this is a really good read: Female Gamers (in and out of character)

[Mozenwrathe]

http://www.kismetrose.com/dnd/WomenOOC.html

there is a companion piece on the website about female characters in gaming. I thought this was one of the best things I have read on the internet in a while. well put to paper as it were.

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/t...disparity.html

found this one at work. I thought this would be an excellent read for many here as well. sure, there might not be a lot of female gamers around, but those that are there have been rather prevalent. most of the women gamers I have known in real life have been huge fans of character-based games, rather than just dice rolling and bloodsoaked combat.

[ 07-02-2006, 11:44 AM: Message edited by: Mozenwrathe ]

[Bithron]

I guess Illumina is gonna post soon

[robertthebard]

I have to admit that while I do know some female gamers from my online games, the majority of players that I have "actually" met in game are male. I'll tell you one thing I have noticed though; presumed female players get more help in a lot of online worlds. While there are exceptions, I tend to flip a coin to determine char sex in RPG's. Since it's not a real factor, other than cosmetic. In the days when I bounced around from server to server, trying to find ones that I liked, if the char I used was female, people would be more likely to help than if I entered a male char.

[Dundee Slaytern]

Originally posted by robertthebard: I have to admit that while I do know some female gamers from my online games, the majority of players that I have "actually" met in game are male. I'll tell you one thing I have noticed though; presumed female players get more help in a lot of online worlds. While there are exceptions, I tend to flip a coin to determine char sex in RPG's. Since it's not a real factor, other than cosmetic. In the days when I bounced around from server to server, trying to find ones that I liked, if the char I used was female, people would be more likely to help than if I entered a male char.

Quoted for truth.

Far too often have I encountered totally different reactions from the SAME person who interacted with my characters, just because I switched the gender... This is just in general, but players are far MORE likely to go the extra mile if you use a female persona online.

It is very common to see males 'sacrifice' themselves in order to save a female character, and yet those same males won't give two flips if the character in trouble was male.

[img]tongue.gif[/img]

ADD] I remember one absurd scenerio in a multiplayer turned-based game, where a player from the opposing team REFUSED to attack a player on our team just because the character was female... We won the round of course... because our 'female' player had an 'invincibility' aura... ...

[ 07-02-2006, 08:08 AM: Message edited by: Dundee Slaytern ]

[Madman-Rogovich]

Interesting read Moz, gonna take me a while to get through it

I never usually play a female character tho I have been known to play cross-dressing male characters wonder if I could get away with it amongst the online communities

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

Originally posted by Bithron: I guess Illumina is gonna post soon

You guess correctly [img]smile.gif[/img]

NICE read! Rings very true in many places, and all in all I'd say it belongs on Illumina's Required Reading List.

[Legolas]

Regarding the second link, Gender Disparity in RPGs by John Kim, I can only say that I'm immediately suspicious of his conclusions due to lines like this: "The apparent best data is a survey conducted by Wizards of the Coast in the summer of 1999. (Kim 2004-1)".
You'd think he might be right anyway as some RPG gender disparity pioneer, but I'm less than thrilled by the methodology he offers in said article. If it is the best, we're horribly wanting for better.

Add: I've no trouble at all with the first link if only because the author simply states things as "I don't know if this is a female thing, but I have noticed that men tend to be more interested in weaponry overall. I have no statistics on it, at any rate." now and again. It's wholly different if you are trying to use statistics to prove a point.
I find the pieces she wrote quite interesting, in fact.

[ 07-03-2006, 06:54 AM: Message edited by: Legolas ]

[robertthebard]

Well, hers was a perspective piece. She took it from her side of the coin. Sometimes, the best research is personal experience. Thinking back to my PnP days, I don't remember many females doing more than turning their noses up at us around the table, but the girls that did decide to play, got way into it. Maybe it's an extremes thing? It was an informative piece though.

[Thoran]

My pnp gaming group is three couples (one of which just went to Origins last weekend), and the ladies are just as into it as the guys. While it's certainly not a representative sample, our group has some basic gender based characteristics (some of them stereotypical, some not).

The guys tend to be more impulsive, girls more cautious.

The guys' characters tend to be more flamboyant, but the girls tend to have more detail.

The girls tend to be more 'out of character' argumentative... they take offense easier.

The guys tend to be 'goofier', girls more serious about the game (maybe why they take offense easier).

Both groups tend to like to pre-plan encounters... but only one of the girls really enjoys the planning stage, whereas all the guys do. The other two girls tend to quickly lose interest in planning and unplug until the rest of us are ready to get to the action.

The girls are more likely to play male characters than the guys are to play female one's.

Now while level of interest in pnp gaming is about equal gender-wise... none of the ladies has ANY interest in computer gaming when we're together, the men however will often sneak off for a game of DS2, Battlefield 2, or maybe LOTR-BFME.

FWIW - the group is fairly well educated with 1MS/4BS and the last currently enrolled.
All three males are Engineers (BS/MS), One Female is an Engineer, one in Nursing School (already has BA), one in a Pre-Vet curriculum.

As I said... not particularly representative of the general populace... but probably not too far off for pnp gamers in general.

[Cloudbringer]

Originally posted by Dundee Slaytern: quote: Originally posted by robertthebard: I have to admit that while I do know some female gamers from my online games, the majority of players that I have "actually" met in game are male. I'll tell you one thing I have noticed though; presumed female players get more help in a lot of online worlds. While there are exceptions, I tend to flip a coin to determine char sex in RPG's. Since it's not a real factor, other than cosmetic. In the days when I bounced around from server to server, trying to find ones that I liked, if the char I used was female, people would be more likely to help than if I entered a male char.

Quoted for truth.

Far too often have I encountered totally different reactions from the SAME person who interacted with my characters, just because I switched the gender... This is just in general, but players are far MORE likely to go the extra mile if you use a female persona online.

It is very common to see males 'sacrifice' themselves in order to save a female character, and yet those same males won't give two flips if the character in trouble was male.

[img]tongue.gif[/img]

ADD] I remember one absurd scenerio in a multiplayer turned-based game, where a player from the opposing team REFUSED to attack a player on our team just because the character was female... We won the round of course... because our 'female' player had an 'invincibility' aura... ... [/QUOTE]Not sure if that's a given in my case as the help I got online was usually from folks I already knew in other circumstances, but I do play female characters in rpg's (unless, like Planescape etc, you have no choice.) I started a male char in my Sacred game and ended up thinking of him in the third person, rather than 'I'm doing this or that' it was more 'let's make the character do this' so if it were a more rp type game (which Sacred really isn't deeply into the story/role play aspects) then I'd probably either not play the character types that were male-only or would continue to think of them in the third person, like a game piece on a board rather than immersive rp.

Whenever this topic comes up I always think of my husband telling me how he'd sometimes rp with a female character and online gaming was especially hilarious as he'd often find other players hitting on him (in character and as players, not realizing he was a male player with a female pc).

[ 07-05-2006, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: Cloudbringer ]