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awake I realize video games are hardly relevant or interesting to everybody, but I wanted to make a few comments about a panel I attended today at an anime convention about female gamers. (It was listed as being about the male reaction to female gamers, but actually all three panelists were female.)
I commented that I feel like I live in a bubble, because I just started gaming recently and all my friends are are online. I know many women who play video games... and the few male gamers I know honestly don't seem to feel it's exceptional or odd that there are women gamers. But I know that's not universally true, and I wondered how it would happen for women to be more accepted. One woman described being in a video game room at a convention where she was winning at some fighting game, and there were guys gathered around saying "Beat the girl! Beat the girl!" And she also described a woman winning a gaming tournament and earning respect. Which was a little depressing to me because it sounded as if women will be respected as gamers as long as they beat a bunch of men at games, which is not something I personally am likely to be able to do.
I asked if they thought there should be more female main characters in games, and the answers were basically "Yes," "Yes, if they don't dress in skimpy outfits," and "It doesn't matter because I relate to the character anyway." (I personally wish there would be more, just because I do relate to them better, but that's me.)
However I was very put off when a man came in and said "I just want to say I support women gamers," and people were clapping. I imagine he meant well, but I couldn't help wondering why I should be so grateful to a man for being gracious about me being involved with a huge industry that he does not own.
January 28 2007, 02:08:59 UTC 5 years ago
What do you play?
January 28 2007, 02:09:50 UTC 5 years ago
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January 28 2007, 03:40:42 UTC 5 years ago
Incidentally, I have been to a few gaming conventions (mostly RPG/board game/war game oriented but there's a lot of overlap) and found them to be really welcoming and comfortable environments, despite some annoyances with scantily clad models as promoters or on game packaging. My experiences in the gaming world have been almost universally positive.
January 28 2007, 05:05:35 UTC 5 years ago
But it was far more rare for women to play video games then, at least in my experience. Since I've got back into them lately I've had positive experiences also, but unfortunately that's not true for everyone. I've heard of game store clerks assuming that female customers are buying games or systems for their boyfriends and don't know anything about what they are doing. (Which means I'm afraid to admit in a store that I'm clueless, because maybe they'll think it's because I'm a woman and not just because I'm new.)
(And that's very cute icon.)
January 28 2007, 04:26:50 UTC 5 years ago
For instance, I went to a few Megaman forums for a couple of years. Giving the nature of Megaman, I don't think I was quite surprised to see a lack of women into them. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. I seemed to be a rare commodity, and I felt as though I had gotten some respect just because I happened to be female. I didn't deserve that respect (note that not all of my respect was just because I was female, but a good chunk of it was), but the men meant well.
I don't think that most men would forbid or frown upon more females joining the hobby. In fact, many would really like it. Unfortunately, there are many factors that are driving away women, including stereotyping not only in society, but in the gaming industry itself. Not only that, but many women are afraid to try new genres in gaming that are "too masculine."
I believe that it is mostly mentalities that have to change. Some games could use a few changes, but mostly it is just the way people perceive the games that causes women to frown on them.
January 28 2007, 04:59:44 UTC 5 years ago
That's interesting to hear. Most women I know do like survival horror games (though, then again, they often have female main characters... just an aside) and some like war/fighting games as well. In fact some feel reluctant to admit they like other kinds of games because they feel that then they are being a put in a box of liking those kinds of games because they are a woman. (Even though there are at least a few men who play, for example, Harvest Moon.)
I do think there are fewer women into "old school" games. Maybe partially because some of the fans have been playing since the games first came out and there were fewer women gamers then? I'm old enough to have played them but I didn't do so.
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January 28 2007, 05:09:17 UTC 5 years ago
I am also really disturbed at how many games do not even provide the option of a female or even gender-neutral character. And like your post pointed out - when the option is available, skimpy, objectifying outfits are bound to come with it...
I remember when I still played into the male-gaze, I used to wish I had gaming skills. Because I knew it was "hott" to be a 'girl gamer'. Of course, like you said, we're not allowed to be very good at it. Just enough so that our boyfriends can brag.
