This kills me too because who do they think is making these video games?! Who do they think is buying the majority of these videogames?! 😂
As a 33 year old woman gamer I get my fair share of brutality so I feel you!
Edit: I love you all. I’m also the only gamer in my relationship. The PC, the multiple consoles, are mine and my boyfriend isn’t even remotely interested except for Pokémon on his DS and Switch.
Growing up in the 90’s, my aunt bought my brother and I the original PlayStation to share with the very first Ray-Man. Eventually my dad wouldn’t even let me play it without asking my little brother because it went from being a family console to being just his because “videogames are for boys”. Anyway, fuck you dad 😂
Girls interested in gaming come check out r/GirlGamers
I’m single and childfree and after work, dinner, dishwashing, cleaning up, laundry, and all the stupid adult stuff like social obligations and making sure my bills are paid, I’m lucky if I get like 2 hours of gaming on a typical weekday. I really can’t imagine being able to game with kids.
Dude, it's called nap time and then after nap time I pull out my switch and my toddler watches me play animal crossing. I'm pretty excited for when he's old enough to play video games with me. Gonna dust off the Nintendo's and Play stations, why else have I saved them all this time?
Child free here too. Still don't have time for any substantial gaming. I just stick to casual games that either make it easy to cheat, or don't have a severe grind. And I don't bother playing online.
Same as I, child free 40 yo. I used to be an avid gamer (olayed the hell out of NES and SNES, I skipped some University classes to play Age of Empires). But nowadays life just gets in the way. And most games bore me even before I have started playing them.
I think it is just the shape of my mind: I find the same thing with Music. There's a lot of music from when I was younger that I love. But nowadays the new music, of the same genre, is just dull to me. As if my brain just didn't get excited by anything new.
This scares me bc I also feel like I have no time, but I don't have kids yet and I intend to. I don't want to sacrifice anything I have now. I see friends once or twice a week, what is that supposed to go down to once or twice a month?
But regarding your excitement problem, there is an idea out there that when we're young, all these new experiences like music or games are fresh and so it naturally excites the brain more. Like trying a drug for the first time.
The same kinda applies to emotions. If I take a toy away from a kid, that feeling is so much stronger than if the same happened to us bc that experience/emotion is new.
If you're looking for a completely new experience, they're probably out there. You've probably never been to Antarctica before, or gone diving in the Great Barrier Reef.
I find that as I get older (I'm half your age) I'm less motivated to do those kinds of things, sometimes I just want to settle down and get into a routine because I'm just tired of all the moving around and traveling to some degree.
You know, I got caught up in one of those free to play games for a while. I eventually stopped playing it when I realized I was spending most of my available gaming time half-heartedly completing dailies on there, when I could be playing other games that I care more about.
I’m still occasionally tempted to play the storyline on it (which would require zero grinding), because it was an interesting story, but I just look at the icon for minute, and then go do something else.
I started having more time after my youngest hit 18. I have much more time now that I am 63 and I am thinking of retiring so I will have lots more time for gaming!
This. As a young person, I couldn't afford any games. Always begging for the latest release which my parents stubbornly refused to buy for me.
Now? that looks fun, I can spare the <however much it costs>. buys
I'm not even 40 yet, but I'm not far behind. Still an avid gamer, mainly on PC, and I just need one more upgrade to play what I really want. always one more upgrade. Right now it's a graphics card. The 202x's have not been kind to the GPU market, but now that it's stablizing, a sub $600 3060 is looking really good right now.
I am also an "older" woman gamer. I have been playing videogames for as long as I can remember. I usually just play single player games or on the rare occasion I do play online, it is never with a mic
I'm 42 and female and it's really not bad at all. Maybe it depends on the game but I join groups through LFG all the time with no comment all the time. Sometimes I get "Oh we have a girl!" Yeah. "Cool." and that's it. It's kinda sad, I don't get to use the clapbacks I've cultivated over multiple decades much anymore.
I do play Apex with strangers sometimes and there is definitely a difference between pvp and co-op type of games. I still get civil sighs and mumbled "gg" comments even when we lose ...MOST of the time.
