Reading about the whole Junglist/Good Game/Hex controversy (cliff notes: Good Game is a gaming show on the ABC, which was hosted by Junglist and Bajo - 2 guys. Junglist was cut from the show, and he claims the reason was because they wanted a girl (Hex) on the show for "mass appeal", but ABC claims it's because Junglist wasn't performing well behind the scenes. Most fans think Junglist is the most credible presenter on the show, and are boycotting), and one of the comments on this article, was:
Some of the comments said that it shouldn't matter what gender the presenter is, it's their content that matters, but I don't realy think that's true. I think one of the weird inconsistencies in gaming stereotypes is that if you imagine a male gamer, you'll probably conjure up the image of a skinny pale guy, or a fat pimply guy, who probably speaks with sentences where the average syllable count per word is four or higher. So gamer guys are typically seen as nerds/geeks, with all the social inabilities that go with it. Why then, do we seem to have the female gamer stereotype being a hot, typically Asian, girl, who either spends all her time "playing" Imagine Catz, or follows her boyfriend around as a healbot in an MMO? Occasionally you'll get one that is a pro FPS gamer, but MMO and simulation games seem to be the female gamer's forte. I remember someone telling me about what happened to a girl from SEE at
a party. Some guy decided to go around guessing what games various
people played, and when he got to her he said, "The Sims!". Said girl does happen to be a gamer, though I haven't had the chance to play with her very often. One of my fondest memories of her was in a game of DotA where she had Furion. She sprouted her teammate QC (surrounded her with trees so she couldn't escape for a few seconds), and left her to get killed by us. It's a good strategy to avoid dying!
Anyway, that's why I think regardless of what people say, even if Hex managed to win the WCG title for every single game (I'm pretty sure there isn't an Imagine Catz/Dogz category), people would still believe in the back of their heads that Hex spends her nights hoping the epic healing trinket she has been trying to get for months will finally drop and if that pally tries to outbid her, she'll offer to send him pics of her boobs if he doesn't bid her up.
There doesn't seem to be as much of a stereotype for male gamer games. Well, except lack of pink. I think that if a guy admits to playing an overly pink game, there will be a few raised eyebrows (<3 Atticus). And ponies. Can't have ponies. Unless they're dwarven ponies. For dwarves. That you don't get to comb.
The thing is, they're stereotypes. Real people aren't necessarily like that. T_T
Then there are all the people going on about equality. They seem to think that the fact that Junglist got fired for a woman is acceptable, because that happens to women all the time in the workforce (being fired/looked over for promotion for men). Which is stupid, how is that equal at all? Though I'm getting off-topic, the comment that made me want to write out this blog post even though I need to be awake in 6 hours for work is this one:
[22:15] <+Fried_Tofu> monkeyfodder is a gender neutral nick, right?
[22:15] <%Rangers> yeah
[22:15] <+Fried_Tofu> hmmm
[22:17] <+Fried_Tofu> why do i get random people adding me on hon? T_T
[22:17] <%Rangers> they can sense ur a girl
[22:18] <+Fried_Tofu> -_-
[22:18] <%Rangers> its the internet
So the first thing I have to work on is using less emoticons. I remember a lot of people thinking Saiyumi was a girl because he used emoticons a lot in chat. It's just like an automatic reflex for me now though. T_T I think emoticons make it easier for the other person to know how to respond. For instance:
My grandmother died.
Could be good or bad unless you had prior knowledge of whether I liked my grandmother or not.
My grandmother died. :(
Indicates that this is a sad thing for me. My grandmother probably taught me how to make won tons, and stayed up late watching the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with me when I was sick. She would always tell me off for kicking the couch as it's disrespectful to our ancestors (I never found out if this is actually true or if it was something that she made up just to stop me from kicking the couch all the time), and let me play with the radio in her bedhead.
My grandmother died! :D
Indicates that I'm an ungrateful bitch who should be happy that my grandmother survived the war and immigration to another country so that she could meet my grandfather, and have my dad, who would then meet my mum and eventually have me. Or that I didn't like my grandmother. (Note: my grandmother was never in a war, as far as I know, but I really liked my grandmother.)
Anyway, ACTION ITEM 1: USE LESS EMOTICONS!
I think my next big problem is listening to people. Guys never do that, right? I was doing a daily group quest with this guy, and we started talking about stuff. He was telling me about his life (though I don't know how much to believe, I gave Julian a summary and he called bullshit), and somehow he ended up offering to give me gold and helping me run instances (he's stupidly geared compared to my normal TOC/quest blues crappy gearedness. We ran a heroic together, and it was one in which you get blocked out of the fight if you don't run in when the boss engages, which happened to me and I was the healer, yet they still managed to kill the boss. T_T) and generally making me feel like a WoW whore (although in my defense, I ended up selling him my titansteel CD, so it wasn't as though I was getting money for nothing. I don't even know why he was offering me money anyway, I have enough gold to buy all the stuff I need, and I don't even need anything right now except a gem and a few enchants! Though if MrMan5.5 doesn't want to borrow gold to buy his epic flying mount, maybe I'll save up for that 3-seater mammoth mount. Mammoth mounts make me look less small, which is always important! So my original point for this part is that guys don't listen to people talk about their lives, so if it happens again, I should swiftly change the topic to sport/cars/boobs, and I should be all good, right?
