RE: Why Girls Suck At Gaming

This is going out to the "guy gamer", Mr. Adam Colon, who decided to write an article about "Why Girls Suck At Gaming", but continued on to not really explain why girls suck at gaming. Did he give us statistics on competive female gamers? Did he have two equally matched gamers - one female and one male - go toe to toe in an epic best of five match? Did he discuss anything relevant to being good at gaming? No. Instead, he gives us his indepth opinion about gamers of the female gender and developers and their hiring tendencies in what he tries to pass as a humorous gaming industry post. 
I detest the term "girl gamer". It's really annoying, but I suppose people will generalize because that's what they do. Anyway, I wouldn't have written my own blog about this topic, but he sent me a Twitter message that said, "5%" and that's it. This made me LAUGH out loud because seriously...Your article title for that section was titled, "Reasonable Game Designers Ignore Girls". Then you proceed to say that, "5% of game programmer’s are women" (by the way, no apostrophe is needed there). Designers are most often NOT programmers. In most game development companies, these two job titles are completely separate. Now, add that 5% of programers to the designers, artists, marketing, PR, QA, and CS staff that are female and in the game development process. DEVELOPERS are not just programmers or just artists. Developer is a term for anyone who helps create games. Designers are a specific field in the industry and so are programmers. I'd like to note that a lot of companies go OUT of their way to find more female developers. Double Fine is a great example! SOE even has a G.I.R.L scholarship program!

You proceed to say, "Real games are not designed and brought to market with girls as their target demographic. Which means, that girls don’t play games as much as men because the selection is so thin." What do you consider a "real" game? A game that takes money, time and effort from various developers of all sexes? I sure hope so. If so, a lot of games whether casual or hardcore can fit into this category. If games, as you say, are not advertised to women, then don't you think that is the reason that some women don't find those games? Not that they aren't interested in those types of games, the commercials and ads are just not placed in areas they frequent. This seems to be more of a marketing problem and less of a "girls don't play games and that's why they don't advertise games to women".

If you say that 42% of gamers are women, do some research on that 42% of women. If they are gaming, are their "interests" in gaming really "low"? Do they really think gaming is "beneath them"? No! They are gaming because they love gaming and they want to game! Whatever game that may be.

Women are social so they all of a sudden don't like gaming? Games are filled with social interaction, especially "VIOLENT AND COMPETITIVE" games. I know a lot of pro gamers that are female and ask any one of them, communication with your teammates is an important aspect of team gameplay in eSports. "When was the last time a girl kicked your ass in Counter Strike? Never, because this shit doesn’t happen." Oh, it happens. ;)
*Note: I don't approve of that song choice. Lol. 

I have no idea why "attention deficit" has anything to do with female gamers. No where do you put out any math that indicates that "x" percentage of women have "attention deficit" disorder and also are gamers. Nor do you express the amount of guy gamers who have ADD and play games. I still have no idea what this has to do with gaming and females or males. "A girl can only handle casual games… games where you can start and stop at will without investing any predetermined amount of time." *Sigh* This just makes me want to /keyboardface over and over and over again. This is why some girls and guys have a max level character of every class and race in a game? Yeah, they are totally not gamers because of that.

Oh and of course, your final "reason girls suck at gaming" is "complaining about difficulty". Really? Even if they did complain, since when does complaining mean you suck at gaming? I hear all types of gamers - men and women- complain about games in one form another. Most of the time, when a game is too easy, unbalanced or has a terrible game mechanic, I complain. There's nothing wrong with voicing your opinion, but I generally think that gamers love a challenge. Most games provide a challenge and that's why we play them. We want to feel like heroes! We want to slay that powerful dragon that kicks everyone's butt for months so that we can say we did it!

Oh and by the way, your caveat does not make your article less offensive. Find that 42% of gamer girls, do some research, maybe interview a few of them from various gaming backgrounds. You'll find a lot of them have similiar stories to those of your male companions. ;) A lot of those "42% of women gamers" were gamers when they were younger, it just wasn't as acceptable. We were teased for being gamers, not applauded like men and their peers. Finally!!! We are in the age and generation where female gamers are accepted and promoted. We don't have to hide and you're finding more and more of us are coming out of the woodworks. Articles like this are the reason women stay out of the lime light, but I plead with them, please...Be proud of who you are! Don't ever let anyone take that away from you. Kick butt in games and ignore the trolls.

Next time someone wants to write an article about why female gamers suck at games, how about you actually write reasons why they suck at gaming, not reasons why you think that they don't play games that you expect them to play.

<3 x 9001,

/Maggie

23 Comments


Jonathan - July 3rd, 2012 at 2:57pm

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

Kyle - July 3rd, 2012 at 2:58pm

Sounds like this guy just got beaten by a girl.

BlakKy55

Phil - July 3rd, 2012 at 5:36pm

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.

Julzerator - July 3rd, 2012 at 5:46pm

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

Adam - July 3rd, 2012 at 7:31pm

You know I love you, Maggie.

Eric Campbell - July 3rd, 2012 at 8:32pm

"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! ^_^

Britton - July 10th, 2012 at 9:17am

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.

Billy6guns - July 15th, 2012 at 2:40pm

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).

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