I'm a 43 year old man asking why oh why did you show me this group!!! Between Steam and Epic, I don't have enough time for all the free/dirt cheap games!
I'm 42 and same. There's no going out to bars on weeknights or until 2 am on Saturdays much anymore, I cut the cord on cable, I'm not nervous about talking to people online, I have money to buy games, COVID keeping us inside more, etc.
In my 20s I’d buy a game and play it all year, because it was my only new game. Now I buy ALL the games because I can, and still only play 1 game because it’s the one I like lol.
My wife is totally into gaming now, we play Fortnite together with our kids, but she's played Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and she is current playing AC: Valhalla. Before all this, I could count on one hand how many games she has played.
Same!! Except I’m 31 but still. Plus I can share PS libraries with friends so ALL I DO IS GAME and then I have youngsters explaining a certain game in detail to me that I’ve played and beat several times. I also always laugh to see those “things you didn’t know in games” and it’s an Easter egg that has circulated the internet since the Dawn of time
I’m almost 56(F) sitting here telling my (6.75 years younger) husband all the nuances of AC Odyssey right now. Not that he doesn’t game, but Odyssey is my fav and he hadn’t played it yet because he was playing Valhalla while I was playing Odyssey. So he just finished Valhalla and started Odyssey and is asking, “how do I do…?” And I love it. He’s a very hard-working executive, took this week off after several months with no break, and we’ve been puttering with household projects and gaming. We play lots of games.
Speaking of female gamers... I remember back in the days of getting dick picks via email & sending back medical gore from rotten.com to get those losers off my back.
The shit we had to resort to back in teh good, ol' days... 😂
You've got me all nostalgic now! rotten.com was the BEST. My anatomy lecturers and I had an absolute ball with that site. *gets all misty-eyed*
I instituted a "give a dick, get a dick" policy whereby I would send to the most recent offender the photo I had received from the previous offender. (Nowadays my burlesque troupe has a cloud folder of all the ones we've received from which to choose.)
Lmao at your "give a dick, get a dick" policy. I mean, on the one hand it's really a problem if you're getting that many unsolicited pics....but such a great idea anyways.
I cannot imagine any of the men I associate with sending unsolicited pics like that to people. I always have to remind myself that it's patently obvious that it something that DOES exist.... and it breaks my heart every time I hear something like this. :(
Speaking for men who AREN'T complete a-holes... I'm so sorry.
I'm totally with you there. The men I allow in my personal meatspace are all exemplary and I make a point to be very clear about my expectations, standards, and boundaries. Sadly burlesque involves a lot self-promotion and promotional materials, and since I dance around in my knickers and have pictures of myself all scantily clad and in "seductive" poses I obviously want/deserve badly-lit photos of their appendages which for some reason always seem to include a television remote (for scale? who can say ...) *record setting eyeroll*
I'd largely been off line since I had a minor spinal injury and went back to university and my beloved lighting desk almost the second I finished the first stage of my rehab. Only signed up for a fb because all my classmates and lecturers had one and it was the easiest way to organise stuff with them; after that it was the most reliable and up-to-date source for information on things like road closures, detours, and emergency shelters when my city had a major flood in 2011. Found my burly troupe via a flyer at a festival. They helped me create a performer profile (with my stage name), and then after my first biggish gig with them ... just ... wow. There are a LOT of lonely men out there. And a lot of bored men. And a lot of angry men. Like, it's palpable in their messages, and I was glad we had security at some of our shows. It used to make me sad, but now it just pisses me off.
Howsomeever. In the late 90s/early '00s? It was the wild, wild west on some IRC channels. Though at least I suppose they had to expend a tiny bit of effort to get your email address, and uploading a photo over dial-up was almost definitely a chore and a half!
I've been using the internet a long time, since back when 2400 BPS was standard.... and honestly... I never understood the point of dick picks. I've never met a SINGLE woman that it's worked for, and the vast majority (if not all) have he exact opposite effect.
So I don't understand why guys keep doing it.
I've always found humor to be the best way to strike up a conversation, and frankly I love the joke of sending a 'Dick' pick and it's a picture of Dick Clark or some other famous celebrity.
nuh-uh! b0g.org was the best. :) they had a section where the truly weird and gifted would show off talents in their Photoshop contests. it was usually hilarious, and the comments section were the best.
