Questions for Female Players

FlopsyPrince · June 2022

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.

TaSheen · June 2022

I started with CRPGs in the late 80s, played all of the TES games as they were published, and played WoW and RIFT beginning in 2005, playing them into mid-2015. I'm in my 70s.

Myreth · June 2022

Female and right on the GenX/Millenial border. Been playing games in some form since elementary school--dad was a hardware engineer and computers were a staple in our house.

Started MMO gaming with WoW in 2006, I think. Played it off and on for quite a few years between a smattering of other MMOs.

Fenris_Arainai · June 2022

I'm mid 40s. I started gaming regularly about 10 years ago (before it was just an odd game here and there, usually because Star Trek, not because game

).

Dragonlord573 · June 2022

Girlfriend isn't apart of the forums so I'll answer for her.

She's a millennial at 32 years old, and ESO is her first MMO, which she started playing when it came out on console. Though she's been a gamer for at least 20 years.

AcadianPaladin · June 2022

My small guild is comprised basically of fan fiction writers who play Elder Scrolls and other rpgs. We run about 60% women who range in age from mid 40's to early 70's.

Crown_of_Antlers · June 2022

Gen X.

I started playing computer games sometime in the year 2000, starting with single player games and then branched out into online games.

MidniteOwl1913 · June 2022

The medicare generation ;-) Female.

This is my very first video game. My daughter wanted someone to play with and asked if I could help with some things. I liked it so I stayed playing. Sometimes it's a struggle because I lack what my daughter calls the "language of video games". Basically, something that is obvious to her is a complete mystery to me. I sometimes wish for an anonymous place to be able to ask what would seem like a really really dumb question to most players who grew up with this sort of stuff. It's kind of embarrassing sometimes...

But it's been almost a year now and I no longer walk into things, can dodge roll and have even created two new characters (I should call them toons, right?) :-) Learning new things is fun if somewhat frustrating at times.

spartaxoxo · June 2022

I've been playing for about the same amount of time as I could hold a controller. Started with the TurboGrafx, Sega Genesis, and Super Nintendo. Been playing MMOs since the aughts, I even played one of the first (but not the first) MMO to include loot boxes (PWI).

SantieClaws · June 2022

A lady never tells how many summers she has seen!

It is one or two though.

This one lived disguised as a female dwarf named Rosiebelle in LOTRO for six years then sailed for Tamriel where she has been for eight and a half years.

She also sometimes recently has strange dreams of being a Lalafell and soaring through the air on a golden cloud ...

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

QuietPanda_22 · June 2022

Gen X/Millenial, started gaming with my Dad as a kid, first MMO was Everquest Online Adventures then WoW, then ESO.

Lady_Titania · June 2022

I've been playing games for over 20 years, and have played on multiple platforms. Primarily I play on PC now and ESO has been my main MMO since I started playing back in 2018.

Irfind · June 2022

I'm mid 30s, my first pc game was WoW BC 2007. Before i played gameboy , nintendo 64 usw.
I play ESO since 6 years and i hope there will be many more

Ilsabet · June 2022

The internet tells me I count as a millennial but I'm on the older end. My first MMO was a small game associated with a website I frequented at the time, around 2008. I think it was later the same year that I got into a bigger MMO that became my main gaming thing for several years. So I was in my mid-to-late-20s when I picked up MMOs, which at the time felt like older than the bulk of the playerbase playing those games. Prior to that most of my gaming was more along the lines of Solitaire and Minesweeper, though I was quite fond of Link's Awakening on my Game Boy. I've always tended toward getting really really into a relatively small selection of games, with the MMOs I've played being primary focuses. Thankfully ESO was a massive step up in quality compared to my previous obsessions.

Now that I think about it, out of the... I'm going to say four MMOs I've ever been really into, I never felt like I was an anomaly for being female. I've probably had more female guild leaders than male (and been one myself), and known a good mix of male and female players. And I've never been singled out for being a token female or been given the "there are no girls on the internet" treatment, though that is obviously low-hanging fruit for trolls.

