By Kieron Gillen on February 5th, 2010 at 9:59 am.
“Cassandra” at Left Mouse Button writes about the sexual politics of online life in WOW and, as she puts it, the myth of the meritocracy. Hits some regular riffs, but with a lot of local colour. The quote from a 17-year old guild leader – annoyingly, with his name changed, which does undermine its credibility – is particularly memorable: “Girls just aren’t on the same level. Sometimes they’re okay as healers or whatever, and I’d rather have a girl than an empty raid slot, but they lack that primal aggression that a man needs. They don’t need the kill as bad.” It’s the modern-day equivalent of the playground game where you stomp around in a conga shouting “WE ARE PLAYING ARMY! DO YOU WANT TO JOIN US?” continuously until a girl tries to, at which point you stop and shout “NO GIRLS ALLOWED!”, innit? Of course, it’s mostly anecdotal, which is why I bring it up – what are people’s experience with this?
(Image from here)
Oh my god. Meanest conga ever.
Gillen, you’re a monster.
report
Richeh: I didn’t say I did it!
KG
report
Oh, we know now.
We know.
report
That is the reason why the method of induction is generally a bad social indicator of how society thinks. You may conclude from a general set of jerks to a single one, but you can’t conclude from one single jerk to the rest of society.
That is another reason, why personal experience, which usually consists only of a very subjective and limited set of cases, cannot be used as basis for general statements. That is also why such arguments should be banned to the local regulars’ table.
report
Pretty much every guild I was in while I played WoW was led by a woman, but, I was on an RP server. So, yeah…
Concerning the picture:All. Alliance.
report
It might be true in a few specific guilds but it’s just the same broad strokes Jack Thompson used to love. Picking one bad example out of millions and pretending that’s the norm.
report
Give me a girl who plays Horde any day. Oh yes. Yes indeed.
report
Here you go!
report
I’ve never played WoW, but of the MMOs I’ve played I haven’t seen any evidence of gender inequality. There were probably slightly more female than male leaders if anything.
I tend to avoid servers with annoying idiots on them, but in online FPSs female players are few and usually known to server regulars. Voice chat seems to get a lot more lively when there’s a female player on as well.
Other than the usual pornographic sprays and what not, I’ve not really encountered any overt misogyny in my gaming life.
report
Hm. This actually taught me a lot. My friends always rib me for how many girls friend me on steam, but I had no idea why it happened. Are people that think gender doesn’t matter really that rare? I mean, come on, “OMG THARS NO GIRLS ON THE INTERNETZ” is such a prevalent meme, I assumed people would try to AVOID fulfilling that stereotype.
I’ve found it’s more fun to play with people who are engaging, have a good sense of humor, aren’t overcompetitve, don’t feel the need to insult you skills, and are willing to chat outside of the game. If those people happen to be girls most of the time, so be it. Heck, you automatically score amazing points with most of the girl gamer population by just treating them civilly. Perhaps I’ve got an advantage, because I’m overly self-suspicious when there’s a girl on the server, thinking things like “Oh, come on, now you’re trying to just show off.”
And really? “NO GURLS ALLOWED” because they cause ‘drama’? Why don’t you kick the guys that are causing the drama instead, as obviously if their mental function and common sense die in the presence of a mere female, how can you trust them in the middle of a 20 man raid against Arothgar, epic lord of Nordic breakdance?
My god people, what’s so hard to understand about this? Chicks dig internet gentlemen. Act like a gentleman to a lady, and you’ll gain a good friend. Nothing more. If it does become something more over the internet without ever meeting her, you’ve got bigger problems, such as the question of the girl’s sanity and common sense.
…Trust me, I learned the last one the hard way. >.>
report
If you are running a relatively high end raidforce you probably cant afford to kick your best raiders.
Now I would never allow this to happen to my raidforce and I wouldnt recruit people who had that tendency (easier when you have girls raiding with you since day 1). But I can sort of understand where it is comming from. Having enough people who are good enough and dedicated enough is ALWAYS going to be a huge problem for pretty much all raidgroups.
report
True enough. I never really understood the dynamics of a WoW guild, seeing as I’ve never touched the game (and never hope to), my experience stems from a TF2 clan. And the week I posed as a girl on Runescape, back in junior high. …I try to repress that memory. >.>
report
If there isn’t an epic lord of nordic breakdance, there should be…
report
mrmud: I still say it all depends on priorities. If you think progress in digiworld is more important than decent social behaviour.. your priorities will differ from those who do not.
report
Which is why I never had a problem with either gender in my raids.
report
@mrmud: you’re still assuming that girls do “bring drama”. They don’t (not any more than adding men to your guild does, anyway) which is exactly why not accepting them over it is silly and sexist.
report
My experience is that women tend to bring some calm into a tense situation, be it a battleground or raid instance.
report
hardly ever notice a difference…but hey, some of the TF2 female players I encoutered sounded VERY hot….
report
Female TF2ers are the best. They somehow grasp the idea of “Teamwork” much better than 90% of the male population.
report
We have a couple of girls on the TF2 server I frequent (well, used to, when I had time :<). They're as wonderful as everyone else on there. We occasionally get blokes perving on them, but very rarely, and I've never heard anyone try to claim they're worse players.
report
I storm to the bathroom door while she’s taking a poo poo and start pounding on it, I screamed “ARE YOU FUCKING MY GUILD MASTER” “ARE YOU SERIOUSLY FUCKING DOING THIS TO ME?” Silence. She knew what happened. She knew she should have logged off when she went to take a shit. I guess it was fate’s way of clueing me in on what the hell was going on.
report
My friend, this is the stuff that soul songs are made of.
report
I don’t think I understand this but it is awesome and beautiful and sad.
report
Here you go: http://www.mochibeats.com/2009/04/fml.html
report
Also, if you’re a girl, and you find yourself contemplating an online relationship, please… Take a good, long, hard look in the mirror. It’s damn rough, and you will encounter online drama. It’s never the good kind.
report
I don’t think it matters whether you’re a boy or a girl in that whole schpiel.
report
Back when I played WoW the girls in the guild were the stable lynchpins in what was basically a guild full of posturing dramaqueens.
Although it might be true that girls bring drama, it’s largely because they turn fifteen year old boys into posturing dickheads. Which is hardly their fault. I’m not saying there aren’t girls out there who DO relish attention and drama, I’ve just never met them.
report
Gamers are mysigonists? Who would have thought that!? Next time you’ll try telling my they’re homophobes as well….
report
ur talkan liek a f4g
report
Don’t forget racist.
report
Having played wow for 4 years and being a raidleader for 2 of those this is not something that I have ever experienced. While it is true that girls gravitate more towards healers (this is not always the case but from my personal experience they are overrepresented as that role).
I think its ludicrous to think that there would be any performance differences between girls and boys and the only real argument for not allowing girls that I know of is to try to keep raid drama low. Not because the girls are dramaqueens but because 50% of your raidforce is going to try and impress the girl.
That said we had several women in our raidforce when I was a raidleader and I never had any problems that would stem from their gender.
report
When we played we Wow our guild had a good mix of males and females, who were all equally capable players. Even my wife who got into Wow because I was, became a capable rogue who was rarely out of the top 5 for damage.
Then again most people in our guild were 25+
Publish his name and see how long it takes for him to learn his lesson.
My missus was also kick-ass at Worms Armeggeddon and when kids used to come on and abuse her . “My p3nis is blah blah” “Why don;t you sit on my etc etc” that kind of thing. Then you would see the steely glare come over her face and she would utterly ignore all other players, evening nija roping across the whole map, to pick on the offender until he was ground into dust. It got to the point where the regular offenders would log out when they saw she was in a game.
Yup she rocks.
report
I can only hope my wife approaches that level of awesomeness. I salute you.
Also, Worms for the win. I miss it.
report
Yeah, that’s the sort of story I like to hear, well, the vengeance/justice part of it anyway, not so much that this childish behaviour happens in the first place.
report
“from a 17-year old guild leader”
Does that not explain 90% of the motivations and reasoning behind the quote he gave? I mean, come on..
report
(clicks link) Yeah…I’d hit that. And that. And that. Oh, and defintely that. But ick, never that.
What was the question again?
report
I was going to do the same thing until I realised that most of them are at least half my age and then closed the page in a fit of self loathing.
report
I played in a top ten world guild, and our raid leader was a woman. Many of the top guilds have a number of women in them–at least in proportion to the game’s overall gender ratio. What you see here is the shitty guilds, the guilds that put it endless amounts of time only to end up middling. You can see the correlation. Any woman with the wherewithal and desire to apply to a top guild has skill, same as a man. Is wow, in general, less appealing to women than men? Yeah, it probably is–attitudes like this make up a large part of the reason behind that, I’d imagine.
report
I am sure that because my steam name and picture is ambiguous, I get treated differently by some people i.e. they are overly friendly. It seems that way anyway – maybe its just me. I don’t think it is though. Why else would I feel slightly uncomfortable on occasion due to someone being overly keen?
It will be interesting to see what the gaming ratio and balance is in 20 years once more non-violent games come out as well – Farmville showed me that absolutely anyone has the potential to become addicted to a game, and people I would never have otherwise imagined.
report
I was particularly dismayed by this thread recently.
report
“I’d rather have a girl than an empty raid slot.”
I don’t know what it means, but I’d like it on a t-shirt.
report
I used to play WoW all day, everyday. Most of the “sexism” draws from the fact that many, many girls that end up involved in the hierarchy of a guild will do what they can to get ahead. Because raiding in WoW is such serious business, this could be anything from NuDe PiCz, to meeting up in real life.
I never saw a serious guild, with actual credentials, not allow girls because of their skill level. The ones who weren’t allowing girls just had some guild destroying drama interfere with raiding, and didn’t want to deal with that in the future.
Dunno about skill level. My guild had 4 female players, and only one was competent, and is now an officer. From my experience, the average female was not a good player. This doesn’t mean shit though, because the average male player was horrible as well, it’s just that there were infinitely more male players than female.
Also, the people commenting here with the usual white knighting regarding sexism, and then using age as the explanation for the quote in the post seem to be contradicting themselves a bit…
report
I think the fact that the guy making the comment is 17 is pretty salient TBH.
report
I guess I just don’t understand why it’s cool to ditch feminism for ageism. You’re discriminating in both circumstances… Instead of saying, “That person said something stupid because he’s ignorant.”, people are saying, “He’s sexist and stupid because he’s 17! Sexism is bad, and stupid!”.
report
What I’m trying to say is that his comments are coloured by his age, sex and the fact that he is a guild leader for WoW – a notorious time sink of a game. I realise that the quote is there to start a debate, but I think it’s given undue weight given it’s source. Chances are that if you’re 17 and spend an insane amount of time playing games then it’s reasonably safe to assume that you are not going to have the most balanced viewpoints about the opposite sex – unless that is the entire social working of school have changed massive in the last few decades. Now, I concede that it’s possible that this guy is popular, well adjusted and a hit with the laydeez but it seems unlikely given his age, hobbies and statements about women.
I don’t think it’s ageism in the same way as I don’t think saying that men are better than women at X or Y because it’s something that is generally true in the majority of cases. People are massively over-sensitive about these things because they don’t seem to see the difference between a generally useful heuristic or baseline (e.g women are physcially weaker than men, teenage boys who spend vast amounts of time playing games are likely to be more socially awkward) and actual discrimination.
report
I think you are correct when you say, “People are massively over-sensitive about these things”, but I feel this way about every single sort of discrimination. My point was (and still is) that many people in the comments here seem much more comfortable with blaming the quoted person’s age as a reason for his sexism, instead of his ignorance. I can guarantee that not every 17 year old on the planet is sexist, so it’s useless to sit around saying, “Hurp durp he’s 17 what do you expect”, because that IS just another form of discrimination.
Society should not pretend to be offended by the ignorant things people say, they should be offended by the fact that people are ignorant. Denouncing sexism on the internet, only to blame the sexism on age does absolutely nothing because age is completely irrelevant to the case. Ignorance can, and does occur in all age groups. Instead of blaming age, we need to blame ignorance. Nothing is accomplished if we blame his age for his sexism, because with that comes an underlying assumption that he will “grow out” of his ignorance.
report
“…Nothing is accomplished if we blame his age for his sexism, because with that comes an underlying assumption that he will “grow out” of his ignorance.”
anomie: Very well said. Although it’s easier to just blame the young age and move on, the responsible thing to do is react to that and address the fact that person has to actively change.
report
There are 3 kinds of players in guilds. Dramas, math heads, and cruisers.
