Do Girls Play Elite?

[xondk]

Naming no names or pointing fingers:

I know quite a few from the Fuel Rats. Oddly enough there were at least 3 that I didn't know were female until somebody else referred to them as "her" or "she". irc chat without images and 100+ people means unless you properly analyse each persons manner of writing it's unlikely you'll spot differences beyond: They use a spellchecker, they use slang etc.

Partly I felt that was incredibly sexist of me as it could be construed as me "assuming that everyone is a man". However, looking back I never really made any assumptions, merely never thought about it as their gender didn't affect my interactions with them. Similarly there's one or two people in there that shared they had a form of disability. Again pondered the above and figured it didn't matter. From what I've seen no matter who you are on the Fuel Rats irc you are just like any other person and treated as such which I think is an excellent thing although the whole topic can be such a minefield of not wanting to put words in anyones mouth I'll leave it here and just say whoever you are, whatever your circumstances if you can type, fly in Elite and have some patience then you will be made welcome in the Fuel Rats


As for the ratio, yes the ratio is incredibly high. iirc the male/female ratio in the world is about 50/50 but I'd not be at all shocked to learn that Elite was 95/5 or similar. Probably video games as a whole is a 80/20 split, possibly +10% either way I don't really follow. Who knows the true figures but lets say its skewed one way. On the other side there are female dominated activities with similar ratios.

Should we try to even it up? No, we can't force people to do things or set quotas or target advertisements, positive discrimination is still discrimination in my eyes.
Should we try and make anyone welcome and do everything we can to make it an equal place? Of course.


Bear in mind a lot of the above is my opinion, feel free to disagree.

I believe I've seen actual studies indicate that the actual ratio is more like 60/40, however again, the girls/woman are not going to reveal themselves, I've known enough female players through the years, to believe that the ratio could easily be up there, you simply do not hear it, because of how the gaming environment would be if they revealed they are female.

 

[Dark Martin]

I believe I've seen actual studies indicate that the actual ratio is more like 60/40, however again, the girls/woman are not going to reveal themselves, I've known enough female players through the years, to believe that the ratio could easily be up there, you simply do not hear it, because of how the gaming environment would be if they revealed they are female.

Quite likely. My daughter plays (she's 16), but wouldn't have anything to do with this forum, and her cmdr name doesn't tell her gender.

 

[Ninj]

Elite Dangerous requires the internet.

It is well known that there are no girls on the internet.

/thread

 

[DukeIronHand]

Most of them can be found in SDC

Hehe...

 

[Winterwalker]

Loads of (little) girls in Solo mode ... ba-hahaha. I thank you.

Just kidding of course. (Wussies)

 

[Lightspeed]

Judging by photos I saw of a Frontier meetup in the UK, players tend to be balding males in t-shirts and jeans ..... but I suspect my poll method is skewed

 

[Old Duck]

I believe I've seen actual studies indicate that the actual ratio is more like 60/40, however again, the girls/woman are not going to reveal themselves, I've known enough female players through the years, to believe that the ratio could easily be up there, you simply do not hear it, because of how the gaming environment would be if they revealed they are female.

I had read an article recently where girls are forming their own private groups and even private servers in order to escape the harassment, which is really sad. My impression from following this forum and different Elite-specific YouTube channels is that most ED players are of a "higher calibre" (mature, respectful, polite) than what you might find playing more mainstream games. I feel like this is a safe community to recommend to my female friends who may be interested in exploring the galaxy without having to hide the fact they are female. If my wife were to play the game, I know one of her favorite parts would be the character creation of the pilot and the picking of a fun name that reflects her personality (that's one of my favorite parts, too).

Of course, I've been hopelessly optimistic about Elite from the start, so maybe this is just another example of that..

 

[Zed]

Judging by photos I saw of a Frontier meetup in the UK, players tend to be balding males in t-shirts and jeans ..... but I suspect my poll method is skewed

Hey, I resemble that description!

Yes there are girls that play ED. Just like every other online game I've ever played they tend to be a minority.
As for men playing female characters. I normally start with a male character in games and then alternate between male and female characters as I create them so currently I have one of each in ED.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Just to wave the silliness of That Flag around a little...

