[AnTi]

There are a fistfull of female members and this board seems to be well mannered :) (no "everygirlplayinggamesisuglyandfat! or womendontknowhowtoswitchonacomputer!) So, ladys, let's unfold some fluffy furs and settle in...

Well, why are you here? What do you like about The Witcher? Or what about computer games in general? What do you think about female charcters in games? And what about those male characters? Are women really not playing computer games? What about sexism? What do you miss in most games? And so forth, feel free... :)

About myself: My favourite game is "Prince of Persia: WW". I mainly play RPGs, but some quick, dirty Q3A deathmatches against my sister are fun as well. It appeals to me that most of the "playing girls" tend to play RPGs. I made up some theories about this and "let's sell pink PSP/DS/PS2" is not the solution :D But first, lets hear about your oppinion...

[Yarpen Zirgin]

will there be any photos?

[AnTi]

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will there be any photos?

Of course, just photograph yourself doing a handstand while eating a bowl of pudding and getting tickled. We always need some entertainment  :P

Dear guys, feel free to leave some intelligent questions, suggestions or comments. ("What do you think about online relationships? I once met..." is intelligent; "Have U photos? Can I get Ur phone number?" isn't)

[Seeker]

ok I will start LOL I met my wife on line  long stroy short we stared out as friends met got to know each other better fell in love and we have been together for 8 yrs now.
think I was one of the lucky ones
Not that many ppl where so lucky

[Michael]

[AnTi]

Hey, congratulations! But you have seen her in "real live" after all. I've made the experience that "just online" friends are short-lived. As fast as I meet new people online, I forget them. Nevertheless I have some online friends, but I've met them in school or on LAN party before we played, chatted, mailed online. I think it would be veeery hard to build a deep, ingame love... I have seen guilds braking apart due to one girl  ;) Maybe this will calm down with more women playing :)

Seeker, have you met your wife in a forum or game or? 8 years ago internet wasn't very established here in germany, as far as I remember (less then 10% in east Germany).


I'm in need for some Ram, too  :'( But no DDR... unless for my old secondary linux machine...

[Seeker]

LOL AnTi  it was even worse in the late 80 early 90 with the net LOL.
I met my wife in a Highlander Chat room  back in the mid 90s

[AnTi]

:D At least you HAD internet and it entered your culture. In Germany we are ALWAYS dragging behind  :-\ Comics, consoles, cartoons, video games, arcade... it's all "Kinderkram" ("things for kids"). And the small dram of german game industry gets smashed by politicians  >:(
The Wii should get a medal for "bringing style into gaming". The cliché of "computer games = teenage boys" dissapears at least... ;) And Nintendo has some real good marketing. I know a lot of women playing WoW, but in every case they know it from word-of-mouth recommendation... A The Witcher promo campaign targeted at females would be interesting  :D (I've got a witcher fan girlieshirt *proud*)

[Cassandra31EEE]

:) Hi all! Nice... We have our own place in the world, sorry, in the forum i meant!

From The Witcher i like most... Geralt (!), no, really, i just love strange dark figures in the games. I believe the story is unusual (i haven't read the books, but i 'm reading stuff about the game in the net), witch is something we need in the gaming world.
I 'm crazy about swords and magic, and Geralt seems to know a lot about these things.
I saw some trailers these days, and i 'm impressed! The game is gonna be great! What movements, what music, what an atmosphere...

Well, that was the reasons i am here, to read and discuss about such a unicue game.

About the "I am a woman but play RPGs", i have to say this:
Yes, we are different from other girls! All the girls i know don't care about fantasy, they just want to think about their lives all the time: how they are in their relationships, their jobs, their houses ( "oh, shall i paint the bedroom blue or green?" ), and such things. They don't have the need to escape a little from their lives.
Well, i have this need. Life is good when you know how to make it more colorful, more rich. Imagination is a way to achieve that. A hobby, a sport... All those things make our lives more complete. But most of the girls just don't want to do anything, it makes me angry!

I think most guys play RPGs just because it's a habbit for them. They 're used to play "manly" video games. But when a girl plays RPGs, she knows why she does that.

And about the male characters, well, it doesn't bother me at all. I can easily feel a role, no matter in witch sex. It depends on the role-character. If i like him, i don't mind the fact he's a man. Of course, it would be nice if some day a RPG will be created, like The Witcher or Gothic (with a specific hero), and the hero will be a woman! Oh, that would be great! But you know what? I 'm afraid a game like this would never sell to the male gamers, and unfortunately they are the main buyers.
And that's the strangest thing: why i - a woman - can play with both male and female characters, but all guys prefer the male heroes for the RPGs? I just don't get it... They can't play a girl?

And, i 'd like to add something else: i don't like female heroes like Zena  ;D , i like characters who they don't loose anything from their female nature, like Eowin, Galantriel,  or Lady Aribeth... The last is my favorite one, because of her wild passion.

