Girl Gamers, they do exist

Today I was reading through Nintendo‘s website and saw an article about the new Nintendo 3DS and how Nintendo teamed up with “Famous Females” in order to promote it . The campaign that was launched is called “Play As You Are”, which was designed to show women and girls that they can benefit from a Nintendo 3DS or Nintendo 3DS XL. The statement that caught my attention was that it was “whether are are gamers or not.”

This statement is a very interesting statement because it would never be used to describe a male. It is somehow assumed that females don’t really play games. Whenever I walk into the store it’s under the assumption that I’m going to pick up a “girly” game such as Cooking Mama, Hello Kitty Seasons or that I’m just waiting for someone. Surprisingly there has been an increase in female gamers throughout the years.

One of the commercials from the series of this promotion includes Glee star Dianna Agron. She markets the new Art Academy as something not game related and specifically says “I am not a gamer.”  It has a nice ring to it that the Nintendo 3DS can be used by anyone not just gamers. This isn’t what bothers me, what bothers me is that they use females to portray the non gamers. Their series of advertisement for this “Play As You Are” series are all females who range from the gamers to the non gamers.

Now bring back a little bit more and go to games in general. A previous article that AngryAsian posted about “Why Girls Suck At Games”,  quoted different people from around the intraweb on girl gamers. It’s one of those articles that makes the girl gamers laugh all over. First off, just like male gamers there are a variety of skill levels. From my experience several of them have different approaches on how to play games.

I am more an unknown gamer, meaning that I never announce that I am a female gamer in game. My reason is because I want to be taken as serious as any other gamer out there. From past experience I have met gamers who would automatically question my ability to play a game just based on the soul fact I am female. Another problem are those male gamers who automatically assume it’s okay to flirt with me and start making sexual jokes. “Hey people, I’m hear to play a game not get hit on.” Seriously….

I have also met the female gamers who take their sexuality as a benefit towards the game. Several years ago during my World of Warcraft days I have met a few girls who flirted their way to good gear. One girl would flirt with the raid leaders and guildmasters so they would favor her in raids for gear. They would also go out of their way to save a spot in raid, whether or not it was an earned position (I would not call flirting an earned position). None the less let’s not forget the female gamer who had sex in order to get 5,000 gold to get an epic flying mount. She was the shame to all female gamers in general.

Gaming is just like working, it will take awhile before female gamers in general be taken seriously. Unfortunately it’s not something that I see will happen anytime soon. Working environments still have sexism in some forms and the gaming industry will probably never change. Now watch out for us female gamers because quite a few of us with pwn your face.