HGiles: Oh LOL. Every year or so another one of these crops up. I'm waiting for the *really* big news, when male gamers realize that duh, lots of women play games too.

dirtyharry50: This is all well and good so long as we make very sure that the distinction is made and maintained that real men play real games like FPS games and women play girly social games that don't count and are not real games.

We get the GI Joe dolls and they get the Barbies. Let's just keep that perfectly clear and there should not be any problems.

dirtyharry50: This is all well and good so long as we make very sure that the distinction is made and maintained that real men play real games like FPS games and women play girly social games that don't count and are not real games.

We get the GI Joe dolls and they get the Barbies. Let's just keep that perfectly clear and there should not be any problems.

HypersomniacLive: But when I was a kid, real boys were not supposed to play with dolls.

HypersomniacLive: But when I was a kid, real boys were not supposed to play with dolls.

Fenixp: GTA 4 already managed to have pretty cool female characters, at least from what I've seen so far. Stereotypical 'I'm a hot and dumb chick!' has only appeared in strip clubs. It may change eventually of course, but the two major female characters so far are actually quite well realized by their own right.

Starmaker: I used to look after two kids, a boy and a girl. Having to share a single computer and not having anything else to do while the other was playing, they had absolutely identical interests in games.

Vestin: snip

As long as there is no unified, relentless and commanding voice to brainwash kids into thinking that some genres are taboo to a given gender (as playing with dolls is to boys), kids will naturally experiment, observe each other and... play.

keeveek: I can't give you a good answer why in most games the lead is still generic white male in his thirties. Maybe industry is aferaid to change. You know, they figured out that generic male leads in their tihrties are what is a safe bet, and they are just afriad to risk their money and change.

As long as those game are keep selling well, it's gonna be hard to change.

StingingVelvet: You're moving the goal posts and making a new argument now, which is fine. The original point of contention was that saying "50% of gamers are women" is useless unless you break that down and define what it means. You told me breaking it down was pointless. Now all of a sudden you meant they have that data from elsewhere? I'm not stupid, I know that, I was talking about THIS STUDY.

As for genres being irrelevant and only "content" mattering, I couldn't disagree more. As discussed a couple pages ago a lot of the difference between casual games and "core" games is often rooted in investment, both mental and time. That's rooted in genre, it's probably the biggest definer of the casual genre, to be honest. You could break a game like Skyrim down into two minute chunks that don't take much attention to complete but then it wouldn't be Skyrim anymore, it wouldn't be an open world RPG anymore, it would be something else. Genre is at the core of the difference between games men appreciate and women appreciate.

Vestin: First of all - I can hardly envision such a thing; Hostility (if any) and hubris usually evaporate during freshman years, turning into intellectual humility sometime into the sophomore year.
Regardless - I can fairly easily imagine "what if": I would've walked over there and strongly objected to such narrow-mindedness, silently appreciating the convenient excuse to get to know the girl better.

Vestin: Negative. That only works under the assumption that the majority is either against a given thing or indifferent to its criticism. If such an outburst had happened, it's the rude individual that would've probably never attempted it again ;P.
Have faith, people are neither that frail nor cruel.

Vestin: Your guess is pretty accurate: flat-chested, lazy-eyed, poor taste in makeup, 6ft tall, fond of combat boots, shy as hell...
In my defense - I've seen plenty of significantly prettier girls before and since... Also - being a roommate can be kinda desensitizing ;P.

Vestin: Yeah, I like to call this "Sagittarian beauty" - it's all in the smile, the motion, the gestures and... "joie de vivre".
Then again - I'm fairly certain the novelty of her even mentioning the game as a conversation piece was enough to spark attention.

Vestin: I've spent most of my life among women, I can confirm this observation... Although they do tend to be more gentle towards men ;P.

Vestin: That's nothing: my grandma used to criticize my mom for carrying AN MP3 PLAYER everywhere; it's allegedly "unbecoming" and not "acting her age".

Vestin: Of course it doesn't. Fortunately - having been constructed in the first place, it means is that they can be CHANGED.

Profanity: Oh hey, I accidentally hit the feminism button.

