Whilst browsing the pages of my favorite community Destructoid, I stumbled upon an interesting article in Candice’s blog. She found she found a quite….erm…opinionated article by a one Raychul Moore. If you care to read it, prepare for your jaw to hit the floor at the amount of pure venom contained in this article. I’m not saying it’s bad quality, however it is surprisingly vicious. Candice wrote her own reply that is certainly worth reading as well if you have the time. This is a particular subject that I’ve been contemplating for a while.
Girls joining the sphere of gaming is a pretty hot topic nowadays (no pun intended). The more mainstream that games become, the more likely that people from varying demographics–including more women–will join in the fun. Many of these will stick to casual games but others will venture further, either swept away by addictive gameplay or for the less desirable reason of garnering the attention of guys.
As the gaming community gets larger, you see a social phenomena beginning to take place: the formation of “cliques.” You see it even among guys: hardcore gamers, jocks, gangstas, and hipsters all play videogames within their own cliques. Now that the female demographic is large enough, we are starting to see a separation into at least two distinguishable groups.
The first of these groups is the quieter of the two. These are the girls who game because they love it. Whether they started because of their boyfriend or not, they got hooked into the world of gaming on their own accord. For me personally, my dad got me hooked on video games at the age of 7 by playing System Shock 2 with me, then eventually he bought my sister and me a Super Nintendo. For other girls, a friend simply handed them a controller saying, “Try this, it’s fun!” There was no extra attention for participating or not, just the satisfaction of playing a good game with friends or family. I have a lot of girl friends in this category. We used to have “Girl Nights” where we would get together and drink, playing Halo 2 and Jet Grind Radio and just being silly. We identified ourselves as gamers because it is truly what we enjoyed, whether there were boys around or not.
However, there is a second group of girls emerging that Raychul lovingly refers to as “attention whores.” These are the girls who generally just expect attention for being a girl who plays video games. It’s not to say that these girls don’t genuinely enjoy games as well, however the problem is that they seem to think they deserve extra recognition or special treatment for it. Thus, their motivation moves away from it’s origins of “playing for fun” to “playing to get noticed.”
There are some, as Raychul points out, that may have “forced themselves into” gaming in order to get attention. However, I find that this type of pseudo-gamer tends to fade out. I’ve seen it happen in the Destructoid community many a time: Girls will start a blog or a forum thread saying “I’m a girl gamer, here’s my pix!” Guys will at first make the obligatory comments on how the girls look, but if she doesn’t continue to be active on the community then they generally just move on. Women who participate regularly with intelligent discussion are quickly accepted and respected within gaming communities. This industry does discriminate against girls–however most guys, once they realize that a girl is a serious gamer, will treat you with the same degree of respect (if not more) that they give their male friends. If they don’t…well then why the hell would you want to be friends with them anyway?
Now the question is, why would girls do something like that? Why would you do something you don’t genuinely enjoy simply for the attention of men? Well, it’s a problem that many people suffer from that is completely unrelated to gaming: low self-esteem. These girls want to be part of what they see as an exclusive boy’s club. It is true that women are currently a minority in the gaming industry, which is why gaming men find girls who play video games more desirable. Girls who feel the need to be loved try to sneak their way into this “boy’s club” using video games as a pretense to say that they’re a “tomboy” or “just one of the guys.” But the reality is that it is not really for the “equality” that they constantly complain is absent, but for the feeling of superiority over other girls coupled with the adoration of the male gaming community.
This is the major difference between “gamer girls” and female gamers: the former wants a feeling of security and control from her social circle, while the latter simply wants friends who share her interest in games. Since these “gamer girls” get their self-esteem from the praise and adoration of men who play video games, they become dependent on video games as something far more than entertainment.
This is where the girl-on-girl hatred starts to come in. “Gamer girls” hate on each other because they feel threatened by each other. Another female in this “boy’s club” diffuses the overall attention that a girl will get. Therefore a “gamer girl” will rip into another female gamer to protect her status as the most important girl in this male-dominated social circle. This is not unique to the video game industry, I’ve seen it happen in other predominantly male territories such as tech schools and the local rock climbing gym I used to frequent.
