Why is Warhammer not a 'girl's thing'?

[That's Not Even My Name]

Hi everyone. I'm kind of new here and don't know anybody but I wanted to know if there were many women here or if any of you play with women at all. I'm the only girl who plays Warhammer in my city as far as I know and I haven't met any other girls who play the game. My friends don't seem to like it just because it's not something they are supposed to like. It's meant to be a 'boy's thing' which just sounds stupid to me. Whenever I try to introduce them to it they just look at me weird and laugh. They don't even give it a chance to decide if they'll like it or not.

It's kind of weird being the only girl whenever I go to places to play. No offence to any men of course. I just feel like a bit of an outsider. I also feel like some guys don't take me entirely seriously. A ton of guys were telling me to start Sisters of Battle at the start because 'it's the army that's most for girls' and later I found out it was the oldest and weakest army or something. Am I just gaming in the wrong places? I have plenty of nerdy girl friends but none that will even touch Warhammer. Or if they will they'll only do it to humour me and deliberately not take it seriously.

I don't want to force people to play and I don't want to come off like I don't like playing games with men. I really do. But it would be nice to have at least one other woman there. If only so that I don't stick out so much.

[Geneva]

Hey, how ya doin'?

First off, welcome to the Hive!

Yeah... 40k seems to be a predominantly middle class, white, male hobby and there aren't many people I've met who don't fit that demographic. I mean, they're definitely out there. I know a few girls who play but that doesn't make for a huge total out of the several dozen people I've played with. Not great figures on the inclusiveness ticket, I know. At the same time I've never made a deliberate point of looking for people who don't fit that profile so I can't really call myself an authority on things.

As for why the game has it's reputation... The phrase 'boys and their toys' comes to mind. 40k is ostensibly the epitome of 'guy hobbies'. All of the things that make 40k attractive are generally things that well off, male children would have grown up with. Toys with swords and guns. Epic battles. Competitive gameplay. These are things that boys are stereotypically exposed to in their youth. There's a connection there, whether through nostalgia or a continuation of things boys are meant to love. A sort of gender based cultural training I guess. As you say though, it's actually complete (please do not swear). Girls can (and do, though evidently not in as much a number) play and love 40k as much as any guy. I mentioned some girls I know who play, one of them is the biggest lore junkie I've ever met. She can tell you the chronological events of the Horus Heresy flawlessly if you ask her to. It's just the established audience target that kind of brandishes a big stupid 'This is for boys!' sign above it. It's always bothered me that codexes and rulebooks refer to players as 'he' and 'his' rather than 'they' and 'their' for example.

The fact that there are so few girls at the moment probably makes for an entry block in itself too. As you recount in your post, it's kind of hard to feel comfortable when you're the only girl there ever. If the player base expanded more I imagine people would feel less intimidated by it. Also, and this really isn't universal so please don't feel turned off by it, but some 40k scenes (or just nerdy guy scenes in general) tend to revel in the fact that it's a 'guy thing'. Let's just say I've had the odd game with guys who didn't exactly have an appropriate opinion of women. It's a small thing and 99% of the player base are great people but the fact that it's there and often goes unaddressed hurts the image of the community a lot. Even the whole 'Sisters of Battle' thing sort of falls a bit into that kind of 'us and them' mentality.

As for attracting other women to the game? Sometimes the lore helps. Reading 40k books doesn't have quite the stigma as pulling out the terrain and D6s. There are tons of video games too. Even just painting some of the nicer looking models can be an entry gate if you have any artistic minded friends. And then they're are some who won't even blink at the idea of playing a sci-fi war game. College societies or sci-fi clubs are a good way to make friends who might be into that sort of thing. You're bound to find someone who plays or is willing to.

[That's Not Even My Name]

Most of the guys are really nice. I don't think anyone meant anything bad when they said I should play Sisters or Battle. I think they just really wanted another person to play and thought that I'd like the army because I'm a girl. I'm in my college sci-fi club but my friends there aren't really interested either. It's like you said about it being such a guy thing. It's hard to convince them to give it a go. I haven't read any of the Warhammer books but I'll give them a try. One of my friends loves fantasy books so she might like them.

I think your picture is adorable by the way.

[Drogga]

I've been playing for 2...almost 3 years and have played with exactly 1 girl. She was the girlfriend of one of the regulars at our store, although she was definitely not a regular I had only seen her there one other time and she didn't even play a game. She had a pretty large Eldar army with a fantastic paint job all the way across the board. It turned out to be a fun game but during times where I clearly had the advantage I didn't feel as comfortable as any other game I played. I didn't trash talk or rub victories in that probably shouldn't have happened (5 hormagaunts taking out 8 banshees) I enjoyed it just felt a bit awkward.

