Lets talk about Girls that play video games

[Clearing the Eye]

Haha, I still got ten years on you AND I saw Friends on Nick at Night last week DDD:

You so old! Makes me feel better at least. By comparison, I'm one of those silly, immature kids, yay

But if it makes you feel better, you look quite young in your profile pic. Can't even see your walking frame XP

 

[DreamaSkylar]

What do you think of female gamers? Do you care that there are girls out there playing video games? Does it not matter at all?
What do you think of girl gamers, girls that go out of their way to identify themselves as female?

I think that some women identify themselves as "girl gamers" because they might want to create a sense of community among other women who also game. I sometimes tell people on forums that I'm a "gamer girl" to try to reach out towards other women out there who might also like gaming, so that I can develop friendships. I mean, obviously you also have the attention-whore-female-gamer archetype that tries to take advantage of the "girl gamer" title, but you shouldn't lump all women who use the "gamer girl" tag as something that just immature, attention-seekers use.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

One cant help but be jealous of "nerd girls". Even if they aren't attractive, all they have to do is walk into a comic shop of a gaming place and every guy gets on his knees for them because they are so female starved. Why inst there a female equivalent of the comic shop, where any guy can walk in and have all the girls fighting over him?

Go to Curves. Gone to pick people up from there before (usually my mum), if a male past the age of consent finds themselves standing still too long in a curves they will invariably be set upon by every single woman in there

 

[lord.jeff]

The 'grrl gamer' is no more annoying then the so called 'hardcore gamer' both use trivial things so they can feel superior and neither are worth listening to.

 

[Torrasque]

What do you think of female gamers? Do you care that there are girls out there playing video games? Does it not matter at all?
What do you think of girl gamers, girls that go out of their way to identify themselves as female?

I think that some women identify themselves as "girl gamers" because they might want to create a sense of community among other women who also game. I sometimes tell people on forums that I'm a "gamer girl" to try to reach out towards other women out there who might also like gaming, so that I can develop friendships. I mean, obviously you also have the attention-whore-female-gamer archetype that tries to take advantage of the "girl gamer" title, but you shouldn't lump all women who use the "gamer girl" tag as something that just immature, attention-seekers use.

Oh I'm sorry, that is just me being vague.
I tried in my original post, but I don't think I made it clear enough, so I'll clarify myself here.
I consider a girl that plays games, to be a female gamer. Nothing special about her, just the fact that she is in fact a her.
I consider a girl that is an attention whore, to be a girl gamer. This is an identity that she attributes to herself and is all about attracting attention to the fact that she is in fact a girl that plays games.
The two are NOT the same in any way, shape, or form. One is just another person that plays games, while the other is someone that wants to make a big deal out of the fact that they play games.

Reading my original post again, yeah I was pretty vague. Sorry =X

 

[Dan Steele]

I forget where I saw it (pretty sure it was somewhere on these boards) but I saw someone say "it is sad that guy gamers say they want girl gamers for girlfriends, but will still say to girls playing games with them, 'get back in the kitchen! make me a sandwhich!' and many other sexist things". Which is true. Whenever I am playing a multiplayer game and a girl talks, most of the guys freak out and go "zomg a girl" and will turn into sexist pigs. It is really sad.

But anyways, why is it that there are so many girl gamers that identify themselves as girl gamers?
I don't really consider it a big deal to see a girl playing a game, nor do I think it a big deal for a girl to excel at a game. For me, a gamer is someone that plays games, their gender is irrelevant. But you see this on youtube a lot--yes youtube is a cesspool I know, but you see it other places as well--entire channels where girl gamers draw attention to the fact that they are female and playing video games.

Case and point:
<youtube=mILjXYbQupw>

The top comment is as follows:
<quote=Eumenorrhea>If a guy did a similar video no&#65279; one would give a flying fuck about their gaming setup, whether they built it themselves or what fucking pictures they drew and put on their wall above it. The only reason people watch this and give a shit is because she has breasts and she knows it. And this is why I have no respect for anyone who calls themselves "girl gamers". It's something you label yourself to get ALOT of male attention.
And I have to agree with what this guy. Most of my experience with female gamers involve them shouting from the tallest mountain "HEY. I AM A GIRL THAT PLAYS GAMES. ISN'T THAT THE SEXIEST THING EVER?!", and it is really annoying. When I played WoW, some female members didn't get as much flak for fucking up, as the guys did. Even when I play CoD or Halo and a girl on one team is doing poorly, most of the people will either say "its ok, you're a girl" or just continue flirting with her; thats right continue flirting -_-

So my fellow Escapists, what do you think about all of this?
What do you think of female gamers? Do you care that there are girls out there playing video games? Does it not matter at all?
What do you think of girl gamers, girls that go out of their way to identify themselves as female?

