Girl Gamers Part 3

This article went up on Gamer DNA today:

Top 10 list of Xbox 360 games both men and women play equally. Bully: Scholarship Edition is in the top ten list? Suprising! Find out what the other 9 are!

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the same stuff I have been ranting about for months, nay make that years, since I admitted that Zeta has a female operator. So what took gamers so long? Why are they surprised that women like the same games as men? And why does it matter? Part of the problem is that gamers are believing the propaganda laid down by their own detractors.

First there are the in game and in forum trolls. They are the ones that reply to any post made by a female member of the community with comments such as: "There are no girl gamers, only fags and dykes.", "All girls who play games are fat, ugly and can't get a man irl.", "All girls who play games are in it to cyber." and my personal favorite "Girls just can't play games. They aren't smart enough."

Here are MY answers: Right, lesbians are not female and girls don't play these games, women do. Absolutely I can't get a man IRL, I got my kid through a faulty
firewall on an I/O port while cybering on a bbs. Man am I lucky I didn't pick up a virus." Though I rarely give answers to these types. They crave attention and thrive on controversy. Just adhere to the rule Don't feed the Troll. The Troll is parroting what they have heard from casual or non gamer friends.

The problem is that for at least one of those statements they are sometimes correct. Some women do Cyber. So do some men. Some men cyber as females, some women cyber as males. Personally I don't care as long as it is kept private and I don't have to hear a replay through the clan channel. But it seems that is all some females do or at least all they are perceived as doing. This is of course promoted by those who believe that the internet is nothing more than a thin veneer of substance over a steaming pile of pornography.

Then there is the problem that many females do not play games because they are "too violent" for a woman's more sensitive nature. This comes from the misogynists who want to keep females in the dark ages. They fear the female that can think, so the best defense is to keep them from believing they are as resilient as men. My answer to that is Lorena Bobbit. I would rather blow away my boss in Doom than in IRL.

Next there are the ones that buy into the idea that all games are made for guys. Have none of you SEEN the Prince in Prince of Persia Warrior Within? I'd take him in a heartbeat! There is just as much eye candy for women as men. And if you prefer women, don't worry most games these days let you pick which avatar you want want to play.

The problem goes back to the post I made about gender treatment on MUDs. You see it seems to be the same attitude on most online games. Girls get a lot of help, but the wrong kind. They are not taught by the masters how to play the game, what stats are important, what tricks and how to use them, they are lamed. Females who teach themselves on stand alone games or hide behind a male character or at the very least a unisex name seem to learn the fastest. Though I am finally seeing this change a bit.

Ok so, the gamers are getting it, most of them. Why aren't the game manufacturers? Because they are buying their own hype. They believe that girls do not game therefore they must make games appeal to girls. STOP CALLING US GIRLS!! Some females have taken to the Girl Gamer label but not all of us. So, just stop already.

Second, stop producing crap. One of my favorite games that held the most potential was Cutthroats. But it fragged my disk so badly I had to play it on the D drive only. Age of Wonder chokes when I enter certain towns. And Interplay HATED my old Intel processor. Even Dungeonkeeper would flail when the graphics got heavy.
Put specs on the box where they can be seen and do not put the lowest end. Put what is needed. Ok maybe I won't buy it because I do not have an UBER gaming rig, but at least I won;t hate your company for lying to me and making me shell out 40 - 70 dollars for a game my machine can't handle.

Which brings me to the main reason I almost stopped gaming. (Ok the thought crossed my mind for about 30 seconds and then I got real.) Technical support. FOr those of you who know nothing of my "real life" I spent many years in tech support of a product that was proprietary. That meant I HAD to make it work on many different machines with many different issues. It was in the early days of Windows (Yes Virginia there were computers BEFORE windoze.)

I had turned my entire IT dept onto Doom. One of my bosses turned me onto this cool game Burn Cycle by Philips Interactive. It would start, I could get to partway through the first section then it would crash and burn. So one day I decide to call the tech support number listed for the US (Philips was a UK company so I guess they were using a third party tech group). Back in THOSE days we got charged. (It was usually a 900 number). So I bite the bullet and call. I get a techie he goes through the usual is it plugged in type questions (We HAVE to ask, so I don't bitch too much.) I rattle off my machine specs and wait. (It was a state of the art 486 btw with a Cyrix chip.)

