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Wanted: Female Game Testers
BaronVonDuvet writes "The BBC is covering
this story
regarding the lack of female testers for the new Tomb Raider game. Given that there are a number of female gamers (admittedly far fewer than male gamers) why are they having so many problems finding women? Is this a sign that the female gaming market has never really taken off? Is the way men and women approach a game really that different? Are they really interested in finding women testers or is the whole thing a publicity stunt? If you're an interested woman maybe you should get in touch."
There's no game I can think of which has achieved so much notoriety solely for its blatant sexism as Tomb Raider and its sequels. And now they act baffled that the ladies don't want to help make another one?
My deviantArt site
If you think I'm flaming, just read one of the hundreds of Venus&Mars books on the shelves nowadays.
-----
For great justice!
- Most (if not all) video games have violence, and some do have "explicit" scenes! (Hmm...) Probably, women dont like to play such games. Probably. - Many video games give a "princess" as the final prize. First, start giving a "prince" as a prize, and see the effect. - Lastly, all video games are developed by males with men in mind. Let a female develop a game.
Have they tried advertising? If so, that's probably the problem: the people who are interested in the low-brow games they produce these days are illiterate.
None of the games they are producing these days are targetted at the market "people who can read".
You want to sell a game to my mother? She plays "Zelda" on her Nintendo; she also played "Pogo Joe", and "Space Invaders".
You want to sell a game to one of my three sisters? Try "Zork", or any of the other text adventure games. Or try "Breakout" or "Arachnoid" or "Ms. Pacman" or an older pinball game. Or, if you want to sell a PC game, try "Sim City" or "Lemmings".
I know that doesn't sound like most of the games they sell these days I guess that's why they don't sell them to women.
-- Terry
If female testers are so damn hard to find, seems like they should get More pay. Or am I smoking crack?
I am a bisexual female gamer, and I don't know about other women but the reason I don't play Tomb Raider is because it totaly sucks. I usualy like large breasted game women (I LOVE the Dead or Alive girls, and can't wait for DoA Xtreme Beach Volleyball), but Lara Croft isn't even that hot. Why play Tomb Raider when there's better-looking chicks in less-crappy games? And btw the idea lately that games need to be made more female friendly p!$$es me off... if I wanted to do girly things, I'd go bake and put on make up or some such crap. Dosen't anyone ever think maybe girls play games because they LIKE the male-orientedness??
most guys would not jump at the chance to beta test a video game in which the main character was an incredibly ripped half-naked man with thong underwear and an incredibly unrealistic buldge in his crotch clearly outlining every detail of his oversized genitals
I think they could strike some kind of product endorsement deal with Showtime's Queer as Folk. Sure, there's a shortage of geek women, but there's an even bigger shortage of homosexual geeks.
If female game testers come up with completely different changes to the game, they won't appeal to the male population, which makes up the vast majority. What would be the point?
More likely, female testers won't offer any different criteria than males, since the aspects of the video game (3D shoot em up, or RTS, whatever the case may be) have an across-the-board appeal regardless of gender. If this is true then what is the point?
I don't have any problem with female game testers, I'm just having trouble finding out why it should be a big deal.
Do you remember Purple Moon? They thought much the way you do. "Oooh, girls like talking, so we'll make games about how difficult it is to get through school! They'll gossip about the other girls, and they'll try to be popular."
Purple Moon didn't survive. They were eventually bought by Mattel, mostly (as I recall), as a method of acquiring inexpensive office equipment.
As someone who's made successful games for girls, I can say that girls do like to solve puzzles.
It's true that they're not as into score as much as males are; they tend to prefer goals. And they don't project themselves into the character as much as men do, they usually prefer to play alongside the onscreen persona.
Granted, my games are for a slightly younger set, but the lessons translate well into later life.
Also, think The Sims. Very high female user base. Not really much "conversation", per se, but lots of goals.
That being said, I know several girls who game many types of games, both inside the game industry and out. I believe that most of the female aversion to gaming had to do with the way it was introduced in the 80's, rather than a genetic predisposition. But I tend to favor nurture over nature.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
Because Lara has big tits? So what? Duke Nukem has huge muscles. Is it the clothes? Should Lara wear an evening dress, then? And doesn't Duke walk around with a bare chest for most of the time? So what? Does anyone really buy the games to look at Lara's tits or Duke's biceps?
