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

[gigasnail]

funny story. i met my wife on Final Fantasy IX, she is from the UK and i am from Texas. we tried the long distance dating thing and it didn't work out well, but stayed in touch. both of us are gamers from way back, multiple systems though i was more of the old pen and paper RPG fan and she was more of a MMO player. when i came back from afghanistan (for the last time, i swear lol) and got a job in california, we started talking again and decided to try to make it work. blah blah blah sappy stuff, got married, moved in together, etc.

so, i move her and her son in with me and like the first day she's here she looks at my work bench, sees a bunch of chaos marines and says, '...damnit.'

see, her father was a hardcore, long term modeling and wargaming addict. warhammer was only the start of his collection, he is an avid WWII modeler and collector. they built a summer house in their back yard, not for guests, no. FOR HIS TERRAIN. their garage is floor to ceiling with his stuff, he's been modeling for like 30 years.

her sister comes down to visit, takes one look at my stuff and howls with laughter, 'you married dad.' wife was less than pleased, to be sure.

so, my wife loathes 40k, but she doesn't make fun of my manbarbies (much), and has zero interest in playing, but this is from long term over exposure.

more OT: i have several friends who's significant others play, to one extent or another. but gals are much less common than the guys, for sure.

[tylertt]

That is actually so sweet Giga aha. Cool you made the long distance work out as well.

I tried to get my wife to play a few times...was pretty comical in the end. Some highlights of our games were:
- I shot at the Marines she was using. As I went to shoot I bent down to check LoS. They were in a ruined building and I declare I'm shooting at them since I can see them. She proceeds to lay the model down on its side and said, "They are hiding, you can't see them now". When I said you can't do it, she replied with, "Well if I was in a war, I'd hide from the shots".
- She refused to measure because it bothered her. So she said that she will just move to where she wants and would continue her 'cover' strategy by moving the models where she wanted and then just lay them on their sides lol...
- She continuously pronounced Tyranids as "Trin-A-dads". I still do not understand why, but she said she preferred this then Tyranids.
- In our 500 point match she charged in with I think two Tactical marines against 5 of my Genestealers. I told her it was a bad idea, but she said I was trying to trick her out of it and proceeded to do it anyways. The Marines died...

While she gave 40k a try for me (Which I greatly appreciated), she just found it was not for her. She loves board games, but just found 40k too overwhelming and hated measuring and moving the models lol. She supports me in the hobby though and will usually sit with me while I paint to keep me company.

[commandersasha]

My wife cheerfully derides "Snorehammer", but knows I love it, so buys me great tools, orders me to go out gaming if it's been a while, and we enjoy trips to the crafting suppliers together, as she sews, beads, carves and welds.

Tylertt, your wife should be writing rules for games, I like how she thinks! Actually, I refer to my earlier post, she was actually empathising with the characters, rather than just treating them as plastic game pieces.

[Squire]

I imagine any girl would get hit on a lot in a typical gaming group. Look at male dominated internet forums- a girl appears (often with a picture of themselves as their avi, which is rare on forums) and they get treated differently.

Also I've always found women to be far less competitive when it comes to sports and games, and not only physical activities but things like competitive (computer) gaming and wargaming. Of the hobbies and interests I've had over the years some have been impractical for men and women to compete together in (football and boxing), but most have been things men and women can do together on equal terms. Computer gaming, wargaming, skateboarding, tennis and volleyball all come to mind. Skateboarding isn't intrinsically competitive but there is a degree of competition. Natural advantages in size and strength don't give any advantage to men in computer/war gaming. I play both tennis and volleyball every week and while some strength is an advantage they are both more technique based and entirely non contact sports. In all of these interests women have been a minority, and when they have been involved they tended to be more into the social aspects.

Volleyball for example is a sport I play twice a week. Once at school with the rest of the staff, and once at the weekend with a club. At school everyone is encouraged to join in so there's about a 50-50 split of men and women, but at the club I play with only one woman regularly comes along. At school the game is dominated by men and more than half of the women will often shriek and jump out of the way of the ball when it comes to them, which is something I've literally never seen a man do. I can't help putting this down to lack of competitive nature and personal drive to perform. I'll point out again that at the mandatory game I play every week there's usually an equal number of men and women, but at the club where nobody is under pressure to show up, only one woman routinely plays.

