Video games and women

Roesy

I was never that into gaming until the I met my boyfriend. We ended up buying a wii one evening after dinner and a few drinks. We had lots of good times playing Guitar Hero and Wii Sports. I also remember the proud heads on the pair of us when I finished Resident Evil 4. When he moved in so did his Xbox 360 and now I'm slightly addicted to Black Ops. Poor Wii just gathers dust on the shelf now.

Earthhorse

Dudess wrote: »

We had pac-man on it (obligatory :pac:) and that tennis game with the two sticks hitting the little dot.

You had pong?

Yes, that's a lowercase "p". :cool:

:pac:

parker kent

I did an assignment in UCD about gaming when I was in second year in 2006. It was an essay and presentation type thing. My conclusion was that gaming should and would target girls in the next few years. Release handheld consoles aimed at girls for example. Make girl friendly games.

I was laughed out of it in the class. The lecturer's first question was "I don't understand why people want to sit alone in their rooms playing games". Like....seriously that guy was getting a fortune to lecture on information markets and had that attitude. :rolleyes: I really, really want to get that lecturer and class in a room and give them a presentation on the Wii and DS :mad::pac::D

Morag

Blowfish wrote: »

I've always been curious as to how games began to be stereotyped more as a guy thing than what it is, which is just another form of media/entertainment. I suppose it may be due to the portrayal of women in games which, bar a few exceptions has been pretty poor throughout video game history.
I used to do that too, along with trying to make a rollercoaster with the highest possible nausea rating to see how many people I could get vomiting.

When video games were in their infancy they thought only girls would play them, as girls were more likely to sit in door and play games and boys would be out playing games and riding bikes and playing at being pirates and cowboys and Indians. Again the assumption that girls are more passive and boys are active.

So to interest boys in video games and to market them to boys sports games were invented, base ball, hockey, basketball ect and war games and adventure games. They made games which were competitive, think of the bragging rights for having your initals on a game in the arcade. This became the market for all video games and how video games be came a boy 'thing'.

This is slowly changing but it's been the market which video games company's, both creators and publisher have traditionally aimed for and still do with Fifa, Halo, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto making a lot of money based of that demographic.

LittleBook

My first handheld



When the batteries started to run out the lights would fade and I remember crawling into the cupboard to play with it until it died completely.

Not for nothing that my daughter is a gamer.

KittyeeTrix

Never been a gamer myself but would have played with the Commodore64 when younger. I can still remember holding run/stop and then Play and coming back in half an hour to see if the game had loaded...............:D

My brothers would've been Mario Brothers mad and Sonic etc when they first came out and us girls didn't get near the thing!!:mad:

My kids play X-Box live a lot and I suppose I'm easy going about it in that I don't censure what they play at all. Even the 9 yr old plays any game he likes................
He's a dab hand at it too, whereas I'm continually running into walls etc. Sometimes I feel that maybe I'm a little too relaxed when I hear the mad language coming from Vice City and the like but they're all good kids, who seldom curse (the teenage lads would have some colourful language when x-boxing live with their mates but that is their private mates time and i don't see the need to intrude)


Honestly I see their friends who call over who (in the case of my 9 year old would only be allowed to play games "appropriate" for their age) and they've been outside effing and blinding.:eek: They then go home to play little Dora games on the Wii while Mummy thinks they are perfectly behaved!!:D, while my lad sits down to GTA:San Andreas...

liah

parker kent wrote: »

I did an assignment in UCD about gaming when I was in second year in 2006. It was an essay and presentation type thing. My conclusion was that gaming should and would target girls in the next few years. Release handheld consoles aimed at girls for example. Make girl friendly games.

I was laughed out of it in the class. The lecturer's first question was "I don't understand why people want to sit alone in their rooms playing games". Like....seriously that guy was getting a fortune to lecture on information markets and had that attitude. :rolleyes: I really, really want to get that lecturer and class in a room and give them a presentation on the Wii and DS :mad::pac::D

What exactly do you consider 'girl friendly' games? What, like, Cooking Mama?

What does that even mean?

