Gamer girls

Damian said:
Violent games are automatically assumed to be a boy thing. You might have a point.
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I was firmly opposed to PC gaming (but not console or Atari games) until I saw Wolfenstein 3D on my friend's brand new 386. He asked me to play a little … and the next day I went and bought a bigger, better PC myself. And got Wolfenstein 3D. And Catacomb 3D. And later Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Blood, MOrtal Coil, Depth Dwellers, Blake Stone (in no particular order) … even Angst, the undoubtedly worst game in the world, but it was labeled as a shooter, so what could I do?

Only one of my female friends did do any virtual gaming back then - during Quake and Team Fortress times, there were two more, though. Even nowadays I don't like to meet with the women on my friend list because there is just one dedicated gamer among them. If the guys go out, well, that's different … there are at least three gamers, and all of them are dedicated, so there are topics we can discuss.

The funny thing is that most of my programmer colleagues (I'm a consultant, not a programmer, but we sit in one office) don't game at all. We're about 30 people in our business area, and only two of the others are gamers (both male). But this may be connected to the fact that we do the support for some kind of Jurassic Park (dinosaur mainframes), many of the colleagues are 60+, don't know how to work with any Microsoft product … and mainframes don't make the best gaming platforms. So this is less about gender then specialization.
 
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Gaming has always had very good equality when it comes to advertising, but even still this blogger seems to be under the impression that it's mainly boys that do the whole no-lifing stereotype:

http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=342

Suggesting that the true inequality lies somewhere in the imagination of basement dwelling. Does anyone here ever imagine a female when thinking about a basement dweller? For example.
 
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I think the revolution with "girl gaming" happened when relationships played a far more important role in games. "The sims" for example brought many "girl gamers" to the fold.
 
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Éder Álvarez Balanta said:
I hate it when most of them play on consoles and their favorite 'RPGs' are Bioware romance simulators.
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I think that is a bit harsh. Females are naturally attracted to relationships and males are attracted to numbers with 10% on either sex doing the reverse. I think it is a shame that most relationships in games focus on romance than other things, I wish more relationships in games have the element of relationships found in Planescape: Torment.
 
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Both my daughters, slightly older (35 and 36) than lost's little princess (aren't they all at that age?) have been very much into gaming for years. On PC, never had a console. They started with adventure games. Lately they've been playing Skyrim, FO4, ESO, Secret World and the Dragon Ages (and TW3 for the youngest).

One of the benefits of gaming is that they learned English very fast. Didn't take long before I no longer had to translate for them.

pibbur who is proud of his daughters because of this. And for a few other minor things also.
 
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It's definitely cool for everybody to play games nowadays, just like it's cool to be smart and a nerd nowadays. Being a nerd or smart when I was growing up was way different. I never seemed to notice much if gaming was that cool or not, but my circle of friends who I could say were heavy into gaming was pretty small and pretty much all dudes. I don't really recall that many girls gaming, although I did have a neighbor when I was really young and on snow days when there was no school we would play Mario and stuff on her NES.

Glad girls are into it today.
 
Éder Álvarez Balanta said:
I hate it when most of them play on consoles and their favorite 'RPGs' are Bioware romance simulators.
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I don't know if you're just looking for a response, but that generalisation is way off. Games like Nancy Drew and the entire PC Adventure Game market generally has always had a very hardcore female following:

http://community.herinteractive.com/

A better question, and one more in-line with the OP, is why you hold those thoughts? From your small social sphere or have you fallen for someone else's propaganda? (or are you trying to make your own propaganda :D )
 
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Damian said:
... I wish more relationships in games have the element of relationships found in Planescape: Torment.
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That one was funny, especially when the jealousy between the tiefling and Fall-From-Grace surfaced.

pibbur who got married exactly once in a game, and that was in Skyrim, but doesn't remember who was the bride. And who thinks that in general romance does not add anything of significance to CRPG's.
 
lackblogger said:
I might be old, but I've never been that old, mentally speaking, lol, to think that girls are not potential gamers, though I do agree that in the early days of gaming it was certainly a male dominated hobby and games were considered toys for boys, from a dedication perspective, and I don't recall any girls talking about any latest games. If I went into GAME and saw the same thing you did I wouldn't bat an eyelid though as the existence of gamergirls has long since been a life norm. I can see how it might bring up a sense of nostalgia of yourself at that age, but I don't see why it would move you to make a thread, per-se. Yes, gaming is a 'legit' hobby nowadays, but then it has been for about a decade now?