The one case I can think of where I've gotten kind of a "male = default" attitude vibe from the playerbase has been in FFXIV, interestingly enough. I mean that is not a game you would call macho (

), but I've seen enough people addressing entire parties as "boys" or "bros" to make me think there are actually people who expect everyone around them to be dudes. It's very subtle, and some of it might just be slang default (like I'll refer to an entire group of people as "you guys" or call people "dude" indiscriminately too), but there's just kind of a feeling I get sometimes where I'm like "they do know not everyone here is a lad, right?"

In ESO I get the sense that the playerbase is mostly older, so maybe that means we tend to be more used to the idea that anybody could be playing with us on the interwebs. There are the occasional assumptions, but that's just kind of a natural part of having no idea who's on the other end of the chat or sitting behind the character. (I usually go with pronouns that match the gender of the character with no other context.)

Most of the time I won't bother to correct someone's incorrect pronouns, since most of the time it's not someone I expect to ever interact with again and it doesn't really matter. In more static groups like guilds I'll usually make it clear that I'm a chick, though, since I do generally like to be correctly represented.

And for the record, though you didn't specifically ask, in games where I can design a character that is essentially my avatar in the game world, I will pretty much always default to female until I get to the point where I have enough alts to start diversifying. I feel more comfortable representing myself with a character that matches my gender, and I like the idea of being a female hero out there getting crap done.

Neyhtsul · June 2022

I'm in my early 20s, so a very late millenial / early Gen Z.

Dad is a massive nerd who used to play lots of shooter games on the PC, and I loved watching him play. I kinda grew up being surrounded by computers since my dad worked in a repair shop, so it was only a matter of time before I started gaming myself.

I started with late 90s puzzle games like Pyjama Sam or Freddie Fish, some Gameboy stuff and lots of Nintendo DS games. I was 12 when I played my first MMORPG. Have been playing ESO since my mid teens. Time really flies when you're having fun!

Khenarthi · June 2022

I'm 40-ish, and this is my first (and only) MMO. I've been playing TES games starting with Oblivion in 2008. I like the lore

aurorable · June 2022

Millennial

Been playing pc games over 10 years now. Started playing eso during the one tamriel update thanks to an awesome friend that gifted it to me. It's the only MMO I've played (I tend to stick single player or co-op games).

Treselegant · June 2022

What generation are you in (broadly)?

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

Millenial and started gaming aged seven. ESO was my first MMO. I mostly play RPGs and Immersive sims. Had to put up with a lot of 'girls don't play games' well into my 20s.

vibeborn · June 2022

I'm a millenial

I've played games since I was 4 or 5, but ESO is my first MMO, and I've played it since 2018

Sly80 · June 2022

I started with Snowball by Silicon Dreams and have played most things since including adventures that took forever to load via cassette tape, lunch-time Quake battles on a network at the office, and WoW. I always knew what computer games would become and have spent my life watching them get closer and closer to their potential. That said, even all the way back to Snowball, the main protagonist was a woman. So the most innovative game designers have always tended to provide positive female role models.

Pevey · June 2022

It may seem like you are seeing more female gamers. And it may be true that there ARE more female gamers. But it’s hard to say since often times you have no idea whether the player you come across is male or female. You may just assume, and you may well guess wrong. Less so today, but even now to some extent, I find there is no benefit to volunteering information about my gender.

Edit to add: Some gamers out there would be very surprised to know how often that inappropriate joke they are making in game about women is being made not to their bro buddy but in fact to a woman. I find it depressing but also amusing.

TaSheen · June 2022

Pevey wrote: »

It may seem like you are seeing more female gamers. And it may be true that there ARE more female gamers. But it’s hard to say since often times you have no idea whether the player you come across is male or female. You may just assume, and you may well guess wrong. Less so today, but even now to some extent, I find there is no benefit to volunteering information about my gender.

