Female is the new n-word, apparently, Two X day 13 recap. (self.SubredditDrama)
SubredditDrama
126 ups - 54 downs = 72 votes
Sexism in Gaming!
"I'll probably get downvote brigaded for this," begins a post about how women aren't real gamers and they just want attention.
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25y2pb/femalegamersnowmakeup45ofthegaming/chlvj3y
"What sexism? There have been leading female characters for years (Tomb Raider, Metroid)"
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25y2pb/femalegamersnowmakeup45ofthegaming/chltqsz
"Am I the only one that doesn't mind being objectified in gaming?" Short answer, yes.
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25y2pb/femalegamersnowmakeup45ofthegaming/chm23nk
"Let's not forget that the male characters are just as grossly misrepresenting as the female characters"
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25y2pb/femalegamersnowmakeup45ofthegaming/chm4ht7
If your friend is in a near catatonic state of shock from a miscarriage, is it a good idea to invite her to a baby shower?... is an actual debate 2X is having.
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25x6fu/closefriendlostbabyoverthreemonthsagoand/chlqj83
The mods responses are starting to sound like fat lemongrab
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25yvyc/twoxchromosomesisontldrtheblogfor_nprs/chm5pxm
OP: "Just looking to vent to a receptive audience." well you picked a bad fucking time to post in 2x, because two comments in we get "Feminism keeps teaching women to forever play the victim, that women are fragile little flowers. "
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25ytrq/justlookingtoventtoareceptive_audience/chm2och
Apparently 2x doesn't like the word female.
"Please find something more important to rage about. Trying to equate "female" with the n-word is just ludicrous."
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25zk6q/menandfemales/chma2x3?context=1
/u/CuntGodJesusNipple doesn't think there's anything wrong with female, and /u/CuntGodJesusNipple is great at word choice.
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25zk6q/menandfemales/chmbhx2
And roughly the same sentiments expressed by /u/pooponmy_balls
http://np.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/25zk6q/menandfemales/chm84zw
177 comments submitted at 15:58:39 on May 20, 2014 by bluemayhem
BTW, thanks to the person who PMed me a link to the baby shower one.
As a gamer and a feminist let me make this clear, IOS and browser games* absolutely do not count towards being a "Gamer". The Sims counts, Pokemon counts, Animal Crossing counts, IOS and browser games don't count.
*Except frog fractions.
Maybe it's because I'm ancient in internet terms, but having played so many classic arcade games makes it hard for me to understand the hate for browser games.
I mean, Tetris was one of the first games I became truly addicted to, and small nations could have been supported on the quarters I pumped into Ms. Pacman, so how am I gonna turn around and shit on the kids who love Bejeweled or Kingdom Rush?
I think it's because the culture attached to mobile games just isn't the same culture you'd see for people who play a computer game or any non fps or sport-based console game. That being said, a lot of gamers have a superiority complex about their medium of choice and mobile games happen to be at the bottom of the tier list and thus get shit on by everyone.
My phone allows me to play Zork....so other gamers can suck it.
Baldurs Gate Extended Edition was mobile first. Several Final Fantasies have been ported over (admittedly the mobile-only All The Bravest is a chocobo turd). The game I've spent the most time playing on a tablet was Spectral Souls, a nintendo-hard TRPG. Mobile gaming is so not "just casual stuff." Heck, Nethack and (as you mentioned) Zork, which are as far from cow clickers as you can get.
Nethack is pretty damn awkward on the phone. The game uses half of your keyboard which doesn't translate well into a phone screen. Every Nethack for mobile I've seen decided to go with a huge drop down list for commands, which is just frustrating.
I played it when I had a Droid 2, which had a physical keyboard. Not nearly so awkward
Point of note, nearly every example of a "real game" released for IOS is a port.
castle crashers
Im a feminist and female gamer as well. i ask this with all sincerity, what gives YOU the right to declare who is a gamer and who isnt? Are you some manner of gatekeeper into the upper echelons of gamer or something?
Sure, I play browser games, console games, PC games, mobile games, board games. Gaming should be an inclusive community of people who like to play....games. It isn't some ivory hill we have to somehow aspire to get up.