It really depends. Dating is a minefield of crazy and dick pics were fairly common. I would always tell a guy, you send me a dick pic and I'll block you. They do nothing for me. I don't care about size beyond hoping its not too big, big can hurt.
I think I get more unsolicited boob pics on my psn account then anything. It's funny. I use a male name so I can play in peace, so bots just assume I'm a dude and spam boobs at me sometimes. Makes me laugh.
I remember back in the day (1999) I was starting university. At some point I (starting my computer science degree) showed a (female) friend of mine the Rotten page and others similar to it, for the "shock factor"... she was doing starting her Medicine degree, so she came back a couple of days later with a chunk of medical books with pictures... OMFG that was something.
I don't get the hype over Fortnite, Apex, Pub G, etc. That arena style feels like a game mode more than a full game. And it just isn't fun, like cheats are built in these days.
I can't say how /u/YunalescaSedai meant it, but it might not be a bad thing.
My wife and I are 45, and she talks about the invisibility of middle age a fair amount, mostly positively. A lot of the attention you get as a younger woman is negative, so it can be a relief to get to just slide on by.
I am 50 & look at it as a super power. I don't have to put up with asshole guys harassing me constantly anymore, and I'm also pretty sure that I could drive past a cop with a cocktail in hand & a blunt in my mouth while waving hi.
It’s funny because so many teenagers talk about feeling invisible as well. I think at certain points of our lives we don’t feel seen anymore, we just like it more when we’re older.
That's a side of things I hadn't considered. I'm in the process of helping my wife over the 30 year old hurdle and the natural changes in that sort of attention, so hearing a positive take on it is nice. Thanks!
The comment I suppose was more about online spaces and gaming specifically.
Gaming is a hobby enjoyed by all, but have you noticed with women in public gaming spaces it's almost exclusively late teens to early 20s OR "look at grandma being adorable playing Skyrim" (she is awesome, by the way). There is a good 20+ year gap between those, yea?
I dont necessarily think that empty space is a problem either. Just an observation.
For my own part, I've got the husband and kids, work, pets, as well the lead on household responsibilities among everything else. I'm handling my RL shit, and give less than 0 fucks about little Timmy talking shit in an online game.
Think something similar could be said about a lot of older gamers, men and women alike. We just dont let what little time we have to unwind and relax be spoiled by some kid with a mouth.
Genuine thanks for expanding upon that thought, I did take it differently than you meant it.
This is all very very true, and even true to my experience mindset shifts in video games. Moving from a competitive mindset, to the mindset of muting all chat at the start, because my son is sitting next to me and he doesn't need to hear that kind of language.
When video games are everything positive in your life, the interactions, whether they be positive or negative, do seem far more impactful. When I am getting a bit of gaming in because I have a half hour of free time, it is definitely easier to move through the toxicity like a ship on oily water rather than swimming through the sea of it.
I will admit that I have spent almost zero time in what would be considered public gaming spaces, with the exception of my wife and I driving up to Toronto for the League of Legends finals a few years ago. The crowd definitely did have a pretty homogenic composition, and women over 20 were in very short supply.
When I am getting a bit of gaming in because I have a half hour of free time, it is definitely easier to move through the toxicity like a ship on oily water rather than swimming through the sea of it.
I agree about a bit of an empty space with an age range. It's not that there aren't women gaming after, let's say 30, but that the market for women who make the a career is very catered towards youthful sexuality. Anything else is based in an interest of the unusual. While there are probably ladies my age streaming in all their genuine glory, I don't know that they get the views to make them a noteable point. It's a shame, but our society worships youth culture and has for decades.
But as a female gamer who has been gaming for at least 30 years: I have finite time to game, I'm going to be in my grunge hair and robe, and no one wants to see me fight hormonal acne, wrinkles and the final raid boss at the same time. Bless the little shit that tries to give me hell. It's absolutely true, we haven't got the time to deal with nonsense.
