I thought the gaming world was over the sexist thing; apparently I was wrong
I'd hate to tell her that the gaming world still isn't entirely over it 25 years later
Yeah. I'm gonna need to lookup some stuff to get my writing game up...
I feel like I was a much better writer when I was 16. My brain has deteriorated since then—I blame the internet. And beer.
As much as gamers have insisted that girls don't/didn't play video games I seem to remember letters like this popping up pretty regularly in video game magazine mail bag sections where women complained about how they were being treated by video game publishers, media and gamers
I remember how in one Finnish gaming magazine some dude wrote in to complain about how unrealistic it was to have female characters in games involving combat because of le muscle mass, etc. Later a female reader wrote a response where she thoroughly debunked and dunked on the guy. Unfortunately I think she gushed over female IDF soldiers in it
Was this in Pelit or Mikrobitti? There was something else too wasnt there
dont remember thoughI assume Pelit- this would've been in the mid 2000s before the Xbox 360 hit the scene since I had mostly stopped reading print gaming media by then
I think there was also Pelaaja (?) but it just wasn't as good as Pelit
You don't truly grow up until you realize Pelit was never actually that good.
What do you mean? I remember one issue having a comic strip where the main character went out and killed every Finland Swedish person with a katana because he misunderstood a quest in an RPG or something
Incredible comedy
No, I really like reading ”everything except the stuff I like is bad and for children” columns from a condescending boomer chud for 30+ years.
If I ever come across old issues of Pelit in my parents' house or something I'll have to see just how awful their takes and politics are to my adult brain
Honestly, all the really bad takes were on their forum, where they were assumedly free of the shackles of any journalistic pretense
That forum was where I found out about 9/11 was happening, though.
I can't even imagine how bad those forums must have been, especially if they had been around for that long
my brother used to have subscription to it in the 90s and I read all of those so many times, just marveling at the pretty pictures. They would probably not hold up very well if I actually read them today.
I seem to recall they were at least not as cringy/horny as many other gaming magazines
Though the 90s cringe is what makes browsing these OPM issues on the Internet Archive so fun
Indents at the start of paragraphs has started to feel weird to me because of the double spacing people do on the internet without ever using it. It's becoming a language relic you only see when reading old magazines and books now. It's even left out of some new books I've noticed.
EDIT: Sad. I didn't expect it to still work though given how many times I've changed email.
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I wonder if this person got weird emails from proto-redditors after this letter was published
Vintage 1999
rage at women. And a bunch of creepy messages because she told everyone she was 16.
I actually do still type with the indents 😅. The only reason I can't on here is because of how markdown works, and it took me a while to figure out it was the indents messing with my formatting.
It’s wild that they would just print a 16-year-old’s email address in a magazine
It was a different world back then. I assume online harassment, dogpiling and internet creeps weren't huge issues in 1999
ok im sorry but how in the hell someone 25 years ago thought sexism was done in the gaming world? almost all the adverts for games back then were sexy bikini models telling you how much of a pussy you are for not playing their game. DO NOT watch old video game awards shows.
I guess she expected better from gaming media for some reason? It wasn't just this one letter, actually. I was flipping pages and landed on this letter but after posting I noticed the entire previous page was filled with other angry responses from other female readers to the same sexist article, lol