January 28 2007, 05:57:23 UTC 5 years ago
I was pleased to see that WoW doesn't officially treat player characters differently based on the characters' respective sexes; it really is just cosmetic. Of course, the sexist undertones become visible when the characters are "driven" by a community of players with some sexist members.
My latest alt is a female: the female Orc's body size/shape obscures less of the view ahead than does that of the male Orc. (With some of the other races, the difference isn't so drastic, but I just had to try an Orc that last time.)
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January 28 2007, 07:04:20 UTC 5 years ago
Of course.... you do still have to save the princess at one point. Just once... I'd like to save the prince instead.
January 28 2007, 08:43:51 UTC 5 years ago
I wouldn't mind saving the prince either though.
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January 28 2007, 12:05:11 UTC 5 years ago
YES.
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January 28 2007, 12:08:23 UTC 5 years ago
Of the two games I play online, one of them has plenty of women playing and the other I'm the only woman I've ever seen on, but I've noticed no sexism. They both have an option for a female character, and one of them has no graphics so that's not an issue, and the other has very few and the differences between the male and female cartoons are minimal.
The real problem, actually, comes with the pool team. I'm the only woman in our league, and I've experienced vast amounts of sexism at matches, usually in the form of blokes being incredibly patronising. (It probably doesn't help that my pool cue is one of these, but I like it, bugger off! [grin]).
There is, of course, the fact that (sorry to sound concieted, but) I'm actually very good. A lot of the sexism I've seen is male bravado after I've beaten them, usually something like "she cheated by distracting me, every time she leaned over to take a shot all I could see was her tits/up her skirt".
January 28 2007, 17:44:25 UTC 5 years ago
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January 28 2007, 18:06:27 UTC 5 years ago
And FFX-2 which a lot of people complained about because of the women's outfits and the plot.
And occasionally there are games with less developed characterization where you can play as a male or female character. (Pokemon Crystal, for example.)
(I'm sure there are many more, and then there are MMORPGs with lots of choices. But that's all I can think of right now.)
January 28 2007, 15:56:37 UTC 5 years ago
That all fell away when individual gamers got to know me, and I was treated just like everyone else in the gaming groups I was a member of. Outside of that little world, however, things were very different. It's been a long time since I went to a con, but based on the initial responses I've gotten from other male gamers, I doubt it's changed all that much. While I was in my last year of law school, I was chatting with another guy in my year, and the fact that I like video games, RPGs and comic books came up, and his first response was to ask if I had a sister. :::eye roll::: Now, I know he meant well. The person in question is one of the most genuinely nice people I've ever met, and I simply cannot imagine him being intentionally or consciously mean or rude. But his stereotypical view of women as "not interested in gaming" is so ingrained that the notion that we might be struck him with the same "wow" factor that I used to get when I first started going to GenCon. Frustrating, to say the least.
At this point, I have too much on my plate to be active in the gaming community, so I really don't concern myself too much with how I would be treated at a con, but I do wonder how my daughter, who is already an avid gamer, will be received once she gets old enough to want to go to conventions. I really hope that, by then, we'll have made a little more progress in that area.
January 28 2007, 18:10:44 UTC 5 years ago
I think it's a little hard for me being 39 years old. When I try talking about video games to non-gamers my age they look blank or think of Space Invaders. And I'm not sure how gamers react to me because I mostly know them over the internet where I'm not sure they think about my age. In the game store I've only had one person be surprised by me, and he was nice about it.
(That doesn't have to do with sexism, now that I think of it... more of an aside.)
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January 28 2007, 18:14:34 UTC 5 years ago
I also have to say that I don't see where the stereotype that all gamers are males who sit in front of their consoles all day and are utterly freaked out by women is doing them any favors either.
