I have a friend who is a girl and plays on Xbox Live, the amount of times I have said I am her boyfriend to get rid of some of these assclowns

I'm a girl gamer. A casual gamer, but a gamer nonetheless. When UT2K3 was big I used to play online about 4 times a week on a regular server and I made the mistake of telling another regular that I was a girl. Every time I would got killed it was 'because I was a girl' or he would be outright sexual towards me, this spread through the server and I was harassed whenever I got on. Before when everyone assumed I was a guy I was respected. And I dont know about anyone else but I dont cope too well under pressure so when I felt like my gaming skills were kindof representing my entire gender I started to choke... Long story short, I left, joined another server and changed my name.

To spite my casual gaming, when I do play I admittedly kick ass. At my brothers LANs, full of his nerdy friends, I usually win in UT and Quake. Though stick me in any racing game and I suck!

My point is though, because I'm a GIRL my skills are usually either disbelieved or belittled. It's hard to be a girl gamer.

(Mind, these are just my experiences)

I'm a girl. I'm not fantastic a games, but I'm not bad either (Can finish most games I play or normal or hard - except Ninja Gaiden:(

BUT I don't want to have hide the fact that I'm a girl online because I don't want to hear all the juvi-cr@p, even though some of the banter is actually funny in a childish way...still. there seems to be only one game where the banter goes too far. And the answer is HALO 3!

why is this???

Oh, dear god, not this old argument.

Yes, there are many girls who play on XBL. Some of them are fantastic. Some of them are not. Guess what? Same holds true for the guys.

Why on earth does anyone give a damn?

If you derive some sort of enjoyment out of defeating another player because they are of a specific gender, race, religion, or peanut butter preference, you really need to get a grip. Winning is winning is winning. Shouldn't really matter who's on the other end, so long as everyone does their best and has a good time.

Scarletmarine:
I am a proud female gamer! I am one tough bitch to beat. At the end of matchs I hear the other team bitching about losing to a girl. Not even mockery can hold me back from my games.

Don't refer to yourself as a bitch, though. It makes you sound like a feminazi.

Jobz:
I personally see no reason why girls should be naturally worse at video games than men(Look at the Fragdolls)

They're akin to a pop group manufactured by a record label. In fact, they were specifically recruited by Ubisoft to promote the company, and it's not exactly a coincidence that they're all very attractive.

The women I've encountered online have been very irritating, irrational and excessively emotional, so I have no particular desire to communicate with them. If there's a woman playing then I'm just not going to care. In real life I don't know any women and I've barely had anything to do with them (draw your own conclusions).

Aardvark Soup:

HSIAMetalKing:
I know one girl who has an Xbox, and I used to play Halo 3 with her from time to time.

Now, I realize that I'm just asking to be flamed by these Escapees claiming to be female, but I think the primary reason that you don't hear girls on XBL often is because...

Girls are bad at video games.

There, I said it. Oh, sure-- plenty of them claim to be good, but I've yet to meet a single one* that's managed to live up to her boasts and play with the big boys. It seems to me that most "gamer girls" simply enjoy the attention they get from guys.

(*That's discounting the 13 year old little asian girl in my WoW guild, who is a freak.)

I think you will change your opinion on this after you've played Super Smash Bros. against my sister. She'll highly probably kick your ass.

That's not very likely-- SSB happens to be "one of those games" that I absolutely rock face in.

Gaming as a girl can work in your favor though too. My brother did the same thing with my sister on Counterstrike once. Some thought she was just a pre-pubescent boy, while others were being REALLY nice. My brother was basically griefing. I remember once when he was standing right behind a guy that was being shot at, and when he had to retreat, my brother was in the way. Instead of yelling "MOVE IT YOU JACK ASS!!" he was like "back up! back up!" because he "knew" it was just a girl playing, and she wouldn't know he needed to get out of there.

The gender/race/creed of the other players does not matter, as they are only targets of my wrath. Does it really matter what the person on the other end looks like when you're all out to kill each other anyway?

Wait.....forum-search senses.......tingling!

Well the only girl I've ever known (by voice and admission) on XBL was a Teamkiller, but it would be unfair for me to judge on just that. I do believe that girls can be as good as guys at games, but due to smaller numbers and the nature of ability by bell curve, you won't see many above average ones.

