PAX Panel: Girls and Games

http://kotaku.com/5043749/pax-panel-girls-and-games

Featuring ANets very own Linsey Murdock
designer in charge of the recent GW1 updates.

Oh, well, I guess that topic was going to come up sooner or later. I'm a girl, and I still don't get why people have to start bandying it around so much. A good game's a good game.

"Linsey Murdock"....

Girls play games? Preposterous! :/

Interesting panel, too bad I have a headache otherwise I'd read the whole thing.

In my opinion people in general need to drop the stereotypes surrounding various pasttimes. My boyfriend was recently told to 'get a life' when Miles the Ultramarines guy pointed out to a pontential customer that he (my boyfriend) has roughly 20k Chaos and has been collecting for ten years. I was standing not but two feet away, reading through the 5th Edition rule book recently realsed. I was also pointed out. I am female and spend much time in Games Workshop drooling over pretty marines models and wondering how not to smudge paint when painting my Daemonettes' nipples.

I honestly think that girls, specifically teenage girls, need to stop putting so much import on how they look to their friends and pontential sexual partners and more on their own fun. I was often called 'weird' for hanging out in GW and wanting to play RPGs. I had fun and then consumed several muffins when I was called 'practically aneorix'. I like muffins.

Also, the game creators need to stop thinking 'pink' (Imagine Babyz? WTF?) and start thinking 'fun' and 'pactical'. Yes many women seem to show a love of shoes, this however does not mean they'll dungeon run in Malahno Blahnik stilletoes. Sometimes I just want to grab a mace and smash something, in steel toe boots!

Hmm, a bit of a rant and ramble there. Oh well.

I'm seriously surprised it's not Regina taking part.

Personally I'm sick of people giving a crap if girls play games or not. It's really getting to be an old subject. I'm tired of hearing about it.

To be fair, most GW stores have employees and a customer base that mostly consists of mouthbreathing neckbeards. Many of them are misogynistic losers who can't conceive of anything outside of their routine bubble of existence.

Hey honestly I think GW and games in general nowadays are much less misogynistic than earlier...I mean even in friggen pokemon at least you can make a girl char now hahahah

My guild is controlled by girls and i have no complaints.

No, I'd use them to stab the first monster in the eye. Much more satisfying.

And I still don't get it. Why is there a particular need to suddenly rush over and cater games for girls? Oh, right, marketing.

You misunderstand, this 'customer' was a man who thinks having fun involves sitting on the couch every Saturday drinking beer and watching the footie. While stricken with a severe case of apathy, my local store is very nice and friendly

What the hell is a neckbeard and get off Warseer, it's bad for you.

Edit: GlacialPhoenix, it is indeed marketing. Why do you think they aim at kids as well? I saw a six your old girl at my till the other day with a pink DS covered in Nintendogz stickers blowing into the microphone, I was deeply disturbed.

I like what Linsey said about Princess Peach. ^^

I don't know if this is true for all of Guild Wars, or if I'm just a moron magnet, but I find an impressive amount of misogynistic idiots in Guild Wars. People who say that "girls can't play warriors because they're weak," people who say "there's no girls on the internet" and of course the people who think "girls can't play video games." No one really agrees with me when I say otherwise, and I get a lot of crap from other people/my alliance because I'm a girl gamer who dares to stand up for herself.

Personally, I think that when the immature males who fail to see that girls are capable of playing and succeeding at video games get over their mental block, there will be less of an uproar at girl gamers.

Talk about getting two 'niche' groups at once.

Well, marketing thinks of us girls as a really big untapped source of cash, which is fair enough, I guess. That's their job, after all. Making pink things - to use an example - however, is a remarkably one-sided way to do it. Yeah, some girls like pink. There are some girls who also hate it and will be rather offended if you try to market it to them that way. And then there are those who'll get offended at the 'games for girls' that companies design.

I was once idly looking around for a good game to buy - this was quite a while back. I thought I'd go and ask for a recommendation, and the guy at the counter stared at me, started looking at the stuff they had for sale, and finally handed me one.

"What's good about this?" I asked.

"...I kind of thought you'd like it because one of the leads is a girl."

He wasn't misogynistic, and he did try, but I was still sort of stunned. I mean, what does 'the lead being a girl' have to do with it being a good game?

EDIT:

I've seen a few of those people. I've also seen the responses. My favourite - and I wish I'd thought to screenshot it - was one guy replying, "I play GW with my wife, and I can assure you a thousand times over that she has boobs." (This was in response to some troll shouting "GIRLS DONT PLAY GW EVERYONE NOES TT!!!")

Also, my boyfriend was telling me about how he left a group by explaining to them that he was supposed to dungeon run with me, and got the response "...your girlfriend's a gamer?! LUCKY BASTARD." Somewhere out there, we're also special and appreciated. XD

That's slightly more to do with identifying with the game, people have a tendency to believe that gamers or readers get more involved if the main is someone of their own gender. The opposite is "said" to imply eye candy (Lara Croft sproings to mind). It's the reason why I rant about Elves in games but see less of a problem with Homo Sapiens (I'd still like to make a game without either, that would be FUN).

Gender stereotyping, it's done with babies as well. Pink is 'girly' and blue is 'manly', where else would the phrase 'Only real men wear pink' come from?

Also, Taurcius *hugs!* You're awesome cool :3

Colours need to be ditched with their gender overtones and gain new ones, like red having symbolism of love and violance, pink could be a symbol of outdated and arachaic practice. One can dream.

In regards to women being an untapped resource, it's true. With technology being an everyday thing now, using it has lost it's stigma and people (mainly companies) are waking up to it's potential as a medium for women. At least there isn't a house-keeping game yet.

I think they should worry about making good games. if it is good it will attract both boys and girls instead of going out of their way to find a reason that girls will like this game because of .... attitude.

Lollerchopter?

I admit i'm not always free of predjudices. When i first saw Bloodrayne (the game not the movie!) i tought women would be offended by such cheap use of female anatomy to get attention, but it turned out a VERY large portion of Rayne's fanbase is female. I even think they are the majority.



Anyway: I think female leads are becoming more interesting over time. Nariko (Heavenly sword), Faith (Mirrors edge) and Shenoa (Castelvania:Order of Ecclesia) all seem to be strong heroines who are more then mere eye candy.

There seem to be three general ways for males to respond to female gamers. Young boys tend to be either in denial, and/or think of girl gamers as unconditionally inferior; if proven otherwise, it's back to denial ("You're not really a girl!" and such). Older men, generally those who play with their wives and such, often don't give it a second thought unless it's pointed out to them. Young men around their 20s tend to display the reaction your boyfriend described. I can say from personal experience that I've been called a "lucky bastard" for having a girlfriend who enjoys Civ IV....even though that has twice resulted in being forced to stay up until 7 am for an extended play session. And no, there's not a bit of innuendo there.

Of course, this is how I see things, and there will always be exceptions, including the overly-mature 12 year old, and the horrendously backwards 45 year old. It's sad that there are still people out there that demean female gamers, but you can find bigots of pretty much any flavor online, if that's any consolation.

Agreed, we have been involved in the game industry as designers, players, consultants etc for a very, very long time, and I think it's high time the guys got off their high horses and realized it's not such a novelty.