I have read a blog post about girl gamers on another blog and it inspired me to write about that topic as well as I have something to say about it too. There are that kind of males who criticize “gamer girls” simply due to the reason that they think “girls traditionally do not play games” and some go so far that they think if they do, then to flirt with males, but that is wrong. I have experienced this in the past as well in our guilds and clans, and we really had to sort out the wrong people to get a non-toxic community without sexism and gender drama. Here is my opinion about it:

I don´t really care who is playing games. I met several pretty hardcore “gaming girls” in the past. Some in our Battlefield clan and other girls in my World of Warcraft guild and so. It was fun to play with them. But if you had fun, that did really depend on all people that played together, because with some wrong guys the climate on the Teamspeak server could change instantly. With climate I mean that it can get pretty awkward if you play with the wrong people, because some males would immediately start to be either sexist or some would do the poser if a girl arrived on our server. In some cases everyone was hoping to get the attention of the girl. Fortunately me and some others were guild leaders and Teamspeak admins so that we talked about this childish behaviour internally and enforced that this would not happen again. We had to kick and ban a lot of people who didn´t understand our concept of playing games together, but that lead to a much better community on our servers. So, you need a null tolerance policy to get a healthy and non-toxic community.

I am male too and for sure I love to flirt with girls as I am not prude or anything, but there is simply a line people shouldn’t pass. Also I do not need to flirt with every female voice just because of the fact that there is a female behind the microphone. I always thought those who do it are disgusting and embarrassing and some of our female guild members told us how often this happens and I understood this must be really annoying for them. The fun fact was that the moderate guys made way more female gaming friends, than the embarrassing people who literary got a boner whenever they heard a female voice.

When we started to enforce the rules, a girl of our guild told me that she now started to enjoy gaming because she could focus on both gaming and normal and fun conversations. We started to have a lot of fun together in the games and via voice chat, we created a circle of people who focused on the same interests and a lot of became even friends outside of the games, for example on social media and in some cases even real meetings. I am in North Germany and know girls in South Germany and from other places now and we can chat about this and that, as normal friends or pen pals would do. It was now simply a really healthy circle and not something like a “who gets the attention first” challenge.

Another point is that some think that girls are bad gamers. It´s not said that girls are not good gamers. There are good and bad players nevermind if female or male and I can’t count anymore how much male beginners I met. Our rule was always “It’s not important how good you play your character in a game” because we created experienced players with teamplay and fun. And if you show this patience and serenity, then members of the guild or clan will start to love it. This counts and this is what a group is for me. Having fun together, taking a challenge together, if things don’t work then mproving together. That is the fun when you play together. And this is the only way you will have success. And end of the story is that we had a lot of success in the games together.

Being male or female is minor point. As said in the beginning. I have met pretty hardcore girls who did kill three human enemy player with ease and they still had time to make a joke like “I thought they wanted to kill me” while they did. That is fun and then you can laugh. If you respect each other, then a little bit humor like “well, they didn’t know that you’re a hardcore gaming girl!” is allowed by the girls as well. I remember this girl who played a healer in our guild and we made a lot of PvP, and believe me she would not let you die, she was our best healer. There is no difference.

As many of us stopped to play games this summer as we are a little bit unhappy with the direction our favorite games went, I am little bit unhappy that there is only Facebook contact to some (apart from my RL friends) and no voice anymore. I miss the funny evenings with people of every gender and any corner of Germany.

I do think the gender stuff like “Who can be a gamer?” is pure nonsense. And even apart from games… I have a kitty as some of you know and I remember when someone from my neighborhood asked me why I do not have a dog as he meant that owning a cat is feminine. WTF? I asked him if that does count for using shampoo in my hair too because I mostly see shampoo commercials with femals, really, what else should I answer to people with that kind of thinking? Yes, I am male and own a cat (that was a lie, the cat rather owns me), but what does that have to do with my gender? When I heard something like this, I started to understand girls even more when I thought about computer games again. I think people who make this gender difference when it comes to interests, they are backward in development, yes imature or maybe even intellectually challenged, point. That´s all. I don’t get it. What about you?

Would you like to tell me your experience? Feel free to drop a comment if you can come up with some great examples or if you just like to write down your opinion here too. So, what is your experience?

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