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Playstation Home Shutting Down March 31, 2015


BraveNoobWorld

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I was also surprised by how many females hanged out there. I thought, even without the dystopia, that they would be instant trollbait and scared away. Not entirely it seemed though.

 

I am personally very interested in the matter. I have read so many times during the past few years how female gamers have grown in numbers, and are now as many as the male. And not just on smartphones/tablets, but also on "real" gaming platforms. But I don't see them.

I have grown up and with and spent almost my entire gaming life being met with a robust disinterest from females towards gaming. I have met a few who liked it of course, but none of them were "my" friends or acquaintances.

I have for the most time been welcoming and invited female friends from acquaintances to close ones to play both a little and a little more, but after many brave years of undoubtedly "No", with many many occasions with a note of "dude, I'ma girl, whaddaya expect?" and some even outright laughing, I gave up and stopped. And it's not like me and my friends just pushed a certain game or genre, or was harsh in any way, more the other way around, tried to encourage and be easy. Neither have I met any douchebag who have said girls shouldn't play or girls sucks or anything like that, so the stories about that that have surfaced recent years horrific. So I don't really understand it from my point of view. I have grown to accept it as an indisputable fact that girls don't play video games. 

 

And that is sad and bothers me, because one of my biggest interests becomes some kind of dude show, like womens disbanded moment, half secret male to male hobby and community, with the potential of being a dickwad contest. I don't like dickwads. I strive after some kind of equality in most senses and areas,

 

So a more gender balanced community is terrific! But I still wonder where they are hiding among the numbers. Some are in Home apparently. Actually met a few over Borderlands recently, which I didn't expect. Still get totally astonished because of my background, but I pretend like nothing, don't wanna make a thing out of it. Problem is, everyone thinks one is hitting on them as soon as one gives them a word, because of all the douchebags out there. I just wanna hang out really, but no chances given.

A lot of female and non-binary gamers do hide. We get a lot of abuse from male gamers less open-minded than you seem to be, unfortunately.

I don't mind someone approaching me to chat, but if you PM me at random and you've never said word one to me at any other time, you can sod off, you know what I'm saying? I logged into Home a couple of days ago and had 3 PMs and two friend requests from total strangers in the space of 15 minutes, and I'm not even kidding. The perils of putting a corset on one's avatar, perhaps. =P But I like wearing corsets, dammit.

As far as "where are all the female gamers hiding?"... In my experience (20+ years now) most women I know are more drawn toward story- and character-driven games like RPGs and platformers. I know a lot of female Final Fantasy players, particularly, some of whom I've known for over a decade. It's certainly the case for my sister and I - we both started out with Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy, and now I play a lot of console RPGs and prefer single-player, while she spends (probably more than) half her life on Neverwinter Nights and does a fair amount of offline gaming too. I used to do PBP, but got ripped off by a GM who stole a lot of work I did for a site where I moderated my own region a few years ago, and I've not had the heart for that since. I do, however, still run one of the oldest Final Fantasy V character shrines, Prophecy of Light.

If it's any help to your demographic view, we're both in our late twenties and have been gaming from very early childhood (my oldest console was an Atari 8000, I still have some of the cartridges though my dad threw the console out - and I'm still mad at him about that). I do find there's a fairly distinct age line between 'hardcore' female gamers and 'casuals' when talking about groups without crossover, though there is a great deal of crossover between those two groups - I like my casual games when I've got neither time nor energy to dive into a full-length one, but I've also clocked 200+ hours on each of Final Fantasy IX and XII in single playthroughs, not even counting replays, they're just examples. Anyway, the line seems to fall in the 45-55 age group, with most of the casual-only players on the upper side and most of the devoted players on the lower.

You're really lucky to have not run into many of the less welcoming players, though. There's a game shop in my home city I don't even have the heart to go in because I get the cold shoulder from every cashier and I'm always brushed out of tabletop games there - if there's a guy browsing in the shop at the same time as me, I'm always served last, and if there's nobody, the counter guys don't even bother to talk to me, they just act like I'm not there (presumably in the hope I'll leave, which I did, as I won't give money to anyone who treats me that way). The store's even got "Boy" in the name, which says a fair amount. I wouldn't go back if I could, but now I can't, because it isn't wheelchair-friendly either, so.

Online I've had a lot of rough encounters. I got reported the other week for posting about sexism in gaming on a thread that discussed it and claimed there wasn't much of it - I didn't get nasty, I just outlined some of my less pleasant experiences, and some prat reported me for it. That isn't unusual. There are some forums I won't even set foot (or finger) in, even a couple of FF ones. I don't often hang around in gaming-specific forums any more, to be honest. Too much hassle. This one seems more accepting than most I've encountered in recent years, and I like that (you may notice from my post count that I've not been here for long). PS Home, well, you've read my post about that, and it got even worse than that from time to time, but I didn't want to get moderated here. I don't play MMORPGs at all, and I try not to use voice chat anywhere unless I know everyone in the chat with me. It's just not worth the harassment, honestly.

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Yeah, I definitely should try my hand at the Ecolibrium Online Challenge again. But I Always forget about it until it's too late to still join. But my biggest problem is the Collector Trophy, I still didn't get it and I don't know why.  :S  I Googled to see if the trophy is glitched but didn't find any information about it.

I heard someone else having problem with it, and later got it resolved and claiming that you have to have 20 tokens at the same time.

 

 

Sorry for off topic again, folks

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  • 3 weeks later...

As far as "where are all the female gamers hiding?"... In my experience (20+ years now) most women I know are more drawn toward story- and character-driven games like RPGs and platformers. I know a lot of female Final Fantasy players, particularly, some of whom I've known for over a decade. It's certainly the case for my sister and I - we both started out with Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy, and now I play a lot of console RPGs and prefer single-player, while she spends (probably more than) half her life on Neverwinter Nights and does a fair amount of offline gaming too. I used to do PBP, but got ripped off by a GM who stole a lot of work I did for a site where I moderated my own region a few years ago, and I've not had the heart for that since. I do, however, still run one of the oldest Final Fantasy V character shrines, Prophecy of Light.

 

I think each female gamer is different, doesn't seem fair to say most like a certain genre. I know you said most woman you know, but generalizing female gamers doesn't seem like a good thing. Just my two cents  :)

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