Didn't u c "the no gurlz aloud" sign?
Damn, as a /r/tall, I have to keep avoiding those god damn ceiling fans. It ends up to me missing a lot of signs.
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was that to me or blue?
Apologies, it was to Blue.
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What gives you the right to demand inclusivity? There are hierarchies in every fanbase. If you want "status" within the fanbase you typically have to earn it by demonstrating knowledge and skill.
OK, that's a problem. Why? Is this necessary to promote gaming, how does it help gamers as a whole? In fact short of ranking in individual games based on concrete scores, what purpose does this serve at all?
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They're not better or worse, they're just not really part of the same culture. My girlfriend playing Candy Crush isn't quite the same as when I load up Assassin's Creed 4. Mostly it's that the medium has split, so it'd be a bit like taking someone reading The Magic Mountain and someone reading Peter David's New Frontiers series and trying to talk about them as one solid group of "readers."
It's pushing back against being corralled in a way that no other medium is. We recognize that the person going to see Saw, the person going to see The Avengers, and the person going to see The Artist are fundamentally divergent.
Imagine the label gamer a bit the way you would use the term "film nerd" or "book nerd." Not just someone who watches films, but something more. Not better, just more.
I don't disagree, "gaming culture" isn't homogenous by any stretch of the imagination, I just object to the idea that one group gets to claim the title of "gamers" and hold it against all others.
To use your example, I'd think someone was pretty silly if they tried to insist that "readers" is a term that can only be used by people who read a particular genre of literature. Likewise, I am a bit baffled by the suggestion that "gamers" only applies to people who play a particular subtype of game.
It's a form of elitism within the gaming community, plain and simple.
Yeah, but people get grumpy when I jump to the obvious conclusion.
I think breaking down "real" games to individual titles is an asinine example of identity politics spinning into the Twilight Zone. But, when you strip away the ridiculousness, there is a useful thing to consider.
Demographics are a real thing. The kind of human who plays, for instance, Call of Duty, is different viewed across population averages, from the kind of human who plays Candy Crush. I can't understand how somebody would take the stance that one is "real" gamer and the other isn't. But pretending that there aren't demographic differences from game to game seems misleading at best.
It's akin to someone saying they're really into comics because they go to XKCD sometimes. It's not that there's something wrong with XKCD, it's just that the comparison is an insult to all those poor souls who forgo sex and sunlight to keep up with the ever-expanding multiverse of comic books. Similarly, you're not a gamer because you're on your phone while taking a piss. You're a gamer if you're taking a piss in a bottle under your desk because your Starcraft 2 match is taking too long.
> As a gamer and a feminist let me make this clear, IOS and browser games* absolutely do not count towards being a "Gamer".
Why?
Some gamers thing there is still a "stigma" to being a "gamer", this doesnt exist for people who play IOS games etc. Now there are lots of reasons for this and there really is no stigma for playing video games anymore but some people believe there is.
To an extent there still is a stigma though. People who play MMO's or JRPG's are looked at as weirdos who just sit in the basement all day.
I mean I'm not, no one cares on an individual level, I play wow and no one has ever said a thing
You may not be because of whom you have told or surrounded yourself with. The other day I was just talking about WoW(full disclosure: I don't play WoW) with my Aunt's fiancee and she said we were a couple of nerds. I understand she meant it in jest but when we would try and explain what we were talking about she was very dismissive and said it was too nerdy. Both our cases are anecdotal but, like I said, to an extent there is still a stigma associated with certain types of games. Mind you my Aunt likes to play CoD and other types of FPS's. For me, it's that sense of always having to validate my hobby to other people when they crack a joke about it being odd or nerdy.
Seriously.
I still can feel the judgmental eyes boring into my soul every time I break out my 3ds on the train.
I want to know where they "gamed" as kids. Granted, I'm not extremely old or anything, but I did own a Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis concurrently, and spent pretty much all my allowance in the arcade on Street Fighter and Tetris.
Nobody seemed to give a shit. The game systems were the first thing anyone took out when I went to or had birthday parties. It was pretty mainstream to go to an arcade, to own more than one system, have Lemmings and shit like that on your Windows 3.1 (or even older) PC.
