So, tell me

[Freya.9075]

Oh my. I am glad I don’t enjoy those kind of games then. Seems we still have ways to go when it comes to acceptance in those kind of games. Makes me appreciate gw2 even more

[Farohna.6247]

5 minutes ago, Freya.9075 said:

Oh my. I am glad I don’t enjoy those kind of games then. Seems we still have ways to go when it comes to acceptance in those kind of games. Makes me appreciate gw2 even more

It truly does make one appreciate it more.  Can't say I've had negative experiences, just more humorous, and only when using voice chat.  Haven't had any issues in GW2, other than one person who finds my charr cute and flirts humorously with her *shrug*.  Whatever knits your mittens.  

I have seen male players mock other males for having a female character, but not in GW2.  They just shrug and play what they like, as it should be, and it goes no where.  Which brings us back to the original point of this thread.  Play what you like, ditch the rude people, keep real life to yourself, and have fun.

[Teratus.2859]

2 hours ago, Batel.9206 said:

😂

Well, that was a hilarious bunch of really sexist assumptions, but you still didn't answer my question as to why on earth this is even a problem. So what somebody calls you "dude" or "he" in casual conversation? Chances are you will never encounter that player again and they'll forget about you in the next five minutes. Big deal. Get over it.

Not to mention they overlooked how commonly words like "dude" and guys" are used gender neutrally.
Hell I've seen completely female groups saying things like "what's up guys"

3 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Almost half of the video game population is female, and it's arrogant of males to think this was "their domain."

And in regards to this segment specifically.. that's because for a long time it WAS!! their domain.
Girls have never been excluded from gaming spaces, quite the opposite in fact.. and creepily so in many cases as you yourself even acknowledge.

But for a long time gaming was publicly, almost exclusively a male space, and in regards to the "nearly half of all gamers are women" statistic, a big part of that is because many modern studies into that included a lot of games and areas of the market that a big majority of mostly male gamers don't consider part of real gaming.
Mobile Games, Social Media games like farming sims and things like that, games that have a heavy female playerbase and are largely ignored and disregarded by mainstream gamers.

So no it's not "arrogant" in the slightest for younger boys to still think that gaming is a majority male space because even to this day they rarely ever encounter a known female gamer in many of the mainstream AAA titles they like to play, nor do they know many if any girls in their social circles that have any kind of interest in video games.

That doesn't mean there are no young female gamers, there obviously are, nor does it mean that female gamers don't play those kinds of mainstream games, many of them do, but even within the group that do an even smaller portion of them actually care nor feel the need to announce it and the ones who do yes occasionally get some hazing about it or creepy behaviour aimed their way.
And frankly there is nothing more amusing in those situations than seeing a female gamer give as good as she gets back to those players, often leaving them dumbfounded and flabbergasted because they didn't expect it.

It's hilarious to witness and almost always met with cheers and laughter from other guys in the game because guys love to banter, it's how they bond and build friendships, and they love it when female gamers join in on the banter and keep the fun going.

But as far as the genuine creepo white knight types go.. yeah nobody likes those kinds of gamers at all.

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, RadiantWolf.2058 said:

CS:GO is a nightmare if you go into voice chat with a feminine voice.

Indeed. You either play with a full team of friends or you use a voice morphing tool. Or you quit (which is what I did).

1 hour ago, RadiantWolf.2058 said:

But that seems slightly left of the topic of this thread.

True.

Conclusion: It's almost 2023 and it would be wonderful if gender no longer mattered, in a video game and in the real world, but unfortunately it still does. That's why I always like to make people aware when they are using the wrong gender when referring to me as a player. I think awareness, in both directions, is important.

It shouldn't matter what gender you are and what gender you prefer for your characters and why. But as long as people feel the need to voice their dismay due to things they are experiencing in the game, that's a solid sign that we still have a way to go to actually get there.

[Teratus.2859]

5 hours ago, Silent.6137 said:

I do expect people to address me in the pronoun according to the gender of my character. The same way I refer to them. I do not divulge my real gender, nor do I care what gender everyone else is.

Same, and that's been my experience through the entire Guildwars franchise.

Only people who know me refer to my OLN and real life gender pronoun.
But in game when talking with all the rando's I am always referred to either by my characters name or the pronoun of my characters gender.

This is to be expected, and is perfectly normal.

