I’m a woman, 35 years old. I grew up playing whatever I could get my hands on whenever, with a consistent and ravenous appetite for computer-based games and entertainment that has been my primary motivation for being a technophile. I played a lot of PC games over at a friend’s house when I was wee. To many to remember and list. King’s Quest, The Black Cauldron, Karate Kid, some Winter Olympics title, I think it was from Sierra, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, tons of space-related RPGs.
I currently have a Ps3 and a 360 and my tastes for console games are pretty diverse.
Halo/H2/H3/ODST
Resistance/R2
Drake’s Fortune 1 & 2
Assasin’s Creed/ACII
Bioshock/BS2
Prince of Persia & all sequels
Fable I & II
Fallout & Fallout 3 (The original is one of the few games I’ve played on the PC as an adult gamer)
Viva Pinata et al
Arkham Asylum
Lego Starwars/Batman/Indiana Jones
Most of the Tomb Raiders
Oblivion
Red Dead Revolver
Call of Juarez
Odd World, Munch & Abe’s Oddyssey, Stranger
Psychonauts (awesomeness!)
Kung Fu Panda
Lost Odyssey
Guitar Hero
Rock Band
Chronicles of Riddick 1 & 2
Probably some more I’ve forgotten
My better half plays the Diner Dash types of games, and point-and-click stuff on her macbook. She’s also a fan of what seem to be color-by-numbers puzzles, which I’m constantly being asked to help her with because she’s color blind. I do a good bit of casual gaming on the computer, but if I’m going to sit down for hours at a time, I do it on a console.
She also enjoys the occasional console game. She liked Psychonauts a lot and also likes Spyro type stuff.
I think it’s really cool that women are getting into gaming. It was a boys’ world for so long,and even now it’s still pretty male dominated,but it seems women gamers are on the rise.
I have read several articles that credit the Sims with opening the field to women and it still holds true,even today. Most of the Sims boards I am on are predominately female and many of the sims websites are run by women. Kind of cool,IMHO. I can see where the sims would appeal to women,it’s basically a virtual dollhouse with virtual lives you can run…and for a semi-control freak like me,that is dandy.
Then there are the games like AOE,Civilization,Sim City…and those game boards are mostly male dominated. I have been playing Civ IV for years and have yet to meet another woman who plays it. Why is this? I am also the opnly female(that I am aware of,anyway) that plays Madden and NASCAR.
After reading some of the posts in this thread,I think I am going to have to check out Dragon Age. I am desperately in need of a slamming RPG.
Forgot to mention that I did purchase Spore for my mac, but had some account problems trying to merge my creature creator creations with my online account, and what I did play of the full game seemed boring and repetitive and did not engage me to continue.
I can’t remember a time in my life when I was not into gaming, so it isn’t something that I started doing because I saw the option to play a woman character all of a sudden. Speaking of which, I forgot to list Portal, which is an awesome little nugget of a game.
Maybe it raises some latent feminazi separatist hackles, but I don’t think there’s necessarily been a big recent uptick in women gamers. I think there has been a big recent uptick in acknowledging the women’s market that has always been there. And I have a hard time giving the industry much praise for arriving late to the party.
Na, I didn’t start playing because of women characters, I just appreciate having them. And women characters, too, with depth, and not just sexiness, though I still rolled my eyes so far back in my head they almost fell out at Samara’s outfit in ME 2.
And yes, girls have always been gamers. It’s just more OK to admit it now, or maybe I just don’t care what people think anymore. My family certainly doesn’t get it and still has an image of gamers as fat nerdy losers that live in the basement and smell. That’s only a small percentage of them.
City of Heroes. Being superhero-themed, some of the options for women are, ah…well, designed by men. But the customization is enormous and it’s actually a pretty female-friendly game; the supergroup/guild I used to be in had to be 50/50 male/female. The theme is also so diverse that even if you don’t care for traditional superheros, you can find something in the game and design a character you do like.
I suppose Champions Online is similar, but I haven’t played it.
I’ve been videogaming since the SNES (still have one), and would have gotten an Atari back in the day if we could have afforded it. (As it was, I played the heck out of my friend Tracy’s 2600.)
The last few (read: 6ish) years I’ve been mostly playing Final Fantasy XI Online, a MMORPG. However, I just the other day cancelled my subscription - too many of my old friends are gone, and there are some changes coming up that I’m just not down with. I may come back to it later, but for the meantime I’m good with what I’ve got. About 25% of the people in my Linkshell are verified female, and I’ve only ever known one person who was male-but-pretending-to-be-female-IRL.
In the meantime, I’m gonna catch up on all the games I’ve missed. I never even finished Twilight Princess! (Though it was close enough to Okami that I felt like I’d already played it already…)
Played games ever since the first Mario came out. PC gaming too, starting from Rogue all the way through…um. Planescape Torment. There haven’t been as many PC games that called to me what with the explosion of FPS games which I can’t play due to motion sickness.
Casual flash games too.
