Thanks and I'm in because I know you will turn violent otherwise! :)
In for $5.99 game.

EDIT: Thanks you LinustheBold for nominating me, I shall happily accept this and if I should win, LinustheBold shall win with me so it's a collateral alliance now, spanning one ocean.

Q1. What are you top 3 favourite game genres and why?

1.) Combat strategy games:

Strategy games where the focus is on combat. Preferably squad level and preferably turn based but I also like real time or hybrid style strategy games. Army level and grand strategy are also fun but I like getting a little bit more down and personal with individual units and little or if possible no losses on my side which is practically impossible in larger scale strategy games.

2.) Build & conquer / build & manage games

Includes peaceful games like Sim City and Transport Tycoon but also Caesar, Settlers and Anno series. There's only one thing all these games have in common: You build and manage more than you fight and they're criminally addictive. In many ways, building & economy are way more fun than destroying and war, the reason why I listed combat strategy games as my favorite genre is because they're more streamlined which is good when you don't have dozens of hours of playtime.
I also enjoy pure managerial sims and will play anything no matter how wacky the scenario is. The weirdest game I've played recently was Sim Brothel, a freeware online flash game where you manage a brothel, employing characters like princess Zelda or Aeries from Final Fantasy as prostitutes. The graphics are quite ridiculously retarded (unless you like lolicon hentai which I hope no sane adult does), but the gameplay is surprisingly well balanced. I finished the game on the highest difficulty which surprised me because I only tried the game for lolz, expecting nothing. Never judge a book by its cover. Yes the pictures are horrible and there's no sound but the game mechanics are really well done, plus the theme of the game is so unusual that you almost have to play it.

3.) Point & Click adventure games

I hate this genre. I love this genre. I could write entire books about how much I hate and how much I love this genre! Most of these games are awkwardly designed and mostly rudimentary in terms of gameplay options but somehow it’s fun and better than a movie. When I played Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, I was completely enthralled and when I saw the movie many years later, I was rather underwhelmed. The game was a more exciting experience and so much more immersive.
This year, I've played mostly point & click adventure games because they can be finished in a reasonable amount of time and the controls are easy to remember, usually it’s just left click to interact and right click to look at things.

I've played a couple strategy games this year (e.g. Cossacks, Dark Reign) but have only finished Stronghold Crusader. These kinda games take up more time than I can spare, Stronghold Crusader has 80 missions and it's quite impossible to plow your way through this in a weekend. Fortunately, it was around New Years time when I got around to playing that game. I recently bought Hearts of Iron 3 and have absolutely no idea where I will take the time to play that from.
I’m currently playing the newly added Halfway and had a great time with this game so far, almost finished and will post an in-depth review this weekend providing I find the time to finish the game. I’ve been working on a detailed review since last Friday. But don't wait for my review: Buy the game now while it's on discount!

Q2. What are you top 3 worst game genres and why? (I'm interested to hear the ladies answer to this as well.)

1.) A.D.D. (attention deficiency disorder) games aka Jump & Run, Run & Gun, Platformers, Shoot em Ups…all the same to me. As a little kid any and all games fascinated me but I can’t see myself playing any of that stuff anymore.
Exceptions: Shinobi, Raptor Call of the Shadows, Abuse

2.) Sports games: seriously, why would you want to play that? Who on Earth buys all that EA sports rehashed crap every year??? Go outside and play some real sports, with real people!
Exception: Ski or Die. I grew up in a ski resort and have real life experience with skiing and snowball fights etc and I fully approve of this game. It’s a pure delight.

3.) Racing games: Boring. Even Carmageddon.
Exceptions: Stunts aka 4D Sports Driving (my all-time favorite), P.O.D. (it’s a trip)

Q3. If you enjoy playing as a woman in games, what is it about playing as a woman that appeals to you?

Most of the time I don’t care about gender but it depends on the game:

-RPGs: I mostly choose based on stats and skills and have no clear preference as to gender. If I want one of my characters to class change into a valkyrie in Wizardry, obviously the character must be female so it’s not just a cosmetic choice. In Sacred Gold on the other hand I chose the vampire lady because I liked her hair.
Species and race do play a part, for orcs and trolls and gnomes etc I can’t quite imagine playing as a female but for races like vampires and elves, I’d rather play as a female. Reason being that I don’t find the ‘pretty boy but badass’ cliché very convincing and I’ll happily leave the Legolas and Edward Cullen appreciation to teenage girls.
I try to avoid creepy sleazy “audition porn” decisions aka hoping that my usually male main character will be getting some. Unless it’s Viconia from BG2 whom I added to my party not for her good skills as a cleric but because she’s the best looking person in the Realm. And I like her hair (yet again). But she didn’t like my main character so that didn’t work out, if I ever play BG2 again it will be as a chaotic neutral character instead of lawful good but on a first playthrough lawful good is an obvious choice because the majority of quests in most games give you more rewards for being good rather than evil.

