Women GW gamers?

[ThePov]

As a player, I've never really had a problem playing with/against girls, but I have noticed that the few I've seen do tend to be romantically involved with male gamers, though some played before said romantic involvement. I even got and ex into WHFB at one point (even bought her a Wood Elf battalion, which turned out to be a massive waste, but thats a whole other story). Don't know if she's still into it or not, as the local GW shut down soon after we broke up, but she was interested, at least.

One thing I've noticed about female gamers is that they tend to put a slightly heavier emphasis on the painting aspect of the hobby, for whatever reason. This is not to say they don't play the game, or that they aren't very good at the game, (I've had my *** handed to me by a girl many times in the past), just that I notice female gamers tend field a much greater percentage of fully painted armies than male gamers, and often to a better quality as well. If you ask me, thats one of the keys to getting girls into the game, to approach it from the more artistic aspect of painting and modelling first, as is at least more gender neutral than "IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE, THERE IS ONLY WAR!"

However, I do think there is a more passive way that girls tend to put down gamers than flat out attacking their significant others for playing, which then increases the male gamer's discomfort and disrespect toward them: stereotyping. Case in point, the old GW in this area used to be located in a fairly busy mall, so there were often packs of ditzy, "popular" teenage girls roving the mall and passing by. Every once in a while, one of these groups would enter the GW on a lark, look around at everything, take up all the Redshirt's time and attention with incesseant and stupid questions ("So are the Eel-dare supposed to be, like, pixies or something? *giggle*"), pick up every box on the wall and put half of them down in the wrong place, then walk out, giggling to themselves at how "nerdy" that store was, and go over to Claires or some other clothing store. Meanwhile, everybody in the store, female gamers included, are sitting around feeling uncomfortable. Games stopped, painting was impossible with that kind of inncesant noise, and no one could actually buy anything because the redshirt on duty had to attend to the ditzes for 10 minutes. It goes without saying that several deragotry comments would be made about the girls, their intelligence, and their sexual promescuity by the more immature customers in the GW, and then for about an hour everyone would feel really awkward and stupid. It's not the fact that girls were in the store, its the fact that the girls only came into the store to laugh at us. I am by no means implying that all girls who enter a GW are like this, but for us, it was a large enough percentage to detrimentally effect many of the regular's opinions of teenage girls in the store, and so many of them tried ot discourage any girls who walked into the store at all. Even when a new female player actually bought something, many of the regulars were unnconvinced that this was not an elaborate joke, that the girl wouldn't just come in one day with a bunch of pink-dipped Eldar or High Elves, play one game, then smash them on the floor, laugh, then run outside and merge into the nearest pack of ditzes.

In short, it's not the female gamers who giver male gamers bad opinions of girls, since they tend to be very cool and often smarter than many of the guys, but instead it's the kind of materialistic chick who snickers when you walk by carrying an army case that really hurts, which then makes the male gamers less receptive to females in general.

(Also, props to Eldargal for breaking that creep's nose. You hit anyone over a game, much less a girl, you deserve much worse than that)

[Vepr]

Genecon had a 40k tourney running in one of the side rooms upstairs and I was shocked to see a lady playing Eldar. I have only known one other female table top gamer in my 24 years of gaming. I have played with more than a few RPG female gamers but it seems rare in the table top war games hobby. I have no problem with it at all and treat female gamers just like any other gamer.

I think the problem is that many of the young men in games shops are bit socially awkward to put it as nicely as possible. Now I know it is not all of you. Many like myself are married or have girlfriends but there is a large contingent that just does not know how to act around females. Instead of just treating them like any other gamer they either shy away or go over board the other way with attention etc and generally acting like buffoons. I see it all the time when girlfriends etc come into the gaming shop I go to because they serve food and coffee so sometimes girls come in that are not gamers and half the guys lose about 30 IQ points while they are there.

As my wife puts it most game shops and the guys in them are like garlic for a vampire to females.

[Aldramelech]

My wife is the classic example of a "Wargames Widow". She has absolutely no interest in the hobby whatsoever.
She often says that if the house caught fire, Id rescue the figures first! lol
I have a ten year old daughter and she (so far) has shown 0 interest also.

This is not a bad thing. If they did join in Id have to share my toys! Its healthy I think to have separate interests from your partner and gaming is my thing. Shoes, Handbags and "Trashy magazines" are hers (her words not mine! lol)

Having said all that I would like to see more females involved in the hobby, from a club point of view it would be good to have some good old fashioned female common sense sometimes and an increase might go some way to shaking the nerdy image gaming as a whole suffers from.

I tend to get on better with women and have far more female friends then male, if only I could persuade them to pick up a paint brush.

[Aldramelech]

LotR. Our new girl got hooked on the hobby through the LotR system, before moving to WFB before she joined and 40k after. When she told us this a couple of the boys scoffed and one made some comment implying that she was just here because of the films and wasn't a proper gamer.

What a crap, immature attitude!

If you asked why people got involved in gaming Id bet there would be thousands of different answers, Why wouldn't the above reason be a valid one?

Some people.............

