WoW! Girl Gamers!
I was once on important business to Darkshore, when I was stopped by a cute little gnome fellow. He said, “Hey, I’ll pay you 10 silver to strip and do the Night Elf Dance.” It was quite flattering, I must admit. I mean, I don’t normally get approached in such a charming manner. I said, “I’m sorry, while stripping is at the top of my life’s ambitions, I must go buy some spiffy new armor.” His reply, “Whatever. I’m sure you’re a guy, anyway.”
Despite my insistence to the contrary, Mr. Gnome insisted that he’d continue to think I was male unless I “proved” otherwise. I can only imagine how exactly he wanted me to prove my femaleness.
It’s a common misconception in the gaming world (and not necessarily an unfounded one), that gamers are male. Still, the girls are out there, and it’s perhaps a good idea to remember that.
Relevant Points of Interest:
- Most girls don’t want to strip and dance for 10 silver (but some will kindly do it for varying amounts of gold)
- Insisting that a girl is a guy doesn’t make her less of a girl
- If you assume that most female characters are male, going up to one and asking them to strip and dance for you makes me wonder about you (not that there’s anything wrong with that)
The fact of the matter is, most of us just want to have a good time. We want to level up, get better gear, better weapons, and kick some opposing faction ass. Despite outfits that defy logic (last time I checked, my bra did not deflect arrows), and the stripper dance some of us must live with, the majority of female players are neither bimbos nor aspiring strippers.
So it makes me wonder, who’s to blame for such common assumptions? The players or the developers?
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POSTED IN: Musings
3 opinions for WoW! Girl Gamers!
Cyranu
Sep 19, 2005 at 3:13 am
What you do to get back at the girl gamer stereotype:
1) Roll a male character
2) Find a core group of people and level with them
3) Don’t let them know that you’re not a guy
4) Freak them out when you come onto vent and speak
the play girlz gaming blog: because guys aren’t the only players » Estrogen Take-Over: An All-Girls Game League
Feb 8, 2006 at 5:54 am
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senor freebie
Jul 11, 2006 at 2:14 am
The assumption often comes from the groups many male gamers hang around in high school. Often they clump together, excluding the girls from conversations about games. This ends up meaning they never discover too many girl gamers and assume they are a minority closer to 5% rather then the more realistic 45%.
On top of this assumption they may have never met someone claiming to be a girl and may lack a few basic social skills depending on how much of a geek they are outside their gaming. For example girls in my region make up less then 5% of Lanners and naturally many guys assume that is because they don’t like playing the games we play at LAN’s.
This assumption can be considered true to an extent as girls tendencies in games are slightly different to guys but assumptions simply allow the mind to exagerrate the difference. As for WoW, roughly 1/3 of the ‘addicts’ I know are female which is a higher proportion then games like CS or Battlefield 2. This is probably closely related to the reasons why there are less women in the armed services of most countries as well.
[disclaimer]I call all wow players addicts as it has destroyed my local LAN scene, numerous friends lives and really hurt the local game development industry where I work. I apologise if this offends anyone here.[/disclaimer]
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