"40% of Xbox Live Users...

[LaoJim]

I think we're creating a huge quote wall!

They've got to find away to contact us the gamers I've never gotten a poll or question or had Ubisoft find me and want to pick my brain or Lion Head wanting me to play test their games for feedback this conversation is as close as I've been to anyone asking anything actually wanting answers.

Ok, so I understand a lot of what you are saying, and I'm glad you've taken the time to answer my questions so fully. I could ask a hundred other questions but this thread probably isn't the place to do it, and we're kind of hijacking it at the moment and covering a lot of different points at the same time (cuteness, sexiness, scariness). If these are things you want to talk more about it might be a good idea to create some threads and to try and get other female gamers to give their opinions on these things.

 

[white_wolf]

I think we're creating a huge quote wall!

They've got to find away to contact us the gamers I've never gotten a poll or question or had Ubisoft find me and want to pick my brain or Lion Head wanting me to play test their games for feedback this conversation is as close as I've been to anyone asking anything actually wanting answers.

Ok, so I understand a lot of what you are saying, and I'm glad you've taken the time to answer my questions so fully. I could ask a hundred other questions but this thread probably isn't the place to do it, and we're kind of hijacking it at the moment and covering a lot of different points at the same time (cuteness, sexiness, scariness). If these are things you want to talk more about it might be a good idea to create some threads and to try and get other female gamers to give their opinions on these things.

Making new threads might be a good idea. You've asked some well thought out questions.

 

[Angelblaze]

I really am loving this entire debate - so many people automatically jumping to the conclusion of 'oh those female accounts are used for their kidzzzzzz' without realizing/acknowledging that it's probably equally likely that the fathers/male figures do that for their kids as well and that females often hide their accounts as male just to avoid the bs that male players spew.

'Oh they only uze it for teh metflix' 'Oh no gaymer szcore' 'Womenz dun play teh gaymez liek teh menz'

Seriously people?
Like I mean really? I know I maybe be a little over-reacting because to be honest, as sad as it is I'm actually beginning to get USED to the sexism while also realizing how fucked up it is that I'm 'getting used to it' but...really?


For the sake of blowing some minds, I'll share my current gaming habits and sort of 'checklist of gaming things'
I've got OVERRRRRR 9000!!! gamer score on my xbl account.
Stopped using netflix quite awhile ago, no real reason to use it since I already watched all of the Ghost in the Shell anime/films. (Still waiting on that next episode Arise...)
Have played just about every Halo and Fable game to come out on home consoles.
Recently got and beat MGR:R for the second time. (To that person above me talking about Raiden, I'm American. I like girly electric samurai cyborg Raiden with the shiny butt. Also, about your statistics of 'western players' not liking him, do you have any statistics or pictures to back it up or...is that just your opinion?)
Playing Blazblue, meh.
Beat KH1,2,CoM.
Aiming for a Perfect no death game on both of the original Fire Emblem games on GBA.
Currently running around in Skyrim with my archmage robes.
Got up to ng+3 on Rogue Legacy and just need maybe 200k more gold to max out the whole castle...
A few short turns from getting a science victory on Civ V. (I really, REALLY should finish that sometime within the next couple hours honestly)
Slicing through biotches as a lvl 30 Volt or an approximately lvl 15 brand new Saryan in Warframe.
Strongly considering whether to stay dedicated as minion or go pure mage in PoE.
Still crying over the corpses of my dead/deleted lvl 70 nen master from DFO but attempting to revive her in chinese DnF.
Saddened by the lack of intelligence shown by my teamates in Hawken but running to deathmatch as a bruiser and getting some good ol quality slaughtering.
Patiently awaiting the arrival of Destiny, fangasming over the fact that its actually HAPPENING.
Saving up for a new skin for Neith in Smite.
Refining my Skullgirls game, really liking Valentine and Parasoul's play styles . That lvl 3 poison + Parasoul air combo should be illegal.
Getting everyone to lvl 100 in FF and FF2
Trying to see how far up I can get in Grief Syndrome.
Attempting to get over 5000 points in a City I multiplayer play through as Levi in Fenglee's AOT game (Stop. facing. towards. the. fucking. camera.)
And last but not least thinking about what computer configuration and hardware I would need to upgrade to in order to get Blade and Soul running at a perfect 30+ fps on max graphical settings.



And that's just from recent memory and history. Now can we just please get past all this jumping to conclusions stuff now?

 

[Thebazilly]

Gotta love how people immediately dismiss these statistics as "Girls aren't playing REAL games." Oddly enough, I had this discussion with my boyfriend not long ago, after he was making fun of me for playing Kingdom Hearts 1.5, calling the series stereotypically "gurl gamer."

But it's okay because I play Borderlands 2 and Skyrim and Assassin's Creed and have thus proven myself to be acceptably non-girly.

It's just silly. Why do I have to qualify liking Kingdom Hearts with also kicking ass at Borderlands 2? Why are some video games not ACTUALLY video games?

 

[Hover Hand Mode]

Gotta love how people immediately dismiss these statistics as "Girls aren't playing REAL games." Oddly enough, I had this discussion with my boyfriend not long ago, after he was making fun of me for playing Kingdom Hearts 1.5, calling the series stereotypically "gurl gamer."