Most people are cruisers with moderate levels of activity few original ideas and a limited understanding of the underlying systems, easy going and they don’t clash with others.
Math heads are power freaks, they want control and they are good at it in terms of the game but cause problems socially.
Dramas are often the most loved, but they clash with other dramas and math heads, they are often the most active and have good ideas but aren’t always sure on implementation.
Most girls are cruisers, as are guys. But when a girl is a drama? They give all girls a bad name. Math heads are more often guys, its these who see the dramas as a threat, but they don’t realise dramas are the glue which hold guilds together.
report
What about that one guy who’s in the guild that you’ve never seen, yet everyone talks about reverently? The guy who has the legends spawned about him, and his name turned into a verb? The guy who said he was “taking a short break” a year ago, and never came back, but the leader keeps him in just in case he returns one day?
.
.
.
.
.
I wanna be that guy.
report
@mechtroid Then quit your mmo to achieve it.
report
That’d require me to BE in an MMO. Plus, I doubt I have that kind of capacity for awesome.
report
That was me, back when I used to play.
report
Honesty, from my limited MMO experience and from some FPS servers/experiences – the majority of players how put out there that they are women expect to be treated like something special because of it. They expect male players to be overly nice to them, to give them items and assistance when needed. Of course, these are the ones that call attention to being female in public channels and the like. I dare say there are many more living their lives quietly away in clans that aren’t like that at all. Certainly I don’t think it’s at all on to admit people or not based on their gender much like any other prejudice.
You decide based on the individual player – the only real rules I’ve ever had when recruiting people are communication. They have to be able to communicate in english. They need to be on vent if they expect to participate in most group outings. On top of that, they just have to fit with the ethos of the clan.
report
I have to kindly disagree. The girls that announce they’re a girl and expect to be showered in kindness are just naive. They expect EVERYBODY to be showered in kindness, regardless of gender. Then they get their first annoying stalker… The good ones barely change. The bad ones, well… Drama queen.
report
Oh no, the one I’m thinking of in particular was well aware of what she was doing and what kind of reception to expect. It’s perhaps worth mentioning that my MMO expereinces stem from a pretty small MMO, where there were maybe 4 or 5 famously female players.
As said, to pre-decide if someone is going to be a worthwhile member of a clan/guild based on such things is silly. You take them on trial, see if they work, see if they don’t. Thats it. Sexism and other discrimination only means that you’ll lose potentially valuable members to other groups.
report
I played in a small WoW guild for a little over a year and there was women made up a little over half of the membership. I can’t imagine playing in a guild that didn’t have a similiar balance now because I always found the women gamers to be more level headed, more sociable, more fun to play with and much less likely to act like idiots.
That said, we formed ourselves as a ‘social guild’ and were never that interested in raiding or being ‘uber’. You can pretty much gravitate into the groups and guilds that suit you. I played WoW before there were any expansions and the high number demands of end-game raids were something of a stumbling block though. It was much less fun when you had to ally with another guild that had a different mentality.
report
I wasn’t aware it took any bloody skill to play WoW anyway.
report
Cool Yogg+0, bro.
report
Probably because you havent tried it.
Granted for raiding most of the skill is in one of three categories:
#1 Being good at math and figuring out how to approach an encounter.
#2 Being good at controlling drama
#3 Being good at hearding sheep (trying to get 25 people, or 40 back in the day to do the same thing is hard).
report
LOL. Glad you said it rather than me =)
report
mrmud that’s roughly about as much skill as it takes to do small gang PvP in EVE-Online.
Try scaling that up to alliance or coalition (multiple alliances on either side) where you have 300+ people on either side of battles for weeks if not months on end where everyone who dies needs a whole new set of gear (ship + fittings) to continue participating. You’re looking at several thousand people involved in the conflict on either side over that period of time.
Plus the skills you’re talking about I’m assuming are relevant to one person, the leader of the raid. Everyone else just presses a couple of keys at the right times when shouted at over voice comms. Compare that to 6v6 matches in TF2 or similar.
report
I would argue that small gang warfare takes more skill than huge battles, as once you get past small groups everyone just blobs eachother.
report
Is it bad that this FPS player thought this about raiding as well? Then I remembered that even within FPS TF2 players look down on BF:H and are in turn looked down on by QuakeLive.
There can be a lot of silly attitudes about skill in games I guess.
Also: Chronotron! <3
report
Well, me and the wife have been playing WoW on and off for 4 years, sometimes casually and sometimes raiding and I can honestly say she is a better healer and a better tank than me and I bet if she WANTED she would be a better DPSer than me too… so, this whole “gender difference” argument IMHO only applies when there is someone stupid trying to back it up, regardless of age or sex.
PS: at least I PWN her on TF2 and basically any other FPS! TAKE THAT, YOU ARROGANT FEMALE!
report
Reading that article just reminds me why I never ever want to play high-end WoW.
Raids aren’t for me thanks. I’d rather bumble through content making jokes and having fun with friends than be expected to “bring my best”. It’s no fun at all if when everybody wipes out somebody gets angry and points fingers.
report
In my experience, when it comes to skill level, gender doesn’t really play much of an issue. Most of the girls I’ve played with via the game have been decent enough. I probably can say I’ve encountered more guys that have been “bad players” now that I come to think about it.
Even when it comes to drama I don’t really think you can disproportionally point all the blame to anyone either. Saying that I can recall a few girls I’ve been in guilds with who certainly stick in my memory for the wrong reasons. One was a complete attention whore, to the point of once notifying us she’d just been in a shower and was dripping wet. It was rather pathetic how many guys then fell over themselves to flirt with her after that. There was also another girl who quite literally turned into the server bicycle, no joke! She ended up “doing” at least 3 guys in the same guild, which certainly lead to some tension. There was another one, a hunter, who ran out of food for her pet during a raid. The poor girl asked on vent “Does anyone have any meat for my kitty?” lets just say she never lived that one down lol
report
Hmm, okay, I have to have disagree with this. Not in regard to WoW because I’ve never bothered with it.
Lots of girls play games, and play them well. Many of them choose to remain anonymous precisely because of this attitude. They don’t want the perceived stigma of being a girl, to be patronised or attract ‘white nights’ because they are one, or to be hit on.
Now, perhaps some of the ‘visible’ girls do help to reinforce this negative view, because often they tell everyone they can they’re female precisely because they want the kind of attention mentioned above. They want to be pandered to, they wouldnt mind getting hit on, they like people to give them free lootz, or to comment on how awesome they are at the game (for a girl).
That doesn’t go for every girl (known to be female) i’ve come across while gaming, but I’ve known a few who do in some ways help reinforce those negative stereotypes.
It’s patently bollocks. In a world were men are out-shined at school and higher education, that intelligence and competence is suddenly reserved when it comes to gaming competitiveness and skill? Doesn’t sound very likely, does it.
report
Most raiding is done with voicecom so girls are going to have a hard time hiding in a raidguild.
report
that should have read *reversed*, not reserved..
report
Wee Mens need more chicks in gaming. In my old Darkfall guild, we eventually had to use the “Anna from Microsoft” text-to-speech program in Ventrilo, and made her say very naughty things to us. Great for morale :)
report
Womens seem a lot less interested in killing things and blowing the fuck shit up, than us guys…and about 80% of all the games seem to be about butchering thinghs… testosterone factor y´know…?
report
My guild’s probably coming close to an equal split of m/f players, with women officers (including a former guild leader), and women tanks, healers and damage dealers. I’ve never seen anyone in the guild suggest that gender should play any part in how to build a raid team. And if they did, they’d be invited to shut up or leave – I can’t imagine anyone wanting to leave some of our best players behind…
report
Lots of raid guilds are either one by 12 year old boys who still think girls suck and 30+ who play all day and hate women because of high school or something
they’re whale penises if you ask me
report
raid guilds suck, only play normal guilds unless you like ‘sperging out over the most efficient way to do the same raid over and over again for some magic gloves
report
Considering the fact that the picture is from a page selling Alliance t-shirts I’m not really surprised they’re all wearing one!
report
@Mrmud, fair enough, but I was primarily speaking from experience with other multiplayer games were mic shyness is often gender related.
That said, if my argument in the case of WoW is utterly discredited for those reasons, that’d mean MMO’s are the sole exception to everything i’ve said.
That doesn’t seem very likely to me, either, simply because a persons gender has bugger all to do with anything apart from easy it is to piss standing up… or into a bottle ? Hmm.. Is that why girl WoWer’s lack the required commitment ? heh :)
report
Guy does know they’re not *really* killing stuff in WoW? Right?
report
I agree with Frankie and others, that TF2 girls are the best.
report
Well WOW is the same as any other online community, it has a fair share of plonkers. My wife plays (a tank) and I know a fair scatter of women across the server and I cant say that I’ve noticed any of the above to be true. They arent lynchpins or healers or team players or drama queens. Just people that happen to have boobies.
It’s more interesting that so far no women have commented here. I’d like to hear it from them. Better go round up some! :-)
Oh and its the evil webbernet. Are you sure all the women you know are? Or all the men?
Hold on. I think I may have boobies too…..
———————————————-
“The name is Bubba, and this here is the main filly o ma herd.”
report
Actually, I had an experience with that a few months ago. Friend claming to be a girl, wasn’t. It was kinda funny, because I had deduced it already, wondered how I should act, and decided he didn’t change overnight, so why should how I treat him do so? It was endearing, seeing how worried he was about my opinion, afraid of losing my friendship, and how relieved he was when I told him it didn’t matter. Anyone that values honesty over personal shame, over admitting to a lie, deserves to be a friend in my book.
report
This is a dead issue for anyone, playing games, raiding, in real life or otherwise, with an emotional maturity of 12 or up. Leave the hair-pulling fools in their playground.
report
Some of the most ruthless and fearless PvP pilots and fleet commanders I know in EVE are girls. People like Mynxee, Shae Tian, and others spring to mind. In alot of cases I’d rather be FC’d by a lady, they tend to think more intuitively and have a better grasp of what the fleet is capable of. That and the other (boy) pilots are more likely to shut up and listen because of the whole “OMGWTF its a girl must be on my best behaviour” attitude you get in the stereotypical socially inept male MMO player.
report
Clearly the person quoted in the original post did not try to display his best behavior, and I’m pretty sure female gamers wouldn’t be so worried about playing if most men online fit the form of “socially inept” you describe.
In fact, this entire controversy would not exist if people treated women with their best behavior…..
report
What are my experiences with girls? Not saying. What are my experiences with girls in WoW? Same as my experiences with boys in WoW, or men, or women. People are idiots; doesn’t matter if they own tits or not, they can still be an idiot.
I wouldn’t credit a 17 year old guild leader as knowing what he’s talking about, though. He may know how to take down a boss or twelve, but he may not necessarily know what a woman is, let alone how to take her down. Erm, that come out wrong, but you know what I mean.
report
I don’t know what you’re saying at all.
Are you saying that sexism is bad, and then using ageism to describe why he’s sexist?
It’s astounding to me to see how many people in the comments denounce sexism, ostracize the person quoted, and then blame his sexism on his age.
report
I’m saying that WoW is filled with idiots. Their sex doesn’t necessarily matter. A guild which won’t accept female players is a guild filled with idiots advertising to half the idiot pool available to them. I say this with a small amount of affection since I’m also an idiot (really, I cause more wipes than diarrhea), but the point remains. WoW is filled with idiots of all different shapes and sizes and sexes and anything and everything. Pointless to make a case that girls play any differently or cause any more drama than boys (or men and women for that matter); anyone who has ever played WoW for a decent length of time has caused drama in some form or another or made a mistake with consequences for more than just themselves before. My point is – shit happens to everyone who plays eventually.
I’m also saying that a 17 year old doesn’t know shit. I’m happy this astounds you, as you should learn something new every day. This can be your new thing! Kids are idiots. That’s it. Nothing to do with him being misogynist or anything; his age makes him an idiot. Yes, this is condescending, and yes, I can think of exceptions, but they merely prove the rule.
Also – ostracize isn’t correct. I haven’t excluded him from anything, I’ve merely labelled the anonymous idiot as an idiot. IMHO etc.
report
Anomie: Well, the difference is that most of us actually have a fair bit of experience being 17 years old. For most of us, we spent a full year in that state. That gives us a certain basis for saying “17 year olds don’t know what they’re talking about”. It might not be objective fact, but it’s not entirely groundless accusations either.
Would you rather blame it on personal individual stupidity? Do you know the kid well enough to say that he’s just fundamentally a moron? Isn’t that just as bad, and just as much a generalization?
