Today brings an article brought to you by one of my favorite guest writers, Excardon. You may recognize his name as one of the founders of halo2.junk.ws or you may be familiar with him because he has written here before. In fact you probably remember his other article quite well, Improvements Needed for Halo 3. It was my fifth most popular article for the month of July. No, I will not have Excardon write you an article every day. You will have to continue to suffer through my ridiculous stuff. However he will treat you to another masterpiece, this time about a topic I hold dear to my heart, female gamers. He is a good source for opinions on this topic as he met his amazing wife through the wonderful world of gaming. I’ll admit, I bristled at a few points during this article (in my defense, he not only discusses the particular position I hold within my clan but also brings up the female gaming group I belong to) but it is an honest insightful read. I will be doing my own article in response to this tomorrow. For now, enjoy.
One Gamer’s Experience and Perspective on Female Gamers,
written by Excardon
First off before I share my thoughts and experiences on females and gaming, I’d like to state what you will and won’t find in this article. You won’t find a million facts and numbers being laid out to prove a point. You probably won’t find this article to be politically correct either. What you will find is the opinion of one man who used to be your stereotypical gamer and through the years developed a better sense of what really takes place in life inside and outside of the video game world. Gaming has been my number one hobby as far back as I can remember, so in some aspects, I do take it seriously. Again, this is my personal experiences, opinions, and outlook on females in gaming. Please keep that in mind while reading this article. Thank you.
Before my days of playing video games across the Internet, I always thought that playing video games as a hobby or form of regular entertainment was limited to a male-only world. If you asked me five years ago to give a percentage of female gamers actively involved in the gaming world, I would have more than likely responded 1% – 3% (and the 3% would be really stretching it in my mind back then). On top of that, I would have also stated that the reason they are playing video games in the first place is because they have older male siblings that play them a lot so they are used to that in their lives (like my sister for example).
However, back in March of 2004 I was one of the millions of people who got sucked into the world of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, or MMORPGs for short. My game of choice was Final Fantasy XI in which I became online friends with a female gamer from Japan. This was something new to me since I have never before encountered a female who played video games.
After getting to know her fairly well, I found out and noticed some interesting things about her that somewhat changed my perspective about female gamers. She definitely broke the common stereotype that female gamers are either bad at video games or they hit the glass ceiling in terms of skill and can not get any better. However, at that time I thought, “Well, she’s Asian. All Asian’s are good at video games and a female gamer is probably not uncommon over there. I doubt there are any American female gamers out there.” Ok, I admit it sounds very stereotypical, but that’s what I thought. I didn’t know a lot about Japanese or Asian culture, however since video games seem to be widely accepted by the general public more over there than here, a very small part of my statement seemed to be somewhat true to me.
Anyway, during this time period a friend of mine introduced me to a game for Xbox named Halo: Combat Evolved. Since this is the first shooter that I played in quite some time that could match up with the awesomeness of Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64, I was immediately hooked. In October of 2004, I signed up to Xbox Live and started my journey into a new world. Although I had experience with online games before, all the communication was done in text. With the voice over IP service that XBL provides, it gives the feeling that the people are actually there with you.
Once I started playing on XBL, I could now notice the age and gender differences because of the ability to talk over this service. I could somewhat tell if I was playing against a pre-puberty teenager or child, a person with an accent or ethnic voice, or whether or not if they are male or female. Although I didn’t run into a lot of female gamers through simple matchmaking that I know of, I was still surprised with the amount of females that played a first person shooter.
Remember my Asian theory above? Well that was shot down fairly quickly as I discovered that not only American women play video games but they also play one of the big time “male only” genres, the First Person Shooter (FPS for short). The first clan I was in only comprised of about fifteen to twenty people and four of them happened to be female.
However the biggest stereotype that was broken over my time on Halo 2 was that females are not good at video games. Coincidentally that was first proven to be false by a female who in fact turned out to be the woman I married. On a side note, no, that is not the sole reason on why I married her. She can still outperform me, as well as many others male friends of mine, from time to time in Halo 2 and actually did quite frequently throughout the Beta version of Halo 3.
Over the past few years of playing Halo 2 over XBL and becoming involved in the Halo community I noticed a couple ongoing trends when it comes to female gamers. The most common and well-known issue is the way a lot of male gamers, typically teenage males, tend to treat females while playing a game of Halo over XBL. Due to the fact that I am married I got to witness a whole lot first hand. It usually is dished out to the women gamers at extremes only. You have your group of people who do nothing but insult women or the group of people who do nothing but hit on women.
