{"id":237,"date":"2005-09-11T13:48:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-11T17:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=237"},"modified":"2006-08-18T17:24:04","modified_gmt":"2006-08-18T21:24:04","slug":"wheres-the-warrior-princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2005\/09\/11\/wheres-the-warrior-princess\/","title":{"rendered":"Where’s the Warrior Princess?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Granted, almost every online gaming forum is dominated by men – the ratio is greater than 9:1 on most. And granted that this online presence is not necessarily reflective of the actual gamer population. But where are the female wargamers and strategy gamers?<\/p>\n

They have to be out there, right? Lots of people who write about gender and gaming say that there is no such thing as a “girl game” – only good games and bad games. The relative prominence of female gamers on Sims<\/i> forums or RPG forums or adventure forums supposedly says nothing about genetic predisposition in gaming.<\/p>\n

Yet, some wargaming\/strategy gaming communities are so confidently male that they can have entire<\/a> threads<\/a> devoted<\/a> to cheesecake photos. (Try that at Neverwinter Connections<\/a> and see what happens.) I don’t condemn this in any way – the communties all seem to be men, they like pretty women, and no one seems to be put off by it. It does speak to a recognition that the strategy\/wargaming world is a boy’s club.<\/p>\n

I know one serious female strategy gamer through IRC. She’s not as heavy into wargames, but historical strategy games seem to be her bread and butter. And, I am assuming that all of those Korean gamers who still play Starcraft<\/i> are not entirely male.<\/p>\n

And it’s not like strategy games do much to offend female gamers. There is no real equivalent of the buxom lass in bikini chain mail, and the god game nature of most titles renders the gender of the protagonist moot. Well, Stainless Steel’s Cleopatra<\/a> is ludicrously dressed. But you rarely see women up close in these games.<\/p>\n

Military culture is very masculine – most military historians are male, too. I have found more female gamers interested in city building strategy games than RTS games, which either suggests a natural female bias to building over destruction or a socialization against resolving problems through conflict. But you find many more women willing to blow a guy’s head off in Counterstrike<\/i> or smite a foozle with Melf’s Acid Arrow than to drop a load of blockbusters on Karakorum.<\/p>\n

Theories, insights and female conquerors welcome in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Granted, almost every online gaming forum is dominated by men – the ratio is greater than 9:1 on most. And granted that this online presence is not necessarily reflective of the actual gamer population. But where are the female wargamers and strategy gamers? They have to be out there, right? Lots of people who write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-3P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}