But it's okay because I play Borderlands 2 and Skyrim and Assassin's Creed and have thus proven myself to be acceptably non-girly.

It's just silly. Why do I have to qualify liking Kingdom Hearts with also kicking ass at Borderlands 2? Why are some video games not ACTUALLY video games?

Because gaming is a serious, masculine business that requires serious, masculine devotion and high scores that almost certainly aren't covering for a complete lack of accomplishments elsewhere!

I feel the need to continue reading this thread, but it's starting to piss me off. Especially how dismissive people are about parents. Gaming really took off at some point in the 1980s. Just as a reminder to everybody, that was 30 years ago. Gamers from that era and eras near it are almost certainly growing up and raising families at this point. Maybe they're still into gaming, maybe they're not. Maybe they're passing the baton onto their children who could be playing Call of Duty. Or some Sesame Street game on Kinect. Do these things invalidate who is considered a "gamer"? Are people of the opinion that breeders and sex-havers need not apply? What's with the obsession of trying to cultivate a gaming master race where members must play video games often enough to qualify as a part-time job before they're allowed to be crowned with the title of "gamer"?

This is all so stupid. I think of my own friends when people attempt to qualify who doesn't count as a "gamer" and I really feel resentment. Just let people game in peace.

 

[LaoJim]

Recently got and beat MGR:R for the second time. (To that person above me talking about Raiden, I'm American. I like girly electric samurai cyborg Raiden with the shiny butt. Also, about your statistics of 'western players' not liking him, do you have any statistics or pictures to back it up or...is that just your opinion?)

I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of MGS and so have got most of my mental picture of Raiden from some very vocal posters on this and other forums over the years. I've been talking about the importance of statistics in this forum, so I did some googling and...

http://patrickbrown.deviantart.com/journal/poll/1442769/
http://www.psu.com/forums/showthread.php/290487-Do-Metal-Gear-Solid-fans-hate-Raiden
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=26559

it turns out that I'm wrong about this.

really am loving this entire debate - so many people automatically jumping to the conclusion of 'oh those female accounts are used for their kidzzzzzz' without realizing/acknowledging that it's probably equally likely that the fathers/male figures do that for their kids as well and that females often hide their accounts as male just to avoid the bs that male players spew.

I can understand you being upset or annoyed with some of the comments on this forum. Let me ask you a question though. Do you believe that the ratio of women/men who regard video games as a hobby is about 40/60? If not, from your own experience, what would your best guess estimate be?

For the sake of blowing some minds, I'll share my current gaming habits and sort of 'checklist of gaming things'
I've got OVERRRRRR 9000!!! gamer score on my xbl account.
Stopped using netflix quite awhile ago, no real reason to use it since I already watched all of the Ghost in the Shell anime/films. (Still waiting on that next episode Arise...)
Have played just about every Halo and Fable game to come out on home consoles.
Recently got and beat MGR:R for the second time. (To that person above me talking about Raiden, I'm American. I like girly electric samurai cyborg Raiden with the shiny butt. Also, about your statistics of 'western players' not liking him, do you have any statistics or pictures to back it up or...is that just your opinion?)
Playing Blazblue, meh.
Beat KH1,2,CoM.
Aiming for a Perfect no death game on both of the original Fire Emblem games on GBA.
Currently running around in Skyrim with my archmage robes.
Got up to ng+3 on Rogue Legacy and just need maybe 200k more gold to max out the whole castle...
A few short turns from getting a science victory on Civ V. (I really, REALLY should finish that sometime within the next couple hours honestly)
Slicing through biotches as a lvl 30 Volt or an approximately lvl 15 brand new Saryan in Warframe.
Strongly considering whether to stay dedicated as minion or go pure mage in PoE.
Still crying over the corpses of my dead/deleted lvl 70 nen master from DFO but attempting to revive her in chinese DnF.
Saddened by the lack of intelligence shown by my teamates in Hawken but running to deathmatch as a bruiser and getting some good ol quality slaughtering.
Patiently awaiting the arrival of Destiny, fangasming over the fact that its actually HAPPENING.
Saving up for a new skin for Neith in Smite.
Refining my Skullgirls game, really liking Valentine and Parasoul's play styles . That lvl 3 poison + Parasoul air combo should be illegal.
Getting everyone to lvl 100 in FF and FF2
Trying to see how far up I can get in Grief Syndrome.
Attempting to get over 5000 points in a City I multiplayer play through as Levi in Fenglee's AOT game (Stop. facing. towards. the. fucking. camera.)
And last but not least thinking about what computer configuration and hardware I would need to upgrade to in order to get Blade and Soul running at a perfect 30+ fps on max graphical settings.

Ok, so it's pretty clear that you would pass even the most stringent of "gamer" tests. The problem for me is that a lot of the media tend to use statistics in a bad way. These days, nearly everyone has played a video game and so it should be no suprise that as the number of people who have played a video game approached 100% that the male/female split should approach 50/50. There is nothing wrong with being a "casual" gamer and nothing wrong with not liking video games at all and I certainly don't believe in excluding people on the basis that they are not hardcore enough. It's difficult to define who exactly a "gamer" is, but in order to talk about the extent to which people are playing games you need to have a more detailed set of statistics than the ones we are currently getting.

