naamahdarling:

prokopetz:

hugobertington:

limitsanddemonstrations:

prokopetz:

Tabletop roleplaying has a reputation as a “boys only” space, and it’s not an entirely undeserved one. However, if you’re a guy who’s into tabletop roleplaying, it’s important to bear in mind that your
impression of how many women participate in tabletop-style RP is
almost certainly badly wrong.

Consider video games: on every platform and in
nearly every genre, it’s been demonstrated by numerous studies that adult women are the single largest gaming
demographic – but us guys would never know it. More than half
of women who play video games never participate in online discussions
about them, and according to some studies, many won’t even play
when a man is present in the room. There’s a lot of voluntary
self-segregation by women who play video games, simply to
avoid harassment, and that leads most men to vastly underestimate their
presence.

It’s not too different with roleplaying. From what I can gather, women
make up a large and vibrant roleplaying community – predominantly
freeform-oriented, granted, but with a great deal of crossover into
tabletop-style gaming as well – that’s basically invisible to guys like
us, because they only play in private forums, usually (though not
always) with exclusively female participants, and never talk about their
hobby outside that closed community. Indeed, by some estimates this
“invisible” RP community is larger than the whole of the traditional
tabletop gaming hobby put together! And, as with video games, this
insularity has arisen primarily to avoid getting hassled by creepy
dudes.

Just something to bear in mind – particularly for those of us who design tabletop roleplaying games, and might otherwise get the impression that it’s not worth worrying about women as a target audience because so few ladies are interested anyway.

god i’d really like to read some analysis on these invisible communties if anyone has them, I’ve been watching certain game markets that work like this since i found out they existed and i’d love to read more about them.

“single largest gaming demographic”

Is this that thing where we count mobile games alongside PC/Console games or has something new come up

There are a few issues with this remark:

1. Why wouldn’t we count mobile games? With only a handful of exceptions, practically every genre of game that exists on PCs and consoles also exists on mobile platforms – it’s a false dichotomy.

2. Of course, we may be using “mobile games” as a code-phrase for “those fake games that women play, like hidden object puzzles” – but it’s interesting how those break down. Hidden object games, for example, are basically the heirs to point-and-click adventure games, a genre that used to be considered the gold standard for serious gamer-dom before being declared persona non grata for having the temerity to market itself to women. Really, it looks suspiciously like it’s not that women aren’t into “real” games: it’s that we’re defining what counts as a “real” game in terms of player gender demographics.

3. Beyond that, however, yes, it’s apparently true even if we do arbitrarily exclude mobiles games. For example, according to a 2015 study, adult women in America are more likely to own a gaming console than adult men.

Of course, none of this is strictly germane to the topic of tabletop gaming.

There’s an insufferable air of “Women? Roleplaying? Hmph hmm hmm! How very peculiar!” and the moment you dare suggest that the freeform style of RP (or the dreaded LARPing) should be considered as valid, you can just sit and watch the monocles pop out. “Not enough dice!” they harrumph, and storm off to their cardboard box fort.