A new article popped up from Examiner by VRevis about the many people that make up the community and how they differ from fans that play other games. A portion from the article:
Simmer BoilingOil made an interesting observation on simbology that dispels the myth of “gaming” and computers, in general, as being a “boys’ club”. He explains, “Computers were long considered to be ‘guy stuff’. But the Sims have a HUGE fan-base among the female population of this planet. And not only for playing, but for custom content creation as well! There’s some magnificent female modders out there. Computing is no longer a guys-only domain!” When put on the spot to name her PC specs, the Cuppa Joe member’s response was immediate: “AMD Turion II Ultra Dual Core Mobile M60 2.5 GHz, 4 GB RAM, HD Radeon 4200 Mobility graphics card.” She didn’t stop there. “[My desktop PC] is AMD A2 processor 2.6 GHz. 4 GB RAM, Radeon HD 3850 graphics card, running XP and built by my own two hands.” Yes, that’s right; SHE built it herself.
mmm…that reminds me…..i wanted to up my RAM before I got Ambitions, whoops! lol….oh well..for my birfday?…eee friday…….
i love to play video games, i did customize my laptop to run my sim games and i am so girly that i do get the pink girly stuff at gamestop when i buy for my ds, gamecube and a soon-to-be shared xbox (pink controller?! eeee), but i don’t consider myself a gamer.
most of the reason why i don’t like playin online multiplayer games is because usually (meaning most of the time if not all) when i connect with a dude he tries to get all gross cuz “girls usually dont play this so i might like you send me a picture cuz i cant get a girl in real life a-hur-a-hur” and that ruins the gaming for me.
xD has quite a feminist angle to it, but at least they make their point clear. But, I always figured handling electronics was simply due to the “nurture” part of “nature vs nurture”; after all, women were always encouraged to engage in certain activities, and guys were encouraged to engage in others. Whether one can be good at the (supposedly) Opposite Gender’s “niche” is rather silly to try to speculate on, since the answer is usually quite obvious; humans, regardless of gender, can pursue a wide range of skills and activities. Gender, like talents, can sometimes have subtle effects (such as added strength for some men), but these effects aren’t major enough to really change the overall skill range (for you can have very strong women as well).
Thanks, again, Jud!
RE: “xD has quite a feminist angle to it, but at least they make their point clear.”
I don’t think it was a “silly” speculation, though it was surprising that the idea is still out there, as evidenced by the poster above you, that computers, gaming, are “guy things”. THAT is what is silly. This was a point brought up by both men and women, when I was asking for input on this article.
i never said that gaming and computers are “guy things” – i love both those things, i just mentioned that i personally don’t play online multiplayers myself because of how annoying it got with some dudes bothering me for playing and that i also personally don’t consider myself a gamer just because i do play casually.
i know girl gamers who are fkn awesome, so i compare my gaming to all genders, and i fall REALLY behind, hence, why i dont call myself one. but i love gaming, i love computers, so its definitely not “JUST FOR GUYS” imho
Sorry, Tracy, I guess I wasn’t clear enough. I was referring to your statement, “most of the reason why i don’t like playin online multiplayer games is because usually (meaning most of the time if not all) when i connect with a dude he tries to get all gross cuz “girls usually dont play this so i might like you send me a picture cuz i cant get a girl in real life a-hur-a-hur” and that ruins the gaming for me.” The guys you say in your post are saying “girls usually don’t play this.” are who I’m referring to; I didn’t mean to imply YOU felt that way.
Hope that’s clearer.
oh yeah i figured that for a second, but i wanted to clear up myself just in case too, because a lot of girls also get mad at me that i play games and i do all the “girly gamer” stuff and not play “hardcore” stuff and give them a bad name…(yes, someone once said that).
i just wanna play gaaaaaaaaaaaaaamessssssssssss….if i wanna do it pink and sometimes on my own, then let me gaaaaaaameeee LOL..
and yes, many dudes should stop with the gross in the onlines. i once even sat next to my brother playing online, and the dude heard me suggest some stuff and he asked my brother how old i was and if i wanted to play with him next time…i was like…uh…block this dude…not cool.
See? It’s crazy that girls are also guilty of stereotyping gamers. Guys sometimes catch flack for playing Sims, so It goes both ways. Of course it shouldn’t matter – gaming is a hobby, it’s fun, and you do it however you want to do it. Don’t let the closed-minded “hardcore” gamers get you down! (And I want to make sure it is understood I am not saying that *all* “hardcore” gamers have this mindset. This article was was written from a small sample of players, from two forums, one more technically-minded, Simbology, the other more socially-minded, Cuppa Joe, and these things are what people are saying, there, who have experience in other gaming communities. I only have experience with the Sims community, so I’m reporting what people are telling me. And many of the people I talked to are a bit older, so lived in a time when there was “guy stuff” and “girl stuff”, and you just didn’t cross the lines. So they were kind of bringing it up in that context.
Yeah, it’s pretty surprising that stereotypes still exist like this. IMHO, the other poster was correct in saying it’s a nature vs. nurture thing. When I was married, I joked that I was the electrician/handyman of the couple. Not a big deal to me, my ex didn’t want to hook up the home entertainment system, so I did it. I like figuring out how things work, nothing more to it than that. He couldn’t care less about that stuff, and if I hadn’t done it, it never would have gotten done.
yeah i totally agree. i know some “hardcore” gamers who think my gaming is fine and good enough to be called a gamer, but to not start up crap when i meet up with others i don’t know in game stores or online and stuff, i just say i play casually so they can make their own decision if they see me play and i don’t have to deal with debating!!
and i’m the same way with the hooking up electronics and stuff – the dudes in my family don’t have any interest and i just find an ease with it. im in music ed right now and i found out i’m a “common-sense” learner, so i like taking things apart, doing things on my own and all that jazz, so im totally cool with that, and thats prolly why i love the sims!
We’re not too differen, then! I tell people I learned how to fix computers because I broke so many! Then when my mother gave me an old 1998 laptop, which is what I played the original Sims game on, I learned all about reformatting, partitioning, etc. And I’ve definitely done some messing around with my Sims 2 games, to do machinima. And that’s another thing: it was so funny how before I put an actual picture of me up on YouTube, after doing a vlog, most people, aside from my forum members and members of other sims forums I belonged to, thought I was a “guy”. I got a lot of “hey man” and “dude that was cool” over there up until then. I just thought it was funny as hell, haha.