This is pretty clear to anyone who has ever played a game of Counterstrike or whatever and a woman makes the mistake of using voice chat. You'll get the whole gamut from misogynistic nonsense to the most awkward and creepy attempts to hit on them possible, pretty much every time.
I suspect the environment is different depending on the game. I never witnessed any of that in overwatch back when I used to play for instance. Though I pretty much never play multiplayer games without at least one friend so the numbers are skewed a bit by having at least 2 non-weirdos on the team
Alternatively, you had two guaranteed weirdos.
I agree that most competitive games tend to go that way. My ex and I played a lot of League of Legends in a small friend group together (where this did not happen, thank god), and if playing with "externals" it was unbelievable what bullshit she had to deal with. and although most of the time the creeps bit off more than they could chew, it must have felt pretty bad, regardless of what me and our friends did or said.
Anyone with experience in non-competitive game settings to share?
Folks in MMOs tend to be more chill in my experience. In such a large sample of people you're going to find a few dickbags who think they're hilarious or the kind who will DM sexual harassment, but the majority of people just do not care and are happy to play the game. Toxicity tends to crop up around entitlement to loot and perceived performance rather than gender.
Maybe in more current MMOs, because back in my WoW days (2013 and earlier), misogyny was rampant
It's just one joke, over and over again. I'm a guy, but one of the reasons I stopped going to lan parties was hearing this same few jokes again and again whenever a woman showed up. If it wasn't a woman, it would be something else from the limited number of topics and opinions they had. When it wasn't frustrating, it was simply boring.
Competitive gaming is a cesspool regardless of gender but I feel for women who have to deal with sexism on top of the default toxicity. Hopefully things will improve over time but i don't have high hope for the near future sadly
This study has nothing to do with that. It only surveyed mobile gaming.
oh dang, women have been telling you for the past like 40 years that video games are an incredibly exclusionary space and turns out they weren't just lying??? crazy, it's almost like we should be listening to people when they have problems in a community. i mean jfc people actually needed a study to prove this? ask any woman who's ever attempted to speak in game chat what happens, just ask.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.
Oh wow, I didn't knew that Super Mario or Tetris on the NES was an "incredibly exclusionary space" because that's not how I remember it.
I'm glad you taught me that.
Being a girl trying to talk about video games with boys was generally horrible, it's not just the multiplayer experience, the 'you like games, then name every X ever!' followed by bullying has been alive and well for over 30 years.
So, to participate in modern gaming, women should play games from 40 years ago?
Well you win the most asinine comment I've read today.
Even I remember girls getting crapped on in the arcades.
oh yeah i'm sure your half rotten memory is a reliable source, thanks grandpappy
gotta love that you not only completely missed the point, but you quite perfectly encapsulate the kind of "gotcha" rhetoric that women hear every day in gaming spaces from these toxic men.
it'd be funny if it weren't depressing.
Activities don't need to be inherently sexist for the culture surrounding them to be. Consider the ways things like healthcare, cooking, and hunting have been gendered in different times and places.
Interesting study. Explicitly about mobile gaming, not PC gaming, though ...
Dr Seán Roberts, who researches gaming at Cardiff University, said: “When I ask people if they play video games, women often say no. But if you ask about playing games on a mobile, many of them will suddenly say yes. It’s like they have an idea of what a real gamer is in their heads, and they feel like they don’t meet that ideal.”
TBF I don't really consider myself a gamer anymore... even though I clock a few hours a week on the playstation. But like I used to play competitive FPS/MOBA/RTS 10+ hours a week.
How can you call yourself competitive when you didn't even clock 40+ hours a week? Competitive gaming isn't just a hobby, it's a way of life... Poser.
//This comment was brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends! Play now!!!//
lmao.
40+??? That's scrub level commitment. Get gud and you'll be on the leaderboards playing 10+ a week. /s
... feel like they don't meet that ideal.
Well, there's your problem, idealizing the traditional "gamer" persona. I play computer games every day, for a long time, and I also don't feel like a "gamer," because I don't want to be associated with people I would consider "gamers."
That might be a side effect of my not wanting to be associated with anyone, but there you have it.
Goood, I can feel your Gamer anger. Beneath the skin we are already one. Even now the evil seed of the Gamer germinates within you. strike me down and your journey to the dark side will be complete.
lmfaoooooo
i mean of course youre going to have a conclusion like that polling exclusively mobile game players. For example had they polled female MMO players (there are a lot), the results would likely be far different.
Eh, I’m one of those MMO ‘females’. I have to be really cautious when I first join a guild. I’m often seen as a ‘female’ first and gamer second. The amount of times I’ve gotten OnlyFans comments is way too high. I’ve had the best luck in multiplayer FPS games. The downfall of Bungie hits me hard because Destiny in particular was a great place to be a woman gamer. Can you do the mechanic and communicate? That’s all a good team wants.
Absolutely, in a guild with a female GM and we've collected a fair number of female gamers because of it. But we still end up kicking folks occasionally because they lose their shit when they hear a female on discord.
In other news: the sky generally appears blue.
Gotta have data to do anything with it. Important to actually be able to show and prove problems exist before trying to deal with them. (Need more data on causes)
Many men are emotionally unable to accept things like this. I think the reasoning goes like
- i'm a good person
- i like my hobby
- someone is saying bad things about my hobby
- this makes me feel bad, so it must be false
- furthermore, the person bringing it up is attacking me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance
Facts don't matter. There's really nothing you can do if you're not someone they like.
I also think about this comic a lot: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1151.html - Some people are too cowardly to grow.
I also think it may be just... sexism... I know people who behave like this towards women, but not other men...
Given where this is coming from, im waiting for the drop where they blame the tranas community for this. Somehow.
I've been playing a certain well known game for over a decade now. I've developed such skill at never specifying anything that could out my gender I could put it on a resume.
It's actually quite fun. Oh the stuff men talk about when they don't know there's a lass in their raid group lolol
Now that I'm "old", it ain't about guilt, shame, or exclusion, it's about how fun this facade is. Y'all neeeever know. So keep talking.
"ackshually mobile games don't count as real games 🤓" - lemmy users
"women avoid me 🤓" - same lemmy users

Yeah that's definitely not going to be exclusive to mobile games, but I always feel like mobile games are generally more isolating to begin with.
Who play mobile games
So not proper gaming like on console or PC?
just like in real life.
online there are the sexual guys who will buy you anything to be theirs.
And there are the annoying sexist ones. I think it often has to do with a primitive feeling in the guy of "there is a female right there that im interacting with but she isnt having sex with me. i am thus annoyed." so the male does mean pokes at the female because it's "her fault" they arent having sex. i've seen it a trillion times. "why arent you MY bitch?" pokes rudely
And lastly there is the good type of male who, just like the good type of female, can have fun with you while playing the game together and enjoying the play; simple as that.
There was that study that found that the men most aggressive towards women in gaming were those less skilled than them, I think about that one a lot
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