[MarkoGold.7126]

On 9/19/2022 at 9:59 AM, Sylvia.4870 said:

        By the six! It is  already 2022 and  almost 2023.  I can't believe there are still some people  who love to look down on anyone who plays  an opposite gender character in the game -  a woman plays  as  a male character and  a man plays  as  a female one. What is wrong with the case much , especially the second one? Since when did it trouble you , harass  your life? Since when did it matter so much? If I prefer creating  the  female characters  to the male ones  and see some outfits  are fitting to them, is that strange much? If you think I created the female ones in order to just look at their arses, act like a woman, be my guest. After all, I can't convince you nor control your thoughts. 

   

 

Play as a salad, everybody like salads.

[Mik.3401]

So, I tell you

[Danikat.8537]

9 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Not to mention they overlooked how commonly words like "dude" and guys" are used gender neutrally.
Hell I've seen completely female groups saying things like "what's up guys"

And in regards to this segment specifically.. that's because for a long time it WAS!! their domain.
Girls have never been excluded from gaming spaces, quite the opposite in fact.. and creepily so in many cases as you yourself even acknowledge.

But for a long time gaming was publicly, almost exclusively a male space, and in regards to the "nearly half of all gamers are women" statistic, a big part of that is because many modern studies into that included a lot of games and areas of the market that a big majority of mostly male gamers don't consider part of real gaming.
Mobile Games, Social Media games like farming sims and things like that, games that have a heavy female playerbase and are largely ignored and disregarded by mainstream gamers.

So no it's not "arrogant" in the slightest for younger boys to still think that gaming is a majority male space because even to this day they rarely ever encounter a known female gamer in many of the mainstream AAA titles they like to play, nor do they know many if any girls in their social circles that have any kind of interest in video games.

That doesn't mean there are no young female gamers, there obviously are, nor does it mean that female gamers don't play those kinds of mainstream games, many of them do, but even within the group that do an even smaller portion of them actually care nor feel the need to announce it and the ones who do yes occasionally get some hazing about it or creepy behaviour aimed their way.
And frankly there is nothing more amusing in those situations than seeing a female gamer give as good as she gets back to those players, often leaving them dumbfounded and flabbergasted because they didn't expect it.

It's hilarious to witness and almost always met with cheers and laughter from other guys in the game because guys love to banter, it's how they bond and build friendships, and they love it when female gamers join in on the banter and keep the fun going.

But as far as the genuine creepo white knight types go.. yeah nobody likes those kinds of gamers at all.

This is exactly the kind of behaviour we've been talking about in this thread.

Firstly strangers persistently (and usually awkwardly) flirting is not welcoming, if anything it's the opposite. They're acting as if you're not there to play the game, you're there for their enjoyment and what they want from you should take precedence over what you want to do. At best it makes talking tactics difficult and an actual conversation about the game impossible because they're constantly trying to derail it into dragging personal details out of you, making stupid and often irrelevant claims in an attempt to impress you or trying to get you into a private conversation. At worst it can be threatening because some of them will not stop and will get angry if they're met with even polite disinterest. There's no way to tell how it'll go when they start out (unless they assure you they're a nice guy, which almost guarantees they are not).

Secondly those kinds of self-reinforcing stereotypes are why women still have a problem being acknowledged in gaming spaces. Men don't believe women are gamers, therefore they dismiss evidence and try to insist women online should keep their identity secret, then use the effect of that dismissal (or the assumption that it's had an effect) to assert that the majority of gamers are still men and keep the cycle going.

But in case you're interested here's some actual research into the topic:

https://quanticfoundry.com/2017/02/09/theme-and-weapon/ - shows that theme and weapon choice is more important for women than men - we're more likely to play fantasy games with magical weapons than sci-fi or modern ones with guns, which leads to a lot of the apparent disparity in "real" gaming.
https://quanticfoundry.com/2018/08/01/casual-hardcore/ - Men and women have different interpretations of 'hardcore' or serious gaming, with women more likely to value completion, discovery and community and men more likely to value competition and challenge. It also goes on to point out that because the people determining the 'official' definitions are men they tend to use male-biased definitions which again skews the perception of what women like to do in games.

There's a lot more info on that site, and several other sites and companies that have done this research (thankfully about 20 years ago the industry began to realise that they were making a mistake by perpetuating the assumption that most gamers were men and it was costing them customers and since then there has been a shift, it's just taking longer to filter through to gamers.)

There's also this one, which pertains to the original topic: apparently about 1 in 3 men prefer playing female characters, and goes a bit into some of the reasons for that: https://quanticfoundry.com/2021/08/05/character-gender/

[lezbefriends.7516]

Nobody cares if you play a female anymore. The problem is, you HAVE to be a guy irl, or “down” with them, emulate them, if you don’t want to get snubbed.

[Teratus.2859]

On 9/22/2022 at 12:23 PM, Danikat.8537 said:

This is exactly the kind of behaviour we've been talking about in this thread.

