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'.

Comments

women... cat fight?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Two things:

[Pantero Blanco]

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.

Re:Two things:

[slughead]

Some females play video games. We've gotten that for YEARS; it's about as revolutionary at this point as minorities going to college.

I find the Fragdolls website sort of amusing. It seems to do nothing but promote a few girls who play video games.. What else do they do?.. well they're semi-attractive 20-somethings, of course.. just look at their profiles, it's an amature modeling site.

That's unlike any clan I've ever been in. Most of the people in clan [DXM] were so overweight I doubt they could even stand upright for a whole photoshoot..

Their site is paid for by ubisoft, and I wouldn't be surprised if they make a bit on the side so they can devote more time to gaming and attracting males to specific areas such as x-box live games.

And what kind of "serious gamer" puts x-box as their mainstay? Last time I checked, half the genres out there are nearly unplayable without a mouse.

I'd imagine this type of thing would deter more women to play games than anything else.

I could be wrong though, I know when my girlfriend played Battlefield 2 she was all about flirting with the other team to get them to type more than play. We'd win nearly every round.

Re:Two things:

[Saige]

Yes, the Frag Dolls were put together by UbiSoft, and the company does pay them to travel to various gaming-related conventions and shows. They do make media appearances and the like. And yes, they were at least partially picked for their attractiveness - though that was secondary to making sure they were all serious and GOOD gamers.

One of the Frag Dolls is also one of the co-founders of my clan, the PMS Clan, and a few more of them are members. They're not pretty faces that can barely play, they're all dead serious gamers that are quite skilled, and they're very much into promoting gaming as acceptable for girls.

WAS held in February

[kuwan]

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!?

Re:WAS held in February

[NewWorldDan]

Chill dude, you weren't going to meet them anyway.

Under-represented!

[ossington]

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.

Re:Under-represented!

[Hannah E. Davis]

I'm with you on that one... to some extent.

Let's just say that I was up until 6am on both Friday and Saturday nights last week because I finally got Black & White 2 to work on my computer. That game is just amazing -- probably one of the best I've ever played.

I like other genres too, though. I've wasted long hours on adventure games (King's Quest, Space Quest, etc.), virtual pet games (Petz, Creatures), and various multiplayer RPGs (MUDs in the past, WoW these days). I enjoy Civilization too, and I used to play Prince of Persia, Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, and Castle Wolfenstein when I was little.

I'm not sure if there's any one big secret behind female gamers. Just as there is no one genre that all men want, there isn't any one thing that every woman will like/want/buy. I mean, we're half the freakin' population -- why do people expect us to somehow NOT be as divided in our likes and dislikes as our male counterparts?

Seriously, just make good games in a variety of different genres and girls will play them.... and at least then you won't lose your entire male audience (along with a lot of girls as well) by dumbing everything down and coating it with pink.

Re:"...treat women as a mysterious nut to crack."

[AKAImBatman]

Expecting them to be able to write a realistic female character doesn't make sense.

I'm thinking that getting Game Developers to write a realistic male would be nigh-impossible. Games tend to be a form of escapist fantasy that are intended to put you in situations you want to be in rather than situation you already are in.

Thus the male heros in games tend to be totally ripped, unnaturally smart, or outrageously funny. Now if you extend this to the female characters, what do you think happens?

Perhaps the only thing worse than the overendowed girls with useless body armor is the "tough girl" image. Thank goodness that the Samantha Carter character in StarGate moved away from the "I can pull 6Gs and win any hand-to-hand knife fight" character into a more realistic person. The show was much more interesting for it.

Now if only they hadn't had her get into a romantic relationship with every new regular on the show...

A hint to some women.

[SmallFurryCreature]

Why do game makers put stuff in that appeals to some guys that offends some women? Because that is their market stupid.

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.

Re:"...treat women as a mysterious nut to crack."

[sarabiz]

Yeah, but women just complain about it, instead of trying to get into the games industry.

Interesting. So all women who wish games were less male orientated not only must be programmers, but enjoy the fun and exciting life of a game programmer- low pay, long hours, and a crappy high stress environment.

Luckily, there ARE more female friendly games out there: Kings Quest, Monkey Island, The Longest Journey...basically any game from the Adventure genre. Unfortunely, very few of these games are made anymore. I blame Roberta Williams, and her God-Awful KQ8- Mask of Eternity.

Opinions of men...

[7Prime]

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.