I have yet to meet a girl who is actually "good" at video games. I've run across many who play regularly but still are not very good. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they are few and far between. I'm not just talking about shooters. Platformers, RPGS, adventure games. They take longer to solve puzzles, their timing is off, and they die more often.

Now before you start throwing stones at me, I do know that good girl games exist. One handed me my @$$ in CoD. She played for a guild that I was in and I saw her pictures on the guild's web site and she was very attractive. So yes, there are hot girl gamers!

All I'm trying to say is that, in general, girls are not as good at video games and the number of girl gamers is disprapportionate to the population.

I made this statement to my girlfriend's sister who (being a brewing femanist) got very offended and said she was just as good as any guy so to prove my point I schooled her in halo, smash bros, mario kart, CoD4, and wii sports. I would like to mention that I own none of these games and only get to play them once every few weeks at a friends while she plays the daily. The only game she could best me at was DDR and that was the first time I have ever played that game.

Yes I have played with that elusive creature known as a female gamer. We used to play FEAR quite regularly. On the few rare occasions she didn't get first place in a normal DM she was second. I would get really proud of myself if I killed her without the use of a pooper grenade. I gotta say for all the nights we played together (it was a good 6 months almost every night) there was rarely a guy who didn't show her some respect. There wasn't much of the "OMG you are a girl, girls can't play VGs" although we would kid around with the "hee hee you got beat by a girl." She is one of the coolest ppl I have met on XBL.

Actually, many believe that females are better at games (insert your gasps here), they generally have better small muscle control than their male counterparts. However, it will always come down to the individual rather than any sort of generalization.

The Admiral:
All I'm trying to say is that, in general, girls are not as good at video games and the number of girl gamers is disprapportionate to the population.

I made this statement to my girlfriend's sister who (being a brewing femanist) got very offended and said she was just as good as any guy

Too many people are unable to understand what statements like "generally speaking" mean (which is a little disconcerting). They always try to counter with some completely isolated example, like the one you mentioned.

joswie:
Actually, many believe that females are better at games (insert your gasps here), they generally have better small muscle control than their male counterparts.

I keep seeing people assert things like this, but I have no idea what they're supposed to be based on.

Hello.

I once read about a scientific study on female students, which came up to mind as I read thru this thread... it went along the lines of this:
There were two groups of students, both of them had to pass a mathematical test. But: The first group was impregnated with the usual yadda about girls being bad at natural sciences, especially logic and maths... a small reminder of what a woman has to look and act like and what are womanly-accepted behaviours, while the 2nd group - of course - wasn't influenced at all.
Guess what? The first group scored really worse than the second.
Funny thing: I see this pattern repeated on a different level (playing video games) right here.

Good girl plays game --> gets "reminded" that girls can't play --> stops playing.
Very sad, indeed.

But who in their right mind would want to play games which are meant to be fun, but actually aren't? Just to show "them"? Come on... leave that for Rocky - a self-respecting human has better things to do in his/her FREE FUCKING TIME than surpassing insurmountable odds.

But I guess that's the problem here.
Boys just are interested in kills, pwning, scores, the size of their virtual peni- sry, I meant exp and gold...
So games are judged by boys' standards and gamers are judged just accordingly:
Who has more kills? Who has more gold? Who has won more matches? Who pwnz? Who rul0rz? Who wins?

...and stupid girl gamers actually respond to that, trying even harder to be "better" than the jerk. But look what that makes out of you... not exactly anything to be proud of. I mean, we are still talking about video games. The main domain of fat, ugly, sociopathic losers. Bragging with being the best here is like forecefully making your way to front row if someone asked: "Okay, who is the weirdest creep in here?"

What these little, prepubescent litte egomaniacs usually don't understand is the social aspect of games - and I haven't even arrived at the point, where I talk about "fun" (yes... that mythical eerie feeling we should have felt before games = jobs, ZP was right on that one)

What you understand by social is: Getting online and beating+insulting others.
Luckily the internet let's you do that without the threat of inevitably being punched in the face if you actually went and tried to pull the same kind of action in real life...