The convo went something like this:

"Uh is that a Mac?"
"No it is a custom built 486"
"I never heard of Cyrix, are you sure it is not an Apple?"
"Cyrix is made by a division of IBM. Apple uses Motorola."
"Uh, hold on a moment."

Remember this is MY dime and I hate paying to put on hold. So after about 5 minutes that seemed like 20 the techie switches me over to his supervisor.

"You are trying to run this on a Server? You know it is not made for LAN play." Mgr type
"No, on my home machine."
I again explain the details.
"Look is your husband around? I think you are confused about the chip and the Bios and we really need to know that because it matters about how the uh computer thinks."

At that point I decided said never mind, "I'll figure it out or deinstall"

Now usually I would just fume about that but I had been through several similar 'pat on the head' type conversations at work lately with client companies' tech support involving DOS 5 and the share issues when it came to printing to a port. (For some reason if share was loaded it would not allow an app to print to a port and share had to be loaded for old windows products. So we had to write a little script that unloaded share to print and then reloaded it and talk users through putting it on the PC in the proper directory.) For some reason for about 30 seconds I bought into the idea I could not comprehend what the issue was. Then I shook my head and deinstalled and went back to blowing away creatures in Doom. Nevermind, there are plenty of other games by companies who know how to treat a lady who calls for tech support. Yep, treat her like a Gamer.

Girl Gamers - Part 2

Ok, now that I have had my rant about people wanting to market to those among the gamer community who happen to have indoor plumbing instead of outdoor, let me go off on the community itself.

First there are the members of the community who seem to believe there are no female gamers. That all gamers that run under a female name are male. That no female is capable of playing a game much less coding one. See one of the comments a member of the marketing panel (male member I should point out) was that the industry maybe needed more female coders and builders to draw more "girls" to gaming.

Ahh well I pointed out to him and I will again remind people of the history of female coders in gaming. There was woman on the DIKU development. Pickle Wars was developed by a woman, who else would think of using a salad shooter to disable aliens? They exist, look at any game you love. Maybe there is a female coder on the credits, maybe not, but the fact remains they exist and have for a long long time. The problems are either they do not get much recognition or like me , they tend to be gamers first. Yep they are not INTO making something just for women, they are into making a good game. Or they spend hours, weeks, months developing a game to have the project leads and/or the VP take the credit - like most of the other coders on the project.

So, you want more female developers? JUST HIRE THEM! I know of many women who are in the industry and out of a job. No, they may not be game developers per se but I bet they could blow away half of your C++ developers. Hire the developers and teach them the industry. Give the team time to develop a good game and listen to them when they say something is not working right. Oh wait, maybe you should do that with male developers too. Bugs might not run so rampant in games.

So, why this sudden concern that women need to be game developers? Because the gaming industry has peaked out. Yep. See it used to be people learned to code well then learned to apply that to an industry. But now people teach how to code for a specific industry. Well, gaming has finally ceased to be the loose cannon industry and has become big bucks (thanks for that WOW). It has ceased to be where the independent thinkers and developers go and become a product a label and set of people to market to. And guess what, they are running out of gamers. (Maybe they NEED to produce better games, but we won't go there.)

So they need to create a new set of gamers. They are trying to convince us that women need to game. Now how are they doing this? by showing a bunch of girls around an Xbox. They are having fun. They are all hot. They are gaming in full makeup. Ok that is just an insult. I used to come home from work, cook dinner, take a shower, change into sweats and proceed to blow the hell outta things in Doom. Especially if the marketing department pissed me off. Then I moved to Dungeon Keeper, now it is Overlord. I play MUDs. I build for a MUD. I write for various gaming sites. I do not wake up, put on my makeup and get all dolled up to blow things to bits. Neither do any men I know. When was the last time you saw someone at home playing WOW in suit?

So, how to convince girls that gaming is something for them? By putting women in prominent positions on the the game dev team and marketing that. Only thing is, if the developers all look like the girls in the pictures, we won't buy it. We won't buy your con nor will we buy your games. BE REAL. Just hire excellent coders no matter what their gender is. Let them create good games. Market the hell out of them and price them reasonably. We will come and we will bring our friends.

