Girl gamers a rare species?

Post Reply New Topic

Well, I think that recently there has been a dramatic increase to the amount of girl gamers out there, thanks to the newest fad of online games like Farmville or Bejeweled or Diner Dash. In fact, if Pop Cap surveys are to be believed, these women *outnumber* men. So the average age of a gamer isn't an 18-32 year old male, but a woman in her 30's.

Of course, these surveys fail to mention that this 'average gamer' is playing Bejeweled all day.

I am a female adult gamer, and have played video games most of my life. I have played them on Arcade machines, Amstrad, Atari, C64, then Sega Master System 1 & 11 & N64, various PCs, Gameboy, Playstation, Ps2, Xbox, and Xbox 360. Right now I am playing Skyrim, and Rage. I have loved many games, and like a lot too. Some of my favorites from past and present are Mass Effect series, Halo series, Call of Duty series, Oblivion, Borderlands, Dragon Age, Fable series, Doom, Portal, Half-Life, the Secret of Monkey Island, Resident Evil, Condemned 2, Civilization 4, Red Dead Redemption, Gun, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Zelda Ocarina of Time, Duke Nukem, Dungeon Siege, Neverwinter Nights, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Assassins Creed, Jade Empire, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Dead Space, KOTOR, Bioshock,1 & 2, James Bond Golden Eye, Tomb Raider, Baldurs Gate 2, FF7 & FF8. I also liked Grim Fandango, GTA, Two Worlds, Guitar Hero games, GT, Need 4 Speed, Test Drive Unlimited. Wonderboy, Sonic the Hedgehog, Tekken, Ace Combat, Shenmue, X-wing vs tie-fighter, Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacles, Unreal, Quake, Turok, Deus Ex, Perfect Dark. Plus heaps more. I have never really met another girl, especially adult that is a gamer. The girls I know that play any computer games, only seem to play the Sims games, and those lame facebook games. I've always wished I had friends that were into gaming, I knew some boys that were gamers and I got to play with them sometimes. But these days I don't have any friends that are gamers.

Gamers don't equal basement dweller at all! Same as saying book readers all stay in the Library!

I hate that social stigma the most...and yes, there are just as many girls into their Video Games as guys are.

Although from my experience, girls who play video games are more into their anime and romantic visual novels then shooters or JRPGS (although I know a few woman into those too).

Ironically, you see more woman these days play Pokemon then even the kids do! I guess the appeal of the animals would be a natural decision to play the game.

From a guy's perspective:
While Console games are dominated by males, many Handhelds and online games are attracting the female population.
So the overall gaming population is about split even. However 'hardcore' gamers are more likely (but not totally) to be male.
Men are (usually) geneticly predispositioned to be better (or initially talented, also called beginner's luck) due to natural affinity for hand-eye co-ordination. Though in the Aspie/ASD community this maybe thrown out the window for "randomized skill". When people think "Video games" they tend to think "Violence", heck my english teacher said that anything in a video game can never be considered a plot or story. In reality stories exist in video games and non-violent games exist, look at Kingdom Hearts (Squuueeee! Fanboy mode!) or Animal Crossing. On the other end of the spectrum a game like Call of Duty (My other fav) is tactical and fast-paced but it is VERY violent (not gory, thank God). Girls play all kinds of games, infact on of the best gaming clans (group of like-minded gamers) is a mostly female clan called PMS (Terrible name but decent players and they are quite skilled). I've come to respect Girl Gamers. If I come across randoms in a game lobby I'll respect the girl over the stoner guy, but if it's with friends or someone I admit is skilled I respect both equally. Personally if I managed to find a girl who plays games of any kind, I wouldn't let her go (as in I'd be dedicated not a creepy stalker). Even better is she could kick my @$$ at a Shooter, I wouldn't complain (unless she rubbed it in all the time).

I wouldn't say my last two exes were gamers, the last still had an n64 and all she'd play was Mario Kart, but she was amazing at it, and the girl before her owned an Xbox and she completed Ninja Gaiden on it, then she got into Call of Duty on 360 and that's it, that's all she'll play... only because she gets a kick out of competing online, but she's not actually interested in experiencing new games, new mechanics, innovations or new ways of telling a story in games. Still, she finished Ninja Gaiden, there's not may guys I know who've done that.

I don't know girl gamers IRL. I don't spend my time looking for them though, so there must be somewhere. On the other hand, I've met several on the internet, I met one of my best online friends through a MMORPG, and in general I get along with them well. I guess having good manners and not trying to hit on them can go a long way

Oh yeah, I hooked up with a goth girl for an afternoon and she played WoW. Her house was a total dump. She said she plays Wow sometimes 16 hours straight.

I'm playing the Chinese Jade Dynasty and Perfect World. There seem to be plenty of girls playing, but mind you we can never be sure how many aren't guys playing along. Could be that Jade Dynasty and Pefect World are the kind of games that a have more appeal to girls. The designers have paid a of attention to making things beautiful.

My thumb is blistered and my fingers are stiff from playing about 8 hours straight of Tony Hawk 3 XD Not all girl gamers are casual

I play video games sometimes.

I've been playing games seriously since the SNES, and have always liked games. In recent years I'm almost exclusively a PC gamer, even though I grew up playing primarily the SNES/Genesis/PS1.

I think especially in RPG-type games, there have always been a decent population of female gamers. I think it depends on the genre of game as to how equal or not the gender breakdown is. Overall, 40% of gamers are female, so it's barely a minority, though I'm sure in some types of games (like FPS or such) they're a much smaller percent.

I'm not a big fan of 'casual' games myself, I mostly like RPGs and Simulation games (like SimCity and SimLife).

My girlfriend is a gamer, and one of her jobs is games testing / QA.