I clicked on the study that’s linked to at the end of the article but got a 404. Anybody else?
From the article:
“All of that means that stereotypes are breaking fast in the gaming industry, particularly the longheld stereotype of the adult woman as an outlier who sticks to mobile games and “social” games on Facebook while the more hardcore gamer, the “serious” (male) gamer, goes for console games.”
“All of that means” is not preceded by any data that would contradict said stereotype. Then it is followed by:
"So what games have women been playing all these years, now that we know they haven’t just been wasting time trying to get their Facebook friends to give them free lives on Candy Crush?
Casual computer games, mostly. The report ranks online and mobile puzzle games, board games, trivia games, and card games as coming in second to the boom in social games, which more than doubled in popularity between 2012 and 2013."
That contradicts the stereotypes that 1) women mainly stick to mobile and online games while hardcore gamers are mainly male and that 2) women tend to mainly play Candy Crush-like games and Facebook-like games?
Maybe the linked-to study does a better job than the article’s author proving those stereotypes wrong but the article itself seems confused at best.
I am curious to know what genres/titles are most popular among different demographics, especially if it’s done with more precision than divvying up game players with one pie chart for age and one pie chart for gender.
I don’t like the idea that Candy Crush, Angry Birds, etc aren’t “real” games. That’s gate-keeping to me.
I don’t consider myself a gamer, but I have a Wii and have had a few different nintendo systems over the last 30ish years or so. I’m quite good at Mario Kart. I beat Super Mario Brothers 1 & 3 before internet cheat sites. Spent a lot of lonely hours playing Doom and Quake. But because I don’t own every system or play a wide variety of games, I’m not “real.” I’m just different. I find something I like and play it a lot, don’t play all the time.
You might be surprised. Vinyl records are a lot more robust than most people think, and blood washes right off of them.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Portal has a female main character, with a fit but realistic body, and dressed sensibly.
Even Diablo II had the same setup: The amazon, assassin, and sorceress were always female, and the barbarian, druid, necromancer, and paladin were always male. For that matter, even the current Heroes of the Storm also has set characters with set genders, though most of them are established specific characters with their own backstory, and there’s enough of a variety of them that you can probably find one of your preferred gender that suits you.
On the other hand, I don’t know what the benefits of “game acceptance” by a bunch of Call of Duty or DOTA 2 dorks are supposed to be
I guess that applies to a lot of stuff. If I like Archie comics and some DC grimdark graphic novel fan blows me off, I guess getting blown off isn’t fun but I’m not sure what we have to discuss anyway.
Speaking as someone who is married to a gamer, and not one that plays much in the way of “Casual Games” (unless you count Triple Town, in which case even I am guilty as charged.) a huge aspect of it is definitely not enjoying competitive games - there are totally women who are into those, but they actually DO seem to be a minority.
On the other hand, my wife doesn’t really seem to care very much about protagonist gender, because she is more interested in protagonists who are interesting and have good stories, so “create your own protagonist” is usually not a feature for her. It’s awesome when games have good female protagonists, but that’s more because they are rare than because she identifies with them or something.
I’m surprised that Minecraft (the first game to beat The Sims in PC sales) hasn’t attracted as many women; there are female Minecrafters, of course, but they’re a small fraction of the male audience.
Give it another generation or two. It’s the same kind of backlash that’s running through all the nerd subcultures. Just a lot of aging outcasts who don’t know how to deal with the fact that their hobby has suddenly become inclusive and popular.
Kids today don’t draw those kinds distinctions (even though I sure do, in a kneejerk kind of way), and the lines will fade over time.
They’re definitely casual games, though. Not that you can’t become a hardcore player if you really want to, but that the games aren’t designed for that. They are designed to be small games that you pick up and play for a few minutes and then put down. They are designed to be played casually without devoting much time or effort into playing them.
Pretending like there is no distinction actually only makes things worse. Because hardcore games aren’t being designed for female players as much as casual games are. If you treat them as the same, then there’s no problem. But if you recognize the differences, then you realize that you need to start getting more women involved in story-based, complicated, heavily skill-based, long play session games.
And that’s without getting into Skinner boxes, which aren’t “real games” for a completely different reason–they’re designed to be psychologically addicting, and not something you choose to play for your own amusement or edification. They’re designed to exploit the most vulnerable players. They make their money by bankrupting people who get addicted to them.
That does surprise me, too. I didn’t expect it to have Sims numbers, as that game is basically playing with dolls converted to a computer game. (Whether by nature or nurture, young girls are more likely than young boys to play with dolls.) But Minecraft–especially in peaceful mode–is really just playing with Legos mixed with childhood exploring–both fairly equally gendered activities in my experience.
Yet, when looking this up, I found that Lego has trouble with attracting girls, which just seems so strange to me, as I never had any trouble finding girls who would play with me as a kid.
I do wonder about this post I found while confirming your claim, which indicates that Minecraft websites have about an equal number of male and female visitors in the US. Maybe the issue is more on the international front.
