Further Discussion: gamer girls.

[WillSimplyBe]

Wait... The Sims and Animal Crossing have a gender prerequisite!?!?!? Crap, do I have to turn them in?

lol, Anyway, aside from my love of those games. as a guy, I have no problem with girls gaming and being better than me or anything.... In fact, in my circle of gamers, 90% of the people are fems anyway...and most of em are better than me, I'd say, lol.

 

[Sissas]

Grr, good to see you noticed too.

I spend lots of time at a videogame store where some of my friends work or have worked. They know me for almost 10 years so they are really civilized on the "games for girls" issue. But throughout the years, when I meet people - men - and tell them I play games, I tend to get 2 differente reactions: the "yeah right" look and the ":O pinch me!!" look. The second one is really cool to get the first one makes me want to kill people. What's the big deal?

Although when I look around at my girl friends, who don't play games at all, I kind of understand why the games for girls are labeled as such; they usually like intuitive puzzle like games and tend to be attracted to covers with lots of colours and cool doll-like things. It's sad but from a merchandising point of view it's kind of understandable. I guess those girls herselves feel kind of inhibited from the "boys games(?)" and pushed towards these colourful repetitive games; I bet any girl would like any "boy game" if she accepted the idea that she is indeed allowed to play it without losing her feminine side

 

[Danglybits]

I think that the display in question has more to do with your local Blockbuster and less to do with the gaming world. Yes it can be appallingly sexist at times but it IS getting better. I'm just wondering how many times we have to have this conversation on the Escapist.

 

[NezumiiroKitsune]

Butch collection of pixels, I'm amused. They aim the "games for girls" shelves not at hardcore girl gamers but at the more easily persuaded younger generation or female casual gamers. Social stereotypes are unavoidable in marketing, because a stereotype is exactly what it says on the moniker, an accurate representation of a generalisation of the target market. You yourself said you are a minority, hardcore gamers are mostly male, which means the market will tender slightly in the favour of (See Samus). However this is all marketing, and not a slight on you personally. You'll notice how they go little further than selling to "straight adolescent buckets of testosterone and simple mindedness", which is just as dire sexist stereotype.

Female hardcore gamers are a rare thing, to those of the gaming community who are not foamy twitchy monstrositys of humanity squealing noob down a spit flayed headset, your a valued and honoured member of the sub-culture. Sex, ethnicity, belief shouldn't come into how your viewed as gamer, only your skill and good nature / sense of humour.

 

[Sissas]

I don't know what the big deal is. I'm a 29 year old woman who plays and has a higher gamerscore than most of the guys I come across in 360 forums. What does it matter if they want to market a game about Barbie or Bratz for little girls? Who else would buy the games? Little boys? Grown men or women? No. Girls. I think the problem here is actually that some of you use the word girl to describe yourself. Have you gone through puberty? Then you are no longer a girl. Use chick if you must, use young lady, but for the love of god STOP REFERRING TO YOURSELF AS A GIRL.

I guess the thing is people expect small girls to play these "games for girls", asthey expect boys to play "games for boys"; expect teenage boys to play "games for men" and teenagem girls to play ..."games for girls". And, guess what!, expect grown women to play games for girls and grown men to play gams for men. You clearly had a great environment when it comes to how you were looked at growing up, being a girl who played games. I must say I HAVE got weird looks from cashiers when buying some games and have been disregarded in conversations about games with guys. You know what? Because they expected me to play only these "games for girls" and therefore being way out of their league; eventually, as a conversation evolved, they would realise they were wrong; nevertheless the fact is that most people don't expect a girl to play a shooter. But I'm realising people's mentalities have been changing for the last years, or maybe it's an age thing!

 

[mooncalf]

Way to divide and alienate your demographic, marketeers!

 

[Andalusa]

Yes, all of us girly gamers love flowers and ponies and whatever the hell else there is.
We all go round giggling pretending to not know what's what wearing bright pink lipstick and frilly fucking skirts. The only games we play are for the Wii or just some stupid thing.
Jesus Christ.
Girls exist, some game, we are actually human.
Some of us like FPS s, some of us like bloody Animal Crossing or whatever.
Get over that fact, the girls have, we seriously don't care.
Take ^that^ however you want I'm in a bad mood, sue me.

 

[SimuLord]

My wife and I were in Best Buy last Friday night and in the PC game section she saw something like "Pet Vet: Horsez" or something equally ridiculous and said "who buys this shit?" I said "believe it or not, those games are big sellers to girls age nine to twelve." My wife said "No wonder so many girls hate games if that's what they're getting. When I was 12 my mom got me Starcraft." Keep in mind my wife plays WoW and EVE and L4D and TF2 and generally acts gender-neutral online...it's not until she goes on Vent that the guys realize they've been pwned by a woman.

Later on that same trip we were in the DS section and my wife said "Look at all this crap. Is there more than one game on each of these display racks worth even pirating, never mind buying?" We went rack-by-rack and found eight good games on nine 40-title display racks. A signal to noise ratio of 44:1, but someone's got to be buying all those Imagine games because Ubisoft keeps shitting them out.