Why doesn't anyone ever ask if anyone of mixed, non-specific, or absent gender ever plays any given game?

Where are all the Little-Bit-Of-Both players? Or Lots-of-neither players?

Where's the social justice outrage that no one ever asks about these people?

Just because they don't want it, or don't know what it is, wished it were something else, or whatever the case may be, no one ever asks about them.

 

[CMDR M. Lehman]

Yes, women play Elite.

And no, they seldom put it on blast that they're women because women have a hell of a time in gaming communities.

 

[Arry]

There are lots of females playing Elite everyday. For a start the Goddess of Minions is like a Queen Bee sitting on her hive of drones and as we all know, most bees are female. Another way you can tell that a lot of the NPCs are female, is the time it takes them to leave the Star-ports. Any honest male in a relationship will know that the females take much longer to leave the house etc., which explains why so many NPC ships get blown up by the stations.

 

[Pyrotiger]

I couldn't care less, and I mean that in a nice way.

 

[Lightspeed]

There are lots of females playing Elite everyday. For a start the Goddess of Minions is like a Queen Bee sitting on her hive of drones and as we all know, most bees are female. Another way you can tell that a lot of the NPCs are female, is the time it takes them to leave the Star-ports. Any honest male in a relationship will know that the females take much longer to leave the house etc., which explains why so many NPC ships get blown up by the stations.

I've been known to sit in the dock trying to decide which paint job to apply before departing

 

[Winterwalker]

There are lots of females playing Elite everyday. For a start the Goddess of Minions is like a Queen Bee sitting on her hive of drones and as we all know, most bees are female. Another way you can tell that a lot of the NPCs are female, is the time it takes them to leave the Star-ports. Any honest male in a relationship will know that the females take much longer to leave the house etc., which explains why so many NPC ships get blown up by the stations.

Wouldn't want to worry anyone but this is starting to make sense! Speaking as a bee keeper, and keeper of bees it's well known that the queen and all the workers are female. The male drones however, while they live the life of Riley in the summer (just playing their game) the females kick them out and kill them when winter approaches! Look away now if that's not scary enough .. but we all know that in Elite Dangerous, Winter ... is (allegedly) Coming (tm).

tldr: Be very, very afraid.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I used to know girl who gamed, and she repeatedly kicked my bum at it. Lol
That was ages ago though. Back when I used to play Novalogics Delta Force!
I only knew she was a girl because we met up and dated for about 5 seconds. Lol
(I was terrible at dating!)

Since then, I don't really pay much attention to it.
It's the attitude of people I pay attention to these days.

 

[Jenner]

Yes. But as to how many? That's a much more difficult question.

 

[Straha Yeagar]

Oh yeah, there are women who play this game, but as has been mentioned already, given the online gaming environment, women tend to use gender neutral personas, and provide very little gender identifying information.

 

[Monk]

Trends are changing for what have been considered male-centric games. Turns out women like head-shotting camping fools, too.

 

[Alikat]

We do, but never saw how my gender is relevant to a game where your avie is really just a spaceship.

Now once they add spacelegs I'm sure there will be some 'beautiful trade maiden versus dashing space pirate' roleplay going on.

Source: Every other mmo I've ever played.

Btw those 60/40 numbers don't account for genre. Yeah there's plenty of girls in your average mmo nowadays. But I'd say most my other female friends trend toward places like the Sims, Second Life, FFXIV, etc. From my personal experiences in those games I'd say the amount of female players is an order of magnitude higher than a lot of others.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

There are lots of females playing Elite everyday. For a start the Goddess of Minions is like a Queen Bee sitting on her hive of drones and as we all know, most bees are female. Another way you can tell that a lot of the NPCs are female, is the time it takes them to leave the Star-ports. Any honest male in a relationship will know that the females take much longer to leave the house etc., which explains why so many NPC ships get blown up by the stations.

My wife would staunchly disagree. One of the hardest things in the world to do is to get me to venture out of the house - unless it's to go golfing or to the gun range, or to take the ship out, but even then, I'm always the last one ready. Of course, this has most everything to do with the fact that I hate being inside of cars, either driving or riding in them. And it's not even so much the being inside the car that I don't like, it's that even at the most obscure hour, there's always some other idiot out on the road.