Why are people so stuck in the 1950s?
Glad to have woman playing. To paraphrase Iwata (Nintendo), gaming should be fun for everyone
Edit: "women" because I have butter fingers
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Technology
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My girlfriend has ~800 hours in Lost Ark and ~500 hours in Guild Wars 2.
She always nags me about not finding her new games. I am glad we are compatible in more than one thing.
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The 1980's for computes, but yeah very much outdated and it's past time that we accept a good game is appealing to everyone and it doesn't need to be pink and simple for a women to want to play it
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I don't understand why they're surprised. Gaming has been mainstream for many many years now and women are half the population.
first they took our jerbs, then they took our 'obbies, what's next, are they going to demand equal pay as well??!???!?!?!?11
jerbs
'obbies
I admire your effort to seamlessly characterise misogyny on both sides of the Atlantic!
what can I say, I believe in equal opportunity
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Some of them have a sliver of an excuse, as from my childhood until I was at least in my late 20s, gaming was the realm of kids and geeks with no social life (according to populate opinion). And some people have trouble changing their understanding of the world after a certain point in their lives.
They probably also have a lot of other issues as that kind of mindset can affect a lot of other things, but that is the way some people are.
This just in, “gamers” react shitty to something.
But "gamers" is evidently the wrong word, it should be "men". The whole point is that there are a ton of female gamers, and then they equate gamers with men in the title 🤷
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Just don't do news about Twitter reactions. It's nothing but outrage bait.
True; this is lazy journalism.
That said, it's absolutely a real problem. Women aren't safe participating in many online spaces because a minority of misogynists make it a toxic space for them.
It starts young, too. Girls just don't show up when I make "gaming" spaces at school. They don't feel welcome.
I get why journalists go to Twitter, too. It's a lot easier to find and provide "receipts". Women who post about their experiences are dismissed regularly with statements like "I don't see it so you must be making it up," completely missing the point that they don't see it because women have been eliminated from these shared spaces already.
Is Kotaku's business model rage-baiting to generate clicks? Yes.
Is toxicity toward female gamers online a real problem? Also yes.
Some of my friends get annoyed when I take that stance, but it's absolutely possible for both statements to be true simultaneously. I want women to feel safe if they want to try online gaming, and it's counter-productive when sites like Kotaku constantly post fear-mongering articles about it rather than offer any solutions.
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I used to browse twitter occasionally, but almost every tweet now has really low quality troll post underneath them. It feels like Twitter just consists of people who find everything outraging and they complain about everything.
It used to be that there were some interesting back and forths on Twitter, but in the last year or so all I see is outrage and insults.
basically just elaborating on this twitter thread.
And because Kotaku decided to play a >1min video ad while i was trying to read:
tl;dr:
According to Circana's PlayerPulse:
47% of console video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
50% of PC video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
54% of mobile video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
41% of PS5s in the US are female owned
45% of Xbox Series consoles are female owned
52% of Swich consoles are female owned
50% of gaming PCs are female owned
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I... have to admit, other than Switch I'd have estimated somewhere around 20% to be honest.
But I like to be wrong here, cool that it's not that divided!
And I'm not sure it's a good sign that I didn't expect this.
Maybe Men are more vocal (possibly because women are less so, because of bad treatment), or maybe I'm just not as attentive...
Maybe Men are more vocal (possibly because women are less so, because of bad treatment), or maybe I’m just not as attentive…
it's almost certain some of this disconnect is women just not participating in traditional gaming communities because they have to deal with dipshits constantly, yeah. i don't know if i'd characterize all of gaming as unusually misogynistic, but it's still probably really easy to find casual misogyny even in the best moderated gaming spaces--and a lot of gaming spaces aren't that well moderated either
There's also the fact that most people assume everyone else is a guy online, even if the users says otherwise. Given the misogyny you were mentioning I think a lot of the women who do stock around in gamer communities tend to not correct that assumption.
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Most Switch Owners Are Women, Gamers React Poorly
Interesting title. As if "Women" and "Gamers" were two distinct groups.
Indeed, I’m assuming it wasn’t the female gamers that reacted badly…
Capital G Gamers doesn't just mean people who play games, it means people who've built their whole identity around being weird little exclusionary creeps about gaming
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I read some digital market reports a few years back, which showed that something like 98% of all people between 13-18 were gaming. Obviously mostly casual games, but nevertheless paying consumers of games. More female than male by a close margin.
When I discussed it on another gaming forum they were really quick to dismiss casual games altogether, despite it being the very largest group. There's probably still a male majority in desktop first person shooters, which seemed to be the only "correct" gamers according to he kind of people following that kind of forum. Anyway, if I were to program a game I surely wouldn't aim at the "stereotypical" gamer. They're a minority with very high demands and very expensive gear. The whole stereotype is gatekept to the point where I don't want to participate neither as a gamer or as developer.
