/filters:format(webp)/filters:no_upscale()/prod01/cdn/media/stirling/news/news-centre/2025/aug-25/iStock-1366032431_1200X630.jpg)
This is pretty clear to anyone who has ever played a game of Counterstrike or whatever and a woman makes the mistake of using voice chat. You’ll get the whole gamut from misogynistic nonsense to the most awkward and creepy attempts to hit on them possible, pretty much every time.
I only ever really saw the clsssic toxic gamer behavior flourish once most games switched from having private dedicated servers ran by the players that almost always had an admin present to handle toxicity to unmoderated developer hosted servers no players have any bit of control over. Counter-Strike: Source vs CS:GO/CS2 is quite a leap in the general attitude of players you would encounter.
Wild how removing people who managed the player’s behavior makes the bad behavior intensify.
Confirmed. Counterstrike specifically was very inclusive and very open to most players of all ages, demographics, and skill ranges especially compared to other shooters of the 00’s. Then matchmaking and eventually premier got introduced and any chance of moderating the community died and here we are today.
I suspect the environment is different depending on the game. I never witnessed any of that in overwatch back when I used to play for instance. Though I pretty much never play multiplayer games without at least one friend so the numbers are skewed a bit by having at least 2 non-weirdos on the team
Alternatively, you had two guaranteed weirdos.
I’m not into gaming, but my wife used to be into it. When we were dating, we’d play call of duty together (side-by-side consoles). She’d get on voice chat, get teased a bit by teenage boys, and then proceed to utterly destroy them. Sometimes they’d scream and curse, accuse her of cheating, accuse her of having a guy play for her (lol her man sucks at this), and so on. She’d just mock them, call them horrible names, and then specifically target and spawn camp the little shits until they rage quit.
It was fucking awesome, and it was alway a laugh riot for the other (more mature, less sexist) folks in the match. I love her so much.
I agree that most competitive games tend to go that way. My ex and I played a lot of League of Legends in a small friend group together (where this did not happen, thank god), and if playing with “externals” it was unbelievable what bullshit she had to deal with. and although most of the time the creeps bit off more than they could chew, it must have felt pretty bad, regardless of what me and our friends did or said.
Anyone with experience in non-competitive game settings to share?
I don’t doubt this but now I’m really curious about the numbers. Is it the same on PC? How do women’s experience compare to other genders in similar surveys?
Competitive gaming is a cesspool regardless of gender but I feel for women who have to deal with sexism on top of the default toxicity. Hopefully things will improve over time but i don’t have high hope for the near future sadly
I read somewhere that “Dead by Daylight” has a (relatively) high percentage of women, because there’s zero voice chat.
It’s not a voice chat problem, you can always turn voice/text chat off. That’s not the reason some games have a relatively higher percentage of women.
It was the reason I started playing it.
It’s one of the first things I bring up when recommending it to other women who aren’t playing online multiplayer games usually.
Most women I know who play it don’t play any other multiplayer games online, at least none with VC.
Games with VC usually do have the option to turn it off, but doing so you’ll have less information than players who use it. You’ll be a detriment to your team if they would otherwise have had efficient comms. You are turning off a feature, where the game is built on the expectations that it is turned on. I’d rather not have that option at all and instead have everyone be on the same page, with no expectations of comms with strangers. One less thing to consider, say no to, to disappoint others with.
Nowadays I’d probably use VC if they had it, but I never would have started playing if they did, so I’m glad there are still games where it’s not even an option.
So I’d say for a fair percentage that absolutely is the reason. That, and the horror icons.
I see that and it certainly takes that initial worry out, but DBD isn’t that competitive, so there would be no pressure to talk really even if it did exist (different for each person I guess, how they feel about that). It’s a more chill game and the community in my experience is a lot more open-minded than your hyper-competitive games like CS where you find all the degenerates, I think that’s why its mostly more welcoming.
Text-chat has been way more toxic in my experience anyway. Usually they stop talking on the mic and start typing.
This study has nothing to do with that. It only surveyed mobile gaming.
oh dang, women have been telling you for the past like 40 years that video games are an incredibly exclusionary space and turns out they weren’t just lying??? crazy, it’s almost like we should be listening to people when they have problems in a community. i mean jfc people actually needed a study to prove this? ask any woman who’s ever attempted to speak in game chat what happens, just ask.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.
Oh wow, I didn’t knew that Super Mario or Tetris on the NES was an “incredibly exclusionary space” because that’s not how I remember it.
I’m glad you taught me that.
Being a girl trying to talk about video games with boys was generally horrible, it’s not just the multiplayer experience, the ‘you like games, then name every X ever!’ followed by bullying has been alive and well for over 30 years.
So, to participate in modern gaming, women should play games from 40 years ago?
Or just single player games in general. If Super Mario is fine (main “story” being that a princess gets abducted by a male villain and rescued by a man), there really aren’t that many games that are significantly worse.
So, again, to participate in modern gaming, women should play only single-player games. Like, to avoid men?
Multiplayer with randos is to be avoided in general IMO.
Well you win the most asinine comment I’ve read today.