If anything, Tomb Raider managed to make some male gamers play a female character for the first time in their lives. I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing, now that I think about it.
Anyway, back to the subject: why is it so hard to find women to play Tomb Raider games?
Simple: women and men think in different ways (okay, it hasn't been cientifically proven that women think at all, but let's admit they do).
When women play the game, they're playing a game. When men play the game, they're in the game.
This became clear to me one day when I was playing Tomb Raider and my mother walked by. I showed her a few of Lara's moves and I said "see, I can also jump backwards like this". And she said "you? it's not you, it's her, on the screen". I've seen other women react the same way to similar games. Men never have a problem placing themselves in the game, even if the character is a woman, or a robot, or a mutant slug.
Women find it much harder to picture themselves inside the game world, as opposed to sitting on a chair, playing the game. That's why women prefer games like Solitaire and SimCity and The Sims and other games where the player is clearly "on the outside". Games where they move the pieces but are not one of the pieces.
This has been shown again and again by psychological studies, and is also the reason why most men drive more naturally (ie, without having to concentrate on what they're doing) than most women; men become the car while women try to control the car.
Of course, some women can drive instinctively, and some women play Tomb Raider and Counter-Strike and hate solitaire. But I can't say I've ever met one personally, and I do go out sometimes.
RMN
~~~
That's an interesting and accurate point, but it's missing the main idea. While both female and male video game characters differ drastically in appearance from the average real person, the direction in which they differ from the norm is different. Male characters tend to be more gruff and muscular, implying physical capability, intimidation, and power. Female characters, on the other hand, have ridiculous proportions, including huge breasts, tiny waists, and slender arms and legs. These visual attributes only serve to objectify female characters (like Lara Croft), because they emphasize sexual attractiveness and nothing else.
Of course, I am only talking about the visual differences--one could argue that Lara is an empowering character due to her unrealistic acrobatic and athletic abilities in the game. However, that would be ignoring the egregious differences in her appearance, which, I might add, would probably preclude ANY acrobatic activity in a real person. Like walking upright.
Funny. Barbie is a disproportionate doll. If she were a "real" woman, she would be something on the order of 42-DD (I can't remember the exact proportions). And yet, most parents have no trouble buying these blatantly sexist dolls for their little girls.
Now, this begs the question: Which object does more harm to women? The game that is played by teenaged boys looking to see a girl in daisy dukes bounce her well rendered boobies up and down while holding firearms, or the toy that teaches impressionably young girls that, when they grow up, they should be thin, blonde, and busty or else they're not worth a shit.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
IMHO I think the reason females don't seem to be as involved in games is because the games are nothing like what they're looking for. In Tomb Raider for example, Lara has to shoot everyone by herself, with not much in the way of storyline. I think games with more interaction (Especially Multiplayer Co Operative games) would be better for women. Also a good storyline is helpful. My sister loves playing Final Fantasy X, which is a great game once you get started. It has a deep storyline, males and females are fairly equal in fighting abilities, and it's not completely mindless.
I personally think games that aren't just look, shoot, shoot again, die, would be more popular among female gamers.
These visual attributes only serve to objectify female characters (like Lara Croft), because they emphasize sexual attractiveness and nothing else.
So being sexually attractive makes you an object:
bullcrap. Your making a delibrate category error,
between object as in subject/object or goal/object
as in object of desire, and object as in unthinking item, in other languages you wouldn't
be able to get away we such an obvios error. Men should not have to be ashamed of having a sex drive.
Tomb Raider is one of the games women actually *like* to play!
... and it makes for the player to see those cool Animations of Lara Croft which make up allmost half of the game. The riddles built in are also the more challenging sort of game women like - unlike the reflexive, no-brainer 'aim-twitching' you have to practice for hours on end before you can last longer than 30 seconds in an online game of UT2003 CTF and finally can start careing about getting the flag and sorts.
While most of the 'girls' shun FPS like UT2003 as to fast, violent and competetive, it's Lara Croft - once they discovered how fun it actually is to play the game, that makes them agree to invest on an 'also-gaming-computer'.
Tomb Raider is actually a visually diverse game with good animation and a third person perspective that is not just as emerging as an FPS
The problem with getting female testers is that you really have to take them and put them in front of the box until they say: "Ok, it actually isn't that much of a waste of time as I thought."
