Cry (loved it), Bioshock (loved it), Modern Warfare (loved it). I feel lucky.
Girls should be in the kitchen making me some sammiches!
Girls should be with big boobs and booty playing in beds only
Shocking though the thought may be some girls are ‘hardcore’ gamers and love it as much as the average guy HC gamer. I own all consoles and love playing all genres. To suggest girl gamers are just casual gamers is a bit silly, but I appreciate you at least didn’t take the all too easy sexist route.. oh wait.. nice image for your “article”….
i have the (almost) perfect wife.
loves cooking (cooks recipes from around the world), loves games (finished Uncharted 2 in 16 hours).
now if only i can get her to like cleaning as much as other things…
nas
This completely oversimplifies things… It’s true that women like to games, but there are more strategies at hand as to why women like puzzle games, for instance, social games, or adventure games over combat games. There are many groups of female gamers and a lot of progress is being made with bringing them up to speed in traditional games. But the truth is, many women just find the goal of them unsatisfactory. Women are often driven by more productive pursuits. If you look at things like social software you’ll find the majority of early adopters to be women — do you consider this a game? Why not? True, there more women play “casual games” and if you look at this market in total, it equals a far larger number than the “hard core” games industry. I think you need to do a little more research on the nature and depth of this issue, some of these comments only scratch the surface.
http://www.uggboots-space.com
My girlfriend plays Left 4 Dead, Fable 2, and Guild Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, Guitar Hero, Rockband… oh hell, she’ll give any game a try at least once. The only thing she wanted for Christmas last year was an XBox 360 (Elite) and a year of XBox Live.
It really does make the relationship easier when we can share a hobby.
i’m a girl and i grew up with sisters, but my childhood could be defined by NES and Sega. my gamer boyfriend has got me hooked on many a games, most recently WoW and TF2… but I must say, I’m not a fan of scary games, they really make me nervous…. so most first person shooters don’t cut it for me, much to my boyfriend’s dismay.
You wanna know where most video gaming women are? Hidden behind an ambiguous name with their mic turned off. The reality is an obvious female tag, or voice, brings a lot of unwanted attention. Like the comments here already show, some guys respond with indifference but unfortunately the most vocal with lame jokes/comments and it gets old fast. While some girls like the unfiltered male attention, women I know, myself included, find it tiresome.
Women who enjoy the more “hardcore” games (Halo/Gears/HL/etc..) aren’t playing to hear some idiot with a hard-on ask for pics of her tits, they just wanna play the f’ing game.
You’re probably already playing with a decent percentage of women, they just fly under the radar. If you want female gamers to be more obvious/vocal you just need less asshat players… sooo pretty much it’s impossible.
well…I started out with a long post about how sexist men really get me mad….but…I’ll save it for another time and just post my all time favorite video…
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1917993
world of warcraft was my favorite while i was in college, now i addicted in the online game from China named Jade Dynasty ,you will find amazing graphic and music in the game.
I think the issue here is that games are developed for the cognitive ways a male mind is, thus the stimuli in a game has little impact to a male, itd be the same if a female tried to teach most men about flowers the male mind would find itself wandering through clouds counting sheep instead…
The other medium is that when females try to couple with males in games a majority of the indecent males do not know how to interreact with females.
The other side is that the content is against most females too as it has been developed more towards males, generically speaking towards the indecent type of males.
It is pertinant I think, to realise that females can and do join in games but only when the environment is healthy and the learning curve is suitable.
I personally have a pretty awesome success story involving a female gamer friend of mine. Luckily for me, she did grow up playing some games, she grew up playing Mario and Zelda, but not much else. I got her to try Gears of War 2 actually, and after being patient and teaching her the ropes, she became a very competent and useful partner on Horde mode. I was quite surprised, even to the point that she would randomly call me and want to play. Often after a long/bad day at school, life, etc.
No girlfriend + computer geek = ME = Loser. But I have video games = WIN!
My girlfriend is hooked on L4d which is awesome, but the major deterrent to getting her to play other games that I enjoy is the competitive nature of them. She feels embarrassed playing poorly against other people, and so refuses to play online. It’s made me realize how much I take online interaction for granted in gaming these days (most modern games aren’t nearly as fun without it). It’s because of her that I started firing up all the old consoles I loved (in particular my snes) and playing old games again.
