"I've never seen women play any games except all these games I've seen them play, but that doesn't count because reasons"
Bonus points for transphobia and ableism.
Fuck people who think like this. TIL that only men play lots of genres of games, which is news to me because the majority of my male friends only play shooters and one plays nothing but... wait for it... RPGs.
G*mers are a mistake.
That meme is not even true any more, they're permanently stuck in 2015 gamer culture. It's just obvious they don't know any women, most of the ones I regularly talk to play many of the games they consider "real", they're just not into gamer culture because 1) most people aren't anyways and 2) because these communities are toxic af for women. Same reason women prefer single player games or at least never reveal they are women, the moment someone figures out you're a woman in an online game you get 50 dumbasses awoogaing on you.
it's never really been true. women have always done a good job hiding themselves because of how shitty gamers are. that's what is changing. we feel more comfortable in a lot of gamer spaces because thirst is often punished now
It's not that there weren't any women playing videogames, but there definitely weren't as many before because they were heavily marketed to boys. But in recent years there's definitely been a lot more women.
from experience this isn't true and they are still marketed primarily to men.
This shows with some fluctuations that after 2010 there was a marked increase: https://www.statista.com/statistics/232383/gender-split-of-us-computer-and-video-gamers/#:~:text=The%20statistic%20shows%20the%20gender,increase%20over%20the%20previous%20year.&text=The%20global%20gaming%20industry%20has,fast%20pace%20in%20recent%20years.
Of course the issue with this statistic is that it seems to only take into account the people who have played some video game, whereas some other statistics seem to imply there is a much more significant gap in people who identify as gamers, which is shrinking too. But yeah, the divide before 2010 was greater in general, not that it was as big a deal as they pretend anyways.
idk. i dont think the difference is that big and a lot can be explained by more people playing games in general. i've been playing games since i was old enough to hold a controller and i've always encountered plenty of other women playing because i typically did not hide that i was a woman unless it was a space i could tell was unfriendly to women for sure.
They are still marketed primarily to men (which is partly why there still is a shrinking gap) but the market is shifting regardless.
a ha ha ha imagine jumping on to a subreddit that claims to value materialism but then a few months later it's turned into gamergate and whining about females
Could it be that society actively shaping videogames into a male hobby in the 80's/90's and transgirls being socialized as boys has lead to a disproportionate amount of female gamers who are trans than cis?
No, it must be biological essentialism, I am stupidpol, I am very materialist.
it's fuckin rich. i get that carelord affect can be grating, but who looks at reddit and thinks "wow there just isn't enough space here for getting mad at SJWs. we need a new community specifically to address this need"?
claiming the “dirtbag” left mantle,
Dirtbags are not offensive to marginalized people, they're as ignorant of the gospel of Amber (pbuh) as Vaush.
I remember going there, thinking it would be making fun of Democratic-style identitarian reductionism and people praising big military contractors for having a gay WOC in an executive role... I quickly noped out.
Yeah, and I didn't even mention the JK Rowling thread where they were cheering for her and being transphobic as fuck. That sub is a dumpster fire.
I just read Petite bourgeois as Pete Buttigieg and got nervous he started streaming.
Yes, they are practically a meme. "I'm only willing to throw minorities under the bus because the imaginary white working class in my head insists we do, and NO OTHER REASON". Buddy, just say you hate minorities and want some sort of nationalist ethnostate with socialist characteristics.
It's not even true any more though. There's so many cis women playing games, they just don't join their dumb communities or don't say they are women (and of course they don't talk to any women irl) so they never figure it out.
It also seems to me that voice chat on consoles has really declined in frequency, at least in my limited exposure recently. I played MW2 on Xbox, and I swear that took the cake for "most toxic voicechat". Now? I rarely hear a peep out of anyone on console.
Don't even play multiplayer games with randos anymore because shit is crazy toxic, used to play a healer character in ESO but matchmade parties were just about screaming at the healer if you failed.
My main problem is that most of the people I'm in tight with don't have the same taste in games as me. :(
Loved alien isolation, didn't manage to complete it though.
spoiler
The infested tunnel after the AI core, with the two Xenomorphs and all the facehuggers was just too frustrating to push through.
There's no need to play online/multiplayer modes for many games though. I haven't played an online game since Battlefield V came out, and before that it had been 10 years or so.
Instead I stick to single player games, because that's what's fun for me, and means I don't have to deal with chat. One of my games (Wargame: Red Dragon) loads you into single player through the same portal as multiplayer, and oh my god the shit in that chat is gross.
The biggest FF fan I know is a woman. She's got all of them (I believe), on OG consoles and has a tube TV specifically for them.
This guy is totally right. My wife only plays RPG, and City builders, and grand strategy, and FPS, and RTS and rogue likes and ... Actually I'm starting to think these guys have never talked to a woman.
same with mine. in fact she loves souls-type games which just look like they'd make me cry
Actually I’m starting to think these guys have never talked to a woman.