Disclaimer: Obviously not all female gamers are like this. I know many female gamers that don't identify themselves as girl gamers, they just enjoy games

For the love of god, don't bring the Felicia Day vs. Ryan Perez discussion here.

I don't mind female gamers, but I do get annoyed when they start acting like they are better because they are female. That is probably what creates all the sexist comments. I like it when they just play the game like the rest of us

 

[Vault101]

That makes sense. The girls would be more likely to pick up on the "she's trying to use her boobs to get her loot" thing since most guys are blinded by boobs. I guess it is the same as a guy trying to get in because how much he can bench; which would be absolutely hilarious imo.

huh...commitment, I couldnt handle that, I get all worried over the obligation to "not suck" when I'm on freindly terms with strangers (in multiplayer)

anyway I think girls themselfs could also be more hostile to the "grrrl gamur" than guys because they are imune to "omg hot"

 

[Rule Britannia]

I don't care as long as the girl doesn't label themself as a "girl gamer" the second she does that, to me, she deserves whatever comes at her...no sick perverted pun intended.

I am a "Gamer" not a "Guy Gamer".

If female gamer's never state they are female I will treat them no differently than to somebody else in the game lobby...Unless they're being an obnoxious asshole and calling me a "tryhard" or something of that nature, there are no rules from there on. No lines can be crossed

 

[Sansha]

Oh WHOOOOOO it ain't the Escapist without yet ANOTHER one of these threads.

Just for discussion, I don't care about what gender you are. And yes, gaming is a predominately male centered audience, so the female that comes by is sure to get noticed. But honestly, I don't care. Not one bit.

I really really don't want it to turn into "another one of those threads" =|
I know it will probably turn into one, but I REALLY hope it doesn't...

Well, you started it, and frankly this discussion can just fuck off.

There are stereotypes of both genders that do exist - the stupid pseudo-slut gamer girl whoring for attention in much worse examples than this, as well as the lazy-ass frat-boy Xbox demographic and the 12-year-old mic screamer.
I play games with a fair enough of females, and I only associate with the ones that deliberately choose not to exploit their gender for attention, just like I don't associate with the same level of immaturity in males.

Oh, and you're frankly sexist for immediately coming to the conclusion that this girl is using her tits to whore for attention. This girl happens to be genuinely interested in games and has had her setup requested, so. There it is.
As someone else said much better than I could have put it, you just bounced right onto that conclusion yourself.

The bottom line is there are males who play games, and females who play games. I disregard the term 'gamer girl' because that trivializes both the person and the hobby.
There'll always be negative examples of people in every community, just like their are good examples, and I happen to think this woman is in the latter category.

Can we seriously please not have this discussion again?

 

[Hagi]

Just come play EvE Online

There's so few girls playing that game that chances of you meeting them are quite extremely small. Then just join a corp that advertises itself by the amount of hate they generate in the community (they do exist).

You should probably get a girl-free gaming experience that way.

There's not so many cooties in EvE. Many other cool things though.

 

[Realitycrash]

]I draw the line where the girl is obviously using it to gain attention.
When I say "I have several female gamer friends", I don't use that as a "woah now, I have girl gamer friends, so I'm OBVIOUSLY not sexist". I hate people that immediately throw up that kind of defence as if it makes everything they say perfectly reasonable and not inflammatory at all.

I agree there

[quote/]I say that I have several female gamer friends because they are my proof that there are girls that play games and don't go out of their way to get attention. 2 of them are perfectly fine being called guys and will only correct people when directly asked.

yeah...its kind of silly though that we need to "prove" things...which isnt helped by "omg god guys have you ever seen a gamer girl?}

I'm not exactally familiar with WOW but I didnt know guilds and rading was such serious buisness

also are the majority of girls healers?