[Culven]

I have known very few women involved in the hobby, and those I have known tend to be related to or in a relationship with a gamer. I think that this is more indicative of the fact that most gaming is outside the realm of experience of most girls/women. I can't speak as to why gaming has been more appealing to males, but I think that it may have something to do with males typically being more competative. Though, that could be an entire thread of its own.

Basically, I think it is just an issue of women not being exposed to wargames in general, so having never developed an interest in it.

[Drew da Destroya]

Back when I was getting back into 40k, I was drumming up support with a couple of my friends (so I could have regular opponents, of course!). I'd been showing my then (now ex) girlfriend about it a bit, but didn't really expect her to get into it. She's now started Dark Eldar, Necron, and Daemon armies, and plays against a friend of mine. We kept on pretty good terms, but she moved away, so I haven't been able to play against her very often.

My current girlfriend has known about my gaming habit since pretty early on. I ask her for advice when building my models, and she pretty regularly encourages me to actually paint my models. She's shown some interest in Tyranids, but for the most part has her own expensive, time-consuming hobby to work on: [URL="http://www.cosplay.com/costumes/m51751/"]http://www.cosplay.com/costumes/m51751/[/URL]. I'll work on her, though... maybe buy her a box of Warriors at some point.

[KnightShift]

I've never had the pleasure of playing a lass... but I would very much welcome it just as I welcome playing anyone who enjoys this game. And that should be anyone who takes a liking to it.

The way I see it, Warhammer 40K has plenty to cater to just about ANYONE. I've tinkered around with four different armies and now am building up a nice-sized Ork faction. Why? 'Cuz Orks most match my twisted sense of humor That's the key to getting the most out of 40K, more than most other games even. The emphasis should be more on the character of the different factions and less on the "guns and power"... which, let's face it, does become boring after awhile.

Play up the unique persona of each of the various armies though, and you will have something that appeals to just about everybody

[The Girl]

The number one reason people quit and swear off Warhammer is for the sake of a relationship.

I seriously doubt that. I could go on a long rant to counter your argument, but will limit it to this: if the hobby is important to you, you need to have a discussion with the woman you're with about it. If she can't deal with it, it's a sign you may need to move on. This depends on how important the hobby is to you, and how willing both parties are to compromise. A romantic relationship takes 2 people... don't throw all of this on the woman, it's completely unfair. Unless she's a mind controlling zombie queen, or she's embedded a chip in your brain that zaps you any time you do something she doesn't like... then you get a free pass.

That aside: I started playing because I work in an indie retailer that sells GW. I wouldn't have known about the hobby otherwise. Seems I'm lucky to play here... the guys have been willing to take me on as a newbie player and don't treat me as if I'm a pariah. The few women that play at my store have also been pretty readily accepted. This isn't to say that I don't have to prove myself to customers everyday b/c some folks assume that women that work in game stores are hired to be eye candy... that we don't know the products we sell, let alone play games.

[insert a long rant about societal expectations, product marketing, and gender branding here]

[oni]

My girl plays some 40K with me every once in awhile. I have to guide her through it, but I admire the effort. She's not a gamer and has no desire to be one, but she sees how happy 40K makes me so she encourages it. I suppose I'm lucky. I'm not afraid to put my foot down if it's called for, thankfully it's an extremely rare occurrence. 40K is more of a 'guys night out' with that occasional girl that can 'hang with the boys'.

[rabscutle]

You have neglected a key element of the gaming world: escapism.

I can't tell you how many of us go play these games for the very reason than to escape the female oppression in our lives and relationships. Myself included. My last girlfriend hated the game, hated how much I liked it (and often accused me of liking it more than her because I discussed it with my friends, or would not leave in the middle of games to go sit in my car outside her house with her doing nothing, etc). She hated that I did it at all and found it hugely annoying.

This always bothered me, and I have noticed many other men in the same position.

The groups I play 40K with have guys who often can't come because their wives/girlfriends gave them a hard time. We meet once a week on Sunday afternoons and the place we play closes early, guaranteeing everyone will be out and off to do whatever other things they need to without a hitch (i.e. there is never a "sorry honey the game ran later than expected..." situation at our club). Yet still many times I have heard people arguing with their significant others.

Okay, never mind that you undercut your own argument to say you just love playing with women at the end of the post...

I used to date a woman just like that. She drew me away from the game and made me feel awful for liking the hobby. It was a rough time and I thought I had found someone that mattered to me. We broke up eventually over unrelated things, and I finally went back to gaming.

You know what I learned from that experience? That Women are evil and suck the life out of gamers and should be avoided at all costs?

HELL NO... it is simple, and if you don't understand it, I weep for how horrible your relationships must be. If your hobbies are important to you, if they are something that makes your life more full and gives you that wonderful stress release, and your partner seems to be crushing your joy... DATE DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Having similar interests is extremely important. If you are the kind of person that paints their face to go to football games, your partner better be at least understanding of your love for your favorite team. If you are someone that wants to play games, your mate better be understanding of it. It is even better if they also find the hobbies you like enjoyable.

And if you have a brain, you realized I wasn't specifying gender in that paragraph. It goes both ways.

Women should be more than welcome at the gaming table for the same reason that men should be: they are a person and if they find their joy rolling dice, they should be able to do so.