[Seeker]

Well will try to say this with out puting my foot in my mouth  :D

@Cassandra31EEE  hope you dont take this the wrong way 
I myself injoy playing rpg for story line and char building and just for the fun of it.
Trust me I have a full life lol wife and I have a horse fram so  at the days end I injoy playing rpg just to relaxs.(now that just me)
I have no troubl playing Male char or female  to me it about the fun of the game  hell I still love playing Bloodrayne
 :D.
I also think there a untap market out there of female gamers and there are some game makers out that that know it but they also have to look at the bottom line when it comes to making a game.

But in time think that will chage  gameing has come a long way form the day I got my frist pong game lol.
for those few that my not know pong came out in the early 70s lol
from 3 bips on a screen to the Witchers  that is a long way in a short time if you think about it  ;)

[Cassandra31EEE]

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Cassandra31EEE  hope you dont take this the wrong way

Why on earth should i take it the wrong way?  :)

Here in Greece most guys( and girls) think that a girl playing RPGs is a strange thing. And most of them don't want to play with a female character. I 'm just saying what i have seen in my country... Even the magazines for pc and games are written from guys to other guys!  ;D
Oh, it's OK, i have used to it... I born here, you see.

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I have a horse fram

If i understood right... WOW!!! You have horses? I love horses, and i would love to take care of horses.
I have 5 dogs and a lot of cats, all of them were on the streets when they were puppies and kitties so we took them to our home, and i love them very much! Together with my husband and our future kids, we are a happy family!  :)

Don't take me wrong for what i said about men. I love men! I 'm a fan of men!  ;D But i 'm just saying that people have to reconsider what is to be a woman or a man. We think of our sex  so much, that we forget to be just...humans!  ;)

[Seeker]

@ Cassandra31EEE
Oh good I said what I had to say with out puting my foot in my mouth LOL.
As to horses it has it moment when  it fun but lot of hard work its not like how one would seed in on TV LOL but I would not trade it  for anything in the world and I grew up in a big city LOL.

Now I understand where you live the Macho crap still around.
I grew up with it as well being my dad from Palermo. but one thing my GrandMother ones told me when I was a boy  the true meaning of Macho is not giveing a dam what other ppl think and I lived by that all my life  ;)

yea I know there are still ppl around that  would not play a female char in a game just because it a female
wich to me they lose out and it just silly.

I know there are a lot of guys in forum what would not care if the main char was female or Male or even
a  green slug so long as it got a good story line and fun to play
that my take on it  ;)

[Aileen]

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:D At least you HAD internet and it entered your culture. In Germany we are ALWAYS dragging behind  :-\

AnTi and what I can say?I'm from Poland, so for a long time in our country a internet connection was something that a kid only dream of or see in your dad's office ;D

As for the girls and games/RPGs and so on - well, I'm a GM for about 14years now, and I must say that playing with women is often much more better than with guys.It seems that women can put themselfs much better in a character than most of guys.
And of course - roleplaying the emotions - it's much more better with women, than with men (it's obvious why  8) ) ,and the emotions are something most important when You're roleplaying...the emotions defines your character.

it's of course only my humble opinion, so please don't shout at me  8)

[Petra_Silie]

Great thread, is this supposed to be a witches thread?  ;)

Well, my first video game was Sonic the hedgehog at Sega's Mastersystem, great fun, I was very successful with jump'n'run. My first games on PC were Duke Nukem 3D and Quake  ;D which was much fun as well. I got very "skilled" with fastpath reaction and was even better than some male players  :P
Then I got introduced to Diablo 1 which was a bit unusual at first cos I missed the cross-hair ^..^ but after a while I got really addicted to that sort of game cos it offered much more possibilities to develope and equip the character. I stayed with the rpg genre.

Actually I don't make any difference to play a male or female character, I prefer melee chars and if the abilities of a female char pleases me I take it as long as it doesn't turn out to be ueber-skills and the char becomes ridiculous. But it's fun to beat a sluggish barbarian with a female assassine character cos the barb is not agile enough and just has lots of strenght. But sometime (depends on my mood) I'd like to play a rude male warrior with no good manners  8)
I don't like the part women have in The Witcher which is just an object to satisfy sexual longings and getting a reward :-[ I hope there will be stronger female opponents in the game who have much more to offer.
But I like the game anyway (what else?) and I like Geralt, cos he's not the typical hero as a main character. He's not the shiny hero who saves the world from evil forces, those stereotypes we have ten a penny. I like the entire atmosphere of the game which has no glamorous aimes.

What else?
internet relationships... I met a couple of poeple on different RL occasions from the Diablo 2 community cos I'm also staff member at http://diablo2.ingame.de/index.php I became friends with a few but no passionate love amongst them. I guess the distance between our homes is not attractive for me to get deeper into such a relationship.

btw the gaming world and industry is not a domain for men, more and more women accede that throne, I just found that example

[Seeker]

@Petra Silie  I dont think  it just about The Witcher think it more of Girls in gaming  :)

My wife frist tryed  DukeNukem as well and she was hooked on gameing she loved it
at the time she was working at a job that she dint like the ppl much there
and it was her way to keep going nuts buy killing  stuff lol.
She still games her thing now is playing WOW.