But having them go out and say: "Hey, I dig sitting in front of a dead, rather uncommunicative box striking my lone wolf ego - I have some time to spare for gametesting."? No way.
Are you really suprised that PC-game testing usually isn't a womens pasttime???
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Computer games appeal to some people. Some of these people are women and some are men. Why there are more men who like playing computer games than women is extremly complicated issue that spands to culture, expectations for different genders and far beyond. Here's a woman who likes computer games and has always liked them. Not only Tetris or Sims or other "female" games, but Doom, Quake and many other first person shooter games. I've spent hours and hours playing Starcraft, Warcraft, Max Payne and State of Emergency with my boyfriend and other male friends. How many of you who are saying stupid things like "women are different species" or "they don't have instict for violence" have actually showed a computer game to a woman? Well, I have. Many of my female friends, who are not into computers, have been horrified in the beginning (like any healthy person not being exposed to ultra violence before), but after a while have really got into it. It's all between your ears, in your attitude. There was one time working in otherwise all-male environment. Guys were having game nights, playing networking games, never inviting me, although they were asking most of the other ones to join. I was very good terms with them so that wasn't the case. I put up that for a while, until seemingly offended asked that why am I not ever invited, and the response was something along lines "but you are a girl and girls can't be interested in computer games". I bet there are plenty of women like me, who do find computer games interesting, but can't express their interest because then they wouldn't be "real women". Sorry for the long rant. Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.
First, I'm not condemning Tomb Raider. Game makers have no obligation to cater to women, who in any event will not buy many games.
Having said that, there are fairly clear reasons why many women would not enjoy Tomb Raider, and I think the inability to grasp these reasons reflects badly on the maturity, sensitivity and empathy of some of the posters here.
First, game characters have personas which players are invited to identify with or work alongside. This is true although the player controls the character's actions. For example, Pacman is an opportunistic, greedy, but essentially nonviolent character. He is not paranoid or vengeful, but believes that "turnabout is fair play". Since he's constantly in motion, we can't tell if he's utterly relaxed or utterly frantic. When Pacman eats a ghost the result is a non-lethal stay in the "penalty box". Likewise, when Pacman is "tagged" by a ghost only one of three pacmans is consumed, like a pinball falling off the board. These softened deaths imply that the interaction between Pacman and his pursuers is merely a game, not a life and death struggle. Pacman is one of the few games that appealed to females.
The typical first person shooter projects a somewhat different character. Although he rarely appears on screen, his persona is clear. A ruthless killer hunted by ruthless adversaries, he is skilled in handling a variety of firearms. His body is a killing machine, not a sex object. He is not on display.
Consider Lara Croft in light of the above. She has the persona, in a way, of a young man - aggressive, exploratory, self-contained. But she has the body of an attractive young woman, complete with a tiny waist and large breasts. And that is also part of her persona - the panting after exertion that emphasizes her breasts. Lara is an attractive woman who is inherently amenable to a masculine style of thinking and action. To understand why this could irritate some women, consider her opposite number: the male hero of romance novels or of soap operas. If you're a man, don't you feel a kind of gut hatred for the blow-dried, earnest, wide-eyed soap character who makes heartfelt speeches about his feelings?
I think the reason is that he's a gender traitor, a man with the soul of a woman. Superficially masculine, he is overly melodramatic and concerned with relationships. Most of all, he hits the spot for millions of women who would like the men in their lives to be like that - handsome, well groomed, full of deep emotional conflicts that he's happy to air.
Lara, of course, is a male fantasy. She has, from our viewpoint, all the desirable characteristics of a woman with none of the unpleasant baggage. It's hard to imagine her asking if you think she's fat. In fact, it's hard to imagine her caring about your opinion at all.
Others in this thread have wondered how there can be any objection to Lara's breasts when male action heroes sport gigantic muscles which could also be considered sexy.
First of all, Lara is eroticized, placed on display for the player's enjoyment, in a way I haven't seen any male game character presented. Admittedly, I haven't played many games recently. I do agree with the feminists, however, that our cultural presentation of females as erotic objects is so ingrained that it's hard to notice. Can you imagine our musclebound action hero filmed from the side, panting in that delightful way Lara has? We simply don't detail, illuminate and present male bodies as we do female bodies.
