Yeah, I think this failure to equally invest in girly games comes in large part from the fact that women are expected to be comfortable partaking in things considered masculine, and men are expected to be uncomfortable partaking in things considered feminine. Feminist theorist Julia Serrano talked about parts of this where because masculinity is regarded more positively violations of gendered expectations are seen as less bad when it’s women embracing masculinity. This of course is also because of many years of hard fighting for women to be permitted these things, but as she notes things associated with femininity are seen as frivolous, tainted by their association with women. Thus she posited that a necessary step towards gender equality is the fight for feminine things to be seen as valuable and acceptable for men to want without a status hit. Sorry for bringing theory into this, but your comment really drew to mind her ideas.
And yeah I was in college during gamergate, where being a woman who games on console/pc went from bad but seemingly improving to so much worse. It led to me and my friends regardless of gender generally stopping using the term gamer to describe ourselves and avoiding “gaming” spaces for the most part.
And yeah I love some fpses. Me and my then gf used to play overwatch together, it was toxic but overwatch was popular enough with women and moderated enough it didn’t get that bad (unlike valorant). Personally I prefer them to be campaigny and story focused: Halo (the good ones) of course remains a classic, ths Borderlands series has consumed far too much of my life, and I bonded with my sister as I played bioshock as a teenager. Make something like mass effect but an fps and most of the women I know that game will be all over that shit.
And yeah, I mostly play indies, I’m loving Fields of Mistria (it’s kinda like stardew), I’ve sank a concerning number of hours into Binding of Isaac, anything by Supergiant (Bastion, Transistor, Hades, etc) is an insta buy for me, Rogue Legacy 2 is criminally underrated, Gris was the perfect game to play by candlelight… Really I just like my games having art in their design and writing as well as roguelikes. And I know a lot of women with similar tastes to me.
In general though I avoid competitive gaming unless playing with friends, because I’m not very good and the toxicity is so horrendous.
To add a wrinkle here I am not that competitive emotionally, I appreciate competitive multiplayer games because of the magic that happens when two humans (or even more fun two teams of humans) are interacting through a dynamic system.
Singleplayer and co-op games are awesome, my mind just loves the loop of pulling a clever trick on someone and then being forced to react to the response they choose to catch me off guard…and seeing how that evolves and continually challenges my mind to reframe things, that is the addictive part to me and NPCs/AI doesn’t really bring that to the table without a ton of human artistry in the game design (one of the reasons Halo 1-3 or Half Life 2 are considered some of the best singleplayer fps games, it ain’t easy to make that…).
What I want from a competitive FPS is not to be the best player, it is to play an FPS where when I lose I feel like it is because my awareness wasn’t correctly oriented or that I made an incorrect choice and when I win it was because I genuinely out played the other team not just found a narrow exploit I could repeat over and over again. This is really the same reason people like really good singleplayer games like Slay The Spire or Monster Train in a way right?
I say that though to underline that I don’t have the mental profile of a stereotypical “competitive gamer” and that the toxicity of competitive gaming environments turns me off, both when people lose sight they are doing something joyful together and when they are just plain mean to other people about trivial things such as making a noob mistake or they are sexist, racist or hateful in another way. I don’t play virtually any “popular” competitive video games for these reasons, I stick to smaller indie games with fanbases that are very good at playing competitively but are generally excited about new players no matter how much they fumble around.
The narrowness of environments dominated by manifestations of toxic masculinity bring us all down and it results in warped pictures of even the people that supposedly “fit in”.
Overwatch tangent. There are several flanking characters who though a mix of stealth or mobility take detours around the main traffic of the stage in order to initiate from a less expected angle.
Sometimes this means two characters from opposing teams unexpectedly run into each other off the beaten path. Often times they duke it out. Others…they will silently crouch at each other from a distance to negotiate armistice, slowly approach each other, squat and jump a few times to be silly, then continue on their merry way. From that moment on there is established understanding that you only kill each other when protecting someone else on your team.
The real awkward moment is when you have negotiated a truce and then someone from your team crashes the back room party only to waste your new secret friend. Rude.
