I want to step in here again and be clear. At no point does the author say that female gamers are second-class gamers. The fact of the matter is that some people, be they male or female, take advantage of others (who are generally male) through "being a girl". It happens, and there are some players out there who will bend over backwards to help out another player if they think that player is female. It may be sad fact, but it's a reality of online gaming.
Female gamers, as has been stated numerous times in this thread, make up a much larger percentage of the online gaming community than many people realize. This article in no way takes away from that, in fact, at the end of the article, AJ is very clear about the fact that a female gamer doesn't need any help.
This article was written with the intent to amuse and also to give a few tips to people who might be taken in by that particular type of scam. It is not meant as an endorsement of the activity itself.
God do you guys ever think before you speak.
The problem is, this is not amusing to women in the slightest.
This is just more of the same biased, undocumented, unresearched, opinionated drivel that perpetuates sexism in gaming.
Do you find humor in the sexual inuendo, harrasment, and out-right verbal rape that most female gamers have to deal with in these games just because we want to game.
Where is the mention of that, because I promise you more than A NYTHING else guys give girls in online gaming.. sexual harassment is #1.
My neice is 13 now, she started playing EQ at 10. She played a shaman and loved it, the bear hats just made her laugh so much. She would usually end up as party healer, and she wasn't a great gamer, but she was good, and she made friends and got in a guild and had a regular group and really enjoyed her time gaming.
You wanna know what " guys gave her.. " when they found out she was a girl and a young girl at that?
" Hey sexy what's your phone number, you wanna be my girlfriend... "
" Mmmm baby you wanna suck my... "
" Hey B..ch I wanna bend you over and stick my.. up your a.. "
" Oh yea why don't you tell me where you go to school and maybe I can meet you after school.. "
Even her own guildmates..
" Sweetie you know what BJ means? "
" So do you have any hair down there? "
Or how about the ones that were subtle and just sent her urls to their pics.. just not telling her the pics were hardcore.
Yea real bloody amusing...
You both should be really truly ashamed.
Speak for yourself, please. I am a woman and I found the article extremely funny. Did you even read the article? Because I feel like you read a different article than the one I read. The one I read was NOT a how to guide for how to find a girl on-line and harrass her, as you seem to think. To me it was a very funny article about the huge discrepancy between how guy gamers think we (as girl gamers) act, and how we actually act. I agree that what happened to your niece is appalling, and highly inappropriate, but it really has nothing to do with this article. Maybe you should read it again, a little more closely this time.
Oh, and if you are such an advocate for equal treatment of men and women, don't start off your rebuttal by saying that men don't think before they speak. Just because you didn't agree with what he said is no reason to be sexist about it. Oh yes, sexism does goes both ways, and only weakens your position, which as I've pointed out was pretty weak to begin with.
Maybe you should learn to read...
I NEVER said MEN don't think.. I said
" God do you guys ever think before you speak. "
A retorical question, maybe we should apply it to you as well.
Oh, maybe I'm just old fashioned but I still equate "guys" with men. I can read quite well, thank you. I stand by my comment. I also had the "before you speak" as refering to what you said. Maybe you should take your own advice.
Do you knowwhat I find funny...in games like the one I am playing now I go out of my way to "earn" everything my character gains, whether monotary or in the form of items. Now there are times I maybe short a silver piece or two and will ask nicely if anyone can spare it. I promise to give it back as soon as I have earned it. Most of the time someone nice will spot me the silver. I will then proceed to add them to my friends list to make sure I get the silver back to them as soon as I can. I tell them as much and what happens. THey always say don't worry about it. Well I worry about it. I don't wish to be the one that everyone points a finger at and says yea..see there is a girl gmer taking advantage of her gender. LOL!
