Toxicity exists in online communities, sadly. Female players get an “extra bonus” when insulted just for their gender, but they also get flattered way too much and are offered to play just because they are women and not because they are as good as other guy (I’ve seen that). But trashtalking online goes for anyone.
I strongly disagree and feel sorry if any player that is a girl should change their GT or avatar like they were some kind of mistake or intruder, Gosh! .
I’ve loved games my whole life and I’ve been really passionate about the games I loved! Why would I stop doing it or not say it because some misfit thinks othewise?? I just block them , mute them or when I’m just mad because life has other really bad things going on I even answer them in a very bad way before blocking them (not often though beacuse I don’t want to get reported just for answering a moron…). I honestly don’t care anymore, I’m not going to play victim or cry in the corner for some moronic atittude from another player, and I’ll never will.
And this is not just in gaming, you will find those kind of persons everywhere, specially when they can act under anonymous profiles.
Mute, Report , Block, talk to ppl that don’t act like that. But just a little message: If anyone see this atittude towards ANYONE, just don’t encourage them to keep it going. The bully should be left alone and go to talk to himself and see what he’s really problem is to insult and menace ppl online. And please, pleaseee report them. It actually works =)
My gamertag is REYNOSO FUA11, I’m pretty sure I’ve fought you before at least once back either in season 2 but I could be wrong. I’ve recently been playing ranked to unlock the achievements and level up the characters I don’t use often since S3 deleted my stats so I haven’t used my mains in a while. Anyway if you ever want to play a set hmu.
Developers of fighting games just make characters as cool as possible. Guys don’t mind seeing topless characters such as Tusk, Fei Long, Ryu, Law etc we look past that and see it as apart of their persona. The female characters which are busty, “in-shape” and wearing revealing clothing tend to match the persona the developers want them to portray.
I think the issues with repelling female gamers are overly sexualized women and the general behavior of weirdos when they find out someone playing is a girl.
The latter usually ends up with girls feeling uncomfortable with strangers saying horrible things (both insulting a sexual things).
As for the former, it’s normal for people to play with characters they relate to, and a nice place to start with that is playing as a character of the same gender. So if females tend to gravitate towards female characters, then they should be made to appeal to them as well. The sexualization of females in gaming really does repel certain audiences. My girlfriend wouldn’t care for most females in Street Fighter because their designs tend to be fan servicey and that they mainly appeal to men, and disgust women. My girlfriend loves KI mainly for monsters (she and I find human characters boring), but we both love how KI treats their female characters compared to other fighters.
To sum it up, I think sexualizing female characters really ruins the experience for female gamers because when there’s lots of fan service, it gives off the impression that these female characters are objects for men’s pleasure. You can see a lot of it with body types and such in gaming. You see bulky, fat, skinny, short, muscular, and normal sized men, but when it comes to women, they don’t have much diversity in body styles. I dunno, but it just feels to me that most female designs in games (SF especially) are meant to cater to men and also make the social issue of beauty standards and body image worsen in society.
I once talked to a friend’s 5 year old kid on why R. Mika had “balloons” on her chest. I had no answer. If I couldn’t explain it, is that a bad thing? Maybe that’s too much sexualization? I mean there was a reason an Alt costume was used during EVO on ESPN.
I wrote a post related to this topic in another thread. In particular, cross-posting the following comment, which seems to reflect some common ground that seems to have been found here, r.e. “thirst”:
On another note:
Yes, there are problems with the expectations that are placed upon men, and yes, the way that male insecurity over penis size has been played for profit is cruel and too often damaging.
I recall an article on the rise of a trend in men adopting destructive (anorexic?) diets and working out constantly to achieve a “Van Damme look”, i.e. a perfectly lean, toned, yet muscular body, the sort of body that a lot of lead male actors put in entire 8-hour working days to attain before shooting for an action blockbuster (and it gets photoshopped to perfection anyway). You can probably google around to find this stuff. It’s an impossible and frankly unhealthy body image to aspire to, and it’s not good that, instead of alleviating analogous pressures on women, society has just started to place impossible body image pressures on men.
But the point is that all of this is terrible, not that both genders are now suffering so it’s okay.
The usual enabler of tacky behavior, is folks not saying anything.
Trying to save on stress and conflict by looking the other way.
Talking to the folks about their bad social practices and lack of tact, would be helpful to everyone involved.(constructive criticism, not ye ole: “go to yo momma basement and die alone you worthless piece of sheet”)
Though some people do need a good backhand across the face…
^ graph shows % of women participating in the Olympics over time.