This was 20 years ago. There was no stigma against playing games. But if all you do is talk about your wifu from some dating sim and start constant arguments about League and how shitty the spin-offs from FF7 are... and basically talk about nothing else but gaming, people just aren't going to want to hang out with you.
But that's not being bullied or ostracized because you're a gamer. That's having no friends because you're weird.
Reading one book doesn't make someone a bookworm, and seeing a couple main stream movies doesn't make one a movie buff but for some reason playing candy crush while using the bathroom and that suddenly makes you a gamer.
But this isn't about quantity. This is an argument of quality. Some games don't count as 'real games'
There are two TOTALLY different cultures and mindsets when it comes to mobile and AAA games. I guess because I'm so entrenched in the community it seems obvious to me, why do you think there's no difference? You must see the difference in advertising and how the games are represented?
I'm probably just as entrenched, but see no reason why those differences are relevant to why someone can't be a gamer.
I thought I addressed that point with the cultures line. Either way, the point here is about AAA games hitting their core demo (gamers) and when it comes down to it, mobile gamers are not who they are looking to reach. Does that make them not "gamers" I don't think so, but I think everyone is trying to find a phrase to separate the groups.
Many people use statistics that include those games to make points that have nothing to do with it. A popular one on /r/games is to point to the number of computer "gamers" as proof that they are somehow better than consoles. They completely neglect to mention that many of those gamers are soccer moms playing Candy Crush that they would never willfully associate with unless they can spin it to suit their purpose. Another common one is using those same stats to make it seem like games are no longer just for kids, like that matters at all.
Angry Birds and Candy Crush are games, certainly, but playing them isn't really indicative of being an enthusiast, or having a desire to play other games.
Generally, the word "Gamer" does not mean "a person who has played video games" so much as it means "A video game fan". Calling people who play IOS games gamers is like calling someone who has 2 macklemore songs on their MP3 player a hip hop fan, or calling a guy who has read 1 book in the last year a bibliophile.
I think that's a really narrow view to take of it. There are a lot of iOS games with depth and character to them, especially now that aaa titles are getting released on mobile, like final fantasy games and grand theft auto and dead space. Even outside of aaa games, there are games with massive communities, and plenty of indie games with stories and advanced mechanics. Not to mention, who's to say that someone who plays Tetris and candy crush non-stop aren't fans of gaming? If they devote a lot of time to a game, why is that different than someone who devotes a lot of time to CoD or Zelda or WoW?
/r/DwarfFortress would like to remind you that you're all filthy casuals.....and that because I use tiles....I too am a filthy casual.
Ugh. My friend tried to get me interested in that game after I got out of the hospital. I tried, I really did, because I used to play MUDs and had fun and thought I could adapt. But I couldn't do it, man. I can barely manage my own life, how am I supposed to manage an entire fortress of dwarves!
It becomes much easier when you learn that proper dwarf care is large body counts.
Oh god, I'm so incredibly hyped for the new release Toady's been bug fixing. I haven't quite had finals yet, but hopefully the dates coincide well cause that'll be hammering my free time.
> playing them isn't really indicative of being an enthusiast, or having a desire to play other games
Same thing could be said for any game ever.
Why? I play plenty of indie games that aren't exactly any more complicated than 2048 or Candy Crush. Fuck, I think Tetris has less features and complexity than Draw Something.
But apparently I'm a gamer, and playing those games is gaming, while dicking around on your phone is not.
What about someone who plays many mobile games?
It's less about the games than it is the community surrounding AAA and mobile games. Angry birds is a unicorn compared to other mobile games in terms of advertising. The way they presented the game and still present it's spin off's are akin to what AAA games do normally.
The best way I can describe the feeling is to think about someone calling themselves a movie buff. They're not saying "yeah, I watch some movies." They're the person who can tell you about Eisenstein and Citizen Kane.
Think about if I call myself a comic-book nerd. I'm not saying "I watched The Avengers." I'm saying I can tell you why they used the Chitauri rather than the Skrulls, or who the two people at the end of the second Captain America stinger were.