Just the other day a guy gamer offered to make me a really killer bow for my ranger I play. He said you get me the lumber I need and I''ll make you the bow. I was like cool. I didn't really care to delv into the harvesting part of this game but I guess one must suffer along with the rest who partake of tedium. LOL! Now during my time harvesting I am tlking to people in open chat about what I am upto..you know just /ooc chatter...when not onetell but no less then 6 tells come in from 6 different players offering to provide me with the lumber I need for my bow. I thought about it for a minute, then decided to pass. Nope...I am not going to take the lumber and have that bow made I will stick to my choice of earning it just like everyone else. Besides the lumber on the market sells for 6+ gold! My character stays poor. What do you expect she is a ranger. Rangers are always poor. Hey arrows cost money! So anyway...I will take handouts if I think the person is doing to just be nice and allows me to pay them back. I will not take something and not give something in return - like an item they might find useful. Some turn it down and others do not. But hey at least I tried.
Yes the author is a woman. Yes, the article is suppose to be funny. I've had people give me things and say some asinine crap to my girl toons. Yeah..some guys are aholes...but some women are manipulative. Generalizations suck...and most women just want to play a game. As far as this being a non-topic..UM...how many pages of threads has this article generated? Come on! At least this is generating some nice discussion. Honestly, don't read this then if you're sick of the topic.
Hey Gracie...in many areas of the US west and northwest the term "guys" is used to cover both genders. It is not meant to be derogatory...its just how they talk there. ::shrugs:: No biggy. Hehehe...they even use the word dude a lot in clubs! LOL! I've done it just out of hearing it so much. Walking up to a table with all the other girls at it. "Dude...did you see that one guy on the far end of the bar...OMG he is so hawt!" LOL!
The reason it seems like there are more males, is because 90% of online game communities (websites, mesage boards, etc) are male-oriented, male-run, and cater to male tastes. So therefore... a lot of women gamers aren't outspoken or represented on those sites.I think its funny, all these "facts" on this page are not backed up.. Or am I blind?
No, just lazy and unduly confrontational.
These are as factual as surveys of gamers are likely to be. They're power point slides from the Entertainment Software Association, a very large (and I'd assume the largest) gaming software professional association. The full study results as released to the public is here:
The premise of the article is what's irritating to a lot of people... why the heck are you going around trying to hunt down any possible girls in your game anyway?
The MAJORITY of manipulative, golddigger type women, aren't playing MMOs.
They don't want your virtual +3 Sword of Uber, they're out in RL milking rich guys with Ferarris.
The majority of 'girl avatars that try to get free stuff' are just guys that know how to yank the chains of other desperate guys. It's hard enough to be taken seriously when you're a female gamer, most of us go out of our way NOT to mooch, because we get enough crap as it is just for being girls without buying into the demeaning charity a lot of guys think we need.
Instead of trying to find and flirt with every possible female (why else would you care so much to find out people's RL gender in a computer game?), just play the damn game and stop bothering them already.
The premise of the article is what's irritating to a lot of people... why the heck are you going around trying to hunt down any possible girls in your game anyway?
The majority of 'girl avatars that try to get free stuff' are just guys that know how to yank the chains of other desperate guys. It's hard enough to be taken seriously when you're a female gamer, most of us go out of our way NOT to mooch, because we get enough crap as it is just for being girls without buying into the demeaning charity a lot of guys think we need.
The REAL manipulative, golddigger type women, aren't playing MMOs.
They don't want your virtual +3 Sword of Uber, they're out in RL milking rich guys with Ferarris.
Instead of trying to find and flirt with every possible female (why else would you care so much to find out people's RL gender in a computer game?), just play the damn game and stop bothering them already.
Agreed, wanna meet someone? go clubbin (assuming your of age, although I think theres teen clubs nowadays). Theres about a million other ways to meet someoen
Originally posted by Taike Playing games for a few years and having some long-term online friends I've run into some trannies.
You know, after awhile you stop caring and say fuck it you duct-taped penis faggot.... LETS FUCKIN GET IT ON.
Good article though, I'll put this test to the use and next time I see puffy pants ILL MIND FUCK THE SHIT OUT OF HIM into submission.
All this shit aside, AJ... I love you. You make good article and make me proud to be korea. Fuck Robocop.
Puffypants... I'm gonna fuck the shit out of you.
In all seriousness, people will be what they want to be. So take the time to get to know them, if they are rocking... fuck them in the ass and callem puffy pants. AJ IM DIGGING YOU, PM ME FOR SOME SAIBOR ABOUT CHIXX WITH DIXX.
