Score one for girl gamers! (Plus, tagged)

[suckmy12inch]

I'm currently extremely happy with myself. You see, the other day I was feeling in a very 'rantish' mood and so who better to rant to than to one of the editors of my favourite gaming magazine, PSM3? At first it was a sort of complaint about their rating for DMC4 (which was 80) and how it's not that difficult and then it sort of morphed into a big rant about girl gamers and porn and stuff. I also went into 'fangirl mode' a little bit. Or maybe a lot. I sort of said: MOAR SHIRTLESS GUYS! I kinda think this may have lowered the tone of my whole email.

Anyway, after my email, got one back today saying that they agreed with my points and that from their April issue, they'll be cutting down the number of pages in their magazine! Okay, I probably didn't bring this about, but it's great to see that I wasn't just blabbering to myself (and I did do a lot of blabbering, believe you me.) I'm really happy that they took the time to reply, even if they sort of ignored some of my ranting, which is understandable really.

see the emails here

Mah email

Hi there,

Figured I'd send this to you... since you're PSM3's Review Editor, right? (That's what it said, anyway.) Firstly, I love the magazine, it's awesome. I once defected to Play, but that lasted for one issue, so you guys are pretty good.

Anyways, I read the review of DMC4. ONLY 80?! Bloody hell, what's wrong with it? So you guys played it on Devil Hunter, and had a huge amount of trouble with the second Dante battle? I seriously hope it was an exaggeration when I read on the front page that you (collective you, of course, I dunno who played it exactly) died at least 17 times. PLEASE tell me that was an exaggeration. It wasn't that difficult, I myself didn't have too much trouble, and I am not the greatest DMC player ever. On a related note, I hear that one of the highest ranking players... Brea, I think, is a girl. GIRL POWER!

Hey, I think you guys gotta do something to try and encourage girls to play. I don't have any bright ideas... except possibly doing something about all those pages of porn ads. What a way to make a girl uncomfortable! (Plus, the game magazines are usually stacked near the porn stuff in shops, it's sort of embarrassing sometimes when I'm browsing game mags and standing right next to Nuts or something.) Now I'm off on a rant...

It's bloody hard for a girl to get into gaming. Myself, I blame my dad, and the fact that my neighbours had a son so I seemed to have mostly male contact as a kid (and how weird does that sound?). What I dislike is the immediate assumption that girls cannot play games. Boys can. Girls can't. It's a boy thing. Girls should be doing the cooking or something equally womanlike. Or, if they DO play games, they;ll be playing the Sims, or Animal Crossing, or something just as sickeningly cute. Fine, that's my opinion on the cute bit, but you get what I'm saying, right? Girls who play the 'hardcore' games are often met with strange looks. Another thing is that a lot of fanservice in games is directed at guys. I don't mind seeing women with big boobs and little clothing but when it seems that they're a staple of so many games, it gets a bit irritating. One reason I like DMC is that Capcom seem to be aware that they have a female fanbase. I reckon that a lot of girls do like DMC because... well, take a look at Dante and Vergil compared to, say, Kratos. Or even the Prince of Persia. I say MOAR SHIRTLESS GUYS. (Even though I prefer Vergil.) Only in DMC4, there did seem to be a lot of... um, jiggling.

Um. There was probably a point to all this. I might have lost it in my rambling. Oh yeah, I was saying, girls should be encouraged to play games. I swear it improves reaction times, my PE teacher was amazed when I kept intercepting her passes. I've had enough of coming across people in general who realise I'm a gamer and immediately go, "You weirdo, games are for boys, what's up with you?" Or: "You can't be that good, you're a girl." We need to teach the world that girls can too play games, and quite often can be better at it than the boys. Our brains work differently, so I think we'd probably excel at different sorts of games. And girls could notice different things in games to boys, creating new strategies. I do that a lot with CoD4, my brother will go in all guns blazing, with death following barely five seconds later, whereas I prefer to skulk around the edges as much as possible. Doesn't always work but there you go.

You could turn it into a campaign or something!

Yeah, I'm getting carried away. And I've blabbered on for ages. Please excuse my rambling, I do that when I get into a topic. And now that I've gone off such a tangent, I should probably just send this to another email... tcha, too lazy, sorry. If I just wasted a few minutes of your life, sorry. But you're not gonna get 'em back. If you did read this all, thanks, I appreciate it. The magazine rocks. Even if I do have to lurk near the porn to get it.

(Put my real name here, but y'all can know me as Elata or vergils-girl, I think.)

Reply

Hi Nat,

Thanks for your mail - Nathan forwarded it on.

I agree with your points about girls playing games. In fact, we had a letter accusing us of being sexist in the last issue - which Andy
misread and I had to calm him down. No, not really - the simple truth is that we want everyone to be able to enjoy the mag, and more importantly games. The good news, we hope, is that we've won our 'war' on the pornography in the mag. It was never our choice to include it - it's a revenue-based, advertising decision - but after extensive, top of company, lobbying, the lurid smut section will be reduced to three pages from the issue on-sale April (our 100th issue), and subject to the same restrictions as Total Film magazine. It's not as good as a total removal, but a step in the right direction.

Thanks for your letter

Dan

I just appreciate that they were polite enough to send me a reply, and I'm just delighted that they understand the issue! There's always like 5 or 6 pages of advertising and I guess while 3's not a HUGE improvement, as the guy said, it's a step in the right direction.

(And now I read over my email... I sound a little insane, a bit like a rabid fangirl, what with my constant mention of DMC. Oh well. Can't have seemed that crazy.)

Uh, other news... I'm hungry?

EDIT: Just noticed that good ol' veiravx tagged meh, so let's see...
Post 10 things that recently made you happy, then tag 10 people and make them post it to their LJ:
Well, dunno how I'll tag ten people. I usually forget the tagging bit >_> Anywho.
1) PSM3 is awesome! THEY REPLIED!
2) Found AWESOME BOOTS on eBay which will be perfect for a Lady cosplay
3) Speaking of which, dantes_girland I are gonna cosplay at the next London Expo, in May, or possibly October. She's gonna be Trish, I'll be Lady
4) I got myself some chocolate mousse. Yummy.
5) Twilight! Bella and Edward are really cute!
6) My wallpaper of Reno, the one where his tongue's sticking out.
7) Just glanced at my wall and that makes me happy because I can ogle my 11 Vergil pictures. 
8) Speaking of my wall... the whole thing's pretty damn hot: Vergil, Sephiroth, Kadaj, Gaku Namikiri, Reno, Axel, Demyx, Knvies, Vash, Organization XIII, Dante, (Roxas and Sora... sorta...), Eiri Yuki... pretty damn hot. AND DAN SOUTHWORTH! AND DAVID TENNANT!
9) I go to sleep facing 5 Vergil pictures, 2 of Sephiroth, 3 of Kadaj, 1 of Dan, 2 of David, 1 of Vash the Stampede... what fangirl wouldn't be happy?
10) Played DMC4 today and killed Bael. I always feel a certain savage satisfaction when I whup that cheap bastard's ass...

Comments

Go girl gamers, I suppose

[earth-bubbles.livejournal.com]

I thought since you said something about nobody commenting I'd comment, so here goes.
Congrats on getting replies, I'm sure they will remember you forever. And go tag Femke, she needs to post.
And now I have nothing to say except:
*GLOMPHUGOFDEATH*