Anyway, this just circles back to the unspecificness of the article. There's so much conjecture in this thread, including mine which I somehow tried to base on logic. All the questions could be easily answered if they just say how many play what games and on what devices, it's that simple, then we'd know for sure what's really up. Now you write all these numbers again, as many other people, and I'm supposed to believe these ones?

1) Obviously the women in your example know what's up. Everyone knows that there are women who are just as much as gamers as men. Both this answer and question mean nothing. I can create an opposite example, that would mean nothing either.

2) Verbal online abuse is expected because loads of gamers are immature as fuck. You're not gonna speed up their maturity, so the only thing women can do on this point is realize that just as not all women are casuals - not all gamer dudes are dicks or white knights. Especially now that gaming is a cool thing to do. And the current most popular "feminism" (yeah, the non quotation mark feminism is long gone from the mainstream society) like to concern itself with games, it wants and sometimes does censor creative process. People can not like stuff, they can say why they're against it, but when they start fucking with how the game is being made with the threat of a PR tsunami of bandwagoning shitholes - then I have problem. I have nothing against real feminism where women are actually being opressed (middle east would be an example), I have something against the ones that think equality means dominance on their part.

3) Of course you'd do something about it, but what's the point of this question? Are you trying to pull some sort of weird move where if they think this is bad they should suddenly agree with you on other points or they're bad people? All kinds of people get nasty remarks, not only women.

EDIT: my gremmer is brkn

Momo1991: Hey guys and gals, older female here and mother to a gamer guy in his 20's - and well I'm not a hard-core gamer chick but let's put that aside for a second. I'm a human being as are all of you. Stereotyping, categorizing, pigeon-holing or whatever label the media or big business uses does NOT take away our basic humanity. Right?

We all feel real feelings, we all long to connect, we all love to play and recreate in many forms. We enjoy pleasure whether that comes from food, drink, entertainment or other human beings. Right?

So why are you having this argument? Who the eff really cares whether more males love FPS and females love casual puzzle games except those with a reason to gain our hard earned cash? Right?

Ultimately I don't give a crap that games use female genres that might not reflect the full range of being female. IT IS A GAME...srsly. Those that take exception need to go live in countries where women do NOT have any semblance of freedom and take their swords and words into action helping real, live women instead of tilting at windmills in the gaming industry.

But that being said, I have actually encountered misogyny and been paid less, been treated as less, been promoted less as a result of being female through-out my work career. So while I recognize that my personal battles are real and valid, I also recognize that many, many women have it far worse than I do. Gah, my friend in the middle-east - I don't even like to think of the daily oppression she faces - and oh my dear lord, she faces it cheerfully even as she tries to change it and daily risks her life to do the work she feels she was called to do as a human being...

When, when, when are we going to let go of our genetic conditioning that kept us alive millennium ago with tribal affiliation and evolve into a global community of human beings that accept that EVERY single "person" has value to our community?

When are we going to unstop our ears and simply listen to another human being's point without judgment, without recrimination, without a filter of country, color, sex?

I, as a mother, as a female, as a human being ask each of you goglodytes to stop for a minute each time someone posts a comment and ask yourself how you'd respond if you personally had said that comment - take it to heart, see it from that viewpoint, hear it's message and then and only then, respond. Imagine the person posting was you - how would you like to be responded to?

We're each of us human beings at the end of this line -it may be an ephemeral connection but it is very effing real and each of us is very real... consider that when you post, consider that when you go to work and have to dictate to others, consider that when you eat a meal in a restaurant with someone serving you, consider that when you drive your car on the road, consider that....it's you you are treating and acting towards...human, fellow human. All other considerations fall aside in that equation....

soapbox free (so sayeth the Momo ;-p)

Darling_Jimmy: 3. Your baseless assertions are annoying as fuck so I dug up this survey from 2009 which claims 58% of casual gamers, 25% of shooters and 37% RPGers are female (of the people surveyed "the primary race is white, and the dominant age break is persons 25 to 54.") How is that useful? What are the "clear decisions" you intend to make with those stats rather than the detailed and individualized data collected from user accounts?