 

[Berny Marcus]

I'm glad that number is rising. The whole "Video games are played only by guys" stereotype needs to be destroyed. I know alot of good friends of mine who are female and own a Xbox 360, Wii, or PS3. Some even play Halo and Mass Effect.

Face it, gaming isn't just for guys anymore, this stereotype should've been debunked a long time ago.

 

[Trivea]

Wow, there's a lot of "well they probably just have them for Peggle microtransactions" on here. I know one person who /actually/ plays Peggle. And he's a guy.

Sure, I'm a girl and my gamerscore barely tips 7k. Fine, whatever, but there's a reason for that: for the most part, I prefer playing games on my older systems, since they have a lot more replay value than most current-gen games. On the 360, I play anything from the LEGO games to the Elder Scrolls series to the Silent Hill series to the Bioshock series (in fact, I just completed a run of Silent Hill to Silent Hill: Downpour because October's coming and I needed to get in the proper mindset).

But is having an Xbox Live gamertag, or even a high gamer score, really proof of whether or not a girl is a "real gamer"? I love playing Persona 3 and 4, but they're PS2. I try to play through FFX or FFVIII at least once a year, but they're PS2 and PS1, respectively. I don't know how many hours I've sunk into my Pokemon games, doing single-Pokemon Elite Four runs or Team Super-Ditto or something (you want a challenge, run the game with nothing but six Dittos). I adore killing time on FarCry3 not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. An ex boyfriend and I used to do side-by-side Portal speedruns before the second game came out as well as teach each other tricks in Fallout 3. I play TF2, Ragnarok Online, L4D2, Cry of Fear, and whatever else I can get my hands on with my online gaming friends.

...buuuut I'm a girl, so hey, I should probably just go play Peggle or FarmVille or something.

 

[broca]

Wow, there's a lot of "well they probably just have them for Peggle microtransactions" on here. I know one person who /actually/ plays Peggle. And he's a guy.

Sure, I'm a girl and my gamerscore barely tips 7k. Fine, whatever, but there's a reason for that: for the most part, I prefer playing games on my older systems, since they have a lot more replay value than most current-gen games. On the 360, I play anything from the LEGO games to the Elder Scrolls series to the Silent Hill series to the Bioshock series (in fact, I just completed a run of Silent Hill to Silent Hill: Downpour because October's coming and I needed to get in the proper mindset).

But is having an Xbox Live gamertag, or even a high gamer score, really proof of whether or not a girl is a "real gamer"? I love playing Persona 3 and 4, but they're PS2. I try to play through FFX or FFVIII at least once a year, but they're PS2 and PS1, respectively. I don't know how many hours I've sunk into my Pokemon games, doing single-Pokemon Elite Four runs or Team Super-Ditto or something (you want a challenge, run the game with nothing but six Dittos). I adore killing time on FarCry3 not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. An ex boyfriend and I used to do side-by-side Portal speedruns before the second game came out as well as teach each other tricks in Fallout 3. I play TF2, Ragnarok Online, L4D2, Cry of Fear, and whatever else I can get my hands on with my online gaming friends.

...buuuut I'm a girl, so hey, I should probably just go play Peggle or FarmVille or something.

There are 3 posts out of 68 that could be counted as saying "These females only play girly games", still somehow people act like it is a commonly expressed opinion here. Yes, there are some posters that are critical of using the statistics to make statements about the rate of females gamers. And the reason for this is that the statistics are just marketing speak. It is a marketing figure released by a corporation to make itself look good. The way it is formulated it is impossible make any credible claims about female gamers based on it. And please show me who claimed that someone with a gamers score of 7000 wouldn't count as a gamer. The discussion was clearly about really low numbers (dozens to hundreds) as a possible measure of whether someone really plays or just has the account for other reasons (e.g. streaming). And for that goal it would be a valid method, given that people who just play one or two games extensively are measured separately.

So, i don't know what you were responding to, but it most definitely wasn't the posts on this thread. And while i can understand your reaction, it would still be nice if you reacted to what was actually written here, not what people said somewhere else.

 

[LaoJim]

But is having an Xbox Live gamertag, or even a high gamer score, really proof of whether or not a girl is a "real gamer"?

No, a gamerscore can be a good indication of whether someone plays a wide selection of games on the XBox 360.
Obviously someone who plays a million hours of PS3 (or Atari 2600) every year would not be represented, but would still be a real gamer.
Having a gamertag is terrible proof of whether or not someone is a gamer. Its like asking someone "Have you ever seen Manchester United play football on TV?" and then claiming the number of people who say yes to no is the ratio of Manchester United fans in the world.

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

So does that mean there's angry thirteen year old girls on COD too?

Funnily enough there is a 30 year old woman with a kid in my gaming clan. This isn't a surprise, but at the same time I have a feeling that 15% of said "women" are actually teenage guys trolling. Just a guess though.