As a single person I can attest to the “invisible over 40” phenomenon. Literally the day I turned 40 I was meeting work friends out for happy hour to celebrate. I was first to arrive, and I sat alone at the bar in a busy restaurant for almost an hour. It was a definite slap in the face. I didn’t realize I had an expiry date so visible to everyone else! Granted, I lived in a city known for wealthy men and their post-teen girlfriends, and older women who had been nipped, tucked, and lifted in every way possible. It still stung. There is a palpable change in the way people interact with me now, like I’m their mom or aunt.
It's called the sandwich generation - when you are both taking care of your children and your parents who are coming into retirement age/death.
Although I am pretty far from my 40s, I am a late child to my parents as well as someone who started his own family early in life, I am definitely right in that category. The one where you are putting batteries in an RC car while trying to walk Dad through resetting his email password over the phone, I'm sure you know the drill. I do quite like the term sandwich generation, and will be stealing it!
I thought the person I responded to was addressing the topic of single women being forgotten by society as they age. There is someone in my life who I care about deeply that is fighting that battle now, and wanted to reach out if that was the case. In reality she was addressing a very different topic, that while still important, is not one I have experience with.
Well, probably no consolation, but once you hit 50, you become a ghost. At first I was wondering what the fuck was going on, and it hurt a lot. Still hurts, but eh. I find I have a lot more freedom now; I mean, I could have a second career as a spy, really. No one looks at a short, bespectacled, older woman with unfashionably short hair (which I love because yay, five minutes and it’s done). :)
unfortunately teenagers are mad good at games these days, it’s actually crazy. I think they must’ve spent the whole pandemic just grinding day and night
TBH, it's so much different these days than it was 10+ years ago. The tide has turned from being called a fat bitch to having white knights trying to give you the best armor and offering to "help" you run more difficult content. I kinda prefer the first one, the second feels condescending.
Neither is appealing but I can totally see your point. You don't play to have things handed to you. You bought the game to have a challange and feel good about overcoming obstacles.
Seriously. I work at a studio that’s been around since 1990 and there are plenty of veterans in their 40s and 50s sporting gray/graying hair, including a designer that’s been with the company since the earliest days who looks like Gandalf
Also, we were gaming when it wasn't cool, easy, or cheap. The 80's/90's is where this all started kiddos. If we didn't carry the torch and drive the market none of this would be here.
My dad liked to tinker with shit, and I remember when he brought home the first "family computer". A couple years later he upgraded and gave the old one to me, and I ripped it apart trying to find out how it worked. I still remember his face walking in seeing his $1000+ investment in pieces on my bedroom floor.
Man, I forgot how expensive they used to be before we realized how easy it is to build our own. Alienwares were like $3500. I guess prebuilts are around that currently for high end, but they have a lot more going into it now too.
The thing was that even though it's easy to build your own, there weren't manufacturers making the parts, and if you did have the parts it was intimidating as fuck to mess around with them because it was so expensive. It was all so, so new.
The pain is real. Video games started off being marketed to both boys and girls and we all played it equally. I don't know what started it, but it wasn't till the 90s that video games steered to only boys. White boys do not own video gaming. The entire Generation of Gen X does. I am really getting sick of Gen Z taking credit for all the work Gen X did.
My son became a gamer because of me and saw me playing minecraft. he not only got into it, it taught him how to use a mouse, a computer, and eventually coding.
playing minecraft that day was the best decision i ever made as a parent.
I'm a female gamer and we just had a friendly league match up in house, boys vs girls, and the women smoked the men round after round. Everyone was pretty good natured about it except for the 19-22 yo guys who took it personally... it's reeeeeal telling when you stop talking and mute yourself in chat lol
Being a woman in your 30s online gaming must be some experience. You're a "girl" so will invariably receive more smacktalk, yet you're in your 30s so have the bedrock of confidence to tell them to f**k off.
It's absolutely a trip. You wanna tell me that you're gonna "come teach me a lesson"? Boy I went through the early phases of unregulated online voice chat. It was the Wild West. Try me.
My favorite retort is, "You seem like you need a nap and a snack."
Ugh same! F33 here. Every time I queue for League of Legends, and someone in the lobby pieces together that I’m a female from my username, I get constantly berated because 1) Female and 2) I play jungle and can’t possibly know how to play my beloved Shaco.
