Hi guys I've always wondered why it seems Mtg is a mainly male dominant game and that there aren't more girls involved? I and one other girl are the only women at my local Game store and though we are treated just like another part of the group it does sadden me we women are so scarce when Mtg is such a fun and enjoyable game and hobby. Granted a lot of girls I know aren't near as nerdy as I haha but still it would be nice to get more involved to even out the playing field abit more.
What are your experiences guys? Do you wish more women would get into mtg? What do you think could be done to help draw more in?
Sadly enough you're right, at my lgs there are also only 2 girls, who are very much a part of the group and are treated as such. But I think that girls are usually a little more sceptic about such things. Guys tend to like wizards and dragons and vampires and whatnot more then women I think.
Even though wotc does their best imo, every card says: his or her library, his or her hand...
The planes are maybe to manly overal to succesfully atract woman to the story, altough kaladesh was pretty colorfull and kindoff likeable by woman I think?
But I'dd like more girls at our lgs too, the dark male humor should be kept in check more hahaha
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Hi guys I've always wondered why it seems Mtg is a mainly male dominant game and that there aren't more girls involved? I and one other girl are the only women at my local Game store and though we are treated just like another part of the group it does sadden me we women are so scarce when Mtg is such a fun and enjoyable game and hobby. Granted a lot of girls I know aren't near as nerdy as I haha but still it would be nice to get more involved to even out the playing field abit more.
What are your experiences guys? Do you wish more women would get into mtg? What do you think could be done to help draw more in?
I don't think the game itself is male orientated at all. There's no specific advantage to being a male and playing. I think women may be intimidated by the number of male players and not wish to join that group. I personally think that it would be great if more women played. The biggest issue is that like video games there's a social taboo that needs to be overcome. Professional poker leagues had the same issue with women getting into the game.
SviacCRO worded it WAY too simply, but is sadly on the right track.
There are two conspiracy theories I have found that fit just too well:
1-The one that Ash (protagonist) kills Gary's(rival) Raticate aboard the S.S. Anne in the original Pokémon games.
2-The belief that society has been forcing gender stereo types through propaganda-type entertainment media. The easiest one to point out is G.I. Joe versus Barbie. G.I. Joe is out battling the "others" on their turf, typically at or from some foreign land. Barbie is more hanging out around the house and looking pretty to attact Ken's eye. Joe dresses for the mission, Barbie dresses for that.
We've been doing better at breaking these gender stereotypes and hopefully working to fully eradicate gender identity ENTIRELY aside from the physical aspect, but there are still some remainders of "that perfect 50s home" and even before that "men go out hunt women stay gather berries and watch kids" mentality.
So why are the women treated differently? Due to the still typical gender stereotypes and how the male dominant group is going to see the women not as "the same people" but a group of "others". Accepted, but still "others".
Why are women not showing up? The gender expectations of society and the answer above: not wanting to be grouped in as a minority.
It's sad but true and hopefully will change sooner rather than later.
Magic used to think of itself as including always I think. But in later years wizards have tryed to make the game more gender and etnically including. The fact that they are throwing money on this should be an indicator that it was not so inclusive from before. We can see this with trans gender characters, working with indian communaties in the making kaladesh and hiering female and black counselors when making the planewalker from 'conspiracy 2 take the crown'. These are some examples, I am sure there are more.
If you look at the urza storyline from 1993 to 2001 you have difeculty finding well pressented women in a major role (freyalise ftw). It is a very 'boyish fantasy' with dragon engiens and two brothers batteling each other. It is not that fantasy as a genre is not for girls, it is, but thus fantasy was more boy spesific yet labeled as 'universial'. No disrespect to Richard Garfield who i have enormus respect for.
So based on that, I would say magic innitially attrackted more boys then girls. Though the statements follows now might have nothing to do with the above, I just think it is related. Here is the real problem:
I have known many girls who have been turned off by magic because of male members in the communaty who are less inclusive and often hostile towards girls. We have tied to do something with this in our enviorment but had very slim suckess.
I do feel the above paragraf is very representative for many local stores without themselves realisinh it. That is my statement, and I am sticking to it.
That being said on non-magic gaming bothe electronic and analog we can see that both boys and girls, and people of all ages play games. If a person plays a game, they are more likly to play games again according to statistics. I do not think that it is a problem for girls /wommen to play MTG, I wish more of them did play. And that non-female players would take steps to include them more.
