The Sudden Gamer Girl Animosity
Felcia Day and Jason Charles Miller created a music video called Gamer Girl, Country Boy. I thought it was adorable and immediately gave it a thumbs up and thought that I should write about it here.
Before, I could, however, poor Felcia suffered a massive attack of trolls. She talked about it on her blog: Felicia Day » Blog Archive » Gamer Girl/Country Boy/Flame Fest
SOOO I guess some unnamed internet sites got wind and thought it would be cool to troll and basically flood the video with the nastiest comments ever. After a day of really hurt feelings (I have never had something THIS bad, so I’ve been lucky on the internet for YEARS!), I backed up and tried to figure out WHY it sparked so much hatred? I mean, sure, it’s low-fi, yes my eyeshadow is TERRIBLE (bad choice yeah), BUT I finally figured it out, I THINK. In all my years of championing gaming, I have ALWAYS avoided the title “Gamer Girl”. I always just said I’m a gamer, and left the gender unsaid. I don’t mean to disparage anyone who uses that title, to me, you change minds by being who you are, representing, and not pointing out you’re different from anyone else. That was just always my unconscious choice, to avoid that. But for THIS video in particular, I decided to portray a few stereotypical characters, I PLAYED a “Gamer Girl” and Jason Charles Miller PLAYED a “Country Boy”. WE WERE PLAYING CHARACTERS. But that didn’t really come across to some people, and I guess that gave them an IN to attack me, or attack the IDEA of “Gamer Girl” in that video. And the attack…thousands of Ouch.
It’s very strange, because two years ago, no one from that unnamed site attacked the G33K and G4M3R Girls Anthem Featuring Seth Green video, even though it was OBVIOUS that those girls weren’t gamers and were just hired to play the part.
That video went by without a Flame Fest, so why the sudden animosity? Why has the concept of the Gamer Girl turned from a cool thing to a hated stereotype that gamers want to frag instead of f**k?
I blame it all on COMPANIES like Frag Dolls.
I talked about this before: Gadgets Page » Gamer Girls, Frag Dolls Isn’t For You!
Back then, I said:
Sadly, Frag Dolls isn’t going to help [a gamer girl] nearly as much as IGN or Gamespot. In fact, based on this picture, it looks like Frag Dolls is more about titilating male gamers than about Girl Power. Was that schedule for guys who want to meet girls online? Shucks! I would have really liked a good Gamer Girl site!
I didn’t know the worst of it back then. A year later, I saw the Frag Dolls and their business manager on a panel at SXSW, bragging about how they were able to play games and casually mention their sponsors during game play. At the time they were sponsored by Logitech, so they would brag about their cool Logitech headsets during gameplay in order to manipulate the guys playing into buying products from their sponsors.
I was so angry at that point, I stood up and LEFT the panel. I’ve never walked out of a SXSW panel, except this one. Ironically, the name of the panel was “Getting Girls Into Games.” Apparently, I didn’t realize that the subtitle was, “So They Can Prostitute Themselves For Logitech.” The worst part is that Frag Dolls still has sponsors. You can see them here: Frag Dolls Sponsors
I think the reason poor Felicia Day received such an angry response is because the majority of gamers are sick of being manipulated by companies who hire girls to play games. The image of the hot gamer girl has metamorphosed from a girl of empowerment to a girl of the night.
Dear Game Manufacturers: If you really want to get girls into games, WRITE some games that girls like to play. Honestly, you’re going to have to raise the bar, slackers. We aren’t happy with just shooting and driving race cars. We need a good storyline and interesting characters. You might actually have to find good WRITERS in addition to good programmers. Until you do, you’re going to lose HALF the population of the world.
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