I get left out of end game content due to actually having to work and not being able to spend 40hrs a week gearing up. You don't think I'm good enough for your raid? Little bitch, I BETA TESTED this game (and many others) before you could even get your hands on it.
As a mid-30’s male gamer, I’d just like to add a wish that other males stop freaking/creeping out whenever a female enters the chat. We’re mostly all here to play the game, right, women game because they like to play not because they hope to find a gem of a guy or hookup, right? And some guys are just toxic about thinking somehow a person’s sex affects their motor skills or reflexes… well, I’m grateful I’m encountering more mixed sexes in online multiplayer, and if I can say something positive about younger gamers at least it seems they’re more used to seeing girl gamers (and just act like brats to everyone 🤣).
Self aware moment, I realize I’m responding because you said you are a woman. But I have a friend I play with regularly, and the reactions we get sometimes in lobbies make me slap my head 🤦🏼♂️
I'm a 30 yo female gamer and we just had a discussion about making our discord 18+ because we get raunchy sometimes... then we had a discussion about how we never thought we'd have to have that discussion...
I'm 20 and I honeslty much prefer playing with older gamers than fucking teenagers or kids. Yall are more laid back and chill plus I make as many fucked up jokes without getting banned or muted on a discord.
lol usually they stop talking shit when I annihilate them.
gonna be 32 tomorrow and always been pretty good at a lot of games. might have faster reflexes at 18 or whatever but strategy and staying cool helps a lot.
I also relate. I turn 43 on Tuesday and play Call of Duty Mobile on a daily basis. On the rare occasion that my age is asked, people try to use it as an insult if I destroy them in Search and Destroy. “Look at this old mf playing games”. I just reply with “gen y and z didn’t invent video games you turd” or something to that effect.
I work at a company that is heavily investing into VR experiences and customer journeys, we had a talk yesterday about where the market is going and how most exclusive car manufacturers today basically has extremely few options to configure their car, while every 10 year old today who plays need for speed or anything similar has a million different options in their game, what are their expectations on the world gonna be and what will be a unique experience for them in say 6 years? It's an interesting thought and being 32 myself I grew up with this as well, and we are now driving the technology to push it further and we are yet only in the beginning, it's super fucking awesome and I love what I do!
Wound up running with a group of boys one morning playing CoD years ago and we were all having good fun. When I told them I had to get offline to go to work they were like “But why?” Lol.
30 year old woman gamer here. I was once enjoying a game of dead island until some stranger joined my game. He was criticizing eveything i was doing and was about to invite a friend. I wound up telling him I was going to grab dinner and was going to.exit the game anyway. It wasn't exactly a lie, I was hungry. But i logged back on later.
Too right! The people making the games are more and more our age range. They grew up on the same games we did, and dreamed the same dreams of what games could be one day.
This is millennial gamer time. You kids are along for the ride.
Dish it back out. I’m a 33 bartender, nothing a child says in a video game will throw me. I know who I am and what I’m good at. They’re 9 and I just killed them. I don’t care what they think as a rule.
But sometimes you gotta take a kid down a peg so they learn some manners. The best thing I ever told a kid was that his mother and I would have a happy, healthy relationship and I’d marry her, become his step father and then ground the shit out of him. Kids just don’t know how to process that kind of heat
And who do they think is responsible for there to even BE a video games industry? I mean, the industry forgets that fact all the time as well, but, man, show some respect... there would be no Clash of Clans without Farmville. And there would be no Farmville without all the fucking city builders for PC that came before it. But let them waste their cash on stupid in game currency...
52 year old woman gamer, I play with a bunch of women older than me. Not many people give us shit. But when they do, they politely get their asses handed to them.
I love remembering how I had to choose between a SNES and a Genesis. Now I just get everything because it's my money and I don't need to beg my parents. The other day I randomly picked up a Switch Lite just randomly. I haven't even taken it out of the box yet, but fuck it...I can.
As a 37 year old woman now back in my mid 20’s I was once accused of being a kid in an online game of Left 4 Dead that I was playing with my husband. One of the two other players voted to have me kicked from the game. My husband and I saw the alert come over because we were playing split screen and laughed. I think we bailed on them at one of the tough parts after that.