Second, the muscles of a male hero are assets in his adventures. If combatting a city full of evil aliens, I'd like someone built like Duke Nukem to help. But if I had to pick a woman to help me raid a dangerous tomb, I'd rather have one of those granite-faced female Sherrif's deputies you see in L.A. than a slender, busty model. Lara isn't really built to fight - she's built to titillate.
Lastly, it's interesting to note that Lara, like many heroines designed to appeal to men, is quite a loner. She doesn't seem to have parents or siblings or a boyfriend or husband - any of the emotional connections that would be interesting to women, but a turnoff to men.
Well said!!
You fellas need to get over sniggering at the artwork/cheesy marketing and actually try playing tomb raider, it's quite good you know!
Far more sexist than the game is the commonly voiced generalisation that women will automatically dislike games with breasts/nasty big guns/etc. Give the fairer sex credit for being able to assess games on the basis of playability rather than recoiling in horror when the first pixel of virtual breast appears on the screen. Male-oriented marketing or not, Tomb raider's got to be more fun than Super Girlie Barbie Virtua Date Party. (ok, i made it up, but you know the kind of dismal token female-oriented games i mean)
I think you make an good argument, but I have a couple of responses.
/. did about gender? It shows a 5% female readership of slashdot. I realize that's not necessarily related to gamers, but still, if _the_ geek hangout on the web is 5% female, you have to see that it's probably hard to find girl gamers.
You state "Take it from someone who has studied a good deal of evolutionary psych; there is not a whole lot of evidence that there are personality differences between men and women which cannot be accounted for by environment."
Whether or not this is the case, it does nothing to invalidate "women don't think like us[...]" You effectively agree with this statement when you blame environment rather than biology. Also, I have some interest in psych and one of my roommates is huge on it. If you could describe or reference any of those studies, I'd be very interested in reading them and showing my roommate.
If you don't believe me, say to yourself, "Women don't like video games because they have vaginas" and realize how ridiculous that sounds.
How about, "women don't like video games because they have different ratios of hormones which affect their temperments and development than guys do?"
I don't know where you're looking if you can't find female gamers.
Did you see the poll recently that
many women gamers have distinguishing taste in games
So we've gone from "Please think before you make generalizations about what women like and don't like" to assuming that all women have good taste in games and "don't tend to play many FPSes"?
games that have been well-crafted (hence the Morrowind obsession) to suck you into the experience (so much for the "theory" posited above that women don't like to enter into the world of the game).
I'm not sure if this refutes the theory. It could be interpreted as supporting that theory - many people have argued that women enjoy watching the story, I've seen several comments from women who "can't wait to get to the next little bit of plot information or character interaction" [see here]. Is this a case of being _in_ the game, or watching the story unfold?
She's still pretty young but my daughter loves to play Q3A with me and my son. She basically likes to play anything we want to play. She gets very picky about the models used and wants one that is a "pretty girl" like her. At some point in her life I'm sure she'll have a boyfriend who she regularly beats in whatever FPS is around at the time.
The funny thing is that she will also play on the barbie website for hours. My son won't go near it.
So maybe someone should try and figure out why boys don't want to play barbie.
You have it right. I like turn-based strategy games. All I can find are "build me" games. I don't care as much for the real-time ganmes because I like to sit and THINK about what I'm doing quite often. I also don't have the reflexes of a 14-18 year old boy.
Please, please, someone make me a new kind of game!
My boyfriend pointed me to this site; I've been gaming for several years now. I notice lots of people mention that women may not want to play a female char that's exaggerated in proportions.
Personally, appearances never bothered me. Heck, I like to feel 'sexy' as my character. In fact, I would even wager that women gear towards playing more attractive avatars. How many RL women play trolls in EQ? Looking at http://nickyee.com/eqt/metachar.html, 0.0% do; same with ogres. Women choose Elves, Humans. My sister is an EQ'er and she in fact chose a male avatar because she 'didn't like the way the females looked'. My race choices are based on the same thing...I just don't like the way some look. I play Dark Age of Camelot and refuse to be Saracen...the women just don't appeal to me. Sexier races draw me in.
As for Lara Croft, I'm just not into FPS. I prefer a little more strategy and interaction in my games...time to think, rather than just shoot stuff up.