City of Heroes had a big female population from what I could tell and, via anecdotal out-of-game communication, the ones who claimed to be women typically were. Plenty of men playing female characters as well, of course, but they weren’t trying to pass as women. Two interesting things I noticed were that the women seemed more inclined to make sexy female characters than men making female characters and that the most popular archetypes for women players were Tank and Scrapper versus playing ranged or support roles. Again, all anecdotal to my experience – I’m sure plenty of dudes were making max bust slider characters in bikinis.
I knew a number of women playing Everquest back when, you know, people still played Everquest. They seemed to gravitate to priest and arcane caster roles in that game. A lot of druids and mages, mostly then clerics, enchanters and wizards. Not so much necromancers or shamans.
I had originally intended to craft a thoughtful response for this thread, but I (female) have been too busy playing video games, mostly XCOM 2. I definitely like shooters, though!
Doubtful. There’s always been a hierarchy where certain types of games are taken more seriously than others by the wider gaming culture. It’s the same in other mediums. Try saying you’re really into literature, then list off Harry Potter, 50 Shades of Gray, and a bunch of Dan Brown books as your favorites.
What other nerd subcultures are experiencing a backlash?
Sure, but that’s because “literature” is a word that implies a certain level of cultural and artistic value beyond “fun to read.” If you say, “I like to read” and then list those works, it’ll be different. The whole “gaming” thing is similar, except that there’s not really an accepted value on the word “gaming” like there is on the word “literature.”
Boardgaming, RPGs, fantasy/science fiction, comic books, the convention circuit in general, probably other stuff I’m not aware of.
Say “I like music” and list your Top 40 pop-princesses or “I like movies… those Adam Sandler films are hilarious!” and you’ll get the same reactions. Whatever causes acceptance, it won’t be trying to force people to accept Angry Birds on the same level as Dark Souls on the basis of “they’re both games”. People are well able to form a hierarchy even under a generic term.
I guess we don’t know the same people? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen reactions like that to a generic statement like “I like movies.” Maybe if you said, “I like cinema,” and then listed a bunch of Sandler movies. I’m not sure I can come up with a comparable distinction for music off the top of my head - maybe if I said, “oh yeah, I love classic rock” and then started singing, I dunno, Muskrat Love?
Then there’s always the Blues Brothers joke about types of music- “We got both kinds, country and western” so you might get a negative reaction if there was an implication that somebody was professing to enjoy a wide swath of a thing while then only naming a narrow subsection, but that’s something different altogether.
Self-professed gamers want “gamer” to have the same sort of distinction as “cinema” or “literature” - the problem is that nobody really gets to define what a word means, and society doesn’t seem to be trending that way. In time, I think, the word will become more generic, and perhaps we will come up with new terms for hardcore or serious gamers (as opposed the casual kind) if they’re truly necessary.
Who really cares if an Angry Birds enthusiast wants to call himself a gamer? Nobody is being “forced” to accept anything.
I’m sure we don’t. That said, I’m legitimately surprised that you’ve never met anyone like that. Congratulations on only ever meeting broad, open-minded people in your lifetime, I guess.
Apparently a good number of people. That’s… ummm… sort of the point of the OP.
Yes, obviously. But the point is that nobody is being “forced” to accept anything. The problem is that the self-professed gamers are trying to take ownership of far too broad a term, and it’s as ridiculous as your equally ridiculous movie and music snobs from above.
And yeah, I think of myself as a gamer. And yeah, if somebody says, “oh, I’m a gamer too! I love Candy Crush and my friends get together on Wednesdays to play Settlers of Cataan!” I’m going to have a kneejerk eyeroll, but that’s a dumb reaction. A gamer, clearly, is somebody who enjoys playing games. The kind of reactionary exclusion that spurns “fake geek girls” and the like is the provenance of the aging nerd - those lines are fading. Sure, nerd circles will always have hierarchies and value judgements, but I think that after a while we’ll stop with the pointless “real gamer” and “fake gamer” arguments and get back to more important stuff, like whether Sonic or Mario would win in a fight (it’s Mario, natch).
I don’t think “gamer” has ever really meant “anyone who plays games”. It’s always had a connotation of “serious” gaming and the push for everyone to be included is pretty recent. If I said I was a “gamer” in 2002 because I played Tetris or Windows Freecell, I’d have gotten laughed at and no one would have thought twice about it. It’s within the last couple years that I’m to say “I’m a gamer because I play Farmville” and everyone’s supposed to respond with “Hooray for you, fellow gamer, come be part of our gamer-club!”
Ironically, although I will call myself a gamer for sake of shorthand, I don’t really think of myself as a gamer. In my mind, gamers are the guys with a desk full of Samus figurines and Mario posters and worrying about if they can get some rare game port from Japan or who’s able to speedrun some 12 hour game in under an hour. I’m just a dude who plays video games. But I think the idea that the lines are fading is largely Pollyanna and there’s plenty of young guys getting double-diamond plated machine guns in Call of Duty while slamming Rockstar from their limited edition Juggernog mini-fridge and laughing at the person who says “I play Guitar Hero… I’m a gamer!”
Oh please. Mario is a fat Italian who obviously eats way too much sausage and has high blood pressure. Sonic would kick his ass before his ass ever hit the ground.