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January 28 2007, 19:24:36 UTC 5 years ago
"beat the girl"? what are they, five years old? i am kind of shocked at the level of immaturity it shows that men openly said that- or maybe they see the gaming world as a place where they can openly express sexism because they see it as a men's domain.
women will be respected as gamers as long as they beat a bunch of men at games- that is depressing, because obviously any given set of male gamers have a range of skill levels, and while a guy may be made fun of for not being good at a game, he won't be taken as a representative of the gaming skills of all men. whereas a woman who wasn't good at a particular game (maybe because it was her first time playing it, or she specialized in a different genre?) would be taken as proof that all female gamers are bad at it.
it does suck that women gamers are seen as sexy just for their gaming skills when girl gamers are being objectified because they have this certain characteristic. but maybe this can be seen as a good thing, because perhaps this means some male gamers have interest in a woman because of a shared interest (gasp!) rather than her conformity to beauty standards. i could see things going the other way, and having women who play games seen as "tomboys", unfeminine, or "one of the guys" and thus not seen as sexual beings.
it seems like certain genres are seen as more acceptable for women to play, as well. RPGS or sim games or puzzle games are seen as more feminine (or gender neutral) than fighting games or first person shooters or sports games, for example. games made for women or girls are invariably stuff like "shopping with barbie" or "mary kate and ashley's dress-up adventures" and have pink cartidges.
January 28 2007, 21:03:03 UTC 5 years ago
Maybe that's why they're so reluctant to let women in and to accept female gamers. They don't want to give up their sexist chat/boy's club.
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January 28 2007, 23:36:21 UTC 5 years ago
We need more women developers creating video games. We need more women on the teams. For example, if I may cite one source, here, it says that only about 10% of game developers are women. We need more women in marketing, in development, in making the story, in making the music - although to music's credit, I can safely name one female composer off the top of my head, Yuki Kajiura, who wrote the music for Xenosaga 3 among other things.
My take is, if more women developers were involved in the process, there'd be more, different points of view when creating a game. I don't think there's any way to completely eliminate the sexism from character design, but MAYBE we'd see it toned down, and MAYBE we'd finally see some more female leads.
I'm not asking that we make more games aimed specifically at women in the way that's being done now - the Princess Toadstool DS game right now is supposed to be primarily for women, but it sounds like the difficulty level got dumbed down since you can't die proper, and it looks like it plays into a different kind of stereotype. I've been playing games for 18+ years; I know what I'm doing and I can handle a challenge.
My problem with the marketing of this game in particular is that it plays into the socialization/gender roles pretty heavily, since Princess Toadstool (she'll always be Toadstool to me,) actually uses her emotions to progress in the game and it's got a rather "Pink" feel to it. On the one hand the emotion thing is neat because I haven't seen them utilized like that before, but on the other... isn't there some kind of negative stereotype about women being all emotional?
Of course the best example of female leads in a video game that I can think of is from Final Fantasy 6 - and even then there's only 3 playable women. It's being re-released in February in the USA; why isn't everyone playing this game? That, and the Metroid series. OLD school metroid though; I'm not sure I'm digging this new skin-tight suit Samus.
January 29 2007, 03:45:47 UTC 5 years ago
Shion from Xenosaga the first.
Mint from Threads of Fate.
Cornet from Rhapsody.
Prier from La Pucelle.
... there are definitely more, but I wish someone would compile a list of females that are more than just fanservice.
Yes, I wish more women would get into video games. I've always wanted to get into that industry, but it would be, as my mother always said, "bumping up against the testosterone wall." I'm not sure if I'd make it, especially not if I wanted to be a character designer -- I think my idea of what's appropriate for a female character might conflict with what the marketing department thinks.
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January 29 2007, 00:08:27 UTC 5 years ago
I like Kingdom of Loathing a lot, since there are equal numbers of male and female characters, and since we're all stick figures, there are no scantily clad women FOR A CHANGE.
January 29 2007, 00:57:52 UTC 5 years ago
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January 29 2007, 03:43:15 UTC 5 years ago
Yes, there is GAMER GIRL porn. THey advertise it over on thottbot.com, a resource for World of Warcraft players.
Then all the guys who say "I wish I could date a gamer girl." Liking video games makes you a sex object for some reason these days.
I empathize with the women gamers comment. What the hell? I don't need your support to play a video game. If you support me, don't stand up and say it. Stand up and pull the guy who is hitting on me off to the side and explain to him that I am a human being before I punch him in the jaw.