Girls in Gaming? back in the day, the 80’s and 90’s you just didnt see it that much. Gaming in those days, days of playing in your parents basements, 2 litre bottles of soda and huge bags of potato chips and jalapeno cheese dip, was largely the realm of the the great unwashed masses of males.
I do remember one girl, Jennifer Grotogears, who, not only being a DR Who fan, was the first female gamer my age i knew, but besides her, no other girl played in our games. Don’t get me wrong, at the Cons and here and there a few brave pioneers of the girlish kind made their presence known. some matched their male counterparts in there class restriction against cleanliness and could spew geek lingo better then most but they were a minority.
Every now and then you have a player that would force (or be forced by ) their girlfriend to play... always a disaster, usually derailing the game and she would disappear as soon as they broke up. Then there were the girl who showed up and every gamer tried to pick them up, GM’s showered them with gifts a favors... “I’m a 2nd level moron” says the male gamer “Oh I’m 100th level demi-god” says the girl. Nothing could destroy a campaign like a single girl gamer... not by anything she did, but by all the young bucks trying to gain her affection.
I still remember standing on the top floor of the Baltimore convention center, watching the reaction as a fairly attractive gaming girl walked by below, every guy would turn and gawk, she was the shark in a sea of guppies. I used to get a kick out of the guys trying to pick them up.... Guys wearing t-shirts the heralded their favorite class, dice pouches firmly fastened to their belts and who had the grooming standard of a homeless man... tried to wow these rare creatures with tales of dungeons past and of loot they had acquired.
Things are different now, though geek guys still outnumber geek girls, the numbers have certainly changed. The last group I ran, girls actually outnumbered guys. There was once a super bad social stigma to being a gamer, at least with RPG players, I don’t know if that still applies now a days. I was once ask “are you a satan worshipper” and the news had stories of kids killing themselves when their characters died.... I think we are passed that now.
