Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Male

265 (71.2%)

Female

22 (5.9%)

Dwarf Male

39 (10.5%)

Dwarf Female

4 (1.1%)

Goblin

42 (11.3%)

Total Members Voted: 372

Voting closed: October 29, 2010, 10:24:03 am

[Noble Digger]

Indeed, I've heard it said that much can be deduced of a man based on how he describes others.

Touché.

[KrunkSplein]

Man, what happened to everyone holding hands and celebrating as one?

Y'all suck 

Also, someone (can't be bothered to go back pages) mentioned their favorite pokemon and the adventures they shared.  I sincerely hope that's not gender-specific, because it's awesome.  Mine's not a Golem though, it's a Kadabra.  Also, I go to great lengths to keep track of my starting 7 dwarves, and give them better things than anyone who comes as a migrant.  Not really sure what that says about me, as I'm not sure how pervasive that particular trait is.

Oh, and LEGO are awesome.  Sometimes I go look at some of the megaprojects that people do, and then am saddened that I don't have the creativity needed to come up with one myself.

...what were we talking about?

[NW_Kohaku]

...what were we talking about?

We were talking about how games like Pokemon or Puzzle Pirates or even games like Oblivion are not gender-specific games.  They are examples of games females can get into easily without fear of the stigma of "nerdiness", and have more gender balance in their play audience because of it.

[DeKaFu]

I find all the mentions several pages back of girls like Sims and boys liking Dwarf Fortress to be hilarious, because I (female) actually got into the Sims via Dwarf Fortress. I read Boatmurdered, looked into the game, tried it and quit when I realized I'd need to spend a day reading the wiki to accomplish anything in it. But it left a gap in me, and I ended up trying a bunch of other games in search of one that would let me do the same things as DF with a better interface. I found designing the living quarters and trying to meet the dwarves' needs and keep them happy really compelling, so I was hoping the Sims would let me do the same stuff, but the amount of options in the Sims were really rather limiting, and having to babysit the people so they wouldn't ruin their lives got tiresome. I still go back to it sometimes though.
I think it was after a bunch of failed nethack that I decided to go ahead and read the DF wiki and install some graphics, and it really snagged me that time. I mean, full-day play sessions. It was beautiful.

I got into gaming in general via Pokemon. (Scyther is and always will be my main mon, but I'm also guilty of having stuff like Furret and Linoon on my team against the elite 4, just because they were on my team from the very beginning and I couldn't bring myself to let them go). Monsters in general are what tend to draw me to games, though I've branched out from that over the years. And by "monsters" I'm including the spectrum from Pokemon to Silent Hill 2. Extra points if the monster is you. Less humanoid the better.

I'd offer more stunning insight into female gamers as a whole, but I only know a handful of gamers of either gender, and we all play pretty much the same stuff. Except DF, they all treat me like I'm crazy for that. 

[chaoticag]

I'd offer more stunning insight into female gamers as a whole, but I only know a handful of gamers of either gender, and we all play pretty much the same stuff. Except DF, they all treat me like I'm crazy for that. 

Showing DF to my friends convinced them that graphics really do matter. As far as any differences between male gamers and female gamers, or males and females in general, I'd chalk it up to a large environmental cause, and a small genetic bit.

Hell, my sister enjoys playing the GTA games, as well as the sims, and introduced me to halo. She isn't as much of a gamer as she used to be, but her tastes were all over the place, and so are mine. It really were our brothers that influenced us to get into gaming, and I remember playing virtua cop with all my siblings.

[Kagus]

When I was into the Sims, I basically just played it to design really fancy houses with cool landscaping and tilework.  Later, I got into making comics for a short period.  I even went on to make a Star Trek parody that was well-received by at least three people.

But the Sims themselves?  Screw the useless bastards.  If they can't figure out for themselves that walking all the way across the plot to start grilling burgers when what they really needed to do was go to the toilet...  Yeah, I didn't want to deal with it.

I also didn't like how it kept realistic work hours and movement speeds when the day goes by at sixty times that of a real day.


And the expansion packs, don't get me started on the expansion packs...  Although I will admit, I soon found out that the key to victory in the Sims 1 was to get the Livin' Large expansion pack, construct a tiny hovel, and add Serv-O.  Done deal.

[chaoticag]

The original sims was programmed so that you had to baby sit them. The other sims games were programs so that you had to help them achieve their goals.

[Kagus]

Yes, but you still had to babysit the imbeciles if you wanted them to do anything other than sleep in the wrong beds and play that goddamn Sim-bingo thing all day long.


