Chatting up the ladies.

[Ignacius]

I also wanted to add, the idea that "girls don't play games" kind of goes to FFXIV to die.  I don't know whether it's because of Square's more default-glittery atmosphere than the average blood-guts-and-rocks atmosphere you usually get in these games, or whether it's just because Japanese games have a tendency to focus less on that old-fashioned 18-24 year old male demographic, but there are a LOT of women that play this game.  Proportionally to other games, at least.

 

I remember playing Battlefield or similar games and just figuring everyone on the opposing team was a guy.  If there was a girl on our team, we lost (usually not the girl's fault, they tended to score decently, but every guy on vent suddenly weren't paying attention for some reason).  After being heavily involved in RP in WoW and especially now FFXIV (and the fact that I married a woman who plays WoW, D3, and XIV with me), that's much less of a sure thing.

 

Which, honestly, I'm totally happy with.  I'd encourage more women to play as many games as they can.  Seriously, nobody wants to know what happens when you shove 20 men into a game with relative anonymity and no women.  The most foul things ever said on Earth are said by men who don't think any women are listening.

[Rinh Hallani]

I also wanted to add, the idea that "girls don't play games" kind of goes to FFXIV to die.

 

Every time I hear that I just think of all the other women I've met in Neverwinter Nights persistent worlds, WoW, GW and FFXIV, to name a few. My old WoW guild was even ~75% female at one point, with all the leaders being women. I also remember there was once someone in trade chat who claimed girls don't play or, if they do, they play badly and a bunch of women piled onto him. Shut him up pretty fast haha.

[Dogberry]

So, kind of a parallel -- I was doing research for an English paper on Ursula K. Le Guin, and I stumbled across letters that had been published between Le Guin and Allison Sheldon. Sheldon posed as a man named James Tiptree Jr. for the majority of their correspondence. A fan figured out who Sheldon was, which prompted her confession to Le Guin at the end of the published correspondence. Some of what Le Guin said in her followup letter to the confession was, I thought, much apropos to this discussion:

 

I don’t know about people’s reactions, I suppose there are some who resent being put on, but it would take an extraordinarily small soul to resent so immense, so funny, so effective & fantastic & ETHICAL a put-on. Why should anybody mind? Why shouldn’t they be delighted? I can’t imagine, honestly. […] Again I think all your friends will be as childishly pleased with you as I am — and as for what the Sf world says, my God, Allitree, who cares? what does it matter? I hope their little eyes widen & their little mouths fall open.

 

Which mirrors much how I feel about rp, myself, and the gender of the players -- so long as it is played well, screw the haters, yo.

 

 

(The correspondence itself is a hoot to read, if anyone is interested it was published under the title "Dear Starbear: Letters between Ursula K. Le Guin and James Tiptree Jr." and edited by Julie Phillips)

 

LeGuin is such a fantastic writer and forward thinker. "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" cut me to the core. It only makes sense that she'd has such a sensible reaction to a situation like that.

[TheLastCandle]

I also wanted to add, the idea that "girls don't play games" kind of goes to FFXIV to die.

 

Every time I hear that I just think of all the other women I've met in Neverwinter Nights persistent worlds, WoW, GW and FFXIV, to name a few. My old WoW guild was even ~75% female at one point, with all the leaders being women. I also remember there was once someone in trade chat who claimed girls don't play or, if they do, they play badly and a bunch of women piled onto him. Shut him up pretty fast haha.

 

Heh! I'm pretty sure my "main" NWN PW (Myth Drannor) was about 80% female. At least that's the impression I got from my time on its OOC forums. And one of the best DMs we had on there was a 40-something soccer mom.

[Mijisaa Qisaa]

What's hard is getting someone to romance a lala. *nods sagely*

 

Poor Kage, he has such hard luck sometimes. *scowls at mean Denn*   Concerning this thread though, if playing FFXIV has taught me anything, it's that the person's gender on the other side of the char is unimportant.  I honestly think I know more people who play the opposite gender than not. Most people assume (correctly) that Mijisaa is played by a female but there have been those who didn't (most notably my FC leader ) and I totally didn't care.