Questions for Female Players

SickleCider

35 years old, Millennial (or GenX depending on interpretation). Started playing games when I was very small. Brothers played a little but mostly lost interest. Nintendo, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii, Switch, PS1-5. ESO is my first MMO. I'm really more into Soulsborne (Demon's/Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring) games than MMOs. I have a wide circle of lady friends that play games as their main hobby.

Frankly, we've always been here. We just mostly exist in men's blind spot. The dialogue where people treat female gamers like they're a new phenomenon may be well intentioned, but it's inaccurate and tedious.

DragonRacer

I am 37 years old and grew up in largely the Super Nintendo/PS1 era. I saw my Dad playing Atari 2600 as a child and wanted to play, too. I was (and still am) very much a tomboy so many things considered to be aimed at boys drew my attention, video games just being one of many such interests. I was roughly 5 or 6 at the time learning simple stuff like Frogger and Pitfall.

My first console just for me was the Super Nintendo, a birthday present. My male friends and I, or my Dad and I, would play a lot of 2-player games like Super Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country. I did not know any other girls who gamed. Years later as a preteen I tried Spyro the Dragon on my uncle’s PS1 and have been a PlayStation person ever since (I also tried his XBox, but the larger controller and non-symmetrical joysticks hurt my hands). The PS2 was the first console, as a teenager, that I saved up my own money from allowance and small neighborhood jobs to buy for myself on launch day (oh, the days when you could walk into a store and purchase a console on day one LOL).

While PS3 did introduce me to MP games (Motorstorm and ME3 MP were my staples), ESO is my first MMO. I got into it because it was Elder Scrolls and I had loved the console ports of Oblivion and Skyrim.

AzuraFan

What generation are you in (broadly)?

Late (at the tail-end) baby boomer.

When did you start playing MMOs (and/or games in general)?

Late 1970s. Single-player games are my passion. I've tried many MMOs but most didn't appeal to me. GW, LotRO, and ESO are the only ones that kept me beyond a week or so. The first one I tried was Asheron's Call.

VampirateV

I'm 38, so (elder) Millenial here, and ESO is my second MMO. I started by dipping my toes in on a mobile MMO for Walking Dead sometime around 2015 and then started ESO at the end of 2019. My earliest experiences with tech/gaming were initially limited to computers, but my dad liked tinkering with electronics (very mechanically-minded folks, we are) and started with a DOS Tandy running the zillion black floppies, when I was four. When he started repairing and refurbing as a hobby, he let me watch while he explained what he was doing and I loved it! My first console was an obnoxiously unreliable Sega Genesis (the year before we got internet) and I didn't get another until 2018 with the PS4...tbh my life just didn't allow for the time to play games until then. I tried FFXIV a few months ago but the chaos of the UI turned me off pretty quickly, so I'm still here

Loves_guars

40 y/o old, began gaming when little because dad was a computer enthusiast. His first computer was a spectrum! Then we got an Hercules PC with glorious games like Prince of Persia. Then the 386x with Doom and many more. He continued upgrading until I bought my favorite game ever Baldurs Gate and discovered RPGs
In my country Internet was an obscure thing those days and I was the only one in my class that had it! So it wasn't in my radar to play MMOs
After BG I obviously played KOTOR (because Bioware was great back then) which got me into SWTOR and that was when I learnt about MMOs. I still play it for pvp.
Learning MMO language is a dense experience lol.
On the other hand I loved Morrowind and Oblivion and enjoyed Skyrim, so naturally got into ESO beta.

dvonpm

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I could make this a poll, but I am not sure it would work well for that.

What generation are you in (broadly)?

When did you start playing MMOs (and/or games in general)?

I have seen more female players online than seemed to be interested years ago, possibly before MMOs. I have always had interactions with females in the field (which I was involved with from the late 1980s) but the numbers were more limited, but seem to have grown more recently.

I am curious of anecdotal and other details about how/when female players today got into MMOs or even computer games in general.

I have no desire for contention here, just information, so please keep it focused and civil, as the mods would say.

Get comfy, gentle viewer, for this is gonna be looooooong lol.

Born in '73 so Gen x. WE HAD PONG lolol must have been like '78 or '79? The Pong sound like, idk, it got in my little weird kid brain and never left. I can hear it like it was yesterday right now.

The next thing was Atari 2600 in I think like '81? I used to play Pitfall in the morning before school a lot. I remember the night we got it, was super fun and started a decade of fighting over joysticks and games between my brother and I.