It's not about making 'girl friendly' games, whatever those are. It's just social stigma that girls don't game, it's seen as a 'boy' thing from early on, more girls will get into it over time like they are with everything else that was considered a 'boy' thing (e.g. IT). There don't need to be any changes to how games are made - we can play them and enjoy them just fine as is, thank you very much!

Faith

Unless you count The Sims, then I've never been a gamer in any way. I don't get it at all. None of my female friends in RL would be gamers either. If we ever mention one, we'd say something like "You know that game online that loads of people get addicted to?". That's about as far as our knowledge goes.

krudler wrote: »

Would a guy being a gamer put a girl off? I've been playing games since I was a kid and owned a NES (Mario 3 ftw!) have always had and always will be a gamer, thats never going to change ever. I'd never let gaming get in the way of a relationship though,its just a fun hobby.

Depends on how much he played, but it certainly wouldn't be a turn on for me. Depending on factors, it could very well put me off, yeah.

donfers

liah wrote: »

What exactly do you consider 'girl friendly' games? What, like, Cooking Mama?

What does that even mean?

It's not about making 'girl friendly' games, whatever those are. It's just social stigma that girls don't game, it's seen as a 'boy' thing from early on, more girls will get into it over time like they are with everything else that was considered a 'boy' thing (e.g. IT). There don't need to be any changes to how games are made - we can play them and enjoy them just fine as is, thank you very much!

ummm well as a previous poster said a lot of games like call of duty, fifa, grand theft auto are centred around themes of war, football, driving cars fast etc etc and generally more boys than girls would be interested in those - it's a whole different debate about why that is the case

I don't think he's saying girls are incapable of playing those games or not interested in them, just that they are targeted more at boys, male lead characters, women characters overly sexualised etc

i know many girls interested in video games and most of them are into stuff like the sims or puzzle games or rpgs, i guess these are the "girl-friendly games" he is referring to, maybe that label is what offended you, perhaps he should have said games that are aimed at a female market (the marketeers are not interested in the reasons for gender conditioning towards particular genres of video games as such, they just do the math and say if we make x game and market it to female market between age 16-30, we should sell x amount of copies, the rights and wrongs of that don't concern them and it is of course a wholly more complex sociological debate)

KiLLeR CoUCh

liah wrote: »

Videogames were branded as a guy thing from the off as they were branded a nerd thing in the beginning and at that time, being a nerd was a pretty much male-only thing; computers and electronics have always been seen as 'guy'/'nerd' things.

But people are finally starting to come around and in the next while the line will get fuzzier and fuzzier.

I remember buying Playstation magazines when I was 11 or 12 and they were essentially half Playstation, half softcore porn. I gave an issue with the naked Lara Croft in it to my best guy friend who appreciated it more than I did. :rolleyes:

I've gamed for as long as I can remember. My dad used to bring me home DOS games from work like Prince of Persia and Rogue, then I migrated from there to the SNES and then PS1. I got a PS2 the Christmas after it was released but then I sort of forgot about gaming during my mid teens as other things came to the front. I'm back in full force now with a DS, PS3 and Wii sitting behind me. Just waiting to finish college so I can start working through a massive backlog of games and ROMs I downloaded over Christmas.

I'm probably very feminine in the type of games I like, JRPGs, Mario, Zelda, the Sims and any form of simulation in general. I don't like FPS, Halo was the only one I would be bothered to play and even then only with other people. I miss the days of the PS1 when there was an abundance of platformers.

Certainly more girls game now than before. I don't know how I feel about the amount of games marketed purely towards young girls though. The entire series of "Imagine" games for the DS are awful, I can imagine my younger self would have appreciated them very much. However, if it encourages more girls to pick up a controller and try out something they wouldn't have done before then I'm all for it. Gaming has made me friends I wouldn't have met otherwise and given me an interest in computers I don't think I would have had otherwise, so for me it's been nothing but a good thing.

liah

donfers wrote: »

ummm well as a previous poster said a lot of games like call of duty, fifa, grand theft auto are centred around themes of war, football, driving cars fast etc etc and generally more boys than girls would be interested in those - it's a whole different debate about why that is the case

Hardly realms restricted to boys. There's hundreds of girls who play each game you've mentioned and millions of women into each interest you've mentioned. Pretty much all the girls I grew up with played and loved GTA. It's bollocks, it's how it's marketed, not the games themselves.

