What’s The Bloody Point? – OH M GEE It’s A Female Gaming
What’s The Bloody Point is my bi-weekly rant article where I take a stab at some of my personal gripes with the gaming industry. This week I’ve decided to tackle a slightly more controversial topic than normal, females in gaming. Now before I get mobbed to death by a group of disgruntled females, this is not attacking the fact that women are involved in gaming and the industry, it’s the fact that the treatment is completely different.
I’ve got a couple of articles to show you that will hopefully help get my point across. Firstly there’s a post on the popular gaming website, Raptr, where a user has explained her experiences and difficulties while playing Call of Duty as a female gamer. Why? If we all want to be treated equally, why does it matter that the specific gamer was female have any impact on their experience? Get a young guy with a high pitched voice to start talking in a lobby and he’ll get just as much gripe as anyone else, do we feel the need to focus on that or start thousands of forum topics on the same topic? Games are a great source of entertainment and just like many other avenues of fun, we’re all entitled to enjoy it as much as the next person. However, despite the fact many gamers constantly say they don’t wanted to be treated differently, there’s still thousands that use {Girl} as a tag, or constantly talk about their experiences as a female gamer. Get 1000 guys to post the same complaint topics and all you’ll get is “QQ”, “Noob” etc etc.
The second article I’d like to direct your attention to is more industry related. An article recently featured on the Telegraph Website touches on someone that was able to land a job in the industry, despite their gender. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic when someone lands their dream job, but why does gender matter?
You might not know that women have considerable influence within games development due to a good number of development studios and conferences being either run by women, or having women as part of their senior management.
What? Do you play a game and think “This is awesome, it was obviously made by a group consisting of only male developers”? Nobody thinks that. Watch the credits roll at the end of any game you complete, there’s always a good mix of names. Why is it such a miracle that a female lands a job role in the gaming industry? There’s female construction workers, female bankers, so why is it such a shock that they also have talents and skills to bring to the industry?
I’ve tried but I just don’t get it. We all want to be treated equally but then we do things like “Oh, I’m a girl and I get treated differently”. I’ve been in situations that would have been totally different if I was a female, but I don’t feel the need to scream bloody murder to the world.
What do you guys think? Do certain gamers (regardless of gender) just crave attention and will do anything to get it? Or is there room for a genuine concern of sexism in the industry? I’d really love to hear your thoughts, leave a comment below.
Davis_Zidain – Raptr
Gamers are genderless…. they are either team mates … or the enemy
No Comments