I may have mentioned this already, but I love my wife. Any time you can say "you're l33t" and get a kiss for the compliment, that's heaven right there.

 

[sprohm]

thats just the problem with this kind of shit, when someone hears of a girl gamer, they immediately think:
"Oh, that chick says she is a gamer. what she means by that is probably that she enjoys playing bejewled or nintendogs inbetween doing the laundry, making food, and gossiping for hours about fashion with her friends."
thats the problem with this country (america), 86% of all people are retards.

I'm sure you have something to back your statistics there -_-

When I hear gamer girl I think of a 10 year old. When I hear some chick on a forum saying gamer girl, I immediately think "emotionally stunted attention wh*re."

I've never met a guy who makes threads about being "gamer boys" or introduces himself saying "I'm a guy who games."

And I happen to like Bejeweled and Nintendogs. When I need a break from serious gaming I pull out my DS. And I do laundry and make food. I'm a mom.

Sorry, I think you mis-understood.
what I mean is that alot of the non-gamer population would stereotype girls( or women) who like games as
just casual gamers, and who see anything resembling a T rated game and say: "Oh, gross."
usually, when someone says she is a "Gamer Girl," I personally see them as more hardcore gamers, seeing as nowadays, almost everyone plays casual games.

 

[NezumiiroKitsune]

To anyone who watched that video by ssskiner, I highly recommend her other stuff too, she does some awesome vlogs and game reviews. So go subscribe, shes kick ass.

 

[experiment0789]

personally I am totally indifferent to whether the person I am talking to or playing against a boy or girl gamer. I do know what you mean,I was playing Halo 3 team social one day,and the people on my team and the other team were not very good. There was one person on the opponents team that was slaughtering almost every person they found,then I hear someone on my team ask"is that a Girl"? Then some one on the other team confirms that that person is a Girl. I asked "Does it really matter if that person is a girl are not"? He responded "of courses it does, I need to know if I lost to a girl".Why do people think it make you a worse person,gamer or whatever,If you lose to a Girl!?!? Times have changed,some,if not all, girl are not those helpless damsels in distress you see in old movies. The whole man are supposed to be better at things then women is not true any more. If you lose to them It is not an insult saying your not a man, it just means you lost to someone who is better than you at the game.

 

[Rascarin]

I actually watched the whole of that video.

I feel physically sick as a result, and feel like I need to gouge out my brain with a melon baller. I mean, I knew there was some shit on the market, but I didn't realise it was that bad. Honestly, "Hey, Girlfriend!" ?? Seriously? How about, "Fuck off and die."

 

[6_Qubed]

I suppose it's sad that I registered to this forum just to reply to this topic, but...

Personally, I don't feel like I'm holding down an entire gender of gamer by playing my BIG MANLY SHOOTERS GRR HAHA RED BULL TESTOSTERONE AND BICEPS.

...

*ahem*

Lemme start over. I only ever saw my girlfriend, back when she was my girlfriend, play fighting games. And rarely as the little girly characters.

And personally, I tend to play as female characters myself whenever I can, because it's nice to see a woman in charge, or they have a particular skillset I'm more comfortable with, most games it doesn't make much difference anyway, and I really like staring at their t-

...

I should start over again. "Girly" Gamers =/= Female Gamers, and they have as much right to play "big manly" videogames as Male Gamers.

Also, I love females in general a whole huggy bunch. (At least I would, if they'd let me. I hate being single sometimes.)

 

[RhinoTuna]

it always upsets me when Samus emerges from her suit after a final smash ready to strike the sexiest pose possible in her more-than-skin-tight lack of suit.

Why does that upset you? Who bloody well cares. I don't get all pissy when i realise i don't look quite as cool as King Dedede when lying down. Yes, there's a stereotype, but it's been around forever and it will stay around forever when it comes to women in games. The same goes for men, you've got your girly men (Final Fantasy, rarararar etc etc) and the big burly bastards (Gears of War, every dude in Street Fighter 4) and i just embrace it. I choose the biggest, coolest looking bastard (Jack-6 on Tekken 6 for example) and have a little fun.

That we as gamers are a misunderstood minority whose skills are always in question and tastes are also misrepresented?

I agree your tastes are misrepresented, but your skills in question? Maybe that was the case years ago, but i don't think so anymore. When it comes to games, you've got the people that can pick them up easily, and others that just can't grasp some aspects, there's no real gender issue anymore (This is mere speculation amongst my own gamer friends, i have ZERO evidence to back up any of my claims).

And guys, what do you think when you see a chick with a DS in her back pocket

I think she wasted her money, but that's just me.

or when you find out the dude you?ve been losing is actually a girl? Why is sexism running so rampant in the gaming world?

Sexism is rampant because well, we're better than you. Nah just kidding I don't really know but it's been around forever and i guess it's hard for us males to let it go. I know if i do lose to a girl and a few mates are around when it happens i'll get the "dude you just lost to a girl!" jokes but i know with my friends they don't really mean it.