No one is saying “17-year olds in general think girls suck at games”. But rather that 17 year olds have limited experience to draw on. They also tend to be immature pricks. Again, every one of us have been there. Every one of us know that when we were 17 years old there was a lot we didn’t understand, and we sure as hell knew how mean, ignorant and immature all the other 17-year olds could be.
I guess you could boil it down to this, if you want to avoid all the vague and subjective stuff about maturity” or “social experience” and other fluffy terms for being a nice person who doesn’t generalize and discriminate:
The older you are, the more female gamers you’re going to have met, simply because you’ve had more time in which to meet them. The more female gamers you’ve met, the better you’re able to notice if there is some kind of general trend concerning their skill at games. The younger you are, the less data you have to draw on, and the less qualified you are for judging if female gamers in general “suck”.
report
I completely agree with the fact that idiots play wow, and I said pretty much the same thing in an earlier comment (that women can be idiots too). Don’t go thinking that it’s a 50/50% thing though. Maybe, and this is a pretty big maybe, the population overall is split evenly, but in the raiding scenario it is not 50% men, 50% women. It’s not even close to 50/50%, but I digress.
I much prefer you admitting to the ageism, though. It’s pretty annoying to see people who won’t admit to their form of discrimination, but I don’t share your opinion that all kids are stupid. Technically 17 is an adult in many places worldwide, but it’s fine to refer to a 17 year old as kid, no issue with that; but to say that all “kids” are stupid is a bit brash to me. Like I said in another earlier comment, anybody can be ignorant regardless of their age. To act under the assumption that all 17 year old males are sexist, and will therefore “grow out” of their sexism is totally wrong.
And yeah, I guess ostracize isn’t the best fitting word.
report
It’s not about absolutes.
If we say “women are generally physically weaker than men,” we’re saying given any random women, chances are she’ll be physically weaker than any random man.
This becomes discrimination when we make incorrect assumptions from the evidence, assuming any woman is weaker than any man.
We don’t think the 17 year old lacks worldliness because he is 17, but rather because the evidence (17 year olds are generally less worldly than their elders, his “interesting” quote, the fact that he is a leader of a raid guild) suggests this is the case.
Whether he is representative of wider views in WoW (or in gaming generally) is a far more interesting question than ‘is he a jackass’, anyway, but so it goes.
report
jalf I tried to reply, but it ended up on the second page. Maybe this one will end up there as well, who knows…
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/02/05/girls-just-want-to-have-dungeon-runs/comment-page-2/#comment-397075
report
They lack “primal aggression”? Geez, I know one or two girls who have more than enough primal aggression to go around. I’m scared of playing FPS’es with them. A man’s ego can only take so many headshots, you know…
report
In FFXI I just assume that everyone’s a guy unless proven otherwise by podcasts.
I don’t really care enough to comment, though. One recent L4D2 game had a pair of girls who were probably friends. They shot things. I shot things. The other guy shot things. All was good until oh fuck a tank, run, jesus, run, not into the you startlked the fucking witch, goddamnit, and oh god I just fell off a ledge help me now you chucklefucks, I can’t do this on my own gimme some help people.
report
There are two very negative experiences I tend to have with women when it comes to gaming (and a lot of male-oriented geek-ish/technology communities). I wish it wasn’t the case, but it has occurred time and time again.
The first one is that the appearance of a girl in a game or a community tends to result in males form mine to ninety years old suddenly dropping everything and behaving like idiots as they try to draw the attention of a girl they have never met and probably never will and should not even have given to thoughts to. Everything grinds to a halt while everything with a dick turns into a blubbering idiot.
The second is that a lot of girls make a huge deal about being a girl, because they want the situation mentioned in the above paragraph to happen. For some reason, they seem to derive a lot of joy and esteem from jumping into a gaming forum or becoming a regular on a CounterStrike server or something and becoming “the girl” which everyone then drops everything for to flirt with and pay attention to. They whine and bitch about how “guys treat girls differently blah blah blah” and yet they are the one who goes out of their way to point out they’re a female. Sexy photos, teasing name, flirting with everyone, etc.
Speaking of which, if you don’t like the way you’re treated and you are a girl – you can blame the above type of girl for much of your own experienced problems. I truly wish it wasn’t the case. I wish you could jsut jump into the community or the game or the server and it would not even be a blip on the radar. But because of stupid males (and often, stupid things you do yourself, too) it is rarely the case. I just sigh, wait for it all to turn into a festering pile of shit, and then log off and hope everyone gets their brains back on by the next time I want to play or talk or interact.
The hilarious thing about all of this is that these people are losing their shit over a chick in a videogame or an online forum. Even if she’s hot, she’s still someone who spends all her time gaming or in an online forum. Who the hell wants that?! I already spend too much time wasted on those things. The last thing I need is a significant other who ALSO spends all their time there, meaning that we have to compete for each other’s attention and time that is always being sucked into such things. Give me a girl who likes fashion and 18th century literature or something normal. Anything but another me with tits.
report
Agreed on this first point. Most girls I’ve met online within various communities have always been the centre of some form of drama. Not their fault, generally. But the appearance of a girl or two tends to cause a lot of stupid, stupid arguments. I’ve made a point of not getting involved these days, if I can.
report
Here’s a story from the other side:
Four of five years ago, I used to play a lot of Counter-Strike.
I also had a microphone too. Made gaming on there a lot easier, bit it also attracted a lot of attention which I didn’t see what the big deal was about in the first place. A lot of CS gamers felt that they had to question whether I was a pre-pubescent boy or an actual female gamer. I guess the idea of a female gamer was crazy back then. I didn’t know whether I should have taken it as a compliment or an insult.
Anyway, one day, some jerk thought it would be funny if he’d go about sexually harassing me online. First he asked me whether I was a girl or boy. I answered “girl” and then he started saying some really crude stuff about us “getting it on”. I immediately jumped off the servers and didn’t play CS for some time (like, a few months). Now that I look back, it was definitely stupid of me to let someone get to me like that. I would probably never come across this gamer again – hey, it’s friggin’ CS. It’s a huge out there.
Having said that, just referring to some comments about male gamers treating female gamers with respect… yes, it’s true. You’ll definitely get a higher disposition if you treat female gamers just like any other gamer. Just remember, any gamer you come across, you come across because gaming brought you here! Don’t go about creating divides when they’re not needed at all.
report
You will not: Defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others.
This is from Valve’s Steam Online Conduct policy. Please report any violations to Valve. I hope Valve takes complaints about sexual harassment seriously and this results in the offender’s account being banned. In the end, the community will be a better place if gamers no longer feel like they can get away with this behavior.
If someone harasses one woman online it is likely they have done it before and will do it again.
Update: It occurred to me that reporting a user on Steam is not all that easy. Here’s one set of steps to accomplish it:
1. Make sure you are logged into the Steam Community.
2. In the Steam Control Panel go to View | Friends
3. Click “Add Friend” (Hold on a sec, this will all make sense.)
4. Click “View list of users recently played with”
5. Click “SteamID Page” next to the offender’s username.
6. Click the “Report Violation” drop down menu in the upper-right hand corner of the page, select “User misconduct” and type a description of the problem.
That’s it!
report
My raid group was almost 50% female. And it’s a horde guild. On an RP server. Our best tank was female. Many of our best healers were female (although not the best, that was my job :P). And we always had female players in out top 5 dps.
That was back in Burning Crusade days, though, I didn’t really get on with raiding in Lich King. Still, we made it all the way through Black Temple and into Sunwell Plateau before they broke it all with patch 3.0.
report
Lol at the pic.
For the cam-Horde!! (see what I did thar? See dat?)
report
Interesting, but so far from the real problem. The REAL PROBLEM is the glass ceiling of female characters in Solium Infernum. Seriously, now. There are plenty of all-female legions, but only a handful of praetoresses. And when it comes to Avatars, only one of the images available is female, and I’m pretty sure she’s a dude too.
report
That is indeed a sad state of affairs.
report
This site seems to be made up emotionally mature individuals who know that this sort of thing is stupid. However this sort of issue really does happen (believe me) and I think it should be taken seriously.
That’s because it supports negative gender stereotypes that the outside world has about us. I.e. That all gamers are emotionally crippled MALEs.
This is an image gamers need to lose if we are ever going to be taken seriously as a mainstream medium.
We really need more vocal female to get involved games to prove that this stereotype is wrong (which is made more difficult by this kinda stuff), having said that, it shouldn’t be too difficult; us girls are only 51% of the population after all.
report
Thats right!! We need to show that damn world that both males AND females can be emotionally crippled gamers!
report
RANT ALERT:
17 year old boys who fill the internet and it’s asociated media with their “opinions” (I’m back to The Escapist forums again, aren’t I?) on gaming, while bragging on their 1337 Skillz (or insulting people) are:
1) the main reason that the mainstream still don’t take gamers and gaming seriously, despite the fact it’s now the biggest entertainment industry on the planet.
2) destroying vast swathes of online landscape – I love online play but the screaming kids drive me back to single player gaming again and again. MW2? Not touching it with a barge pole.
3) Not allowed to comment on women – you actually have to have spoken to more than one woman in real life (your mom don’t count – actually from what I’ve heard your mom can’t count, unless it’s inches of dick – that one’s free, try using it on screaming kids, they can’t handle anything cleverer than “fag”) to be allowed to have an opinion on them.
I’m in a gaming community of more mature gamers and we have a number of women players. Clan policy is to give them kick/ban rights and let them decide how much abuse they want to take off non-members playing as guests on our servers (screaming teenagers get banned pretty rapidly by normal admins – I don’t work all day to spend my spare time listening to etc etc etc). It avoids tedious white-knighting (mostly) from the guys and lets the women get on and play. Most of them kick arse at games as well; women have better hand-eye coordination and faster reactions than men – scientific fact, I think.
report
2) destroying vast swathes of online landscape – I love online play but the screaming kids drive me back to single player gaming again and again. MW2? Not touching it with a barge pole.
Incidental, but I generally feel the same way. TF2 has a rather snazzy console command that blocks all voice and text communique, and when playing on public servers it vastly improves the game, reducing any bigot to the level of a well-made bot in seconds. Something that all games should have, to be honest.
report
“Scientific fact, I think” is not sensible to me. So I googled for you, look: http://biology.clemson.edu/bpc/bp/Lab/110/reaction.htm#Mean%20Times Some select quotes:
- “… in almost every age group, males have faster reaction times than females, and female disadvantage is not reduced by practice”
- “However, things may be changing–Silverman (2006) reported evidence that the male advantage in visual reaction time is getting smaller (especially outside the US), possibly because more women are participating in driving and fast-action sports.”
- “Barral and Debu (2004) found that while men were faster than women at aiming at a target, the women were more accurate.”
report
I know many women who play videogames, and by videogame i am not only talking about peggles, wiisports, or solitair.
Some play fighting games, some, play RTS, most play RPGs. And even though i am happy to see a fellow gamer in them, if i had to do a teambattle for anything important (money, winning a theme shirt, whatever) i would never team up with any of them for such a reason.
I don’t think there is any general reason why women should be worse players, but face it: women simply have less interest in non-casual games. And in those games it’s mainly practice that builds skill.
it’s the old “our society raises girls and boys different”-problem. and even if it’s not nice it doesn’t simply away and make females attractive coop partners just by realising that females _can_ be good players.
report
@jalf
You make great points, and I’m not disagreeing with anything you said. However, my point is that many people here are acting under the assumption that all 17 year old males are sexist, which is completely untrue.
As for what to blame, you do indeed blame overall ignorance. I do not know him well enough to say he’s stupid, but he is ignorant. You can’t guarantee that this person will become less ignorant through experience, because there are plenty of ignorant people out there who are much older than 17. Any form of discrimination forms from ignorance, it is THE “reason”. It’s what you blame.
Unfortunately, after thousands of years, there still is no end-all cure for ignorance. We still end up in debates such as the one we’re having now.
report
Most 17 year olds are bloody stupid though and I was definitely one of them. And so were my friends. There may be a correlation of some sort there…
If you don’t think that your younger self was an absolutely contemptible idiot then either you were god’s gift to the world or you haven’t finished growing up yet. I just cringe at the things I used to believe and attitutudes I held.
report
I still haven’t worked out how to be completely open minded and I’m nearly 27. I still think that people choose to be ignorant though, and that ignorance in society keeps it alive.