ACTION ITEM 2: STUDY UP ON SPORTS/CARS/BOOBS
I need to be more manly and aggressive. I prefer playing support heroes in HoN/DotA, and even when I random a carry hero/tank, I always prefer to play them in a supportive way. I think that is partly due to the influence of Mooicules when I first started playing DotA. Soulcry commented once that he seemed to always get Mekansm (Astrolabe in HoN), regardless of what hero he was. I guess I must have stored that little tip away somewhere, because I was a bit like that for a while. I thought it was essential to have a HP regen item at all times, and that seemed like a good one as it also gave you a slight stat boost and you could heal yourself if you needed to (although +250 HP really isn't much, now that I think about it). Played a few games of HoN with Redact, and watching him play Blood Seeker/Hunter, it was completely different to how I play him. I just don't have the confidence to go and hunt people. I prefer to gank in groups, which is a bit overkill when you can 2-shot someone.
ACTION ITEM 3: BE AGGRESSIVE. B. E. AGGRESSIVE
And there is my guide on being a girl who is not a gamer girl!
"BRING BACK Junglist! What¿s does Hex play? Probably hello kitty island adventure. Junglist you be l337 son!"Which I thought was funny as the most pro gamer I know (Atticus) was playing Hello Kitty Island Adventures a while ago. I think he also got SEE people into Hello Kitty Online where you get your own Hello Kitty email address and everything! I have to admit though, that I haven't watched the show, and so I can't really comment on whether Junglist was better than Hex. Could download a few eps now, but I should really sleep since I have work tonight. Anyway, reading the comments made me think about girls gaming. I know I've talked about this topic a lot, but since playing games takes up a large portion of my time (sleeping and watching Antique Bakery are close competition though), and I am female, I'm dragging out the horse (mule? I can't even get my proverbs straight. Dragging out thing to be flogged!) again.
Some of the comments said that it shouldn't matter what gender the presenter is, it's their content that matters, but I don't realy think that's true. I think one of the weird inconsistencies in gaming stereotypes is that if you imagine a male gamer, you'll probably conjure up the image of a skinny pale guy, or a fat pimply guy, who probably speaks with sentences where the average syllable count per word is four or higher. So gamer guys are typically seen as nerds/geeks, with all the social inabilities that go with it. Why then, do we seem to have the female gamer stereotype being a hot, typically Asian, girl, who either spends all her time "playing" Imagine Catz, or follows her boyfriend around as a healbot in an MMO? Occasionally you'll get one that is a pro FPS gamer, but MMO and simulation games seem to be the female gamer's forte. I remember someone telling me about what happened to a girl from SEE at
a party. Some guy decided to go around guessing what games various
people played, and when he got to her he said, "The Sims!". Said girl does happen to be a gamer, though I haven't had the chance to play with her very often. One of my fondest memories of her was in a game of DotA where she had Furion. She sprouted her teammate QC (surrounded her with trees so she couldn't escape for a few seconds), and left her to get killed by us. It's a good strategy to avoid dying!
Anyway, that's why I think regardless of what people say, even if Hex managed to win the WCG title for every single game (I'm pretty sure there isn't an Imagine Catz/Dogz category), people would still believe in the back of their heads that Hex spends her nights hoping the epic healing trinket she has been trying to get for months will finally drop and if that pally tries to outbid her, she'll offer to send him pics of her boobs if he doesn't bid her up.
There doesn't seem to be as much of a stereotype for male gamer games. Well, except lack of pink. I think that if a guy admits to playing an overly pink game, there will be a few raised eyebrows (<3 Atticus). And ponies. Can't have ponies. Unless they're dwarven ponies. For dwarves. That you don't get to comb.
The thing is, they're stereotypes. Real people aren't necessarily like that. T_T
Then there are all the people going on about equality. They seem to think that the fact that Junglist got fired for a woman is acceptable, because that happens to women all the time in the workforce (being fired/looked over for promotion for men). Which is stupid, how is that equal at all? Though I'm getting off-topic, the comment that made me want to write out this blog post even though I need to be awake in 6 hours for work is this one:
'Hey, "girl gamers" as you guys call yourself. Stop calling yourselves that. Like your sex makes you any different with regards to gaming. I really am sick of you people announcing yourselves as girl gamers. It's almost as pretentious as calling yourself a hardcore gamer.'I am guilty of that, and I feel bad about it. I think from now on, I'm going to try to be less "girly" in games (which is kinda funny, because of all that effort I put into trying to be more girly). I don't know if it's just me, but nobody else seemed to have mentioned it, but I get all these people I don't know adding me in HoN. I don't add them back, because for me, the point of a friends list is to make it easier for you to play games with your friends, and if I started adding randoms, then it's kinda like just playing pubs, so that defeats the purpose. Most of them are from games that I've played in, and at first I thought maybe it was because they thought I could host (which doesn't really apply in HoN, because games are hosted on their servers, so anyone can create games), but they have invited me to join games they have created, so they must know about that.