We also had a Commodore 64 which had a couple of weird little games, one was like Pacman but in Spanish and little guitars would chase you. At least I think it was the C64?? Maybe something right after it?

I have played soooo sooo many games since then. All of the Ataris, ColecoVision smurf idk why lol. I loved Galaga and Centipede arcade games. Loved Ms PacMan. objectively a better game than Pacman fite meh.

Then there was Nintendo lol. Super Mario. My brother won the joystick fight and I kind of fell away from it. life changed and I didn't have a tv or money for even food really for like 10 years. But things got better and my entrance back into games was Parasite Eve on PS2 or something, which I LOVED. Then Metal Gear but mostly a lot of replaying PE haha.

Then a bit later Vampire Bloodlines and That will be my favorite franchise until I die. But the DDO and Oblivion is after that, I sadly missed Morrowind. Then Guild Wars. No WWC I couldn't stand it. Then Death Jr and Okami on Wii, which is a stunningly gorgeous game.

Anyway. We were always there, right from the beginning. We always have been, with everything, since the beginning of time because we are humans and we do stuff too even if you don't notice

I would like to give an honorable mention to my best friend's mom, also. They had one of the first Apples and there was this rip off PacMan that was actually better and much harder. She SLAYED THAT GAME! It was a lot of fun we'd have girl game nights in which she would mostly mop the floor with us lol. She was a total beast on that game it was hilarious. She's in her 70s now.

Anwyay tl;dr I'm very old and I have played many, many video games starting about 40 years ago.

Lady_Scorp72

Gen X, will be 50 in November. My first introduction to gaming was The Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Zork. My friend had a Commodore 64, and a group of us spent hours in his basement trying to solve all the puzzles. Wicked fun. After that, it was a Colecovision console, then Nintendo, then bulletin board MUD games in the 90s. Played a bit of WoW in the early 2000's but hated the grindy bore of it, then I found ESO in 2017 and the rest, as they say, is history.

DreamyLu

I'm 57. I started playing computer games very long ago. I'm not sure, but I think that my first game ever was maybe ZORK, so in the late 70s. Later, I became busy with Tomb Raider 1 to 3. Aside of those, I was a true addict of the whole Myst serie, and as a consequence of this, my first "MMO" experience was Uru online in 2003.

From there, my first real MMO was GW (the original one), followed by GW2. They are my main games. I started with ESO about one year ago, because I needed a game to chill solo aside of my mains. I have tried other MMOs, but in the end, nothing that could take me off GW1/2.

FineFeathered

FineFeathered wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I could make this a poll, but I am not sure it would work well for that.

What generation are you in (broadly)?

When did you start playing MMOs (and/or games in general)?

I have seen more female players online than seemed to be interested years ago, possibly before MMOs. I have always had interactions with females in the field (which I was involved with from the late 1980s) but the numbers were more limited, but seem to have grown more recently.

I am curious of anecdotal and other details about how/when female players today got into MMOs or even computer games in general.

I have no desire for contention here, just information, so please keep it focused and civil, as the mods would say.

That last one was a oops. Hit post before I could write.
I am a boomer, later end of it. So over 60.
I remember pong, but real life didn't allow for many games until the late 1980s. Got my first computer in 1988 or so, and started playing Carmen Miranda and things like that. But also used it for spreadsheets etc.

Went to school for comp sci and had a part time job at Egghead software. That was my downfall. We got to try some of the software so we knew what we were selling, and I played a lot of different single player games. I was about 30 then, and got addicted to Sid Meyer's Civilization. Still play that occasionally, the later version of course.

I knew about MMO's but I knew other ppl who were addicted and was afraid to get that. Well.... I played Oblivion when it came out, got an xbox, Mass Effect, other Star Wars games. So when Swtor came out, I started playing that. When this came out, I jumped in on the beta.

Most "guys" assume that everyone they're talking to are guys. Right bud? hehe I expect it. When in Swtor, I was leading a raid and someone couldn't believe it until they got into teamspeak and there I was. (We used to explain the things, not like now). I'm surprised that people are surprised that women like to play. I mean why wouldnt' we? Some of us are right up there with the best. We are able with the same skills as men, some of us better. It's an individual thing.

So now I'm in my early sixties and addicted to this game. Yes I have other things to do irl, but hey, games are a good way to relax, so long as you block the toxics. There's no reason to think we wouldn't be around. No matter our age or whatever. Welcome to the real world!

