A brief history of women in video games

giegerwasright · 2013-09-14T05:10:59+00:00

Let's not forget Roberta Williams, one of the most important video game designers ever to walk this god forsaken earth. She likes boobs, and dick jokes, and has a fierce working knowledge of classical literature. Simple, she's everything that the fakers and complainers of today are too shallow to be. She didn't wait around for someone to invite her in. She and her husband Ken founded their company, Sierra On-Line. Masters of the craft.

edit: I often realize just how much Roberta Williams played a role in my love for the mythologies and folklore of different cultures. It all started with King's Quest.

Number357 · 2013-09-14T05:41:36+00:00

/r/mensrants

Although I also must add, "lol look at the loser and his videogames!" should extend to at least 2007.

soldierofwellthearmy · 2013-09-14T12:21:29+00:00

Can I just say that gamers being mocked for being gamers is not a uniquely female pursuit. It has to do with popular culture, stereotyping and the idea that it's an unproductive pursuit in a society that requires productive behaviour. That may be wrong or right - but has nothing to do with men's rights.. social equality for gamers maybe.

Peraz · 2013-09-14T08:43:29+00:00

2013 - "A man beat me in MMO, that's technicly rape"

gremlina · 2013-09-14T06:55:12+00:00

Pffft. Gaming started in 1995? Who's the poseur?

grantmoore3d · 2013-09-14T19:59:47+00:00

This is Hyperbole at it's finest. There's some truth to it, but it's completely ridiculous, all of the female gamers that I know were playing games right along with us boys growing up.

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Zosimasie · 2013-09-14T07:12:00+00:00

I really think that graphic should start back around 1988.

Offensive_Brute · 2013-09-14T10:12:58+00:00

Guys, this being top of the sub is not going to garner a lot of support for men's rights.

cl3532 · 2013-09-14T18:56:43+00:00

I'm a girl and I got my first gaming platform (NES) when I was 3 years old. I barely knew what I was doing that but I loved it. I don't play as much as I used to. And I've never made fun of anyone for playing games. please don't let a few dumb girls ruin it for the rest of us..

hugolp · 2013-09-14T09:27:26+00:00

This is a huge generalization, there are plenty of females who play video games. My sister has played since the NES, same as me (but I'm a dude), and my mom plays every single platforming/adventure style game for the nintendo systems, I ended up just giving her my wii because she played it so much. A few girls I dated were gamers before it was "cool" (so hipster right).

I get it though, it is a male dominated space and it feels like women are barging into it and trying to take control. Feminists are trying to get people to make games the way they want, but I have yet to see a (good) game developed by a feminist. All they do is whine, and the real developers tell them to fuck off. If the developer is willing to compromise his/her game to satisfy a few feminists, the game isn't worth playing anyway (I'm looking at you EA).

bl1y · 2013-09-14T12:37:31+00:00

In defense of this post, I think the message is supposed to be this:

The gamer culture, which has existed since the 1970s, has largely been male-dominated. Even if there were some girls playing games back then, they were a very small minority. Gaming has only recently become mainstream among girls. It's absurd that these late-arrivals get to steer the direction of the industry.

Imagine you and your buddies are having a house party. You've cleaned the place up, strung lights out in the yard, you've made food, everyone's chipped in for soda and booze and ice, you've rented a bitching sound system, the party's going great and everyone's having fun. Then a girl shows up three hours late and demands that her iPod be plugged in to the stereo because she doesn't like your music. GTFO, right?

fireinthedarkness · 2013-09-14T10:28:52+00:00

Honestly? You guys complain feminists generalizes men but then you post this?

Atheist101 · 2013-09-14T03:17:13+00:00

2020: Hello gamers, we're your new feminist overlords. Not allowed are the following: Large breasted women in revealing clothing; Large breasted women in non-revealing clothing, male lead characters, male focused story lines; basically anything that offends us. Aren't video games so much more fun now?

EDIT: grammar

Captaincastle · 2013-09-14T02:56:19+00:00

Well I laughed

dregle · 2013-09-14T11:37:20+00:00

This is bullshit. I'll get behind you when you find a better word to describe what your complaint is than "women".

revengethyself · 2013-09-14T07:59:26+00:00

There are a lot of bad people on both sides. Deal with people who you find infuriating on a case by case basis, not by making these broad generalizations (pununintended).

2013-09-14T18:49:07+00:00

To be fair, the media portrayal of women is still pretty awful, and games are no exception.

