10% is not enough! Recruit! Recruit! Recruit!

[stompy]

Edit: Um, what's the 10% about? Sorry, but just curious.

It's the "what sex are you?" poll with the 10% female membership stat (though I was not just asking about teaching women to play) bumping up against one of the more colorful bits of my history and knocking a bit of it out into the open.

In 1992, the religious right in my state (and throughout the U.S.) was staging a massive anti-gay political and social push. You would probably not remember it and many of you were not even born yet, but this was also at a point in the AIDS crisis where it wasn't uncommon for a gay man to go to a friend's funeral every 2 or 3 weeks, and there wasn't much in the way of effective treatment. The combination of these factors lead to a large portion of the gay community feeling like they really had nothing to lose. Out of this came two in-your-face activist groups, ACT-UP [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_Coalition_to_Unleash_Power], which focused on AIDS issues, and Queer Nation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Nation], which focused mostly on pissing off the religious right at every opportunity and making the rest of the gay rights movement look very calm and reasonable by comparison. I was a Queer National.

The pertinent statistic: 10% of the population is gay or some variant thereof. I think that's a Kinsey report statistic, but I'm not sure.

Aaaaaaanyway, one of the more absurd things that the religious right insisted was that gay people were constantly trying to convert straight people, especially children, to homosexuality. That we were "recruiting".

We all pointed out that almost all of us had grown up without knowing of a single other gay person, and thus we were obviously not recruited. However, giving that we were snotty, young, pissed-off youngsters who were just coming into the freedom of not receiving repeated beat-downs from our high school and college classmates, we decided to turn the recruiting accusation back on its source, with the protest cheer, "10% is not enough! Recruit! Recruit! Recruit!" As we were mostly single at the time, the idea of adding to our dating pool was also quite appealing.

Wait, wait, you're homosexual? Really? Ok then.

Uh, well, thanks for the reply. Cleared up some things...

 

[josh797]

Edit: Um, what's the 10% about? Sorry, but just curious.

It's the "what sex are you?" poll with the 10% female membership stat (though I was not just asking about teaching women to play) bumping up against one of the more colorful bits of my history and knocking a bit of it out into the open.

In 1992, the religious right in my state (and throughout the U.S.) was staging a massive anti-gay political and social push. You would probably not remember it and many of you were not even born yet, but this was also at a point in the AIDS crisis where it wasn't uncommon for a gay man to go to a friend's funeral every 2 or 3 weeks, and there wasn't much in the way of effective treatment. The combination of these factors lead to a large portion of the gay community feeling like they really had nothing to lose. Out of this came two in-your-face activist groups, ACT-UP [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_Coalition_to_Unleash_Power], which focused on AIDS issues, and Queer Nation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Nation], which focused mostly on pissing off the religious right at every opportunity and making the rest of the gay rights movement look very calm and reasonable by comparison. I was a Queer National.

The pertinent statistic: 10% of the population is gay or some variant thereof. I think that's a Kinsey report statistic, but I'm not sure.

Aaaaaaanyway, one of the more absurd things that the religious right insisted was that gay people were constantly trying to convert straight people, especially children, to homosexuality. That we were "recruiting".

We all pointed out that almost all of us had grown up without knowing of a single other gay person, and thus we were obviously not recruited. However, giving that we were snotty, young, pissed-off youngsters who were just coming into the freedom of not receiving repeated beat-downs from our high school and college classmates, we decided to turn the recruiting accusation back on its source, with the protest cheer, "10% is not enough! Recruit! Recruit! Recruit!" As we were mostly single at the time, the idea of adding to our dating pool was also quite appealing.

Wait, wait, you're homosexual? Really? Ok then.

Uh, well, thanks for the reply. Cleared up some things...

yay for homosexuals on the escapist! makes the place even more varied in audience.

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

Wait, wait, you're homosexual? Really? Ok then.

Uh, well, thanks for the reply. Cleared up some things...

yay for homosexuals on the escapist! makes the place even more varied in audience.

