It shouldn’t be a “male’s” hobby. I refuse to allow fascists to deny us another thing, I saw them complaining about the The Last of US 2 for culture war reasons, they have no right to set the rules.
Since when is gaming a men’s hobby? For as long as i remember, while majority of gamers are men, women are still a significant part of gamers, at least in the games that i play and watch online. And especially in recent years, i see more women in games.
It may be a “male’s” hobby for gooner shooters, but in casual games it is pretty much equal.
I can’t speak for video games (because I loathe most of them and don’t even bother looking at them any more) but I can take a step to the side and talk about (pencil and paper) RPGs.
I started that hobby early. 1978, while it was still punk AAF and full up with the DIY ethos. Back then women were a significant fraction of the player base; I mean really, it was practically catnip as a game for theatre nerds and drama flakes, and a huge fraction of those (probably majority) were women. Hell, one of the most influential forums for game players and designers to hang out, Alarums & Excursions (still in operation last I heard!), was an APA run by a woman: Lee Gold.
But things changed from the '70s and into the late '80s until a lot of women were driven out of the public view (myself included). Pick-up games, hanging out in the games/comic shop, attending conventions … women just vanished because sexual harassment and gatekeeping and all the other obnoxious toxic masculine behaviour came to the forefront. There was a brief upsurge in the '90s with the release of White Wolf’s line (Vampire, et al), but it was still very small compared to the number of women at the beginning.
And who wants that shit in their recreation.
I still play RPGs. I still talk about them in some circles. Hell, one of my two Mastodon accounts is a gamer community. But I don’t go to conventions. I don’t hang out at gaming shops (well, OK, right now because I’m half a world away from any, but before I moved here). I don’t do pick-up games with strangers (the rule is “friends first, then the fun”; it applies to RPGs and sex both). By any metric used by people observing the hobby, I don’t exist.
But I do. And at my peak I had more RPGs (not supplements: core game rules) than most people can even name.
But hanging out with poorly-socialized men in someone else’s home? Not gonna happen.
It shouldn’t be a “male’s” hobby. I refuse to allow fascists to deny us another thing, I saw them complaining about the The Last of US 2 for culture war reasons, they have no right to set the rules.
Since when is gaming a men’s hobby? For as long as i remember, while majority of gamers are men, women are still a significant part of gamers, at least in the games that i play and watch online. And especially in recent years, i see more women in games.
It may be a “male’s” hobby for gooner shooters, but in casual games it is pretty much equal.
I can’t speak for video games (because I loathe most of them and don’t even bother looking at them any more) but I can take a step to the side and talk about (pencil and paper) RPGs.
I started that hobby early. 1978, while it was still punk AAF and full up with the DIY ethos. Back then women were a significant fraction of the player base; I mean really, it was practically catnip as a game for theatre nerds and drama flakes, and a huge fraction of those (probably majority) were women. Hell, one of the most influential forums for game players and designers to hang out, Alarums & Excursions (still in operation last I heard!), was an APA run by a woman: Lee Gold.
But things changed from the '70s and into the late '80s until a lot of women were driven out of the public view (myself included). Pick-up games, hanging out in the games/comic shop, attending conventions … women just vanished because sexual harassment and gatekeeping and all the other obnoxious toxic masculine behaviour came to the forefront. There was a brief upsurge in the '90s with the release of White Wolf’s line (Vampire, et al), but it was still very small compared to the number of women at the beginning.
And who wants that shit in their recreation.
I still play RPGs. I still talk about them in some circles. Hell, one of my two Mastodon accounts is a gamer community. But I don’t go to conventions. I don’t hang out at gaming shops (well, OK, right now because I’m half a world away from any, but before I moved here). I don’t do pick-up games with strangers (the rule is “friends first, then the fun”; it applies to RPGs and sex both). By any metric used by people observing the hobby, I don’t exist.
But I do. And at my peak I had more RPGs (not supplements: core game rules) than most people can even name.
But hanging out with poorly-socialized men in someone else’s home? Not gonna happen.