But there is more about games (and here it is, where my little retrospective kicks in):
I would like to describe myself as girly gamer (albeit I am male):

The usual games worked with me as well, but the times I felt most rewarded was when I digged out the very first edition of D&D at my local library. It wasn't cluttered by ridiculous amounts of rules to go by and left all the freedom to one's imagination one could wish for while fueling it with a really nice collecting of the most grotesque monsters I have ever read of. Quickly I got all my friends together and we played and it was good and fun and all.

We really gave a meaning to the ROLE-part in the word RPG - because when we played it felt like an interactive, improvised film with us as the protagonists and me as its director. It was about playing a role and we could literally spend hours without any useless dice-roller-fighting whatsoever.

The most enticing part about this discovery was the fact that this was actually a game, where EVERYONE could WIN (not in this creepy way, where you have to participate in a running contest, "score" last place and get told by your teacher that you are winner, too. NO!) If all did their best @ playing their role and even if the master was officially "defeated" in the end... it felt good for everyone, because this simply wasn't a zero-sum game. It was much more and you were rewarded for being a part of it.

Mark my words, cause this is what nearly all computer games, be it online, or "team"-based get totally wrong: They are all about that shitty zero-sum aspect. You can only win, if you beat someone else. Especially so-called RPGs are not at all about playing a role. They are about getting XP, gold, kills and the grinding monotony of repeating the same action over and over again. Where is that fun? Well, maybe it appeals to some unconscious hunter-gatherer instinct in us all, but that's about it...

Now, back to the topic:
If you actually took a really large, representative sample of girls and another sample of boys you would find out that most of them have gender-specific interests and hobbies. Of course there are always *turns on stereotype-mode* boys who like to dress like girls and girls who like playing soldier (e.g. in Halo3), but that's just diversity/evolution... there are always exceptions to the main rule... if nature didn't want it that way we would all look and behave the same.

[Right now you could stop me and argue with me whether we, as genders, are different by nature or by behaviourism/education/social status/yadda - but, indisputably, there ARE differences in girls' vs. boys' interests...]

Then, of course, the econimic aspect of scarcity and the appreciation of rare things kicks in: We humans somehow are hard-wired to like rare things. That's why we value gold higher than iron, that's why we pay attention if a fish with 3 eyes swims by and pay more for unique things. In this particular context (video games) girls are rare. So everyone is making a big deal outta it... who would have expected that coming? [me.]

As far as I understand it, girls could play video games just as good as boys. The majority of them simply chooses the sensible thing and goes out having hot sex with their boyfriends ;)
Ok, small joke aside: In my mind their reason is that the games, how they are, are made for stupid prepubescent 12-yr-old boys - so they simply do not appeal to girls (once again, there are always exceptions - but there is the main rule which covers 95% and the exception which covers 5% at best)

I guess if games were more about social interaction (besides shooting shotguns in each other's faces - if you call that "social"...), real cooperation, real teamplay, roleplaying and having fun (which doesn't derive from insulting and beating others), there would be lots of more good girls gamers, simply because there are more of them in total numbers.
Heck, the category "good" and "bad" would cease to exist! Either you all win (if all give their best and play their roles nicely) or all lose (if everyone is an asshole, centered on getting the most kills in the shortest amount of time).

That is why I played Natural Selection and not Counter-Strike.. and I guess Left 4 Dead could contribute to that, too.
It's a shame developers are getting on that train just about now, because the technology is all there for quite some time. It's the lack of will...

PS: Do you know the Simpsons-scene where all Springfield males are going on a vacation with a bus and right after the last female left, someone goes: "Hey guys! We can stop holding our breath! The girls are gone! ...and suddenly you see how all the big bellies are popping out again in their fat glory.

Each time I encountered a girl on a Natural Selection server I felt the opposite effect going thru all the boys... as if a magical faerie had suddenly dispersed some Sensible Sand(tm) onto the brains of everyone, all started welding each other and immediately switched from Rambo- to Team-oriented playing...

frontier psychiatrist:
The women I've encountered online have been very irritating, irrational and excessively emotional, so I have no particular desire to communicate with them.

Just curious, but considering that numerous males in this thread have this attitude, it begs me to ask.

