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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

[Dakk]

I'm assuming the goblins are either gender benders or agnostics 

Since when is "agnostic" a gender?

Because they are atheists without balls.

This man gets it

[BodyGripper]

...and where the only socializing is on these boards, which have an obvious masculine confrontational bent to it.

That's not true! You are lying! I'm going to kick yer ass! *flex*Urrgh... MUSCLES!

Don't kick his ass, USE MAGMA!!!!!

[Ravenplucker]

The fact of the matter is that men and women are, mentally, very different.

This is not to say that there is a superior sex, but men and women excel at different areas.

Males are (on average) more technically minded than females. Although stereotyping and discrimination is still present in modern society (although not at much) it is simply that men and women are interested in and excel at different things. This explains why an overwhelming proportion of engineers are male, they are more interested in how things work.

Guys like computer games so much because it has the same effect as playing a sport, namely stimulating our competitive sides. And computer games do exactly that.

[nbonaparte]

The fact of the matter is that men and women are, mentally, very different.

This is not to say that there is a superior sex, but men and women excel at different areas.

Males are (on average) more technically minded than females. Although stereotyping and discrimination is still present in modern society (although not at much) it is simply that men and women are interested in and excel at different things. This explains why an overwhelming proportion of engineers are male, they are more interested in how things work.

Guys like computer games so much because it has the same effect as playing a sport, namely stimulating our competitive sides. And computer games do exactly that.

Dwarf Fortress isn't exactly a shining example of competition.

[Ravenplucker]

Not against eachother, but again starvation, animals etc

[Deon]

I wonder if there are any goblin GIRLS. If there are, meet me in central park. Wang. Had to do it.

Oh god. I thought it was deleted. Haha. Now I have some more food for thought (and for Fan Art thread).

Also if you want to see the registered male/female ratio, you can check the forum stats.

P.S. Male to Female ratio "5.5" : "1"

Wait what? I remember it was "10":"1". What the hell?

[hailthefish]

Computer monitors should have serrated disk traps attached to them, so I could pull my little lever and watch you all burst into hilarious goo for the dumbdorfery in this thread.

According to this thread, anyone that has ovaries is attracted to glittery, pretty things, strong characters, easy and non-intellectual things.

According to this thread, anyone that likes the Sims either likes it because of the pretty wallpaper and family drama (and they have ovaries), or because you can TOTALLY BURN THEIR HOUSES DOWN AND ELECTROCUTE THEM AND MAKE THEM FALL ASLEEP IN THE POOL (this is the testicle-having portion of the population).

Perhaps this is why there's so few females playing DF, or at least willing to self-identify on the forum. Of course keep in mind that this has two layers of sampling bias. People who participate fairly actively in the DF forums rather than EVERYONE who plays DF, and people willing to identify their gender. The other reason, I think, is more likely to do with exposure to the game rather then ovaries meaning you can't possibly understand anything more complicated than operating a kitchen appliance, much less the arcane mysteries of dwarven water systems. DF is not particularly well known, there's no advertising, and the only populous places on the internet you're going to find reference to it are in other male-dominated bastions of chauvinism.

My taste in games...
I enjoy the Sims, for the building houses and for optimizing their lives. And also because it's funny when they flip out when the house catches on fire. I enjoy Dwarf Fortress for the engineering, for the citybuilding aspects. Not so much for the fluid logic stuff, or the opaque and (since I'm still using .08) broken military system. I don't like RTS games because I can't ever get a feel for how to pace myself. I enjoy the Civilization games for the fun combinations of civics and the interesting ideas they can give me, and for the strategy component. I play Halo, Bad Company 2, and TF2, though I keep the voice chat off. I have no interest in WoW because why would I want to pay money for the privilege of doing stupid, pointless, repetitive tasks? I play MUDs, but for the roleplay, not the combat.

I'm a 'girl gamer'.

[strongrudder]

No, according to this thread, ladies tend to gravitate toward those things more than their male counterparts.

Let's not get worked up over people noticing general trends. Obviously stereotypes exist for a reason, but by the same token they are not a foolproof assessment, and we are aware of this.

[Patchouli]

I am a moe little girl at heart.

[Deon]

Sucks to be you.