Hmm. I'm proud to be a "gamer old woman", and perfectly happy to tell people so. I've met some really neat people after volunteering that info, some of whom (from my WoW and RIFT days, as well as some from all the TES game forums over the years) are still very good friends today.

Amottica · June 2022

I have been in MMORPGs for sometimes offer a decade. Was playing PC games since the 80s.

Depending on the source MMORPGs have around 40-45% female population.

emilyhyoyeon · June 2022

I'm on the millenial/gen Z cusp and played runescape starting in 2004 and TES games starting in 2008. I never really played many videogames other than those, I don't really care for videogames in general. I don't like MMOs either. Runescape is very special to me so it's an exception and I only play ESO because it's a TES game.

TheImperfect · June 2022

I'm in my forties and been playing games since a teenager starting on Amstrad computer (did have ZX81 but not really that gameworthy) and always played variyng games. Mainly RPG and action FPS type game.

Nightowl_74 · June 2022

I'm a Gen X member and grew up in the eighties to very early nineties. The first video games I really got into were the Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy games, when I was around twelve to fourteen. Before that point I didn't have much interest in video games, I could take them or leave them, but I was an instant fan of the rpg genre and that's held true ever since.

My first experience playing an MMO was FFXI in 2004, but I no longer play that one I just play ESO and FFXIV. I'm not a pc gamer, per se. I'll play on whatever platform is most convenient or that my friends play.

Danikat · June 2022

I'm 37 and I've been a gamer since I was about 2 or 3 and went from poking the squishy rubber buttons on my parents ZX Spectrum to understanding they controlled what was on the TV and trying to play the game. We had various PCs throughout my childhood (the first one branded a Personal Computer was an Intel 386 laptop my dad claimed when his work was throwing it out) and assorted consoles starting with a Gameboy Pocket and later an N64.

I'm not going to try to cover everything I've played but my first RPG was a DnD game called Eye of the Beholder. I didn't discover the TES series until Morrowind (I played a tiny bit of Daggerfall at a friends house first, but I didn't really know what it was and never got it myself). My first MMO was Ultima Online which I got in about 1998. At the time the idea of meeting other people online in a game was a real novelty, and the idea that they could change things in "my" game even when I was offline seemed really weird. I tried Everquest and Runescape but couldn't get into them. I liked UO however and played it until about 2002 but eventually had to accept I couldn't give it the time it required, especially to be part of the community, which seriously limited what I could do in-game.

I thought that meant MMOs weren't for me, until 2006 when I discovered Guild Wars 1. It was the charr that first got me interested but when I found out it was an MMO without a subscription, with a very low and easy to reach level cap and basically designed not to be a massive time-sink I decided to give it a go. I played that regularly until 2012 and only stopped because GW2 came out and I ended up spending more time on that, which I still play regularly.

I found ESO though a Facebook advert for the betas in 2013 (probably the only interesting Facebook advert I've ever had) and after some checking to make sure it was offical and not some generic 3rd party licenced game I signed up. I'd like to say I've been here ever since but weirdly the one thing that hadn't changed for me since 2002 is my limited and erratic free time so a subscription game wasn't going to work. I bought ESO the day I heard it was going buy-to-play and timed registering it so my free month ended the day it switched over and I've been here ever since then.

I've tried various other MMOs from time to time, but not stuck with any of them long enough to be worth mentioning.

For what it's worth the impression I've gotten is there's always been a fair few women in online games, but unless you explictly say you're a woman the vast majority of men will assume everyone else is a man and since it's not something that comes up that often they may never have that assumption corrected, or will assume the times when it is are a rare exception. If it's relevant to the conversation (like now) I'll mention it, or if it might be confusing because someone keeps calling me 'he' around people who know I'm a woman and therefore won't know who they're refering to. Other times I just ignore it because it's not worth interrupting the conversation to explain.

(Similarly the majority of Americans online seem to assume everyone else online is American and if you're on a European server and speaking English most people will assume you're British or Dutch...or American.)