As for the whole Sisters of Battle thing goes. The girl I played against was given the same treatment and i think it is mostly because:
1. Sisters are girls
2. Very uncommon and many people(including me) would like to see one
3. They aren't man enough to own a Sisters army for themselves
4. The one sisters player I lost to was given so much praise for beating me...In other words people get excited when sisters are actually doing well given their codex state

[WestRider]

Genevaman laid it out pretty well. A lot of it boils down to unquestioned assumptions on the part of the player base, local stores, and GW itself. To cut the circle down to its most bare form, few women play 40K because few women play 40K, and each element of the cycle tends to be self-reinforcing. For example, GW doesn't consider women to be a significant target market, so they put no real effort into designing things to appeal to women, and don't market to women*. This obviously does nothing to increase the number of women who play.

The Adepta Sororitas thing is another example of people just not thinking, jumping to conclusions based on superficial connections. In my experience, Eldar seem to be slightly more common among female players than any other Army, but they've always been a fairly popular Army anyhow, so that doesn't really say much. Other than that, it's pretty much covered the spectrum. Marines, Orks, Nids, IG, Chaos, whatever.

*In some ways, this might actually be for the best. I've seen a number of attempts by various companies over the years to "reach out to women" that were just terrible, because they were founded on weird stereotypical ideas of "what women want" rather than actual market research or anything. I kind of doubt GW would be one of the companies to break that mold.

[robomummy]

In our local group there is one female member who plays space wolves, her list is one of the nastiest I have seen. apart from that I haven't seen too many playing 40k (though there is about a 50/50 male-female ratio in our Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons games), I know a few who like to paint the models (primarily orks, vampire counts, and Dark eldar) but they don't actually play.

[greyseer]

My girlfriend plays, and she has been into the hobby for about as long as I have. In fact, she's been pen and paper gaming for longer. She runs Chaos Daemons and only recently started in with CSM.

It's the opportunity for shared storytelling that we enjoy. Creating characters in various universes is just a thing we do together. But that's not what got her started. She enjoys being creative, so the building, painting, and modding attracted her.

Otherwise, women are, unfortunately, rare at the store we frequent. There's another couple who pop in every now and then who actually play armies opposite to us (he plays Chaos and she plays Tyranids). There's also another woman from another shop who is rumored to be shifting stores due to issues at her current one.

Finally, the other GW store that's local to me has about three or four semi-regular women. However, the manager there is female, so she tries to encourage play across both genders.

Generally, when I meet a woman who plays, it's not necessarily the aesthetics that attract them, but the opportunity to either create or compete. As mentioned previously in this thread, the aesthetics tend to lean towards the testosterone fueled violence and action traditionally associated with a male audience.


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[That's Not Even My Name]

I actually like action stuff. In the beginning I was going to start the fantasy Warhammer because it reminded me so much of Berserk but nobody I knew played it. Tyranids look fab though. I love the idea of the Hive Mind too. Something that sees everything at once through billions of eyes is so cool I don't regret playing the 40,000 version at all. I get that it's meant to look more like the things boys would like than girls but not all of us are into dresses and flowers. I still have a hard time convincing people though.

Westrider and Genvaman are probably right though. Girls don't play it so it seems like something that isn't for girls so girls don't play it. It makes sense. That's even more annoying because if I could just get a few people to play it it actually might catch on. I'll keep trying though. Maybe I can get some of my friends interested with the story like Genvaman said. It's nice to here that you guys do play with women sometimes though. At least I'm not the only one.

[Inquisitor Stingray]

This isn't a comment directed solely at women, but people in general who are hesitant about getting into Warhammer; I've foudn, unsurprisingly, that if the person in question has had any experience with say Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons, the transition to tabletop games with lots of rules is much smoother and less awkward than if they had only been playing video games up till this point. I know it's stating the obvious, but the chasm between shooting things in Warhammer 40K: Space Marines (the video game) and moving models around on a table, doing the same thing in your imagination is huge, in particular if there's nothing to bridge the gap.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that perhaps by introducing your friends (assuming they have little to no experience with the 'geek community' or however we shall describe ourselves) to games with less extensive rules, you might have greater success getting their souls hooked on convincing them to play a game of Warhammer with you.

[Overread]

Geeky things are for Geeky people. Which is why consoles are owned by most able to families - why most kids today play video games on console etc...

It's not actually true.

In the same way that women "don't game" and men "don't knit". They are artificial constructs that in todays world where many barriers are breaking down; they simply don't hold up. Sure the change is often slow and sometimes it does need a little nudge here and there, but things are shifting.

I do very much agree that the reason you don't see many girls is because not many girls do it; but also it is certainly linked to advertising and market awareness. Go back 100 years or so and women shaving their legs was not a thing; men had razors. It wasn't till razors were advertised as a womens thing that suddenly they became a womens thing to the point where its not only common but expected.
A solid advertising campaign and some women in the design team making some choices to appeal to that market segment could most certainly turn things around (and you don't have to get rid of the male appeal aspect in the progress either).

