Girls and Games...

[johnnybravo]

Let me start off this post by saying that I in no way think that girls are any less capable of playing video games than men. I just simply want to talk about something I've noticed and see if anyone has any similar experiences.

Anyways, it seems like anytime I give a woman a controller, whether it be my girlfriend or just a friend, they can't figure out left from right, up from down on the controller. Just for fun I wanted to introduce my girlfriend to CoD, and she had serious coordination issues, even after playing for a solid hour. She could not move and aim at the same time or she would get too confused and end up spinning the camera around aimlessly. It's not just her though; it seems to be most girls I know. I can give most of my guy friends a controller and they get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Do girls who actually "get" video games feel ashamed and therefore fake being bad at them? Do you think men have a naturally better hand eye coordination?

Again, I am NOT meaning to degrade women in any way with this post. Just want to see what people think/if they've noticed anything similar.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Games aren't as easy to play as they were when I was a kid.

When I was kid, we just needed to know left, right, and which button makes my guy jump.

Now, there's camera control and a myriad of other game mechanics people take for granted.

 

[johnnybravo]

It's not girls, it's people.

It takes much more than an hour to get used to a controller, the movement isn't natural. You just take it for granted because you have likely been playing for years.

I guess that's true..and maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to judge after just an hour. I guess after awhile it just seems so natural to me that I expect everyone to be able to grasp the "simple" controls.

 

[Ryotknife]

It's not girls, it's people.

It takes much more than an hour to get used to a controller, the movement isn't natural. You just take it for granted because you have likely been playing for years.

pretty much.

Anyone who has played games for awhile takes it for granted. I remember trying to introduce a woman into gaming via portal, figuring that you get a good sense of accomplishment without time constraints or anxiety. She had no spatial awareness of her surroundings, they were just pictures to her.

 

[Lilani]

It has been resolved.

 

[johnnybravo]

pretty much.

Anyone who has played games for awhile takes it for granted. I remember trying to introduce a woman into gaming via portal, figuring that you get a good sense of accomplishment without time constraints or anxiety. She had no spatial awareness of her surroundings, they were just pictures to her.

Honestly playing portal with ANYONE seems like a hassle. I've tried to introduce several of my friends to portal and only a couple could understand how the portals worked. The rest reacted exactly as you described.

 

[burningdragoon]

How old are you?

I'm 24. I've been playing games for as long as I can remember. The first time I played a 3d game (Super Mario 64) I couldn't even move in a straight line.

 

[johnnybravo]

How old are you?

I'm 24. I've been playing games for as long as I can remember. The first time I played a 3d game (Super Mario 64) I couldn't even move in a straight line.

I'm 20. It's funny that you mention that game because Super Mario 64 was the first game I ever played. I guess starting off my gaming life with a 3D game helped me out but I don't remember having problems with the controls.

 

[Ryotknife]

pretty much.

Anyone who has played games for awhile takes it for granted. I remember trying to introduce a woman into gaming via portal, figuring that you get a good sense of accomplishment without time constraints or anxiety. She had no spatial awareness of her surroundings, they were just pictures to her.

Honestly playing portal with ANYONE seems like a hassle. I've tried to introduce several of my friends to portal and only a couple could understand how the portals worked. The rest reacted exactly as you described.

it certainly seems that introducing someone to gaming via portal is a mistake. I thought i was being clever. Hilarious commentary, problem solving involving mechanics that everyone understands (like gravity), and no pressure from time or enemies seeking to kill you.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

How old are you?

I'm 24. I've been playing games for as long as I can remember. The first time I played a 3d game (Super Mario 64) I couldn't even move in a straight line.

Oh God, I remember playing that game and it took me forever to figure out how to do that, and I felt like an idiot.

And the swimming.... ugh.

OT: More like people and games, and what everyone else has said here. It's not that easy having someone play a game for the first time ever and have them move in a 3D space. On the reverse side, I've had my 10 year old cousin play the original Mario, somehow my NES still works, and he kept dying a lot. He was used to playing 3D games that playing older games was hard to him.