EDIT: Hmm, rereading that, I’m sure there are lots of people who know no different than ignorance.
report
Yeah, I’m not saying I wasn’t stupid either, most people wouldn’t say that. But there are kids out there that are “well mannered, disciplined” and so on. To discount every 17 year old male as ignorant based on what some of them do on the internet is no different than saying all men are vile pigs, and that all women are attention seekers based on what we’ve seen on reality tv shows…
report
Haha, I think ignorance keeps the debating side of our society alive, that’s for sure. I can’t imagine a world without ignorance, so I obviously can’t say for sure whether it’d be boring or not, but I like to at least imagine that it’s not…
report
LOL, I even had the wrong idea of ignorance when typing that. Looked it up on dictionary.com. Man do I feel ignorant…
Can you really have a go at people for being uneducated though? I mean I thought it was more when people deep down knew what was right but through some sort of sub-conscious trickery fobbed themselves off to believe something that was easier for them.
But no, Ignorance = The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed.
report
Here’s why it’s a conscious problem. The cure for ignorance is education. Beyond a certain point in life, your education is your own responsibility.
Learning is hard work; it is painful.
Most people, after a certain age, tell themselves they ain’t gonna larn no mo’. They make a conscious decision not to grow, or learn, and they spend the rest of their lives justifying their beliefs, rationalising their experiences, and ignoring the times when the two collide.
report
The word you’re describing is bigotry, and many people have issues with bigotry as well as ignorance.
Individuals are definitely to blame for being ignorant. Maybe not before the late 90′s or early 2000, but now that you have a resource such as the internet that gives you more information and knowledge than any resource in the past, you are responsible for your own knowledge. So yes, I do think it’s fair to go at people for being uneducated.
Bigotry is different, and falls into what I said earlier about how you can’t expect a 17 year old to “grow out” of sexism. He very well may be bigoted, thus unwilling to give up his ideas regarding women. I don’t know him personally, so he might not be, and instead is just ignorant.
report
Yeah haha, Sheffield totally beat me to the point. Well said.
report
I think parents of kids hold most of the responsibility in educating their children. I know a mother of 3 who has single-handedly produced kids who have been educated enough (by her) to be able to independently see what is the best way to treat others with kindness and respect. And these kids are in the 7 to 9 age range and are apparently leaps and bounds ahead of this 17 year old in emotional/rational development.
report
@Lestaticon:
The brain of a 17-year-old is a very, very different organ from that of a 7 to 9 year old. I have an 8 year old, who is a brilliant angel raised by a nearly perfect mother. Significant chemical changes are going on in the 17-year-old that the younger person does not have to deal with. Also, the older child has much more advanced peer and societal pressures helping to form their thought processes.
In other words, I expect my 8-year-old to be a confused gangly 17-year-old kid without a clue of how the larger world works, no matter how cogent he is now. I’m sure he’ll be fine after a few years. Like Mark Twain said, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Teenagers live in a different world.
report
If you’d like another view, talk to Kadomi at Tank like a Girl — I think she’s the GM of an all female guild.
There are always some dickweeds, but really quite a lot of the WoW population are female (I remember seeing a poll that put it at about 40%). There are lots of women in my guild (inc. me) and I’ve never seen this as an issue. We also have a bunch of younger players, and I haven’t seen this kind of attitude at all.
I think Cassandra is fluffing it to make a better article because it just isn’t the norm. Now, if she was looking at TS2 servers or something like that, then I wouldn’t be surprised. But most people in MMOs are not like that in my experience. There are other reasons not to reveal your RL gender (such as not being stalked by the guild loser) but even there … I think it’s not as bad as it used to be.
report
How do you not reveal gender? o.O Do you have one of those Darth Vader voice changers for use in Vent?
report
Maybe it’s the RPPvP servers then?
Because I found it was that bad. When the main thing in the game it has is a chat box, it doesn’t help when most of the game’s population is still a disassociated homophobic whiny bunch of teens.
I mean honestly, the game isn’t really that fun, especially if you’re stuck with a bunch of children who half the words out of their mouths is ‘fag’ with the fantastic sugar coating of sexual frustration because they play the game all the time and never actually meet anyone.
report
I think in a way if women feel it necessary to start an all-female guild it means the community has failed, though. If they weren’t the discriminated against party in this case we’d be judging them by the same standards as we do that 17 year old guild leader, i.e. what the hell do you think is so wrong with men that you won’t admit them to your guild?
@DJ: the older more mature people are really less likely to speak up in the general channels, so perhaps what you experienced on the RP servers is just an instance of that (selection/observation bias). They didn’t make the “I survived barrens chat” t-shirts because of the high-society aspect of its conversations.
report
No one know if you are a man, women or dog if you don’t tell. And for most games is not important. On a game like BF2, I don’t care if the pilot of the jet on the sky is girl or garl.
Maybe MMORPG are different, because are more like a socializing area, with all the bad and good things of socialicing.
report
@Tei
So you’re endorsing a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in online games?
report
What’s a “garl”?
report
@disperse:
more of a “don’t care” policy :P
report
Social icing!
report
As the article mentions, many online games require voice chat for effective play, and talking gives away your gender.
If some guys aren’t mature enough to handle knowing that there’s a girl on their team, that’s their own problem, not the girl’s.
report
When in doubt, it’s a guy.
report
My experience of sexism mostly comes from a transgendered perspective, where people try and assert masculinity onto me despite my protestations. If I’m on a random TF2 server and I use the mic (because I like winning, and silent teams lose) then I can expect a barrage of abuse based solely on my voice and how it isn’t male enough whilst also not being unquestionably feminine, until I either quit or shut up. If I find a server I want to play on regularly, I can get abuse if I assert that I’d rather not be ‘he’ or ‘him’ to the other regular players. Similarly, I’ve never been able to get to the high end areas of MMOs due to the fact that it’s largely text based to introduce someone, except when mics are involved, whereupon I’m ‘outed’ rather instantly, or I come up with an excuse why I can’t speak, and don’t get to play. The amount of flack I can get for ‘claiming’ to be female and then ‘obviously not’ being is phenomenal. And so far, all of it has come from -exclusively- male players. So maybe this isn’t conventional sexist abuse. It’s my experience though that I’m simply unwelcome in multiplayer games that require high levels of team co-ordination, and it’s because of my gender.
report
Sadly, I think it’s more because many people just like to be able to put others into neat pigeonholes. Uncertainty is frightening!
report
I think it’s more that people are jerks who don’t understand each other, and also don’t understand that you don’t have to understand people to give them some basic respect.
I just don’t bother with the mic in TF2. In most public games, I enjoy myself more with voice turned off completely.
report
Do you play WoW? If so, which server? I’m in a guild that is rather full of, how would I word this well, ‘social misfits’? If you don’t mind leaving an alts name, I could send you a message.
(On cenarius server, myself. Horde.)
report
Cenarius is US servers, yeah? I’m EU, otherwise I’d have alted myself up.
report
I’ve played dungeons/raids where girls have been more efficient than me! I think it depends more in the person rather than the gender. I’ve been playing games since I was about 4, some of the girls I know haven’t done that and therefore wouldn’t be as interested, but those who’ve played from a young age like I have I would say are at the same level as me and I don’t think there is any valid reason to doubt them!
report
So to “prove” their point, they interview a 17 year old? I’d say more successful guilds are run by 27 and 37 year olds.
report
@Zyrxil:
Specifically 27 and 37 years olds? Nobody in between?
(Sorry. No need to reply to that.)
report
Be careful, people, when making assumptions about others based on their age and gender. That seventeen year old guy might not have rampaging hormones at all. It is perfectly possible that he is a statistical freak instead.
report
It’s not likely though.
The thing is (IMHO), that there will be ‘idiots’ (or people who don’t like to think about things too much) in every age range. It is generally though (hoped, expected?) that at least some people wise up a bit and that with the growing of the years the percentage grows smaller and smaller.
But hey, you only have to look at some football ‘fans’ to see that aging isn’t likely going to take them all away until mortality comes around.
Regardless there are plenty of teenagers who act far more mature than most people think possible. No, I’d say this kid is an example of a broader group which isn’t necessarily defined by age or sex.. but rather by behaviour.
report
You make a good point Zyrxil, it’s telling that they’d grab a 17 year old, but ultamately, age isn’t supposed to matter. Guilds and entire games are defined by their playerbase. It’s not fair enough to say ‘if the community sucks, find a better one’, as I’ve seen certain levels of sexist behavior in online play, it’s impossible to escape completely without completely concealing one’s identity (hard if you want to use voice communications). However, good, open-minded, mature communities are out there. They’re harder to find in some games than others, but they are out there.
report
Dear lord, back when I used to play we’d have never turned down someone decent. Raids are to much hassle to not bring along the best people you can.
report
Making generalisations about groups of people is fine, but judging individuals based on generalities is stupidity. The end.
report
So it’s common for WoW guild leaders to be yelling “OOK! OOK! KILL! KILL ALL! KILL NOW! UNGA-BUNGA!” and that wasn’t limited to the one I was in?
On a more serious note, I’m not at all surprised by this. My time in World of Warcraft introduced me to no end of nutters, people who were sexist, homophobic, racist… good grief, people whom I would never care to know, and that’s why I spent so little time with that MMORPG and why my skin crawls whenever I think about it. The problem with World of Warcraft and MMORPGs like it is that–like XBox Live and unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey–it’s full of sociopaths.
This is actually one of my primary problems with gamingkind, and you’ve all seen me air these feelings before, but aside from small pockets of thinky people, gaming is centred around a subculture that is, for all intents and purposes, incredibly homophobic, fascist, and anti-intellectual. I could draw so many parallels between the denizens of the bible belt and the gaming subculture that it makes me sad inside.
Thankfully though there are little sects of gaming that don’t fall prey to this, and those are where I’m usually found. But if you need proof, try the Eurogamer comments threads, or Kotaku, or Destructoid… and if you want to lose any faith you had in humanity, try playing any 360 game multiplayer.
Conclusion: Unlike some people, even someone I previously argued with here–I think arbitrary hate/dismissal of anyone is as unacceptable thing as gamingkind’s speedy march toward anti-intellectualism. It’ll all pique when someone demands the Gov’t to draft a legislation that makes it illegal for women and gay people to play “MAN GAMES”.
report
Play EVE, it requires a mental capacity above that of a dog :)
report
Skills the average EVE player needs:
1)Ability to click his buttons
2)Ability to follow orders
report
Psychopomp: remember that to play Eve you also need the firm conviction that by doing so you are -better- than every other MMO player out there. :P
report
Having been in leadership roles in a few MMOs in the past, I think I should point out that the ability to follow orders is a lot rarer than you’d think. Also, the ability not to be such an abrasive jackass that no one wants to play with you should be considered an essential skill for all MMO players. When people say they’re social games, they aren’t just talking.
report
@ Wulf: “This is actually one of my primary problems with gamingkind, and you’ve all seen me air these feelings before, but aside from small pockets of thinky people, gaming is centred around a subculture that is, for all intents and purposes, incredibly homophobic, fascist, and anti-intellectual. I could draw so many parallels between the denizens of the bible belt and the gaming subculture that it makes me sad inside.
Thankfully though there are little sects of gaming that don’t fall prey to this, and those are where I’m usually found. But if you need proof, try the Eurogamer comments threads, or Kotaku, or Destructoid… and if you want to lose any faith you had in humanity, try playing any 360 game multiplayer.”
I think I understand where you’re coming from on a lot of things a little better now. You’ve sought out the most vocally obnoxious minorities in gamer culture, been rightly offended by them, and you’ve assumed that they represent the majority of gamers. Dude… you shouldn’t just automatically believe what horrible people say. When some asshole on Eurogamer, or Kotaku, or Destructoid, or whatever bullshit site you’re visiting tries to convince you that they represent the majority of gamers, what leads you to believe that they’re telling you the truth? Seriously, think about it a little bit. I’ve had my issues with gamer culture as well, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve also been playing MMORPGs and other multiplayer games for a while. You shouldn’t look at the most easily accessible web sites and chat channels and assume that what you see there is representative of gamers, because almost all of them are already overrun by the moron minority and abandoned by the majority of basically cool and reasonable people. Trust me, I played City of Heroes on the Virtue server. It was a bit of a master class on the differences between forum/blog/web site culture and actual in-game culture. They are very far from the same thing.
report
@Wulf:
I hate to be the one to break this to you but gaming is pretty mainstream now, especially when we’re talking WoW. And the world out there is indeed full of racist, sexist and homophobic nutters. You seem to assume those people don’t like games. Afraid not. :-)
In the end you have to do the same in these games which you do in real life: find a crowd that suits you and stick with it.