Yeah, there's something to that effect on my profile. I call myself an leftist feminist queer or something like that. I generally just call myself "queer" because it also means "strange," (which is people's general impression of me) and also "homosexual" just makes my life sound a lot more...organized than it really is.

 

[Anarchemitis]

I never really tried to get people into video games. If they have their own interests, hey, who am I to intrude? [Other than Vizral, the greatest living Gentleman Theif of our time]

 

[Mstrswrd]

Yeah, there's something to that effect on my profile. I call myself an leftist feminist queer or something like that. I generally just call myself "queer" because it also means "strange," (which is people's general impression of me) and also "homosexual" just makes my life sound a lot more...organized than it really is.

Hey, whatever works. Anyway, I have often tried to turn my non-gamer friends/associates into gamers, but it always backfires. And I use a wide variety of games, too. Anything from simple, old-school Mario games to feaking Devil May Cry 3 (probably not the best choice, but whatevs), and it just doesn't work. I have, however, converted people from one type of game to another, like my one former friend Justin who only liked racing games. I got him into RPG's. I also got my at one time too innocent former friend (not Justin, other former friend) into good M-Rated games that actually have a story (DMC, God of War, etc).

 

[Girlysprite]

I got my sister to game. I think I (and my brother) started it with Diablo 2 and heroes of might and magic 3. Now we got her hooked on WoW and her character already raced past us in levels.

Another fun note; the cousin of my bf once played Tekken against bf's mom. She never played videogames before in her life, and he knew how to play tekken...yet, she won. On another account, I also managed to win a fight game against 3 other persons (fighting at the same time) while I was looking at the wrong puppet all the time, thinking that was me. That just shows that random button mashing=FTW.

 

[000Ronald]

Sorry, don't know too many girls... Which sucks.

I feel your pain.

Back on topic, I got my little sister into Super Smash Brothers Melee. While I can still kick her ever-loving ass three ways from sunday, she's gotten better.

That's about it. Moving forward?

Apologies abound

 

[jim_doki]

I've been on both sides of this coin. My dad spent hours teaching me the basics of flight sims where i'd crash before leaving the ground. on the other hand I had a freind who insisted that hte pits in SMB3 were actually secret warps to new levels, im assuming he had some kind of memory defect because he constantly tested this theory

the best time i ever had introducing a girl to video games went something like this

Jim: So, choose your favorite character
Girl: I'm gonna be toad cause he's cute. I like cute things...
Jim: Good call (oblivious), so we'll go with donut plains
(race starts, Jim takes lead)
girl: No fair! (leans over and kisses my cheek)
Jim: uhh
(girl takes lead, wins race, makeout session)

 

[Akirasfriend]

My sister is open to the idea of videogames, but so far only has a few that she'll play, and only co-op with me. She loves telling people what to do but not controlling, so she'd decide what we needed to do in Harvest Moon and make me do all the FUCKING WEEDING.

Ahem.

My dad is a frequent casual gamer at best, although I reckon he's probably the best Dungeon Keeper around. The game we played together was the Star Wars: Episode One Pod-racing game. I only managed to beat him because I knew how to boost properly, yet he was still more competition then I could ever have hoped for.
Let's give the dads a hand. *Applause*

 

[Deathbird]

My girl was a semi gamer when i met her but i introduced her to Everquest and she was hooked, the bell bottom pants on half elfs sold her apparently.
But now days shes a mega gamer, Supreme commander, Medieval 2 Total war, Sims 2, Witcher but on a sad note her computer is alot more beastly then mine

 

[Sib]

Yeah, there's something to that effect on my profile. I call myself an leftist feminist queer or something like that. I generally just call myself "queer" because it also means "strange," (which is people's general impression of me) and also "homosexual" just makes my life sound a lot more...organized than it really is.

i swear half the threads i read that youve posted in you mention being a lesbian...ah well no harm in that, yay.