So, the world of athletics clearly found a way to get participation from something that was incredibly dismal even as close as 1990- yet is now on its way to parity. Clearly, something went really freaking’ right there.
The answer at least for the US was mandated parity (Title IX) for young women athletic programs in all gov-funded educational institutions. Participation skyrocketed as a result.
In Chile they had a all-women MK9 tournament. It was kinda awkward, but got participation regardless. An all-women (except for the people running the tournament and commentating…) MK9 tournament. It was kewl.
IANAW, but there appears to be super strong precedent for increasing participation by having separate leagues, and mandating their existence.
It’s an interesting supposition. But look at your graph. Title IX was passed into law in 1972 and truly came into force in the late 1970s. While it looks like there is a minor bump in the percentage of women athletes during that approximate time, there’s actually no way that women benefitting from athletic programs as a result of title IX would have been able to move into the olymlics as a result of their experience that quickly. I would guess that similar social pressures led to an increased number of women’s sorts being featured at the Olympics during the same time. Which gets to my point. Title IX (which was not about sports at all when it was written) is more a reflection of a changing social standard than a driver of that standard. It simply continues the trend you see in the graph, it doesn’t radically alter it. Like all federally mandated social programs it has a pretty mixed record. Inarguably it has increased funding for women’s collegiate sports overall, but it has also killed a lot of men’s athletic programs, particularly at smaller colleges and universities.
Anyway, the difference is that in athletic programs women and men don’t compete against each other. So far, at least, in the FGC they do. Although I’m not personally opposed to women only tournaments, it does beg the question “why?” It may well increase the number of female participants. But wouldn’t it also establish that there is a separate women’s league? And if women can compete at Evo and any tournament involving men, then how can you exclude men from a women’s tournament? Especially if you start offering prizes. It gets messy.
This is true but when you do say something it rarely leads to an actual conversation. Any person in a chat or message board that calls people out on the childishly sexist comments and remarks typically just get called “SJW” or “White Knight” then it just devolves into two groups of people hurling insults at each other lol
I agree though. I always try to call out sh** like that when I see it, but like I said, I don’t think it ever does any good lol
Personally, I feel women will come into the FGC is when games that interest them are available. Usually, Competitive fighting is not a subject that really gravitates women as a whole, but from what I observed, by far the largest women participants is found in the Smash community. The game is approachable to them, available, and has appealing (recognizable) characters. Nintendo also see similar success with both boys and girls in the Pokemon Franchise. Even though at it’s core, it is monster fighting monster, there is enough “fluff” to do in the game, appealing esthetics, and able to reach it audience though advertisements, social media and cartoon. For a fighting game to be attractive to both genders, we need to think beyond worrying about where a character is over-sexiualized or not.
When they told me about this I was kind of “surpised”, I don’t get the idea of making gender aside tourneys, their answer was “so they could measure who was better between them”. I don’t know, it annoys me in some way. But I see what they were doing.
That’s why they prefer simulators like The sims. Mans are competitive among themselves, in general aspects we achieve the sensation of accomplishment when we overwhelm our enemies, women in the other hand get it when they fell they rise something successfully (can be a char, an empire, a family) or discover things at the game lore (side histories, relationship of persons, etc). Of course there are exceptions, but this sumarize why women usually do not want to get involved with extremely competitive genres like fighting/shooters.
Exactly, this is why I feel topics like “What can be done to make women feel more included in the FGC?” is irrelevent. Its like a women asking how to get more men into ballet. Of course there is men that are into it, but not by the majority.
I think it’s also a good topic to stem other subliminal discussions. Think about it. This post has allowed us to express an opinion we otherwise, may not ever bring up. Also, it let one of our members @MaruMDQ (sorry for putting you on the spot) feel comfortable explaining her perspective.
Nothing. An average woman is much less competitive than an average man by nature. You don’t rectify this with character design, it’s just the way things are. FGs are one of the most competitive games there is, and the genre is not really mainstream, at least in the traditional sense. I remember there was an anonymous survey of dota 2 players, only 3% (out of 35000 or something) were female, the game is also very competitive.
And Overwatch is a type of game that can be still fun when played on a very low level. Especially now, when quick play is at its most casual after they added ranked. You can put a literal toddler to play the game and he might even be useful after some training. Almost every hero has a BIG RED BUTTON that resets on its own and can be used to destroy the enemy team on its own.
In FGs, you will just consistently stomped, which is not fun at all. You need to git gud in order to have fun, you have to earn your fun.