I don't think he's saying girls are incapable of playing those games or not interested in them, just that they are targeted more at boys, male lead characters, women characters overly sexualised etc

Doesn't stop women enjoying films with male lead characters or overtly sexualized women so why should it with videogames?

i know many girls interested in video games and most of them are into stuff like the sims or puzzle games or rpgs, i guess these are the "girl-friendly games" he is referring to, maybe that label is what offended you, perhaps he should have said games that are aimed at a female market (the marketeers are not interested in the reasons for gender conditioning towards particular genres of video games as such, they just do the math and say if we make x game and market it to female market between age 16-30, we should sell x amount of copies, the rights and wrongs of that don't concern them and it is of course a wholly more complex sociological debate)

They're marketed towards males more, definitely. But it's ridiculous to say we need more 'girl friendly' games - we just need less of the biased marketing and gender role conditioning. Quality games stand up for themselves, and there's very large female communities on basically every 'boy' game under the sun. I've known hundreds of female gamers and I play basically only 'boy' games.

Logical Fallacy

liah wrote: »

It's just social stigma that girls don't game

It's like the social stigma that men don't knit or any of that type of stuff. From what i can see a lot of blokes out on the internet are into assorted homecrafts.

krudler

fluffyorganic1 wrote: »

Never been a gamer myself but would have played with the Commodore64 when younger. I can still remember holding run/stop and then Play and coming back in half an hour to see if the game had loaded...............:D

My brothers would've been Mario Brothers mad and Sonic etc when they first came out and us girls didn't get near the thing!!:mad:

My kids play X-Box live a lot and I suppose I'm easy going about it in that I don't censure what they play at all. Even the 9 yr old plays any game he likes................
He's a dab hand at it too, whereas I'm continually running into walls etc. Sometimes I feel that maybe I'm a little too relaxed when I hear the mad language coming from Vice City and the like but they're all good kids, who seldom curse (the teenage lads would have some colourful language when x-boxing live with their mates but that is their private mates time and i don't see the need to intrude)


Honestly I see their friends who call over who (in the case of my 9 year old would only be allowed to play games "appropriate" for their age) and they've been outside effing and blinding.:eek: They then go home to play little Dora games on the Wii while Mummy thinks they are perfectly behaved!!:D, while my lad sits down to GTA:San Andreas...

To be fair thats whats giving games a bad reputation when people let kids play them, I have a 7 year old nephew and wouldnt let him near anything like GTA or something with a lot of violence in it.
He's played Uncharted 2 with me because he loves stuff like Indiana Jones and adventure stuff,he likes solving how to get around the levels and theres very little blood in it, but its a different story when you let a child play a game where you can beat people to death with a baseball bat if you feel like it.
I'm not saying kids can't tell the difference between games and reality, but its counter productive to the "games are corrupting our kids" brigade when parents do let their children play games that arent aimed at them. Would you let your 9 year old watch Scarface? cos thats essentially what Vice City is based on.

donfers

liah wrote: »

Hardly realms restricted to boys. There's hundreds of girls who play each game you've mentioned and millions of women into each interest you've mentioned. Pretty much all the girls I grew up with played and loved GTA. It's bollocks, it's how it's marketed, not the games themselves.



Doesn't stop women enjoying films with male lead characters or overtly sexualized women so why should it with videogames?



They're marketed towards males more, definitely. But it's ridiculous to say we need more 'girl friendly' games - we just need less of the biased marketing and gender role conditioning. Quality games stand up for themselves, and there's very large female communities on basically every 'boy' game under the sun. I've known hundreds of female gamers and I play basically only 'boy' games.

yes well of course it's true that although a game may target a particular audience there will always be people outside that demographic who enjoy the game also

your goal is very idealistic in so much as you want all the boundaires and labels to come down and the games to be entirely played on the merit of the games themselves but while it's a noble dream I can't see it happening for the simple reason that you'd put all the marketeers out of business for one thing and capitalism is built on creating markets and the unfortunate truth is often these markets are built on gender, class or age stereotyping

liah

donfers wrote: »

yes well of course it's true that although a game may target a particular audience there will always be people outside that demographic who enjoy the game also

your goal is very idealistic in so much as you want all the boundaires and labels to come down and the games to be entirely played on the merit of the games themselves but while it's a noble dream I can't see it happening for the simple reason that you'd put all the marketeers out of business for one thing and capitalism is built on creating markets and the unfortunate truth is often these markets are built on gender, class or age stereotyping

