Bragatyr wrote:My sister's male friends learn very quickly that she's into games, because they almost invariably mouth off about how great they are at said games and get trounced. She will throw down at Mortal Kombat and Smash.
I'll tell ya one thing…I did this same thing (in Smash, Brawl to be specific) with the competitive guys at college. Oh boy. Not only did they laugh at me for 'lol girl' but also because my character of choice with them was Ness, who is offbeat and generally considered not that good, plus it takes a while to actually get good with him. So imagine their reaction when I show up, select Ness, get laughed at and then proceed to systematically destroy all my competition so hard they teamed up on me and STILL couldn't beat me. They did not have the first clue about how to approach a player who's actually competent with Ness. After that I garnered a lot more respect from them (and for Ness…yay!)
Same thing happened at PAX East last year (which I'm returning to, BTW…next month, Saturday and Sunday passes, PSYCHED…though I won't be able to participate in the Friday Smash tournament). It seemed a very novel thing that A) a woman could be good at Smash and B) that there's a way to play Pit besides spamming his arrows and side special (aerial maneuverability, to be specific, and his gliding slash is insane). So again, I select Pit, everyone expects spamminess, and I do none of that and instead spent probably 75% of the match in the air and not many people knew what to do about this. Several of the guys who I was playing against were congratulating me over it when all was said and done.
Games aren't just a guy thing anymore. Gamers know this, as a whole, I think, or it's at least being realized, though there's definitely still trouble for women in the gaming community. But society still can't quite shake away the stereotypes and girls who are not in the community…well, it's easy to keep holding to that stereotype.