I'm an incredibly huge fan of the Tombraider games, and I'm a woman. I'm also NOT lesbian, before you use that as an excuse. I'm not a big gamer - so far there are only a few games I like: Neverwinter Nights, Tony Hawks Skateboarding, Tetris style games, and the Tombraider games. What's more.. I LOVE Lara. I have posters of her on my walls, I had her calendar, her mousemat, and I totally adored the film. Given the chance, I'd playtest the games in an instance - but guaranteed I wouldn't have the qualifications, and I'm also incredibly bad at the games, so I wouldn't be able to help much.
;) It's true there are much less female gameplayers (although I know a lot, most of whom like Tombraider), and out of those that do play, I'd imagine very few read whatever magazines advertise for testers, I certainly don't. And yes, female players are more likely to enjoy games such as The Sims and Everquest and NWN, because they are more strategy based - they make you think more - and women don't tend to like games that you just play without much thought. That said, I know lots of women who are exceptions to this rule. I was playing "Halo" with a female friend just the other night.. she absolutely loved the game (I found it mindless, boring and really hard to play). Another friend is more interested in Spyro and Diablo.
So why do I like the games? Well, firstly I'm a big Indiana Jones fan so I love the "plots" of the games. I find the puzzles interesting, if incredibly hard. Despite the relatively poor graphics (compared to NWN at least) I love the how the game looks, some of the levels are fantastically interesting (if a little square). I find the games incredibly playable, and can lose myself quite easily in them - except when I'm dying because I'm so bad at them.
People say the games are sexist. Maybe they are, but I don't care because I'm not a feminist, and I'm sexist about men all the time
So yes, a lot of the reasons stated in other comments for women not playing Tombraider are definitely true. But I think it being sexist is only a reason for those incredibly extreme feminists (who should, quite frankly, be shot). But there are also a helluva lot of women out there who love Lara (they also tend to be programming geeks and roleplayers - but lets not stereotype here).
And if someone wants me to playtest the first level of the new Tombraider game (unless you can wait a few thousand years for me to finish it) then contact me!!
She played Tomb Raider a little, but found it too scary (she was less than 10 when she first tried). She plays Tomb Raider today, but not on the computer, but as a pretend-fantasy game with the house and her friends (I had to make her a paper gun, and many objects become "artifacts" that need to be collected, sofa cushions and the space under the table become caves). Very cute...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I guess one place to start would be to figure out what type of computer games women do play. My wife, who is also a quite capable UNIX admin who still enjoys a game of spider , tetris and a few other old-school favorites. I've got a little girl who is bored with flight simulators and such, and prefers puzzle like games where she finds things or builds things.
In other words, from a programmer's perspective perhaps the problem is that games for girls just aren't as sexy or as wham-bam to write as games for guys? Perhaps it isn't as profitable to engage in writing these programs because its hard to dress them up and make them fly?
I mean my wife and I joke about this all the time. Here I want to conquer the world, and there she wants to make it more livable.
--- have you healed your church website?
Most of the posts here are simply a male's opinion about what females like or dislike. No matter how much males believe "women like games like Tetris", it does not get any more truthful.
I like playing almost all genres of games: sports, RPG, strategy, action/adventure, 1st person shooters, etc. I am not turned away from or find it sexist that female game characters have large breasts. A lot of my favorite characters fall into this category (like Lulu from FFX). Is that to say that ALL anime is sexist? IMHO, no; it is simply the drawing style/appeal.You will find that a lot of females loved the Tomb Raider movie as well.
What draws me away from Tomb Raider is its lack of depth for the type of game it is. I feel "dumbed down" when playing it, which has nothing to do with the drawing of the game character. There are a variety of other similar games that offer me a better plot and design layout while giving that "fun" or "achieving" feeling during gameplay.
schlach quoted (from Gamespot):
;)
> There are no women gamers, and anyone who tells
> you otherwise is a liar. They don't exist. In the
> '80s there was one, but she died.
Sorry, but I'm still alive. I started on an old pre-Atari console in the 1970's. I've since played games on the following mainframes, consoles, micro and personal computers:
Honeywell mainframe (StarTrek, with printer terminals)
IBM 370 mainframe (StarTrek, with new fangled CRT terminals)
Timex Sinclair 1000 doorstop
Commodore 64
PC from XT to Pentiums
Genesis (& CD & 3DX)
GameGear
Nintendo 64
Dreamcast
Playstation
Palm III
Handspring Visor Platinum
Macintosh (OS 9 and OS X)
Playstation 2
Sharp Zaurus SL-5500
Game Boy Advance
GameCube
I own or owned all the machines above except the two mainframes; those were at college.
