A question to all girl gamers...

[Meemaimoh]

We don't have to be gentled into gaming. But we do want our tastes (which don't always include flowers and the color pink) to be included.

Yeah, what Caenis said! Also paraphrasing Azaradel -

...female gamers [do not] have to be eased into games through male relatives or casual games...

My first game was Sim City. Letting Godzilla destroy Tokyo or creating my own slum city were my favorite scenarios. Soon after I learned the joy of killing with Doom. I still do the occasional Sims variation but for the most part I want to kill critters. No one got me into games. I found them on my own and introduced the males in my family and circle of friends to them, but no one really took to them like I did. I'm the only one that played so much I've gone from being a right-handed mouser to left because I so over-used my right forearm and elbow playing Doom and all the Quakes.

I'm also a girly girl. I wear makeup, own and wear high heels, obsess over my hair, don't like bugs, like to shop and get pretty new clothes, and cry at the bloody ending montage of the movie Love Actually. I listen to loud, rude music and tonight have stayed up way too late killing critters.

I appreciate people wanting to know about us and what makes my gender tick but I think it may be too easy to stereotype us into being all one thing when in actuality, we're all things, just like the males are.

I'm not a girly girl, but I cried at Love Actually. Nothing wrong with that! It's a great movie!

I, too, kind of resent the whole "must have been a male relative" mentality. I guess it was my Dad that got me into gaming, but certainly not actively - I remember being about six years old and he'd close the door and forbid me to enter when he was playing Wolfenstein. Still, I was playing Space Invaders on DOS with my (little!) brother when I was about three years old, and have never really stopped.

 

[Auric]

Thank god, I'm not a female but I thought this was another "Women are oppressed in gaming thread"

Top work OP for creating a good girl directed thread, I sure am sick of the aforementioned threads.

This

 

[Doctor VonSexMachine]

The learning company.
Why would girls react any differently to this form of entertainment then males?

 

[Skinny Razor]

... such a "Boys club" that spends millions on jiggle physics.

Ball sacks jiggle too.

What, you think guys aren't looking at that too?

 

[the_bearpelt]

I grew up with only Pokemon on the Gameboy Color and eventually on the GBA. After that, I "grew out of gaming", or just Pokemon, in 5th grade. Then I met a friend who's a huge gamer and she showed me HALO the right way. (I'd played it once before, but the person who introduced me to it completely ruined it at the time for me and I thought it was something completely different and absolutely despised it.)
After that I just sort of became interested, slowly gaining more knowledge and only a little more skill. That was last year, altho technically I got a PS2 at my house about 4-5 years ago, but I don't really consider myself a gamer back then. The only games I played were Burnout Revenge, Kingdom Hearts, and SoulCalibur 3.

 

[Paksenarrion]

Actually, I started out as a boy, but when I realized how much nicer guys are to girls, I took a dip in the Spring of Drowned Girl, and voila! Instant boobies!

...I just have to stay away from warm water...

<__>

@_@

 

[antikrists]

It started when I was in grade 8, I think. Me and my friend played Mortal Kombat 2 on her brother's console, watched him playing Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2, and solved puzzles in Silent Hill in his stead. I didn't had computer or console of my own, so that was pretty much all of gaming I did until I bought a computer in 2001, after getting into university. I still wasn't too much into gaming, just played stuff like Quake 2, Age of Empires and Heroes of Might & Magic every now and then. I wasn't aware that girl being interested in games was something out of "normal" until quite late, heh.
Anyhow, ~4 years later I got addicted to MMOs, such as Lineage 2 and World of Warcraft and around the same time I really got into playing normal RPGs (Neverwinter Nights, Fallout, Elder Scrolls and alike, and realised it was the genre I liked the best).

That's about it, I guess.

 

[Andalusa]

I actually blame my dad, he was always playing Quake, Unreal Tournament and Diablo on the PC, I was curious and had a quick play, and from then I was hooked.

 

[Miskin Wolf]

Ha. I remember being a kid and playing the N64 on a fighting game and my sister kickin my ass like it was nothing when no one else could beat me. It use to irk me, but now i laugh about it. And i love playing online and a femme is on and the guys are all sexist and like 'ignore her' and she pwns them. i die laughing. Some of the best gamers i have ever met are femmes. But my sister ended up losing interest in games but she likes WoW. I have another sister who loves diablo. I ahd an exgirlfriend who got into Halo just cause so many played it, and she accidenatlly assassinated me in mid air. that was funny. My current girlfriend is addicted to Guild Wars. She got into after hearing me and a friend talk about it and hearing my story about the two lesbian i was playing with.

 

[Dr. Paine]

firstly, spyro and twisted metal are both awesome games and secondly, you had playstaions in your grocery store? thats amazing!

Yep xD Sadly, the things didn't last long... but by then I didn't give a crap, I'd figured out how to beat Spyro in under 24 hours (a huge accomplishment for an eight year old...)

 

[thinkingaboutnothing]

I guess different genres came from different people. I remember having a Mario Bros game on the computer around the mid 90's, and a friend getting me addicted to Sims, an uncle playing a strategic game, Dad playing flight sims, it wasn't until I got to Uni, made a bunch of geeks my mates, started living with them in my second year, and got heavily into FPS. One of the roommates was very good at cod4, the kind who will only knife, just to up the challenge. Having him for a tutor was fantastic, and I thank him for whatever skills I have now, Even if I've only played FPS's from COD4 onwards, so still pretty young in gamer experiance.

 

[AngloDoom]

...What got you into gaming? Were you raised with it or played it with your brother(s)?

For me, it was the other way around. My older sister got me into the original Mario Kart and Street Fighter so she could kick my ass. What got her into games was the same thing that gets most people into games: parents bought her a SNES and she played it. That is all.