NIGGER OUT.
Btw, to all you "females" posting on this thread... we make sweet lovings now.
??
Yeah I didnt get it either. But can you real guys understand now how freakin annoying it can be having to deal with stuff like that
LOL L2's new advertisement is wonderful..... Take a step back in time and relive the original Lineage II experience as it was in the beginning. Create a classic hero from the original 5 races and 31 class options and jump into the nostalgic hardcore level grind where the rewards can outweigh the risks. It's your chance to experience the game the way it was when "hardcore" meant something!
I want to step in here again and be clear. At no point does the author say that female gamers are second-class gamers. The fact of the matter is that some people, be they male or female, take advantage of others (who are generally male) through "being a girl". It happens, and there are some players out there who will bend over backwards to help out another player if they think that player is female. It may be sad fact, but it's a reality of online gaming.
Female gamers, as has been stated numerous times in this thread, make up a much larger percentage of the online gaming community than many people realize. This article in no way takes away from that, in fact, at the end of the article, AJ is very clear about the fact that a female gamer doesn't need any help.
This article was written with the intent to amuse and also to give a few tips to people who might be taken in by that particular type of scam. It is not meant as an endorsement of the activity itself.
Hey Jon,
Sorry if the author and/or site seems to be the target. My responses were not to the article, but to the responses to the article -- which, if you skim through the dozen pages of them so far, certainly run the gamut from well reasoned to utter foul drivel.
The thing is, publishing an article on these gender issues happens about once a month or so on MMORPG, and every time it happens, there's a significant segment of the women here who end up feeling unwelcome because of the male general response. I try to surround myself with a guild of mature folks, adults or teens, who have an idea that age, gender, race, religion, and politics don't indicate quality of character of themselves. But character is very important.
Because of this, the devolution of the "barrens chat" style sexist or racist riffing that occasionally happens in any game, or any gaming forum, is just a little more aggravating. It doesn't have to be that way.
But you can't have a "evolved human beings preferred" server or forum environment any more than one can have a "roleplaying preferred" server without getting grief.
So this means, every time you bring up this issue -- especially involving humor in the form of sarcasm or irony beyond the capacity of some of your viewing audience -- you will bring up this kind of drivel in the responses, and the sexism and foul mouthed jerks, as well as the griefing trolls, will take over the thread.
So, perhaps you should think about not using this as idiot and troll bait? It's an important issue, but the forum response will be awful even to a serious article on the issues.
I recommend, perhaps, going to ESA and getting the person who did the study to write a guest column on women in gaming. Or getting a serious woman gamer to write a well-researched and journalistic monthly column on women in gaming. Or getting folks at the MIT Media Lab who have done studies on gender spoofing in online environments since at least the 80's sometime to talk about their work. Or perhaps Sherry Turkle who's been writing about women and tech since the 70's. Or the person at Neilsen ratings who reported this past year that 64% of US online gamers are (really) women.
As long as these topics are done in humor or in MMOWTF, they'll invite a kind of response you won't enjoy, and that might actually drive away readership who feel both mocked by the idiots and unsupported by the editorial staff.
I've seen you do *fabulous* jobs on equally edgy topics in the community. Perhaps you just need inspiration. IM me on the site if you need intros or leads to folks who could help out.
Fun article. The topic deserves about as much effort as the author gave it.
I will say. . . I was once on one of those multiple-hour "task force" things in City of Heroes with a team that had four female toons on it. Two hours in, one of them said, out of the blue, "I just realized that all of the female toons on this team are actually females." The rest of them were just like, "Um. . . yeah. So?"
I don't know how she knew they were females, but she did. And speaking as the only male on the team, it hadn't occurred to me that I should care.
1) MMORPGs are generally not designed to be dating services.
2) I am sure out of the 8,000,000 players that play World Of Warcraft, alone, many happy couples must meet. It’s what people do.
3) Just remember that selecting gender is just a click.
