I’m a woman and a gamer, and I’ve been both for as long as I can remember. Once introduced to EverQuest as a means to communicate with my ex-boyfriend long distance when I went to college; I’ve now been hooked for life on the idea of massively multiplayer online worlds. I play no less than two games at any given time, generally bouncing back and forth to keep things fresh and new. I am a subscriber to several print gaming and computing magazines. I view an RSS feed of over 200 different websites daily; staying on top of news in the gaming industry, and I comment on a gaming blog. In addition, I am a regular reader and poster at over ten different forums and I do my best to attend as many game development conferences as I can.
Aside from the first two sentences of the previous paragraph, that will sound like any typical male gamer – which is exactly how I’d prefer it. Lately there has been such a huge push towards recognizing female gamers and their differences and similarities between them and the male population. I have seen websites go as far as to dissect the biology of the female body and determine what makes a female want to play video games rather than go shopping. I could not care less what the population of female gamers is; I do not care to read article upon article about how women are not treated the same in games. If you are going to prance around advertising that you are a woman, you are drawing negative attention to yourself.
There are websites dedicated to highlighting girl guilds and events, and there are girl gamer forums where you can talk to people who ‘understand’ the way you feel because you share the same chromosomes. You will never catch someone like me on those forums. I do not view myself as a girl gamer, I consider myself the same as everyone else who plays video games. I have my real life hobbies and my in-game hobbies. I prefer to do my discussion on websites that do not coddle me or baby me because I am a female. I like to be called out on the things I say, asked to provide proof. I like to be corrected when I am wrong, and flamed when I say something unintelligent. Yeah, I like to go shopping and I like horses and things that are pink and I like putting on makeup and dressing up to go out with friends. I just do not feel the need to flaunt around that I am female so I can try to draw attention to myself.
Bottom line girls – get off your high horse. We do not care if you are male or female or whether you are wearing panties while you are out questing. You are not oppressed or treated poorly because you are a female. Quit talking in that phony fake high pitched voice on Ventrilo. Learn how to play the game like the boys and you will be treated like the boys. In case you want to be segregated and given all sorts of special treatment and attention – keep making self centered websites about your gender and how unfair you think everything is. I am sick of reading your feminist crap when I am trying to read the gaming news.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s like the pendulum effect.
Starts off way on one side, and then activism starts pulling it to something more balanced, but more and more people jump on the bandwagon, giving it an excessive momentum, so that, instead of resting somewhere comfortably in the middle, it keeps swinging toward the other side. It’s excess, regardless.
I like your take on it. I’ve had a number of female gaming friends, and it’s nice when they respect themselves, play like the boys, and everyone entirely forgets about gender, and just plays.
What I hate is when everything is going fine, and a female player who was doing just fine suddenly gets the urge to throw the gender card, and asks for (more often demands) special treatment in certain situations, making everyone uncomfortable.
I can see how that would play nicely into a deep RPG game, if that’s how the character is (it’s very effective), but it shouldn’t be used as a player to player manipulation device.
I don’t hide the fact that I am a woman in game. I see no reason to, but I do hate the women on ventrillo that constantly flirt with every male voice and act so sickenly sweet that it makes one want to throw up! I also hate how every man in the game caters to it as well, but that is just a part of the world. It won’t change.
LOL… you sound like you must have got something in your newsfeed that really pissed you off! Want to go paint our nails, eat ice cream, and talk about it? We can bash all the boys and call them moronic jerks too! Jking:P
*chuckles*
I think, that a lot of women actually feel the way you do, in regards to your post. There’s no reason to go around flaunting the fact that you are female or are male or whatever in a video game. I think every female (and probably every male who plays a female character) out there gets the question at least once a day “R U female IRL!?!?!” as though that should make some huge difference.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. At least, it shouldn’t. I realize that people probably DO get treated differently based on their sex, but I’ve actually seen more WOMEN expect to get treated differently then men treating them differently. I hate the giggly-oh-pay-attention-to-me-I-have-boobs attitude that I see far too frequently. I’m in game to kick ass, to play my class to the best of my ability, and I do a damn fine job of it. The breasts don’t have anything to do with it.
You’re wrong Cuppy…bewbs have everything to do with why women play games. Can’t you see that?
