Data point: I have played MMORPG for about 8 years now, with both male and female avatars. One game I quit because of, among other things, the abuse in game chat. If you had a female avatar, the amount of L2P, stoopid B****, etc. was significantly higher than if you had a male avatar. The game I’m on currently has less of that, but zone chat still has a not-insubstantial number of trolls who think it’s good fun to mess with female avatars. As a side note, some of the most deadly PvPers I know are women, and they still get the rude sexist chat comments, usually after they have flattened someone.
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Anyone got a bingo card? This thread would be slightly more interesting to read if I could just tick off the specious arguments against believing the statistics or against women gamers in general.
“I don’t know any women gamers, therefore they don’t exist” — really?
“If they do exist, they don’t play real games” — I roll my eyes.
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I basically play casual games only and was a bit surprised to see that those were included in the statistics. Games with a bit of narrative arc are what I’d want to know about when comparing gaming to movie-going. That said, my own experience suggests plenty of women playing narrative games.
I think ‘real games’ (or at least the games most people are talking about as real) are those where there is a protagonist or it makes any difference what gender the protagonist is. By this standard, most casual online games or puzzle games (which represent over 50 % of the video games played) are irrelevant to the statistics. Games exclusively involving driving or piloting vehicles are similarly mostly irrelevant. Games should encourage both women and men to play (and should represent both genders well even if only one gender predominantly plays them at the moment), but this statement just says that “Women make up 45% of all gamers, but are underrepresented in a few subsections of games that are still mostly played by men”. Given the ambiguity in the statistics, it isn’t unusual that people are questioning them and the motivation behind them.
Not sure Borderlands 2 fits anymore than it’s predecessor. Or earlier Diablo games, for that matter. You cannot be a female Gunzerker, for example. So when they tie the gender to a play style does it count? If it does count then doesn’t it also count that there are four male options to the two female ones?
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While this is certainly worse than anything I’ve experienced, this is the sort of thing that keeps me from playing anything competitive online. There’s just too many people who cannot deal with losing.
I doubt it’s the ambiguity of the stat that is making most people question it (though, I think it’s about as clear as a statistic can be, given that it’s a statistic in the first place), rather that it brings up things they are uncomfortable with, which is the whole notion that one can desire and like women and at the same time act in hateful ways towards them… And that it doesn’t agree with their view of reality. You can see it in what some people have said in response, such as “well I don’t know any women gamers, so this must be a wrong stat.” That’s not ambiguity about a statistic, that is straight up missing the point.
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I’m a guy, and I don’t like talking about playing games. Honestly, what a sausage fest. What, you don’t play the latest FPS? You’re not a real gamer. You don’t have the latest console? Ditto. You like to play casual games? Definitely not a gamer. Okay…so be it. I’m not a “gamer”. Happy, everyone?
Occasionally I play games that gamers enjoy. I don’t understand the obsession with what constitutes a “gamer”.
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the thing about FPSs is that the player character isn’t the main character of the game.
There are very few exceptions where the character you play in the FPS is anything but the camera.
The real main characters of those games are all the people talking to the player.
That’s true as well. Which is why I find it amusing that people will spend money to buy extra customizations in Borderlands, for example. Why should I care enough what other players see that I’ll spend money on it?
I don’t really play games much, and not online in any case, so I can’t really comment on how many female gamers are out there. It seems obvious to me that you should be civil with other people, even if they only represented 2% of all gamers. Gaming isn’t a niche activity any more, and if you are playing a game, you are a gamer. It’s not weird or edgy to like something that a multi-billion dollar industry has created for your enjoyment. If women want to play, that shouldn’t even be an issue. However, it’s not unreasonable to question statistics if you have some experience in the subject and the statistics bear no relation to what you see. @nickthedick sees much less than 45% women in the games he plays, which could be because the women are keeping quiet about their gender. On the other hand, most of the people asking me to play candy crush are women. The best anecdote in this thread about women playing ‘real games’ in large numbers is that some mmorpg games have some guilds that have a good amount of female representation (not even that the games as a whole are about 50/50 men to women).
At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter what the statistics are. We shouldn’t be abusive to other people or create a place that is hostile to another group, especially if that group is a minority in that environment. Sexism isn’t ok, even (shock) online. We should still avoid using statistics that are misleading, even if it’s for a good cause.
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That’s terrible, but god sometimes that robber makes me rage even at my friends IRL.
You really think women only play three games? Ugh. And yes, if the other games were more representative, I might play more. I would have played Call of Duty if I could do the single player run through as a woman character - why not? I also play three MMOs - SWTOR, EQ2, Neverwinter Nights, Saint’s Row 4, Skyrim, Morrowind, Dead Island Riptide, Far Cry 3, The Swapper, BioShock, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Diablo 2 and 3, Half Life 2 and that’s just my current gaming routine. I’ve been gaming since I was a kid - first on the Commodore 64 and TI system my dad had. Then when we got an Atari 2600 in 1979 I really became a gamer. I have a shelf full of games I’ve played over the years. My story is far from unique among the women gamers I know. I will tell you, we are very underrepresented yet it is getting better and I hope it continues to do so. I remember RPG’s that’d penalize you for playing a female character because that thought was we are weaker. Ugh. Onwards and upwards.
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It is indeed getting better. For that I am very happy. Now, about the armor females wear in RPGs vs. the men… 
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I don’t chat online with strangers. Only folks I talk to are my guildmates. Otherwise, I am open to some stupid comment about let’s date or are you hot or last time I tried, the main tank of the group kept doing sexual emotes. So sometimes I just let the players assume what they want of my gender. Until I know I can trust you, you won’t hear me talking.
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Meh - I think you’re only seeing the end result of a much larger problem, that’s wage disparity. As long as that still exists and women are under-represented in game development, they are never going to be seen as the primary market for entertainment products.
That said, yes, I’ve known a few female gamers who like WOW and shooters - but typically, not so much. Like most fems, I don’t have the reaction times of most male competitors, so am always at a disadvantage in those types of games. Give me a strategy or puzzle game, or one requiring accuracy over speed, and I can kick butt. Those just don’t happen to sport the same kinds of player communities.
And somehow? I think the complaint wasn’t about the gazillion dress my dolly/do my hair shopping games out there. They aren’t even decent VR games. I really wouldn’t want to let my little girl play that junk for hours on end, anyway.
Both genders are limited in a game like Borderlands 2. I tend to play Zero as I like the stealth classes. It would be nice if all of them came as both genders - yet in this case, you are playing a character in a story, so I give it a pass, myself. I have not played it since Gaige was added, I will likely give her a try next go around.
Is there science to back that up? In any case, get me in any arena game - Unreal Tournament anyone? - and I’ll do very well indeed. I think most games are developed so they are not as dependent upon a split second reaction time and the difference between any presumption of gender is likely not going to impact end results. If that was the case, there’d be a lot less stoners playing online FPS games… talk about delayed reaction time.
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Any customization I might purchase for a game is to make myself happy. I don’t care what other players think. 
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