As an aside: I enjoy making female avatars, I am a man, and I am married to an educated, intelligent, and attractive woman (way out of my league). I don’t have problems attracting girls (hell I was chased though high school by the girl voted most attractive in my class . . . still hitting myself over that one). When given to option to make an attractive woman avatar in place of an attractive male avatar . . . well, it is just more fun designing, and looking at attractive females. Where the heck is the horn dog in you men? Oh yeah, that’s the problem.
I only started to read the comments on this article because of the SWG dancing thing. Others got to that first. ~ I just want to say that SWG -WAS- one of the best games ever - too bad they killed it. AO was great in it's day - I'm still waiting for the next game to give me that feeling again. WOW just passes the time.
Anyway, I don't have any trouble with my female chars- Although I mostly solo these days. I have no urge to know anything about the rl people behind the chars I do play with unless I already know them. I quit a guild once cause the people kept talking about themselves in rl.
Everyone plays for different reasons - The more things a game has to offer, the more fun it is. I like being able to team with cool people, and then when I'm bored doing repetitive missions alone, I like to read all the obnoxious people fighting on chat, hehe.
The dumbest most lamest excuse is saying they made a female av because they rather look at her ass then a male av. This is so stupid to give this excuse.
The reason a male would make a female is either he wants to get over other guys like it was said in the op or this male has female tendencies and wants to act out his feminine side. Now, you won't get an male to admit this and rightly so but these bad "macho" studs who use females in games usually have limp wrists and it ain't due to the constant use of the mouse either.
I read this part about guys who run females in games and how they supposely are expressing female tendencies in a book a while back by some professor of human behavior, guy was from some major college in some southern state. While I don't believe all guys who run females in game are like this I will believe many are in secret anyway.
Comments
God do you guys ever think before you speak.
The problem is, this is not amusing to women in the slightest.
This is just more of the same biased, undocumented, unresearched, opinionated drivel that perpetuates sexism in gaming.
Do you find humor in the sexual inuendo, harrasment, and out-right verbal rape that most female gamers have to deal with in these games just because we want to game.
Where is the mention of that, because I promise you more than A NYTHING else guys give girls in online gaming.. sexual harassment is #1.
My neice is 13 now, she started playing EQ at 10. She played a shaman and loved it, the bear hats just made her laugh so much. She would usually end up as party healer, and she wasn't a great gamer, but she was good, and she made friends and got in a guild and had a regular group and really enjoyed her time gaming.
You wanna know what " guys gave her.. " when they found out she was a girl and a young girl at that?
" Hey sexy what's your phone number, you wanna be my girlfriend... "
" Mmmm baby you wanna suck my... "
" Hey B..ch I wanna bend you over and stick my.. up your a.. "
" Oh yea why don't you tell me where you go to school and maybe I can meet you after school.. "
Even her own guildmates..
" Sweetie you know what BJ means? "
" So do you have any hair down there? "
Or how about the ones that were subtle and just sent her urls to their pics.. just not telling her the pics were hardcore.
Yea real bloody amusing...
You both should be really truly ashamed.
Speak for yourself, please. I am a woman and I found the article extremely funny. Did you even read the article? Because I feel like you read a different article than the one I read. The one I read was NOT a how to guide for how to find a girl on-line and harrass her, as you seem to think. To me it was a very funny article about the huge discrepancy between how guy gamers think we (as girl gamers) act, and how we actually act. I agree that what happened to your niece is appalling, and highly inappropriate, but it really has nothing to do with this article. Maybe you should read it again, a little more closely this time.
Oh, and if you are such an advocate for equal treatment of men and women, don't start off your rebuttal by saying that men don't think before they speak. Just because you didn't agree with what he said is no reason to be sexist about it. Oh yes, sexism does goes both ways, and only weakens your position, which as I've pointed out was pretty weak to begin with.
Maybe you should learn to read...
I NEVER said MEN don't think.. I said
" God do you guys ever think before you speak. "
A retorical question, maybe we should apply it to you as well.
Oh, maybe I'm just old fashioned but I still equate "guys" with men. I can read quite well, thank you. I stand by my comment. I also had the "before you speak" as refering to what you said. Maybe you should take your own advice.