Edit@Caddy, yes, the SNES was already quite universal in its appeal, another of the many reasons it flew off the shelves.
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lackblogger said:
A better question, and one more in-line with the OP, is why you hold those thoughts? From your small social sphere or have you fallen for someone else's propaganda? (or are you trying to make your own propaganda :D )
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I am not claiming that girls are not potential gamers. I know lot of them online who plays MMO and very passionate but none in real life. My social circles these days is small but even at school and university I was friends with lots of girls and none of them cared about games. They might do some casual gaming but never had any passion for it. It was never their hobby. This is why I was surprised to see the number in GAME store other day who were buying what I consider "hard core" games for themselves. The girls I knew at school would be dead before they step foot into a game store :lol:
 
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Aubrielle said:
My parents had an Atari around the time I was born, so that got *me* started. I got an NES as a little girl, and then a PC when I was about 10, and went from there. :)

It was all too fun to care whether it was "cool" or not.
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Lucky you! At my school and my other social circles, games weren't cool at all for both boys and girls. If you played games you were considered bit "lazy" and a couch potato. Sports were the thing if you want to date a good looking girl! At high school I wanted to loose my virginity badly, I stopped telling anyone I played games at all :lol:
 
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Fluent said:
It's definitely cool for everybody to play games nowadays, just like it's cool to be smart and a nerd nowadays. Being a nerd or smart when I was growing up was way different. I never seemed to notice much if gaming was that cool or not, but my circle of friends who I could say were heavy into gaming was pretty small and pretty much all dudes. I don't really recall that many girls gaming, although I did have a neighbor when I was really young and on snow days when there was no school we would play Mario and stuff on her NES.

Glad girls are into it today.
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There is lot of truth to this I think. Its cool to be nerd and geek these days thanks to likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg who got very rich etc. Its good to see the stigma going away.
 
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For anyone who wants true to life relationships/dating, be sure to play Hunie Pop :) It is also a great role model for girls in how to treat dates.
 
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crpgnut said:
For anyone who wants true to life relationships/dating, be sure to play Hunie Pop :) It is also a great role model for girls in how to treat dates.
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Hmm. I want to stamp on something!!!! Regrettably, only the cat is available. And the rest of my household will probably react with hostility if I tried something on the cat.

Pibbur who did get a bit restless now. *ponders*
 
Jaz said:
I was firmly opposed to PC gaming (but not console or Atari games) until I saw Wolfenstein 3D on my friend's brand new 386. He asked me to play a little … and the next day I went and bought a bigger, better PC myself. And got Wolfenstein 3D. And Catacomb 3D. And later Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Blood, MOrtal Coil, Depth Dwellers, Blake Stone (in no particular order) … even Angst, the undoubtedly worst game in the world, but it was labeled as a shooter, so what could I do?

Only one of my female friends did do any virtual gaming back then - during Quake and Team Fortress times, there were two more, though. Even nowadays I don't like to meet with the women on my friend list because there is just one dedicated gamer among them. If the guys go out, well, that's different … there are at least three gamers, and all of them are dedicated, so there are topics we can discuss.

The funny thing is that most of my programmer colleagues (I'm a consultant, not a programmer, but we sit in one office) don't game at all. We're about 30 people in our business area, and only two of the others are gamers (both male). But this may be connected to the fact that we do the support for some kind of Jurassic Park (dinosaur mainframes), many of the colleagues are 60+, don't know how to work with any Microsoft product … and mainframes don't make the best gaming platforms. So this is less about gender then specialization.
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Ok!! As someone who knows a bit about those 'dinosaurs' I can (unfortunately) drive MS 'stuff' and I actually quit personal computer gaming for a few years as I had a $10,000,000 computer to play with often all to myself!!!
 
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lostforever said:
I am not claiming that girls are not potential gamers. I know lot of them online who plays MMO and very passionate but none in real life. My social circles these days is small but even at school and university I was friends with lots of girls and none of them cared about games. They might do some casual gaming but never had any passion for it. It was never their hobby. This is why I was surprised to see the number in GAME store other day who were buying what I consider "hard core" games for themselves. The girls I knew at school would be dead before they step foot into a game store :lol:
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I really can't understand this.... there are still GAME stores where you live?? Amazing, I thought that was something which only existed a long long time ago.
 
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GothicGothicness said:
I really can't understand this…. there are still GAME stores where you live?? Amazing, I thought that was something which only existed a long long time ago.
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Hehe yes, there is only one dedicated to games and they are struggling and I think they will go bust in few years. They are very expensive compared to online but I still like to go there and have browse! These days I only buy pre owned games from them since their prices are not much different from online.
 
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Cleaned the thread up and removed all the rubbish in order to go back to the original discussion.
 
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