[Urist McArtStudent]

Female here. I fell in love with DF instantly, can't stand Sims. I tried a Sims game once on gamecube, got to something like the third mission which was to get my guy to earn so much at his job or something. zzz

On gaming communities: I also play Pokemon (shaddup!) and used to be fairly active on Gamefaqs - now there's a community that's the antithesis of this one. There's a surprising number of females on the trade boards, who can usually be identified by their ability to type words.

Male player (~15 years old): "i want shiny squitl sum1 give me a shiny squitl plz fc in sig"

Female player (~15 years old): "Does anyone have a squirtle for trade, preferably shiny? See my sig for my Friend Code"

I have no idea why this is.

I'm trying to work out just what it is about Dwarf Fortress that attracts me to it. I think, in the end, it's gotta be the potential for story.

This. As a long term pokemon player I know damn well that my favourite golem is just a collection of numerical binary data on a chip that runs repeated calculations with a certain random element, but at the same time that guy is my buddy. We've been through great adventures together, we beat the Tower Tycoon together. It's the same in Dwarf Fortress. I mean, look at Boatmurdered (hands up who got into DF via Boatmurdered). Look at the way Toady "sells" DF through those stories on the mainpage. Look at how people who do community fort stories in the story forum sometimes mod the game into unrecognizability or even dispense with the game entirely and use Asciidraw to get the story they WANT to tell. Dwarf Fortress is not the game, it's the story about the game.

According to this thread, anyone that has ovaries is attracted to glittery, pretty things, strong characters, easy and non-intellectual things.

I'm afraid a proportion of women are just rather stupid. (I'm a woman, I'm allowed to say this). What I mean is, it's acceptable or even desirable for a female to "not know very much about computers" - even if she's intellectually capable of it, which she almost always is. I heard it once from a nineteen year old who was perfectly au fait with writing complicated CSS to pimp out her Facebook page: "Computers just hate me, I can't do anything with them." Of COURSE she can do things with them - she just thinks being attractively "feminine" has to be linked with being a technological idiot! With that attitude, how is a female supposed to sit down and play an ascii-based game with an absolutely arcane interface? No, she'll go to Puzzle Pirates or Bejeweled because it's okay for women to like those games. I have several female friends who seem to think like this and it drives me absolutely wild.

[Patchouli]

Sucks to be you.

That hurts. That hurts both my fragile girly heart and my manly inner dwarf.

[Medicine Man]

Sucks to be you.

That hurts. That hurts both my fragile girly heart and my manly inner dwarf.

ELF!!!BURN THE ELF!!!!!Just kidding.

[Ravenplucker]

I'm afraid a proportion of women are just rather stupid. (I'm a woman, I'm allowed to say this). What I mean is, it's acceptable or even desirable for a female to "not know very much about computers" - even if she's intellectually capable of it, which she almost always is. I heard it once from a nineteen year old who was perfectly au fait with writing complicated CSS to pimp out her Facebook page: "Computers just hate me, I can't do anything with them." Of COURSE she can do things with them - she just thinks being attractively "feminine" has to be linked with being a technological idiot! With that attitude, how is a female supposed to sit down and play an ascii-based game with an absolutely arcane interface? No, she'll go to Puzzle Pirates or Bejeweled because it's okay for women to like those games. I have several female friends who seem to think like this and it drives me absolutely wild.

That was an awesome rant

[Dora Feddy]

I'm a woman, and I don't think I would be talking in this forum if I didn't take some kind of utter glee at having my adventurer strangle the crap out of a tiger or beat a lion with a giant cheetah corpse....

I enjoy dwarf fortress because I like building crap and because I enjoy a challenge of keeping my dorfs alive. I also play Warcraft 3, the sims, the elder scrolls: morrowind, ace attorney, and zoo tycoon.

People (guys) playing Warcraft 3 has mixed reactions to "gamer girls" . Most of the time I just allow people to assume I'm a guy, but when I get fed up with that I just go on and say 'hey, girl here'. The majority of players just shrug and correct themselves, but then there are the guys who strongly believe in the "ther r no gurlz on teh internetz" and just call me a fag, or ask for pics.... ugh.

Really, I don't care what ratio of guys to girls there are. Jeeze, just let me play and don't bother treating me differently or chatting me up.