It's 2008, and despite the advances in the world, I am still a rarity. I am a female gamer. I know I'm not the only one out there, but we certainly are few and far between. And I'm not just a female gamer, but a 30-something, married, mother of two, owner of my own business female gamer. Yes, I am old enough to technically be the mother of many of the players out there these days, I don't have to rely on my parents to pay for my online game subscriptions, and yes, I remember the days of 1200-baud modems, BBSs and monochrome monitors. But does that mean I enjoy my gaming any less than the average male player? Heck, no.
I do know many other female gamers. Generally, it was their significant other (male) who turned them on to gaming in the first place, and they game together, especially in games conducive to group gaming, such as World of Warcraft. While my husband is in fact a gamer, he's more of a console gamer, preferring first-person shooters (FPS) and such, I am more of a PC gamer, sticking with role-playing games (RPG) or real-time strategy (RTS) games. My husband finds the repetitive nature of the RPGs tedious, while the FPS games make me nauseous. This is no problem, since we have hardware and bandwidth in our house to meet everyone's needs.
When we went to Hawaii in 2000, we bought Nintendo Gameboys so we could pass the time on our 9+ hour flight each way. We were full-grown adults playing Pokemon, got a problem with that? (Gotta catch 'em all!)
Okay, I do have to admit that it was an old college boyfriend of mine that got me into gaming in the first place, but that was because I had never had a computer or console of my own. The first game I really played and loved was Final Fantasy on the original Nintendo system. I was hooked. Though that boyfriend is long gone, my love of gaming just grew. I bought a television and the Playstation system in 1997 specifically because Final Fantasy VII was only being made for the Playstation, and I didn't actually own a television. I have owned, played, and won every game ever made by Blizzard Entertainment. (Yes, even Lost Vikings!)
My game of choice these days is Blizzard's massively-multiplayer online RPG World of Warcraft. All of the characters I've made for the game have been female, and I have no desire to create male characters, that's just me. Because female gamers are so few and far between on the servers, people generally think I'm male, even even though my characters are female. The topic generally doesn't come up, and I don't advertise the subject either. Only if someone refers to me as a guy will I let them know nicely, that in fact, I'm a woman. There are the occasional few who don't believe me, but they don't press the subject after I offer to describe the labor and delivery of my two children as proof of my gender.
Why aren't there more female gamers out there? I think that many women see computer games as the realm of children and men. It could also be that women who aren't computer savvy are intimidated by the idea of video games and of interacting with the system or console. Some women just aren't into the carnage displayed in a good fraction of the games out there, which explains the attraction of many women to The Sims franchise.
Women are the backbone of many online communities, and enjoy the camraderie available in online groups, so its only natural to extend those relationships to online games whose mechanisms support these interactions. Yes, gaming can be a time sink, and perhaps women don't think they have the time to devote to learning and playing games. I've found a way to work gaming into the rest of the activities in my life, and I feel that gaming keeps my mind working in ways that other hobbies or activities just can't match. My life just wouldn't be complete without computer games.
By S. Kristoff | VEESH Writer | APR.03.08