Personally I'd put women's relative lack of interest in competitive activities down to not getting engaged in sports and computer games as much as kids. Reasons for that are a discussion for another day, but I find it a shame. There are few things I find more attractive in a woman than competitiveness and athletic ability, but I've found them to be quite rare traits.

tldr; There's an inherent competitive aspect to 40k and typically women don't have that competitive nature.

[Inquisitor Stingray]

I tried to introduce my wife to Warhammer 40K at some point, then realized that I'm not married...

Some pretty hilarious anecdotes in this thread, though. I don't necessarily disagree with what Squire is saying, but I will say that I have never been big on competition or anything sports-related. The games I've played throughout the years, Magic, Warhammer, video games, obviously all have a competitive aspect to them, but I think new-comers are intimidated by this, as they greatly overestimate the importance of winning. Or rather, they think that now that I am introducing them to this game, I fully expect them to remember every single rule and detail. I don't know if its something about my attitude (though I suppose not, because I strive to emphazise the casual aspect of such games) or the fact that people are hesitant to dive head first into something that isn't their natural element.

I suppose it would be little different than if someone were to introduce me to a certain kind of sport or martial arts; I naturally and quite naively assume that they only seek to kick I strongly disagree, when really they are just showing me the fundamentals of the 'game'.

[Yuno]

Although I haven't played in years due to my local game store closing, I would agree as a female with most of what Genevaman said as guesses towards the psychology of it.

Although, I think it should also be fairly stated that girls in the board/model/card gaming field are fairly rare to begin with especially the higher you go. I'm not sure it is really fair to lay that on the feet of men. (Though, I do think that there is a real problem with how women are perceived and treated by the male gaming community and that it is far larger than just 1%). I think a lot of it has to do with actual interests in gaming. I mean you can go on about representation and patriarchy or whatever in gaming, and probably there is a good, clear point there to be made.

However, I've not met a girl yet who felt interest in war gaming or other gaming in a real way. I've met a few that feel passing fancies for it, and even given encouragement, they don't generally speaking seem to want to stick with it. (Unless you count some of the lovely ladies of the hive, but even then I've only heard tell of). Women aren't interested in it because it isn't something that falls into the general scale of their interests most of the time.

Why? Many reasons. However, the one at the front, is that it just doesn't butter their biscuits the way it does for men. Why? Because most women would rather not work very hard for their fun. Why? Because it strikes them as stupid.

[Overread]

Part of this is that we still have a lot of the old socially enforced structure of gender and what is and isn't suitable still kicking around. Companies even extend this as you get certain products, certain hobbies, certain things advertised to women and not to guys and vis-versa.

This is slowly changing, but its still partly there, if now its less intentional discrimination and more just "well that's how the world is". Ergo one gender group isn't encouraged toward a certain activity and thus they don't pursue it as a whole. Even when given the freedom of choice they don't want to follow it because its "not their thing" they are simply not interested. Thus that event and those who profit and promote it will focus on their stronger gender grouping with advertising and promotion.

It's why sometimes there are these big pushes toward "forcing" certain things to happen to break that situation; otherwise it just self reinforces itself.

[Deleted]

the characteristic of being into "nerdy" hobbies be it from D&D to call of duty has come to fruition in the tradition of what has been male behavior. As others have voiced the effect of feminism hasn't really balanced the scale of gender in regards to these hobbies(among countless other things). Overread makes a lot of the points I was intending to mention about encouraged and non-encouraged behavior.

It's not even about forcing yourself to avoid specific behaviors(ex. pursuing games like 40k and warhammer) but when your peers aren't immersed in those activities it doesn't stand that they'd pick them up for no reason and gender encouraged behaviors as well as other neutral behaviors compete for that. The population that plays warhammer is already relatively low. Recruitment of new players is largely through males who more often than not have predominantly male friends due to gender grouping and social bonding and as a result recruit more males than females.

And all of this is after the fact that these nerdy hobbies started ways back when gender equality was even further behind so the founding generation of our hobby was almost certainly even more male skewed than our current demographic.

[Alice]

There are plenty of girls playing Warhammer where I live. Myself being one of them! Yes, it's largely boys and men in the shop on a regular basis, but there's always at least one other girl when I go in

[Xantige]

Since I'm of the female persuasion I might as well add my own two cents to this.

