Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Editorial: Girl Gamers, Are They Real?
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Carolyn Koh asks this important question. Are girl gamers a myth or reality?
| We don't just play Barbie Make-up World or My Pretty Pink Ponies either. Those titles didn't even exist when I was growing up. I played Centipede, Pacman, and Joust (although I stank at Joust) but I didn't play those on a PC. I had to put a quarter into a machine. Time went by and I graduated to PC games such as Eric the Unready, Camelot, created a pilot with nickname of Pinky in Gunship 2000, solved puzzles as Guy Threepwood and played Castle Wolfenstein on the office LAN after hours with the guys in engineering.
I don't play PvP games unless it's team against team / realm against realm. Just my preference... but although I do not play PvP regularly, I've always like shooters. I preferred picking up a rifle and plinking ducks, sinking battleships with torpedoes and killing aliens... and learning to lose to my dates. Or else not beating them too, too badly. |
You can read more here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Of coarse women play games, what the hell kind of question is that? My gf used to play WoW with me all the time, it's engaging for both sexes and each year will bring in more and more women into the gaming field. Technology is soon to make computers the only thing we ever need, even for a job, I see a lot more work at home jobs being designed and soon that may be the only thing we as people will ever need to get through life.
Am I the only one who gets a little annoyed that "a girl gamer" is even classified as differently then a normal guy gamer. Having been a gamer for the past 15 years of my life (I got hooked with pencil and paper D&D) I can honestly say I dont think of myself as any different then a normal guy gamer.
Sure I am not as rude or vulgar as most guys, but on the other hand I have met guys that are more upper class and polite then I am in games. Another thing this article might be written from the perspective of a United States gamer, as in some countries in Europe and Asia women make up 40-50% of the gaming population. This editorial is pretty much beating a dead horse and only furthers the stereotype that female gamers should be looked at differently or as a rare event.
WE ALL KNOW girls play games
Why do we need to hear this over and over again?
I'm a girl... I already know I play games...
and I'm especially NOT interested in what kind of games some random chick likes to play.
Is that supposed to prove anything??
If there's gonna be a girl gamer article, tell me something new. Tell me something special that a girl gamer is doing, running a successful guild maybe, or ranking high warlord. SOMETHING OTHER THAN "LOOK AT ME I PLAY GAMES OMG!!"
Thanks.
Very subjective best MMO list:
Saga of Ryzom, Anarchy Online, Lineage 2, WoW
Waiting for:
Age of Conan, Aion, Lineage 3
I couldn't agree more, its a huge stereotype that will soon fade away but it will take time. Don't think twice, women are people too and can game just like the rest of us.
I care as little for your gender as the colour of your skin.
Please forgive the gamers who may assume there is a male at the other end of your female avatar. They simply haven't realized that real-life identification methods (i.e. looking) do not work in the lands of MMORPG.
As an avid City of Heroes/Villains player, I've found some other guidelines that help, not that it ever actually matters.
- If her chest has been scaled up from the already-generous default proportions, odds are, you're talking to a guy
- If her outfit is a horrible mis-match of fishnets, high heels and a thong bikini bottom, odds are, you're talking to a guy
- If her avatar name is "BeegBewBeez" or "5LUTL1PP5", odds are, you're talking to a guy
In general, I find I can identify real girl gamers over the course of running a few missions based on the way they talk/type (generally more coherent and a bit more open to general chatty topics instead of straight strategy), and their general play strategies (females tend to be a little more cooperative in approach). All opinion, of course, because A) none of these traits are exclusive to one gender or the other and
That said, to the guys out there (and maybe some girls too), DON'T LET THE AVATAR FOOL YOU!
And if you happen to play CoH and see a pretty Peacebringer named Prism Angel, there's something abut her you should know.
I set her battlecry text to "Dude, I'm a dude." for the sake of conveneience.
Michael K. Donovan
Not really, seems the whole topic is about just that
but in respects towards "girl gamers" i really don't care what or who someone is, aslong he/she is mature, fun to play with and loves challenges then i don't care if its male or female, but somehow people will always cast some people into stereotype's, they just narrowminded in games and probebly the same in rl, some of my friends wife's/girlfriends play games from COD to WOW but they also play more sim like games as The Sims and since a short while Deserate Housewifes (wich my girlfriend is playing atm 
these are just my experainces with the woman around me in rl so this does not mean i state that most woman are atracted by sim games (just to make that clear:)
But a gamer should always be a gamer regardless if its a guy/man or girl/woman
One of my all-time favorite adages goes something like: "On the Internet, all men are women, all women are men, and all children are FBI agents."