I'm not asking for obliteration of biased marketing; simply asking for a little more credit given to girl gamers in terms of their tastes (and intelligence, tbh) and wishing there was a bit more effort in marketing to women based on things other than the colour pink and cooking.

Silverfish

I've never seen a game trailer or advertisement and thought 'Hmm, it looks to be for boys... but I might like it!'

The stigma seems to be applied to female gamers BY (some) male gamers, nowhere have I ever seen marketing for a game mention a gender.

KittyeeTrix

krudler wrote: »

To be fair thats whats giving games a bad reputation when people let kids play them, I have a 7 year old nephew and wouldnt let him near anything like GTA or something with a lot of violence in it.
He's played Uncharted 2 with me because he loves stuff like Indiana Jones and adventure stuff,he likes solving how to get around the levels and theres very little blood in it, but its a different story when you let a child play a game where you can beat people to death with a baseball bat if you feel like it.
I'm not saying kids can't tell the difference between games and reality, but its counter productive to the "games are corrupting our kids" brigade when parents do let their children play games that arent aimed at them. Would you let your 9 year old watch Scarface? cos thats essentially what Vice City is based on.

For me and my lot I've not seen that it promotes any agression in them at all. I've already posted on here about how they never fight amongst themselves or anything like that (they're a really mild mannered bunch) and yet I see other kids kick lumps out of each other play fighting and they wouldn't be allowed to play these games.

Tbh, I don't have the answers but I don't think a "one size fits all" answer is necessarily the right approach...

I can only go by what we allow in our own household and by that I have found no negative effects at all from letting them play the games mentioned above..:)

krudler

liah wrote: »

They're marketed towards males more, definitely. But it's ridiculous to say we need more 'girl friendly' games - we just need less of the biased marketing and gender role conditioning. Quality games stand up for themselves, and there's very large female communities on basically every 'boy' game under the sun. I've known hundreds of female gamers and I play basically only 'boy' games.

I'd agree with this, just because its aimed at guys doesnt mean only guys will enjoy it. People will play what they like the look of, the girls I know who enjoy games tend to stick with stuff like Zelda and Final Fantasy (not girl orientated games at all) and not so much stuff like Gears of War but it doesnt mean there arent plenty of girls who wouldnt enjoy blowing seven shades of sh1te out of people on COD.

From a marketing point, yeah obviously its easier to sell a pink DS with Nintendogs to a young girl rather than Metal Gear Solid or something, Nintendo nailed the marketing of the Wii and DS to families and women who may not have had any interest in games before playing Brain Training or Wii Fit or something, doesnt mean they cant enjoy other games too.

baby and crumble

krudler wrote:

Nintendo nailed the marketing of the Wii and DS to families and women who may not have had any interest in games before playing Brain Training or Wii Fit or something, doesnt mean they cant enjoy other games too.

Now all I can think of is the Dara O'Briain sketch: "oooh, I'm stroking a pony..."

liah

Hm. Thinking on it a bit, I'm considering starting a thread on Portal/Portal 2 and its relevance in regards to females in gaming. But it probably wouldn't garner much interest.

It's basically the only game I've played that has a female main character and prominent female (kinda :pac:) antagonist that doesn't rub the fact that they're females in your face and is an incredibly intelligent game all-around. It's the perfect game to get women into gaming, I think, because it's largely non-violent, beautiful to look at, challenging, incredibly witty and doesn't sexualize the female characters.

That's a game I would consider 'girl friendly' that isn't just 'girly.' But I can't think of many others.

krudler

liah wrote: »

I'm not asking for obliteration of biased marketing; simply asking for a little more credit given to girl gamers in terms of their tastes (and intelligence, tbh) and wishing there was a bit more effort in marketing to women based on things other than the colour pink and cooking.