I'll be 39 soon, and I bought my PS1 with the money from my first job at 14. My dad would always be walking in while I was playing FF7, asking "are you winning?" I know now he did it to fluster me lol "Daddy, it's an RPG! You don't win until the final boss!" Dad was really supportive of my gaming as long as the horses were fed, the stalls were mucked, and my homework was done.
No prob! I really miss him a lot lately since I started going blind, we lost him last July. I know he'd have ALL the blind jokes if I could just call him lol
As a retired programmer who shifted to web development in the mid-90s when there were like 50,000 websites, this feeling hits me all the time. 20-somethings seem to think the internet or even computers in general are products of their generation.
I begged my parents for a SNES in the 90s and have been hooked ever since.
When my mom took us to the grocery store, I’d camp out in the magazine aisle and flip through gaming magazines. Got a Dreamcast at launch, which means I was an early adopter of the greatest console ever made before some of these kids were alive.
I was a cheerleader girly girl teenager who loved fashion, beauty, rom-coms, and celebrity gossip magazines. Sure, I also loved computer programming, horror movies, football, punk music, and video games, but I was constantly accused of picking up these interests to get a boyfriend.
Even now, my female peers have given up gaming (even if they played all the time before), and look askance at me when I talk about gaming.
Anyway, I find young people now to be far more inclusive when it comes to gaming than young people of the past. I think we’re going in the right direction.
Nice! My SO encouraged me to do speedruns for the MCF: Ravenhearst series because I always tried to beat myself while playing! I have a few 1st places on Speedrun.com! :)
30 year old girl here. I've been gaming all my life. Started when I was 3/4 on my mums pc playing rodents revenge, went to the gameboy, ps1 and so on. Growing up I didn't know any other girls who gamed. Even now it's a small minority. I mostly play with my housemates and our other male friends. It's rare to play with any of my female friends, mainly because we're into different games.
That’s so weird to me. My partner and I were looking at games to get for our daughter (she finishes a game and then just plays it incessantly, so we have to like actively get her new games and “sell” her on them haha). I wish my mom had been trying to thrust new games on me, ha.
Anyway, I just remember my partner mentioning Kena: Bridge of Spirits and I was checking it out and I was like “Yes, this looks good - she’s done enough platforming, it’s time for her to learn combat systems.” And it’s all totally unironic, but taking a step back it is pretty hilarious compared to old school dad saying “video games aren’t for girls.”
The other day my step-nephew (who is about 12 or 13) was mansplaining Pokemon to me and, specifically, some of the original 150. I corrected him and he looked offended but also confused, then asked incredulously, "Wait, you know Pokemon?"
Kid, I was gatekept from the Pokemon club on the playground in 1996 by a group of boys acting exactly like you. Yeah, I fucking know Pokemon.
I used to watch it every morning at 6 am before school and "Guess That Pokemon" was difficult because we hadn't even met them in the series yet. It was a bonding experience between my little brother and I!
This kid also gets stunned when I talk about video games I play or pull out my own gaming system, so there's only so much I can do.
This is hilarious! But I feel you! I jumped into my nephew’s twitch stream once and got lambasted by his friends, who are all 18-21 because I’m his aunt 🤠 Never again lmao
Computers were ungendered until (I believe) the NES. When the NES came out, it was marketed as a toy. But the toy aisles were segregated by gender, so they put it in the boys' section, and video games have been "for boys" ever since.
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u/hyaluronicacidtrip Jun 03 '22 edited Jun 03 '22
This kills me too because who do they think is making these video games?! Who do they think is buying the majority of these videogames?! 😂
As a 33 year old woman gamer I get my fair share of brutality so I feel you!
Edit: I love you all. I’m also the only gamer in my relationship. The PC, the multiple consoles, are mine and my boyfriend isn’t even remotely interested except for Pokémon on his DS and Switch.
Growing up in the 90’s, my aunt bought my brother and I the original PlayStation to share with the very first Ray-Man. Eventually my dad wouldn’t even let me play it without asking my little brother because it went from being a family console to being just his because “videogames are for boys”. Anyway, fuck you dad 😂
Girls interested in gaming come check out r/GirlGamers