By Julie Whitefeather
Dinosaurs, free lunches, checks that are in the mail and the supposed FACT that all p.c. gamers are teenagers that hunch over brightly lit screens in dimly lit basements - all are things, or concepts that are archaic, outdated, or just plain extinct.
What changed the last concept?
To a large extent, a game with 11.5 million players called World of Warcraft (WoW) and the many cultural and social strata from whence come its players. Thanks largely to WoW, video gaming has long ago "come out of the closet" as something about which you might have once denied as a pastime. Still, it amazes me that there are gamers who seem to think that all but one of those 11.5 mil are male - and that one lone female gamer is sitting in the bedroom of her mother's house somewhere in Poughkeepsie..
O.K. a bit of an exaggeration - but in some cases not much of one. Consider the following excerpt from an audio file that was recently submitted to the No Prisoners, No Mercy Podcast: "My second complaint is your issue with the game lore and not being able to change it, getting your panties up in a bunch - those flame proof panties, getting them all up in a bunch about not having female slayers. What you're asking for here is to impose the modern world on Warhammer. The world that Warhammer is, was created to be a, not a modern world. It was created to be a medieval world where you had the predominating mindset that men are dominant so of course you are going to find that men are in those strong muscular careers. It's not the time, it's not the place to change that..." - "Sarc"
Now the assumption made in the diatribe by "Sarc" that the Warhammer Online (WAR) universe is a medieval world is more than a bit incongruous considering the game has rifles, steam engines, tanks and even repeating cannons. And yes, despite my insistence in podcast 23.2, the crusades did not actually take Jerusalem with a tank battalion. Just as ludicrous, however, is the thought that female gamers must accept the bizarre notion that some few young men seemed to have developed that males have an inalienable right to a dominant role in any given mmo.
Not only is it an odd notion that anyone would feel they know the state of my panties, but despite occasional condescending, and misogynistic emails Fran and I get insisting to the contrary - we do not need a keeper of any sort to keep us in line (read agree with someone else's viewpoint).
Sadder still (or perhaps scarier) is the thought that the author of the email above, and some few like it, might be serious. I find it difficult to believe that anyone with even a modicum of sanity would honestly believe that games that are rife with Barbie dolls and rainbow colored ponies would appeal to any female gamer above the age of 10. But it seems that more than a few game developers share that sad notion considering that "armor" most female characters are asked to where in any given game are more at home on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition than on a field of battle.
So while those few (and fortunately rare) gamers out there are contemplating whether or not Fran and I need a male point of view to set us straight, those same young men should keep in mind the following:
I had an M-16 over my shoulder, defending my country when the biggest decision you had to make was whether or not to eat your Popsicle or read your comic book.
See the REST of you online,
- Julie Whitefeather |
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