My gf never played a console game before. It surprised me when one night she was on her laptop and I was playing Guitar Hero to kill some time and she tried it and loved it (although she can only manage Easy level). I’m wondering how do I get her to like some of the other games I have (Gears/CoD/etc). I did grow up with a sis who DID LIKE to watch me play games all day. She watched me play GTAIV from day till night for a whole week and was sad when it ended lol
No offense what kind of crappy article is this??? Of course girl game as well, it isn’t as if they are an alien race from a different plant God dammit! My GF games like its her religion, my other Female friends game when they find the game interesting.
Whats the next one gonna be.. Do dogs like to game… Its a rhetorical question, it obviously depends on the freaking person my father doesnt game but my mother does. See my point.
таковой пост и распечатать не жалко, редко такое найдешь в инете, спасибо!
Looking back now, I can remember my sister and I playing lots of Mario Bros 3 ( 1st world over and over) and DK country (mine kart level was her fav). The last titles I saw her playing were Riven (Myst) and Riiiidge Racer lol. I guess it’s fair to say that healthy competition and cognitive thinking skills promote females picking up that controller/mouse.
My wife absolute loathes serious gaming. Much to my dismay, as I on the other hand can get lost in very long-winded games like MGS and Final Fantasy!
She does enjoy puzzles and simpler games, like the ones I have on my iPhone. The sad thing is, even if she starts liking a game, she gets bored of the repetition that all games inheritly contain.
…if only they made Dance Dance Revolution, with dance mats for the PS3 though, it could work out…
Well, I know many girl gamers. Many of which love playing the same games I enjoy. Games like Halo, COD4, SSBM and SSBB, and many more games that I never thought they would get into. I also never thought that I would be the one being called a casual gamer, but these girls have placed more than enough hours of game play to say it.
The only funny thing is that these girls seem more competitive than even my hardcore gaming friends.
This article is why girls avoid playing video games. We don’t need gaming to be “fashionable” and I certainly don’t need a man to show me how to play. I will learn on my own, thank you very much. We don’t need games that teach us how to cook or raise babies (nintendo, I’m talking to you). What we need is for men to get over it. If guys didn’t act like morons every time they bumped into a girl who plays video games, girls wouldn’t avoid it the way they do.
I recently started dating a girl that wasn’t much of a gamer. Now, she’s almost hardcore. She loves fast action adventure games like Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, etc. But, I’ve got her playing one of my favorites and she’s played 40 hours in a couple weeks. That’d be Final Fantasy X. I know, I know. Old school right? Well, she’s on the last boss and is asking me about FF X-2 and FF12 already! Not to mention, she loves watching me play what I like as well. Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend are next on our “play together” list. If I could ever put down Demon’s Souls.
Oddly enough, I think one of the things about my girl that made me fall in love with her was an in depth conversation about Halo. Of course she prefers the pretty games like Little Big Planet and Braid, but she never hesitates to grab the controller when we’ve got a shooting tournament going on. I’m a lucky guy.
Perhaps if the gaming industry produced a worthwhile RPG every once in a while, more women would play. I know that’s what hooked me. Finding an RPG title that’s actually worth playing (hint: more cutscenes than gameplay does not a fun game make!) is a tireless search for me. That being said, when playing online many women do tend to minimalize the chances they’ll be recognized by using a male avatar or handle just to avoid undue attention. I’m not special because I’m a gamer chick; I’m special because I’m tanking for your party. Now heal me.
Also, many of my female friends don’t understand the allure of gaming, and as women, IMHO, tend to be pretty social creatures, the social stigma of “geek” doesn’t go over so well in all circles and means I spend more time with the guys, to the point of DMing or Storyteling for our PnP games on Sundays. So, guys: ovaries are for reproduction and have no bearing on my PvP skills. Girls: Yes, your hair looks nice; now excuse me, I need to frag someone.
I grew up playing Bomberman, Super Mario and Pac Man. I enjoyed all sorts of flash games and fighting games in high school, mostly played in arcades (secretly sometimes), and I tend to get a bit o.c. on my scores. I played The Sims games to death. When I met my boyfriend in college, I began playing all sorts of video games, especially m.m.o.s with him. It was so fun to go around m.m.o.g. worlds with him; usually he handles melee fighting and I am a magic user. The two of us can level up and cover ground much faster together.
