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How Women Became Gamers Through D&D
An anonymous reader writes: To add some historical context to the currently controversy surrounding attitudes toward women in gaming, Jon Peterson provides an in-depth historical look at the unsurprisingly male origins of the "gamer" identity. It also examines how Dungeons & Dragons helped to open the door for women in gaming — overturning a sixty-year-old dogma that was born when Wells's Little Wars first assumed the "disdain" of women for gaming.
The idea that misogyny is some how rampant and women like Sarkeesian are specifically targeted because there women is in itself sexist. Never mind that people disagree with Sarkeesian scamming that kick starter harder than the girl scouts selling me cookies or Gaben stealing my wallet every quarter. The bigger issue here is that none of these women can take criticism or have someone disagree with them at all without screaming misogyny. What can be more accepting and gender nuetral than judging you by the content of your character and your work and products? You don't get to demand to be treated equally then scream that your a special snowflake when that doesn't work out in your favor.
Hell, even the trolls don't care there women. There looking for public targets that get riled up at the push of a button. Find a male dev that cries on television when he gets made fun of and they will tear him a new one too. This is for every single public figure ever.
several marriages have emerged from my gaming group, Lots of dating, I've been running games since I was 13, I'm 49 now. In college, I was running groups that were always co-ed. after college, once I was married, I was running games with a mix of married and unmarried couples. Nowadays I pick my gamers based on whether their kids get along with my kids.
Retirement is going to rock, a bunch of old fogies, rollin' for initiative.
you don't know what you are talking about. You must be young. Back in the early days of D&D (and I'm talking nearly 40 years ago - so if you relate to that, you are in your 40s, 50s. or 60s), we had plenty of women in our groups (my best friend's mom was even a passionate player) - and it wasn't odd, or revolutionary, or reactionary, it was just normal, that wasn't even a consideration then, and it remained so all the way up to the 90s (and the same was true for comic books, science fiction or fantasy novels, anything currently commonly associated with being a 'geek'), coincidentally when the world wide web became mainstream. The considerations seemed to begin appearing when 'nerd' became a fad, became a source of bizarre credibility of some sort, became codified, became Internet and social media currency. Back then, people pretty much just loved what they loved and participated in what they wanted to participate in, the rest just didn't matter. Wendy Pini was a woman, Madelaine L'Engle was a woman, Margaret Weis was a woman, ad infinitum and nauseum, and at the time, nobody thought twice about it. Millennials - a term I don't particularly care for, but it simplifies things in this case - seem to have both revised history (as children often do, until they know better, because their own experience of the world is inherently limited by comparison) and manufactured conflicts where before there really were none. Pretty f***ing silly. I feel for this generation that was robbed of experience and a history of their own because of the way they were raised and the vicarious, networked world they grew up in, never having the opprtunity to experience anything directly. I have never seen a generation so thoroughly obsessed with their own version of 'boys vs. girls' while simultaneously claiming to decry such notions. That is truly a pity. The rest of us will continue to enjoy what we enjoy and get on with our day, and not feel the need to justify or apologize for any of it. Like what you like and do that thing. It's that simple.
This really, really is the answer. The only way some people learn good behavior is by learning there are consequences for bad behavior.
By the industry forcing all these games to be on company-owned servers, they have inadvertently created this situation. When I first started playing multiplayer games, like Starcraft or Counter-Strike, you didn't run into this kind of nonsense. If you cheated or were a horse's ass to other players, you found yourself bounced in a big hurry. I don't expect or want game companies to have to police the behavior of gamers, but if they're going to insist on total control of the game servers, then they have that responsibility.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Let's be honest there was also a ton of anti-gaming marketing targeted at women by existing female targeted products. The whole scam being, don't spend you money on games that are meant only for teenage pimpled nerds instead buy makeup, but clothing, buy shoes, buy buy buy more shoes. This is real competition for the consumer dollar or credit line as per the current reality and a huge amount of counter marketing going on, to deny competition.
The computer game does in reality block a lot of other sales opportunities, not just because of the money it consumes but also because of the consumer time it consumes and how cost effective a recreation it is for the consumer ie dollars spent for recreation gained. Something that made it a pretty solid target for peer pressure marketing for decades and this marketing is clearly failing as more females get directly exposed to gaming and benefit by the low cost recreation (money saved from not be spent on other forms of recreation and you don't need to fancy dress to play an online game with others).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
My lady friend is 51 and has been playing an MMO called "internet bridge" for well over a decade, there are some serious players, competitions offer good prize money, a high ranking player can actually make a decent living teaching others how to play well. She also enjoys "world of tanks" (no blood and guts), 20K+ battles under her belt. She's not upset because I won't play bridge, I'm not upset because she won't play StarCraft.
My lady friend also happens to have a PhD in marketing, the whole "controversy" is simply a marketing exercise so that people like my lady friend can identify with the label "gamer". However the way they have gone about trying to broaden the definition of "gamer" by associating it with adolescent "greifers" and throwing it overboard has blown up in their faces since the demographic you point to overwhelmingly interprets the whole thing as political correctness gone mad. Rather than broaden their audience they have divided it into two camps; people who play games, and people who claim the ability to read their minds....for a price.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
My brother worked construction with a guy who used pink tools because pink tools won't walk off with the other guys on the crew. Other than that, what difference does handle color make?