AoEnwyr

Elder Millennial and been playing games since the NES came out (I think we had an old Hanimex console before that but the games were pretty basic). As far as online gaming and gender split, I've never found a shortage of other women gamers, though they were less likely to make their gender know outside of the friendship groups we formed due to some historically poor behaviour from other corners of the gaming community. Saying that though, I pay a lot of attention to guild recruitment messages when I start a new mmo so I'm selective about what kinds of guilds I am joining. At a guess you might find higher concentration of women in guilds that make a point of having their own set of community guidelines when it comes to expected and acceptable behaviours.

If you're hanging out in a group that is constantly being sexist and/or gross about women, you might feel like there are significantly fewer women playing than actually are because they're avoiding your guild like the plague

BretonMage

It does seem that gaming has become a more common and accepted form of entertainment in general, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are more gamers from all demographics. I've been gaming (CRPGs) since the 90s and I do remember being the only person (male or female) I know who played video games regularly.

Kallykat

I'm GenX/Millennial.

My family got our first computer when I was in elementary school, and it ran on DOS. My dad was the only one who knew the commands, but it had things like Jeopardy and some Alf geography game. I vaguely recall playing a really old fantasy rpg once or twice on the school computer too, and I really liked it, but I don't have a clue what it was called. I think it was on a floppy disk.

Over the years, we upgraded the computer and eventually CD drives became a thing, so I played a lot of computer games on CD's. My favorite series that I played with my dad and sister was the Myst/Riven games, which had great stories, puzzles, worlds, and graphics (for the time). We lived in a small town that had dial-up for far too long, so I never played online games growing up.

As far as consoles, my mother had a less-than-favorable opinion of video games, so we didn't have any until my brother happened to win a PS(2?) in a contest. He later got a hand-held system too, but I can't remember which one. Monster Rancher 2 was one of my favorite games because I like creatures, and it had a cool feature that allowed you to generate a different monster by inserting any CD into the console.

I didn't play much in college, but I started up again after graduation while I was living alone. It was a good break from reality after work. I bought my own console finally. I played lots of games, but mostly Assassin's Creed and Skyrim.

ESO is my first and only MMO. I got hooked on the lore in the single player games. Fantasy has always been my favorite genre in books/movies/etc., and I get to play as a talking cat, so what more do I need?

I don't know if I consider myself a "gamer." To me, that sounds like someone who spends more time on games and plays a larger range of games than me or maybe someone who has a style that is more about optimization. The word just feels intense for me. I do like playing games though, and I always have. That being said, I agree with what several others have said about females always being around in gaming but maybe not making it obvious or just being assumed to be males.

I also think gaming has become much more acceptable in general. When I was in my early 20's, I was embarrassed to let other people know I played video games unless I already knew that they played too because it was still portrayed as something made for kids and antisocial slackers. Now my boss plays, my husband and I play together, and you see a wider variety of players depicted in media culture. The internet and streaming sites like Twitch are also an equalizer and prove that people of all stripes enjoy gaming. However, I will say the stereotypes are not completely eradicated. My students are usually still shocked when I talk about games at the beginning of each school year.

SammyKhajit

Just want to say it’s amazing to read all these posts! So many different game experiences that enrich the ESO community!

Ilsabet

dvonpm wrote: »

I loved Galaga

Aww man I wasn't even thinking back that far in my history, but we had an Atari and I rocked Galaga back in the day. I wonder what happened to that thing.

I am also reminded of a babysitter my brother and I had, a teenaged girl who would play Super Mario for us to watch if we asked persistently enough. I mostly remember hiding behind the couch and pretending not to watch when she got to the boss fights, cuz Bowser scary. (Though to be honest I think that was mostly about making a show of being scared because why not. )

Oh and there was also a game at school with Gertrude the Goose. I loved that game. And Number Crunchers. And there was a Garfield trivia game that I beasted because I read all the book collections of the comic strips.

So yeah gamer from way back yo.

Hexquisite

I feel like I have been playing games my whole life!
Started out on consoles.
First MMO was DDO online! Great game where we could use 20 bars of skills!
After that drifted around between a lot of MMOS, still do, but I've played ESO since Beta and it is my main game.

katanagirl1

DreamyLu wrote: »

I'm 57. I started playing computer games very long ago. I'm not sure, but I think that my first game ever was maybe ZORK, so in the late 70s. Later, I became busy with Tomb Raider 1 to 3. Aside of those, I was a true addict of the whole Myst serie, and as a consequence of this, my first "MMO" experience was Uru online in 2003.