There are so many reasons for why I think girls don't get into 40k. Right off the bat, there's the already existing fanbase. I've been to 2 game stores, one was really really messed up, with kids that would sneeze in your face and whole table discussions about how in the 40k universe, the reason there are no female warriors (or few) is because they're basically kept safe to breed... and the entire table nodded sagely at this wisdom as I was sitting there amongst them. What girl wants to game with people that see women as conquests, another race, inferior, or just a piece of meat?

In the more saner club I still hit a wall. I'm 5 feet tall, not the prettiest girl by any stretch of the imagination, and I go to art college. All the sane gamers in my area are pushing 6 feet, and are thick enough that you couldn't even wrap me around them. All of them are in their 30's or older, and have been playing so long that they've got every army. They're all engineers and the like... what's there in common? I can't grow an army with them, they're past really understanding how price GW stuff can seem to new people, and they're not really into any sort of narrative ,they like competition.

Not to mention, even the best meaning guys have often treated me with kid gloves, like I'm too dim to know basic things... they expect me to be bad at the game, and you know what? I am. But it's not because I'm a woman, it's because I'm new, and I don't go out and buy 2000 points in models in an evening. And it turns me off wanting to game when I feel I'll just prove them right. And I game to have fun, not to research and print off a netlist to win so people will respect me.

Next up keeping girls out of 40k: The commitment required. This turns off a lot of people, not just girls. You'd almost have to be INSANE to get into 40k. You have to spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to build up a good army before you can start winning. And then you realize how unbalanced the game is... random rolling and casual play are fun, but is that really what you want to do with your $1000+ army that has 1000 hours of blood, sweat and tears put into it? Not to mention the storage, the care, and arranging games...

And then there's the 40k lore. Find me all the amazing female characters in 40k.... Shadowsun? Sure. Maybe there are some others, but are there more than 10? 20? Probably not that many. And what of the Space Marines? NO GIRLS ALLOWED EVAR. Seriously, the SM lore is cool, but in a nutshell, they're really every 10 year old boys dream: super-human EVERYTHING, sweet ass armor, a noble purpose, awesome comrads, outnumbered but still able to win... and the "good guys"... oh and no icky cootie-infected girls allowed! You wanna have girls in your army? Play Sisters of Battle, because space nuns who aren't super-human is the same as space marines </sarcasm>.

Now don't get me wrong, GW (as far as I know) handles it's female characters well... but there's just not enough of them.

And also, as previously said, 90% of the girls I know would rather work together than compete against eachother. This is why my friends will play DnD but not 40k (to be fair the cost of 40k is also a big turn off). And yeah, my friends aren't into faceless minions fighting eachother. What's the point? But that's not to say that we hate 40k and wargames... I think we just want a different KIND of wargame. You know what got me into 40k? It wasn't the thrill of beating people, it wasn't exploiting rule loopholes... it was the idea of slowly yet lovingly creating my own army, fluff and all, and battling people who also had an army they loved -- battles with meaning and narrative, not exploitation of bad rules or "I dunno, just because?" I don't know why that's so hard, but it seems to be for people. Everyone in my area just wants to battle for the sake of battling, for the sake of exploiting rules, or proving THEY are the best. Most people don't have a name for their army, let alone fluff. Few even have fully painted armies... fewer still have fully painted armies that actually looked like they TRIED.

As for how to get girls into 40k? Well that's tough. Honestly, I wouldn't even bother if the hobby itself doesn't interest them. Maybe get them interested in something like Kill Team? The investment would be small, but you could still have some fun.

[Overread]

It's been remarked before that for some reason Wargames attract BIG people. It's like it has a magnetism to people over 6ft tall!

[Xantige]

May 15, 2014 9:11:50 GMT Overread said:

It's been remarked before that for some reason Wargames attract BIG people. It's like it has a magnetism to people over 6ft tall!

You have to be big and strong to carry all the models you need for a game .

Also, here's a few things I think guys can do to encourage female players:

1) Tell other players to stop the derogatory talk about women, whether it's fluff or real, whether girls are there or not. I don't expect people to stand up for me, but if you were at a table as the lone girl, surrounded by big guys and they're talking about women as if you're not there, having someone inside that group tell the others to knock it off goes a long way in helping girls feel like FELLOW PEOPLE at the table and not feminine outsiders who snuck into the man-cave without invitation.