Raychul’s article seems to be based off of many strong feelings, which unfortunately renders her article too passionate to do anything but continue the cycle of girl-on-girl hatred. The negative tone she uses takes away from her overall message, and ends up being degrading to the average female gamer rather than being informative–which certainly could not have been her original intent. There are a large number of girls–probably larger than most people realize–who simply love video games and ignore the drama going on around them. This silent group of women is readily recognized and respected by the men who have learned to see them as equals, through either gameplay or discussion.
The reason these girls are so quiet is because they’re a bit busy…you know, playing video games.
I just read an article about the “girl gamer” stuff.
Written by a female.
And it was actually a GOOD article.
Well that’s my world turned upside down for today. Thanking you.
I think a serious issue with attracting more women to the gaming community lies in marketing. The key to solving the kind of problems you describe is to have more women in the gaming community and playing not just casual or ‘cute’ games but rather the ‘hardcore’ genres, FPS/shmup/JRPG/sports/driving etc rather than sim/management type games like the sims, nintendogs etc.
Many of the women i know who play games do so for similar reasons to you – they were introduced to games as a child with no sense of ‘this is a game for girls’ mainly because until recently, games were not marketed to girls.
The issue is that just as more women are becoming interested in gaming, they are becoming interested in the shallowest end of the gaming industry. Look at the marketing for the Wii – shallow, fluffy little games being played by women, kids and grandparents. As long as the only independent invitation to women outside of friends/relatives recommendations comes from marketing focused on non-traditional games, thats all they will play and they won’t be involved in the more intense aspects of the industry, blogging for example. by involving more female ‘hardcore’ gamers, you’ll see them absorbed further into the community and the shrill attention-grabbing will decline because it won’t be seen as being significant.
Less condescending, non-threatening marketing. I want women challenged to beat ME not their grandmother.
Nice article – really got me thinking.
Awesome article :-) I twittered it as it needs to get read <3
I’ve already read the article in question, but I still don’t understand what you’re trying to get across here: The vast majority of what you wrote seems to agree with most of Raychul’s points, but how is she being too harsh? Maybe I’m just alone in the opinion that these self-styled gamerchicks *need* to be exposed and ostracized – That way, the would-be attentionwhores of tomorrow will think twice before forcefully injecting themselves into a niche culture for the sake of bettering their self-esteem.
And I got the link from Atheistiums tweet, great article.
I was thinking the same thing as zen, but I cant word it as well.
so, what he said ^.
A sociological dissection of the gaming community? Well done, Chelsea — this article is what made me create an account on this site. “Gamer girls” FTL, female gamers FTW!
@Zen
I don’t agree with her point of condemning all women who game as attention whores. She’s being to harsh because she’s just assuming that all women who game are catty because they are bitches and for no other reason. That is not true.
Nice job. Not much more I can say.
Second one @Zen:
I sat around and thought about what you asked for a little longer. Good questions though :)
If a girl is looking for attention, and you GIVE her that attention (positive or negative) you feed into the cycle.
So it is better to ignore them?
@nintendoll on the website of the original article there is a podcast where she tries to defend it. A funny listen as the other two females on the show totally disagrees with her and she still makes it out that girls are the worst and men are saints.
@Halfleft: Stop replying and ignore her, don’t you read anything!? Ignore girls on the internet!
It’s actually very important to pay extra attention, as well as to secretly scrutinize girl gamers, because it’s impossible to have interests and opinions if it’s not common within their gender.
Also, animals can’t feel pain, and the world is flat.
Funny there aren’t more comments on this article, I thought it was an interesting enough read. I’ve seen a handful of those whore archetypes, though I’ve met enough of the other archetype too.
this is a prime example of a typical attention whore:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/80765538/
I think it’s silly that she’s angry its on the internet when she had this publicly in the first place for all to see.