But yeah, girl (*ahem* WOMAN, sorry) gamers do exist. I play CoH/CoV and am pretty good friends with 5 of 'em (4 of which also play CoH/CoV...alas, one remains in SWG
). My wife is one; while she prefers tabletop RPGs to online ones, she's still far closer to the level cap than I could ever dream. They tend to be far more level-headed than the male gamers out there, more driven, and generally more effective. (Perhaps because they've been relegated to mythological status, they feel they have more to prove?) This is balanced, however, by the occasional "I don't really know what I'm doing" or "I'm sorry, I'm an idiot, please bear with me". Either it's the poor self-esteem that so many women in the US seem to suffer from...or they're just trying to help make my pathetic ass feel better. 
Female gamers are out there. And occasionally, they ARE the ones in the uber-skimpy outfits. My advice? Take the avatar at face value & enjoy the gameplay--at least until your teammate has a homophobic outburst.
Here is a link featuring Cindy, who is at least three girl gamers all by herself.
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/news_archive.vm?id=67096&month=current
Anyway, we all know there aren't any girl gamers, so stop pretending to be one. Female avatars or 'mangina' are just male players trying to cash in on free stuff and treatment given to them by the fat lonely mom's basement gamer class. I don't care how realistic your ventrilo distort sounds, or how much you protest that you really are 17 blonde and perky irl, I don't buy it.
"I don't play PvP games unless it's team against team / realm against realm." The battlecry of the perennial pvp loser. On the surface this might seem to be something a real girl might say, but sadly on deeper inspection it is just more carebear drivel coming from a chestless choir boy. Myself I don't pvp unless I'm outnumbered.
No doubt as to my sex irl eh?
Nice comment Hellrose
The Part about being asked for a picture is funny because i have seen that happen like 50 times while, I'm playing with some Girls i know from work but it always seems to happen.
Nothing to worry about though the Stereo-Type of less "Woman" playing online games will change soon as more and more games are made to impress more female gamers then of there male counter-part, Overall Great Editorial and i just have one thing to say to the creator of this editorial. My daughter loves to play online games and you would be surprised but she actually kicks my but at a lot of them.
obviously women play games. It has just not catered enough to the "average" girl. Unlike with men, where gaming is basically a rule instead of exception
The reason it needs to be asked again, is because developers dont seem to develop with the "girl gamer" in mind, everything in a game is contructed for the guy gamer, the girl gamer shares the male content, but with a female character.
There is one thing put in a game for your average female gamer, and thats female characters. The thing is, girls are a lot more diverese than boys. My grirlfriend could spend 2/3 hours deciding on a name for her character on WoW, designing the way it looked, and so forth. A lot of her "will to play" was based on the characters looks, which resulted in countless abandoned characters. It wasn't all "it has to be a perfect female" but more of a "I want it to look this way". Other females playing games might enjoy the blood, and pillaging and so on, and thats great, it doesnt count against them at all, but the thing is, they have the male built playstyle avilable to them, which they enjoy.
However we all know that women have a much more diverse intest in things than us men do. I would say a good 99% of the male population is happy to slaughter the living hell out of anything, and things like crafting, character creation and other things are just nice sidetracks to take once in a while to advance your character.
My girlfriend loves to make things, she hasn't been into games as long as me, and she copes with hack and slash, but only because she wants to get to crafting things, she wants her things to look a certain way. If she could take a pattern and use different materials to make differnt coloured items she would be happy. She is absolutely obsessed with Vanguard. The reason? She can build a house on there and decorate it, Her reply to "what if the game is absolutely terrible" was "I dont care, its got something I REALLY want in it.
So yes, females play MMORPG's, but MMORPG's arent giving some females what they want, I know some of this sounds like a clich
Good Point Meon
Take Fable for example
When they first released the idea of Fable it was said that you could be either a Boy or a Girl while playing the game, but as the leader designer said in an interview, "Girl characters require much more effort to create and would add a lot more work load on the team's" (Now what i got from this is, he is claiming that girls would be much harder to implement into games because they have Brests and there bodys change much faster then male's). Just look at the average male character in a game it's not that hard to create now add Boob's and other female attributes and that would take a lot more effort to create then a simple male character
I Know for a fact there are a couple games that are directed more towards females then males take Blade Mistress as an example. it said it was 100% designed for girls to meet up talk and play around.
Also i think that there is also another reason to why there are more male gamers then female gamers one of the reasons being girls seem to be more Realistic then males they seem to be much more advance then most males at the age of 14 - 25 (Which most mmorpg's directed age group is). I also think females are more relaxed and easy going while males are in it for the thrill or the adreniline rush.
I Know my daughter loves playing "The Sims" and she has told me time and time again that she doesn't like the games her brother plays because everyone is too Aggressive and mean.
