Femme dilemma
While strolling through the blogroll section of our new linkmate Sickr, i came upon The Girl Gamer (as in i found, not “i jizzed upon”). She happens to be this Faith character, a writer from Destructoid. Well, yesterday i was looking through the horribly set up Miss Video Game site and she was there, among – alternatively – a bunch of pretty types that only qualify as gamers for the simple fact that they spend 4 minutes a week playing Snake on their Nokia while their boyfriend struggles to open a condom.
Obviously, “girl gamers” are a bit of a joke, and the Miss Video Game pageant intends to find a proper representative of the female gaming race…even though it itself kinda continues the mockery. Good luck with that.
Back to Faith. Her site is called The Girl Gamer. It seems harmless enough on the first glance, but when i look at the name and URL (4thegirlgamers), she’s just as misguided as the pageant people. I mean really, is the way to destroy the “girls don’t play games” stereotype by being so loud about it? Shit, if i had taken that approach with this site, you’d be reading FuckNintendo.com right now. I get what she wants to get across, but having this “i am woman, watch me game” attitude isn’t the right way to handle it, i think. She does a lot of the female-related articles, and i guess there’s a niche for that somewhere, but classifying herself as a “girl gamer” with “girl gamer content” when they want to be seen as equals makes it all the more ridiculous.
I’m not against the idea of a female who games; i’d like to see one in person, actually. An attractive one. But when you’re dealing with games and gaming, especially in the blogosphere, you should be a gamer first and then a male or female, not verse vice-a. Unlike those girl gamer clans like PMS Clan and Frag Dolls, who fall in this same category.
Where do you manly men stand on this issue? I’ve never really come face to face with one (besides that leader of PMS at DigitalLife) and therefore haven’t given it too much thought. I do like the fact that they’re females who play games and have different perspectives on what makes games fun and how games should be. In fact, i’d hire one on the spot if she wanted to write with us here at FuckNintendo. Straight up.
It’s kind of odd that they consider themselves so special. My wife being an extraordinary gamer doesn’t make her any different from any guy gamers. She just loves 2-D Zeldas, Puzzle Games, and every game she played growing up. She is a big fan in your Game Boyancy theory and plays the crap out of her SP.
While it’s cool to have a gamer wife this does not make here some superior woman, It just makes it so if I turn my back I just lost Paper Mario and shes beating the shit out of it. I personally believe my wife is cool as shit and love playing video games with her.
Thank Jesus she doesn’t have this “Girl Gamer I am a Woman see me PWN3″ attitude, but I’d still love her all the same. As a bonus she is understanding of my gaming needs when they arrive and loves to watch me play games.
Can’t beat that.
My wife plays games, too, but only occasionally.
The funny thing is, she is really good at them! She can beat me at most of them with very little practice. And if it is a game that neither one of us has played before, she will very likely master it long before me.
Her attitude makes me think that there are a lot more “girl gamers” out there, they just simply don’t make a big deal out of it. For them it is just another past time, like watching a movie or going to the park. They don’t seem to have this need to “PWN” someone, only while they are in the game.
I also thought that one of the points of playing online was so everyone could be whatever they wanted to be, including a member of the opposite sex. Heck, even Link seems a bit hermaphrodite (check out the first season of “Drawn Together” for a hilarious comment on that).
Wanna play me sometime on COD 2?
Sorry if my site came across as girly thing, but when I started the site back in May, I was unaware of the whole hate on for girls proudly stating that they game.
If you read my articles on Destructoid, you’ll see that not all my articles are about female gamers. Read them all here – http://www.faithnaked.com – my boss bought me this website so people could easily find all my articles on Dtoid.com.
Note: I entered the contest to help Destructoid get attention and get more readers. The contest could be big and entering it will definitely draw attention to the site for us.
Well yeah Faith, but i was only using your blog as a reference. In a more diverse setting where you are one of many, i’d expect you to not be the token female.
I don’t know if you took it as me hating on girl gamers — like i said i haven’t given the issue that much thought before — but i’m no hater. I know there are asses who do. My problem is with the loud and proud attitude y’all tend to have. I get that you wanna be heard, but like the gays, i think you’re going about it all wrong.
Why not just let it be known and that’s it, instead of being the “singular voice” for the girl gamer population? When it comes to being a semi-known blogger and writing on a semi-known site, gender or sexual orientation shouldn’t be the main focus. How many posts can end in “Solid Snake indeed!” or “as a female…” ?
I realize we kind of seem to have a singular skew on this site too, but our goal – which i think we achieve – is diverse opinions. The skew we have is much broader in that our angle is to look at everything from everyone critically before subjectivity interferes. I think specializing in anything limits your audience from the get-go, same goes for game makers. At the same time, maybe that’s what you’re going after. We are.
Aren’t you guys big enough? Why don’t you put an Intendo link on your page, help the cynics out a little.
I understand, Faith. I might enter it myself. And no, no COD 2 for me, but you can find me on the truest of the unisex games: Clubhouse Games. Wifi bowling almost nightly.
Note: If you know any girls or guys or guys who wanna be girls that dislike or disapprove of Nintendo, who’d like to write for a startup blog, send em here, wontcha?
I do see and like the presence of “female gamers” in magazines and gamer websites who give a unique perspective on gaming… But does gender really make a difference in gaming preferences?
I think the current “loudness” of female and gay gamers is just a response to the perceived demographics in the gaming industry… Once the industry “gets it”, that there is more diversity in gamers than they thought at first, the games themselves will become more diversified also and the loudness will be toned down. (I think it is already happening.)
Expect to see a similar “stand up and shout” coming from the senior citizen ranks. The industry needs to hear it, too!
>>I get that you wanna be heard, but like the gays, i think you’re going about it all wrong.
BOOM. Right there, that’s it, that’s the ticket, the money shot, the words of wisdom. I’m cool with gay men and have some gay friends but I totally hate gay and lesbian pride parades. “We’re just like you, don’t hate us!” and then “Hey guys, let’s have a parade to show the straight folks just how different we are!”
It’s annoying but in a way it’s hard to blame them. Everytime a minority wants to gain acceptance there are groups that will go overboard (hence gay pride, girl Pwners, and the black panthers). The shock value will attract some nad repulse others, but in end like they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity,
There will come a point where girl gamers will be looked at as the norm and all the hubbub will die down but until then, the loud and proud type will be there.
As an aside, my girlfriend is a sometime gamer who isn’t so loud about it but gets really addicted to startegy games like Civ 4 and more casual games like Cakemania. So they’re out there, and I think there’s much more than readily admit it.
y do i care dike heads