[quote/] What I find ironic, is that when the officers convened to decide whether she'd get in or not, the 2 girl officers immediately shot her down. The other officers didn't object because they didn't like her gear and skill set up, but I still find it funny that the 2 girls (which you'd think would want another girl in a male saturated game) didn't want anything to deal with her.

well I figured that would be pretty obvious why....she obviously thourght she could get through based on her gender alone...and the other two were like "yeah...no"[/quote]I'll be brief in my explanation:

There are basically 2 kinds of guilds in WoW: casual guilds and serious guilds. The casual guilds are where people do dungeons, leveling, and hang out together. Its basically a group of friends to do stuff with. Most of the guilds in WoW are casual guilds. Serious guilds do all of that, but focus on raiding. The world's "best" guilds have a very rigorous application process to get the best of the best applying to their guild. Most of the things that they check for don't actually filter out good players from bad ones, but that is a different topic I don't feel like getting into. [/quote]

The worlds "best" guilds don't actually always have a very serious application. You know of GameSense, perhaps? It used to (I don't know, any more, I don't play) to be in the top 10 (I heard even top 3 in EU) PvP-Guilds in the world.
Well, then my sister started Project Angel, which was basically gathering a full female PvP-Battlegrounds team. They requirement of Battlegrounds Rating was 1700 for them, and 2.400 for the Guys (1700 you could PUG with some luck, 2.400...Not so much).
And the girls flocked, and the guild loved it (free girls to dream about, free publicity for the guild on an international level).
So yes, it was pretty much "We are a top-tier world-guild, but you're a girl, so play with us".

Here's the original recruitment-post: http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/202712-%E2%99%A5-a-outland-gamesense-angels-female-pvp-project-needs-you-%E2%99%A5/

 

[Wintermoot]

some of them are well behaved and could pass as one of the guys
others are attention whores that have stuff like "I AM A FEMALE GAMER DON'T HIT ON ME YES I EXIST NO I WON'T ACCEPT YOUR FRIEND REQUEST XD" they usually suck at games.

personally I don't care who I,m playing against a enemy player is a enemy player.

 

[Vault101]

I don't care as long as the girl doesn't label themself as a "girl gamer" the second she does that, to me, she deserves whatever comes at her...no sick perverted pun intended.

I am a "Gamer" not a "Guy Gamer".

If female gamer's never state they are female I will treat them no differently than to somebody else in the game lobby...Unless they're being an obnoxious asshole and calling me a "tryhard" or something of that nature, there are no rules from there on. No lines can be crossed

thats the thing though.....I get the feeling just having the "audacity" to indicate your female or be attractive is going to get you the "grrl gamur" label...unfairly

 

[Torrasque]

]I draw the line where the girl is obviously using it to gain attention.
When I say "I have several female gamer friends", I don't use that as a "woah now, I have girl gamer friends, so I'm OBVIOUSLY not sexist". I hate people that immediately throw up that kind of defence as if it makes everything they say perfectly reasonable and not inflammatory at all.

I agree there

[quote/]I say that I have several female gamer friends because they are my proof that there are girls that play games and don't go out of their way to get attention. 2 of them are perfectly fine being called guys and will only correct people when directly asked.

yeah...its kind of silly though that we need to "prove" things...which isnt helped by "omg god guys have you ever seen a gamer girl?}

I'm not exactally familiar with WOW but I didnt know guilds and rading was such serious buisness

also are the majority of girls healers?

[quote/] What I find ironic, is that when the officers convened to decide whether she'd get in or not, the 2 girl officers immediately shot her down. The other officers didn't object because they didn't like her gear and skill set up, but I still find it funny that the 2 girls (which you'd think would want another girl in a male saturated game) didn't want anything to deal with her.

well I figured that would be pretty obvious why....she obviously thourght she could get through based on her gender alone...and the other two were like "yeah...no"

I'll be brief in my explanation:

There are basically 2 kinds of guilds in WoW: casual guilds and serious guilds. The casual guilds are where people do dungeons, leveling, and hang out together. Its basically a group of friends to do stuff with. Most of the guilds in WoW are casual guilds. Serious guilds do all of that, but focus on raiding. The world's "best" guilds have a very rigorous application process to get the best of the best applying to their guild. Most of the things that they check for don't actually filter out good players from bad ones, but that is a different topic I don't feel like getting into. [/quote]

The worlds "best" guilds don't actually always have a very serious application. You know of GameSense, perhaps? It used to (I don't know, any more, I don't play) to be in the top 10 (I heard even top 3 in EU) PvP-Guilds in the world.
Well, then my sister started Project Angel, which was basically gathering a full female PvP-Battlegrounds team. They requirement of Battlegrounds Rating was 1700 for them, and 2.400 for the Guys (1700 you could PUG with some luck, 2.400...Not so much).
And the girls flocked, and the guild loved it (free girls to dream about, free publicity for the guild on an international level).
So yes, it was pretty much "We are a top-tier world-guild, but you're a girl, so play with us".

