Girl gamers a rare species?

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I've been playing games my whole life but it wasn't until I was half way through high school that I realised that most other girls don't actually play games (other than facebook games and iPhone apps). When I go online and I join a party, people always seem to be shocked to find out I'm a girl. In an NT world, gaming seems to be a male dominated playing field, yet in the autism community, this doesn't seem to be the case. I hate to ask 'what is it about games that you like?' (every time someone asks me this, I think "you've obviously never played a good game or you wouldn't be asking me this") but what is it about games that attracts an autistic girl and not an NT girl?

Girls are socialised not to get involved with that sort of thing. It's a 'boy' thing.

My guess is that autistic people in general are less likely to conform to that sort of stuff. Or possibly less exposed to it. Or something. Or they don't care!

Assuming of course that videogames are indeed more popular among autistic ladies than everybody else.

I'm open to the concept, but when the vast majority of the market seems to revolve around either violence or sports, it's hard for me to be interested.


I enjoy the Sims on the PC, and Little Big Planet, although I don't have access to a PS3 anymore. That's about it.

The gaming community is very much a "gentleman's club", in the worst sense of the word. There are a lot of misogynists who identify as gamers. The sort of guys who have not had much luck with girls, and thus they have convinced themselves that they hate girls.

If I was a girl gamer, I don't think that I would want too many male gamers to know about it. It would just be awkward. So really, who knows how many there are?

I don't think that's accurate.

Aspies often have massive or tiny imaginations, both of these attracts people to games, be it something of dreams like zelda or skyrim or something real like war games or sims (granted, sims can be imaginative) plus, aspies do what they like a lot more, and if you get diagnosed in the first place, you have money and you probably enjoy the Internet enough to look up aspergers or wrong planet in the first place. Therefore and gamer aspies are more likely to be on wrong planet in the first place. (I hope that made sense)

My sister is an RPG (Mostly Tales of Series, but almost any RPG goes, including MMOs), sonic, and Fighting Game fan.

I actually know a large number who are big into call of duty, moreso than guys I know.

EDIT: NVM read post wrong... byebye

Last edited by Pondering on 28 Jan 2012, 9:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

I once read, someone with aspergers has 'extreme male brains'. So females with aspergers, our brains are wired and function as a males.

I've always loved gaming ,ever since i was six. I was almost always on the computer, after school, during breaks, whenever possible. I grew up gaming. In real life if a guy finds out i game, they tell me, Really!?!? O_o. You don't look like a gamer at all. Not the type at all, WOW. I always think, "How the hell is a gamer supposed to look like? What the hell is so strange about a girl gaming and being good at it? We both have hands rights? Do they think it's harder because our boobs are blocking the screen or something? I'd be impressed in gamer monkeys. Or gamer fish, since they have fins, it seems pretty hard to for them to hold a mouse or a controller with fins. Seriously dude."

Last edited by Miharu on 28 Jan 2012, 10:11 am, edited 2 times in total.

female gamer here, mostly World of Warcraft now.

My father introduced me to video games, and I loved them. Still do, even without my father in my life anymore.
I think it's great that I love video games (I call my self "Geek Chic"), it makes me able to have more in common with guys, while still having that girly side with my girl friends

I like puzzle/rpg games, games that work the brain and not just the trigger finger. Unfortunately those are sometimes hard to find, there are too many shoot-em-ups to sort through.

Yeah, it's a bit sad. I've only ever known a couple. Unfortunately, I couldn't be friends with some due to ugly personalities.

Others have given good reasons as to why it seems dominated by guys. What with the image given off nowadays, it feels to me as if a lot of people in general only play the most popular games to be cool, which I find to be a funny concept because for a long time games were considered nerdy.

My sisters do play some games, but not quite as much as I do. Lately they've just been raising Chao in Sonic Adventure 2. Don't know whether it's just been me that's influenced them to play more or not.

I run a Stargate RPG with Traveller rules. I've also run AD&D games back during the 2nd Edition era. It seems to me that women are more likely to join a gaming group if: (1) the genre is Fantasy, (2) their boyfriends or husbands are already playing, (3) they're looking to do something that will upset their parents, but that isn't illegal or immoral, (4) it's considered the 'cool' thing to do, or (5) any combination of 1 through 4.

The nice thing about the Traveller system is that there are no separate rules for male and female characters (unless you are playing a member of the Aslan or K'kree species').

We had a 3rd edition group a while ago, the one guys girlfriend would play but it created too much drama (Oooh but we have to be lovers in game and try backstabbing the rest of the party. Well, In character I found out bout their plot, killed her wolf (she was a druid, so yeh), and stuck its head on a pike right outside of her tent in order to get a message across (also did it simply because her and her boyfriend would use it to spy on the rest of the party whenever we tried to do stuff (considering I played a Fighter/Rogue/Duelist, I would often go out and 'acquire' ill-gotten goods among other things. I wasn't evil-alignment, even after the incident (even the DM was getting annoyed with it because when we actually did need their help, they would just abandon everyone else, so we had more lee-way when it came to character stuff. (not stats or anything, but when it comes to alignment shifts.)).
It all culminated in us all killing the boyfriend's character (He killed his girlfriends character for an in-character trial to become a Player Character Deathknight. Who then resurrected his girlfriends character. They both then tried to kill the rest of the party in order to obtain a storyline artifact. I decapitated the girlfriend on a critical (we used a custom critical system), and our Half-orc Epic Barbarian crits and cleaves through the deathknights +8 Full Plate armor (which as we all know, magic items and equips go boom.). That then resulted in a party wipe among other things.

Hmm.. I actually know a lot of girl gamers. A lot of the girls I know play Skyrim. I know Gears of War is really popular with a lot of women I know for some reason