:P Don't take my word for it try to introduce an online game to your wife,girlfriend,co-worker,friends and see what there responce's are.
-3L1TE
--EDIT--
Woman also seem to have more self-esteem then Men which doesn't require them to go on a game like world of warcraft and build up these super ego's
also Atomicide you posted before me so some of our points might be the same (i was typing this while you were clicking submit)
Seriously why does it matter who is controlling the character?
They could be male, female, jewish, islamic, christian, not religous, black, white, yellow, red, pink, purplish, they could have gils, they could live under water, they could be from mars, as long as I enjoy playing with them who gives a crap what they look like or what they are in real life.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
I mean, please, folks. I was wargaming pre-D&D in the 70's. There were a larger proportion of gamers who were women then, I suspect, because gamers were just not a big slice of the population.
But funny thing, guys *tend* to like to blow things up and are more willing to spend money to do it. Women *tend* to enjoy RPG environments more, and MMOs suck at maintaining both market share and RP. So MMOs are likely to have more guys.
Me, I'll happily RP either (or additional if available) genders of avs. Why not? As a girl, I got used to roleplaying a guy because all the heroes were guys, all the villains were guys, and all the victims were girls. No fun. So I got practice RPing boys at an early age.
Not *every* guy who RPs a female AV is after favors (sexual or otherwise). Some are playing with identity and social norms in very different ways, with no implication of sexuality (gay or whatever).
So people need to get a life about the guys who RP women too.
Yrs,
Shava
My first MMORPG was DAoC and I played it for a couple years before venturing to other MMORPG's, like SWG. But my first friend was a female and I never once thought that she wasn't. Maybe I was naive, but if I seen a girl avatar, I assumed it was a female controlling it. Most of the people I knew (adults) were of the same belief. So maybe the problem exists with teenage boys and not all of us males. In that case, who the hell cares what a bunch of kids think anyways.
Girl gamers exist, are no different than men, and can pwn your face off, so get over it.
Girl gamers exist, sure, but are they they exception to rule?
An article about if Girl gamers exist or even if over 50 aged gamers exist should have some statistics or facts about it. How many girls play MMO's compared to guys? Is it split 50/50? Is it 20/80? I certainly don't know, but would like to know more about that.
You could also write an article: Are there games for the Macinosh? The author could say "Hell yeah! I've been playing games on the mac since it was an apple 2c. Of course there are games on the mac. What a stupid question. Duh." Now that question and response prove there are games for the mac. But how many? Can you walk into Comp USA or Best Buy and find 'the shelf'? Can you find any? Even the Apple store only has a handful of them. Most of us who play MMOs have PC's right? So doesn't that mean there are more gamers who own PC's than Mac's? Should MMO developers care about devloping for the Mac?
My analogy is not to say that there are no girl gamers, but that we don't know how many. Even an editorial should back up a few made up facts besides looking in their own pants.
80% of all statistics are made up
Give a man fire and he''s warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he''s warm the rest of his life.
And what about cat-gamers?
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
An Ex GF of mine (Joanne) still plays EQ2 (well she did when I spoke to her about a month ago). She had a 44 Fighter type (I forget which but it is a freeport char) and a 19 Monk/brawler at that time. She hates mage/cleric type chars. Archers get on her nerves too.
She got into MMORPG's by making use of my UO account years ago. She got my fisherman up to Grandmaster level for me and she decorated my house near Trinsic (bless). For some reason she hated DAOC. She also tried a trial for COH but didn't subscribe.
She also plays FPS shooters HL2 & CS. Often uses the Name ZebaDee and has a knack for the shotgun.
We used to do paintballing together years ago too. She is a pretty good shot with a paintball gun and a crossbow. Oh! and she has a great pair of legs
.
So they do exist. There is at least one in the UK South West.
I have to admit tho that Jo is the ONLY female MMORPGer that I know of.
[edit]
This was my 100th post 
1
I used to visit this site a lot however in recent years it has become the home of negative forum posts, illogical opinions and tantrums so I visit less often.
Played or Beta'd: UO / DAOC / Horizons / EQ2 / DDO / EVE / Archlord / PirateKingsOnline / Tabula Rasa / LOTRO / AOC / Champions / Darkfall / Mortal Online / DCUO / Rift / STO / SWTOR / TSW
I'm definitely going to have to chime in on this and say that yes they are real.
My wife and I play a variety of games, from City of Heroes / Villians, Guild Wars, WoW and Final Fantasy. She is very active in her SG's and plays a pretty mean game as well
So yes, Girl Gamers DO exist, I have the proof!!
-Launchpad