I fail to see how anything I said could be considered "that kind of behaviour"

I hope you were not implying I was condoning the creepy, pervy behaviour that some gamers indulge in, because I clearly stated the opposite.
I have utterly no tolerance for that kind of behaviour, it disgusts me.

On 9/22/2022 at 12:23 PM, Danikat.8537 said:

Secondly those kinds of self-reinforcing stereotypes are why women still have a problem being acknowledged in gaming spaces. Men don't believe women are gamers, therefore they dismiss evidence and try to insist women online should keep their identity secret, then use the effect of that dismissal (or the assumption that it's had an effect) to assert that the majority of gamers are still men and keep the cycle going.

You are presuming a lot in a pretty sexist tone here.

A significant amount of men know there are a lot of female games out there, especially today and the vast majority of them love that there are.
Hell back when I was young, girl gamers were almost mythical creatures that guys only ever heard existed but never encountered.

I have never known a single gamer guy both growing up and as an adult who didn't desire a girlfriend/partner who also loved gaming.
So this idea that "men" don't want women in gaming is nothing but a popular lie and it always has been.

And the amount of creepy white knight types who do give women unwanted attention in gaming is even more evidence of everything I just said.
Again not condoning their behaviour in the slightest, but you can't sit there and say things like men don't want women in gaming and then use those kinds of men as proof of it when their absolutely inapropriate behaviour, as well as their obvious inability to converse with the opposite gender, is clear evidence to the contrary.

The whole thing that gaming has mainly been a guy space isn't an assumption based on some conspiracy to keep women out of gaming, it's a simple fact that it has been a guy space, and even today mainly is.
Even those arguing against the idea use statements like "almost half of gamers are women" which is a self defeating argument in itself.
The majority of gamers are men, that's just a fact.
Gaming has for a long time been primarily a guy space, again another fact.
Neither of those facts in any way exclude women from gaming nor serve as evidence that men don't want women in gaming.
And there are plenty of female gamers out there who love all the same kinds of games that guys do, even those that were specifically designed to cater to male gamers.

About the only thing you said that I can really agree with is that the industry made a mistake in ignoring that girls like video games too.
But like all things that was just a product of it's time, and back then there was cause to think that that female gamers were a minority, because they really were back then.
But that didn't stop any girls who wanted to play games from playing them and the only thing that really did were the parents of those girls..  the parents being the ones telling girls that "gaming isn't for girls" is no fault of gamers nor the industry, it's just poor parenting.
I grew up in the 80's with a sister who never cared much for video games, nor did any of her friends nor any of the girls I knew growing up.
In fact the only female gamer I knew until I was more or less an adult was my mother, who still games today for the record and is the main reason I was introduced to gaming in the first place.
And she doesn't believe in any of this gamers hate women nonsense either, nothing ever stopped her enjoying gaming, not then and not now either.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[Blue D Phoenix.7260]

On 9/22/2022 at 12:30 AM, Ashantara.8731 said:

Wow. Ever heard of gender awareness? No wonder the majority of pubescent boys who play computer games assume they are only playing with male teammates (and then start hitting on the women as soon as they spot one, which is super unpleasant).

Almost half of the video game population is female, and it's arrogant of males to think this was "their domain."

P.S. Only a man can say that this was not a problem, because he never had to use voice morphing tools to sound like a guy in order to be able to play specific genre games (like CS) in peace and be treated like an equal instead of being constantly harrassed one way or the other.

 

What you're saying is extremely sexist.

1. The first time video games came, both arcade games and indoor games were mostly played by boys, there were girls but very few of them. It wasn't opression, it just never became an interest to them. But as times changed and games became easily accessible, any person with interest played of any gender.

2. You're complaining that people assume you're a guy, but based on your previous post, you use male gender character and as any role playing game they only gendered as your character, not you. People called me she/her based on my char, it didnt bother me, why? cause im currently role playing as a cool female comm in a fantasy game.

3. No one stated this is not a problem in all video games only about this game(mmorpg), they should'nt be a problem in any RPGs (as its name), and there are problems in other types of games which involves voice chatting no ones denying that, but it is off topic to this.

 

Also don't give a permanent place in your mind for those people who harass/bully/catcall you, report it, spread its awareness, and ignore it.  

[Daniyyel.3428]

Been playing GW1/2  since 2005,  never once had an encounter in the game about the sex of my character.  Play both sexes also play different races.  No question about that either which would be equally as absurd. 