In the end i think that gamers are just gamers and while there are fewer female gamers than male gamers, it's all rather meshed together and gamers don't really care what gender you are (except maybe the perverts).

 

[The Black Adder]

Home for spring break and determined to get none of that ?exercise? BS, I found myself patrolling the scarcly stocked selves of my local Blockbuster. It?d been a while since my last visit and I had been cryptically warned that the setup had changed.

This was not a pleasant visit. Aside from being bombarded on all sides by Twilight displays I found that a lot of the games that I SWORE I had seen there were gone. But that wasn't the biggest issue, hooo-no....

In the center of the middle game aisle there was a shelf decked in bright pink with the label ?games for girls!? in a sickening flowery ?you-go-girl!? type font. And what was on the shelf? Wii Fit, some random veterinarian game, The Sims, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, and Cooking Mama (I wish I was kidding about this.) That was it.

Needless to say as a female gamer I was more than a little miffed. I know we?ve always gotten the short end of the stick (I remember how excited I was to find out that in Pokemon Crystal you could play as a girl and thus would no longer be forced to name my male characters ?Hannah? and pretend she was just a very butch collection of pixels) and while SSBB is still one of my favorite games to kick ass at it always upsets me when Samus emerges from her suit after a final smash ready to strike the sexiest pose possible in her more-than-skin-tight lack of suit.

So here?s my question, girls do you ever feel like I do? That we as gamers are a misunderstood minority whose skills are always in question and tastes are also misrepresented? And guys, what do you think when you see a chick with a DS in her back pocket or when you find out the dude you?ve been losing is actually a girl? Why is sexism running so rampant in the gaming world?

A little off topic but I used to work for Blockbuster and they do have a horrible section of games. And they always get rid of the good games and keep the popular crap that I don't like or they order 15 copies of the worst games (Who the hell is going to rent 15 copies of Bratz?) and one copy of the one that I want to play. I used to use my rental allotment (5 rentals a week) to rent 5 games at a time, so I played pretty much every PS2 and Gamecube game that even looked remotely interesting. I used to take the old games that they were going to throw out and not put out for sale as a used game. Anyway, back on topic, I don't care who I'm playing with male or female. But I must say the way women are portrayed in that gamegurl crap in GamePro is fucking atrocious. I had bite my tongue when they featured a few page segment of these "gurls" that played Xbox in a skimpy negligee like it was a Maxim shoot. But it didn't matter, because some fat girl wrote in and bitched them out an issue or two later.

 

[Hellebore]

I think I love you cainx10a.

 

[TheEvilDuck]

i walked into my grocery store and can you believe it, they had RAZORS GEARED TOWARDS MEN!!!! What's next???? Underwear for men!????? I am livid.

Cute. But there's a difference, why can't a girl play "games designed for men." What about them makes them manly or even exclusionary (I can't believe that's a word)?

I know that I for one am not going to walk around in boxers or shaving with a giant electric razor, but why can't I play Bio-shock or Gears of War or anything that isn't the Sims or Cooking Mama???

 

[Elurindel]

So here?s my question, girls do you ever feel like I do? That we as gamers are a misunderstood minority whose skills are always in question and tastes are also misrepresented? And guys, what do you think when you see a chick with a DS in her back pocket or when you find out the dude you?ve been losing is actually a girl? Why is sexism running so rampant in the gaming world?

Other than what's already been posted, I can offer one possible explanation. I know I certainly went through my childhood under the strong impression that girls didn't play games. Obviously I know better now and I'm glad that I do.
Still, one of the factors that did nothing to solidify my childhood impression of girls and gaming were the shows for gamers that they'd show on children's TV as after-school entertainment.
The problem with these shows was that they very rarely had girls on. The only girl (I suppose they'd have been seen as a grown-up at that point) would most likely have been the eye candy presenter who would lean over the kid's shoulders and coo over how pretty and colourful the graphics were. This would always make me wonder just where they'd picked up such a ditzy woman, and whether or not this was the only opinion they had about games.
Now doubt other people have had similar impressions growing up, if not from programmes on TV, most likely another media or family source.

Not necessarily the sole factor in this case, but certainly a hefty contribution.

 

[manimani]

it does get truly irritating. If it wasn't for GamerChix on Xbox live, i don't think id really play online at all.

Though, to be fair, i have met a few guys online that were decent. They offered to play fairly and not go easy on me because im a girl. But the majority are completely annoying.

 

[Meta Like That]

i walked into my grocery store and can you believe it, they had RAZORS GEARED TOWARDS MEN!!!! What's next???? Underwear for men!????? I am livid.

Cute. But there's a difference, why can't a girl play "games designed for men." What about them makes them manly or even exclusionary (I can't believe that's a word)?

I know that I for one am not going to walk around in boxers or shaving with a giant electric razor, but why can't I play Bio-shock or Gears of War or anything that isn't the Sims or Cooking Mama???

You make it sound like there's an integrated taser effect in the controller whenever you try to play them.