I think the problem with how most people think is that they single out women as a particular group of gamers, when in fact, gamers already belong to a particular subculture / a group. There are other people who do not like gaming (freaks! =P). There are also some men who do not like gaming. Its just the way that some men are. If a woman does not like to play video games, maybe its because she just doesn’t like to… not because she’s a woman, but because its the just the way that she is.
I dont know any that do. I wish I did!
RT
http://www.anonymous.ua.tc
This article is horrible and patronizing.
“The problem is that male gamers often do not have the patience to teach females about their hobby so few women become interested.”
What is this sentence supposed to mean.
“The Nintendo DS and simple PC games have properly introduced millions of new customers that will grow up with video games in their lives and learn to enjoy them just as the boys did as opposed to the NES/SNES and Genesis which did little to attract and develop female gamers as having a little bit of pink in the box art is not nearly enough.”
like a rare species of hummingbird, the girl gamer requires an intricate design of symbols on the video game box in order to attract her to it.
“Similar could be said for character archetypes as most women cannot identify with many of modern gaming’s most popular characters such as Nico Bellic and Marcus Fenix.”
Women: unable to comprehend basic human experience, such as that of a man. Nico Bellic’s experience is no a gendered experience, it is an immigrant experience. There is no reason a woman wouldn’t understand that. The point about lack of women/ lack of non-sexualized women in video games is a problem but stating that women can’t relate to a character simply because it’s a male is ridiculous… But it strengthens the author’s argument. Tomb Raider’s probably the only game he’s had to play as a woman in.
This article is poorly written and just has an awkward and imbalanced perspective of women and gamers as a whole. It would make far more sense to look at those who play games around them – perhaps when you die in smash bros, you don’t WANT to be told by your fellow player that he “raped” you. Perhaps it doesn’t seem all that fun anymore when the guys are playing NHL ($current year) and they’re calling each other women whenever they lose.
Games are fine; gamer culture is full of creepy misogynists.
NOT TO MENTION the photo used for the article. You think that’s going to attract girl gamers? That’s a ridiculous photo for this article, and completely defeats the purpose of what you’re saying. It’s actions like that that make female gamers feel that they’d rather just avoid male gamer culture altogether.
You know, it’d be a whole lot easier to take this article seriously when it talks about double standards for men and women if their headline picture wasn’t A GODDAMN HALF-EXPOSED WOMAN’S ASS WITH A CONTROLLER. F**king hypocrites.
I’ve been dating a girl for the last year who’s an absolute gamer freak. She loves Mario Kart and Need for Speed. She’s not so into Halo and GoW, but she doesn’t mind picking up the sticks and laying down some death online. And she seems to have a blast stalking sh*t to gamer guys on my profile regularly, and has no problem shrugging off comments about seeing her naked or being a woman. I have other female friends, as well, who can hand me my own a** at Counter Strike.
Like many people posting have said so far, most girls just want to play the game and get over it. Many, many women I know play WoW and can hit up some battlegrounds and own just as hard as anyone else. I’ve never once heard a complaint about sexism or objectifying women as sex objects in games from a single one of them, either. Most of the women who play video games are well aware of the fact that violent and otherwise brutal games often contain sexual and questionable content, and pass it over so they can get back to shooting the jetpack aliens hiding out behind the strip club.
tl;dr. I’m a woman gamer and I believe that, yes, women like video games. But do black people like James Blunt? That’s the important question.
Us hardcore female gamers are more competative because we know how to alot of guys getting beaten by a girl at a video game is like a knife in the ego, specially when it involves shooting
I am a girl gamer and I enjoy playing halo 3, CoD4, Gears of War, and other games. They guys on all of them get mad when us girls beat them and they say some nasty comments. Also when they realize that you are a girl playing the game they harass you and won’t stop. Some guys on these games are cool and you end up playing with them again. My experience as a girl gamer on xbox live has been good for the most part, but sometimes you get those jerks who harass you and tell you to send them a pic and your number.
I have grown up with video games. There wasn’t a time in my life I didn’t have access to at least one console. Many of my friends play, maybe not to the extent I do, and as such, we would have gaming nights. In our small town there isn’t alot to do so other would show up to this social gathering not realizing game night meant “Halo” night. Yup, one big, sweaty lan party. One girl who would show up now and again claimed to be “awesome at Halo”. After few matches we all realized that she was little more than cannon fodder. Over 10 matches she score 8 kills. God bless her for trying. Really, I think she gave it her best, didn’t take it seriously and had fun.