My current favorites are Twisted Metal Black (PS 2), Tony Hawk 3 (PS 2), Sonic 2 Adventures Battle (GC), and Star Fox (GC). I am (extremely) eagerly awaiting the arrival of "Godzilla Destroy All Monsters Melee" for the GameCube, and "Godzilla Domination" for the GameBoy Advance.
Most of you guys don't have a clue about what you are talking about. But you don't let that stop you from eagerly pontificating about what we girls (or my case, women) like or don't like in games.
Hint: women have different interests, in games as in other things. Personally, I love the 3D games with worlds to explore and stuff to do. I also like to fight and smash stuff.
And no, I'm not going to go for a Tomb Raider testing job, because the job is in the UK, and I am in the US. Besides, they would have to do a lot of work to upgrade the graphics to modern levels. Star Fox has fur, even in game play. Fur is one of the hardest things to do in 3D. Before I played the game for the first time I would have said it was impossible for them to do fur on a console. Obviously, I was wrong. But, hey, I am impressed.
"His power is unequalled.
His battles are legendary.
His return is near..."
"Godzilla 2000" trailer.
G Countdown: 18 days (www.godzillaoncube.com)
In particular, I was thinking of an interesting piece of ethology that I read about in a course textbook I had last year, Evolving Brains. It cites some research in simians where the amount of caretaking a father simian does (this depends on the kind of monkey) has a strong affect on the amount of estrogen produced (and as a result, length of lifespan, since estrogen is apparently a useful adaptation to make certain that caretakers live long enough to take care of their children). While we often assume that the connection is the other way around--having hormones makes you want to take care of children--in fact this study suggests that's it the other way around: caretaking leads to having estrogen.
"How about, 'women don't like video games because they have different ratios of hormones which affect their temperments and development than guys do?' "
See above. Estrogen production is an ongoing process, not something determined at birth, as well, and I think various life events can affect that.
"So we've gone from 'Please think before you make generalizations about what women like and don't like' to assuming that all women have good taste in games and 'don't tend to play many FPSes'?"
I said I didn't play FPSes, and stated why, as an illustration. I doubt that applies to all women; it's just why I'm not a fan of such games. I admit, when talking about sex and gender, it is hard to avoid making generalizations; it's hard to make even a positive point about sex or gender without making them, and I know I make them, especially when posting at 4 AM ^_^. That's why I have more patience for this issue than I usually do.I'm not saying differences aren't there; my difference is that I don't attribute them to biology.
More importanly, what I'm saying is that it's dehumanizing to turn individual women into tokens of a type "woman" without regard to their individual interests. (Funny, how so called feminists do this so readily. And they wonder why so many women find them unsympathetic. Internalized oppression, my ass).
Being a liberated, educated woman I guess I do have some insight to share on this. For me its an escape, as I'm sure it is for men gamers as well. Being liberated and educated all the time gets tired and boring. Sometimes I just want to go into that part of my head where that dumb blond chick sits waiting.
As far as the other side of the coin. I know some liberated, educated women who aren't into computers and the like and they don't game (I guess it depends on the type of education and it doesn't hurt to hang around gamer guys. Gaming takes up most of their free time so if you like him you learn to share his hobbies). As for the unliberated, uneducated women the same goes for them too. Those who aren't into computers et al don't game.
Kate
No, this girl was smart and decided to buy the game... not to kick everyone's ass, but because she liked playing it.
I used to even play the street fighter and mortal combat games.
I'd like to mention that I can kick many a guy's ass, not because I have spent many hours playing, but because I learned how to do particular button combos to get the moves I wanted. This supports the girls enjoy puzzles theory. The reason I kick boys' butts is that I know the moves, I know how long it takes to execute, I BLOCK (you would be amazed to find out how many guys don't), and I figure out what my opponent's weakness is and use what I know to play it to my advantage.
Oh, I played starcraft on battlenet, in the late night computer rooms, in groups of friends (where I happened to be one of two girls and both of us were duking it out at the end), and on my own.
And my latest game I have to beat (since I beat myst exile and black & white) is Pools of Radiance which someone gave me as a b-day gift.
As a closing statement, I'd like to mention that my sister played all the warcraft games and it was because my brother *wasn't* playing starcraft when it came out that I decided to play.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"