KinArt · 2013-09-14T07:36:34+00:00

My wife plays video games, sometimes we play together. She recently got into Skyrim, she has passed me the controller so many damn times to help beat a boss or solve a puzzle for her. Not that I mind, we both have fun with it and leave it at that. Never once has she mentioned anything along the lines of "this is catered only for boys!" or anything...She just accepts that I can solve certain tasks better than her, never once do we think about sexism- just individual abilities.

2013-09-14T14:26:28+00:00

I come here to read meaningful posts about the promotion of equality, examples of lack of equality and examples of justice. This is just an angry generalization. All women are different just like all men are different.

HankDevereaux · 2013-09-14T15:54:35+00:00

I really think some kind of self-post actually articulating the point the image is trying to make would have been much better. The very idea of men's rights is incomprehensible to some people; it simply has not occurred to some that we might face discrimination. If we are to make progress, those minds are the ones that need to be changed and an image like this seems childish and comes off as we're getting mad that women are involved in video games now (I know that wasn't the intention of the image but it wouldn't be hard for it to be interpreted that way).

Zanju · 2013-09-14T15:55:45+00:00

Go rant somewhere else please.

Not every woman is/was like this, and implying that they are/were makes us no better than feminazis.

Keep your head on straight.

intrepiddemise · 2013-09-14T12:38:18+00:00

Pretty funny, but not a hundred percent accurate. I remember the "I'm a grrrrrrrl gamer!" stuff back in 2001. All-female counter-strike clans began to pop up. Their websites had completely pink lay-outs, and the clan-members pictures were everywhere. They even linked to an amazon wishlist in the sidebar.

It started with women who wanted to take advantage of the nerdy guys, by making them buy stuff for them. When we, the gaming community, called them out on it they just sort of disappeared. That's pretty sinister.

Of course we had plenty of female gamers who didn't give a shit. There were semi-professional counter-strike players, who happened to be female, who were legitimate CS players in their own right and could kick your ass any day and didn't apologize for it. We made sure they got the respect they deserved.

jeampz · 2013-09-14T08:28:20+00:00

This is so full of shit. Just two examples: my sister and I (M) played games growing up together and my current girlfriend grew up playing games. This was all during the mid-80s and early 90s.

You realize the reason we need Mens Rights is because Feminism has overstepped equality and they want superiority. Posts like this make it seem like you want superiority.

Seriously, I've had it with this group. Go watch Magnolia.

Edit: Other thoughts, maybe if you were more than 18 years old you would know that games were around long before 95.

freetheducks · 2013-09-14T08:21:25+00:00

I've only been particularly looking into feminism and mens rights for a few weeks, and I'd rather mutilate my genitals than hear "Check your privilege" one more time. I feel like I've lost a bit of self-respect simply having to type that phrase.

Sagemanx · 2013-09-14T12:11:36+00:00

I know a lot of girl gamers and they don't care about the sexualization of women in games. It seems that the feminists are the ones who whine about it and complain and it has done nothing to stop designers from doing what they have always done. In fact the women I play with in MMO's tend to be the ones that dress the most provocatively in game. I know of all my friends who play the only ones that buy the in game clothes for their characters seem to be women. You have to remember the feminists who cry about this stuff are a very small collection of very vocal women. The thing is they talk loud and as a result they drown out what the rest of the women gamers and they could care less what those women say or think. It seems that this small and vocal feminist group feel they need to decide what's best for the rest of women out there.

2013-09-14T21:03:31+00:00

This is not about men's rights. It's about women hating. Sorry.

euneaux · 2013-09-14T05:56:59+00:00

Books, television, film, magazines, just about any media has different genres that appeal to different target markets.

Do feminists really demand that all video games be made accessible and interesting to women?

That's crazy selfish.

stoudman · 2013-09-14T08:19:58+00:00

As someone who considers himself both a feminist and an advocate for men's rights, I find this offensively ignorant.

Captaincastle · 2013-09-14T14:34:21+00:00

I wish you people would stop posting shit like this. This isn't about men's rights at all.

Captaincastle · 2013-09-14T13:50:32+00:00

I realize I'm in the gross minority here - but this is the kind of whining people see upon visiting this subreddit for the first time that removes any chance of us being taken seriously.

malone_m · 2013-09-14T09:54:01+00:00

Can somebody explain " the cake is a lie"? Don't see the reference.