But as for converting non-gamers to gamers, ive been hard pressed to find any guy who doesnt game at least casually, and ive only (sort of) converted one girl to gaming, been trying to get her to get xbox live

 

[Same River New Water]

The pertinent statistic: 10% of the population is gay or some variant thereof. I think that's a Kinsey report statistic, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, the 10% statistic is from Kinsey - I looked into it just the other day. Surprisingly, there's no simple percentage answer in Wikipedia. I researched it as thoroughly as you can in one hour on the internet, and the consensus seems to be... that there's no consensus. But 10% is really the upper limit: Kinsey's surveys were far from randomly selected, due to the difficulty of getting people to agree to talk about sex back then, so their proportions haven't been found to be particularly reliable since - Kinsey's findings are weighted towards what you might call either "deviance" or "sexual liberation", depending on your perspective. At the lower end of the scale is census data, which in the US for example lists about 1.5% of people as being in a same-sex couple. Other reports range far and wide in between, but the average seems to be something like 5%, with a big margin for error, plus the complication of sexual preference being a malleable point on a spectrum rather than a discrete category, etc etc etc.

It's interesting to read the various findings and, uh, why they're all deeply flawed. The best summary I could find was this [http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_mental_health.html]:

All surveys are likely to underestimate the actual prevalence of homosexuality because, fearing discrimination and stigma, many gay respondents are reluctant to tell a stranger (even anonymously) that they are homosexual. Recognizing this limitation, most research with probability samples suggests that at least 3-6% of the US adult male population is homosexual, with somewhat fewer females.

Um, I just realised I'm running the risk of making this a Talking Point, which (this being the internet) will probably lead to a Flame War. Apologies in advance, I just found the statistics interesting!

P.S. Mshcher I am totally your fanboy. Apparently all it takes to get boys to adore you is to be a witty lesbian on a video game forum who rides a motorbike. If only the straight girls knew!

 

[Same River New Water]

Oh, ha ha, forgot to respond to the actual topic. Derr!

I'm nearing the end of a long covert campaign to turn my girlfriend into someone I can play videogames with. Like many girls, she played a lot of Mario Kart and Yoshi's Island as a kid, but drifted away from games aside from Bejewelled et al until she felt she couldn't play "real" games. So I've been gently encouraging her. People: it can be done, and the key is to take it slowly and build up to the serious, complex games in stages.

I wasn't sure it would work at first. There were a few false starts with Xbox games, but she couldn't really get her head around two joysticks at once. Now that's fair enough: you have to walk before you can run. So I bought a Nintendo 64 off eBay, and it was a resounding success! Mario Kart 64 got the biggest workout at first, then Star Wars Episode One Racer, but the real breakthrough was when I got her to try Perfect Dark. Not Goldeneye, mind you: it had to be against bots, not humans, and easy bots at first. So I set up a game variant on Perfect Dark called Zombies, which is basically a King of the Hill scenario with a long capture time and the maximum number of the very easiest AI bots. You have to sit in one spot and guard the doors as waves of mindless enemies come at you - not individually dangerous, but enough to kill you if you don't kill them fast enough. It was fun, it was simple, it wasn't frustrating because even a novice wouldn't die very much, and she only had to worry about one joystick and a trigger (strafing could wait).

That stage lasted a long time. I had to nudge the difficulty of some of the bots up when she wasn't looking, then tell her afterwards, before she'd believe she was ready for something harder. And while she'd happily jump into a game of Need For Speed (and frequently kick my butt), she'd literally laugh if you asked her if she wanted a game of Halo.

Oh, did I mention that I'm very crafty? Throughout this whole process, I was very careful never to play too well: never got too far ahead for too long in a racer, never killed too many more bad guys than her in a shooter, often discreetly softened up an enemy so she could get a kill or quietly took out an enemy she hadn't noticed who might kill her. Drive a gear down, intentionally use a shitty weapon, so that without being obvious about it she'd win often enough to feel encouraged - but not often enough that it became obvious. Just like a single-player game makes you feel powerful, you have to nurture a newbie's sense of accomplishment.