No, that's how you're choosing to interpret their statement. If I say I'm a gamer, for instance, what I'm actually telling you is I like playing video games. Enough so that I'm claiming it as part of my identity
Shouldn't we be happy about people wanting to call themselves "gamer"? Like, isn't it good that the "lonely male nerd" stigma surrounding gaming die, and it become a cool thing that's open to everyone?Even if all they play is candy crush and browser games, why can't we be like "Welcome! You have such a great journey ahead of you!" not "YOU ARENT A REAL GAMER YOU ARE A LYING ATTENTION WHORE!"? Like seriously, gaming is a hobby. It's not a fucking country club, let people have their fun, no need to be elitist about what counts and what doesn't.
it's the same people that get all bent out of shape about the big bang theory or whatever.
I think a lot of the vitriol comes from the ostracization "real" gamers feel when they discuss the games they play. Sure it is ok now to admit playing Call of Duty, Candy Crush or some sports game, but if someone said they play WoW, LoL or Final Fantasy there would not be that same acceptance as their "fake" gamer counterpart. I still don't think that gives anyone carte blanche to be a dick to someone for only liking mainstream games, but the venom is more understandable. It's an unwillingness to have their gaming culture be appropriated while they are still treated as outcasts for liking the same thing basically.
And fuck the people who only just got introduced to it, right?
It's exactly that attitude that makes people who have an interest in diving deeper into the world reluctant to even take that step. After all, they have to go through this bro-ish acceptance ritual where you need to make sure to play the 'right' game, despite whatever interest you have, in order to have the right to express your interest in gaming at all. And once you're done with that, the goalpost will move, because now you're just a casual, who hasn't spend enough hours a week clicking buttons in the dark. Even worse, you may not even have the time to spend 8 hours a day on gaming.
I hate to say it, but time keeps ticking, and the young ones who grow up with games being popular will never, ever understand being an outcast in that way. Instead of casting bitter looks their way, it's better to be glad it's becoming such a big thing in our culture.
Reading is my thing. You don't see me scoff behind my friend's back for reading mostly chick-lit. You see me discussing my own interest with her, while I listen to hers, and then we each recommend some shit to each other, and expand our interest along the way.
Because that's what you're supposed to do when you find people you share a passion with, no matter on what level.
Oh man I got ranty. And in SRD of all places.
and cookie clicker.
That's not a game. Its digital crack.
Hmm. I have to disagree. You are right in that casual games typically have a different connotation (positive fictions, pick-up/put-down gameplay, more mobile/portable), but it's not like individuals can't be just as "hardcore" about casual games. As ridiculous as Candy Crush might seem from the outside, I know a bunch of people who play it with as much strategy and obsession as someone might play CoD.
Jesper Juul has a pretty good book about the casual game "revolution," (first chapter here) and he suggests that part of the difficulty with the whole hardcore/casual dichotomy is that we conflate both players of the games and the games themselves. It's absolutely possible to have a "hardcore" approach to certain casual/iOS games (see, for example, Kingdom Rush, Flappy Bird, Cookie Clicker, etc.), and to be fairly "casual" in approaching what we would consider "hardcore" AAA games - see, for example, people who play short pickup games of CoD or FIFA.
If we wanted to follow this logic further, Juul suggests we can separate out both the game types and the gamers themselves into four different categories: casual players who play hardcore games; casual players who play casual games; hardcore players who play hardcore games; and hardcore players who play casual games. I think many of us who consider ourselves gamers probably float between these categories, and even those folks who wouldn't consider themselves gamers per se, do as well.
Maybe it would help if we started expanding the definition of who might be a "gamer" to include the latter group - moving beyond the stereotypical Cheeto-eating, Mountain-Dew-drinking guy from South Park (which is not only inaccurate, but damaging). It might shake things up in the gaming community and create a sense of inclusiveness that's sorely (imo) missing these days.
Edit: clarity(ish)
So, Android games count? /s
> browser games don't count.
Just gonna leave this here
I both love and hate you.
Candy Crush master race checking in. Fucking plebs.
Gaming isn't a gated community man, and nobody is the gatekeeper, least of all you or me. Let people play Candy Crush and 2048 and call themselves gamers if they want. So many of us grew up being bullied for playing games you'd think we'd be more aware of when we're being bullies ourselves.