We all know these things that I just mentioned above are common issues that women face when sitting down to play a video game. With everything else aside, I will now dive into the things I have noticed as being an active member within the Halo community.
When I first started getting into the Halo community I noticed a couple trends on forums that tends to still be consistent to this day. If a male gamer introduces himself some people say, “Hello and welcome”, and that may continue on for a few posts and then dies off when new people arrive to the forum to post their introduction. However, if a female gamer posts an introduction, they are usually welcomed by a lot more, if not all, of the members of the forum they are posting in and their thread stays active for many days, or possibly months. Check it out for yourself. I’m sure you’ll find this trend to be true.
A little while back in August of 2006, my wife and I formed the Halo 2 Junkies, which is the competitive community team for the website http://halo2.junk.ws. At first to get established and find challenges we needed to head out and find teams willing to face us. Throughout our year in existence we came up with a certain way we could easily get challenges when we needed them. “What’s that?” you ask? Well, it’s quite simple. My wife made the challenge requests when we were hurting for them. Once she issued the challenge, the response was almost immediate in most cases. As for myself, it usually took a few days to a week and if I heard nothing I just got her to post and magically someone would respond. To this day, my wife usually gets most of the questions about the Junkies although now that we are established it is starting to even out in terms of people approaching us with questions about the team.
Another big example comes to mind is a Halo community of all female gamers who call themselves The Cavegirls. I first off want to say that the girls in that community are very nice people and have done good things for the community as well as others outside of Halo (i.e. the Fight Like a Girl tournament that raised money for breast cancer research). I am only using them as an example here and nothing more.
This example comes to you in the form of a question and my question to you is this : “Would they be as well known and receive the attention they get from communities and even the folks at Bungie if they weren’t female?” Maybe they would, but unfortunately I think not as much if this were the case. I personally believe that I would have been big fans of them if it was in fact this way. Anyone who does the awesome stuff they do gets a thumbs up in my book. However, sadly I think many people would have pushed them off to the wayside and it would have given them a harder time to become established within the community if they were an all male group.
The reason I bring this up is because I see this happen to up and coming communities when they try to get established. While forum hopping at work or home, I’ve seen many communities look for interaction with others and this exact thing happens to them and it makes me upset when the male gender does not give chances to interact equally.
“So, why is this?” you ask. Well, when a female expresses an interest in something a male commonly is into like video games, the male automatically finds it not only to be unique but an opportunity to build a friendly relationship with a woman. Although an attraction for the female may not be present, the chance of interaction with a female is. Us as men naturally jump at the chance to have as much interaction with the opposite sex as possible. It’s a self-confidence booster and at times form of status among men. Simply put, if you know a lot of women, you have must have a special something about you. This in turn can also bring more male friends since they know you’re the guy to hang with. Whether its genetics, society, or both to blame to cause us to think like that; I have no idea. It’s just how we are.
As I bring this subject to a close I would like to say a couple things to everyone who took the time to read this. The future of gaming is forever changing. I want every person out there to keep in mind the necessity of treating everyone with the same amount of respect that you would like to receive in return. For the men, as females are becoming more present in all genres of gaming, we must learn to welcome them with open arms but not at the expense of neglecting our fellow comrades that we fight along side of in the trenches of the online world. For the women, don’t let the bad apples of the male gender discourage you. Keep doing what you are doing and progress will continue and your presence will flourish.
As for me, I will continue to try to live by my gaming motto: I don’t discriminate; I kill everyone equally. I hope everyone can eventually one day do the same. On September 25th, we will be entering a new era of gaming. Let’s finish the fight together in more ways than one.
Posted by xATHENAx on September 12, 2007 at 7:50 am
From time to time beat you?? Psh. Try most of the time!
Thank you BS Angel for posting Excardon’s article. I think he brings up some valid points and hopefully the fact that he is a male saying some of these things will open the minds of those males who are still against females in the gaming world.
Posted by Excardon on September 12, 2007 at 8:44 am
^ Hehe. Well since September 2005 you killed me 7,267 times to be exact.
Bs angel, thanks for putting up this article and I’m glad you enjoyed it. To be honest I was very hesitant in writing this when you first asked, but I’m glad I did. Can’t wait to see what you write tomorrow!
Posted by bs angel on September 12, 2007 at 9:47 am
I am glad Athena stopped by to present the facts. LOL …
I am always happy to host your articles. They are very well written and thought out. I enjoyed this piece immensely and hope the same thing as your wife, that perhaps it will strike a different chord since it is coming from a male’s perspective.