Ah but do girls enjoy pink things because they're marketed these things, or are the people doing the marketing just giving people what they want? Its pretty standard that if something is pink its aimed at girls, I'm not sure when and where this was ever decided but you only have to look at anything from a console to am ipod, laptop or phone or gym bag or a million other things that women may buy because they're pink, doesnt mean they're some vacous airhead who only buys girlie things. some girls like pink, simple as.

ElleEm

krudler wrote: »

Would a guy being a gamer put a girl off?.

It would put me off, I have to say.
Probably because I don't understand it myself. I have family who play online games, my boyfriend's friends and friend's boyfriend's who play the Xbox and stuff, and they just seem obsessed by it all. When the lads get together it's like all normal conversation ceases and it becomes about bloody games. I've also witnessed how the online things can become a compulsion as well.
All of my friends (and boyfriend) are the same, they just don't get it. I just feel (being completely honest) that playing computer games is kind of childish. I don't mean to offend anyone, it's just how I honestly feel.

krudler

liah wrote: »

Hm. Thinking on it a bit, I'm considering starting a thread on Portal/Portal 2 and its relevance in regards to females in gaming. But it probably wouldn't garner much interest.

It's basically the only game I've played that has a female main character and prominent female (kinda :pac:) antagonist that doesn't rub the fact that they're females in your face and is an incredibly intelligent game all-around. It's the perfect game to get women into gaming, I think, because it's largely non-violent, beautiful to look at, challenging, incredibly witty and doesn't sexualize the female characters.

That's a game I would consider 'girl friendly' that isn't just 'girly.' But I can't think of many others.

Thats a great point about Portal, GlaDos is one of the greatest female characters in video game history, but not because she's a typical video game female character, you never even see her in a human form only as a robot, Portal 2 spoiler! ->

or a potato

but shes a fantastic character.

donfers

Silverfish wrote: »

I've never seen a game trailer or advertisement and thought 'Hmm, it looks to be for boys... but I might like it!'

The stigma seems to be applied to female gamers BY (some) male gamers, nowhere have I ever seen marketing for a game mention a gender.

well that's not how it works, it's far more subtle than that

they're hardly going to say "the game is for american teenage boys", that would be insane

implicit in the content of these games is a narrative aimed at that demographic

but yes you are right some male gamers are dismissive about female gamers, i've heard many stories about females with headsets getting awful abuse on xbox live or psn - however not sure how much impact that has on the games themselves....you could argue it discourages girls from playing these games and thus propogates the gaming culture revolving around male teenage fantasy but as with all theories it's difficult to know where to stop

krudler

ElleEm wrote: »

It would put me off, I have to say.
Probably because I don't understand it myself. I have family who play online games, my boyfriend's friends and friend's boyfriend's who play the Xbox and stuff, and they just seem obsessed by it all. When the lads get together it's like all normal conversation ceases and it becomes about bloody games. I've also witnessed how the online things can become a compulsion as well.
All of my friends (and boyfriend) are the same, they just don't get it. I just feel (being completely honest) that playing computer games is kind of childish. I don't mean to offend anyone, it's just how I honestly feel.

but the average age of gamers these days is late 20's-early 30's. Its no more childish than kicking a ball around a field, does that make soccer childish? Games are becoming more and more adult orientated, I dont mean just sex and violence, I mean themes that would seem heavy in a movie, never mind a game.

dfx-

krudler wrote: »

Ha you're not a gamer until you've had to blow into a NES cart to get it working, or wedge down the loading tray with cardboard because the spring broke on it :pac:

:pac:

This thread will now be having me occupied at Youtube clips of SNES/Master System/Mega Drive and early PS1 games this evening..

People should be judged on all fibres of their being on their ability at Super Mario Kart on the SNES.

donfers

liah wrote: »

Hm. Thinking on it a bit, I'm considering starting a thread on Portal/Portal 2 and its relevance in regards to females in gaming. But it probably wouldn't garner much interest.

It's basically the only game I've played that has a female main character and prominent female (kinda :pac:) antagonist that doesn't rub the fact that they're females in your face and is an incredibly intelligent game all-around. It's the perfect game to get women into gaming, I think, because it's largely non-violent, beautiful to look at, challenging, incredibly witty and doesn't sexualize the female characters.