Anyway: the next step was Team Fortress 2. Actually I should say the next step was Team Fortress 2 as the Pyro. The Pyro was perfect because a) it's naturally suited to hiding, which she needed to do while figuring out the two-joystick thing, b) it's easy to aim, and c) even if you're not doing well, setting people on fire is a shitload of fun.

I should also note that a lot of non-gamers (ok, mostly girls) in FPSes are prone to spinning in circles and staring at the ceiling. Actually they're usually quite capable of turning normally - it's the vertical axis that throws them off. Another reason TF2 is perfect: Valve lets you tune the horizontal and vertical sensitivity separately. With vertical sensitivity at rock-bottom, she learnt the controls quickly and soon graduated to the Scout, the Heavy, the Demoman and even occasionally the Soldier.

Now she bothers me every afternoon for games of Halo 3. Heck, now she regularly beats me in games of Halo 3.

I've created a monster.

 

[werepossum]

I introduced my wife to video games. She gets way too nervous and won't play anything involving shooting or fighting or dying, but plays adventure games and casual games like those where you hunt for things in pictures, games that would drive me crazy. She's played a bit of Psychonauts as well, but doesn't like the fighting. Now she buys as many or more games than I, and is a serious contender for computer time. I'm actually building my new computer from scratch rather than cannibalizing the old one to get around this problem - if she's playing games, I can surf or write.

Other than that I've attempted to get my parents to play, with limited success.

 

[Jumplion]

I tried to get my dad to play "Wii Play" with me, he was just sitting there and yelling at the screen "What the hell am i supposed to do!?" It was halarious.

And one time, my sister's friends were coming over to study and she wanted me to plug in the Wii to the big TV we had. I had to teach everyone how to do the positions in "Wario Ware: Smooth Moves" and everytime someone failed (which was nearly all the time) they just said "That's bull****!" Again, halarity ensues.

Also, for some reason, my friends and I end up teaching little 5-year olds (literaly) how to play a game we were playing. Another example is "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" and a demo of "Skate" i had on my PS3. They caught on pretty well.

I sleep well at night knowing i've made a difference in this gaming world.

 

[Cameoflage]

I've never really got anyone else into gaming, and no specific person taught me how to game that I can recall (my first non-edutainment game was Lemmings, which I first played when I was somewhere between four and six, and accordingly wasn't too good at but still loved). I kinda learned by a combination of osmosis and self-education.

 

[fyrh56]

Got my dad into RTS's and FPS's (ET mostly). He's actually good in ET, he even got recruited to a somewhat serious clan, tho it's still pretty fun watching him play and taunt him everytime he makes some sort of blunder.

Got my ex-girlfriend to play Lineage 2 with me. Being Lineage 2 one of the most grindtastic MMORPG's out there, i'm pretty proud of myself over this one. Then again scantly clad, hawt, pointy-eared elves are one of the playable races, so that might have helped a lot.

My girlfriend got interested in street fighter after seeing me play Alpha 3 on the PS1. She had heard of SF before, but never got to see any gameplay. Plus, she did see the movie on TV. It was really easy to hook her on the game and she learned quick. Too quick. I suck at SF so yeah, she wins fairly often now, which is bad since i ran out of excuses lately.

 

[zacaron]

i am in the process of teaching my dad to play games for the xbox 360 we started with halo but that didnt realy work out so now im leting him play bioshock we both play togeather and take turns but somtimes its like watching a cat trying to fly a kite but overall its fun

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

Yeah, there's something to that effect on my profile. I call myself an leftist feminist queer or something like that. I generally just call myself "queer" because it also means "strange," (which is people's general impression of me) and also "homosexual" just makes my life sound a lot more...organized than it really is.

i swear half the threads i read that youve posted in you mention being a lesbian...ah well no harm in that, yay.

I am trying to find someone who will go all homophobe-troll on me. I have been on the internet for over a decade, been obnoxious as hell (as you can well guess), and I've still never been directly called a homophobic name. I've also never been called a feminazi, which really makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong. I'm never going to get all my Web Scout badges at this rate.