:thinky-felix:
In my experience, male gamers play whatever big game everyone else is playing and female gamers play the games they enjoy 🤷♂️
my brother shit on me for playing Zelda BOTW and called it a shitty game with bad specs
uhhhhh it’s gotta have DUNGEONS with ITEMS and TRIFORCES bro you can’t call it a ZELDA GAME when ZELDA JUST RUNS AROUND SOME HILLS OR WHATEVER
where’s the MACARENA, you know, the little flute
NOT ZELDA
I mean, I kind of miss traditional puzzle based dungeons and collecting permanent items and shit, and I hope Nintendo isn't going to never make a Zelda game like that again because BOTW's success. But I wouldn't say BOTW "isn't a true Zelda" or anything dumb like that.
Personally, my favorite Zelda is A Link Between Worlds.
Seriously?? You'd think Ocarina would be the one everyone is nostalgic for, and that's no top down. Weirdos.
with bad specs
Ok, I know the graphics aren't "powerful" in the way that, like, The Last of US's or whatever are. But BOTW is a gorgeous game.
I think that's true for a significant chunk of male gamers. There's a lot more concern about AAA titles and FOMO/FOTM, it seems. Plus there's the whole PC master race of "gotta have the latest graphics card, also please look at my $10000 'battlestation' and validate my life choices", etc.
It seems almost perfectly designed to make toxic people more toxic.
PC gaming is the People's gaming because it doesn't require purchasing anything you wouldn't need to have anyways and you can pirate shit very easily, change my mind.
(Of course this doesn't apply if you've spent 10k on a dedicated gaming rig, or if you own any of these cringey mice with a billion buttons and flashing lights lol)
Oh, the PCMR types are definitely a minority of people who play on PC. PC is definitely my preferred platform for strategy games, but anything besides that I play on console. Sitting in front of a TV with a controller in hand just feels like how I'm supposed to play shooters or RPGs.
And I think modding is really an amazing scene. Sure, there's bad mods, but in general mods as a concept, and often as an execution, are fantastic. Beyond the obvious political aspects of "who would work voluntarily under gommunism?!", they democratize the gaming experience and can make it much more cooperative between developer and players.
At the same time though, in terms of mass accessibility consoles are an achievement. They're the iphone of the gaming world - they just (usually) work. No need to download a mod manager and queue up your mods so that dragons don't spawn in your house or whatever. That's part of why Cyberpunk was such a failure: you assume a base level of playability with a game released for your console. That peace of mind was shattered.
The issue is that everything about consoles is expensive. I'm not a hardcore gamer or whatever so I'm not gonna spend a few hundred euros for a console only to then have to buy every game I want to play. Like, yeah, maybe I will be slightly limited in terms of what games I can play in my computer compared to consoles, but it's a worthwhile tradeoff for not having to pay. This is why I don't think consoles are as accessible. It's like, PC is good for people who want to spend either 0 or thousands of dollars and consoles are for people who want to spend hundreds of dollars.
That, to me, is why it's accessible for more people: for $400 you get a machine that will get you 5-8 years worth of useful life. It's a walled garden, but it's a damn big walled garden. And you don't have to worry about checking specifications, you don't have to worry about shady sites for pirating your games, you don't have to be annoyed by needing to upgrade one item to run a game. For an additional $60 you get a AAA title that should, in theory, work, plus you can pay for access to a huge backlog.
Now, that costs more than PC can for games, but in return you get convenience. For many people, that's a good trade.
you don’t have to worry about shady sites for pirating your games
I don't worry, I love it because I don't have to pay, I'd worry if I had to pay.
I spend $12 a month on humble bundle all of which I have go to charity, every thing else gets pirated.
Damn, wonder why women don't play fps games where you're expected to use your mic 🤔🤔🤔🤔 must be in the chromosomes or something
I mentioned below that mic usage, for casual play, seems to be declining. Not sure if it's because of more women playing, more gamers becoming self aware (lol) of how voicechat is perceived, or if it's because, at least for the PS4 I bought it didn't include a mic IIRC. Xbox 360s included one, I believe, and their chat was legendarily bad. A quick Google tells me there's not one in the PS5 box.
One of the reasons I've always played games on a 5-15 year lag is that way there's no point in online anything and if I mention what I'm playing to any m*n there's way less of a chance they'll care enough to try to be g*mers about it
Cool, been playing weird grognard flight sims and grand strategy since age 3 on my hand-me-down Amiga 500, so now I'm apparently Trans and Autistic (I get to be in the cool group now!) :trans-hammer-sickle:
I grew up playing on a Tandy 1000, whose most notable feature was the huge amount of games that said "640k RAM required (Tandy: 768K)".
I still remember a few DOS commands, even.
Do you still have the Tandy 1000? Which model was it?
Just curious, I'm really into vintage computers. I posted a picture of my Apple IIe here a while back, with a hammer and sickle on the screen.
As we all know, the Gamer gene exists only in the Y-chromosome, also sometimes called the Gamer chromosome.
tbh the reason women dont play computer games in the same amount as g*mers is theres a fuckton of shit thrown on them to do by society (cleaning, emotional labor, and so on) as well as the open hostility gamers have to women, so it either shunts them out of the space or makes them never talk or mention theyre women
Every kid - boy or girl - I knew grew up playing video games. But boys continued into adolescence while girls gave it up.
Not coincidentally, every girl I know who played has stories about the vile attitude of guy gamers acting like absolute shits whenever they picked up a controller.