Posted by Fezzer on September 12, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Very interesting. I’ve seen most of those anomalies you mentioned. If I was a girl, I don’t think I would like it very much. Sure we are of different genders, but we can still treat each other equally.
At the same time there is nothing wrong with giving a girl a little extra attention. Most of the ones in my life have appreciated it and seem to flourish from it. Correct me if I’m grossly wrong here ladies.
What I’m trying to say is, treat a lady like a lady, whether they game or not. Treat a guy like a guy whether they game or not. Don’t sacrifice one relationship over another because you think it’s more ‘cool’ to hang with a girl (and vice versa). Be well rounded.
Be excellent to each other.
I’ll shutup now.
Posted by Cayote on September 12, 2007 at 9:47 pm
I have decided that I am going to do a radio show response to this article. I will post the date and time soon. Anyone is welcome to join and welcome to leave comments or hang out in chat while we do the show.
I will say this tho:
I can appreciate what Excardon is saying. I can understand where he is coming from. I agree with treating everyone equally. I do not want special attention in the game or anywhere because I am a girl.
I did not create the group for fame. The most important thing to me is that I have met some awesome women and made some awesome friends.
http://www.nowlive.com/member.asp?id=100229630
Posted by Second Foundation » The Riot #065 on September 16, 2007 at 9:19 am
[...] Excardon on Hawty McBloggy [...]
Posted by Jo on September 18, 2007 at 8:33 am
Hey there, great article, its nice to actually come across male gamers that understand these issues. I can relate to a lot that was written here.
‘You have your group of people who do nothing but insult women or the group of people who do nothing but hit on women.’ -
This is the kind of thing that i tell a lot of people when they ask me wat its like to be a girl gamer. I happen to hav 2 accounts, one name I play under makes it obvious that i’m a female gamer, the other doesn’t. Its interesting to see the difference in the way people treat me depending on wat account i decide to play on. When I play under the name that could be either male or female, i find people don’t talk to me as much, when i play under my female name i recieve tonnes of attention. I’m glad to say much of it is positive, although it doesn’t mean i’m always happy to recieve it. I get a lot of compliments on my gaming skills telling me that ‘i’m not bad for a girl’ or that ‘i’m the best girl gamer they’ve ever seen.’ I don’t understand y they hav to use the word girl in the compliment, because as stated in the article, the idea that girls can’t play as well as guys is complete and utter rubbish. (At the end of the day we still hav fingers and thumbs, and if we spend just as many hours playing as the guys do, there’s absolutely no reason y we can’t be just as good or even better.) I told my m8 that i kept getting flrty msg in my inbox, and he thought it was ammusing and asked me y i didn’t enjoy it, while my other m8 tells me that i only recieve the numer of compliments that i do because i’m a girl. There’s nothing wrong with recieveing positive attention, its better than the opposite, but at the end of the day, i don’t want to be hounded by it, i just want to be treated like an equal.
‘At the same time there is nothing wrong with giving a girl a little extra attention. Most of the ones in my life have appreciated it and seem to flourish from it. Correct me if I’m grossly wrong here ladies.’ – Ye, i like a little bit of attention, its quite fun and exciting, but when it passes a certain level it can get annoying, and i also wish that i could say that i recieve lots of compliments based on my good gaming skill, but i can’t say that for certain, despite the fact that i’m fully capable of coming first place in the FPS that i play, i get the feeling that the compliments arn’t all based on my skill level. At the end of the day, i just want people to be truthfull.
‘we must learn to welcome them with open arms but not at the expense of neglecting our fellow comrades that we fight along side of in the trenches of the online world. For the women, don’t let the bad apples of the male gender discourage you. Keep doing what you are doing and progress will continue and your presence will flourish.’ -
I’m glad u stated that. Attracting more female gamers seems to be a big thing in the games industry at current, but i already know a few girls who would play but don’t, becuase not all the attention is positive. I hav to put up with a lot of sexist comments and insults, most women just won’t put up with that and will probably be deterred frm playing the game, but i continue to ignore it to prove a point. Games are my passion, i’ve played them all my life starting on the amiga and followed them through to where we are currently, i think i hav as much a right to be playing them as everybody else does. In fact, it was my mums addiction to breakout and tomb raider that got me into games in the first place, i use to play a lot with my sister, my female cousins and in big groups of female firends. I also use to play weekly with my male cousin, who never mentioned the fact that i was a girl and played me like an equal, so i use to think it was common and normal for girls to play games, it was only when i got the internet and started going online more that i realised there was in fact an issue… Some of the comments i hav recieved hav been very hurtful, and i admit to going off the game for a little while after recieveing them, although i never went back to CSS, i usually do build up enough confidence and get back up to enter the game world again. The way in which these people treat u is ranged, they either let u win, or when u kill them they say they let u do it becuase they felt sorry for u, or they all gang up on u and seek u out more over the other gamers in the game. It was only yesturday that i had someone screaming over the mic at me, ‘kill the bitch, everybody kill the bitch.’ I’ll probably play under my more masculin name today and keep quiet over the mic, but why should i feel the need to hide my gender like i’m ashamed of it… I’m glad to say i’m in a clan with 2 other girls and the guys on there appreciate us. Their proud to be playing alongside other girl gamers, not ashamed of it.
