I found this on BoardGamesGeek. This is a very informative and enjoyable website, with very polite forums filled with --gasp!--helpful people. If you're thinking of buying a board game, then this should be the first place you check out.
But the above photo started a fire. The idea is that many of the members of the site like to post pictures of themselves playing their favorite games. Most of them are people sitting around a table, doing things like wearing hospital masks while playing Pandemic. I spent far too long yesterday reading the forum posts this picture generated. Many--like myself--found it light and amusing. Many others were offended, and were very vocal in their outrage. "I don't come here to find pictures like that!' was the general theme.
So I asked Vulcan Ninja what she thought. Was the picture offensive? She looked at it, laughed, and said "Not at all". Of those being offended, she said that in the geek community, you're always going to have those people who are uncomfortable with sexuality, even something as frivolous as this. She wasn't being judgmental--she said she knows some people see gaming as their refuge, and don't like having that world threatened in any way.
On the other hand, I think it's great that the Geek Community is no longer just a Boy's Club--and I think that some of the strong reaction is tied into that shaking of the status quo. Go back to the Eighties, and I couldn't name a single girl who read comics or played Dungeons and Dragons. Now, I play Dungeons and Dragons with an all-female group, I just borrowed two years of The Walking Dead from my friend Lisa, and I co-edit a Doctor Who website with another female friend. To see women getting into geek material--be it comics, anime, or even card games--is something to celebrate, not pillory just because someone decided to have some fun.
And besides, she's cute. Not many of us guys are. For that alone, we should cheer.
1 comments:
Offended by the slighest hint of breast as presented by a female gamer with a sense of humour. The Apocalypse is surely upon us, and I'm certain this will figure prominently in the main quest for Fallout 4.
Anyways, great post about women and gaming - then and now. You speak the truth. I NEVER encountered girls that read real comics or played geek games back in my high school days. Sure, you'd occasionally see girls hanging out in the arcades, but they weren't there to game and they could surely have had the likes of you and I dragged off for swirlies (or worse).
But to have a girl join our D&D group back then would have been tantamount to serving tea to the aliens that just landed in your front yard. That would have been something, though.
But I thought about the last D&D group I hung with (a couple of years ago, at least). There were 7 of us. Two were gray-haired gents well over the age of 55 (one of them the biggest capital-G Geek I have ever known). Three were middle-aged ladies (one single, one with 4 kids, and the other in a gay relationship - not that it matters). Myself and one other bloke were the vanilla, middle-aged guy demographic. In all, not at all like the bad, old days.
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