I’ve been with my gf for 3 years. She used to play games like Parappa the Rapper and pac-man world. Now she love Peggle and Rock Band. Hardcore games are just beyond her unfortunately. Why you ask??
1) Dual joysticks. Admit it. When we all picked up a dual analog ps2 controller we didn’t exactly start sniping noobs. It takes time and practice…..especially for someone who wasn’t exactly great at games in the first place.
1A) So many buttons. There are 11 buttons on a 360 controller and sometimes (depending on the game and situation)2 or 3 functions for a button. Game are WAY more advanced than the ps1 days now.
2) Violence. Alot of violence.
3) The other day I was enganged in a firefight in Uncharted 2. As she watched she uttered “wow….this game seems hard”. I was playing on normal. She was right its not exactly a walk in the park and I’ve been playing games for 20 years.
4) coordination. conditioning. an overall sense of what you are supposed to do in a game even if you’ve never played it before. This comes from years of gaming an observing the rules of different game worlds.
5) The willingness to devote many hours of your free time to a fictional world where this is little to no actual payoff other than the sense of accomplishment.
6) We all have to find a middle ground. Not too hard for her but still fun for me. I suggest co-op games from the 8 and 16 bit era. We played and beat Streets of Rage 2 on normal and she loved it.
I really hope this article is right. I’d love it if women played more games that I do…..but I can’t see my gf playing halo anytime soon…..and I love her for that.
Yes we do!
Having a vagina does not render me unable to figure out game mechanics, I can look at the screen, mash a few buttons and take it from there. So rest reassured, I never bothered a male to explain me his hobby!
With that said, I don’t relish in the “attention” you get for having the aforementioned vagina, my gamer tag and picture sport your random guy stuff and my mic is conveniently broken or lost unless I’m playing with real life friends.
Why? Well, because the slightest hint at being a female brings either instant underestimation or sexual harassment most of the times. And heavens forbid, should you display a higher frag count at the end of the match, you are also prone to provoking several guys to question their virility. But if you are one of the “guys” you get a “you pwn dude”. Funny how that works, uh?
So yeah… we are out there, some of us just don’t care for the antics associated with announcing our gender
shit yeah we do.
@JohnRawr: No offense man, but FFX is not “old school”. I play games, I’m a girl. I’ve played them almost as long as I can remember. Admittedly, the oldest FF game I’ve played is FFIV, but FFX is definitely not old school. Glad that your girl is playing, but 40 hours really isn’t all that much.
I think I logged 180+ hours on FFX before my memory card decided to die. Not to mention all of my data from Soul Caliber 2 and many other games. I think I might have cried at little and I was about 15 at that point. Other games I was playing at the time and still play include Diablo II, was hooked on WoW for about 4 years (it’s pretty gay now)CS and other games for certain consoles: Ps1, Ps2, Ps3, DS, Wii. I’ve played through Halo and various other first person shooters. I think a part of why girls don’t necessarily get into “hard-core” gaming is the fact that it does take up a lot of time, which as you get older you most definitely have less of. Although I played all those games when I was younger, I mostly stick to my DS now days because I just don’t have the time to be addicted to another game. Another factor is online play. In WoW I always HATED letting anyone know I was a girl, because although some girls get the reaction “oh you’re a girl, let me give you free stuff” most girls don’t. Most girls get the “you’re a girl, you must automatically suck at this game. Let me yell at you for it.” So, even though on any one of my three 80’s I was the top healer in my guild, I still caught a lot of crap for being a girl. Girls can definitely be “HC” gamers, although I never saw myself as HC. But you better believe I will be again when Diablo 3 comes out! :p
Reference to antiquated Custer’s Revenge fail. Very few people were playing video games in the days of Atari 2600 compared to the present. Most people would never have even heard of this game if not for the internet constantly reminding them.
After finding out that the person who did the godly Super Metroid 100% speed run was a female, I have never once thought that they are less hardcore than guys. That said, it may be difficult to spot them in a crowd since most are much less … geeky, on the exterior.
Thats racist!
Try not referring to adults as “girls” for starters. Then stop talking about a woman’s need for so
ething to be fashionable. Women will game if it is interesting. I play gears of war 2 with my fiancé, and GTA4, prince of Persia, etc etc on my own. Problem is that so many guys I know don’t want to play with me because they make assumptions based on my gender.