I’d like to state that its not just young immature boys on games i’ve had this problem with. I’m generally interested in computing. In my ict group at college there was only one other girl in my class. It doesn’t bother me, cos i get on with guys better than grls anyway, as long as their not sexist with me, which they weren’t. But one of my teachers (who u would expect to be mature enough to accept us) came up to me and sarah and said ‘don’t worry if you find it hard to get at first, girls do tend to be a little slower than guys at picking this up, but i’m here so u can ask me for help whenever u want.’ I found it very insulting that as a girl i had to prove myself at computing more than the guys did, and just for the record i walked away with the highest marks in our class, which my teacher looked very embarrased about. I’m starting a game development course at uni next week, its always been my life long ambition to get a career in the industry. I’ve been warned that it will be probably be mostly guys, but i don’t care as long as their not nasty to me. On the other hand, because female game developers are also rare and due to the aims of the industry to widen the gaming audience, i’ve been told that i’m more likely to get a job because of my female perspective on things.
To be honest i also get a lot of rubbish off non-girl gamers. U know the girly types, making me feel like i’m wrong for not being all lady like and not being into the same stuff as them. I don’t see myself as being a part of the female stereotype, but at school i did get insulted by a lot of girls and laughed at by a lot of guys for saying that i wanted to be a game developer.
I also get sick of the assumptions made in my game development books. Some of them assume that its a guy reading them, and they also make some assumptions on the types of games girls like to play. Its tru, FPS games are not for all girls, but i get sick of the statement that they’re made solely for young teenage boys, cos i hav bumped into quite a few female gamers over the years who like excatly the same stuff as guys.
Sry for writing so much, but its an issue that plagues me day in and day out. Every time some guys comes up to me and makes out that i don’t hav a right to be doing wat i’m doing, it just gives me even more drive and determination to get to where i want to be. I want to prove a point that girls can be just as good at gaming and computers as guys can be. I hope the increase of female interest will help to put out this kind of immature attitude… To be fair though, i’ve also come across some female gamers who do make it worse for themselves. One of my m8’s says he’s suprised by the amount of girl gamers he’s been seeing lately, and he strongly believes in equality, and he’s a little bit sick of getting msg’s off of girls saying he should be ashamed cos he just got beaten by a girl. It makes me mad, cos thats the kind of attitude i want to be stamped out, but i informed him that most girls arn’t like that and just want to be treated equally…
Posted by Excardon on September 20, 2007 at 6:47 am
Hey, thanks for the comment! Don’t worry if it was real long. It gave a lot of insight on what some girl gamers go through and how they feel. Not only did your comment expand on my article, it also showed how non-gamers of both genders view females gamers as well.
Thanks again and good luck with your gaming career. Since that is the field I am looking to get into as well, who knows, maybe we will be working on a project some day. If not, I hope your game will be as good as mine. :P
Posted by Jo on September 23, 2007 at 9:25 am
LOL, Thanks very much. I’m renowned for being an essay writter, but I enoy discussing issues regarding the industry. Maybe we will meet sometime, who know’s lol. Good luck also in your career and any projects you work on. :)
Posted by Tey on November 28, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Well, I had a lot to say too. But to tell you the truth, Jo pretty much said everything I’ve felt about being a girl gamer. But I do have a bit to add about reactions I have received from many male gamers.
I am flattered when I get good reactions. I can’t deny that. But more often than not, those come with strings attached: dozens of friends requests, strangers asking for personal information, unpleasant hooting and hollering, and if all of this fails them, they just might rate you for “Unsporting Conduct” because you didn’t give out your phone number. (Yes, this has happened to me.)