Has it every occurred to any of you who feel this way that MAYBE the girls you encounter who are like this, it's probably a direct result of how they are treated by the male populous? It IS fact that the majority of men (well I say men, it's really boys) do a 180 in their personality when they find out there's a female player in the area, moving in with either the barrage of insults or sexual innuendos. If you wish to refute that, I would love to see the evidence of you could possibly provide against it. Please, prove me wrong.

In today's society, it shouldn't be a secret anymore with the amount of psychological study being done on bullying and its effects. Bullying DOES have massive effects on people, whatever their gender, and I imagine that after a normal, healthy minded female is subjected to the amount of crap male gamers love to throw at them, they can turn into vastly different people. How many times have we heard in the media "He was always such a nice boy, I don't understand what happened" in response to school shootings and it somehow always trails back to the shooter having been the subject of bullying? I know that's a very extreme example, but it's the most notable that I can give that really runs home with the point I'm trying to make

This is just food for thought, but I really felt the need to point this out.

Reiraku:
It's because girls can't teabag.

No, it's because when a girl teabags the other person normally feels happy they've been tea bagged

Yes, girls can be good players but in general they are not, why the first? because the first is proportional to the second. why the second? soccer moms, and a girl gets insulted and called a tom boy if they play any real videogames. Not that their's anything wrong with tom boy's. Also, those who do play normally play casually.

Has it every occurred to any of you who feel this way that MAYBE the girls you encounter who are like this, it's probably a direct result of how they are treated by the male populous? It IS fact that the majority of men (well I say men, it's really boys) do a 180 in their personality when they find out there's a female player in the area, moving in with either the barrage of insults or sexual innuendos.

what's wrong with sexual innuendos? Most people playing COD4 have their tounge planted firmly in their cheek if their mike is on regardless of how seriously they play, and you should expect to hear sexual innuendos.

I believe it's been said before, but I highly recommend playing Team Fortress 2 (PC version.)

On my regular servers there are several girls who use microphones and are fantastic medics. Nobody gives them shit for being girls. They're just thankful for good teamplayers.

TF2 is one of the greatest online gaming communities I have ever been a part of. Nobody teabags, everybody welcomes newbies and I hear very little disparaging and sexist remarks. Join a bunch of servers, and favorite the ones you like. As you become a regular, you will have more and more fun as you bond with the community (by killing each other :-)

TF2 is one of the greatest multiplayer experience I've ever had. Every so often, Valve releases the game for a "free weekend". Give it a shot and enjoy yourself!

That's because TF2 doesn't encourage those morons who won't play a game with cartoony graphics to buy it. And I think most of these morons on xbox live fit on that demographic.

@XPelargos:
That's interesting. Women are good medics, you say.
Which is, well, just the kind of stereotype we officially do not like, but that somehow continues to exist, whether feminists want to talk it away or not...
Classic: Woman in the nurturing, nursing, social role.

But I can understand that. TF2 servers, where it plays not like 12vs12, but 1vs1vs1vs1vs1vs1vs... everybody is busy just with themselves and their scoreboard, nobody coordinates their actions, talks or even listens to others... it's shit.

I'm always happy, if I find social players. And losing together is always more fun than winning alone.

Samlowry: You have WAAAAAAY too much time on your hands.

I've been a female gamer for several years now and I feel like I have to have "generic female lead" syndrome in many online games to ever get anywhere. If I declare my gender openly I'm not allowed to ever act/sound feminine or express an interest in anything beyond the boundary of the game.
There's something wrong when I find myself going over posts in an attempt to sound as gender neutral as possible.

@DeathMagnetic: WROONG! I have a paper to write. So don't try to keep me from procrastinating!

I think any girl who makes a big deal that she is a girl deserves getting shit on.

Eh.. When I saw this thread I thought.. Oh no.. Not again. But, it isn't too bad. Not too woe is me. I tend to leave it alone that I'm a girl. With girl gaming, and lots of things in life currently, you bring a lot of unnecessary attention and drama on yourself. If you think it's perfectly normal, others will be more likely to. But if you spend your time shouting to the hills about your rights and whatnot, well, that'll cause a stir, a negative one.