2) Don't tell us to play Sisters of Battle, or Eldar because they're girly. Don't tell us to paint our armies pink. Some girls might be okay with it as a JOKE, but a lot of girls into boy-hobbies have to deal with this (please do not swear) all the time. And it's not funny. We don't require a female character or army to feel at home, heck, most girls I know I enjoy playing as male characters in games, we don't care as much about gender, maybe it's because in a lot of things, 75-90% of the available choices are "male". Anyways, the only reason to suggest those things in seriousness is if the girl seems interested in the aesthetics or the playstyle.

3) Treat us like people. Don't swarm at us if we're single, don't make a lot of comments about the fact we're girls, don't assume things about us. Include us in talks around he painting table, or try to include us by asking us what we like to paint most, or our favorite model. But don't tease us for what we say until you know us enough to do so. Outsiders usually feel bullied and unwelcome with too much "playful teasing". Imagine how you would feel if you were new at a table of female pro model painters and they laughed at you for saying you liked to dip your minis. You probably wouldn't feel very welcome.

4) Step up if you see girls in awkward situations with awkward gamers. I don't want to sound like I'm saying girls are weak and need to be protected by guys. There are lots of girls that can handle weirdos, but there are also shy girls who don't know how to shake a socially awkward guy trying to hit on her, or people telling her how women in 40k are just for breeding. There was another female gamer at the more insane club I went to, and she'd be constantly pestered and subtly hit on by all the guys there. As one of the "in" crowd, you guys have the ability to tell other guys to stop it, or intervene in some way to make it less awkward. It's stuff like that that really makes a person feel welcome in the group.

5) Don't fuss about winning or losing to a girl. Guess what? 40k isn't played with a person's genitalia. No one makes a fuss over losing to red heads or people with blue eyes because hair and eye colour doesn't matter.

And really, all of what I said goes for anyone who feels like an outsider in any group, give or take a few details.

[Carnikang]

May 15, 2014 9:11:50 GMT Overread said:

It's been remarked before that for some reason Wargames attract BIG people. It's like it has a magnetism to people over 6ft tall!

Some say over 6 feet? Reporting in. 

On topic though, a lot of good points and suggestions have been made in this thread, and I do hope the female demographic grows in wargamming in general. I know I've tried to get my Fiance into it, though she's not too attracted to the concept. I'll paint a model here and there for her, seeing if she likes it. Always calling them toys and the like. Ah well. 

 

[WestRider]

I want to reinforce point 4 there. A lot of that sort of thing is about looking for in-group solidarity by picking on someone out of the group. It really doesn't take a whole lot of disapproval from others within the in-group to start cutting that down. Every little bit helps. Even if you don't feel comfortable getting up and intervening or whatever, at least frown or something, do something to show that you disapprove of that sort of behaviour. Here's a tumblr post expanding on that, explaining better than I can. Guys, you want to help make this hobby more open? You can't change the game's fluff or art, but this is something you can do from the ground level.

[Craig]

Mar 25, 2014 22:38:14 GMT That's Not Even My Name said:

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

Marketing.

Don't misunderstand me. Games Workshop will gladly take your money no matter what your gender is, and they'll do it with smile on their face, a skip in their step and a glint in either eye.

Their like the bank, they don't care who you are so long as you do business with them and only them.

Or like lawyers, except one is a blood sucking parasite that will take you for penny that you have and the other one is...

You may have noticed that I might slightly, if only just by the teeny tiniest of the slimmest of the smallest amount, be guilty of being somewhat biased towards Games Workshop. If that is the case, then be at ease, for it is just a figment of your imagination, for I have nothing but the utmost respect for Games Workshop. And of course, any past or future statements I've made to them, telling them exactly where they can put their new terrain that they are constantly trying peddle off, are meant entirely as a well intended jest.

If Games Workshop changed they're marketing strategy up a little, I'm sure there would be a lot more female gamers.

It's like those perfume brands aimed at men. Change the name from perfume to deodorant. Avoid bright color branding, making the packaging black or grey is good. Give the brand a masculine sounding name, Lynx does this really well, also working up the attraction of the opposite sex. Suddenly, before you know it, every man has lost his senses and what was once considered unmanly, mow becomes a must have socially expected item.