[Captain Cass]

Originally Posted by Alexia_Ashford

I have no interest in looking at a feminist gaming website, because I'm not a feminist. Sure, it can be a little irritating when you go on XBox Live and a small minority of 13 year old boys go "Omfg be my girlfriend", but the fact of the matter is, it's not that big of a deal.

Since you didn't go to the Feminist Gamers site, let me quote you a few interesting articles! For instance, one of the largest gaming companies in China decided that if you were a woman playing this game as a woman, you had to prove it. With a webcam. The area had to be 'undoubtedly feminine' - face wouldn't do. Use your imagination! That's right; you were given a chance to send in pictures of your body to be granted the honor to play this game. And Shanda is a huge company.

Then there's the fact that Sony believes that only 4% of their gaming population is women and displayed this percentage at one of their conventions - which completely ignores the fact that 1. households choose to share consoles, 2. secondary consumption of games, and 3. women generally choose to hide their gender online. Wonder why?

Then Sony goes ahead and staffs booths with people who love to talk about how sexually attractive women protaganists are, and think rape is hilarious. Feminist Gamers » Blog Archive » Rape culture reflections in videogames Ha ha, isn't that a laugh!

and then GameDaily and IGN go ahead and run features like "The 10 greatest sets of boobs in gaming" and the "10 hottest developers in gaming" (both of these are real articles on those exact sites.)

But haha, nope, no sexism in gaming at all, get over it ladies.

Only In China: Shanda Says No to Men Role Playing Women Characters

As a matter of fact, the most sexist thing I've seen in this thread was posted by none other than you. The fact you think Nintendo caters to the female market more than Microsoft or Sony, and pretty much every game Nintendo puts out there for women is something like "Cooking Mama" or "Cooking Recipes", "Nintendogs", insinuating that women should get the fuck back in the kitchen, or play with cute little puppies. They don't treat us as serious gamers at all, whereas Microsoft and Sony aim to the general gaming market. I've never felt patronized by them, whereas with Nintendo, I have. I've been a serious gamer since I could walk yet all of a sudden Nintendo take an interest in the pink gamers market by giving us cute little puppy games, cooking games etc, and nothing serious at all.

While I agree that the pink DS advertising campaign got on my nuts a little, I was speaking specifically about the Wii and the Wii Want To Play Campaign. The Wii Want To Play Campaign featured equal amounts of men and women throwing down with the Wii, and this has evidently worked pretty well if you look at sales numbers for the Wii.

Keep in mind that the Xbox campaign are generally male oriented, and don't even get me into the Sony marketing campaigns, such as the "PS2: because your girlfriend bores you shitless." or or the "Cheaper than a girlfriend" ad campaign they did, or Consoul featuring hot ladies taking a shit while playing their PSP, or the super hot girl... with a controller coming out of her navel so you can play her.

So is there flaws in Nintendo marketing campaign? Sure. But let's look at the alternatives.

I think this argument is absolutely ridiculous because although some men go "Omfg a girl on Halo 3", it's a minority and I've never experienced personal discrimination and harassment. It's also not fair to inflict your personal experiences with the male gender on male members here and speak as though you're speaking for the entire female gaming community. It's a very extreme point of view, to say the least.

I think it's hilarious how you say that I speak for the 'entire female community' just by citing my gender. Is MOS speaking for the entire male community? I even specifically noted that I wasn't, at one point. I've also cited several examples of sexism in the field above. Just because you've been lucky doesn't mean that the sexism in the field doesn't exist. I've played tournament level for certain games, such as World of Warcraft and Warcraft III, where vent communication is absolutely essential, and I'm often called a whore, bitch, a bloody tampon, demands to see my tits, whatever whenever I'm playing those games, even after going through the effort to find a relatively good guild for this sort of things. My experience doesn't 'trump' yours, but its just as relevant.