From there, my first real MMO was GW (the original one), followed by GW2. They are my main games. I started with ESO about one year ago, because I needed a game to chill solo aside of my mains. I have tried other MMOs, but in the end, nothing that could take me off GW1/2.

Wow I played Zork too, but my first video game was Pong. My parents bought this huge box that hooked up to the TV to play it.

Then Atari 2600.

This is my first MMO and my second multiplayer game.

SianTamzin

42.

I've been gaming since the mid 80s.

Gaming was just a casual, fun hobby back in the 80s and 90s, and no one cared if you were male or female. It's the younger generation of gamers who have politicised gaming and who seem to think "girl gamers" are new. We're not.

DarcyMardin

I’m 74, female, and I started playing computers games as soon as the earliest ones were available (got my first home computer in 1982, and used it initially as a word processor, which seemed like a miraculous invention to an author. No more typewriter! Hallelujah! I no longer had to retype an entire manuscript to edit it).

When I wasn’t writing, I played Rogue. This was pre-Windows — no graphical interface. The bad guys were ascii characters appearing randomly on a grid. K was a Kestrel…you definitely didn’t want to encounter one of those! Then there were RPGs, again all text. You had to imagine the room you were entering “walks forward,” “open door,” “Pick up the sword,” etc. Then came Nintendo — whoa, colors, pictures. And the original Zelda…and a little dude you could move around. Graphics were taking shape at last!

And the Internet in the 90s, which was so absorbing and exciting that it took over my gaming leisure time for a while. My first graphical MMO was Guild Wars, the original. Sucked me right in for several years. Then ES3 Morrowind and the other Elder Scrolls games when they came out. LOTRO was my next serious MMO, and I was a regular raider, and played it steadily for 6 or 7 years. I then tried Guild Wars II, but didn’t like it anywhere near as much as GW I. Also played a bunch of other MMOs for short whiles each, like EQ I and II, Warhammer, SWTOR, AION, FFXIV, and some others I forget. Started ESO in closed beta and have been here ever since, with occasional experiments with other games, but never leaving ESO for more than a couple of days here and there.

Before home computers showed up in the early ‘80s, I played board games and card games…started those in childhood. Guess I’m just a gamer at heart.

Sevalaricgirl

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

What generation are you in (broadly)?

When did you start playing MMOs (and/or games in general)?

See that post on the main page: Enjoying ESO as an older player, yeah I post there and I'm damned proud to be an older gamer girl.

I started playing MMOs in 2011 with SWTOR. PC games, 1989 when I bought my first computer, before that....well there was the Atari 2600....ancient times.

Hlaaluna

Female, late 60s, worked in IT most of my life until retiring. First game was text based, white text on black screen. First game with colour consisted on green dots for the good guys and red for the baddies. Lost count of the games I have played. ESO and WOW since beta. Fantasy, exploration, RPG have always been my fave. Not into shoot-em ups, card games or puzzles.

First non computer game was chess with my dad back in the days before electricity. Joke 🙂 almost.

JKorr

Born 1962. Started with pen and paper D&D when it was still "satanic/black magic/devil worshiping/will no one think of the children?" stuff. Started videogaming with a thing called "Pong". Not a great story, and no character development, but it was a start. I've actually gotten the message "You have been eaten by a grue". Had absolutely no interest in MMOs, played single player mostly offline [early days, drm was on the disc]. Neverwinter Nights and Lady Aribeth, expansions and mods, Revan and Bastila, many other games. Found Morrowind, and was hooked. The only reason I even looked at ESO was because it was Elder Scrolls. Stopped looking when it was going to be pvpvp. Got interested again when information about an actual story/pve emerged. Really got interested when it was pc only and they wouldn't have to deal with console restrictions [yes, I know, unfortunately that didn't last]. Got in the Beta tests and decided I was having fun, sooo...still here.

TiaFrye

Millennial here. I've "played along" with my mom who played Lineage II at the time. She was the og lets player for me)). On my own I've started after getting my own PC. First with Perfect World, and much later - AION. After that not so much. ESO was my grand return to MMOs you can say but I wasn't drawn here because of multiplayer aspect tho.

RaquenneRhwyn

Mid-50's Gen X

Played Atari games through high school and rogue-likes in college

First mmo was Asheron's Call, then a bit of Everquest, several years of City of Heros and WoW (starting with Lich King expansion, when it became less grindy...gawd I hate grindy games). I tried a few others like Guild Wars, but none stuck.
I stopped WoW at the Cataclysm expansion, it's zoned story telling made it hard to group with friends on a whim, unless we kept dedicated toons just for playing together.

