It's time for it to be said. I've had enough. No more top ten lists, beauty contests, YouTube videos or mission statements loudly stomping feet and proclaiming the superiority and uniqueness of female gamers. God women, don't you see how bad you're making us all look?
I'm not complaining about the sexualization of Wiimotes (clearly, as I am an advocate of oral activity with controllers myself), posing naked in a sea of consoles, or even playful photo shoots. What's freaking me out is an attitude of supremacy that female gamers are often affecting these days. It's no better than the college boneheads that powerround Halo en masse and crush beercans on their heads, screaming "I POWNED YOU" up until the moment they pass out and/or vomit.
The merge of sex appeal and gaming is an obvious one, and no doubt there are lots of enjoyable results, from crass to classy. I've never had a problem with the sexualizing of women in the video game world. The far more distressing issue is the amount of energy and time spent on female gaming topics that do not matter.
This year brought the advent of much discussed items such as the Nerdcore calendar, which I was most interested in the reaction to. To my surprise, I heard more feedback than I expected from men about how the pictures were sexy, yet would have been moreso had the girls been real gamers enjoying games versus posed models. Now, I'm sure there will be more people that will buy the calendar than those who will speculate on it's game specific authenticity or not. I have no problem with it personally. My only issue is the constant focus on female gamers being women first and gamers second. A recent vid post from Aktrez got me thinking on how much this entire situation bugs me.
The thing is, ladies, we're here to play games and enjoy them. Yes, we get a totally different response to being gamers than guys do. Does that mean we adapt the "If you can't beat them, join them" mindset? I don't think either of those directions are the right way to go. It doesn't matter anywhere near as much that you're a girl as it does that you are a gamer. So drop it. It doesn't make a difference if your boyfriend turned you on to World of Warcraft last year or you've been addicted since Kid Icarus - once you become a gamer, you'll always be one. Leave the post feminist discussion to people who like to hear themselves talk. Better yet, play a game and forget everything around you. That's what made all of us fall in love with them in the first place, regardless of gender.
Contest:
3:54 PM on 12.30.2006
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Gamer power!
Take a joke.
It seems more like a bitter rant than a legit article. The fact that gaming, the world's fastest growing hobby/sport, has become sexualized should come as a shock to none.
I'm sure there are plenty of girls who only play games for the attention they get from guys. But there are more girls that play games because THEY LIKE GAMES. And for every guy who respects a girl's right to game, there are ten more who go "UR A GIRL YOU CAN'T PLAY GAMES YOU SUK LOLOLOLOL!!11!!!1!"
Don't crucify girl gamers for an attitude guy gamers created.
lolz innuendo
Bitter rant or no, it's still a good reminder of the crap that girl gamers put up with sometimes. I've not met too many myself, other than the ones recently who like Wii sports and the girl who works(ed?)in the local Rhino games store. Most of the girls in MMORPGs are guys playing out some fantasy of theirs so... did I have a point? I forgot. $hite!~
you are teh saucesome.
thank you for writing this post, i was steaming about the exact same thing after watching that video. gamers are gamers, and when 'girl gamers' make such a blatant public display of how essential their gender is to their 'unique' hobby it appears to be the whole reason why they game in the first place, which is <i>not</i> a positive message.
I am a gamer because I play games. 'Nuff sed.
Supremacist! You think you're better then us!?
I acctualy sent Aktrez a message asking her about this... Some other dude posted something on her post saying "There girls and they play games that all we need to know" Everyone plays games these days kids guys gals even robots! My friend also said he meet the frag dolls and they sucked...The only reason there famous is because there girls..Also there is a thing on xbox live were a whole bunch of girls meet to play people...How come i can make something like that with microsoft called "Pieman's Piearena" I belive its because im not a woeman. So why cant we put away our diffrences?
(Is it just me or are there more that really dislike the term gamer?)
Men need to stfu and realize that they aren't better gamers, and women need to just stfu and play and not bitch about the way their viewed. it's just a game. hit the damn buttons and be done with it.
I'm assuming you're gay then? Nothing wrong with that...but if you're not, why are you in interested in the anus and not know what the vagina is?
Also vargins...
i think you hit the nail on the head yo
im tired of the whole zomg pwned l33t speak crap and its a good comparison.
um, what supremacy? as far as i can tell, they're just pieces of ass with controllers in their hands. i'm not being a pig, but to me, that's all this has to do with. guys will be guys and if you post a top ten of attractive women (doing ANYTHING)on a site predominately visited upon by men you're always going to get the hoots and hollers. i have a girlfriend who plays games. she's got a ps2 and loves final fantasy, jak and daxer, harvest moon, zelda (these are titles i'm seeing layin around as i type this)and she got a ds for christmas, but she doesn't talk dirty to me about how the xbox 360 gpu has 48 shader pipelines or spank me with a zelda case when i've been bad.
this seems to just be a maturing (ironic, eh?) of the medium as it becomes mainstream. sex can go with anything, kinda like maple syrup, and when you mix it with nerd fodder i think it kind of comes into it's own fetish, for lack of a better word. why is it hot when girls game? i don't know. maybe just because the activity is still associated with nerdiness and some feel like they have some kind of connection with a hot girl?
for me, my girlfriend is beautiful and smart and funny and goofy and insightful and loving and charming and cute and comforting and challenging and dorky and smartassed because she is those things. and that is why i love her. even if she didn't play games i would still love her, but the fact that she willingly sits next to my while i play halo 2 on live and is glad to do it (usually now she plays ds) is just something really fun and cool we have in common.
i've dompletely forgotten half of what i was going to say and this is what i wound up with. hope i don't sound like an idiot
oh yea, and what the hell is wrong with sitting around with a few friends and playing halo... even when drinking? frat boys suck, but don't you bring halo into this just for a random game bash! you and i know damned well that that's what madden 200shittyassfootballgamesfor3var!0x is for.