Even the ones who compliment often turn out to be the same ones who insult. So in the end, I really just want to be treated fair and kindly, like I’m sure everyone male or female does. I don’t want to feel like I have to take off my mic altogether because of how people might react. Then I can’t coordinate things with my team, which I enjoy doing. So I either have to play with others I know or not talk, which takes some of the fun out of team games on Halo 3, GoA, etc.
I know there is no quick solution to this problem or for teaching people courtesy in general. But it is very encouraging to see articles about the good and bad reactions to girl gamers.
And I just have to say, I also liked that Excardon discussed how the lack of equality affects male gamers, because I understand how it feels to have to work harder to get noticed because of your gender. I am a female undergraduate in computer science and my job involves helping customers with different electronics, and I am not always taken seriously because I am a girl – even by other women. It has really been infuriating at times. But when it comes to gaming, I do think girls are sometimes noticed sooner than guys. Hopefully the female population in gaming will continue to grow and help even things out a bit for guys and girls in the future.
Okay, so I had a lot to add. But thanks for reading my ramblings anyway. :)
Posted by Cheryl on March 14, 2008 at 7:34 am
From one female gamer…thank you for taking the time to explain. I really appreciated everything you said and glad it was a male that stated it. No doubt your gamer wife has you in check, were a rare breed but an exceptional one :) Again thank you!
Posted by nshadowsong on March 27, 2008 at 10:50 am
I’m glad you bring into light some solid points. I am a female gamer and when I do play games, say like on Xbox live or over the net, I don’t try to call attention to my gender. I have been playing since I was a wee’bitt, starting with the NES and have continued doing so. Although I’ve played many genres, FPS is and has always been my favorite. However, that is also where I witness the friction between genders/gamers the most. It wasn’t until I started playing Counter-Strike 1.5 and later on a clan that I really started to notice the two “typical males” you talk about: 1) the ones who can’t shut it about the cat calls and sexist jokes 2) the ones who can’t stop the woman-bashing.
As with all games, you need to consider the type of games it is and the kinda players involved. Definitely, not all guys are like that and there are some awesome players out there. Certainly the FPS is still a genre catered towards males simply because of its nature. But I’ve noticed in games like World of Warcraft, where the content caters towards both sexes, the presence of those kinda guys and their kinda talk has been practically nonexistent in my experience. Maybe one of the reasons for that is because the nature of WoW gets you into the mindset of Alliace or Horde, or Paladin/Warrior/Priest, etc. But that’s another topic for another day. Excuse my ranting @_@”
BS Angel brings up a point when she says:
“An opponent is an opponent, plain and simple. I hope that attitude is a universal one instead of a rarity. I have faith that other people shoot virtual bullets indiscriminately as I do.”
As a female gamer, I want my opponents and teammates to judge me not by my gender, but by my ability to play the game, my ability to play on the team, and my ability to strategize, know when to follow the leader, and know when to lead. I personally want to earn the respect when it comes to serious gaming with teammates.
Sure, there are things you need to overcome first if you are a female gamer at times, like initial impressions, or the cat calls, or the sexist jokes–whatever. Because of the bias that exists, you may have to double the effort to “earn the respect” of your teammates as they say. This is not only limited to gaming, but to our society at large. I think women in general feel that they need to prove themselves more because of the social constructions we put on ideas of maleness or femaleness that already exist in the country. So it is no surprise to me that female gamers can feel so similarly.
Then again, now that things like XBL chat exists, or Skype, Vent, basically any kind of program that allows for in-game chat, we have to consider our perceptions of people from different ethnicity and age. You bring up the point about noticing people with accent, people who may be young or old. I think we have to check ourselves from perpetuating stereotypes based on these things. We also need to remind ourselves that these things don’t define a group of people as a whole. Whether it is a female, a Mexican, a child, an Asian, a man, whoever it is, we need to remind ourselves that however they play and however they may act in-game is not representative of their gender, ethnicity, age group as a whole. We can’t fall back into stereotypes.
In the idealistic gaming world, I think people should be judged on their gaming, thinking, and communication skills.
In the era of the Wii, DS, casual games, and even comics becoming more accepted in Hollywood, I think the public in general is becoming more receptive of video games. So I think this certainly helps to start diluting these stereotypes in the gaming community.
As a person who wants to see the gaming community grow and be accepted by the public at large, not just as a hobby that little kids play, but as a viable form of entertainment, I can get pretty passionate about issues like these. I want to see gaming move forward positively in every aspect if possible
Posted by Waffle Deluxe on February 21, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I concur.