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I am a woman person and I have TWO switches. This is a source of consternation for some reason?
Noooo they made the switch Political !!
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I'm a 38-year-old woman who has been playing games since she was five years old. The myth that women don't play and enjoy games is a long-running one.
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Really? People are still acting like this? I remember back in the early 2000s when people were giving me crap for being a female gamer. The sad part is that I have been gaming probably before a lot of these new people complaining about female gamers have been born. I started back in the day with the Super NES. I also have a gaming PC, a Switch, and a Steam Deck. I also have various other consoles.
It's bizarre, isn't it. I'm a woman and I remember growing up with Pokémon, and Zelda and those 2 game series are extremely popular with women. A lot of women I know love puzzle games and were huge fans of Professor Layton on the ds when that was out. I even know a woman at my job who's into Elden Ring.
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That anyone ever acted like that is so insane to me, it doesn't even feel like it happened on the same planet. Among my middle/high school circle of friends through the 00's, not a single one of us would have ever given shit to anyone, male or female, for playing video games. To us, every new gamer we met was a potential new friend who spoke our favorite language. Then we graduate, go out into the world, look around on the internet, and hear stories that there exist complete fuckwads on this green earth trying to keep girls out of gaming?? Like... what??
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I am glad this trend is becoming better understood. A more diverse audience means more diverse stories being told, and while another MCU or Street Fighter is a perfectly good game to release a game targeting that more diverse audience will give more options for me. I typically play games like Risk of Rain, Skyrim, Creeper World, and so on, but I have also lost many hours to Viva Piñata, so I would love to see some more diversity in the games on offer.
You do realize women like fighting games and the MCU, right?
That's the whole point of this statistic: the current gaming market is already palatable to everybody, unlike what your statement seem to misunderstand.
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My girlfriend has been literally using my PS5 more than me since I got it, gamer girls do exist and we should cherish them, not alienate them
“I don’t know ANY women ~~who play games~~!” Is probably half their comments.
They do, of course. They're just the reason no one on the team has a mic
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Toxicity towards girls and women in gaming is a real problem, but this article doesn't really show that as it's just talking about random people from Twitter It's definitely nice so many women feel free to own consoles nowadays
I remember when they took a group photo of all the people involved with the racing games at Codemasters. Around 600 of us... someone commented, "who are all these people?". Well, programmers (AI/Phyisic/Audio/etc), Artists, Sound Engineers, Producers, HR...
And there were women as well. Yes, that's right, women develop games as well. There's one of my team.
More information from a closer source: https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1667172957066600448
47% of console video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
50% of PC video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
54% of mobile video game players are female (+1% vs YA)
For these numbers quoted: n = 10,184
For people interested in PlayerPulse:
Frequency: Monthly
First Data Captured: Jan 1 2017
Methodology: Circana conducts a monthly survey of US active gamers over the age of 13. Surveys are fielded online, via PC and mobile devices, drawing from a nationally representative pool. Respondents qualify on the basis of having played games in the past month (30 days). To ensure consistency across samples and correct for any biases/errors, Circana implements a weighting system for each monthly dataset based on representative distributions of platform use and platform investment. Circana’s models are based on aggregated, cross-product samples, and are updated quarterly to account for market shifts.
Mat Piscatella - Executive Director & Video Game Industry Analyst at Circana (NPD).
Clearly the data is wrong. Switches Jane, who owns three hundred million switches, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
Toxic incel minority that makes a lot of noise. People have known it for years and nobody gives a damn. Videogames are made for every person to enjoy
Woman like Pokemon as much as dudes. Also Nintendo's awful online experience is a plus for woman that don't want to be exposed to weird online dudes.
It isn't surprising, at least with my anecdotal experience, but still higher than I expected. Two girl friends of mine started to play lan parties with us since covid, and I know another that is completely obsessed with Valorant, and another that is equally obsessed with Football Manager.
I tried to find the original study and can't. The only source that everyone points to is this tweet by the executive director of Circana. Anyone knows where I can find it?
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Among my personal friends, probably the same ratio of men and women are into Souls games. So like… yeah, women play games. And not just “lady-friendly” fare. As a non-woman, I freaking love Animal Crossing; meanwhile my wife has beaten most of the Souls games and I’ve given up on all of them. Anecdotal, but like… gamers like gaming, and I feel like these days trying to say anything about game preference and gender is just not really helpful.
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That is the most Onion headline I ever seen for real news. Kotaku? Yeah, the clickbait makes sense.
Glad to see more women picking up gaming! Here's hoping that'll stop my wife from nagging that my gaming habits are purely a "men/boys" problem.
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