I'm familiar with at least 3 girs who are into gaming but the difference with the stuff we see these days is that they weren't particularly into "girl" videogames.

link5057 · 2013-09-14T13:41:28+00:00

This is obviously a dramatization to some extent, but to be honest, it still happens to me. Just yesterday actually, I started up a school fighting game club, we were all sitting there playing smash bros with like 25 people, and this one girl came up and was making fun of us. I told her to eat shit and she got all butthurt and kept making snide ass remarks. Another girl was giggling at how cute "us guys were", because we were invested in the game. Sad fact is, at least 10 of our 40 members signed are girls. This is kind of a rant, but it seems relevant. Pisses me off

SmooK_LV · 2013-09-14T10:37:00+00:00

In my country majority of women still consider video games as something childish. Many of women find these flash, java etc. games in browser and enjoy those, then they find a little game like Angry Birds on their mobile device and then thy waste their time on these foolish games. It frustrates me to see them not recognizing serious AAA games as something actually worth time spending on. I always am going to say this: A good game is like a good book or a good movie.

notnotnotfred · 2013-09-14T02:49:18+00:00

source https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BT5s-2HCAAA40Ae.png:large

https://twitter.com/kidstrangelove/status/377859245674201088

Relention · 2013-09-14T09:16:18+00:00

I don't believe most women think this way...although the thought of censorship bothers me more than anything else.

Edit: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. Is it because I believe most women aren't like this?

rogue780 · 2013-09-15T01:37:20+00:00

Wrong sub

AidanHU4L · 2013-10-30T17:26:53+00:00

Men's rights as a subreddit is that one friend you think is really super cool and then they say something really sexist and you're like oh... I'm gonna stop talking to you...

Purp · 2013-09-14T14:06:34+00:00

Ok...time to switch this sub to text-only, or make a new version that's text-only; like all other once-great reddits that slowly become overrun with shitty memes from Tumblr.

hmasing · 2013-09-14T12:35:33+00:00

For me the list started back in 1973. Just FYI. Video game nerdom didn't start in 1995.

ZimbaZumba · 2013-09-14T13:27:26+00:00

Priceless. Loved it.

2013-09-14T23:54:06+00:00

The entire video game industry was founded, developed and adopted largely by males. They are the ones that took the risks socially, professionally, economically and personally to develop something new. Women by and large(and most of the dominant culture in fact) first ignored it. Then when it didn't go away, shamed and mocked it specifically because the people involved were rejected from the dominant culture already. But it remained until now when video games are an accepted part of the dominant culture. So it is NOW that women, girls and all those others who mocked and shamed it before are joining in, because now it's safe to do so.

Video games probably have the same history of development that numerous other pieces of our culture have had. I simply think women have a different relationship with risk and culture than men do so they are overly represented in the late adopter class just as most who adhere to the dominant cultural norms is.

Ginganinja888 · 2013-09-14T05:11:12+00:00

Hey Admins, have fun shedding users because of the decision to censor your own users. If you need me, I'll be over at Voat. At least I can rely on them to not suppress the truth.

titanhermant · 2013-09-14T15:56:27+00:00

Big bang theory came out in 2007. What are the odds huh?

StoicSophist · 2013-09-14T03:18:14+00:00

In other words, you ~~listened to bands~~ played videogames before they were cool, and girls aren't real gamers because reasons.

Yawn.

sillymod · 2013-09-14T03:34:16+00:00

This has been posted so many times.

ampwyo · 2013-09-14T14:27:55+00:00

ITT: People who can't take a joke

Grapeban · 2013-09-14T20:31:39+00:00

Welp, I guess I just don't exist. And there I was, sure I was playing videogames in the early 2000s, but apparently I just laughing at boys playing them all along.

MoreFreeSpeech · 2013-09-14T14:40:19+00:00

Can someone explain the line about cake? I've never understood the reference.

The_Matman · 2013-09-14T17:59:37+00:00

You guys should read that silly femist article on gtaV.

2013-09-14T18:53:21+00:00

"I'm not like other girls. Girls are retarded. I'm good at video games."

"WHY AREN'T YOU TALKING TO ME ALL THE TIME I HATE YOU PAY ATTENTION TO ME!"

Every time.

Also the /r/GirlGamers response is hilarious like always.

Jennazn · 2013-09-14T17:13:49+00:00

I think extensive video game playing is still for losers, oooh look the colours on the screen change. The fact that feminists are everywhere doesn't touch that.

Title	A brief history of women in video games
Author	notnotnotfred
Upvotes	477
Comments	305
Date	September 14, 2013 2:48 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1mcukp/a_brief_history_of_women_in_video_games/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/a-brief-history-of-women-in-video-games.1163877 https://theredarchive.com/post/1163877

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