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by danielrjones.8759

[Cynder.2509]

Well, I'm male and I play male characters only. I thought that was weird since all guys usually play females. 
Well, playing anything else than male characters would make me uncomfortable and dysphoric though. 

[PhantomKitty.6520]

My SO, who plays other games on other platforms, makes female and male characters both.  It all mostly depends on the the asthetics for him mostly.  What he can and cannot handle looking at on any given game or what he just feels like playing on any given day.  Some game makers do better with the male characters and some do better with female characters, according to him.

The same could be said of me, though, I have more of a preference for female characters in any game that I play.  Of course, I'll do pre-research for outfits and things of that nature to see what looks good on what type of character's body, and almost always end up with a female anyway (I'm female, myself).  On games where I've been stuck with male characters?  Well, I deal with it and try to find cool things to kit them out with.  I also sometimes tend to make them a bit nerdy...since I like nerdy male characters...I don't know why, just do.

For both my SO and I, it's not just a "booty" thing...it's more a fashion wars thing, no matter what game we play.  Any game you play can be turned into "Fashion Wars" if you try hard enough.

[Silent.6137]

6 hours ago, danielrjones.8759 said:

Been playing GW1/2  since 2005,  never once had an encounter in the game about the sex of my character.  Play both sexes also play different races.  No question about that either which would be equally as absurd. 

 

The chances of encountering such behavior personally in GW2 will be very slim but it definitely exist.

-------

In smaller games, where you main just one character, many identify more closely with their character. I would suspect more players will choose their character based on their own gender. Smaller games, you get to know majority of the players especially the more prominent ones. Thus more likely to be personal feuds, stalkings, etc. Here, few will recognize your name unless you are in the same guild or often play the same game modes. Majority will be strangers to you. Hard to identify a particular person to hurl abuse when the person has 10 different characters with 10 different names, for example.

In GW2, where you have the options of creating multiple characters even with the F2P version, more people are liable to experiment with the various choices. A little more difficult to insult someone else on their choices when you also play different gender/race.

[abc.4918]

[Nevermind, I just need a break.]

Edited September 29, 2022 by abc.4918

[Lynx.9058]

Here I am a 36 year old,  6 foot tall,  195lb dude and my favorite character is the shortest asura female you can make... lol

Of course, my first character was an iron legion charr scrapper, and still one of my favorites (at least until they kill gyros in the great nerf...)

 

Edited September 24, 2022 by Lynx.9058

[Firebeard.1746]

There's this really old joke

MMORPG means:

Many

Men 

Online

Role

Playing

Girls

 

I mean I don't play opposite gender, but  don't judge. Generally men like watching female booty and online female characters are intentionally made to look sexy.

 

And for women, well unfortunately there's enough idiots who expect women to play girls that you get harassed if you play a female character, so it's just easier to play a dude

 

Play whatever brings you the most fun/peace, and don't be a creeper. 

[T G.7496]

Let it go.

Your life will be much better when you exclude certain people from it.

I'm a bloke, and more than half of my characters' preferred pronouns are she/her.

[Gibson.4036]

I’ve made a range of toons of both genders, purely as a creator envisioning different kinds of characters.

I realized over time, though, that I connect with them differently. I identify more closely with the male characters.

I still play the only female character I have left quite a bit, but I still kind of think of her as a character separate from myself.

My male characters, however, feel more like avatars of me.

[Teratus.2859]

On 9/24/2022 at 3:12 PM, Gibson.4036 said:

I’ve made a range of toons of both genders, purely as a creator envisioning different kinds of characters.

I still play the only female character I have left quite a bit, but I still kind of think of her as a character separate from myself.

Very much of similar mind to what is quoted here as well.

I also make male and female characters based on a vision of a character not an avatar of me.
10/24 of my characters are female, but all my characters I treat as individual's.

I don't RP or anything like that, give my characters big fleshed out backgrounds etc though I may dabble loosely with the concept to a minor degree if I have something I want to attach to that particular character but that usual doesn't extend past a family legacy or something.. such as in gw2 for example some of my human characters use the names (especially last names) of my Gw1 characters, which implies they are related but that's about it.
I also don't see my characters as a visual representation of me in a game either, I never connect with fictional characters on a personal level.. or see myself as that character in any way, that's probably why the idea of characters having to "represent me" in a video game in a very personal way just feels really out of place to me and pointless.

I don't have to relate to the character to enjoy their story.
And I never believe that any character in any story should be "more like me" for any reason..
I mean, we all play games to get away from reality right.. kinda defeats the point for me i'm just playing myself in a more appealing, fantastic world.. that would just make the real one I have to live in more depressing in my opinion. 

Edited September 26, 2022 by Teratus.2859