I read a very good, true, story in a book called Blink the other day. It was about an orchestra in Germany. They were auditioning players and they did it with each performer behind a screen. They did this because someone famous or something was auditioning and they wanted to keep it fair. So, this remarkable woman sits behind the screen, plays trombone, misses a note even, and the judges are so enthralled with her that they call off the rest of the audition, send everyone else home, and say "THAT'S THE ONE I WANT!" The screen goes down. Everyone sees she's a woman. They're horrified. The trombone is too manly for her, they think. It has been proven, they think, that women just aren't as good with certain instruments as men.

She was accepted in but they made her life hell pretty much and eventually demoted her off her solos for bogus reasons they couldn't back up. She sued. She got her solos back. They continued to hate her with every fiber of their being and paid her less than her male counterparts. She sued again and won, but only 8 years later.

Anywho.. It was proven that auditions just weren't fair without a screen. At all. The biases we have, on purpose or not, are too powerful. Just like when we look at a pile of mush on our plates we'll think it tastes bad too, but that isn't necessarily the case. Just the power of the mind. All auditions are now done with screens. Women who wear high heels and the sound of the clicking of them is heard, are rushed off stage, asked to change shoes, and assigned a new number.

Some things can't be fought entirely. Just don't use your mic. Or get a mind reading male robot to speak for you.

sigh, i am a gamer girl... i dont have xbox live but i do have computer games, i mainly kick ass in TF2 and i have met over 20 other girls in that game. i try not to meet assholes :p

XPelargos:
I believe it's been said before, but I highly recommend playing Team Fortress 2 (PC version.)

On my regular servers there are several girls who use microphones and are fantastic medics. Nobody gives them shit for being girls. They're just thankful for good teamplayers.

TF2 is one of the greatest online gaming communities I have ever been a part of. Nobody teabags, everybody welcomes newbies and I hear very little disparaging and sexist remarks. Join a bunch of servers, and favorite the ones you like. As you become a regular, you will have more and more fun as you bond with the community (by killing each other :-)

TF2 is one of the greatest multiplayer experience I've ever had. Every so often, Valve releases the game for a "free weekend". Give it a shot and enjoy yourself!

Yeah but guess what? Theres no crouch so you can't teabag.

I would just like to remind everyone that I asked the following questions:

Have any of you seen or heard girls playing on X-Box live or with video games in general?
Additionally, why do you think some gamers are so against female gamers online?

I did not ask "Can girls play video games," "Why do girls suck at video games," "Where can I play online where I won't get yelled at," or any other question other than the two above.
Personally, I love playing video games and I am not very good simply because I don't play enough to get "pwning skillz" like other gamers do.
However I do love a good fighting game, DoA and Soul Calibur are two of my favorite games. I also love Katamari Damacy.

And for those doubting that I'm really a girl- While my username and icon may make me seem like a fake, I do have a very real myspace and livejournal.

In my experienece, girls can be as good as guys but they usually aren't.
I believe this is because, for the most part, guys have been raised playing video games whereas girls usually pick it up later on in life from a brother or a guy figure in their life. (I have noticed this because this is the case for all my friends that are guys and girls)
Now someone mentioned that girls have different eyes than guys which I believe is true, because I found that most girls didn't notice if an ennemy was moving in the far off corner of their screen, but guys were quick to pick it up. This could be attributed to that fact that guys have what I call "gamers eyes" (to see things that were almost invisible to the naked eye and that had usually only been on the screen for a mere second)
Another good example of this was a day that me and my girlfriend were playing some game, perhaps gta, and as we were driving I noticed a special item in a little niche at the corner of my eye, and my girlfriend was in utter shock of how I seen it. She spent an hour interrogating me to find out if I had already knew it was there or if I was hiding a map somewhere. Of course, girls aren't always the ones without gamers eye. I have noticed this in some guys as well, just not as often.

Edit: After reading the post above, I realise I am an idiot. Sorry

I think that girls are so unliked in the gaming world because it has been a guy thing for so long. Back in the day it was a place where guys who couldn't get girls went to seek fun without dealing with social aspects. Then it became rooms of testosterone filled guys yelling and screaming as they raped the corpses of other players. Now they must once again adapt for females, which usually means less yelling and Tbagging. Which is apparently something they don't wish to give up. The gaming world is the male equivalent of a feminist meeting. If the feminist meeting were online where no one could see them and they were given the power to murder and rape whoever they wanted, that is

yes, you can crouch bulletinmybrain.... its the Ctrl key