I bet you are all sitting there thinking 'Oh yay another gender thread!' This isn't a thread about how much clothes female characters are wearing or whatever (Apart from a small comment at the end*) it's about the simple attitude some guys have towards women playing video games.
Like many of you on this forum know I have been playing games for a loooong time. It's my most beloved hobby but I'm not going to sit here and justify myself any more than that.
Firstly I don't know why having ovaries makes you a different gamer. Secondly gaming does not belong to men. Yes the devs often cater to lads over women because of demographic but that does not mean they have some sort of divine right that makes their opinion more valid.
You see when someone says 'How dare people like (insert woman here) come into our hobby and tell us what's wrong with it! They are doing two things. They are claiming gaming as some sort of medium that only belongs to them and they are depriving someone of the right to an opinion just because they are female.
Also there is some sort of reaction of 'Why don't you go off and make your own games! Instead of asking men to do it for you.' This works on the assumption that all developers are male and the only people who are allowed to have an opinion about games are people who make them (if that was true forums like this wouldn't exist.)
Lastly the existence of female cons like 'Geek Girl Con' do not prove that 'men should be allowed to exclude women too' They are only there because women feel like they cannot be part of the main scene. If you look at pictures of those cons, sure they aren't as busy as the main cons but there is a significantly different amount of women you see there and in the pictures from the main cons. That is disturbing to me. It suggests that women feel like the main gaming cons aren't relevant or just plain hostile to them.
Maybe I'm preaching to the converted here, Escapists tend to be intelligent people, but diversity in games isn't a bad thing.
Please add your own thoughts or post pictures of spider-man and ponies to cheer me up, either works fine. :)
*PS. As an aside I had an idea about adding a toggle to games to change the outfits of female characters (and I guess, maybe even male characters.) That way we can stop women feeling put off by PVC clad nuns without depriving the lads of their eye candy. Seems simple doesn't it. Considering a lot of games already have costume changes I don't think it would be that difficult to implement either. Other methods of reducing sexualisation while not pissing some people off might be more difficult, but one step at a time I guess. One step at a time
(If you have nothing to say other than 'I am sick of these threads' then please just don't post it isn't helpful or constructive.)