Now I’m not saying we couldn’t do with dialing the homophobia, sexism and whatever down a bit in online games. It’s good that this bad behaviour gets called out and we should absolutely try to fix it. But it’s not like these kinds of things are all that unexpected. If you don’t like being confronted with the ugly nature of humankind, you should probably stick to single player. (and then start asking yourself what prejudices are inherent in the fundamental design of some of these games, but I digress)
report
Oh, come on.
I’ve been in three guilds in World of Warcraft, the first one (which I’ve always had a couple of characters in ever since I started and was an officer for a good while) with a female Guild Master. It started as an all female character (characters, not players) guild, later turned into one of the largest guilds on the server and I’m pretty sure still has the largest proportion of female players. There’s certainly no differences being made between players based on genders there.
The second also had a fair few girls in it, girls who had officer positions, raided, did PvP and all the things everyone else were doing.
After that my main character moved to one of the top raiding guilds on the server. With a female GM who was also the main raid leader and guess what? She’s was probably the most respected player in the guild and extremely good at everything she did. And she certainly wasn’t the only female in the guild.
I’ve also had girls gamers in arena teams I’ve been in, and in various other gaming guilds and clubs and I’ve never seen or heard anything that would indicate that they’re being secluded or treated any worse than male players, often quite the contrary.
So I guess my point is that anecdotal evidence from asking questions to 17-year old idiots is a really bad thing to build assumptions on.
report
I’ll probably get flamed for this, but I had pretty much the same experience as that little boy. When I played WoW, I regularly did dungeons with a few girls, but when it came to raiding I stuck to an all male group. The girls I played with were not bad players per se, but they were definitely not outstanding and that was just what I was looking for in a raid group. After doing some casual raids with people not having potions and generally not having prepared for the raid at all, I just joined a guild, that allowed me to do raids fast and efficient without stupid wipes.
There are probably girls, that play much better than me, but the ones I know just don’t have the ambition to be one of the best players or strive after the best equipment.
report
And we should accept your personal anecdotal evidence… why?
report
I’ve seen both great and terrible female and male players. (here’s where the generalization and anecdotes start). In my experience, few people were decent players. Those who were decent players often had an attitude problem. Women don’t tend to have attitude problems about their games as much as young, adolescent males. Hence, with my completely fallacious logic, most women weren’t very good.
Oh wait, I forgot that most men weren’t very good, either.
Looks like laziness breeds ignorance!
report
Skill has nothing to do with aggression… It’s dedication and calmness that’s required. Aggression can only lead to hate, flaming or a ragequit
report
I’ve been in a number of guilds where the leader was a woman, and I have nothing bad to say about their in-game performance. Granted, some of them were utter scum, but that had nothing to do with their sex. In raids, I often found myself competing tooth and nail for the top DPS spot and on many occasions losing to women.
So in conclusion… that 17-year old just needs to get laid.
report
My WoW guild had a female leader. It wasn’t a serious raiding guild, since many of us were game industry monkeys. We were about hanging out and having fun and occasionally getting together to kill some stuff.
From what I’ve seen of serious raiding guilds, I never want to stop mocking them anyway. Anything where you get kicked out for not showing up to play for eight hours on a Friday night, or where you absolutely must play the build that you are assigned and push buttons when told to, just does not sound like fun.
But anyway, we did have the #1 battlegrounds warlock, and our two most serious go-getters were women. So, whatever.
report
At the Over 30 Club about… 5-10% of the active players are female? But the group plays shooters and such like, and since we have our own servers and are a fairly tight-knit group there’s rarely any problems. Pubbers make crass or otherwise inappropriate remarks and are permabanned. I permabanned one of our own members once for some gross remarks.
As people have pointed out time and time again, it’s about ignorance. Play with people who aren’t ignorant and you don’t have many problems.
report
If I ever ran a guild in an MMO I wouldn’t allow female members in.
It’s pretty simple, really. Once the guild knows one of the members is female, every lonely nerd tries to fuck her. This can be as tepid as some very mild flirting on ventrilo, or as frustrating as raid leaders giving loot priority to the pussy, or as hilarious as guild members actually going out IRL and hearing the joyous horror stories that result.
I’ve been in plenty of guilds, seen just about everything, (one guild member ended up cheating on her husband, who was also in the guild, with their guild leader — and she eventually left her husband for the guild leader), and there’s always the token piece of pussy. And I say that not to be sexist, but because the token girl has no self-respect to play any other role than “token piece of pussy.”
I guess they’re just lonely nerds too and like the attention and favortism, so they act like sluts and flirt with everyone, often with not-subtle-in-the-least motivations behind it.
It doesn’t matter if she’s 50 years old and weighs 300 pounds. Her blood elf is hot and has a female voice behind it.
report
So you’re saying you wouldn’t let female members in because your guild would be full of wannabe rapists?
report
Umm…
a) How about you not allow lonely nerds instead.
b) People meet in different ways. I’ve met a girl from my guild IRL and we had lots of fun and even broke the bed. Why would you deny people an opportunity to socialize?
c) Sure it sucks when a piece of loot goes to someone because of favoritism, but I’ve seen dozens of cases of it that didn’t involve women.
WoW (or any MMO) is just a reflection of real life. The politics, the relationships, the emotions. What you are essentially saying is that you’d like to ban women from life.
report
“If I ever ran a guild in an MMO I wouldn’t allow female members in.”
I already had you pegged as a pretty miserly and unpleasant individual, but this is the last nail in the coffin. I’d have thought that a ‘No creepy obsessive losers’ would be a far more resonable and inclusive rule, but that’s just me.
report
I’d need people in my guild for it to function. “No creepy lonely nerds” pretty much prevents that in an MMORPG.
If you’re talking about guilds in a “family friendly chatroom” sense, then I really don’t care. I’m talking about guilds in at least the “softcore raider” sense.
Now, if you had more than one or two women in the guild, things might be different. But for some reason it never falls out like that for raid guilds. There’s the token guild girl/whore, and that’s it.
Get enough women in a guild and I think the problems would go away. Act like a pig or a horny teen and half the guild hates you? That’s how to fix it. Right now that behavior is just kind of looked over. Boys will be boys is the attitude.
But none of this is going to change. Women seem strangely disinterested in raid guilds. Probably more proof to them being smarter than us, come to think of it.
report
@undead dolphin hacker says
I’ve played WoW since release to about a year ago. During that time I’ve been in a number of raiding guilds, and yet I have not seen that which you are talking about. You have either been fundamentally unlucky, or you are enhancing the truth for some reason.
As to your assertion that MMO raiding is impossible without lonely nerds – that is simply not true. My last guild didn’t have a single person like that. No individual was maladjusted or socially awkward. Everyone had a social life, interests, friends, family, work, school, hobbies and all sorts of other things outside of WoW. To all of us the game was just another cool thing to do, and we had fun doing it.
And we didn’t have “token girls” as you put it. Instead there were 3-4 women, some single, some playing with their husbands/boyfriends. And I never had problems with any of them but one, who was annoying and bossy, but to be fair an excellent player.
Throughout the years I’ve met people from guilds I was in, drank with some, hooked up with others, and once again, I never saw the issues that you mentioned. In fact I still keep in touch with some of those guys/girls, even though they live all over the world.
report
The top four raiding guilds on my server not only have female raiders but female officers among their corps.
Your argument is akin to those of ultra-conservative Muslims, claiming that women must bundle themselves up in burqas because guys just wouldn’t be able to control themselves if they were to catch a glimpse of an ankle. Truth is, however, that you’re a social reject and so are your potential guildmates. All of you need to get a goddamn life and until you do, nobody should inflict your type on girls.
report
When I played WoW (for about 4 months after its release) I was in a guild with two female leaders (one for alliance & horde respectively) and a bunch of female members. Also, one of my good female friends is the biggest WoW junkie I know – male or female – and leader of the biggest and baddest raid group on her server (which was also my server and the server of all our friends that also played or still play WoW).
report
“Female players were accused of causing too much drama, distracting male players, and not bringing enough skill to the table to make up for these shortcomings.”
I laughed when I read this. I then asked my wife, who has played the game since launch, how many female WoW players she thought that applied to. “About 99%” was her reply. We had a bit of a discussion about it and came to the conclusion that female players are no more likely to be problematic than male ones, but most female problem players share similar traits, so it’s easy to make blanket statement about female players.
report
My lady destroys me at any fighting game or rts we play. There’s no shame in losing to a lady, she’s simply the better player. Try telling that to a 17 year old who’s been trained by the media his entire life to objectify the fairer sex. They don’t understand because to them women are inferior creatures.
I win when we play quake though, so I am redeemed.
report
Ok now… I’ve made a few posts previously arguing that women are just as good of players as men, but this is another topic altogether, so…
The media DOES NOT teach men to objectify women. In fact it does something else entirely. If you look at any TV show, men are shown to be complete and utter morons. They are often well-meaning but pathologically dim-witted and always end up being outsmarted by women. More than one generation of TV viewers grew up being taught that males are intellectually inferior brutes.
I won’t go into detailed analysis, because this is a topic for a dissertation or perhaps a series of books, but the observable damage this is doing to both men and women is vast. And who knows what unseen harm is being caused.
report
Oh and I’m not even talking about the way girls are taught to see boys (and boys are taught to see themselves) when it comes to emotions, relationships, etc.
report
Something I found curious about the kid’s quote is that he’s generalizing just as badly about men:
now, I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m pretty sure I’m a man, and I definitely don’t “need the kill”. I might get a thrill out of doing well at a game, and out of winning, but (virtual) kills are just a way to achieve that. The “kill” itself is utterly meaningless.
But according to this kid, not only are all women bad at games, but all men are testosterone-dripping psychos whose entire personality is molded by aggression, and who are apparently addicted to killing.
Funny that people only get worked up over his generalizations about women. I’d say his portrayal of men is just as bad…
I think he just needs to get out more. ;)
report
Most of the women that I regularly play/have played WoW with played quite successfully primarily as hunters. To generalize, I suspect that this trend represents a more-common interest in strategic thinking (skewing away from faux-primal-aggressive-maleness) than anything sexually physiological about the player.
See, while anybody can be proud of a single-point metric like DPS — often used to compensate for an utter lack of strategy — actual success (aka: winning new boss fights) usually relies on a wider awareness and competence that makes range of a wider skill-set (such as what a competent hunter, often more than other classes anymore [sadly]) can bring to the party/raid. The fact that most content in the game these days can be slammed with little more than primal aggression is more disparaging of the content designers’ thought process and the lack of esteem they hold their target market in more than a genuine player-based attempt to make WoW a boys’ club (with virtual paper-pirate hats and 16-verse tone-deaf anthem, no doubt).
It used to be that strategy really mattered… and I think the game was a lot more engaging that way.
report
Oh man, that’s such a load of balls.
The only reason that dynamic you refer to exists is because there’s the inherent belief that women are inferior – hence the dunderly male in so many sitcoms.
The reality of it is far more insidious and socially ingrained.
report
“The only reason that dynamic you refer to exists is because there’s the inherent belief that women are inferior – hence the dunderly male in so many sitcoms.”
Please explain how you arrived at this conclusion so that we may point out the problems with your logic.
report
Media might not teach men to objectify women, but gaming does!
And you can’t really disagree with that, because in almost every mainstream game we have oversexed naughty/subservient women. Morrigan, anyone?
Furthermore, this is just evidence that gaming is behind the times, and it’s teaching young gamers old fashioned values, which might have something to do with why we seem to be going backwards, lately.
Sure, television allows for equality, as do some movies, where women have equal roles, where even gay people get a look in (and that’s amazing). But gaming is terrified of gay people (Bioware, again), and it’s just as terrified of women that actually have a mind of their own. From what I’ve seen, gamers in general are distressed by undersexed women, and it bothers them a great deal if they don’t show an interest in them.
And this is part of the problem, gamers seem to have separated women as sex objects as characters in games from girls who can’t actually play games, and that’s interesting on a psychological level. Why? The reality of women would challenge their fantasies.
So yes, other mediums are embracing more open minded ways, but gaming is lagging dreadfully behind.
report
@Wulf:
That argument is fallacious. The way that game designers treat men and women is essentially the same. Both sexes are represented as idealized versions of themselves. You cannot possibly claim that women are singled out for an unrealistic representation.
The fact of the matter is, it is considered politically correct to talk about the poor, oppressed, exploited women. They are made to look hot in games, oh no! Anyone who wants to appear progressive and worldly can effortlessly hum this tune and pretend to be a champion for women’s rights.
