SE players gender

Dude, those are questions that if scientists could discover the answer, they would be very very rich.

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The real qustion would be why do so many men pretend to be women in games
I used to play Star Wars Galaxies and would die laughing watching others try to hit on my friend whose toon was a girl lol

Groovy Baby Yeah!

lol but the scary thing is...if one of the "females" is hitting on you and its actually a 50 year old...now thats scary

The people that posted to the photo exchange represent only a small portion of the player base; hardly a representative sample.

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Usually because internet games forums (and indeed games) are full of teenagers or at least of men who have the maturity of teenagers. So if it becomes obvious you are female then you get hit on. Now since people come to game forums to talk about games and play games - to play the games, you don't want to get hit on or have someone 'be nice to you' or try and ally with you in a game just because you are female. You want to kick ass, whatever your gender, and not be patronised.

Despite the above comments there are far more women playing any kind of game (like SWG) than you probably think. Women often play male characters to avoid being hit on, or if they cant bring themselves to, often let men think they are a man playing a woman. Ive encountered both many times.

The point is guys, you are the ones to blame for the situation, not the women. If those of you who have problems with your hormones managed to keep that your problem and not make it the problem of every female player you encounter, then maybe women would be more open about playing games. More specifically mmporgs than games like SE where there is little interaction and hence harassment.

That said, SE is a bit dry and will not appeal to that many women, so I do expect women to be a small minority here. But certainly not absent. Most alias' are gender neutral so you would never know.

Anyway why post this topic? Does it matter what gender the person is who is blowing your fleet into spacedust?

Space Empires is harder to get into than most strategy games and has a steeper learning curve. Does your wife like Galactic Civilisations? You might be able to hook her by getting her interested in a less dry 4X game like that and then trying again to get her to try SE. Personally I like SE multiplayer but find it hard to persist in the single player games. Trying to think why...

The AI empires lack personality is one problem for me. I cant remember one from the other. None of them are 'scary' like the Borg or the Dominion. The AI isnt very good in the first place, though I can enjjoy a game played in a small galaxy with AI players set to high and giving the AI a bonus. When you have 17 empires and neutrals packed into a half dozen star systems the fight for a place at first is fun. Doubt this puts off more women than men though.

In SE4 I used to use the star trek mod or babylon 5 mod because the AI races felt more interesting.

I expect that a number of things come into play. More men use the internet than women, though this is changing fast, and SE was download only for a long time so less would have bought it. Less post on forums so you would see them less. Less women work in technical jobs, though that too is slowly changing, and a game like SE5 is probably helped by a more technical mindset that wont be put off by the need to have to work quite hard even to manage a first turn, since you dont have any predesigned ships and have to work out shipbuilding before you can start playing. More men will get past this first hurdle than women since less women are used to having to spend time dealing with spreadsheets I would guess.

I suppose that might be it. The game needs to be a bit easier to get into, without being dumbed down - maybe have some intially defined ship designs so you can at least play the first few turns without having to learn to design a ship, and AI empires that are fun, distinctive, and make you want to interact with them or fight them. The GalCiv empires had personality, from the evil Drengin to the good Altarians.

I was thinking of teaching someone to play SE by letting them be the "supreme leader" who makes the decisions, while I act as the "trusted advisor" who tells them what their options are, and deals with getting the interface to do what they want.

In theory, this should work with any strategy game, regardless of the new player's gender.

"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

My other half plays SE5, we both perfer the balance mod.
she has a game that's about 80 turns in I think.

groovyfishguy wrote:

The real qustion would be why do so many men pretend to be women in games

In third person games I usually play as a female - if I'm going to be staring at an ass for 20-30 hours it might as well be a "female" one.

every new world is a woman to me, and every woman a world

IMHO its not about hormones, SE series are very mechanically based gamepley, which is what makes it a delight to men and avoidable for their spouses. Further to that I can understand why they might avoid competing with their menfolk in such a mechanical mindset. If you offered to play as allies against computer players, that might make it a different kind of proposition, reinforcing the bond rather than eroding it. However I would not be surprised if it was still refused. Competitive play when growing up is similarly segregated and it is a bit unrealistic to expect that to change based on an ideal.

Also its like guys playing the Sims, personally I wouldnt be caught dead playing the Sims, IMHO its a girly thing. Fine. But Spore will be interesting on that front, I think it might well have a much more representative player base because it has elements that appeal to both genders and they have avoided direct confrontation in the game design, but allowed interaction via the in game species and civ designs. Just a shame there was no 4X space game in Spore last time I looked (just a UFO), I could enjoy building and battling fleets in such a nice looking galaxy representation.

Well, I do consider women gamers in 4x TBS games to be a rarity. What's been said about the learning curve may be valid to a point, but in itself I don't consider it the most obvious reason (and one could argue that it would be a sexist assumption anyway). I would think the lack of pre-generated storyline may be a more important factor. You truly have to do a lot more "effort" if you want to find engaging storylines and relate to races in a SEV game, so considering that women are on average more in touch with their emotions this may cause the game to look less interesting at first sight. Maybe it's the lack of characters or the open-endedness (does that word even exist?) which make it harder, i don't know. The fact remains that some players are doing a marvelous job at creating their own storylines around the games they are creating and if memory serves well, this is not limited to just the male players among us.

I've met quite a few more female gamers in fps games like counter-strike or CSS. The gender was never really an issue - heck, I've even had a female clan leader - but for guys it can be quite unusual to see the "hitting on" thing reversed at times Ah, well, whatever you find in the real world you will find online and it's all just fine with me just as long as people don't abuse the online factor to forget their manners, which will always remain up to the individual.