I like the Zelda and FF franchises, plus a bunch of JRPGs that I really need to finish someday. :smack:
I’m currently a casual raider in World of Warcraft, and I co-GM our tiny guild with another woman. We have a few women in our guild, but we’re still heavy on the male side.
Another one checking in.
Right now I’m playing GTA San Andreas for the first time ever.
Been playing Borderlands with my boyfriend (had plenty of fun shooting zombies recently).
Apart from that I’m a Sims player, from the first game, and enjoy some other simulators (like Zoo Tycoon).
Loved Dragonage, generally a fan of RPGs, since I first played Baldur’s Gate.
Can’t get enough of Monkey Island, and really enjoyed the first two installments of On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness in the adventure genre.
I started gamjing on, umm, Nintendo, I think. Had my own Sega Mega Drive (Toejam and Earl was one of the best games I’ve ever played).
Ooh, yeah, that’s kinda important. And I have a lot less experience with free MMOs. The only one I can think of that has any kind of customizability is D&D Online.
Well, as a working single mum I don’t have a lot of gaming time these days, but I’m still a casual WoWer. I used to be into the Sims bigtime (and would still be if I didn’t have an actual person requiring me to care for them) and I have been devoted to all the mainstream editions Civilization since the first. I missed out on Spore (though the watered-down version that was released seemed like a bit of a disappointment anyway). I primarily play on my PC, but I do have a couple of old-school consoles floating around that I periodically break out (Super Nintendo, Game Cube, Playstation 1 and 2).
I was considering Spore until I started reading about the rather draconian DRM that comes with it. No thanks. I had enough problems with suckurom in the Sims 2. It’s too bad because Spore looks like a really cool game I would probably like.
Your post brought back memories Cazzle. I wish I still had my Nintendo 64. That was a kick ass console and had some great games. I found a store in the mall that carries Nintendo 64 games,made me kind of sad I don’t still have it. I know I could go on ebay and buy one,but I hate ebay.
It all started with my Atari when I was 5. In rough chronological order, it’s been Night Driver, Frogger, Pac Man, Super Mario Brothers, Master Blaster, Tetris, Kirby’s Dreamland, Mortal Kombat 1 through 3, Myst, Riven, Diablo II, Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, The Sims, Final Fantasy XI, Vanguard, Bejeweled 1-2, Bookworm, Hellgate: London, and WoW.
I quit WoW in November, wrapping up 6 years of MMORPGing, and I don’t plan on picking up another game until Diablo 3 comes out sometime in 2011.
I had a Diablo II fever a month ago and I have it installed on my laptop. Haven’t really touched it since. I still play Tetris for about an hour three times a week.
In Dragon Age: Origins, one of the things you can do is get nookie with five people. Three females, two males; one of the females and one of the males are bi, and if you’re a male spending time with elfboy you can have a threesome with the girl who’s not one of your companions.
I currently can’t play WoW because I’m living on campus and the university’s IT service ip-blocks it (no, I can’t use another ISP); I played Runes of Magic for a while, have played the hell out of DA:O and butchered tons of little soldiers in several editions of Civ. A couple FF games on the PSP; I tried Prince of Persia but can’t get the hang of figuring out where can and can’t I move and don’t like the graphics. Same for the Witcher; I liked the idea of the game but couldn’t stand the look.
You can have all your sims be gay in any version of the sims,and they could be bi as well to a certain degree.
Final Fantasy X was the game that really got me into consoles. I had a Gamecube,but at the time there weren’t any decent RPGs for it. I hated Tales of Symphonia,which drove me out of my skull with the stupid dialogue,wonky controls and the sheer difficulty of one particular level. I have had no desire to play it ever again and have no interest in picking up the Wii version of it. I found better and more engrossing titles for the PS2 and it is still my system of choice for RPGs. The best part is that you can find PS2 titles everywhere and they are usually pretty cheap.
I found a few RPGs for the Wii but I wonder how difficult they would be with the remote. I love the looks of Muramasa: Demon Blade,but I would hate to buy it and then find I didn’t like it. I’ll probably give Fire Emblem(Wii) a try,since I ate it up on my Gameboy and played the hell out of it on the Gamecube version.
I love RPGs…I want more,more,more!
I just finished Dante’s Inferno. I’ve also recently played Uncharted 2 and Folklore. I used to be a huge Diablo 2 junkie, along with NWN and Sims 2. Also the proud owner of a DS and a PSP. Have DA:O sitting on my shelf, as well as Batman: Arkham Asylum.
And women characters, too, with depth, and not just sexiness, though I still rolled my eyes so far back in my head they almost fell out at 
And I have a lot less experience with free MMOs. The only one I can think of that has any kind of customizability is D&D Online.
In rough chronological order, it’s been Night Driver, Frogger, Pac Man, Super Mario Brothers, Master Blaster, Tetris, Kirby’s Dreamland, Mortal Kombat 1 through 3, Myst, Riven, Diablo II, Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, The Sims, Final Fantasy XI, Vanguard, Bejeweled 1-2, Bookworm, Hellgate: London, and WoW.