In truth, men are represented equally unrealistically. I don’t know what you look like, but certainly don’t have the appearance of any of the famous male protagonists from the games we all play. I’m fairly decent looking, fairly strong, fairly well trained in the use of weapons, but still I’m quite inferior next to those fellows with their handsome looks, limitless strength, never-ending stamina, gravity defying acrobatics, and so forth.
Should I bitch about Prince of Persia, Commander Shepard, and Minsk lowering my self-esteem? Should I?
NO!!!
Because games are fiction! They are a make-believe idealized version of the world. Saying that it shouldn’t be like that because it is “unrealistic” is like complaining about fairy tales, myths and legends.
I don’t know about you, but when I listen to a story, read a fantasy novel, or play a game, I want my heroes and heroines strong, fast, hot, smart, etc.
report
@Alaric
No offense, sir, but I have the feeling that there might be less issue at hand if, say, female characters were physically idealized—perfect hips and breasts and all that—-but are not sexed up. In general, women also like to play reasonably good-looking versions of their sex, it’s kind of why we have celebrities, but following this logic there is absolutely no reason to dress them in bikinis. Except for the fact that sex sells.
It’s not really an ‘equal’ idealization. It’s an idealization in favor of the masculine idea of strong men and attractive women. And frankly I would be really quite happy if women get male character models that actually pander to their fantasies (it’s a bit more varied than the typical male fantasy, granted), it would give me something nicer to stare at when I play male characters. Dangit.
I do agree with you that there are harmful stereotypes on both sides, very much so. Which is why my gender identity is a little bit dodgy. The world would be much better served if we could just see people as…..another specimen of the same species who have the same needs and wants as us. It’s just that your logic of ‘unfairness toward males in society is greater than unfairness to females’ is also a little bit fallacious.
There’s also this : while most of the stupid dunderhead characters on TV are male, most of the competent/supercapable/professional characters are also male.
report
The point you’d be missing Alaric is that games generally pursue versions of males and females based on male ideals. The women are the male ideals of what a woman should be (and there isn’t just one) and the men are the male idea of an ideal male (and probably the very model of a modern major general as well).
Tying in to the above argument about representation of males in the media; what you observe is true, men are goofy lads of late (last ten fifteen years it’s been big). But a comedy history lesson is in order. Men have been goofy idiots verbally fencing (and losing) with smarter, more sensible women since the 1940s. We’re not going to lay The Honeymooners down as some sort of emasculating feminist tract now are we.
The better point perhaps either side of this argument is missing is, it’s not so much that the media is instructing people in damaging gender stereotypes. The goofy male for instance, is a performance trope as much as anything and the scenario where the girls always win is one designed to appeal to the female audience. I’m quite sure guys are capable of ignoring it, not feeling it refers to males generally or themselves specifically. The media is far too wide spread, with many tropes and stereotypes, to pin down what it actually does influence wise. (I think the ‘lads mag’ era has produced a new pride in reclaiming ‘boys will be boys’ masculinity and being a boorish idiot that least talks about women as fuck toys and little else, for example, but you won’t find that on TV much. Which is a Femmo /PC conspiracy depending on who you talk to).
No, role models and symbols are too nebulous to nail down. What the media does know perfectly well is that there is a gender divide and it’s much easier and more lucrative to exploit that rather than go around building bridges.
report
I do not believe that unfairness is towards males alone. Unfairness is a fact of life and it extends equally to males and females. What I do believe is that people seem to notice it disproportionately more when it extends to females.
Now, let’s not forget, that sex is only one way to divide society into groups. There are other ways as well. Each of us belongs to multiple groups and each of those groups is portrayed in a certain way by the media. Some of these ways are flattering, some are demeaning.
Here is an example:
I work in the IT industry, listen to metal, read fantasy and sci-fi and play computer games. People like me are branded nerds/geeks and in pop culture are usually presented as socially awkward, weak, maladjusted, repressed, etc. Not a very pleasant image.
I am also a former Marine. And here the representation takes a complete U-turn by becoming overwhelmingly positive. Now people like me are presented as “tough-as-nails” indestructible warriors. Agent Gibbs and Detective Stabler are on TV every day. The Spawn is in every comic book store. And games… well I’m not even talking about those.
Both these descriptions are inaccurate, but is it really a serious problem?
report
Regarding the disproportionate attention to female woes : it saddens me to say this, considering I do not actually identify myself as a woman (a lot of sexuality, in that context, baffles me to be honest) and this does have a pretty good chance of sounding like argumentative whining : if there is an elephant and a rhinoceros standing in the room and people point them out and say ‘look at the size of that thing!’, 99% of the audience will look at the elephant. The sad truth is, although unfairness is everywhere, women make up more of the population than nerds or any other demographic will.
I do not usually group myself with sex, either, and rather prefer to use my professional and personal interests for that purpose. The fact remains, however, that it is one of the most common dividers, and both sides of the argument WILL get pigeonholed with it regardless of what they do, what they have been, or what they think. That’s why, I feel, gender-related incongruities can be more severe than other forms. I wish we would group people by what they are as a PERSON instead and weigh the merits and incongruities of that (such as you being a nerd and an ex-marine) and see if they make sense, instead of pigeonholing based on your capacity and role in reproduction.
That’s why the argument exists, I think. And that’s why how this particular way to group people deserves more attention than most of other social divides. I would love to see more media attention on the rich-poor, developed-underdeveloped and racial groupings, too, but it seems it will take some time for games to get there. Short of overthrowing the Always Evil Empire, of course.
report
Always remember, boys and girls:
All-Female Clan (no boys allowed) = COOL
All-Male Clan (no girls allowed) = Bunch of sexist assholes
SCNR
report
@Duncan
it’s very short-sighted not to consider cause and effect.
CAUSE: A few girls try to join a major guild, this results in them being insulted based on their gender and nothing else, and an outright refusal to allow them in.
EFFECT: A few girls decide that they could be independent any way and create their own ‘all girl’ guild to show that other guild what’s what by playing them at their own game with nothing but girls, and succeeding them.
I don’t think anyone is really saying that it’s ‘cool’ for an all girl guild to exist, but what I do think is groovy is that those girls took the initiative to do something about the anti-girl attitudes found in gaming. If those attitudes didn’t exist, then they wouldn’t have to have done that.
And besides, you’ll find that female dominant guilds are far more the meritocracy, willing to allow open-minded guys into their guilds, than male dominated guilds are.
Am I saying that females are by far and wide more open minded in general, and that males are still swinging their ‘clubs’?
When it comes to gaming… yes. Yes I am.
report
“A few girls try to join a major guild, this results in them being insulted based on their gender and nothing else, and an outright refusal to allow them in.”
That, kind sir, is a load of crap. If you are going to make outlandish claims like that, you better provide conclusive and verifiable proof.
report
@Alaric
Alaric, Alaric, Alaric…
“That, kind sir, is a load of crap.”
Nice way to open an argument.
“If you are going to make outlandish claims like that, you better provide conclusive and verifiable proof.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
/sigh
report
@Alaric
Point is, I have my opinion, you have yours. You don’t need to throw your balls around by calling mine a pile of crap and then thrusting upon me the burden of proof.
report
@Wulf
You made a claim. Here it is:
“A few girls try to join a major guild, this results in them being insulted based on their gender and nothing else, and an outright refusal to allow them in.”
I think it is reasonable for me to ask you to support your claim with evidence. Do you not feel that way?
report
@Wulf: I actually don’t feel strongly about the topic. I’m too old :)
It’s just the hypocrisy that always surrounds gender discussions that bothers me a bit. Because noone seems to notice.
report
“Point is, I have my opinion, you have yours. You don’t need to throw your balls around by calling mine a pile of crap and then thrusting upon me the burden of proof.”
Don’t really understand. You made the claim. Why is the burden of proof not with you?
report
@Wulf
Point is, I have my opinion, you have yours. You don’t need to throw your balls around by calling mine a pile of crap and then thrusting upon me the burden of proof.
I think all girls are stupid.
This is my opinion, and therefore fact.
If you call my opinofact wrong then I shall say that it is opinion.
If you ask me to prove my opinofact then I shall say that I do not need to prove my unsubstantiated claims. But I shall still act as if it is fact.
I have made the most unstoppable arguement.
Thanks Wulf, I would never have found out how to make a arguement without your help
/sarcasm
report
omg, it’s like, totally reverse sexism!!!
report
I can’t speak about MMO guilds, but every FPS clan I’ve been part of has had female members, and they’re in general far more polite and pleasant to play with than guys are. I don’t know what to attribute it to other than a lack of the competitive male cock-flapping one-upmanship.
report
“[...] other than a lack of the competitive male cock-flapping one-upmanship.”
That’s pretty much what it is, and one of the reasons that there are a lot of competitive situations I hate. You’re also right about FPS games, because–as bizarre as this is–there does seem to be more of a sense of equality and fair play in those games than in MMORPGs. This only applies to the PC though, because from my experiences, people in FPS games on the PS3 and the 360 are just as bad as people in MMORPGs.
In fact, the only MMORPGs I’ve found where this isn’t a problem is where the PvP is separated from the PvE, as I talked about in another comments thread, because the problem with these fappers (I’m not going to be quite so politically correct) is that they don’t choose fair targets, they choose easy targets to prove their meta-cock size against. And this is why guilds are so popular in World of Warcraft, because raiding is bloody easy and yet they get an over-inflated sense of accomplishment from it, just as the World PvPer gets an over-inflated sense of self-accomplishment for taking down an under-equipped PvE gamer who doesn’t raid.
And should they lose to you… well, prepare for every ethnic and phobic slur under the sun, you’re gay, you’re also black, you’re African, Indian, and Japanese!
But yes, MMORPGs are games in which this attitude flourishes, at least on the PC. I don’t know why this kind of attitude also flourishes on the consoles and not on the PC with FPS games. Is it because it’s more easy to take advantage of situations and find only players that the fapper can actually muster the skill to defeat? I don’t know.
It’s interesting though, but as I said, in FPS games and even MMORPGs which have no PvP, or separate PvP from PvE (like Guild Wars), this problem doesn’t exist.
I can’t really say why that is.
report
It’s interesting to me that so many of the responses here are along the lines of either “but I’m not sexist, so this girl’s story is obviously anecdotal” or “boys will be boys, so girls should hold themselves to a high standard of behavior and/or avoid revealing their gender so as not to provoke them.”
I’ve played WoW (on and off) for a long, long time — going on five years now. I’ve been in four raiding guilds; I was an officer in two of them (I’m a guy, for the record). I’ve seen a whole lot of drama, I’ve met hundreds of players (and probably at least a hundred female players), and I can say with great certainty that on at least two servers (particularly my current server — Alliance, PvP) sexism has been and is absolutely rampant. Women are harassed and discriminated against in more ways than I count — scapegoated for others’ failures, blamed for drama they had nothing to do with, verbally abused at every turn, etc.
The average female player and the average male player, as many people here have said, are no better and no worse than one another — they’re both average. The average female player, however, is subject to closer scrutiny, constantly used as a representative for her entire gender, and assumed, if/when she makes mistakes or underperforms, to have done so because she’s a girl. That’s the essential point, really. If a male player is bad, he’s just bad. If he causes drama, he’s just an asshole. If a female player is bad, it’s because girls suck at videogames; if a female player causes drama, it’s because all women are loot whores and drama queens and sluts and so on.
Also, this “no girls allowed” policy that people claim never to have encountered — really? Really? I’ve seen it quite a few times. There’s no better example than of US-Crushridge; they’re ranked 38th in the world right now.
report
ha, whoops. html thinks guild tag bracket-y things are trying to tell it something
the guild “No Chicks Allowed” is probably the farthest-progressed guild with an explicitly male-exclusive recruitment policy
report
In my experience, girls are often spoiled in WoW. They often get differential treatment (from guys) just because they’re girls. The result is that many of them are sub-par players who get insulted when someone tries to show them how they can do better.
That said, I’ve seen many excelent female players, and there are definitely male players that are just as bad, so maybe I’m just being stupid.
report
@Rhade
You have a point, but I have a counterpoint.
It’s a well known thing for farmers that if they roll a female character, they’ll be able to do part of their farming by acting slutty around gullible straight males, it’s an old trick. It’s been theorised before that many of the ‘women’ who’d show interest in a guy in a game without actually knowing anything about them (most the women I know aren’t that shallow, or shallow at all) are actually guys doing abstract farming runs.
Some of the women I know (such as my sisters) happen to play a mix of male and female characters, too, and they have too much pride to even think of whoring themselves out, they find the concept utterly disgusting, and I don’t blame them. They’re also competent gamers too, who’d give any guy a run for their money.