Then I switched to an Xbox (controller is so much easier on my aging hands) and tried lots of different types of games. I decided to give ESO a try once One Tamriel happened (it sounded less grindy and pvp) and have enjoyed it quite a bit.

FeedbackOnly

First mmo was endless online after that none really were interesting. Elder scrolls online offers more variety of activities for female audience in my opinion

Age is classified

I started playing games idk maybe when I was 8 . I had brothers so it just made sense

Lugaldu

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

Elder scrolls online offers more variety of activities for female audience in my opinion

I'm sorry but I have to ask: what are the specific activities that women are said to prefer in a computer game?

blktauna

Borderline boomer and I used to play MUDs. Ultima, Evercrack, Neverwinter, Wizardry, Lan parties with Doom and Duke Nukem... You name it. I started playing ESO because one day I was watching Shirley Curry and her son had just installed ESO and she was walking around Auridon. I flailed alot until I figured out what it was and bought it immediately. I didnt even finish watching the video I had to get it right then.

Syldras

SianTamzin wrote: »

Gaming was just a casual, fun hobby back in the 80s and 90s, and no one cared if you were male or female. It's the younger generation of gamers who have politicised gaming and who seem to think "girl gamers" are new.

Exactly, I still remember those times (at least the 90s, as I was still a bit too young for gaming in the 80s). In my environment, female gamers were a minority, but there always were a few and no one found it strange. There were also well-known female game developers like Roberta Williams of Sierra or Jane Jensen who created the Gabriel Knight series. It was no big deal (Why would it?). Today I still have female friends around my age (between 30 and 40) who have been playing computer or console games since childhood and still play today (everything from rpgs over real time strategy games to 1st person shooters).

Everytime a discussion starts about female gamers being something new or rare, it seems really strange to me. Same goes for that politicing that came up somewhen in the 2000s. It makes no sense to me. Why would I object to women enjoying the same hobby that I enjoy?! Wouldn't straight male gamers even profit from having another interest/hobby in common with their female partners?

Danikat

Lugaldu wrote: »

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

Elder scrolls online offers more variety of activities for female audience in my opinion

I'm sorry but I have to ask: what are the specific activities that women are said to prefer in a computer game?

I know I'm not the person you asked, and I'm not sure if this is the answer they were thinking of, but here's an article which addresses this topic: 'Female Gamers Want To Kill You, Just Not With Guns'

Edit: There's also this one, about how male and female hardcore gamers have different priorities: https://quanticfoundry.com/2018/08/01/casual-hardcore/

Ghanima_Atreides

I'm an elder millennial (36 years old) and I started playing games when I was about 5 or 6 and I got my first SEGA Game Gear console. I remember the first game I played on that was Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8 bit version) and my collection grew quite large over the years.

Despite this, I am very much a PC gamer (that SEGA was my one and only console) and I got seriously into gaming in my late teens; I've been going strong ever since. RPGs are by far my favourite genre, particularly the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Mass Effect and Dragon Age series.

ESO was the first MMO I played for a significant length of time, although I also play(ed) SWTOR, Star Trek Online and an old post-apocalyptic MMO called Fallen Earth. I poked my head into Neverwinter as well, but it didn't stick.

VaranisArano

Millennial, and ESO was my first MMO. Skyrim was the first video game I played that wasn't at a friend's house and was the first I later bought for myself.

Bethesda Games have pretty much ruined me for other singleplayer RPGs, and I haven't managed to find anything else that sucks me in as thoroughly as Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

An interesting quote from the articles posted above seems to sum up my approach to ESO:

"So for men, playing a game seriously means being able to beat other players at it. For women, playing a game seriously is more likely to mean having completed and done everything there is to do in a game, and to leave traces of your personal flair in the game while doing it. For Hardcore female gamers, playing a game seriously is more akin to patiently creating and curating a work of art. And it’s a powerfully evocative alternative to how we typically conceptualize what a “hardcore gamer” is."

Through ESO, I've been role-playing Varanis Arano since 2016. Her character and story continue to grow, sometimes just in my imagination and sometimes when I write. That ongoing creative expression iin tandem with solid, lore-driven stories is one thing that keeps me coming back to ESO even though my PVP friends have moved on to better performing games and overland combat has stagnated.