Just to use an example close by: SvizacCRO statement that girls do not like fantasy, or that they do not like competetiv elements seem very unjustified. Studies prove that this is not true. Even if we do not look into studies just the general statement that all members of a gender do not like these cultural elements are just to broad. More importantly, statements like this is one of the problems in the latent culture holding girls out. Weather kpals follow up statement is meant as fact, jest or both it is also not very including. In fact it trivilises Paige712 question quite a lott.
In my experience when I quote 'research' I often get barrated by people wanting to see the research. After 8 years at the universaty I can only say that I am not breaking out the exact source as it would take to long to look up for a post on an mtg forum. Belive me, don't belive me or just look into studies yourself.
Well it's possible that there aren't as many female gamers as male because of the stigma that was attached to being nerdy 25 years ago. Even now there's a stigma attached to being an adult and playing video games. People care a lot about how other people see them, and it's hard to go from making fun of someone for playing D&D to getting into the same hobbies.
While a lot of people are happy to move on, some of the people who have experienced criticism for their hobbies in the past may not be very receptive to the source of that criticism coming and playing.
Personally, I find the whole "gender roles" argument to be ludicrous. Not once in my life have I ever gotten any indication that video games and nerd stuff in general was for men, aside from the stereotype of the sweaty neckbeard. If that's a stereotype anyone WANTS to be associated with, I don't know who they are and I don't want to meet them.
I can't say for certain what the source of that stereotype is, but I would guess that the stereotype is what stops people from gaming. My sister and her friends used to make fun of me and my friends, and now she has more tabletop games than I do. As far as I can tell, the only thing that was ever stopping her was the hypocrisy. Either way she always beat me at mario party.
There are a lot of contributing factors to this, some of which have already been covered, but I'll try for a comprehensive post:
1) It's absolutely true that 90's High Fantasy was a male dominated trope that also targeted males. Magic originated here, and back in those days being a nerd was NOT trendy or hip like it is today, it's something decidedly uncool. And girls don't tend to flock to guys that uncool, or their hobbies. It's not to say that you didn't have the occasional girl in a D&D campaign group or something back then, but the odds were she was as much of a societal outcast as the rest of the group. Eventually though, nerd culture started to become more accepted, and this occurred around the time CGI got good enough to realistically render High Fantasy in the Lord of the Rings movies. For the first time, people didn't have to sit back and imagine a giant dragon or orc battle, or see some clumsy costumes. The best we had for portraying fantasy like that was animation and special effects, but CGI....CGI and Lord of the Rings being the first fantasy movie to REALLY use its power....that was able to bring imaginations to realistic life. Game of Thrones would later mark a return to High Fantasy, and we all know how much it's hailed for its special effects as much as the plot. Being able to realistically render fantasy settings and bring them to life makes them more accessible to more people who might otherwise never find themselves attracted to fantasy storytelling, and in turn, it becomes more acceptable. I mean, let's face it, whether you're a football player, stockbroker, drug dealer, or whatever, Dani riding the back of a firebreathing dragon leading a giant army of Dothraki is FRIKKING COOL. So as nerd culture has become more accepted, it's something more females are willing to associate with, and even enjoy themselves, much as many people suddenly picked up the LoTR books for the first time when the movies released. Still, nerd culture has gotten to a point where we've started to go a little overboard in the celebration of it and it starts getting cringy again "nerd blackface" is the term that man have for how The Big Bang Theory's later episodes would devolve. Please note at around the same time, video games started getting genuinely GOOD. By that I mean that computers/video games were starting to break out of the "nerds and kids only" role they'd had for a while. Of course, they'd done that technically for a while, but socially, video games could still be a little on the nerdy side. The original Xbox changed that with the original HALO, and going over to your bro's house and lugging your TV became a new acceptable pastime because, just like dragons going from makeup and special effects to full blown CGI, video games firmly crossed the threshold into "normal guys play video games." We don't even really consider someone who enjoys playing video games to be a "nerd" anymore, it's just another hobby to us.
