As a gamer, it's not commonplace to come across women, especially attractive ones while playing a few rounds of Warsong Gulch or while 'fragging n00bz' in UT2K4. Compounding this problem is the fact that there is an innate animosity amongst the ranks of women gamers. My co-editor, one Ms Faith, sometimes shares this kind of animosity, as you have seen from her attacks on various groups of girl gamers; insisting that they were just attention whores or models paid to titillate horny guy gamers (yes, you creepy bastards, I'm looking at you). I refused to believe that ALL the pretty girls were just there for the glamour, so I decided to find out for myself just how many of these "girl gamers" were actually gamers.
Hit the jump for the exciting conclusion.
We had a recent article about a website called GorgeousGamers, a site which purports itself to have the most attractive gamers on the web gathered into one easy to sort through social networking site. While the gentleman of the site leave something to be desired (Summa and I are EASILY hotter than any of them … but you knew that already …), there are actually a lot of very attractive women therein. Wondering whether or not they were really gamers, I struck up a few IM conversations with some of them, one of whom I'd like to tell you a bit more about.
Her name is Liz and she's the attractive woman in the red underwear and NES belt at the top of the article we did earlier this week, much to the chagrin of other women who would be angry at her simply for looking better than them in her underwear and identifying herself as a gamer. While I originally had my doubts as to how much she actually knew about gaming, those doubts evaporated 5 minutes into talking with her. We began by talking about her history in gaming, and it's almost as extensive as my own. She started off back in the mid-80s with everyone's favorite gray box, the NES (hence the belt on her hip). We spent a good 30 minutes talking about the awesome-ness of Kid Icarus (which she had amazingly encyclopedic knowledge of). She actively remembered more of it than I did (and I get paid for this shit)! Color me impressed.
Next we moved on to talking about more recent games. She turned on her webcam to show me her GameCube and PS2 (and her totally mental cat). I think she was more entertained by playing with her cat than she was by any of the systems at that moment, but, keep in mind that it was very early in the morning and, I have to admit, watching her cat flail about WAS pretty entertaining. We later moved on to how she felt about being a "girl gamer". The thing that struck her most about that moniker is that even though she has been gaming all her life and was as knowledgeable as anyone she knows, people still refuse to treat her as they would a man (gamer or not).
She is currently employed by Electronics Boutique in Sydney, Australia and is constantly overlooked (by customers and fellow employees) merely because of her lack of a penis. Apparently when questioned about games, male customers often eschew her opinion in favor of that given by her male coworkers (whether those male coworkers are knowledgable or not). This could, of course, be symptomatic of a general sexism within our hobby (which is problematic enough), but it could also be the result of gaming having become the new "Boy's Club". That is, men (and boys) use gaming as an escape from a world in which they are forced to treat women as equals, much like they would retreat to the country club (or their father's closet porno stash) 50 years ago to get away from the wife and kids. As much as this is acceptable (or at least unchangeable) behavior, the problem becomes one of discriminatory idiocy when men forget that women are gamers as well. I'd pit Liz against any guy (including myself) in a test of gaming knowledge and be pretty secure in her ability to win.
The other stigma faced by these girls is that they use their feminine assets as well as their gaming knowledge in a bid to get stupid, immature, never-been-touched boys to pay attention to them, buy them things (ponies?), and generally fawn all over them. After speaking to Liz for hours, I realized that not only does she not want gobs of attention she'd rather avoid that sort of thing altogether. Her goal seems to be the same as any of the other 3 girls I talked to; they want guys to stop focusing on their genitals and just play games with them. Historically, equality has been a fleeting thing in all new realms of interaction, and apparently gaming doesn't escape that truism either, even in the supposedly enlightened year of 2006.
My point is this -- if women are all tremendously aggro towards each other based on physical appearance, they merely reinforce the antiquated, misogynistic stereotypes that guy gamers should be striving to grow out of (assuming we would ever like to have sex ... with a human female ... who is breathing ...).
So who's at fault? Everyone. Rodney King said it best in his oft-quoted, post-beating soliloquy; "Can't we all just get along?"
Contest:
1:15 PM on 11.10.2006 | 
The lesson I learned from that is that gaming girls have the best of both worlds for a gaming guy. I continue to learn it with every psycho I go out with. There's boobs and games. If they don't want the same out of us that we want out of them, then it's really not going to improve for them in their goal of "equality" amongst gamers.
Every guy wants sex, plain and simple. Every gaming guy wants to play video games in lieu of sex. So, when both are available, like any guy would in any situation, he's going to oogle, just like the guy at the end of the bar. In fact, we're going to be worse about it due to social awkwardness. All we ever know how to do is yell racial epithets at other guys our same age.
She's also on the forums now, for the sexual deviants out there. (Summa, I'm looking at you.)
You could take the word "gamers" out of that and it'd still be a true statement.