That's a game I would consider 'girl friendly' that isn't just 'girly.' But I can't think of many others.

ah but don't you see, you're kind of going down the road of the marketeers here yourself suggesting it's a perfect game to get women into because it's non-violent, has nice visuals etc. - you see how difficult it is for any of us to truly detach ourselves from our gender-based assumptions

Morag

What I find bewildering is that as the games industry has grown it's gotten less female gamer friendly. The first FPS game I ever got into and played to death on single player and multiplayer was Unreal~(published in 1998) and from the very start of the game there were 8 player models, 4 male and 4 female. None of them were sexualised.

These days it is rare to see that, you might get 1 or 2 female options but they can be crap. Mass Effect had the option to play the game as male or female but the marketing was all done in with the male leads.

Dragon age origins you could be male or female of all the different races but Dragon Age 2 it's male only.

As gaming becomes more and more main stream as it reaches out to broaden that main male demographic most of the main titles are of the big distributors are cutting corners and not having the basic gender options and going for the low brow sexist attitude* to get more 'Dudes' to play and buy the games. Which is short sighted to say the least.

But that is the main publishers like the warner brothers and 20 century fox of the movie industry, thankfully there are other smaller indie publishing companies out there which are not so narrow minded, but its a shame when game companies like Bioware who have an excellent pedigree and back catalogue of games get bought up by the likes of EA and narrow their games, making the % of female gamers who will buy and play their games smaller.

*DukeNukem and it's capture the babe game.

Earthhorse

You're a girl in Portal? I hadn't noticed! The Metroid series is another that doesn't make a big deal out of its protaganist being female.

krudler

Silverfish wrote: »

I've never seen a game trailer or advertisement and thought 'Hmm, it looks to be for boys... but I might like it!'

The stigma seems to be applied to female gamers BY (some) male gamers, nowhere have I ever seen marketing for a game mention a gender.

You can kind of apply the same logic to movies as well though, look at both of these posters:



Now if you asked 50 guys and 50 women which one they'd rather see, you can almost be guaranteed most of the women will pick SATC.
I used to watch SATC when it first started on tv, does that mean I should feel offended that they dont market it to men? nope, cos I'm in the minority of guys who watched it. same thing with games. Just cos something isnt marketed to you doesnt mean you cant enjoy it, hell I own Mean Girls on dvd :pac:

Earthhorse

Oh, and Mirror's Edge too, I think (not played the PC version, only the iPad one).

krudler

Earthhorse wrote: »

You're a girl in Portal? I hadn't noticed! The Metroid series is another that doesn't make a big deal out of its protaganist being female.

You sure are, you can see yourself if you put a portal where you can look through and see yourself enter it (thats incredibly difficult to explain unless you know the mechanics of how Portal works :pac: )

Metroid didnt make a big deal about Samus being a girl to begin with, then Metriod Other M came out and had her running around in a skin tight catsuit with high heels :rolleyes: instead of the armour and helmet you only see her in for the other games.

Earthhorse

krudler wrote: »

You sure are, you can see yourself if you put a portal where you can look through and see yourself enter it (thats incredibly difficult to explain unless you know the mechanics of how Portal works :pac: )

I think I did that in the course of play but didn't notice. Maybe it's more obvious in Portal 2? It's obvious from some of the promo material anyway.

Metroid didnt make a big deal about Samus being a girl to begin with, then Metriod Other M came out and had her running around in a skin tight catsuit with high heels :rolleyes: instead of the armour and helmet you only see her in for the other games.

Hmmm. Well, I guess nobody's perfect.

Wolfe Tone

Some much hate for WoW its a brilliant game, just takes over your life is all. Its deffo enjoyable though.

Revolution9

The first time I laid eyes on my now girlfriend she had a Yoshi teddy bear sticking out of her handbag for some strange reason, moments later I recieved a text and my text tone was the battle theme from Final Fantasy VII, she recognised it, said she loved that game, and I was pretty much smitten

krudler

Actually I totally forgot why I started this thread to begin with lol, I was playing Modern Warfare 2 the other night and for the giggles I changed my in game pic to a female one and my clan tag to G!RL, and the amount of messages I got off people saying I was "good for a chick" and "get off xbox and in the kitchan" (thats how he spelt it) was ridiculous. Goes to show how many assbags plays games online who freak out that the idea a girl is a better player than them.