Wow…just…wow. I am reading this article and the comments and it’s like…wait for I say this comparison I’ll preface it with the fact that I’m an extremist, but..reading this was like..if I could travel back in time to watch the beginning of the civil rights movement or even the reading of the Willie Lynch letters (google it). The last post here that says stop referring to adults as girls is right (on the flip side some of us women like being referred to as girl by our men, it makes us feel young and pretty, but I digress) The ideas you have here and the responses are the primary reasons why you CAN’T find female gamers. Your thinking is just..backward. Here is a newsflash for you..some women just DON’T LIKE GAMES. I know..shocking isn’t it? Just as you would not be caught dead at a fashion show, even if your girl begged you to go, you’re not into it. So might your women not be interested in your hobby.
Quit dubbing women as casual gamers and two, just hardcore is not defined by what you play, it’s your LOVE for what you play. I’m rather tired of that too. A lot of you think you’re hardcore because you play COD or Halo. No you love your GENRE of gaming you can say you’re a hard core COD or HALO gamer but stop generalizing it by saying it’s hardcore because it’s a shooter. Further more there are millions of us women gamers around. Just because you don’t know where to look doesn’t mean we don’t exist. And if you want a girlfriend/wife that games, either find her one she likes, accept that she doesn’t like them and get over it, OR find a woman who games. It’s not that hard and live in gaming wedded bliss, but PLEASE do stop writing articles like this that just serves to perpetuate the sterotypes that plague us femme gamers. We’re just plain tired of it..care to take to the console and hash this out? I know 5k FEMALE gamers that would gladly take you on..in your “hardcore” game and turn around and kick your ass at Bejeweled as well. Come into the future people.
- A VERY Irritated Gameinatrix
My husband and I are hardcore gamers. I work at GameStop, and our dating consisted of avid gaming on our PS3. Now that we’re married I don’t have to get upset that he plays games so much, because he’s got to beat me to the system in the first place if he wants to play so badly.
Gaming doesn’t need to be fashionable for me to enjoy it. Give me a good story line, great game play, and a popular online shooter ANY day than anything. I don’t need a pretty Aly&AJ guitar to appreciate RockBand or GuitarHero, and I definitely don’t need to be thought of as someone who takes gaming lightly.
Name any game, and I’ve more than likely have played it. I think the gaming industry needs to realize that there are more avid female gamers than not.
I’ll always be a hardcore gamer, and I hope my husband will be the same!
Now, onto Demon’s Souls I go and some MAG later.
My fav games? Call of Duty, 4, 5 and hopefully soon 6. I loved Gears of War 1 & 2. Loved all the Halos. Love the Rainbow Six series. I love playing online (Nazi Zombies in COD5?!?!).
We’re not hiding under a rock, and if you give me an RPG I’d probably ask if you thought I was 10. (I’m 26 btw)
The thing is… I avoid talking to anybody online. Why? Because 95% of people there either revert back to being 13 year old homophobic douchebags or are just douchebags.
I don’t mind hearing swearing, and most people there don’t care. Its the attitude people have when they play. I am not interested in the pissing match that usually goes on there.
Simply put: grow up, and we’ll start speaking up.
As a woman, one of my very favorite things to do was to play Halo Live. I used to be pretty good so when I would win I would switch my mic on and reveal my gender. The reactions were worth all the practice I had logged in. I also grew up with NES, Super NES, Sega, etc. I still play the old games but I have moved onto games like Warcraft. I still keep to my roots though. I got the triforce tattooed on my ankle in honor of my favorite game.
I can personally say that I find this articles rather humorous. I can see your point on most of it, but I agree with many of the comments that you won’t find the girls playing games because most of them don’t want to be found. Nothing is worse than when I am sitting on Left 4 Dead and only say “hunter on me” and suddenly the whole conversation changes to the fact that there is a girl on the mic. I would rather die than go on Vent while playing WoW or Aion for these exact reasons. The conversation usually consists of borderline sexual harassment comments or assumptions that I am not going to be a competent player. It gets old, and just easier to hide. I am sure many girls would agree that we are there to play games, just like the rest of you boys, we don’t need ridiculous attention on us when we are trying to have fun like the rest of you. We are all over, you just don’t know it!