Sadly, as said, sometimes they end up going too "girly" in these campaigns and the product ends up warping into trying to fit a market niche its not really wanting to. You can't make Warhammer into the sort of thing that girls who are all about dresses and clothing want by suddenly dressing space marines in dresses. You can most certainly pitch it to a lot of artistic gals very easily (I'm actually surprised that GW doesn't do more to really push their hobby as an art form as I know a large number of people (esp girls) who are into the models only for the art) and other groups I'm sure as well.



There is also another barrier which is a touch harder to break and that's the "boys club" feel. Because guys do like to be guys around other guys without gals (barring that one or two tomboy gals who are one of the guys anyway). It's a social thing and gals are the very same way. GW at the moment has that feeling of the boys club - a thing for guys to do with other guys; to suddenly try and shift that atmosphere to multigender can be a very difficult thing to do if you try to do it all at once; because suddenly the old feeling is lost; the old draw is gone. IT can indeed turn away many people who were once fans - in the same way that when you've an established group of friends of all one generation which is suddenly flooded with a large group from another generation the old group often splits off.

If done slow they don't notice the change; if done fast they do and then there's natural resistance.

Thing is until you've got 10 or so gals who can play you can't really do a "girls night of wargaming" because it just won't work.

[Inquisitor Stingray]

Mar 26, 2014 14:37:03 GMT Overread said:

You can't make Warhammer into the sort of thing that girls who are all about dresses and clothing want by suddenly dressing space marines in dresses.

I don't know why, I just feel a sudden urge to share this picture upon reading your post.

[tylertt]

There are only a few girls at my local GW, and most of them just paint and model. I have only seen one girl paint, and she was the girlfriend of a guy I played against.

There definitely are girls out there who play though, but as stated by most people this appears to most people as a 'male hobby'. I don't agree but unfortunately that is the mindset of quite a majority of the hobby.

I seen this video though of a lady winning the 2013 BAO event. Thought it may encourage you!

[commandersasha]

I'll add a couple of musings:
1) I am a Scout leader, primarily Beaver Scouts, which is the 6-8yr old group in the UK. For seven years we had no girls, and the few that came along tried it for a week, and didn't like it; then last summer 4 started at once, loved it, and now we have 7.
There's a critical mass effect, I think; decades of feminism aside, there are still enough differences that a lone girl will stand out, and disrupt the environment: that can be very intimidating, enough to drive off an inquisitive newcomer, and 40K has a BIG entrance curve: before you get good enough to play, and win, and not get trounced, you have to learn building, playing, and probably painting: a supportive peer group is essential.

2) This game is deceptively maths-rich: you need to be naturally confident with statistics, probability, measurement and abstract reasoning, plus good spatial imagination; the subset of humans to whom this is not just comfortable, but actually fun, is very limited: most of the kids in GW Kingston, Surrey are also in the top maths sets at the local schools. A quick look at the statistics for gender balance in degree level pure mathematics courses shows that there is still inequality there!

3) All the gamer geek girls that I know seem to be much more interested in connecting with characters rather than commanding faceless minions: there is a huge female fanbase in roleplaying games, where you play your character, and a reasonable takeup in small skirmish games like Malifaux, where you have a very personal crew of half a dozen named characters, but less in games with lots of models.
Similarly, the Cosplay explosion sees geek girls putting fantastic effort into character emulation.
Eldar are a very characterful army, maybe this is why Eldar are so popular amongst female players?

I believe anyone can do or be anything, but the bulges on the bell curve will see 40K appealing to noisy boys more than girls, but there are many female players, they will never be short of attention (good and bad!), and the game is always richer for more diversity.

I hope you find many friends amongst your community, and that you become a regular face on the hive!

[Overread]

Sasha - I thought scouts was for boys and girl scouts for girls. At least that's how I recall it; each group focusing on the different genders; which would also explain why there's typically no or very little cross over of the membership.


As for maths I agree, GW games are very maths heavy, but so to is Magic and a large proportion of board game and geeky things. I think that its also something that doesn't have to be strictly true either. Look at MMO's and such; high grading maths players are more likely to hit higher level gaming faster because they'll often more readily break down the numbers to work out the best advantage; however those games have huge populations of people who can't even add up straight.

I think that with GW games and similar the effect is that if you have a mathy group which in turn tends to set a high bare of skill that in itself acts as problem. Essentially if you end up with a small group of the elite it becomes very hard to get new people to join in at a new skill level (regardless of gender). This is oft the death-nail of local groups as they end up unable to recruit many new players.

It's why I think you really have to push the game as multi-hobby and also push to have large drives to get many new people in in one big go. Schools/Unis do this well because each year you get new students - for independent of education clubs its harder.

[commandersasha]

Overread- Scouts was originally for boys, Guides for girls. In the UK Scouting went mixed in the 90s I believe. Guides is still girls only.