@Pablo  I do agree with you rping with wemen is much more fun  they do put a lot of feeling into there
Wich is good for it raise the bar for guys to learn from that and do the same
I use to play a lot of UO  and it was a big rpg shard 
and you could tell  veary easy who would put work into there chars

[bri193]

Hello, just joined the forum, and this seemed like an interesting thread !!

I'm a guy, and I mainly play female characters in CRPG's. I have a few reasons for this, but most depend on the skills/feats variation ingame between genders. I prefer playing high DEX/Charsima based characters, and some gaming systems provide a bonuse shift in these areas if playing a female chara.

Another reason is voice-overs. During a long game, I find listening to voice-overs for my female PC is much more pleasent than male voices, particularly as I play using head-phones. Seems more natural to have a nice female voice in my ears than some bloke's voice ...  ;) And then there is NPC interaction, it is hilarious following any male NPC trying to romance my female PC ! ;D

As far as girls playing CRPG's I'm surprised not more play. My roll-playing began with pen and paper D&D over 25 years ago. There were always at least 2-3 girls in our RP group. Althought our gaming time was also a social time for us, the girls who played were very attached to their characters.

Yep, the computer gaming industry initally marketed to young males, but I see this changing. Certainly there is no reason a girl cannot enjoy a good round of hack&slash as the next guy.

As for meeting on-line people in RL, I did this only a few times about 15 years ago. I was working in Ottawa, Canada at the time, internet was well developed there with many universities, companies and all government offices and agencies connected up. There were social forums to post in, and some of us would meet in local pubs. For me, nothing ever developed further past the first few meetings. I found I had less in common with them in RL.


I now live near Rome, Italy

[Seeker]

@bri193  welcome to the froume  I also go back to the D&D days when it was brannew LOL yea dateing myself there.
Im sure you will love it here there are a lot of good ppl here as well as good topics.
Now back to ther main topic LOL.

I think it veary hard meeting someone on line  for the real person comes out when you meet them face to face. I was just one of the lucky few I think :)

[Petra_Silie]

Some poeple I met in RL were more enjoyable than their spamming behaviour in the forums  8)

[AnTi]

Wow, thank you all!

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From The Witcher i like most... Geralt (!)

I sign this :) There are so many games with boring, characterless, soldier type maincharacters. No woman can identify with those or like them.

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Here in Greece most guys( and girls) think that a girl playing RPGs is a strange thing. I 'm just saying what i have seen in my country... Even the magazines for pc and games are written from guys to other guys!

We have a brand-new magazin for "lifestyle and games for women" in Germany. It's only the beginning :D And there is a huge Anime/Manga wave which also introduces games to a wide range of girls (Final Fantasy or Ragnarok for expamle)

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I don't like the part women have in The Witcher which is just an object to satisfy sexual longings and getting a reward. I hope there will be stronger female opponents in the game who have much more to offer.

I'm optimistic about that. In Sapkowskis "Last Wish" there are more powerful women then men. Rather then "saving a helpless woman" Geralt has to save men from angry women ;D

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He's not the shiny hero who saves the world from evil forces

That's a good point! I was thinking about "typical" male/action and female/romance movies and their correlation to games. Action movies tend to: Conflict in the beginning, the good, the bad, the main part is the fighting and in the end the bad one looses. Romances in contrast: Two or more characters in the beginning, struggling, mistakes, intrigues and at the end it becomes clear who is good/bad/stupid. Although a lot of RPGs got a you-are-the-hero-safe-the-world-plot, most cRPGs have lovely sidequests (e.g. Obvion ).

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btw the gaming world and industry is not a domain for men, more and more women accede that throne

Step by step. At Games Academy we are 120 students - 7 of them female... It's no picnic.  Either you're "pretty & dumb" or "kicking males asses"  8)

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I like the entire atmosphere of the game which has no glamorous aimes.

Yes, The Witcher has a living world :D I give a damn about "Next Gen Graphics", most of the games with aaaawwwwsome graphic technology are lifeless, unorganic, synthetic (e.g. oblivion, or lair)... Credibility and athmosphere are important to me. The Witcher is more "real medieval" than "fantasy" and that is great. Everything is used and dirty, even luxurious chambers.

[Petra_Silie]

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Everything is used and dirty, even luxurious chambers.

yes that's an other realistic point which makes the game attractive to me. When you're involved in a fight or travel through swamp, desert places etc. your clothes gets dirty. Poor poeple look in the game dirty  etc. In other common rpgs games the characters always look neat and clean even if they spend hours in a rotten dungeon etc.