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Female Gamers Duke It Out
It's March, and that means that Women's History Month has rolled around again. The latest event put on by 'Women in Games International' was held in February; Both Wired and Gamasutra have rundowns on the event. Wired's coverage highlights the two camps of female gamers, the 'Frag Dolls' and the 'Casual Gamers' that populated the event. Gamasutra's piece discusses the exploration of women in all gamer roles. That, indeed, was the focus of the event: Women as players, designers, and gamers. From that article: "Margaret Wallace (Skunk Studios), also on the panel, railed against the industry for disenfranchising women. 'There's a push against women gamers from within the game industry,' she said. Games have been made 'with puke-humor' thought to be edgy, she said, wondering why developers don't see the direct correlation between the 'sophomoric' humor put into the games and women not liking them. 'They treat women as a mysterious nut to crack.' Wallace's advice: 'Make a game mechanic accessible.'" GameSetWatch also a blog post linking to some advice for female FPS players, especially 'aggressive young girls'.
ob Seinfeld:
Elaine: Ok, why? Why do guys do this? What is so appealing to men about a cat fight?
Kramer: Yeye cat fight!
Jerry: Because men think if women are grabbing and clawing at each other there's a chance they might somehow kiss.
Of course! Game developers (and most of the /. crowd) can't figure out women. Expecting them to be able to write a realistic female character doesn't make sense. It's like expecting to see a conservative realistically portrayed on TV or in the movies.
1. Some females play video games. We've gotten that for YEARS; it's about as revolutionary at this point as minorities going to college.
2. Disliking "sophmoric humor" in games isn't a "female" thing. It's an "I'm-not-twelve" thing.
Held in February!!! Why wasn't it news before it happened? How are we going to meet any girl gamers now?
You trot them out once a year from the depths unknown and then tell us about it after it happened!?
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
majority of males playing FPS's and video games in general so majority of games marketed towards men.
Girl fight! Yeah!!
make sure the dupe at least has pics of these women. even if they are as fat as irc chicks
I gotta write the standard, "women's history month essay". I rather write about them, than trot out the same ole Rosa Park essay,
Sure, everybody talks about the women who like Tetris-style games (my own mother is one of them), and the "tomboys" who like blood and violence are a big deal, but what about the third camp? The big secret behind women: we like to play God. Give me SecondLife or The Sims or Black and White any day of the week. I think it's a control thing.
KEEP BREAKING MY HEART WHY DON'T YOU!!! *shawshank pose*
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
Anda's Game (have to either subscribe or go through an ad to see it) is a cute story about gaming from a girl's perspective. Fiction, but maybe not so much as it seems. It seems like the sort of thing that might help some guys relate a little bit better.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
I always found women in EQ to be more into the roleplaying aspect of the game. They were kinder and used the language associated with EQ and certinaly NOT d00dspeak...
The also brought more hugs and kisses to the game.. No duh..
How about we link to the ARTICLE http://ninthwavedesigns.typepad.com/guilded_lilies /2006/03/annie_get_your_.html rather than linking to someone's lameass blog that REFERENCES the link to the article?
Editors should catch this crap.
-Styopa
DOA Beachball or whatever it is called is aimed at the guys. There are 3 billion of them and while not all guys like DOA beachball even if a mere 10 percent likes the idea that is still a shitload of games.
To these women who wonder why some games are not aimed at them I ask them this. Why were there no carchases in Titanic? No sword fights, no half naked ninja killers asian teenage girls? We guys NEED THAT. The crappy soppy romance crap without any of the hardhitting political criteque that was in the original offends US!
There a guy games and their are girls games and their are gender neutral games. Just as for every other piece of entertainment. Soppy mindless romance drivel movies for the girls, crappy senseless violence for the boys. Or not.
Why do all games have to appeal to all people? Frankly the women becrying the guy games seem to want to turn all men into women. Not going to happen ladies. Especially not since those same women will be raising the next generations of crotch scratchers.
Don't blame game designed for guys that they don't appeal to girls unless your 100% sure games designed for girls appeal to guys.
I hate to see a game that appeals to everyone. Disney tries that. Ewh.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And tight asses? gimme gimme gimme some!
I agree completely. We have a summary zonk may(or may not have written), and then we have to read a freakin blogger's view of the article. Oh, and somewhere buried in there is the original editorial. Yay for meta-crap!
If blogs are going to be the unnecessary middleman of typewritten content(like intrusive ads), then let's just forget about logs.
But I never had really any faith in Zonk's story reporting.
Rather than the alien, Nazi, enemy-du-jour, for a Player-Character of whatever gender (Heinlein counted six), start with the standard "my little sister was ..." by one, or more, of the following: "body tax" collector at workplace, sexually aggressive cop, serial rapist, politician, street gang, sex slave trader, snuff film producer. You can even go international.
Picture your character with the unions, cops, Feds, and gangs all trying to kill heesh (as you complete each mission, you get a new permanent enemy). After all, real life provides more varied and more truly dangerous situations than the game writers can imagine.
I'm a girl/grrl/woman, whatever, who loves to play games.