Girl Gamers part 1

Another label. It looks like this one is sticking, so it seems time to address it.
First let us look at what it means Girl - female, not yet adult Gamer - someone who plays games.

Well yes there have always been girls who play games. Jump rope is a game, chess is a game, Ace Deuce is a game (I still own you Brent), females both adult and pre-adult have been known to play these games. But the epithet Girl Gamer refers to any female who plays a console, computer or online game. Females have played these for as long as they have been around too, suddenly though we are labeled and they are looking for ways to market to us. Pity they are probably going to ruin some great games that way.

See this is my problem I am not a girl, although I did start gaming when I was one. BUT I am a gamer who happens to be female. Several things started me thinking about this, but the most recent was on Valhalla. See another female approached me said wouldn't it be great if we had an all female Clan. I said "no".

Why you ask? Well gender in not basis for commonality. Yes, there are some things you can say I have in common with other females, they tend to be biological in nature. However, I like playing RPGs and strat games. My friend prefers FPS, another friend will only play things like Bejeweled and dominoes. Yet, we are all female. So when you get us on a place like a MUD we all head in different directions. I go for the quests or off to role play with friends, Elly heads off to the casino or other mini game and Cathy is off to PvP. Same game different aspects. That is what is great about MUDs.

I used to like FPS, when I did I played Doom, Zero Tolerence, and Descent. I liked the graphics and the playability. They were not games made for women they were made for everyone and were good games. Prince of Persia is still one of my favorite games. Last I checked that was not marketed to women. Why do I not play them anymore? I got bored.

Strategy games work for everyone how do you market strategy and tactics to a gender? Either you can counter that attack or you cannot. Gender does not matter when you are besiege and trying to fend off the attackers hoping they starve and lose troops before they manage to undermine your walls. When running pirate ships against a blockade your plumbing is not going to help or hinder the situation. Either the game play is decent and the situation realistic or it is not.

Earlier this year I took part in a panel on female gamers. It started out as rah rah. Girl gamers rock etc.. Then the nasty truth began to come out. Not all of us like the same type of games. Not all of us are the best at the games, but we still like to play. AND not all of us like each other. Because well, we are people and guys don;t always like another guy just because they are male and play the same game do they?

We were asked what could be done to bring more women to gaming. None of us agreed. Some wanted to lose the chainmail bikinis and get real armor. Some liked the revealing nature because it showed they could kick ass with less than a guy wore.
Some wanted some beefcake, some said no it would embarass them. Some wanted to save the prince, - ok most of us wanted to save the prince. It was what we did with him after we saved him that we differed on. Our point to the marketeers - yes who else would hold such a panel - was "Look either you game is good or it isn't. If it is good we will play it. If it is not we won't. It's that simple."

As for us uniting because we are all girls I think one in the panel said it best. "If you are on the other team you are my opponent. This time we may be team mates, next time you may be on that side. When we are on the same side I will work with you. But when you are against me I will do my best to kick your ass." Yep, that is the right attitude GAMER first.

Gender treatment - originally posted on the Mud Connector

Ok I keep hearing about how females are treated better on MUDS by players than males so I conducted a little experiment. THe idea was to prove my male friend who keeps telling me I get more help than he does wrong. I hit a few MUDs and MUSHES and had some interesting results. No MUDS will be named. I do not wish to start a flame war just to let owners and players know what happened so they can perhaps keep an eye out for the negatives and encourage the positives.

First the set up

From home I created a female character newbie (called Mary below) fighter or rogue type
From another location I created a male character newbie. (called Fred below) Fighter or rogue type

I kept race, class and stats the same or as close as I could except in cases where the MUD engine made adjustments for gender. Characters were created about a week apart.

Here is what happened:

On muds that were mainly hack n slash (fighter types with same stats and race)

Mary got a lot of help initially, mainly from male characters and female helpers. She received a lot of attention and then when I refused to talk about myself personally, interest from the male players waned.

Fred was ignored except for being 'checked on' or when I asked for help directly with things such as corpse retrieval or directions to an area or mob. When it became apparent he was going to stay and was not going to be a nuisance. (I tried not to be a nuisance) (levels 5 - 10) He was accepted as one of the guys and invited into groups more often than Mary by other players.

NOTE: One MUD with a particularly low number of players online at the time I would log in, treated both characters the same. Lots of help from everyone and interest in how the characters were coming along.


