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The "Girl" Gamer: On The Other Side

dainjre said:
Even actual girl gamers sometimes act like fools.

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What "actual girl gamers", Yoonie became marginally famous cause she was Xpecial's girlfriend (abit like Pooksie became famouse because of her relationship with voyboy). The rest of the team was gold-diamond level and were already sort of famous. Their only defense for that cringeworthy video is that it was completely scripted by their sponsor lol.

I mean even the "famous" gamer gurls from important communities end up taking advantage of being females, I just feel like it's in our nature as men to end up acting like fools just for the hope of getting some vajayjay.
And don't think that in videogames its any worse than in anything else cause it bloody isn't (the number of wasted money I've seen on women surpasses the GDP of the USA haha), the only sad thing is that not having actually seen the girl means that you might be acting all nice hoping for a real beauty and end up getting a wild boar. Atleast in most IRL cases you act all nice and throw your money away knowing you might get a good looking lass.

Out of topic: Pooksie also became pretty famous cause Oddone posted her full-out striptease on stream lol (apparently Voyboy/ex-boyfriend posted it on some pornsite, and being from brazil she has a pretty nice body -brucethumbsup- )
 
Keleynal said:
I agree. I don't think I've met any girls that acted like Sarah. If I did come across one, I'd just avoid them. I think most people get that Sarah isn't representative of females at large. If not, they haven't had enough exposure to females.
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Yet........ to say "Sarah" cannot exist is naive. I didn't come up with a new way to act for this. I didn't change my inflections or way of speaking(much). I didn't change me in the long run. The stories I told were from my own life, the way I played was the way I play. So perhaps we could say there is no one exactly like me, but we all know that isn't true.(as much as we hope for the sake of Fen's migraines).

I actually had the pleasure of speaking with a girl gamer I had run across during this after the article hit and we spoke quite extensively about it. She told me this: "Completely sold you were a girl", "I have encountered girls like you before", "I have encounter John Does that you described before", and in a few words or less: this is a pretty damn close to home (other than the fact that you are not a girl) representation of how she experienced men many times through her gaming career(regardless of if she choose to ignore them or not, UO or WoW, Everquest or Farmville).

I am not claiming to be a girl or know the inner workings of girls I am only sharing what happened to be from day 1 to day 15 as a "Girl Avatar".

Of course people can navigate this kind of stuff. It is called having moxy or street smarts. But in the end that depends on the person. Sadly, when first introduced to gaming, women will be introduced to such a different environment than men, navigation can be a bit tricky since the minefield is much differently laid out and 100% has more mines to step on(I.E. more dick to navigate). Not to mention the different way in which woman are received.
 

Where did you find this? This. Just This.
I know I'm repeating myself here, but none of it should matter. Let's just share our love for games peacefully.
 
MADie said:
Where did you find this? This. Just This.
I know I'm repeating myself here, but none of it should matter. Let's just share our love for games peacefully.
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This is all I ever want to see. Whether I am ranting about The "Gay"mer, or culture, or gaming-isms... it all comes down to the same shit. Be respectful. The reality is we can only change that within ourselves. But that is a good step.

And maybe when you want to be surrounded by self respecting/outward respecting people, then the changes happen, because those who don't become the minority.

The attention craving, racism spewing, ignorant others, have to finally look in the mirror, one which the gaming culture is often happy to throw a sheet over for them in order to keep the group alive until the boss is dead.
 
And then I ran across this add today:

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I didn't say it didn't. I just found it befitting of this article. Also please show me a game ad not a romantic novel that caters to women that isn't the sims or a game intended for the age 18 and below.

You read way to into what I post sometimes mr cat. We don't always have to be polar opposites. :)

There are facts about human nature and societal conjecture. Both are valid arguments because both prove a point. Without one you cannot have the other. I.e. Vietnam wouldn't have been Vietnam without the protests of Vietnam.
 
tr1age said:
Also please show me a game ad not a romantic novel that caters to women that isn't the sims or a game intended for the age 18 and below.
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Obviously he'll be hard pressed to find a game that aims at the adult female demographic because the gaming industry still believes that male customers dominate the market, so they target them specifically. Not to mention that the industry itself is still dominated by males.
That doesn't render his argument invalid though, the gaming industry just needs some more time to "mature" and offer us crotch size sliders during character creation. ;)
 
Jia said:
Obviously he'll be hard pressed to find a game that aims at the adult female demographic because the gaming industry still believes that male customers dominate the market, so they target them specifically. Not to mention that the industry itself is still dominated by males.
That doesn't render his argument invalid though, the gaming industry just needs some more time to "mature" and offer us crotch size sliders during character creation. ;)
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Never said his argument was invalid, but the blanket statement of "objectification goes both ways", doesn't really hold water in the gaming world. As you said, "the gaming industry still believes that male customers dominate the market". Gonna take some work on the part of US the gamers to change that perception.
 