You know, I remember reading somewhere that the original Sims concept was for it to be an architectural simulator.


And am I the only person who designed impromptu theft prevention devices when a burglar shows up?  Like an incredibly long labyrinth constructed from picket fencing, forcing them to creep around in circles while the cops took their sweet time in getting there?

Just don't block them off completely.  They can teleport.

[Azzuro]

To contribute somewhat on the discussion on the distinction between male and female gamers, I think that the games that can draw both are those which have variable 'depth' to game play. To use Pokemon as an example, you can choose to IV-breed your pokes, spend hours looking up their best movesets, and spend even more time calculating the most optimal path to take through the main game. The importance here is that doing so is optional, that is, you can beat the game with a Skitty and Furret if you wished to(I once beat Silver with . In fact, for most Pokemon communities online, there exists a sharp divide between those who sperg over the competitive metagame and those who put up polls for "cutest pokemon". However, in Dwarf Fortress, it is necessary to read up on the arcane workings of supply chains and the maze of military menus to even consider having your fort survive for more than five years.

As an aside, I think the only sites on the Internet which have a fifty-fifty gender split would be social networking sites like Facebook, because they appeal to almost everyone.

[Beeskee]

I like Pokemon and The Sims too...  Even though I agree with ZP that The Sims is Evil.  Anyone remember the guinea pig?

Spoiler: The Guinea Pig (click to show/hide)

The Sims One: No Expansion packs. There are 5 objects in the game: The Bed, The Fridge, The Toilet, The Couch, and The TV. Your character moves in a little circle between these objects when not at work or asleep. Your sim earns just enough money at their shitty job to pay the bills that show up every 3 days. A masterful satire of the modern lifestyle.

So EA was like, "Hey we realize we released only a tiny fraction of a real game, so here's some free stuff. Like this guinea pig. It's cute and cuddly and your sims will get happy playing with it." What they didn't say was that it would bite your sims and they would get sick and die. And The Sims has only one saved game slot per house, kinda like DF. So I load my saved game which I've been playing for weeks, and my sims instantly die.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU--

On-Topic: I've seen gamers admit they are female in various games and it turned into a shitstorm of people hitting on them, asking for pictures, asking for sexual favors, or just generally going "Duurrrh GURL EQUALS BOOBIES!"  There are also a fair number of guys (or girls pretending to be guys) who get pissed at that kind of behavior.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Male.

[Doomshifter]

I put in goblin.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm actually a kobold.

[lordnincompoop]

I picked male, and it keeps telling me I'm a girl. 0.o

[Snook]

It seems about 10% are female (if the voters are to be believed...) which seems about right.

And there's female gamers out there. The school I went to was engineering-only, and had a 1:4 female:male ratio... But the girls who were there loved their video games. Too many of them loved their junk food, too, sadly.

[Vector]

EDIT: I realized that perhaps I should front my post with some relevant statements.  I'm a female student in pure mathematics.  I have never played DF, but was directed to play Mafia here in hopes of helping me figure out the magic of socializing.  As for why I've never played the game... well, that's mostly because I don't feel like spending hundreds of hours figuring out the tangly interface with the reward of building something big and meaningless at the end.

In case you didn't notice, I'm really not much of a gamer sort, though I'm kind of addicted to Civ IV.  There's a certain something about eating rival cultures alive and stealing everyone else's wonders.

Women do not like an environment where every statement they make can be challenged, and must be backed up in triplicate.  E-peens or not, that's the environment we have, where you have to show your work.

They don't?  That's odd.  Maybe I should consider a career change.

Psst: blanketing stereotypes like this one make it hard to pay attention to anything else coming out of your mouth.  In fact, how about this: back your statements up.  Articles, citations, something that shows your work.

This explains why an overwhelming proportion of engineers are male, they are more interested in how things work.

Actually, in my experience women are far more interested in "finding out how things work" than men are.  What do you think all that talking is about?  Finding out how things work.  I'll admit that we may be somewhat less prone to aimless tinkering, though.

Of COURSE she can do things with them - she just thinks being attractively "feminine" has to be linked with being a technological idiot!

I'm going to have to disagree with your "women are dumb for doing this" attitude.  It all depends on what a woman wants, and it seems foolish to me to denigrate someone who wants, say, a hot boyfriend.

My personal experience with not being attractively "feminine," as someone who routinely beat the pants off her classmates in mathematics and computer science, is that no one will talk to you.  The boys will talk to each other, to be sure, but I ended up completely isolated.  It all depends on the sacrifices you're willing to make.