Furthermore, the women I know are also fiercely independent, they don’t like handouts, and they get good by learning to be good by their own initiative. Therefore, I find the idea of spoiled, sub-par female gamers rather ludicrous. But again, this comes back to people being afraid of reality challenging their fantasies, because fantasised women–such as those farmers–might meet this profile, but actual women don’t.
This is just my opinion, of course, but my sisters show me all I need to know.
report
Ah, this is a good discussion.
When I posted a link to this article on my guild forums, I mentioned that when you’re in a great guild with people you enjoy spending time with, you can sometimes become complacent and forget that a lot of WOW’s playerbase is made up of unsavoury sorts who believe in all kinds of weird and not particularly wonderful things.
Then something like the Looking For Group tool comes along, and you find yourself looting through instances with people who are often impatient, ignorant, and bigoted. You realize that these sometimes young, sometimes old sorts are actually in guilds, and when you Armoury them, you realize they’re progressed guilds. And then you wonder if all the members in that guild are like that.
I suppose this is something that is more prevalent in guilds looking to win big when it comes to raid and PVP content, because then socialising doesn’t matter so much. In a more social guild, or an RP one like the one I lead, it’s far more important that a member fits in. As someone above said, raiders are often inclined to let troublesome sorts stay, if they are good at what they do.
Contrastingly, I make a habit of kicking members early on, if they display signs of any xenophobia. This has happened when one member decided to type a flurry of racist jokes in the guild chat, and should that happen again but with misogyny I’d do the same. I gather that this happens more often too on RP realms.
There are three sorts of people who join RP realms: those who have come to RP, those who haven’t come to RP but want to enjoy the calmer atmosphere and will respect the policies anyway, and those who think “RP” stands for “Really Powerful” or some other lark and are wondering why people around them are having these in-depth conversations about the threat of the quilboar. This latter group are much like their normal realm counterparts, except they sometimes find out that “RP” actually means “Role Play” and either ignore it and pretend they didn’t make a mistake when they rolled their character, or actually try and harass RPers. Or sometimes, and this is when my heart swells, they actually join in.
But because RP realms are inhabited by those who wish to create their own characters and stories and not just go onto the complex rollercoaster rides of raids and epics, they are often more thoughtful. Please note here that I’m not claiming RPers can’t be twats. They most certainly can, and those who create can often be extremely bigoted (Hi, Lovecraft!). But what I’m saying is that if they’re mature enough to look past the “Ohhh, that sounds a bit nerdy!” conundrum, they’re often mature enough to look past the “Ohhh, she’s a woman!” puzzle.
It doesn’t help, of course, that Blizzard seem to be demented on providing titillation to their male audiences. The Queen of the Dragons herself is dressed absolutely ridiculously, and there can be absolutely no reason why she wears this (http://www.wowwiki.com/File:Alexstrasza_the_Life-Binder.jpg ) other than the fact that the designers thought it’d be hot. It isn’t hot. It’s just cheap and chatty, and undermines the character. Even if robed, female characters (and player characters, as a lot of the armour models can be tiny when compared with male counterparts) have little bits of flesh around the torso revealed.
Now, I’m not for a minute suggesting this is causing such sexism, but it does not set up an environment bred for equality. Whilst the behaviour of female characters doesn’t seem to be exploited, Jaina Proudmoore in particular is often called a slut on forums and in-game. Slut, whore, a woman who doesn’t stand by her man… and whatever else that comes to mind.
What’s strange is that there doesn’t seem to be any signs of Blizzard changing course in how female characters are designed. Surely now that they have an expansive playerbase they would see how counter-productive such male fantasies are? The very fact they’re so predictably given bras as armour makes the whole thing much less alluring, which, I guess, is the purpose of it all. It’s lowest-common denominator stuff. (Or “stiff”, as the case may be)
In my own guild, we’ve got a roughly 50/50 member split. Maybe it’s more like 55/45 in favour of males. It’s a superb guild culture, at once mature and obnoxious. I like to make sure that, despite our CAPS LOCK chat and profanity, we’re not 4chan. Racism/homophobia/misogyny isn’t wanted, even in jest. And somehow, it works. There is, of course, personality differences between male and female members (there’ll always be. I used to be one of those who thought there would be absolutely no difference in my a-bit-too-liberal-mind. Ironically, I was 17 at the time) but these complement each other rather than cause tension, and they certainly don’t cause the kinds of tedious sexually-fused creepiness that has been mentioned before. It’s a fucking awesome set-up. My favourite bunch of people on the ‘net. They’re my second family.
WOW is one of those gaming phenomenons that, much like the Wii and The Sims, invites players of all ages, genders and cultures to play. It is more of a traditional action-orientated, fantasy-world game than those other two examples. I think sites like WOW.com and blog posts such as these do a good job in promoting different perspectives other than the perceived young white male gamer. It’s looked down upon by many gamers because of reasons different to those that it is looked up upon by many others. Because despite the aforementioned 5p eye candy, it’s a welcoming game to women, in ways that Warhammer Online couldn’t be and Age of Conan didn’t even try to be.
It’s inclusive, bright and colourful, and yet it’s about goblins and dragons and all those things that 12 year olds, 20 year olds, and 40 year olds can all appreciate. It’s not about controversial subject matter and so many are comfortable with playing it. And, much like a Disney film, it can be played by all demographs. This is both a blessing and a curse.
(Sorry for typing so much. You always make me type lots, RPS. <3 This is a great, great discussion, and the reason this site is the best for comment on games on the web. Keep it up, yo!)
report
So it bothers that Alexstrasza wears a bikini, but you are perfectly fine with every single male in the game looking like an imbecile bodybuilder? At least the human female models have a slight touch of intellect to their faces. Whenever I look at any of the human male models I have a hard time believing they have enough brain function to maintain bladder control. =)
report
Never said I wasn’t, nor did I imply it. My post was entirely about the female audience and representation.
Plus, gnomes aren’t THAT stocky. 8D
(for reference, I was one of the people who got annoyed when Blizzard buffed up the male blood-elf models so that they had more muscle, and didn’t get called “faggots” by dickheads quite so much. I liked the old look. It was refreshing, and when Blizzard kowtowed to pressure I lost a bit of faith)
report
It’s not my logic, you cheeky little imp, it’s the accepted belief of numerous gender theorists. If you’d care to read Foucault’s History of Sexuality, you can see the ingrained phallocentrism of modern Western culture which emerged from the power of the masculine discourses of science and medicine and their ‘scientification’ of gender.
You can see an extension of this in Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze, which we can apply to those sitcom dynamics, whereby the female falls into an idealised image perpetuated by the heterogeneous heterosexual stereotype of the married couple we so often see (Happy Days, The Good Life, Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens etc – the wives are so often hot, have you noticed that?)
Of course, if you read Butler or Helene Cixous, you can interpret the dunderly male/tutting female as a further perpetuation of binary gender stereotypes (pink/blue, strong/weak, form/matter) which is a patriarchal institution in and of itself.
You are correct and valiant, however, for identifying the need to recognise masculism and male stereotypes as well.
report
I know the point you’re making generally, but Happy Days? I’ve honesty never encountered overt or otherwise Mrs C fandom (this is not a call for anyone to Rule #33 either).
Perhaps the Brady Bunch is a better choice (but the hubby isn’t schlubby in that one)
report
It’s funny, the way these kids regard girls in online games is pretty much the way I regard kids in online games. While it’s not impossible to hit upon a young player who’s actually mature and nice to play with, the vast bulk of them seem to be, well, as immature and unpleasant as this article makes them out to be.
report
While it’s not impossible to hit upon a young player who’s actually mature and nice to play with
Inadvisable!
/smirk
report
tee hee!
report
@undead dolphin hacker
I’ve played WoW since release to about a year ago. During that time I’ve been in a number of raiding guilds, and yet I have not seen that which you are talking about. You have either been fundamentally unlucky, or you are enhancing the truth for some reason.
As to your assertion that MMO raiding is impossible without lonely nerds – that is simply not true. My last guild didn’t have a single person like that. No individual was maladjusted or socially awkward. Everyone had a social life, interests, friends, family, work, school, hobbies and all sorts of other things outside of WoW. To all of us the game was just another cool thing to do, and we had fun doing it.
And we didn’t have “token girls” as you put it. Instead there were 3-4 women, some single, some playing with their husbands/boyfriends. And I never had problems with any of them but one, who was annoying and bossy, but to be fair an excellent player.
Throughout the years I’ve met people from guilds I was in, drank with some, hooked up with others, and once again, I never saw the issues that you mentioned. In fact I still keep in touch with some of those guys/girls, even though they live all over the world.
report
Oops… I think I just double posted. Apologies.
report
What I found interesting about that is the implication that healers aren’t competitive… I can only assume he isn’t a healer and doesn’t hang out in his guild’s healing channel much.
report
“Primal aggression?” It’s WoW, for god’s sake! How much primal aggression does one need to double click and then carefully press number keys in the correct order? I’m sorry I didn’t type several paragraphs like the rest of you (great discussion) but I just found that particular line hilarious. World of Warcraft is probably one of the least testosterone-fueled games I’ve ever played.
report
Interesting discussion.
The problem is anonymity gives people the power to take their discriminatory attitudes a step further and actually enact them in an environment with other people when in general in polite society they simply wouldn’t dare.
The thing is always find funny about gaming communities is that geeks and nerds are stereotyped as being downtrodden and bullied by people with more social value and capital – yet when you look at online communities created by them they often go to great lengths to create stratified elitist structures that firmly place other people outside them. Instead of being set free by the online arena they are just free to impose their own form of bigotry and bullying upon other people. I don’t think this is simply in revenge for their own percieved treatment either.
To some extent is it natural and part of being human to want to exclude others and stick with the tribe, but essentialy the question this begs is do ALL people want to oppress and denigrate other as soon as they have the opportunity to do so? Can you truly honestly safely say if you were born with a quaterback physique and good looks into a wealthy family you wouldn’t be more of a dick? Honestly?
Anonymity brings out the worst in people and online communities simply open up opportunities for exclusion, especially for people who are exluded in normal society.
report
@Mark —
yet when you look at online communities created by them they often go to great lengths to create stratified elitist structures that firmly place other people outside them.
In my experience the lower someone is on the social ladder the harder they fight to make sure the people below them stay firmly in their place and to draw a clear line between them and the even more undesirable undesireables.
report
Depends on the desires of the person.
“[...] a quaterback physique [...]”
I do not desire a quarterback physique, therefore it would make no difference.
“[...] good looks [...]”
I do not desire the looks of a playboy, therefore it would make no difference.
“[...] wealthy family [...]”
Wealth cannot acquire what I desire, therefore it would make no difference.
So at the end of the day, I’d still be me, whether I had these things or not. These things don’t matter equally to everyone, and to some eccentric types–like myself–these elements have never even begun to enter into their dreams.
And if I had my desires, I’d have far more interesting pursuits than being dickish to people.
Maybe the difference in my case is my obsession with ethics, I can’t say.
report
I’ve had mostly positive experiences with female gamers, but I’ve also seen a middle-aged stay-at-home mom with mediocre playing ability decides that she’s the guild’s mom, acts like she has the authority of a guild leader, and generally tries to make decisions for everyone until she gets ignored and moves on. It’s really annoying.
report
I stopped reading at “sexual politics”.
report
Most females I saw in WoW were average, just like most players were average! I.E. I saw no difference in skill between male or female. Playstyle and personality perhaps (men and women are different!) but skill no.
the GM of the first and mostly only major guild I was in was a baffling paradox: A hot, female GM! She wasn’t super good tho, more into goofiness and team spirit than Min/maxing and perfecting skill rotations in battle (she was a lock.)
It’s unsurprising that a Woman would be more into the social / dress-up aspects of role playing whereas a male would be more into the pure statistical BIG PENIS DAMAGE NUMBER aspect of the game. This is maybe why some1 would think a woman would be “worse” but there were plenty of terrible men and plenty of good women I played with as well as plenty of ppl who dont adhere to that stereotype.
Still a hot female GM is pretty rare I bet!
report
I like this post, as it’s good to acknowledge that stereotypes can be broken, and sometimes stereotypes might even be in the minority. I’m of the mostly male variety biologically, but according to what most would expect of a woman, I’m apparently female, it’s all very confusing to the people who know me, but that’s alleviated a bit for them since they know I’m gay, anyway. I might be a stereotype in that respect, actually. Ha ha… doubt.