Funny how that works out, but that's just me.

 

[Lilani]

This has also been resolved.

 

[Total LOLige]

It's not a gender issue it's just people that are new to video games. Everyone struggles at everything they've just started to do unless they have natural talent.

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

That's pretty sexist of you to assume that only women have that problem. When you're doing something for the first time, you're gonna suck at it. It's really not too hard of a concept to grasp. When I made my dad play Star Wars Battlefront II, he ran off cliffs, couldn't strafe, only shot enemies after coming to a complete standstill and rotating like a sentry turret, and crashed his X-Wing into our capital ship 10 times when doing a space battle. Conversely, when I was driving for the first time I nearly knocked over our garbage cans backing out, got pulled over because the police officer thought I was drunk, and nearly had a panic attack when I came to my first intersection. Navigating a 3-D space on a 2-D screen is a mindblowing concept for non-gamers.

 

[MortifiedPenguin]

We really do take our glorious muscle memory for granted don't we?

It not a gender issue. Anyone who has never picked up a controller will struggle at first and it take more then an hour or so to learn where everything thing is. You have to pay attention to a lot of things, what's happening on screen, where all the buttons are, camera controls, etcetera. Also an FPS style game may not be the best kinda game to introduce someone to gaming to, since you've got to do a lot with the controller all at the same time.

 

[DoPo]

How old are you?

I'm 24. I've been playing games for as long as I can remember. The first time I played a 3d game (Super Mario 64) I couldn't even move in a straight line.

I'm 20. It's funny that you mention that game because Super Mario 64 was the first game I ever played. I guess starting off my gaming life with a 3D game helped me out but I don't remember having problems with the controls.

Because you alone represent the entire male gender, and the handful of females you've seen play games are enough to represent the entire female gender.

I had a couple of friends who were learning to play PC games. Their firs game was Quake 3. They were so bad in 3D environment, that one was using the keyboard the other the mouse, otherwise they couldn't move at all. Both were male, too. And I've seen girls and women, pwn noobs in CS.

Can we use that to generalise the genders, please?

 

[johnnybravo]

How old are you?

I'm 24. I've been playing games for as long as I can remember. The first time I played a 3d game (Super Mario 64) I couldn't even move in a straight line.

I'm 20. It's funny that you mention that game because Super Mario 64 was the first game I ever played. I guess starting off my gaming life with a 3D game helped me out but I don't remember having problems with the controls.

Because you alone represent the entire male gender, and the handful of females you've seen play games are enough to represent the entire female gender.

I was just stating what I had personally observed. I clearly was not trying to say that all women are bad at games and all men are good. I said in the first couple sentences that this was just something I had personally noticed and nothing more.

 

[Lilani]

Aaand, we're done here.

 

[JaceArveduin]

snip

you seem a bit hostile to me. It was probably an honest mistake, to be honest, seeing as most of the guys he's known has probably picked up a controller off n on, yet there aren't as many of you ladies playing 3D games. So, he's with two groups, guys who he knows plays a little, and the ladies that play none. Some People don't think that the off n on playing, even if it's only an hour or so a week, really helps with stuff like that. Then there are those that do play some games, generally 2D puzzles n such, and we forget that there's a difference between the two.

*shrug* oh well

 

[Doclector]

It's not girls, it's people.

It takes much more than an hour to get used to a controller, the movement isn't natural. You just take it for granted because you have likely been playing for years.

EDIT

Another mile-wide explosion erupted on the surface of LV-escapist. Just another few hundred victims in the seemingly endless gender war.

I've never witnessed this phenomenom, that may be because that would involve getting a girl to my room, but I'm inclined to agree with matthew. Us long term gamers forget that controlling another entity in first person does not come naturally. Getting used to gaming is a challenge in itself, but first person is a whole other step, I remember my first steps into it feeling wierd as hell, as for the first five or so years of my gaming career, I had not played any first person games.