Jia said:
Not just that, I think we need more females in key positions of game development to change the gaming landscape.
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That helps too. Blizzard had... fuck actually... Blizzard had 0.[DOUBLEPOST=1377508061,1377507204][/DOUBLEPOST]
 
I must admit that I have never played Ultima Online, but this really shows how... well, "desperate" some people can be.

And quite honestly, I don't understand their mentality. As you have experienced, there was at least one player (John Doe #1) who complimented you for being "unbelievably attractive."

I'm not sure what he was expecting as a response. Affection?

I've experienced this in non-gaming areas too. I am also a developer for jailbroken iOS platforms (nds4ios, PPSSPP, Ingress, GV Substrate Extensions, various other MobileSubstrate extensions, etc.) and I've... honestly gotten quite a lot of people who try to hit on me via Cydia support ticket.

To which I point them at this: https://twitter.com/angelXwind/status/364922470383353856

It actually got so bad I had to slap a giant disclaimer on the top of my reddit AMA, found here: http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/1kuc3i/requested_ama_hi_i_am_karen_tsai_angelxwind/

And what I find funnier is that they don't actually have a "real" picture of me. The closest they have is this picture with the redsn0w pineapple obscuring my face http://puu.sh/3IyCR.png

Even worse, during the UnthreadedJB (massive iOS jailbreaking troll) conspiracy theories, a group of people attempted to find more pictures of me. Of course, they failed, because they somehow ended up finding pictures of the wrong Karen Tsai. (then were banned by the moderators.)

Of course, I know a lot of level-headed people in the jailbreak community, but an alarming amount of people seem to be interested in me just because of the fact that I am a girl, and not for what I do.

People say that girls in male-dominated areas only label themselves as a girl "for attention." While this may be true for some, I do it just because I want to be referred to with the right pronouns. Other than that, I don't make a big deal out of it.

That being said, I'm not criticizing you for anything, tr1age, but if I were put in the same situation as you, I would just completely disregard the people who are interested in me purely because I am a girl, and associate with those who truly respect me as a player.

That aside, perhaps it's just Ultima Online, but I really haven't had that much issue with playing in multiplayer games. Or maybe that just has something to do with what I play (Crysis 2, HL2DM, Source Engine stuff, PSO2JP, etc.)

Also, if you're wondering how I found this thread, someone posted it on reddit, ahah.

Really, in my opinion, this is more caused by just how society has kind of pushed women aside (especially in technology/gaming) in general than anything else.

Just my two cents.

EDIT: Another thing worth noting is that the people who have tried to hit on me all use grammatically incorrect/mispelled English... just an interesting fact there. (not that it really means anything, though.)

EDIT 2: Another thing that I have experienced though, is when I first started out in Crysis 2 MP.

Crysis 2 MP is the first multiplayer FPS that I have played that uses more realistic gun mechanics. I'm used to the way how Source handles things, so I really had no concept of "firing from the hip" vs "aiming down weapon sights." That, and the multiplayer Nanosuit differs greatly from the campaign Nanosuit, which I am used to. (MP Nanosuit energy drains quicker, etc.). You also can't really fool human players just by cloaking (your shadow still shows, AI seems to disregard this... most of the time)

Many people reasoned that I sucked because I am a girl, not because I was just starting. (Now I'm rather skilled with the MK60 MOD 0, ahah.)

if ( female == TRUE ) {
printf("You suck. Girls can't play shooter games. Go away.")
}
else {
printf("You suck. Practice more, will you?")
}
 
Evilcat said:
You run face first into an egg and chicken debate. "Game development needs to change to get more women but game development wont change until there are more women."
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I never actually said this (were you referring to Jia's post?), but "more women" on the development team won't necessarily change anything.

The core problem here is the players, and the perception of video games in society.

Sure, it'd be nice to see more female faces in the game development industry, but it isn't (always) required.

Look at Mirror's Edge (DICE). I'm not sure how many female employees there are at DICE, but that game came out fine (to me).

Many "girl gamers" complain about how women are represented in an unequal way in gaming. This is true (usually), but you have to understand that there are many reasons to why a game is how it is.