There are many MANY girl gamers out there but there are also many more girls out there that do not. Sadly, you have a higher chance of not really meeting one and I feel horrible that you are probably yelled at all the time for the amount of time that you spend playing games, but a guy that is an avid football fan gets nagged by their wife that does not like sports. You find this with any hobby. it is just a sad part of being in a relationship/married, haha.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I would consider myself something of a “moderate” gamer, (if there is such a term.) I adore gaming, but I’m just not that into the FPS or sports genres. I could spend all day rep grinding and and instance-running on World of Warcraft, but I wouldn’t play Madden on pain of death. I think female players often crave puzzles and storylines in their games, and we can be very critical of those in which character development and plot seem to be lacking. (At least, from our point of view.) I know for me, personally, art direction is another major contributing factor when it comes to whether or not I like a game. We’re a fickle bunch, and it’s going to take developers awhile to feel out what works with us and what doesn’t. In the meantime, the most important factor in getting a girl into gaming is having friends or a significant other who can be a mentor. Guys–if you’re trying to get your girl into your hobby, just remember that for someone who has never really played before, engaging in video games for the first time is kind of like trying to wade through Dostoevsky with the reading skills of a kindergartener. Have PATIENCe and keep it FUN!
A good start to not isolating women would be to not start your article with a picture of female ass hanging out of a mini-skirt. That sort of sums up the whole attitude of the industry — “We want more women to play but we don’t want to give up games about ultra-masculine space marines with sultry double-D female sidekicks/villainesses/damsels in distress.” Maybe the two desires aren’t compatible.
Lets see, I’m a girl and I game, I’m 18 years old so my gaming history doesn’t go back many years. First console was the NES, which was more the family console which, I shared and gamed on with 3 of my 5 SISTERS. I have not one brother, not many close male cousins and my dad does not game. Yet I game day in day out to the core. I probably got extremely serious with the PS1 as it was the first I owned that was MINE. Since I’ve gone through every Nintendo handheld, the PS2 and now the PSP, PS3 and the XBOX 360. As with much things in my life, I’ve taught myself everything I know about games. I play games from Uncharted, Gears, Halo, Killzone, LBP, inFamous, GTA, Crackdown, Mario, Saints Row, A whole bunch of sports games, and the list goes on and on. I’ve brought 5 games in this month alone and it’s not even finished yet. When I’m not at college or elsewhere, I can gaurentee you’d find me online on one, if not both of my consoles. I plain and simply love to game.
My point is that there is such thing as a hardcore gamer within a female. One of the posts above spoke of how the real ones have a name you wouldnt suspect to be a female, and rarely have their mics on. This is me. I’ve always been against the whole ‘Miss’ ‘Ms’ and ‘Lady’ names, but in the same breath, I don’t see why we should hide almost in fear due to some males being unable to control their feelings. Some of you need to get over it and also need to get an understanding that we are not your console eye-candy. Voice chats and video chats are NOT our only purposes!
All of these women commenting here about how offended they are by this article are missing the point. Obviously there are “hardcore” female gamers. That wasn’t really the question. You cannot deny there is a huge rift between male and female gamers though, both in number and in gameplay. Some of these quotes (especially the one about being told the button config and expected to just know how to play from there) really resonated with me. I have played with my brother and my boyfriend, and while my boyfriend is much more patient with me, my brother gets upset when I can’t immediately run around and shoot things five minutes after being handed a controller.
I think the issue stems from the fact that if you took a male who had never played games in his life, he would be in the same situation as the hypothetic females in this article. The difference is that in real life, males are more likely to end up playing video games as children, thus growing up inundated with how to play games and the typical set up of a game.
And lastly, please don’t overlook the fact that our brain chemistries are different. Any woman who ignores this fact is in extreme denial. Not that women are only attracted to pink games about cooking and puppies (that’s just as lame as saying men only want to kill things and hate puzzle solving), but our brains do function in different ways. Things as simple as the way we approach problem solving. When games are made specifically for the male brain (and usually by the male brain), it is an entirely different experience for a female to jump into the game and figure out the dynamic. Like I said before, if you’ve played for years, you have this figured out by now. But for someone who has never played, this can be really intimidating and demoralizing. Especially if you are playing with your guy friends, who (presumedly) have been playing for decades. When you are the only one in a group who can’t get platforming down (my biggest issue), it tends to make you feel stupid, rather than “well, they have had a lot more practice than I have, so I just need to keep trying”.
so women, stop complaining about the sexism in this article. It was talking about a specific situation of women attempting to play games with the men in their lives. I seriously doubt the author believes that no women anyone in the world play video games on a “hardcore” level.
Real Girl gamers play COD 4.