RE: Why Girls Suck At Gaming

YEAH GO MAGGIE! MAGGIE! MAGGIE! YEAH ! ... TR also.

Sounds like this guy just got beaten by a girl.

BlakKy55

The guys who have a problem with female gamers are showing their lack of maturity and insecurity. Guys, let's get past the 12yr old phase where we don't know how to act around girls and just play the game.



Thanks for the post though I am sad you still have to make this argument.

My 64 year old Mom is a gamer. She plays more DS than anyone I know, averaging 6 hours a day!

You know I love you, Maggie.

"When was the last time a girl kicked your ass in Counter Strike? Never, because this shit doesn't happen." - omg... the dude is so full of crap. I work every day not 20 feet away from a former world champion counterstrike player. And yes, she's female. Gah... dudes like this really irritate the crap out of me.



I also happen to know Ms. Krohn here pretty well and let me tell you, she is a seriously hardcore gamer. Far more into gaming for the sake of itself than some stupid label... morons.



Not only are there are lot of women gaming, there are a lot of them working in the industry and kicking ass doing it. Over half of my team alone is female. It sounds like this guy is just a dude that's just pissed off he's still not part of the inside.



Alright - my rant is over. Keep kicking ass Luper! ^_^

Maggie, I think you're great and I sympathize with your position here but I kind of have to say that you're doing something I tend to do a lot. That being, you are arguing with someone who is very obviously irrational. A rational person knows that when they make a claim they have to back it up with something concrete, otherwise it's essentially opinionated, uninformed nonsense. As such we feel the need to fill in their ridiculous assertions with actual fact and reason in order to rectify what we feel is an injustice. The problem is these people do not actually care about rationality. If they did they would have used it already. When you come across an article that makes absurd assertions with no evidence to back them then it's simply best to ignore them.



In all likelihood your argument is not going to change any minds. Anyone who is already listening to the article is not going to care about any rational points you bring up because, well, they already bought whatever the writer was saying (likely because it agrees with their own bias). Anyone who doesn't agree with the article, well they are probably already on your side anyway so your arguments would do little to change their minds, but rather enforce what they already believed. You certainly aren't going to change the mind of the writer so honestly, what good is it going to do? In fact, I would go as far as to say replying like this is going to hurt your cause in the long run. After all, the article seemed very much like a troll post to me so reacting is only going to give them ammunition. They do it because it generates buzz, it gets the page views, and it gets people coming back again and again to argue. That kind of brings me to the fact that you're contradicting yourself a little here. You tell your fellow gamers to ignore the trolls and then write out an essay about why this guy is a jerk-off. I know you might be offended by what he said, I know you might hate the shit out of him for being such a dick but don't let him see it. By giving him the time it took you to write this you do yourself a disservice because you let some fuckwad get to you, know what I mean?



Finally, I'd just like to give my 2 cents on the whole situation. I've seen a lot of posts from "girl gamers" over the past couple of months (in seemingly increasing amounts) and I have to be honest, most of it will do more harm than good. Yours is one of the calmer ones and I applaud you for that. However, look at, for example, the post from Aisha Tyler about the flak she got stemming from the Ubisoft presentation at E3. She came off as incredibly defensive, she was confrontational, she was overly sarcastic, and most of all she was childish. Those kinds of things do not help the cause at all. There is a female on Youtube who covers what she calls 'sexism in the media' and she just raised almost $160,000 to make a video on sexism (on sexism against females) in video games. 160k on a movie that comes about simply because she is slightly offended at some characters in entertainment media (in a medium, I might add, that has plenty of sexist male stereotypes as well). People are letting their offended sensibilities take over their lives (if you want proof, just look at our overly-PC society). I think the best solution was best voiced by Morgan Freeman when he talked about racism. He was asked "Well, how are we going to stop racism?" He said "Stop talking about it." I think there is brilliance in those words. I love that you detest the term 'gamer girls', I do too! If anything enforces segregation it's a term that, by definition, segregates! However, in following that, we have to discard our outdated sensibilities. We are allowed to be offended, that's part of being human, but we have to stop striking out when we are offended. We have to stop litigating and legislating based on someone being 'offended'. I believe the only way we are ever going to get rid of segregation is to stop pointing out every single little place where segregation occurs. The people who will segregate, they are going to do it regardless of what you say. Maybe I'm wrong in this, I know the major flaw in this idea is asking people to stick to it and that's not always a reasonable real-world expectation. However, ideally that's how I'd like to do it. I should mention, it's one thing to fight against a legitimate injustice: slavery, actual harassment, things like that. However, at the basest levels of segregation (racism, sexism, nationalism) I say we follow what Mr. Freeman said (obviously not Gordon, he doesn't say much): I won't call you black or white or whatever race you may be, I'll ask that you not call me a white man. We won't go by 'male' or 'female' gamers, we won't be 'hardcore' or 'casual', we'll just be gamers at the basest level: we will be people who play and enjoy games, nothing more, nothing less. The people who don't agree with that, simply ignore them, they aren't worth your worry or time. I don't know, maybe this has all been nonsense, but just my current train of thought on the situation.

Well, i must say that i agree with BOTH articles.



There are some totally kick butt gamer girls out there... quite a few in fact.



This however does not change the fact that *MOST* girls will actually roll their eyes at you if you declare that your a gamer. Just as he said in his article it is very true that a large percentage of women believe that games (and gamers) are beneath them.



This i feel is a throwback to socially accepted attitude that "girls don't game". It is *I believe* that women are perfectly capable of excelling as gamers.... but CHOOSE not to. Do they truly find games uninteresting? there is definatly a large niche of female gamers. But as he mentioned in his article that *MOST* women would rather pursue other means of entertainment (even though he was somewhat degrading on what those forms of entertainments were).