Yeah, I think this failure to equally invest in girly games comes in large part from the fact that women are expected to be comfortable partaking in things considered masculine, and men are expected to be uncomfortable partaking in things considered feminine. Feminist theorist Julia Serrano talked about parts of this where because masculinity is regarded more positively violations of gendered expectations are seen as less bad when it’s women embracing masculinity. This of course is also because of many years of hard fighting for women to be permitted these things, but as she notes things associated with femininity are seen as frivolous, tainted by their association with women. Thus she posited that a necessary step towards gender equality is the fight for feminine things to be seen as valuable and acceptable for men to want without a status hit. Sorry for bringing theory into this, but your comment really drew to mind her ideas.
And yeah I was in college during gamergate, where being a woman who games on console/pc went from bad but seemingly improving to so much worse. It led to me and my friends regardless of gender generally stopping using the term gamer to describe ourselves and avoiding “gaming” spaces for the most part.
And yeah I love some fpses. Me and my then gf used to play overwatch together, it was toxic but overwatch was popular enough with women and moderated enough it didn’t get that bad (unlike valorant). Personally I prefer them to be campaigny and story focused: Halo (the good ones) of course remains a classic, ths Borderlands series has consumed far too much of my life, and I bonded with my sister as I played bioshock as a teenager. Make something like mass effect but an fps and most of the women I know that game will be all over that shit.
And yeah, I mostly play indies, I’m loving Fields of Mistria (it’s kinda like stardew), I’ve sank a concerning number of hours into Binding of Isaac, anything by Supergiant (Bastion, Transistor, Hades, etc) is an insta buy for me, Rogue Legacy 2 is criminally underrated, Gris was the perfect game to play by candlelight… Really I just like my games having art in their design and writing as well as roguelikes. And I know a lot of women with similar tastes to me.
In general though I avoid competitive gaming unless playing with friends, because I’m not very good and the toxicity is so horrendous.
Awesome response!
To add a wrinkle here I am not that competitive emotionally, I appreciate competitive multiplayer games because of the magic that happens when two humans (or even more fun two teams of humans) are interacting through a dynamic system.
Singleplayer and co-op games are awesome, my mind just loves the loop of pulling a clever trick on someone and then being forced to react to the response they choose to catch me off guard…and seeing how that evolves and continually challenges my mind to reframe things, that is the addictive part to me and NPCs/AI doesn’t really bring that to the table without a ton of human artistry in the game design (one of the reasons Halo 1-3 or Half Life 2 are considered some of the best singleplayer fps games, it ain’t easy to make that…).
What I want from a competitive FPS is not to be the best player, it is to play an FPS where when I lose I feel like it is because my awareness wasn’t correctly oriented or that I made an incorrect choice and when I win it was because I genuinely out played the other team not just found a narrow exploit I could repeat over and over again. This is really the same reason people like really good singleplayer games like Slay The Spire or Monster Train in a way right?
I say that though to underline that I don’t have the mental profile of a stereotypical “competitive gamer” and that the toxicity of competitive gaming environments turns me off, both when people lose sight they are doing something joyful together and when they are just plain mean to other people about trivial things such as making a noob mistake or they are sexist, racist or hateful in another way. I don’t play virtually any “popular” competitive video games for these reasons, I stick to smaller indie games with fanbases that are very good at playing competitively but are generally excited about new players no matter how much they fumble around.
The narrowness of environments dominated by manifestations of toxic masculinity bring us all down and it results in warped pictures of even the people that supposedly “fit in”.
Overwatch tangent. There are several flanking characters who though a mix of stealth or mobility take detours around the main traffic of the stage in order to initiate from a less expected angle.
Sometimes this means two characters from opposing teams unexpectedly run into each other off the beaten path. Often times they duke it out. Others…they will silently crouch at each other from a distance to negotiate armistice, slowly approach each other, squat and jump a few times to be silly, then continue on their merry way. From that moment on there is established understanding that you only kill each other when protecting someone else on your team.
The real awkward moment is when you have negotiated a truce and then someone from your team crashes the back room party only to waste your new secret friend. Rude.