Here's the original recruitment-post: http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/202712-%E2%99%A5-a-outland-gamesense-angels-female-pvp-project-needs-you-%E2%99%A5/[/quote]Of course there are some exceptions to the "rigorous application process" rule, but PvE guilds typically have higher standards than PvP guilds. The stakes are highter after all, we're talking about loot here!
That particular case seems more of a publicity stunt and test than a serious guild, lol.

 

[Tilted_Logic]

I watched that video, and didn't really find it to be proving your point. Sure any female can use their gender for extra attention, but the girl in this video is not drawing attention to the fact she's female. She's not wearing anything revealing, hell, she is barely in the video herself aside from some face time.

I'm female, and proceeded to go through a few more of her videos; came across this one, which should be of use to the topic:

All in all, I completely agree and loathe it when I find females gamers treated so vastly different. I had the luxury of being in a lot of guilds/groups that were full of females, and there was minimal exposure to intolerance/flirting. On the flip side, I've definitely taken notice of certain women using their gender to benefit themselves or manipulate the men in the game. Special treatment is just /sigh worthy, but it happens. Don't agree with it, but at this point unless I'm among friends, I generally don't speak at all so as to avoid the issue.

 

[MiriaJiyuu]

I identify myself as a gamer, it is part of who I am, the fact that I am also a girl is irrelevant to the fact I am a gamer. I am a gamer and a girl, not a girl gamer.

 

[Yali]

In my experience it's just a matter of age. I myself am 40+, female and have been playing games for over 20 years. Whenever I play online it's with a group of people that I've known for a long time. Half male, half female (just like real life, imagine that). We usually join up in a guild and play away. Recruitment is funny tho. We get these chick gamers/attention whores occasionally who try to pull their "Look I'm a guuuurl, am I not just too cute" thing on us, hilarity ensues and fun is had by all. So... purely age-related issue from what I can tell.

CAPTCHA: for sure

 

[Blow_Pop]

I identify as either girl gamer or female gamer in conjunction with avid book reader/bibliophile(depending on my mood) and a variety of other terms to describe myself. And I do it simply because for some reason people like to presume(not just when I'm talking gaming or what not)that I am male so I like to make it explicitly clear that I am NOT male. Though I will say usually when I identify as "girl gamer" or "female gamer" there is USUALLY a comma in between the two words. But I started using it because of the whole "girls don't play video games thing" that started long ago on the net, so it's just kind of become part of me I guess. I've never expected any special treatment though. I do expect that if I am talking about a game I'm playing that people will respect that I have some inkling of WHAT I am talking about and not tell me "oh you're a girl you have no idea what you're talking about/completely wrong". Though unfortunately the latter reaction/s seem to happen more often than not...still. One of these days.......maybe it will stop happening. As such, I get defensive about me being a gamer girl so inevitably most of my online profiles somewhere in them have the phrase "Yes I AM a gamer girl" or some variation of that in them as well as an update as to what I'm playing and my disclaimer of "I will NOT touch an MMO with a 10 foot pole because they are NOT my types of games" so that people will stop assuming that me saying I'm a gamer means that I play WoW(nothing against anyone who enjoys it. Music is amazing and the scenery and such is beautiful as with most Blizzard games I just don't enjoy it and am tired of people trying to force me into playing it with talk of how "awesome" it is).

Yes, girls drawing attention to themselves by pointing out they're gamers can be annoying (I guess... I don't care, so I have a hard time understanding what the fuss is about, honestly), but this issue wouldn't be discussed anywhere near as much if guys could simply grow the fuck up and get a handle on their hormones.

y'know the only time this annoys me is when it's the girls who (are basically just attention whoring) constantly (or almost always) throwing it out that they are gamer girls (of course these are usually the girls who hold the controllers upside down or don't have things plugged in OR in rarer instances but I've still seen it happen, think that dating a guy who obsessively plays video games makes them a "gamer girl" and a lot that I've come across use the "gamer girl" to get things or what not. If you are a female and play games great, do it because you enjoy them and not because you can get people to do stuff for you because of it, I got gifted a shit ton of games this past holiday season on Steam but it wasn't because I asked for them, apart from putting them on my wishlist that is, but because it is people I play games with who know I enjoy games and have a limited budget and wanted to give me something new to play despite how much I protested because of how behind I am in my gaming).

 

[Kitten DeLux]

We probably play against real gamer girls all the time but they keep their mouths shut because they are here to play games.
To many games you get obnoxious girls that just love telling you how much of a gamer girl they are and often suck harder than a 12 year old.