In the gaming community, there is this epidemic known as the Fake Gamer Girl. These are females that, knowing video gaming is a male-dominated society, is a great place to get attention from guys. Whether or not they would actually date a gamer is irrelevant. They dress in revealing cosplay, talk about how they play Call of Duty or Mario like it's the only game in existence, all the while knowing little about the game they claim the love. The girls that call Link Zelda, or visa versa.
These girls DO exist, but are not nearly as prevalent as we think. I am a female gamer. I have been playing video games since I could hold a controller, and watching others play them before that. Yet, not once, have I come across a girl that plays video games in order to get the attention of boys. I certainly don't. I also don't cosplay to get the attention of men, but that's a conversation for another blog post. I have heard stories about the elusive 'Fake Gamer Girl', but have yet to actually meet one.
Men do not make the overwhelming majority of gamers anymore. Us girls make up nearly half, though not exactly a full half, of gamers. Yet there are so many tropes and stigmas to being a female gamer that men do not face. This is one of them.
If a girl claims to be a gamer, but doesn't meet some kind of hidden criteria to the person asking, they are called 'fake'. If they dress in revealing costumes, there is no way they can be ACTUAL gamers, because ACTUAL gamers just don't, so it HAS to be because they want the attention of men. It couldn't possibly be because we generally like the character, and the fact that the costume is revealing is the fault of the - usually male - designers. If a girl is pretty, they can't be gamers because real girl gamers are ugly and/or fat. Now, ignoring the fact that pretty is in the eye of the beholder, my good friend Gina, aka RikkuGrape, definitely a gamer. Through and through. She's also a very pretty girl, and a semi-well known Cosplayer, as well as a Geek Girl. She isn't fake; I've seen her freak out over the League of Legends development team at PAX, play very enthusiastic games of Mario Party, and named Tidus from FFX Turdus the first time through and spent years accidentally (sometimes on purpose) calling him thus in random conversations. It's a similar case with most of my other girl friends (the gamers, at leasts).
Name a stereotype about female gamers, or gamers in general, and I can show you a true gamer who breaks that trope. When I play online games, I don't yell and scream at the screen when I don't win, or call people 'n00bs' or 'fags' or anything else. I'm relatively quite, focused, or if I'm in a room with friends, laughing and having a good time. When I play by myself, I usually play in a lit room and don't play for hours on end at a time. I don't have the attention span for it (except for a few games. Like Minecraft. I could play Minecraft for DAYS).
Every now and then, a 'real' Fake Gamer Girl comes along. And these girls make a terrible name for the rest of us. But guys, it's not just the girls. There are Fake Gamer Boys as well. Ones who only play CoD and nothing else, denouncing all other video games that don't involve mass killing as childish and not worth their time. Then there are those who claim to play games to impress us, the girl gamers. Seems silly, doesn't it? Well, they exist too, guys. They are rare, just like Fake Gamer Girls, but their counterpart exists.
Why do we hear about the girls more? Because humans fear change. The video game industry has been dominated by men for most of its life, both the players and developers. Because of that, females were largely thought to be either extremely rare, or to not exist at all. But when that demographic started changing, some refused to accept it. Even now, there is harassment in gaming based solely on the outdated idea that girls that don't play games.
Sometimes, its easier to believe that these 'outsiders' (females) are only trying to impress us. That they really don't LIKE or WANT to be gamers, but want our attention.
But girl gamers are here to stay. Pretty, ugly, skinny, fat, dark, light, gay, bi, straight, amazing female gamers. We're not here to impress you, we are here to game.
So let's game.
A female gamer,
Scarlet
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