People have different experiences. Even if two people are witnessing or taking part in a situation they can have widely differing interpretations of it. Just because one girl has encountered dimwitted Neanderthals doesn't mean everyone other girl that games has as well.
Don't try to impose your opinions, based on your experiences, upon others. And understanding requires that you maybe attempt to see another's viewpoint. Rough stuff on the web, I know.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm a pig. A hot girl gamer has posted pictures of yourself. Yesplz! And who cares? It won't make me treat her any differently if we happen to be playing with/against each other.
I agree with most everything you said, aeon, cept the part about Halo. Boring.
It's good to see that a girl gamer can actually give such a criticism about the more arrogant of the female gamers. My hats off to you for having enough guts to be able to say that.
Anyways, this is one of the reasons why I never have played games online (except for occassional games of UT2k4). I don't want to deal with immature twelve year old little shits, idiotic egotistical frat boy types, and I don't want to risk running into any of the more arrogant female players who would try to proclaim their superiority over male players based on the idea that girls are better than boys and that cheesy shit.
But it's a good article Nagiko. I like how you point out how both men and women should just let our sex not be a huge determining factor in who is better than who and just enjoy the game. Well spoken!
But as I recall, one of you mentioned the Frag Dolls and said the only reason they're famous is because their girls or something like that (I'm too lazy to read back). I find them to be corporate asskissers of Ubisoft products (I have a couple examples and could explain in detail why I don't like it, but let's leave that for another time).
There is one member of the FD team in particular that rubs me completely the wrong way and it's Valkyrie. I've been on the FD site and her pictures and some her statements scream arrogant to me.
There was one statement she made in a blog entry like somewhere in February that kind of had me a bit pissed off and laughing at how unproductive I seen it as for helping women get accepted in the game community. She said something about a humorous video that shown (and I may get this quote wrong mind you) "a HIGHLY realistic depiction of a TYPICAL nerd in Counter-Strike" in which it shown a player with glasses freaking out when getting beaten. Even if it is true that there are CS players like that, and I'm sure they're out there, I don't think it was fair of her to stereotype how a (what she wrote is) "typical nerd" reacts when beaten, because the definition of a "typical nerd" is entirely up for definition, so who made her the judge of what that is? I myself am a nerd, not ashamed of it either, and when I get beaten in UT2k4 which happens a lot, I am pretty calm about it and occassionally type in "Dammit! Why is my game off?" maybe to get some tips or just to vent for a few seconds.
At first I was willing to let it go until she did some sort of humor thread on the FD forums saying why dating a nerd is ideal with something like "they are too socially inept to cheat" which is not entirely true.
Maybe she meant it humorously and I lack a good sense of humor, but I'm not entirely sure about that. Something about Valk rubs me the wrong way and says to me that in some ways she means it.
But you may be thinking to yourselves how this ties into female gamers. Well the Frag Dolls are partially meant as a way to get female gamers seen and respected, right? And why is it that they feel like as if they don't belong in some cases? Well, some of you here pretty much already said it yourselves that they it's because there have been male players either say no to a game with them or make fun of them. But then you have female teams which scream the idea of superiority based on gender, which Nagiko's article frowns upon, as well as people like Valk who says some of the things she does. If you ask me, that doesn't make them any better than the people that try to keep them out. Does making fun of others really help a groups cause or make them any better than groups that insult them? Hell no and that could be some food for thought.
To just sum it up here, if you are a certain type of person who wants to bring yourself up, be heard, and not be looked down upon, the solution is most definitely is not to look down upon others for being one type of person or another because you might be in too much of a delicate position to do so.
That is the end of my rant and sorry people for the long post but I just had to get this off of my chest.
But there is one other stereotype we need to address for gamers; the belief that every person under 18 who plays video games at all is a total nerd. Now I know that most people who read Destructoid probably don't have that misconception, but a hell of a lot of people in the outside world do.
To the average person, a kid playing video games must be a total loser with no friends, zits, glasses, and be a member of the chess club. What about that stereotype? I'm a gamer, and I'm 14. Yes, I got plenty of friends, yes, I have zits,(but not a hell of a lot), no, I don't wear glasses, and no I am not a total loser. If you're reading this, I bet you're thinking that I'm making this all to validate my pointless existence due to the fact that I cannot get drunk or buy porn.
In that case, F**k you. I might play video games a couple hours a day, but I'm not the asshole sitting behind his computer 12 hours a day going "OMGLOL!!!!!11111111111 I t0t4|_|_Y P\/\/N3|) J00!!!11ON3, 1 4|\/| |_337 |-|4x0r!" Actually it took me about five minutes of studying Urban Dictionary to translate that phrase into l33t speak. No, I'm not the guy who when the game begins, immediately runs to the best sniping spot while boasting my l33t skills. I am an intelligent member of the gaming community who is just as worthy of respect as female gamers. I play games cuz I like them, it doesn't make me a nerd.