OK my friend was right. Females do get more help starting.

RP enforced MUD's

I did not 'test' any MUD that required clearance for RP by sample posts or logs sent prior to being permitted to play. I attempted 2 of those, did not receive an accept or deny in what I considered a timely manner (3 days) so crossed them off my lists.

Mary received about same initial help as Fred in stat/level building on most. Only difference I found here was Mary was walked through or to places a bit more and received less explanation of how things worked or the nuances of the IC politics and situation than Fred.

Mary's RPs seemed to be centered around romance or dating more than Fred's. Most RP offers came from males. Attempts to RP with females tended to degenerate into more OOC chatter than RP. Refusal to divulge personal information was accepted by females in most cases, by males in a few cases it was immediately assumed I was a male playing a female character. IC RP topics religion, backgrounds, business plans, confidence games and romance. Many with other females seemed to degenerate into catfights for the amusement of others on the MUD.

Fred recieved more offers to RP from females and males than Mary. The female characters were more forward with sexual innuendo and suggestions to Fred than males were to Mary. At times I felt like I was being swarmed by the women characters on the MUDs. OOC chatter with females made me uncomfortable (most likely because I am not male - they wanted to know more about ME than my character). Refusal to divulge personal information caused some to stop speaking to me, others would not stop trying to find out OOC things. IC RP topics included power struggles, conspiracies, religous arguments, confidence games, competitions and romance.

Fred spent more time overall in RP than Mary and the topics inpacted the overall story more than Mary's did.

OK We were both right. Initially the female got more more RP, but the male got more significant RP and his invitations went up, as hers went down.

PK Muds (non rp enforced)

Mary was assisted much more in gaining eq and levels, but was attacked less overall and largely ignored. Mostly IMMS older players and long time players offered her advice and warned of PK tricks used by other players.

Fred was assisted somewhat and immediately drawn into PK. Almost all characters had an IC reason or RPed out something before attempting PK. I died a lot. (I am lousy at PK) When it became apparent I was not a challenge, most attempted to assist me in becoming better. Some of the unethical tricks Mary was warned of were used on Fred with no warning.


What I found interesting.
Back in the day there were few female gamers. We tended to hide behind male characters to keep from being swarmed by the guys, that position seems to have reversed. There are more female players these days and there were times I felt overwhelmed by offers to RP. On most MUDs with xsocials invitations to use them were many when I played Fred. When I was running Mary it might be mentioned once or twice by a male character, BUT I had some female characters coming on to me as strongly as males and for orgy type situations.

Possible explantions:
Fear of accusations of harrasment? Fear of my being underage IRL? Those fears do not seem to apply to the women when approaching Fred but they were brought up when I was playing Mary. This is a sad reflection on our society in general.

Fred was privy to more female's opinions of other female chacters than Mary was to info about other males. In one case Fred was told by a female admin that she wanted to run Mary off the MUD because she got too much attention from the guys.

Females DO get preferential treatment initially. It continues to a lesser extent in questing, Mob killing, etc, but NOT in grouping in general.

Males are ignored more intially and generally viewed with more suspicion.

Some suggestions:

*Most SWR MUD and MUSHES have players or IMMS that understand annoyance hunger/thirst/tired spam causes in RP. On almost everyone I was on (6) I received money to have a cyber implant to stop that. No other RP MUD seems to have caught onto that.

SUGGESTION: If you run an RP enforced or strongly suggested mud disable that code, increase the waits or create an item that suspends it. (Or get really fancy and find a way to suspend it when RP mode is on.)

If you have an RP enforced MUD, check periodically that everyone is getting the level of RP and type that they want.

Discourage OOC chatter it breaks a player's concentration Or set up a RL OOC channel and a META GAME OOC channel. Allow only game chatter in the META. OR create an OOC zone lounge that players can enter and sit and chat about rl for a while.

Do not ever assume that any player is the same sex as their character. I was accused of being a male playing a female more often than female playing a male. What is interesting is that the females spotted me as a female player whereas not a single male suggested I was a female playing a male.

Forgot to add this On PK MUds I played a fighter type and on RP I played a rogue type. What can I say I like my thieves and assassins.

OK You were right, Kutter and Whistler.