:p
I remember when the Atari came out and just salivating over it. I knew my large and barely middle class family could never afford it so I befriended a girl in my neighborhood I didn't really like who had Atari just so I could play it.
Pathetic? Totally, but it means I'm a gamer at heart and gamers like good games. Period.
My first and foremost love is and always will be Tetris, I used to go to great, silly, lengths to make sure I had the Tetris highscore at the local arcade. I remember being ridiculously ecstatic when the gameboy came out. I saved for it and bought one with a tetris card so it would be at my beck and call.
Currently, I'm mainly playing DOA 4 and my favorite character is Kasumi, one of the female characters with ridiculously large breasts. Of course, since I happen to have ridiculously large breasts, it just makes me relate to the game more and feel apart of the action.
Seriously though, so what? Figuring out all of the combo and special moves is fun, especially when it means pounding my boyfriend's DOA character into the pavement. We had a great time unlocking all of the extra characters and no, neither one of us is at cut or thin or whatever as any of the DOA characters. I enjoy it because it's a really well-crafted and entertaining game.
And I like all things Kung Fu.
- tokengamergrrl
Because I, uh, find it hard to believe that they, um, play video games. Thanks.
Hey, I'm a GUY and I don't like seeing women objectified in video games. Not just because of how I think it might effect our culture, but because it really feels like a threat to my intelligence, and it reenforces male stereotypes just as much as it does female stereotypes. Game companies putting in big-titted, thongly dressed women over and over again just says to me, "we think that men only ever think about is sex, and from a purely physical standpoint." You see this stereotype reenforced everywhere in our culture, but this is usually completely exadurated. Sure, it makes sense to cast characters that are reasonably attractive, especially if we are supposed to connect and empathize with them, being "easy to look at" is a positive feature. But making them completely abnormally sexual, either in appearence or in personality, just destroys all empathetic connection with that character. If I wanted to just look at sexual women all the time, I'd probably just hang out at METArt all the time or subscribe to Penthouse.
Strangely enough, in narrative games, such as RPGs or adventure games, I think that there is a lot more diversity in female characterization than male charactization. For the guys, 95% of characters either fall into: "tough talking hero", "silent, hard-boiled badass", "innocent young boy", "wise, though cool, old geezer", and "silent seifer protagonist". For the women, you have you're typical "starry-eyed romantic lead", "boobulicious, overbearing young woman", and the "annoying, but cute little girl". Yet, I would only say that about 50%-60% of female characters in games fit into those distinct catagories, and even the ones that do tend to have much richer personalities than the guys.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Erm. She did?
Martouf and the Ancient guy whose name I can't remember. That's about it, really, aside from her undying love for Jack O'Neill. Oh, and there was Pete, who was BARELY recurring. So really, four-ish characters in 9 years... not terribly strange or excessive.
+++ATH0
Women gamers are on the rise the recent study on women gamers in England placed them at about 44% of the entire gaming community how is this 'ignored by the game industry for so long'
'People are assuming that games have to be mindless in order for women to play them' - Since when??? the top game for equal play by the sexes is the Sims. Thats pretty much common knowledge in the industry how would that translate to the industry thinking women need a brainless game and at what point did they think this only applies to games made for women. Last I checked most games dont exactly have the complexity of well thought out book or film.
'with puke-humor' 'sophomoric' - Oh yeah because men love puke and sophomoric humour I mean thats a real seller for every man I know... Games that rely on these things are typically bad games not bad games for women. Just bad games.
'Wallace's advice: Make a game mechanic accessible.' - Genius. Why didnt the industry think of that before. If games didnt make the game mechanics accessible theyd be... bad games. Not bad games for women. Just bad games.
'co-op' - Another brilliant suggestion add co-op modes in games. That will sell them to women... and men, because if games have co-op modes thats a good feature. Not good for women. Just a good feature for everyone.
'I would argue that World of Warcraft actually did design the game with women in mind,' - Really? Do go on.
'crafter roles and supporting roles' - So they believe warcraft was made with women in mind because there are supporting roles such as healers etc. The same roles that are in dozens of games from your FPS's to your RPG's and have been for years now. Yeah clearly Blizzard were making a conscious effort to make it accesible to women and not just utilising a tried and tested mechanic that once again both sexes approve of.
The article has someone claiming They treat women as a mysterious nut to crack. then listing a number of points and holding an entire event based around women as if they are a mysterious nut to crack.
Just about every single point in the whole article on how to make better games applies to everyone not women, not men. Everyone. Which is exactly the point a lot of people and myself have been making for years now. If you make good and varied games women will play them. Its as simple as that.
The second article pretty much backs that view up. Women like FPS, women like puzzles, some like violence, some hate it. Almost as if women have diverse tastes in games just like men. (Although the infighting reminds me of a point Janet Street Porter made about women being the major factor in holding women back.)
Maybe this is a flame, maybe im just a jaded male gamer, but when I look at the other industries they just dont seem to have this problem. Sure you get chick flicks and macho movies in the movie industry but they're just labels and regardless of what genre a film is a good film is a good film. You dont have groups and thousands of people within that industry trying to push all the films in to catering for both sexes absolutely equally. (Nor would I ever want that to happen.)
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.