-TPP Action games: Watching Lara wiggle around from ledge to ledge and making cute sounds is just too adorable, I can’t imagine this being fun with a male character. Assassin’s Creed? Meh…

-Beat em Ups: I usually pick whichever female character looks the nicest but by nice I don’t mean skimpily dressed in ludicrous Dead or Alive fashion. My favorite is Hildegard from Soul Calibur, a properly clad fighter who can kick all those bimbos out of the ring.

-Adventure games: I don’t care what gender the playable characters are as long as they are interesting. I couldn’t care less about April Ryan from Longest Journey but liked Kate Walker from Syberia, she just felt more convincing and sensitively written.

-FPS: Cate Archer, end of discussion. No H.A.R.M. shall befall her!

Awesome, I'm in!

. . .

Kidding ;D Hermaphrodite I am not~ 3. I generally don't enjoy Tower Defense games. I say "generally" because Defender's Quest is pretty fun :D

2. MMO's. Sure they're a lot of fun, but they suck the life right out of you. Dangerous, that's what they are! They're like the Dementors of gameplay!

1. The so-called "Free" to Play games that are actually Pay-to-Win. Yeah, having cool things that you can buy to enhance your game-playing experience is great... but only if it's NOT going to affect your chances whilst playing the game >_<

I enjoy some women in gaming. And I also love writing with female protagonists. There's a few reasons why, though I'm sure the reasons are more complex than I even know.

Some technical/gameplay reasons:

- Usually women are faster in fighting games. I've played many fighting games where you can just perform better as some of the female characters than the men.
- Usually are usually smaller. In Guild Wars, I selected a female for any non-tank class. They are smaller and more difficult to click on. I had a bear in Guild Wars for my ranger character and I would sometimes hide right behind or in my bear. The only way to select me was to tab over to me.


Some story reasons:
- Women are more "frail" than men; or, at least, that is how they can often be perceived. So if a woman rises to the occasion, it can be more emotionally triumpant than a male counterpart. For instance, Lara Croft would not work as a man. He'd just be a whiny nobody b/c we expect our male heroes to already by Navy SEALs. I think many men and women believe this lie until they live some life. From my experience, men and women are both badasses in their own ways -- and sometimes in the same ways. But sometimes perception is more important than reality.

- Women stories almost always have more attention given to them. I just see better female characters, in general. For instance, in Dragon Age: Origins, I wanted to play the elf rogue male. His origin story, so I read in the manual, was that his newly minted wife was stolen from her for some Prima Nocturne activities. He's made about it and rushes in to save her. Lame. Cliche. The female version was that she's kidnapped, so she rips the throat out of her kidnappers and everyone he ever knew or cared about while rescuing her friends in the process. Better story? I think so. So I chose to play a female there.


But when all things are equal, I tend to play my gender. If there's a story element or a technical element, however, then I choose what sounds more interesting or more fun.


(not in by the way)

Enebias seems to share your sentiment, though I don't know why. You two make it sound like I break legs if people don't accept gifts ;-).

SS: Psssht. This place is sausage festival.
TW: Oh! Like that one time in Vienna.
SS: No. That was actual sausage festival.

Not in. :)

There's always a fake moustache ;-).

I'm in for the smaller prize and nominate BillyMaysFan59 as my second!

Q1. What are you top 3 favourite game genres and why?

Adventures, RPGs. Two genres. I can't justify adding a third one to my favorites. I grew up on adventure games and RPGs (also tabletop RPGs) so they're what I know and do best.

Q2. What are you top 3 worst game genres and why? (I'm interested to hear the ladies answer to this as well.)

Sports (includes racing) because I just have no interest in sports in general. I don't watch football, basketball, baseball, soccer, NASCAR or whatever. They bore me to death. Tower defense and similar time-wasters (including farm sims,
"social" games etc) because I find no point it them. MMOs because I have no time to grind forever and go on repetitive quests/raids with no real objective or ending in sight.

Q3. If you enjoy playing as a woman in games, what is it about playing as a woman that appeals to you?

I prefer playing as a woman. There are a few exceptions, for example Borderlands 2. But usually when there's a choice, I usually choose to play a female character. I can't exactly explain why. I've been doing it since forever and it is now simply a habit. Perhaps it helps me to further remove myself from my real persona and immerse completely in a different role? Who knows. I don't! :D

You are too generous...not in.

I have 0 desire for a slumber party with a bunch of sweaty dudes...

Not even if there's popcorn? :-)

Q3: That is an interesting question. In playing Alien Shooter, I take the lady because she is superior to the man. The man gets more strength (carrying capacity) and hit points but the woman moves faster and is more accurate doing more damage. In that game, HP is less useful because if you get overwhelmed you die, no matter what your life.

When I played WoW, my main character was a woman. This came about because I looked at the various rogue avatars and thought about it in a role-play way. I was looking for a character that fit the role of a successful rogue and decided I didn't want the type of character one would avoid (like most rogue archetypes). You see an ugly guy with a scar on his face wearing a cloak, do you let this guy get close enough to pick your pocket? So I picked a female dwarf. For the record, when people describe the typical sexy female avatars, the WoW female dwarf was anything but. It was an interesting experience. I played the character for years and some people definitely thought I was a woman, maybe because I also had a female alt. I don't recall enduring many sexist insults at all, despite playing the game for a few years, maybe the subscription fee kept most of the jerks away.