Anyway, point is, I love roleplaying and puzzle solving just as much as I do any other kind of activity in gaming. I was there for the beginning of Uru, and what times those were, wandering around as a mildly overweight hippie in sandals. There were a large number of women playing that game, probably because of the puzzle-solving and roleplaying, I wouldn’t mind betting that it was assumed that there was a woman behind my avatar too, which is a terribly funny thought.
Most fun character I ever roleplayed, that, though, a ploddingly curious mindset, almost erudite, but offset by a Summer of Love attitude to everything.
Ahh, I miss Uru. :<
report
I don’t like them not because they’re girls, but because they’re alliance.
I mean come on, even I have standards.
report
Not going to bother commenting on the article, but I do find it interesting reading the comments to see the writing indicates a near 100% male audience for Rock Paper Shotgun.
report
Careful, the people that comment are only a very small subsection of the actual readership for a blog or forum.
report
@Pimorte
You say that now, but it’s only a matter of time before some fangirl writes a slashfic about the hivemind.
report
So being practical is politically incorrect now? Oh, well…
report
It’s practical to turn away a raider, because you perceive them to be calm, and composed?
Oh yeah, let me tell you about how much fun it is playing with aggressive dipshits.
report
I don’t know if anyone has seen me make the point before, but does anyone remember that I’m against forced grouping? Mainly because it tends to group one with sociopaths who can be racist, sexist, phobic, or worse?
Yeah. This guy. I don’t want to be forced to group with this guy. Give me a calm, composed woman who knows how to have fun any day of the week rather than an angry, shouty, narrow minded, wingnutty, sociopath of a gamer.
report
In my experiences, solo friendly environments that produce total assholes. Every single person I ran into while playing FFXI was kind, helpful, and generous. No one wants to group up with an asshole, so they don’t get very far before quitting.
report
Y’know, it hadn’t really occurred to me before but that makes sense. The community in Everquest back when I was playing it (from launch up until shortly before Shadows of Luclin) was great in a lot of ways, and I’ve been kind of mourning the loss of that sort of community since then. I hadn’t really considered that soloability could be the factor that empowers shitheads in a game community, but given my experiences in City of Heroes I think maybe you’re onto something. Too bad, since for a lot of reasons I’m not crazy about forced grouping.
report
My missus played WoW a lot longer and more vigorously than I ever did. I’m also pretty sure that she wears her gender openly because she’s proud of being a female gamer of the not-healer, not-a-nancy, look-at-my-boobies, oh-god-this-isn’t-THE-SIMS-OR-FARMVILLE variety.
Likewise, when I played WoW, I was always pleased to announce that if I wanted to play dressup, I’d just play the Sims. But I am no true man.
report
You nor me.
Not that I’m convinced that anyone can be completely masculine/feminine anyway, as biology doesn’t like working that way, everyone’s a per centage something else, no matter which way their body leans.
report
I think women are inherently inferior in basically everything… they lack the simple intelligence and coordination to be able to play videogames. It’s not sexism. It’s biology
report
Yes. If that was biological fact. Which.. you know.. it isn’t.
report
I didn’t know Dick Masterson read RPS
report
@Psychopomp
RPS Solium Infernum II – in which the Temple of Lust is entirely staffed by commentors.
report
@Hammer: So… is your guild EU based?
report
Yep. Why?
report
Because it sounds interesting and I was wondering if I could join.
report
Ha! That’s the first out-of-game recruitment post we’ve ever made, seemingly. How about sending me a PM on the RPS forums, and I’ll tell you the details?
report
I practice my own form of elitism, and just don’t join guilds run by 17 year olds, be they male or female.
report
Well of course. The boy is right. He just defined the difference between men and women pretty exactly.
The problem here is YOUR sexism, of thinking that young women/girls would have to run after MALE ideals (fighting, hunting, etc).
It’s funny how the strongest feminists are actually the strongest pro-male sexists, exactly because of that.
You hate sexism, but put yourself in such an extreme opposite position, that you’re no better!
Men and women HAVE de-facto different abilities.
In a team whose job it is, to do things that men are good at, you OF COURSE prefer men.
And in a team whose job it is, to do things that *women* are good at, you OF COURSE prefer *women*.
Everything *else* would be unrealistic and unfair!
report
Bullsquid. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. you’ve taken a generalisation which is primordial at best and made it out like some sort of real defining difference. I’ve known women that are absolute killers. Not literally of course, but they will be as aggressive as they want to be and they won’t hold back. I’ve known men that are staunch pacifists who find it difficult to stand up for themselves at all. So no, he didn’t define the difference between men and women even slightly. Certainly not in the contemporary world where people can and should be treated as individuals, not generalisations which lost their relevance when we built our first permanent residences.
report
What Barefoot said makes perfect anthropological sense, but in case of the article we are discussing here, it simply didn’t need to be expressed rudely.
report
The rational element here is ignored: can a person go beyond predefined biological parameters and do we have the inclination to do so? The answer would quite logically appear to be yes, on both counts, as history has shown us that any role can be equally supplied by any person who has the appropriate skills, gender has never been a relevant consideration.
Furthermore, one would have to posit that sexism is borne of the desire to pigeon-hole people into roles, regardless of capability and skills, but instead influenced by arbitrary–and indeed, irrelevant–factors, such as gender. A person may be capable of many things, but the problem here is that a narrow minded view might only allow one individual to perceive some of thee capabilities.
For example, a person is of the male persuasion, and therefore they can only perform certain duties within their range of capability and skill, regardless of what they’re actually capable of. The way to sidestep sexism is to consider gender irrelevant, not unimportant, but simply irrelevant. A person’s gender has no impact on their capabilities, and which of those capabilities they choose to exercise and become skilled at is their own choice.
If a female chooses to be a housewife, then one cannot find conflict with a conscious choice providing that it really is a conscious choice, but to inform a female who’s capable of martial combat techniques that their place is in the kitchen, thus attempting to override their individual choice, that is sexist.
I do not believe anyone should be forced to supply any role, it’s a sapient individual’s choice which role one takes for oneself. I would consider any manner of thinking that would pigeon-hole people into roles as outmoded, as the world has moved on and let such ways of thinking behind, which is for the betterment of humanity as a whole.
report
That’s… that’s exactly it.
Women may be more likely to be less aggressive, but this doesn’t mean any given woman actually is less aggressive. Essentially, people are individuals, with their own particular attitudes and skills, and gender doesn’t actually have an impact on that except in a statistical sense. Ultimately, the conclusions you should be drawing, instead of this
In a team whose job it is, to do things that men are good at, you OF COURSE prefer men.
should be this
In a team whose job it is to do a selection of things well, you OF COURSE prefer those who can do these particular taks well
Wulf abandons his own good sense again and again above for internet white-knight duty (“Am I saying that females are by far and wide more open minded in general, and that males are still swinging their ‘clubs’?”), but let’s ignore that.
report
What you see as abandonment of sense and white-knight duty might actually serve another purpose: such as provoking people in a tongue-in-cheek—indeed, blithe–way to kick-start the reader’s mental processes. Certainly, that reader might be angry at me for acting so flippantly, but some of them might stop and examine why they’re getting angry over it. In which case… mission accomplished.
Sometimes I apply cool rationality and logic, and sometimes I’m very subtly tongue-in-cheek, in ways that only a few people actually seem to pick up on. All of my efforts are to try and get people to see things from another angle. I’m particularly drawn to Chaos Magician methodology for drawing conclusions, that in order to understand something, one should consider something from every angle, even taking stances which aren’t at all their own, for the cause of understanding.
Reality isn’t magnanimously simple, and when it comes down to it, people aren’t either. There’s usually more to a person or an opinion than might initially meet the eye.
report
Unwise. Being irrational in a riposte on the internet is only going to turn things into a shouting match. In a peculiar way, that actually validates their opinion, putting it on the same level as yours. In a topic that actually matters, like this one, best to stay as rational as possible and hope that others follow suit.
IMHO.
report
On the subject of 17 year old boys, it’s probably a good thing that they’re brazen, overconfident dickheads. If someone realised their stupidity and ignorance at that age they’d probably never learn from getting into trouble, and develop an inferiority complex a mile high. That’s been my experience, anyway.
report
I find many of the comments here humerous and ironic; they remind me of the “I’m not racist at all, I have a friend whos Black and he has a proper job!” style irony.
Being a female or guy in WoW makes no difference in general. I have never even been asked my sex in WoW.
report
It’s the internet, it doesn’t surprise me at all that someone would say this. Besides, the internet allows for people to comment without borders or consequence (almost.) The stereotypes that revolve around female gamers are usually based on some truths, as all stereotypes, but there’s a wonderful thing about the internet: it makes an initial level playing field for everyone.
I was a guild and raid leader for a guild for a couple years before Wrath came out, and I successfully led my guild to clear BT and Sunwell before I gave notice I was returning to real life. While I was not only leading my guild and raid leading on a regular basis, I topped the DPS meters consistently as a shadow priest. Not a healer. A DPS. Additionally, I later made a warrior to tank due to guild needs and still managed to gear up to BT raidiing standards. In the meantime (not to toot my own horn), I was a 4.0 student during the entirety of my WoW raiding career. Before any men can declare women aren’t biologically suited to a leading position, one has to wonder; if women aren’t suited for leadership, men aren’t suited for responsibility, time management, and general organization.
And as stated earlier, the beauty of the internet lies in the ability to mask stereotypes and be anonymous. Unless a person makes it blatantly obvious to their audience, it’s incredibly difficult to differentiate between the sexes online.
report
To be fair, I don’t think humanity is really suited for any of those things, and it’s only out of necessity do we show any degree of capability, and thus the old wisdom is true were the person who’d be the most capable of these things, of leadership, responsibility, and the rest, is usually the person who doesn’t want the job, because they know how well they’d have to do it to satisfy their own standards. Whereas those who desire the job are often the first to fail at it. I believe it was Douglas Adams who pointed out that particular bit of wisdom, with his own punchy brand of wit.
I don’t think roles are relegated to gender, anyway, and I never have, as capability speaks volumes over everything else, and capability, over gender, and over willingness, should be valued. One thing I’ve noticed with many guild leaders in World of Warcraft, even most of the big ones, is that the leaders wanted the job for the prestige. And thanks to that, we end up with people like the chap quoted in the article, whom otherwise wouldn’t really be in a position of any merit to talk.
I suppose it’s our own fault for putting entirely incapable and irresponsible people in power, so the sad part is that they’re probably inculpable too, as they were given a vessel for their words, and a position of power from which to speak. More fool us for electing the town fool to run the town.
report
Halfway agree there. If I had said prestige wasn’t a factor in me becoming a guild leader, I would be blatantly lying. However, there are certain factors which distinguish a good leader from the bad ones (like the one quoted above.) A good leader has to be able to manage the wonderful balance between being a power-hungry, asinine prick and being an authoritative guild leader trying to give the guild the best chances of success- being sexist crosses that line.
Having been a guild leader myself, I interacted with a fair number of other guild leaders in the beginning, mostly for advice and opinions on this raid strategy, that type of raid calender, mostly the nitty-gritty technical details of being a guild leader. During my conversations and a few cooperative guild runs with them, I’ve learned one very definite fact- the “personality” of a guild centers around their guild leader. If the guild leader is ignorant, then the guild will consist largely of ignorant people. If the guild leader is a happy happy, lovey-dovey, I-don’t-punish-anyone-for-doing-anything-dumb-during-raids-type of person, the guild will largely be similar.
It’s not really a matter of all guild leaders being power hungry malevolent people bent on waving around posters advertising the size of their genitals. (Unfortunately, some are like that, which is unfortunate for their guild members.) After leading for a while, most guild leaders realize the ungodly amount of work it takes to run a guild, particularly a successful raiding guild. Three situations can result:
1) Some are power hungry enough to continue their banner-waving and annoy the crap out of everyone else.
2) Some realize the necessity for a proper distribution of power and tone down their egos for the sake of everyone else.
3) And many times, in the attempt to win everyone’s favor, the guild leader loses power to the masses and allows the guild members to essentially take over the guild.
I was fortunate enough to have amazing officers and some of the most understanding, loyal guild members I’ve ever come across. My situation was always a mix of #2 and #3. My officers and members are still my good friends who I talk to on a fairly regular basis, despite having quit WoW about two years ago.
I became a guild leader because I was curious what holding that much power would feel like. While this sounds painfully cliche, I stopped caring as much about power and started caring more about getting the raids done and keeping people happy. Granted, this did require the “no mercy” style discipline on occasion, but I’d like to believe the majority of my guild and my officers were happy with my leadership.
report
Good information, thanks for posting that.
report