A lot of the time, the developers just want to rake in piles of money (who doesn't?).

And in order to get that money, they appeal to the demographic that buys the most of their games. The "straight male gamer."

In my view, there are two major reasons why women are represented the way they are in gaming:

1. Due to the nature of the game itself, it is not really possible to include women in the game. These would be some FPSes, and every Grand Theft Auto game you can think of. Of course, FPSes can also choose to include women in them (as shown in Half-Life 2, Crysis 1/Warhead/Wars/2/3), so it isn't always a stylistic issue.

2. It is possible to be more inclusive, but the developers deliberately choose not to just to appeal more to the "straight male gamer" demographic. Like the some League of Legends character designs (though this is quickly changing, and various RPGs I don't really know the titles of. Again, "some FPSes" are also in this category.

On the other hand, there's Naughty Dog's The Last of Us (why are you a PS3 exclusive ;_;), a really good example of how developers can satisfy a broad range of gamers.

Evilcat said:
There is nothing wrong with the product. People need to change. people treating others badly is the problem.
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In my opinion, it's actually both. But it is the people that have more influence. Because the "straight male gamer" demographic (who makes up 80% of all sales) is often the major source of these developers' incomes, they choose to appeal to them more, to avoid causing backlash that could possibly hurt sales.

It was stated somewhere that the cover art for The Last of Us originally did not include Ellie, because they were afraid that having a girl depicted on the cover art would hurt sales.

In other words, developers are afraid of this: http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/03/25/straight-male-gamer-told-to-get-over-it-by-bioware/

People need to learn that female players are just as capable as they are. And this doesn't just apply to gaming either, but to almost all fields (only exception are fields that involve physical strength).

In order for gaming to change as a whole, it must start with the people, and society as a whole.

And honestly, we're having a hard time doing just that.
 
Evilcat said:
My comment on women was to imply more women in the whole gaming culture not just development. the thing about markets is that they change to suit their setting.
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Which is what I said earlier as well, I didn't exclude one for the other: both the customers and the industry are male dominated. Both areas "need" more females to make a change.
 
Evilcat said:
Male customers do still dominate the market. when you look at AAA games on all platforms, over 80% of sales go to men between the age's of 18-34. you only get that magic 40% of gamers are women number when you include Apps and Facebook. When you look at the App and Facebook market you can see what kind of games do well under a split demographic "puzzle games and (topic) simulators " now don't me wrong 20% of all sales is still a lot of sales but its not enough to cause the marketing guys to change aim's.

You run face first into an egg and chicken debate. "Game development needs to change to get more women but game development wont change until there are more women."

Looking at an issue in a vacuum is silly. Its okay for gaming to pander. There is nothing wrong with that. people keep standing up on their soap box's going "GAMEING NEEDS TO CHAGE!" but it doesn't. There is nothing wrong with the product. People need to change. people treating others badly is the problem.
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*coddles soap box* YOU CAN'T FUCKING HAVE IT!

To Angel:

Don't worry I am not claiming to know it all, change it all, or have answer to it all, but I can explain my experiences :) Also I don't think I was saying you have to hold on to this kind of attention or even play into it. I think I explained it multiple times how I "felt" as me, in the game. I also explained that it wasn't just UO in chapter 2 or 3.

What exactly will the people who "find your picture" get at the end? Do they get a reward? A prize? Money?

Nope... they can just assume pretty or ugly by their own tastes.

And because they are "Gamers" or "internet" users, this is their right? Am I guilty of the google fu? fuck yes. Do I flex my e-peen with it? Fuck no. (well occasionally to my mother in a non sexual way because I want to prove I am worthy of being born....)

Back to Evil:

To say the Gaming Industry/culture doesn't foster immaturity, racism, blatant disregard for others, and a free pass to act like an ape is ignorance.

To say it is because of the demographic is factual, but factual only because we are too pussy to do something about our antiquated ways.

Evil you can argue against me all day long with facts, and percentages, and numbers... but all I hear is an unwillingness to actually take into consideration that regardless of #'s the situation is harboring more fucked up shit.

If we all stopped eating everything infront of us, we wouldn't be called the fattest country in the world. Problem is... instead of trying to help ourselves, we make more McDonalds, cheaper happy meals, and add an extra shake for free on Sundays, because "In God We Trust". And then we look at statistics and say, WELL OF COURSE WE ARE FAT.

Everything in life takes personal and self motivated change. You can call it a soapbox, I call it evolution.
 
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