Borderlands 2: “Girlfriend mode” comment sparks outrage

Bah you pathetic male underlings can troll all you want, this woman has fragged approximately 78,940,356 times since birth, made crowbar fatalities cool, has landed helicopters upside down at least 65 times, mastered the art of the rocket jump midair rail, telefragged, taught others how to hop around a warehouse at lightning speed, has saved the world from darkfalz FOUR times, cratered, built a pc inside a cupboard, taught her Dad how to play racing games, shot the food, taught her Mum how to play ps3 games and stream media from her laptop, has been a senior computer programmer for most of her life, and has just about finished creating her first video game from scratch.

And that is to name a very select few examples.
(kudos to those that get the references)

The fact that a lot of women don’t choose or aren’t led down the same path as me isn’t relevant. I am living proof that we are just as capable as men in all things computer or console related.

All I was saying is, I think a big part of what we do in life stems from what we are encouraged to do, and women are NOT encouraged to do anything related to gaming or programming.. or even IT for that matter (apart from secretarial.. sigh), and I personally believe this needs to change.

I expected a longer post from TheWulf on this; ending in a paragraph extolling the virtues of Guild Wars 2.
+1

@silk, yeah yeah yeah… That’s great and all. More importantly though, can you make a good sandwich?

:p

@101 Just out of curiosity, is that number specific or just a rough estimate? Hehe.

@1 i completely agree with you that women are just as capable as men in all things computer related. however, how do you purpose we start encouraging girls to play videogames? we cant force developer to make games specifically tailored for a female audience. developers can do w.e. they want, and we have no right to tell them otherwise. the only thing we can do is tell the parents to stop buying their daughters dolls and stupid pink shit just because the kids were born with vaginas. that kind of responsibility can only lie with the parents. im glad that you’re an accomplished programmer, and im happy to count you as a fellow gamer. but using any of your gaming experience as grounds for encouraging this kind of behaviour is a major skip in logical progression. the two are completely irrelevant.

@105 I was fortunate enough to have two older brothers and open minded parents. That in itself got me where I am today. Had I not had my older siblings there, I might never have gotten into I.T. I mean the first computers and consoles in the house were bought for them, not me. I was bought dolls. But they gave up on that once they realised what I liked.

I am one person and I cannot change the world. What I do hope for though, is some small success in my personal indie game venture. Even if it’s just enough to get a female voice out there, and even if I can inspire just one other woman to do stuff like this.

I *don’t* think devs should try and make games “for” female audiences because frankly there is no such thing. Everyone likes different kinds of games, male or female. Like my father and his racing games, me and my strategy/fps/rpg, mum and her puzzlers, bro and his rpgs. Honestly the only thing I’d change in today’s video games is to try and be a bit more inclusive, more “not just here for eye candy” female characters in games, especially multiplayer avatar selections where more and more modern games companies just can’t be bothered adding models with tits.. ah they’re a minority, ignore them.

It’d be awesome to have a televised, not so sexy, just normal woman on mainstream game media news, who had a voice that stood out, who was clearly an avid gamer. But sadly instead, the only media coverage women seem to get is when they cosplay well. So, the gaming media needs to change.

What else needs to change is bigots making girls feel they have no place here in the first place. The only people who can change that are the bigots themselves. They’d need a good long hard look in the mirror first though.

I agree, why should games be made just for girls?

Last night my wife, her brother and his wife played a few rounds of L4D on Steam. We go back forth between Diablo III, Wow, and L4D at the moment. We play most nights.

Games are games, and different gamers like different games. I think pushing steriotype games on female gamers is just another demeaning well, steriotype.

If I recall a recent study that said 47% of all gamers were female.

And what if the whole thing would be called BOYFRIEND MODE?

jeez people…

The only real sexism is in payment issues between Male and Female.
In everything else FEmales and Males are the same.

No game differs between a Female and Male…

Hypocrits.

Playing videogames.

What an intelligent, beautiful thing to do with your time. Esp against pattern based AI.

Smh..

@Silk,
No need to take such a debate personally. Did you really think people will take you seriously if you tried to persuade them using personal experiences?
Although the word gamer has no gender, so I dont think there should be any discrimination of any sort.
“I am one person and I cannot change the world”
Irrelated to the topic , but I dont like it when say so because its wrong. Most revolutions (of any sort) in human society are brought forth by a single determined person hell-bent on changing the world , whether for good or bad.
Like Gandhi, Mendela, Einstein, even Hitler.

Any guy that has a girl gamer on his arm is one lucky guy.
I wish my girlfriend was a gamer, but sadly she just isn’t into them.

@110 I’m not taking anything personally, merely using personal experiences in my debate.

There are children starving in Africa, and cretins are whining over stupidity like this.

@113: Oh, you’re that guy. Are you doing anything against starvation in africa?

114 comments.

Again.

Come on, gaming should be something above sexism, even in small cases like sexist jokes from John Hemingway. There’s a time and place, and that was neither one of them. Just disappointing.