Mik195 · June 2022

I took many years off gaming after college, but my first game was Pong, then on to Atari (didn't play properly usually - my favorite was a game called Berserk where I would trick the things you were supposed to kill to running into the wall and dieing instead of shooting them). In college, I spent a ton of time playing a game called Dungeons of Daggeroth on the Radio Shak Color Computer. I didn't get back into gaming until I was in my 40's and went Xbox because it worked best with my health conditions.

Cheyenne · June 2022

Not ashamed to say I'm 50 years old. I started playing games/MMOs somewhere in my mid 30s, I believe. I started with WoW. I had a computer that was not a gaming computer (didn't even know there was such a thing), so I'm honestly surprised it even worked for WoW. I had no idea what I was doing, but I do remember my first character was a Tauren hunter named BeastieGirl (back when Beastie Boys were still a thing, I think). LOL. Oh those days.

I actually played that for 6 years or so. Didn't get that far with the Tauren but ended up with a Night Elf hunter. Tried a few dungeons and quickly realized they were not my kind of thing so became solo only.

Then I think Rift came out, and I switched to that game. Did mostly housing there, though, because they had the BEST housing.

Tried other MMOs in between and never lasted for more than a couple months.

ESO has been the longest I've ever stuck with a game. Still don't do dungeons. Tried housing but too much of a money sink (real life money and in-game gold). I just putter around now in my old age, not really taking anything seriously and just wasting time when I have it to waste.

Edited to fix my mistake. My ice mage was my 2nd character in WoW, not Rift. I can't remember what I was in Rift. Some kind of caster with a stone pet dude. Like I said, I focused on housing in that game because it was just so awesome and not so much on characters/combat. I miss that housing so much. Sigh.

NotaDaedraWorshipper · June 2022

Older millenial. Been playing games since I was, I don't know, around 10 is probably when I really started get into it. Before that I watched my older siblings play things. It has mainly been rpgs, which is what I still mostly play to this day. First MMO was probably WoW in the early days which I played for a long time, but I have played several other ones too, such as Age of Conan, SWTOR, Aion, EVE, among others.

Throughout my years playing and spending a lot of times in mmos my experience is that there is a lot more female players than some seem to assume. You often see the "majority of people who play ESO or any other game are male" which is just hogwash. There might be a bit more female players the latest decades compared to the earlier days, but a lot of it is that it's not a big deal any more to play games. Playing games has gotten a lot less stigma for everyone and it's now far less isolated and seen as a rather normal hobby and entertainment. Which means people are open about it.
The times when a female player could expect "erh muh gerd, it's a grill!" is becoming further away in history and much rarer.

Some of the male players who believe the majority of players are male, seem to think a player is only female if they play female characters, got an obvious and ridiculous female name and shout from the rooftops that they are a girl. And even then it's a stretch they think it's a female player.

TaSheen · June 2022

Cheyenne wrote: »

Not ashamed to say I'm 50 years old. I started playing games/MMOs somewhere in my mid 30s, I believe. I started with WoW. I had a computer that was not a gaming computer (didn't even know there was such a thing), so I'm honestly surprised it even worked for WoW. I had no idea what I was doing, but I do remember my first character was a Tauren hunter named BeastieGirl (back when Beastie Boys were still a thing, I think). LOL. Oh those days.

I actually played that for 6 years or so. Didn't get that far with the Tauren but ended up with a Night Elf hunter. Tried a few dungeons and quickly realized they were not my kind of thing so became solo only.

Then I think Rift came out, and I switched to that game as an ice mage. Did mostly housing there, though, because they had the BEST housing.

Tried other MMOs in between and never lasted for more than a couple months.

ESO has been the longest I've ever stuck with a game. Still don't do dungeons. Tried housing but too much of a money sink (real life money and in-game gold). I just putter around now in my old age, not really taking anything seriously and just wasting time when I have it to waste.

Oh.... I have a screenie for you! My Tauren fem with the biggest axe there ever was: