Let me help you out here, buddy.
We don’t speak in games because when we do we get:
PMs asking for our phone number
PMs demanding tits
PMs describing sexual acts
OR:
Men just do those things in the voice chat.
Men call us names BEFORE we’ve demonstrated whether or not we’re good players.
Men swear at us for just playing the game in a perfectly normal way (see my comment upthread)
http://fatuglyorslutty.com/
I’ve got Star Trek Bridge Crew. I’d like to play it. My husband swears everyone who plays is perfectly lovely. But a friend’s wife went on it and was told “get raped” in the first five minutes.
Well, that is something that might explain it. It does not jibe with my experience playing WoW on a European server some years back, but perhaps it is the case with other games in different places and times. However, it has nothing to do with the findings of this study.
The study shows quite clearly that women recieve more negative comments overall.
Oh please. Female gamers, like male gamers are all over the board in their skills. They shouldn’t have to take extra abuse when learning game mechanics.
Only after they reached a certain threshold of skills. An average female player will be treated worse than a male of the same skill level.
My personal experience is that it’s not worth the extra crap. I keep my mic off to avoid having to field extra critcism, sexual comments, and transparent “praise” from hopeful weirdos.
Gerry, are you a female gamer? Would you say that your experience is wholly representative for all interactions even within the games you play?
How does it “not jibe” with your experience? Did you have access to all the women’s chats so that you could see the whispers they got? I played WoW, let me tell you, it’s not different.
It has to do with the study because “women not talking in games” predates the study, for the reasons I stated. We were ALREADY not talking when they did the study.
I am particularly “amused” that GerryQ has taken to talking dismissively to the women in this thread, thus proving the argument of the study.
My stepson said something similar once. He’s never seen anyone be rude to girls in HIS games, so he doesn’t think it’s a problem. Boy did I school his butt on that one. And so did his dad.
I don’t recall having witnessed it myself though i must have i’m sure of it. But either way i 100% believe the women that say these things happen, i don’t see why anyone would make something like that up.
In fact, I’m reminded of when I first started playing WoW. I was waiting around for my husband to finish setting up our family guild, when a guy started pestering me in whispers to join his guild. I said no, I’m actually about to join one right now, and the guy went off about how I was a fat ugly slag blah blah.
I was playing a Tauren. I was clearly not in this to be sexy.
Sounds udderly terrible
I’ll see myself out…
I played WoW for several years. For a couple of years I never used a mic, and about half of my characters were female. I never indicated any personal information. I do know that at least some people believed I was female. I never encountered significant harassment on that account (or any other). (Though I did get asked to ‘cyber’ once or twice.) Maybe I just have a thick skin, but I always felt the WoW chat experience was much like being back in the playground at the age of ten or so.
Eventually I joined a guild for raiding, and had to use a mic. There were many women in my guild; several were guild officers as was I. Generally they used female characters, which as I recall was the norm (females played female characters, most males played a mix). They were all quite happy to chat in guild and in semi-pick up groups, as I remember.
So no, I am not a woman but I do feel at liberty to give my impressions from my own experience regarding their opinions and experiences; I have noticed that women often do the same with regard to the opinions and experiences of men (though rarely are they charged with “womansplaining” when they do so.)
There’s a difference between talking about your experiences with women around and women’s actual experiences. What you are doing is claiming that since you didn’t witness it, it must not be a problem. You’re dismissing the actual experiences of actual women in favor of what you personally experienced and your opinions thereof.
And comparing “chatting with your guild” to “chatting online in general” is really not the same experience at all. In a guild, you’ve gotten to know those people. If your gender were a problem you’d have already gone elsewhere (or been kicked out). I’ve quit a guild because - not realizing I was female - some of the guild officers were making gross jokes about women’s bodies.
You don’t get that option on many online games. Gaming with a group of people that you’ve spent some time with and popping into a Halo multiplayer match with random people are veeeerrrryyy different experiences.
Yeah, I am a guy and I made that face when I read that. Lol
How hard is it for some men to admit that they might not understand what it’s like to be a woman? Is it really such a threat to their masculinity to do so?
Whenever I play MMOs I usually choose a female avatar (both for aesthetic reasons and often times the female character attributes better suit my play style) but an otherwise gender neutral character name. I never use voice chat, because fuck that.
Despite not saying anything and basically minding my own business I constantly get others being suspiciously nice to me, asking me for my age and location, asking for pics, and generally being skeezy. I can’t even imagine how much it must suck for an average “out” female gamer to not want to smash her computer in frustration.
As a man i think i can explain this…