Do you knowwhat I find funny...in games like the one I am playing now I go out of my way to "earn" everything my character gains, whether monotary or in the form of items. Now there are times I maybe short a silver piece or two and will ask nicely if anyone can spare it. I promise to give it back as soon as I have earned it. Most of the time someone nice will spot me the silver. I will then proceed to add them to my friends list to make sure I get the silver back to them as soon as I can. I tell them as much and what happens. THey always say don't worry about it. Well I worry about it. I don't wish to be the one that everyone points a finger at and says yea..see there is a girl gmer taking advantage of her gender. LOL!
Just the other day a guy gamer offered to make me a really killer bow for my ranger I play. He said you get me the lumber I need and I''ll make you the bow. I was like cool. I didn't really care to delv into the harvesting part of this game but I guess one must suffer along with the rest who partake of tedium. LOL! Now during my time harvesting I am tlking to people in open chat about what I am upto..you know just /ooc chatter...when not onetell but no less then 6 tells come in from 6 different players offering to provide me with the lumber I need for my bow. I thought about it for a minute, then decided to pass. Nope...I am not going to take the lumber and have that bow made I will stick to my choice of earning it just like everyone else. Besides the lumber on the market sells for 6+ gold! My character stays poor. What do you expect she is a ranger. Rangers are always poor. Hey arrows cost money! So anyway...I will take handouts if I think the person is doing to just be nice and allows me to pay them back. I will not take something and not give something in return - like an item they might find useful. Some turn it down and others do not. But hey at least I tried.
Yes the author is a woman. Yes, the article is suppose to be funny. I've had people give me things and say some asinine crap to my girl toons. Yeah..some guys are aholes...but some women are manipulative. Generalizations suck...and most women just want to play a game. As far as this being a non-topic..UM...how many pages of threads has this article generated? Come on! At least this is generating some nice discussion. Honestly, don't read this then if you're sick of the topic.
42% of online gamers are female.
The reason it seems like there are more males, is because 90% of online game communities (websites, mesage boards, etc) are male-oriented, male-run, and cater to male tastes. So therefore... a lot of women gamers aren't outspoken or represented on those sites.I think its funny, all these "facts" on this page are not backed up.. Or am I blind?
No, just lazy and unduly confrontational.
These are as factual as surveys of gamers are likely to be. They're power point slides from the Entertainment Software Association, a very large (and I'd assume the largest) gaming software professional association. The full study results as released to the public is here:
http://www.theesa.com/archives/files/Essential Facts 2006.pdf
I assume there's a considerably more detailed version of the study in the members-only section of their web site.
Geez, dude, don't troll.
Shava
Neat, first time Iv been called a troll.. Go me!
Anyways I was just curious as to where the facts come from... Yea. Im a troll
The MAJORITY of manipulative, golddigger type women, aren't playing MMOs.
They don't want your virtual +3 Sword of Uber, they're out in RL milking rich guys with Ferarris.
The majority of 'girl avatars that try to get free stuff' are just guys that know how to yank the chains of other desperate guys. It's hard enough to be taken seriously when you're a female gamer, most of us go out of our way NOT to mooch, because we get enough crap as it is just for being girls without buying into the demeaning charity a lot of guys think we need.
Instead of trying to find and flirt with every possible female (why else would you care so much to find out people's RL gender in a computer game?), just play the damn game and stop bothering them already.
Someone in vent told me: You are a faggot for playing SilkRoad.
The little voice in my head then proceeded to tell me: In answer to your question and from my personal experience, a fat mexican DJ.
Oh noo a use-less post!!!??
Yeah I didnt get it either. But can you real guys understand now how freakin annoying it can be having to deal with stuff like thatTake a step back in time and relive the original Lineage II experience as it was in the beginning. Create a classic hero from the original 5 races and 31 class options and jump into the nostalgic hardcore level grind where the rewards can outweigh the risks. It's your chance to experience the game the way it was when "hardcore" meant something!
Yah it would be funny if the writer is actually a guy posing as a girl.