I'm in. I'll decide what level later.

Thanks - I am in for the $5.99 game, and I'd like to nominate awalterj as well.

Q1. - Fave game types?

I love RPGs, though at this point in my life I hardly ever have time to play them. I'm sad about that, because I love to lose myself in these great grand worlds that devs have made up, and I always feel like the more detail there is the more I'm engaged in the game. I've always had a hit-or-miss relationship with the Elder Scrolls games, for example, but the reason I'm always willing to let them slide is simple: SO MUCH LORE, and so many books. It makes it easy to immerse.

Same goes for turn-based strategy games: I like to ponder, and build, and refine, and gear up for war (though I generally don't like actually going to war, I like it best when the game lets me threaten - actual war always messes up too much stuff). If only my job involved going for long walks, reading interesting books, seeing great films, and playing complex computer games. But I think that job is called "being born rich," and I can't get anyone to read my application for it.

And then there's the point and click adventure. That's where I started in the big-game computer world, back in the Cretaceous Era of PC Gaming, with King's Quest 3.

Edit to Add: And roguelikes. How could I leave out roguelikes? My very first ever game - not counting Adventure on the UNIX VAX at college, and I didn't get very far with that one but IT WAS SO COOL - was Rogue, which soon became Hack, which later became NetHack. I've probably sunk an actual lifetime into Hack, NetHack, ADOM, and some of the others. At times I've been very good friends with my ghost files.

Q2. - Icky game types?

I don't do sports games. I don't do driving games, including flight simulators (but excepting space shooters, which are more like shooters than they are simulators). I don't do platform games which involve a lot of speedy jumping, and I'm automatically suspicious of any platformer that has gold coins hanging in the air above the platforms. The furthest I willingly go in that direction is to, say, Braid, or Oddworld. I sometimes try a few new ones, to see if I've gotten interested in my dotage, but nah. Also, I suck at them.

Basically, when I was a kid there were no computer games of any kind. So I didn't grow up with fond memories of Gameboys or SNES systems or whatnot. Hint: my family's first TV was black and white. Without the nostalgia to power my interest, I never really got the bug for jumpy console stuff.

Q3. - If a woman, why a woman?

I often do. Not exclusively, but often enough. In games I play more than once, I generally switch. In serious - ahem, "serious" - RPGs I rarely play a woman, because I'm usually playing as an extension of myself (not that it makes a difference in gaming, but if I'm going to identify I'm going to identify, I guess). I both like and find it odd that games make no general difference between the sexes, though I certainly understand why - the biggest factor, I think, is the amount of work it would take to make a meaningful sex inflection in gameplay (and I'm not even sure exactly what that would be in the end).

In general I rarely play a fighter or tank - I'm not that interested in physical combat per se, and I'd rather do magic (and stay away from religion) if I'm in a gaming mood. I favor elves over dwarves, and I ride the median on character sex.

For a current example: I'm past halfway through, I think, on my first play-through of Borderlands, and I'm playing the Siren character: coming to the game cold, she looked like the most interesting character by far. I renamed her, of course (Maserati), but she caught my eye right away.

I'm a guy....... and I'll just go in for the $5.99 prize. For my second I will nominate Ragnarblackmane. Thank you very much for the giveaway. +1

Here are 3 of my favorite game genres, in no order: (there are others I like as well :)

Racing
Or just any game where you drive a fast car. I've always had a sweet tooth for fast paced racing/driving games, and a few of my favorites (so far) are Monster Truck Madness, Pod Gold, Re-Volt and Moto Racer.

Turn-based Strategy
I actually prefer this over real-time strategy (however there are some RTS games that I enjoy a lot) because it just seems more easy-going to me. It gives me time to think strategically and plan out my next move. My top 2 favorites from this genre are Battle for Wesnoth and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Just one more turn!

Platformer
I mainly like platform games with action/puzzle elements in them. A few examples would be Jetpack, Commander Keen, and Abuse. Terraria also deserves mention because it mixes action-platformer goodness with Minecraft, and I find it hard to put down when I'm playing :D

It could have been the cost, or the type of game, or that you just ran into the majority of nice gamers. It tends to be the more testosterone filled games or male dominated games that bring out the insults. From what I have seen of WoW (I have never actually played it), it doesn't look like a fast paced, action packed game, more of a play at your own pace and enjoy game. It also seemed to have had a nice mix of male and female players.

Also, "I take the lady because she is superior to the man", I couldn't have said it better myself ;-). But seriously, thank you for the answer, I like that for many guys the answer it's not just "something pretty to look at".

I´m in, thank you for the giveaway. In order they are: adventure, terror and fighting. I always adventures, they are exciting. About terror, what can i say? Silent Hill made a mark in my life, too bad the saga changed so bad. In the case of the fighting games, they were the frst class of games i play, but i´m horrible bad xD.