Azureus

Im happy theres gamer girls on here, cuz I have a large group of girlfriends and only one shares my gaming enthusiasm!
I play a bit of everything from reto consoles like snes, megadrive to DS to Ps3 to xbox, My main/fave games bein Zelda (speshly Ocarina of time, FinalFantasy 7/8/9, Counterstrike, Red Dead Redemption although think the ending is ****, all the GTAs, fifa, pro evo...
Mortal kombat is my current obsession mainly because the new fatalities are epic and it was always one of my favourite games. Love fps games like Half-Life,Tekken and perfect dark. Golden eye is a deadly two player. Nothing beats a tournament playin halo or g.o.w with a few drinks either.
I love 'girly' games like dance central on kinect, and went through a massive guitar hero phase aswell. Im in mega-nerd mode playing pokemon on the ds right now which I get the piss ripped out of me for (understandable, but its so so addictive!!)

krudler

Revolution9 wrote: »

The first time I laid eyes on my now girlfriend she had a Yoshi teddy bear sticking out of her handbag for some strange reason, moments later I recieved a text and my text tone was the battle theme from Final Fantasy VII, she recognised it, saif she loved that game, and I was pretty much smitten

Thats marriage material right there :pac:

Revolution9

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

Some much hate for WoW its a brilliant game, just takes over your life is all. Its deffo enjoyable though.

I would never play it, because I fear what it would do to my social life. I just know I would become addicted to it, so I stay away.

Captain Chaos

Sharrow wrote: »

Dragon age origins you could be male or female of all the different races but Dragon Age 2 it's male only.

In DA2 you can be female too, just human only.

Even Gears of War, with the 3rd game due in Spetember now has at least one, most likely two female characters in co-op and online play.

krudler

Revolution9 wrote: »

I would never play it, because I fear what it would do to my social life. I just know I would become addicted to it, so I stay away.

Same here, one obsession with Call of Duty is enough you'd think after 32 days of playtime I'd get bored of it

krudler

Captain Chaos wrote: »

In DA2 you can be female too, just human only.

Even Gears of War, with the 3rd game due in Spetember now has at least one, most likely two female characters in co-op and online play.

Halo Reach has the option to be a female character in it too, and Cortana is basically the conscience of the lead character in the other games. Resident Evil has had loads of female protaganists, even a black female one in RE5 which is even rarer to see in games.

Morag

krudler wrote: »

Ah but do girls enjoy pink things because they're marketed these things, or are the people doing the marketing just giving people what they want? Its pretty standard that if something is pink its aimed at girls, I'm not sure when and where this was ever decided but you only have to look at anything from a console to am ipod, laptop or phone or gym bag or a million other things that women may buy because they're pink, doesnt mean they're some vacous airhead who only buys girlie things. some girls like pink, simple as.

But that causes issues with people assuming you want pink tech and your ownly choice due to gender is the pink one. The argument on pink branding has been had in this forum several times.

donfers wrote: »

well that's not how it works, it's far more subtle than that

they're hardly going to say "the game is for american teenage boys", that would be insane

implicit in the content of these games is a narrative aimed at that demographic

but yes you are right some male gamers are dismissive about female gamers, i've heard many stories about females with headsets getting awful abuse on xbox live or psn - however not sure how much impact that has on the games themselves....you could argue it discourages girls from playing these games and thus propogates the gaming culture revolving around male teenage fantasy but as with all theories it's difficult to know where to stop

It does discourage, all the flack you get due to gender sucks the fun out of the game and disrupts the game and people blame you on the disruption and all you are guilty of is gamine while being female.

I have a lot more concerns about my daughter as she starts playing online then I do my son.

Captain Chaos

It was Tomb Raider that first made it big in 1995 that kicked it off main stream but alot of women took the patronising look on it because of how the male designers created her, Lara's digital form.