Sorry if the author and/or site seems to be the target. My responses were not to the article, but to the responses to the article -- which, if you skim through the dozen pages of them so far, certainly run the gamut from well reasoned to utter foul drivel.
The thing is, publishing an article on these gender issues happens about once a month or so on MMORPG, and every time it happens, there's a significant segment of the women here who end up feeling unwelcome because of the male general response. I try to surround myself with a guild of mature folks, adults or teens, who have an idea that age, gender, race, religion, and politics don't indicate quality of character of themselves. But character is very important.
Because of this, the devolution of the "barrens chat" style sexist or racist riffing that occasionally happens in any game, or any gaming forum, is just a little more aggravating. It doesn't have to be that way.
But you can't have a "evolved human beings preferred" server or forum environment any more than one can have a "roleplaying preferred" server without getting grief.
So this means, every time you bring up this issue -- especially involving humor in the form of sarcasm or irony beyond the capacity of some of your viewing audience -- you will bring up this kind of drivel in the responses, and the sexism and foul mouthed jerks, as well as the griefing trolls, will take over the thread.
So, perhaps you should think about not using this as idiot and troll bait? It's an important issue, but the forum response will be awful even to a serious article on the issues.
I recommend, perhaps, going to ESA and getting the person who did the study to write a guest column on women in gaming. Or getting a serious woman gamer to write a well-researched and journalistic monthly column on women in gaming. Or getting folks at the MIT Media Lab who have done studies on gender spoofing in online environments since at least the 80's sometime to talk about their work. Or perhaps Sherry Turkle who's been writing about women and tech since the 70's. Or the person at Neilsen ratings who reported this past year that 64% of US online gamers are (really) women.
As long as these topics are done in humor or in MMOWTF, they'll invite a kind of response you won't enjoy, and that might actually drive away readership who feel both mocked by the idiots and unsupported by the editorial staff.
I've seen you do *fabulous* jobs on equally edgy topics in the community. Perhaps you just need inspiration. IM me on the site if you need intros or leads to folks who could help out.
Yrs,
Shava
Ever played Starcraft? I don't thinks so. This is the way Starcraft was meant to be played. Starcraft
I will say. . . I was once on one of those multiple-hour "task force" things in City of Heroes with a team that had four female toons on it. Two hours in, one of them said, out of the blue, "I just realized that all of the female toons on this team are actually females." The rest of them were just like, "Um. . . yeah. So?"
I don't know how she knew they were females, but she did. And speaking as the only male on the team, it hadn't occurred to me that I should care.
I only started to read the comments on this article because of the SWG dancing thing. Others got to that first. ~ I just want to say that SWG -WAS- one of the best games ever - too bad they killed it. AO was great in it's day - I'm still waiting for the next game to give me that feeling again. WOW just passes the time.
Anyway, I don't have any trouble with my female chars- Although I mostly solo these days. I have no urge to know anything about the rl people behind the chars I do play with unless I already know them. I quit a guild once cause the people kept talking about themselves in rl.
Everyone plays for different reasons - The more things a game has to offer, the more fun it is. I like being able to team with cool people, and then when I'm bored doing repetitive missions alone, I like to read all the obnoxious people fighting on chat, hehe.
TANSTAAFL
No... that reply was very sad... err, lol.
Anyway, rumour has it there may be a LotRO Deed for dancing. There's one for being the target of a /hug emote for heaven's sake.
I figured this article was a badly researched pile of made up jokes. Being a charitable guy, I assume the author was trying for parody.
The dumbest most lamest excuse is saying they made a female av because they rather look at her ass then a male av. This is so stupid to give this excuse.
The reason a male would make a female is either he wants to get over other guys like it was said in the op or this male has female tendencies and wants to act out his feminine side. Now, you won't get an male to admit this and rightly so but these bad "macho" studs who use females in games usually have limp wrists and it ain't due to the constant use of the mouse either.
I read this part about guys who run females in games and how they supposely are expressing female tendencies in a book a while back by some professor of human behavior, guy was from some major college in some southern state. While I don't believe all guys who run females in game are like this I will believe many are in secret anyway.