[22:15] <+Fried_Tofu> monkeyfodder is a gender neutral nick, right?
[22:15] <%Rangers> yeah
[22:15] <+Fried_Tofu> hmmm
[22:17] <+Fried_Tofu> why do i get random people adding me on hon? T_T
[22:17] <%Rangers> they can sense ur a girl
[22:18] <+Fried_Tofu> -_-
[22:18] <%Rangers> its the internet
So the first thing I have to work on is using less emoticons. I remember a lot of people thinking Saiyumi was a girl because he used emoticons a lot in chat. It's just like an automatic reflex for me now though. T_T I think emoticons make it easier for the other person to know how to respond. For instance:
My grandmother died.
Could be good or bad unless you had prior knowledge of whether I liked my grandmother or not.
My grandmother died. :(
Indicates that this is a sad thing for me. My grandmother probably taught me how to make won tons, and stayed up late watching the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with me when I was sick. She would always tell me off for kicking the couch as it's disrespectful to our ancestors (I never found out if this is actually true or if it was something that she made up just to stop me from kicking the couch all the time), and let me play with the radio in her bedhead.
My grandmother died! :D
Indicates that I'm an ungrateful bitch who should be happy that my grandmother survived the war and immigration to another country so that she could meet my grandfather, and have my dad, who would then meet my mum and eventually have me. Or that I didn't like my grandmother. (Note: my grandmother was never in a war, as far as I know, but I really liked my grandmother.)
Anyway, ACTION ITEM 1: USE LESS EMOTICONS!
I think my next big problem is listening to people. Guys never do that, right? I was doing a daily group quest with this guy, and we started talking about stuff. He was telling me about his life (though I don't know how much to believe, I gave Julian a summary and he called bullshit), and somehow he ended up offering to give me gold and helping me run instances (he's stupidly geared compared to my normal TOC/quest blues crappy gearedness. We ran a heroic together, and it was one in which you get blocked out of the fight if you don't run in when the boss engages, which happened to me and I was the healer, yet they still managed to kill the boss. T_T) and generally making me feel like a WoW whore (although in my defense, I ended up selling him my titansteel CD, so it wasn't as though I was getting money for nothing. I don't even know why he was offering me money anyway, I have enough gold to buy all the stuff I need, and I don't even need anything right now except a gem and a few enchants! Though if MrMan5.5 doesn't want to borrow gold to buy his epic flying mount, maybe I'll save up for that 3-seater mammoth mount. Mammoth mounts make me look less small, which is always important! So my original point for this part is that guys don't listen to people talk about their lives, so if it happens again, I should swiftly change the topic to sport/cars/boobs, and I should be all good, right?
ACTION ITEM 2: STUDY UP ON SPORTS/CARS/BOOBS
I need to be more manly and aggressive. I prefer playing support heroes in HoN/DotA, and even when I random a carry hero/tank, I always prefer to play them in a supportive way. I think that is partly due to the influence of Mooicules when I first started playing DotA. Soulcry commented once that he seemed to always get Mekansm (Astrolabe in HoN), regardless of what hero he was. I guess I must have stored that little tip away somewhere, because I was a bit like that for a while. I thought it was essential to have a HP regen item at all times, and that seemed like a good one as it also gave you a slight stat boost and you could heal yourself if you needed to (although +250 HP really isn't much, now that I think about it). Played a few games of HoN with Redact, and watching him play Blood Seeker/Hunter, it was completely different to how I play him. I just don't have the confidence to go and hunt people. I prefer to gank in groups, which is a bit overkill when you can 2-shot someone.
ACTION ITEM 3: BE AGGRESSIVE. B. E. AGGRESSIVE
And there is my guide on being a girl who is not a gamer girl!
1 comment:
Cool post :)
"Some of the comments said that it shouldn't matter what gender the presenter is, it's their content that matters, but I don't realy think that's true."
...
"The thing is, they're stereotypes. Real people aren't necessarily like that. T_T "
But if it's all stereotypes anyway, then surely gender has as little to do with the reality of the content as anything else. I totally think presenters should be based on what they bring to the show alone, HOWEVER I think having a girl to give the show more widespread appeal and promote gaming as being a valid and legitimate pass time is something I can also support.
Also, I think it's fine for people to say they are hardcore gamers - I don't see how it's pretensious, it really just means you play games alot. Girl gamer is pretensious however, it makes no sense that there's any distinction there (I think there's certainly a valid distinction between hardcore gamer and normal gamer).
Oh also, I offer an apology. It may be my fault for calling you Anna in pub games that randoms have added you, that could be how they've realised you're a girl. Sorry :P
Oh btw I saw someone with the name munkeyfodder playing WoW or HoN one day and they were certainly male, so your screen name is definitely gender neutral :)
Also, I think your first two action items should be changed to 1) Don't listen to people, 2) Talk about yourself alot and say how good you are. The third one is fine. If you follow those pointers you'll certainly come off as being a guy, because there's no way that girls can be as big a douchebag as those traits make you (just think of our mutual "friend" with whom we play HoN sometimes who seems to think he's pretty good).
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