@Silk, you mentioned you’re almost finished your first video game from scratch, is there a website/twitter, or even at least a name to go with it, I’m curious to see what you’ve been working on.

These sort of articles always gain over 100 comments. It’s ridiculous, too many people are either extremely ignorant or easily offended. Why be offended by ignorance in the first place? You should know better. The original comment by John Hemingway clearly had no malicious intent yet it’s spawned dozens of responses debating it, get over it.

His message was clear but not completely accurate, girls can be just as hardcore gamers as men, but they just tend to be either a minority or just very quiet- I know most female gamers on XBL tend to not speak, especially on CoD or Halo were you get a dozen jugheads every game making them feel uncomfortable so they pretty much go unnoticed.

@118 Agree with u 100 percent.

@118 Most of us weren’t offended by anything. For the large part, the discussion has been friendly and polite.

We weren’t even discussing his comment – the topic has expanded into a much broader subject. There’s nothing really wrong with that honestly, is there?

@Silk

This is what I bet you sound like IRL and at least what you look like online.

“OMG GUYS LOOK I’M A GAMER GIRL, PLEASE GIVE MORE ATTENTION LULZ, I PLAY GAEMS CAUSE IZ COOLZ N L33T N STUFF )))) <3<3<3<3<3"

The "girlfriend mode" is "funneh" cause most girlfriends suck at games even though they say they LOVE games to look hip (apparently nerdy is the new cool :/ )

it sux, my gf can kick my ass in kz3 and battlefield 3..

WOMEN should stick to the kitchen

@silkvg247

You’re the perfect image of what I used to think women should be like when I was younger. It was disappointing to see my friends(girls) turn out to be stereotypical females, completely uninterested in games, software and technology *sigh*

But rest assured, if I ever have a daughter she’ll grow up as a warrior. No stereotypes, she’ll decide her future unbiased, apart from my influence as a programmer and gamer of course.

@silkvg247
What you said about women not being encouraged to do anything gaming/programming/IT-related – amen to that. I’m a woman who realized she loves gaming and wants to create games already after I was far into university education process majoring in humanities. In my 20s I learnt almost from scratch things about gaming and computers that my male friends just grew up with. I work close to gamedev now, I had to work hard for that and I do like my job, but it is one for someone without an IT education. If I could change the past I’d have studied to be a programmer, and preferably specialized in engine programming.

Were I born male I would’ve prolly gotten the encouragement you mention – from parents, school, friends, society in general. Very likely bookish kid and quite a good student that I was, had I been a boy, would’ve enrolled in IT studies. Unluckily, I have no older brothers and I’m from a not too well-to-do Eastern European family.

It’s not easy to make up for lost years, especially those lost when your mind is best at learning new things – when you’re a kid. In linguistics there is this theory that kids acquire a language (naturally absorb in a way) and adults have to learn a language (requires conscious effort). It always seemed to me like this could be applied to acquiring IT and games-related knowledge and skills. Most guys I know grew up with computers and video games and were in various ways encouraged to participate in gaming culture and learn about technology. I, as an adult, had to learn all that. I wish girls were given more opportunities to acquire this kind of knowledge.

@Kesarion – Seeing most girls turn into your typical girly girl depresses me too. Not because I’m a feminist but because I think of all the potentially wasted/untapped talent. The media is primarily to blame since it practically brainwashes people, though parents/upbringing is also a strong factor. I think it’s more a case of letting your kid figure out what he/she likes rather than pushing your own preferences on them. Unfortunately no matter what you do or don’t do, they’ll be exposed to other kids who will hugely influence them too, and those kids in turns may have been influenced by media or gender-stereotype pushing parents. It’s a very sad circle.

@Ravenne – If it makes you feel any better I didn’t get into programming or PC’s until about 17-18. Before then I’d been massively into computer and console games but never really delved into how they worked, letalone written stuff to run on them. It’s never too late.

In my case I wasn’t held back so much because I was female, but more because there were no options in my education to pursue computer programming. It literally didn’t exist. We had “IT/Business studies” rolled into one instead, and it never so much as touched on programming. I think I was born a little too early perhaps, because I see now schools are starting to do this kind of thing. I completely agree all kids should be started young on programming. I’d even argue it’s more important than learning a second language nowadays.

My main gripes with where we are with I.T. and gaming being predominantly male, are aimed squarely at the media for pushing female and male stereotypes down everyone’s throats.

Anyways I’ve just been discussing a very interesting idea for a game to write next with my other half (also a girl programmer, yay!), so hopefully when I’m rich and famous I can do something about the woefully sparse female population within I.T. :-p

But, girlfriend mode is what this is for most people. I wish they could just call it that. Everything doesn’t need to be so politically correct all the time. People can make their own choices as to who they want to be, they are not at the whim of other peoples opinions, and if they are they can suck my balls anyway because I’m not. Sex stereotypes are not arbitrary, but follow the avarage choices of identifiable groups which are influenced by genetics, instincts and reality. It has nothing to do with anyone preassuring anyone to do what they do not want to do. Why don’t you grow a pair people!