Seriously, I love having women in my group because they bring a sorely missing aspect to the gaming experience. Most of the women I’ve gamed with have been the funniest people I’ve known and some of the more knowledgeable.
Women are also natural community builders and I have no idea why men aren’t outnumbers in MMOs due to that very fact.
What if you have both naughty man and woman bits? Hmmm.
I think all this attention to female gaming is a crock of shit, and has been annoying me ever since the media donned the frag dolls as some sort of sex symbol marketed to the prepubescent boyhood masses and I started seeing more rags about “this is from a female gamer’s perspective!”
I appreciate good writing, I appreciate a perspective that doesn’t depend on if that author has ham pocket or a schlong but whether or not that person can show and tell with words.
As for in game, I wouldn’t want to be a female because the attention and immaturity they put up with is ridiculous – the slack-jawed mouth breathers are to blame, but I have no sympathy for the gamers who love the attention and stir up the drama.
I never wear panties while questing.
I figured as much THK =P
My guild has maybe 1/3 or 1/4 girls (lot of wife/husband teams), no one really treats them differently because, they don’t really say that there girls, there just playing the game like everyone else, and there treaded like everyone else.
I’m a writer and an MMO player and my nom de plume is often confused for a female name. It probably didn’t help that back on EQ I played a female character.
The difference of even playing a pseudofemale is staggering. I used to test responses based on my male and female toons and the reception they got varied widely. My female barbarian rogue was horrendeously flirted with – my amiable and friendly troll warrior was almost ignored except for a couple of cool people.
So, even if apparent gender makes a difference at first impression, RL gender can really affect people. Some of the younger generation pretty much haven’t had a lot of exposure to women at all besides their mothers – and therefore they can often fall into imitated behaviour by other players and parents and also influenced by the media.
I particularly dislike people abusing their gender or their pseudogender in games – an ex-girlfriend has exploited this so much that she gets regular gifts from her admirers in the WoW mail. I particularly agree with Psyae’s comment about the “gender card” being tossed at a critical juncture to influence a decision.
On the flip side, I dislike when female players can be ignored for their input because they are female. I have a guildie who told me about another player who said “Gee, you play too well to be a woman! Hearing you on Ventrillo was a shock!” It’s a backhanded compliment, I’m sure
darrenl is also dead right about the community based focus that many women bring to groups and guilds. Most women (not all) are also less competitive on an individual basis therefore are more willing to contribute to the team. There are exceptions, of course – as many of these gendercard throwers are.
Yeah the other day I was in a group and was told by a couple of guys in it “Wow… you’ve got skills for a woman!” So obviously women should not have skills!
Although yesterday I was in a group with a friend and helping him with the spider queen quest in LotRO and just kept running him around in circles to this point where we suddenly fall off this overhang and back to the beginning…. This happened like 10 times in a row with me saying, “I got it this time…” LOL I have always been really bad with direction. My cool gps hat I had just won wasn’t working right!
Well as a female gamer I’ve never gotten special treatment in game. Usually ppl don’t figure out I’m a girl till I say something like uhh..I need to afk to take care of my kids…then they ask if I’m a guy or a girl…most just assume I’m a mom which I am.
I’ve never recieved gifts in the game for being a female. Have I been flirted with? sure…but more often that not it was a joke to make all of us laugh to lighten the situation…usually while messing around with emotes while camping a named mob.
Most ppl when finding out I’m a stay at home mom with kids who plays EQ2 they just say cool and move on…so not sure what all the complaints about female gamers is about…I’ve never seen women get special treatment even tho I’ve played on three different servers and am starting on a 4th server so…forgive me but *scratches head* I don’t see how your arguements make any sense whatsoever.
You should read up on Shrub.com, Cuppy. (http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2007-02-13_521)
There’s a reason there are ‘girl focused’ game things trying hard to make a space for themselves… because its hard to find a comfortable online space if you’re a woman gamer a lot of the time. The frustration may be manifesting in ways that seem silly or annoying to some people, but theres a reason its happening. If you’re female (or any non young hetero white male demographic) you’re not payed attention to in the least by the industry or even taken seriously by most of the community.
You only have to experience the vicious, hateful backlash that comes from even mildly criticizing this fact to see that the problem is there. Its great that you can be one of the guys and can play without having any problems from anyone… but thats not the universal reality.