Women in Gaming White Papers 84
Many thanks to GameJournalism.com for the heads up on two white papers put out last month by the Women in Gaming Special Interest Group. The two papers (both excellent reads) are Chicks with Joysticks: An exploration of women in Gaming, and Why are there so few Women in Games? In a related topic, TerraNova has a piece on the Women 's Game Conference and MMOGs.
Re:Is it just me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Resident Evil uses female characters to emphasize how weak you are, to highten the fright. Imagine our protagonist from Metal Gear in this zombie game. All of a sudden it goes from scary to moderately funny.
If you wanted to point to a game thats sliding over toward women, look no further than Final Fantasy. The series has slowly moved from Saving the Princess and the World by Restoring the Crystal's Light to androgynous characters fighting a war for feeling, and playing dressup. You can say what you want about condesending stereotypes, but its not like placing a woman in place of rambo dissovles the masculine angle. It takes a different kind of game to directly appeal to girls and women.
Why fewer women gamers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe we're kind of different.
Great articles! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm very happy that the place I work seems to have no problems hiring female programmers... but I'm still one of two female programmers on my approx 20 person team. Because there aren't that many women out there, because so many women were discouraged from technical fields for so long.
I have felt the atmosphere that discourages women frequently in gamer circles, when I'm around gamers I don't know - guys who tend to be crude, rude, and are there just to hack n'slash. My gaming circle is playing a campaign that features a lot more political intrigue, as well as has major male and female npcs who are more than window dressing. My group is nearly half and half on gender. It's wonderful.
Anyway, the more we make the reasons known, the less we'll have people claiming it's all just "well, women don't want to do that" or "men and women are wired differently, that's all".
Women are more social I would think... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll use my sister as an example, it takes her *forever* to finish an RPG. While it takes my brother and I less then a few days of hardcore playing on weekends and whatnot. My sister can't stand being alone or away from people, even just to have you in the same room as her and not even talking to her, she has this insane craving to be around people. Maybe it's that guys desire less social interaction then women? I think you also have to think about responsibilities and the real working world too.
But when I was in highschool almost no girls found video games terribly interesting to the point where it became their main hobby. They could play it on and off for a few hours with their boyfriends or whatnot but in my experience they would rather be outside or inside (parties, etc) doing something other then videogaming.
Re:Shoryukens and wedding bells (apology) (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me apologize to any woman reading for all
the comments in this thread that indicate women
gamers are unwelcome if less than attractive.
the sexes need be sexual. We need you as gamers
if only to dilute this kind of idiocy among us.
-g
Re:Shoryukens and wedding bells (Score:4, Interesting)
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I can't speak for StreetFighter, but I know a girl in Lake Oswego that could probably hand you your ass in a few rounds of Counter Strike. Some guys at the UofO and I used to run a popular CS server (before I stopped playing most video games) and this girl named 'Val' was always on. She was probably around 18 at the time and she learned quickly. Oh, I actually knew another girl too on the same server from the same area, now that I think about it. She was pretty good, too.
Other than those two, the only females I've known who did much gaming played things like Sims, EverQuest and Ultima Online. There's clearly a distinction between the interests of both sexes, for the most part. Generally, it seems that females tend to avoid hard-core puzzle, strategy and action games. Even in MMORPGs, the 'action' and the 'fighting' tends to be a secondary or tertiary requisit for them. That's a broad description based on the women I've been around and people I've talked to, but it probably isn't too far off the mark, in general.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I played The Sims Online for about a week. It wasn't for me. Boring and pointless. I gave it a chance, but it fell short (just like a lot of more male-oriented games did, like Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, ATITD, Rubies of Eventide...) The one thing that did stand out about The Sims Online, however, was the social interaction among players. Especially females. Within a few minutes of entering the game, I was invited to join a group of women who showed me the ropes, helped me out, gave me tips and eventually invited me to join their "house" (or whatever you call it in the game). The game play was painfully dull to me, but the community was unique. In most games, you won't see that kind of treatment. With most MMORPGs or FPS games, you join a server, create a character, figure out what the hell you are doing and start hacking stuff to bits all the while dodging the offcolor racist, homophobic and sexist remarks of pre-pubescent boys.
I wouldn't try to read some social theory or explanation into why there aren't many female gamers and why they're attracted to certain areas. Men and women are very different creatures and some things come more natural and are more appealing to one sex over the other (with interesting exceptions). The important thing is to welcome those people who do cross the boundaries and find enjoyment in it.
What bothers me more is the reaction of males any time someone with a female voice is playing (using the mic) or even just a female name logs into a server. You have three typical responses, such as those below:
The person who doubts that it's a female and makes a point of doubting it.
The person who goes out of their way to be a jerk to the female just to be a jerk.
The person who can't stop talking about the girl and sucks up to her and flirts with her and can't shut up about how hot he thinks it is that a person with breasts is playing his favorite game.
It would be nice if a female could join a server and we could all continue to play as normal without regressing into a pack of slobbering penises.
I also have a sister who has always played videogames. Not addictively like myself, my brother or any other male I know, but quite a bit nevertheless. She doesn't play online games, but has played almost everythign else on PS2/X-Box that she's come across. The frustrating thing is that it comes so natural to her. She's almost 20 now and as long as I can remember, she could walk into a room while my younger brother and I are playing and pick up a controller... and breeze right through things that we'd spent hours trying to beat. We'd take days or weeks to beat a game and she could do it in a couple sittings. ARGH! She's a bit of a tom-boy, but not much. She's just very *very* adept at the videogame thing, I guess.