Even I remember girls getting crapped on in the arcades.
oh yeah i’m sure your half rotten memory is a reliable source, thanks grandpappy
Interesting study. Explicitly about mobile gaming, not PC gaming, though …
Dr Seán Roberts, who researches gaming at Cardiff University, said: “When I ask people if they play video games, women often say no. But if you ask about playing games on a mobile, many of them will suddenly say yes. It’s like they have an idea of what a real gamer is in their heads, and they feel like they don’t meet that ideal.”
TBF I don’t really consider myself a gamer anymore… even though I clock a few hours a week on the playstation. But like I used to play competitive FPS/MOBA/RTS 10+ hours a week.
How can you call yourself competitive when you didn’t even clock 40+ hours a week? Competitive gaming isn’t just a hobby, it’s a way of life… Poser.
//This comment was brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends! Play now!!!//
lmao.
40+??? That’s scrub level commitment. Get gud and you’ll be on the leaderboards playing 10+ a week. /s
So they aren’t actually getting excluded from games they just dont view themselves as gamers probaby because that label is cringe. I wouldn’t consider someone who casually plays mobile games to be a gamer either. Gamer isnt just anyone who play a games, it describes someone who embeds themselves in gaming communities and culture and engages gaming as a hobby. Same as going for a walk doesn’t make you a hiker.
I play pc games often and wouldnt consider myself a gamer.
How much RGB do you have?
Valid question. 0.
Def not a gamer then.
… feel like they don’t meet that ideal.
Well, there’s your problem, idealizing the traditional “gamer” persona. I play computer games every day, for a long time, and I also don’t feel like a “gamer,” because I don’t want to be associated with people I would consider “gamers.”
That might be a side effect of my not wanting to be associated with anyone, but there you have it.
Goood, I can feel your Gamer anger. Beneath the skin we are already one. Even now the evil seed of the Gamer germinates within you. strike me down and your journey to the dark side will be complete.
lmfaoooooo
How the fuck are they getting shamed and excluded in mobile games?
We need equality in the gaming space.
We should shame everyone who plays games on phones equally.
Probably by the common mindset that mobile games don’t really count for gaming clout.
If i compare what crap games i’ve played on my PC sometimes to mobile games, i feel that such boundaries are pretty arbitrary. There are some mobile games that can keep up with PC gaming too - Shattered Pixel Dungeon and Hoplite come to mind.
Self-inflicted wound.
She plays Candy Crush and feels that calling herself a “gamer” for it amounts to stolen valor.
Maybe she’s right, maybe she isn’t. I’m a woodworker, and I’d built several bookshelves, tables, shop fixtures and cutting boards before I felt comfortable wearing the rank. I would insist I was an amateur or a beginner. It was my little porch table that is made with genuine mortise and tenons that I felt I’d earned it.
And that’s without the gender politics of it. Here I’m a man doing traditionally masculine things. I’m not a man taking up knitting or a woman taking up gaming.
just looking at it as a classification of genres, they (men & women) rightly feel shame and exclusion because mobile gaming is to gaming as connect4 is to table top gaming.
-as decreed from the Assistant to the High Stellarch of the PC Master Race 69th Group, Section 420.
“Researchers surveyed 1,000 women of all ages across the UK who play mobile games.”
Shows a picture of a woman holding what appears to be a PS4 controller.
Poifect.
i mean of course youre going to have a conclusion like that polling exclusively mobile game players. For example had they polled female MMO players (there are a lot), the results would likely be far different.
Eh, I’m one of those MMO ‘females’. I have to be really cautious when I first join a guild. I’m often seen as a ‘female’ first and gamer second. The amount of times I’ve gotten OnlyFans comments is way too high. I’ve had the best luck in multiplayer FPS games. The downfall of Bungie hits me hard because Destiny in particular was a great place to be a woman gamer. Can you do the mechanic and communicate? That’s all a good team wants.
Absolutely, in a guild with a female GM and we’ve collected a fair number of female gamers because of it. But we still end up kicking folks occasionally because they lose their shit when they hear a female on discord.
Given where this is coming from, im waiting for the drop where they blame the tranas community for this. Somehow.
In other news: the sky generally appears blue.
Gotta have data to do anything with it. Important to actually be able to show and prove problems exist before trying to deal with them. (Need more data on causes)
Many men are emotionally unable to accept things like this. I think the reasoning goes like
- i’m a good person
- i like my hobby
- someone is saying bad things about my hobby
- this makes me feel bad, so it must be false
- furthermore, the person bringing it up is attacking me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance
Facts don’t matter. There’s really nothing you can do if you’re not someone they like.
I also think about this comic a lot: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1151.html - Some people are too cowardly to grow.
I also think it may be just… sexism… I know people who behave like this towards women, but not other men…
I’ve been playing a certain well known game for over a decade now. I’ve developed such skill at never specifying anything that could out my gender I could put it on a resume.
It’s actually quite fun. Oh the stuff men talk about when they don’t know there’s a lass in their raid group lolol
Now that I’m “old”, it ain’t about guilt, shame, or exclusion, it’s about how fun this facade is. Y’all neeeever know. So keep talking.
My first thought was why would anyone know. Granted I pretty much assume no one in the game is female. I know some are but I think my assumption will apply a large majority of the time. I mean I know my wife was on the game.
Yeah that’s definitely not going to be exclusive to mobile games, but I always feel like mobile games are generally more isolating to begin with.
Do they resize this is the case for al gamers? No matter the gender