Blowfish

liah wrote: »

Hm. Thinking on it a bit, I'm considering starting a thread on Portal/Portal 2 and its relevance in regards to females in gaming. But it probably wouldn't garner much interest.

It's basically the only game I've played that has a female main character and prominent female (kinda :pac:) antagonist that doesn't rub the fact that they're females in your face and is an incredibly intelligent game all-around. It's the perfect game to get women into gaming, I think, because it's largely non-violent, beautiful to look at, challenging, incredibly witty and doesn't sexualize the female characters.

That's a game I would consider 'girl friendly' that isn't just 'girly.' But I can't think of many others.

Indeed, there are very few which manage to do this. Valve did it with Alyx too, so it's nice to see a company which is portraying women properly rather than the ridiculous over the top dimorphism. Over all though, it may just be a symptom of gaming not having matured yet as a medium. It kind of reminds me of early black and white films where women seemed to be always depicted as demure and dainty souls who sat around all day waiting for there knight in shining armour to sweep them off their feet.

krudler

Captain Chaos wrote: »

It was Tomb Raider that first made it big in 1995 that kicked it off main stream but alot of women took the patronising look on it because of how the male designers created her, Lara's digital form.

very true, but look at her now compared to the old version, this is Lara circa the mid 90s:




And this is her in the upcoming game:



Now granted graphical differences mean they can render her as a more realistic looking woman these days, but they've definitely played down the ridiculous look she once had.

Ickle Magoo

I have a PS and PSP and love, love, love the FF series...and am partial to an F1 race.

I also love the lego star wars and indiana jones on the psp.

Don't get much of a chance to play these days - I remember many happy hours spent playing FF, GTA, Tekken, etc when I was supposed to be studying. :cool:

aligator_am

Logical Fallacy wrote: »

Heh, nice one! E-props for you!

My first gaming system was a ZX Spectrum, so i was loading games off tape. Went from that to an Amiga 500, then ended up getting a PC in the mid to late 90's. Switched to consoles when i bought my brothers PSOne off him for 50bucks.

But yeah, the early days were vicious, no saves, no nothing....just start from the start each time.

Haha same here, used to love the Spectrum, you should route around google, AFAIK it's all in the public domain now so you can download the emulators and ROMS / game files free, haha meaning you can now play skool daze, jack the nipper, jet set willy and all those other brilliant games again

parker kent

liah wrote: »

What exactly do you consider 'girl friendly' games? What, like, Cooking Mama?

What does that even mean?

It's not about making 'girl friendly' games, whatever those are. It's just social stigma that girls don't game, it's seen as a 'boy' thing from early on, more girls will get into it over time like they are with everything else that was considered a 'boy' thing (e.g. IT). There don't need to be any changes to how games are made - we can play them and enjoy them just fine as is, thank you very much!

I disagree to an extent and agree in a different extent. I think the likes of Wii Fit, Brain Training, anything involving ponys etc are girl friendly games. I'm not saying they are strictly for girls, but they are more likely to attract non-gaming girls than say Red Dead or Black Ops. They are what I'd refer to as girl friendly. In other words, they are games aimed at what are seen as areas girls are interested. Similar to having a Pink DS. Whether it is right or wrong is not really important, but it has played a part in getting more girls involved in gaming. When I say girls, I mean females of any age btw.

The reason I said they needed to make such games was to counteract the long-held belief that games are "for boys". The stigma of it being a boy thing would decrease if more girls got involved in gaming. Using a pink console, fitness games or any other casual, mainstream marketing device is just a way of getting girls involved. When they get involved in gaming, they are more likely to play other types of games and see that it is not actually a boy thing.

I think Nintendo played a marketing blinder with the DS and Wii by opening up the market to far more people. Girls really were the untapped market (ooh er matron :pac:). Whilst there will be girls like you who'll naturally try gaming, there were many who simply would not because as you say, it is seen as a boy thing. So creating overtly female or mainstream friendly games is one way of counteracting that belief.

Edit: I also mean a move away from Zeppelin titted teenage fantasy depictions of girls in games. The depictions of girls in games is fairly male centric.

Morag

http://women-gamers.livejournal.com/ is a good community of female gamers.