2) Since the High Fantasy trope was targeted towards males at Magic's inception, the game started out being male dominated. Not intentionally, I'm sure, but again, back then the closest to fantasy/nerds most girls were allowed to get without killing their social status was Lisa Frank unicorns. Which, for the record, I still think are gloriously awesome in an over the top way, but I digress. Sure, some girls were into High Fantasy as well, but they were the outliers, and without the internet really existing, I'm sure they felt very alone as they were pretty uncommon. My school had a small handful of these girls and I consider it an outlier to have had (5?) girls that enjoyed hanging out with the various "nerd" circles. When the internet came around full force and socialization really began to occur, many people began to see they weren't alone, and also tended to be more open about their interests on their Geocities pages and such. This was where nerds were finally beginning to feel some empowerment, they, like other minorities, could finally connect with more than the "other" weird kid at school. And with empowerment comes confidence, the notion that "Yeah....I'm a nerd....and that's OK." And confidence is sexy. Now more people want to be nerds, and now here's the Lord of the Rings and here's the start of the whole "Gamer Girl" trend which I am NOT going to delve into.....but yeah, there you go, we're starting to see more females get into Magic.
3) Aaaaaaand we're running them back out. What happens when there's one girl sticking her toe in the water of a cardstore full of guys? Especially now that Magic has expanded beyond its original niche audience and included all sorts of people from every walk of life? She gets a LOT of attention from every single dude there. TBH, I think that's why some girls try to make themselves get interested in magic, they enjoy the attention. Please note I said "some". And some guys may do the same just because they're lonely and aren't very good at making friends, but don't honestly care enough about the game to be more than passable at it. Anyway, the issue is that if you find a girl who genuinely enjoys playing Magic....that's like jackpot for some people. Wouldn't it be AWESOME to have a GF that plays Magic? We'd just hang out and play Magic and have sex all the time!
Yeah no. That mentality is a pretty huge turn off to most girls, who would like to be valued for more than their Magic playing skills and ability to have sex. The girls serious about playing? They would like to be respected as players, talked to as comrades, and treated with respect. Instead, they can be met with anything from unwanted advances and crude language to sexual harassment to condescension. And those girls usually have enough self respect to say "screw this, I'm out, I don't need this." Just like in real society, it only take a vocal minority of people to create an impression, so even if you don't think your game store isn't like this doesn't mean you see everything happening to every customer. Ask yourselves if every conversation you've heard at your LGS you'd like to have in front of your mother. Probably not. That's not to say it's "locker room talk" in the Trump definition of the phrase, but I know that my vocabulary gets a deal larger when the Pokémon kids aren't around. This also applies to the vocabularies of misogynists, sexists, and worse. So while you might be guilty of dropping an f-bomb casually or having a slightly crass conversation, other conversations from others might be much more vulgar, discriminatory, and representative of the "locker room talk" our president is a fan of. The types of people who find this kind of talk "OK" are also the kinds of people that will gradually expand that locker room talk outside the locker room and a single player with this mentality is enough to run off every female that comes into the store one at a time.
I do find that once a certain threshold is reached, an LGS becomes regarded as much less male dominated. It's hard to break that barrier of what seems to be 3-4 female regulars, but once it is broken, ladies are much more apt to frequent the store in more equal numbers. As long as those 3-4 females get along with each other, they give a counterbalance to the sexist behavior they may experience and make the store more comfortable for new female players. Ladies also tend to have higher standards for hygiene and thus gravitate to whichever store is the cleanest and most professional, all other things being equal. Guys tend to go after whoever has the best prize support and inventory. There are not a lot of places I wouldn't play if I could draft MM17 for a magical price of $15 for example.
All in all, a girl going to an LGS for the first time might encounter a seedy store on the outskirts of the bad part of town. That's not a great start, but that doesn't mean the people are bad. And hopefully they aren't- a good playgroup and a good store will cause me to forgive a LOT. But then you walk in and everyone turns and looks at you like they've never seen a girl before, and then they find out you're there to play Magic. If you're lucky, the worst thing you run into is a little bit of condescension that might even be unintentional, or perhaps one weird guy excitedly trying to initiate conversation over how you can improve your deck. If you're unlucky you'll get hit on until you have to as the new girl, report the guy that was chatting up the store clerk in friendly conversation 20 mins ago, and have it spelled out to his friend that you're not interested. You then get murdered by the T8 players, who are all male and might include the guy who kept hitting on you, as you start wondering why you don't just stick to Duels on PC or Xbox.
Granted, this experience may not happen to every female, but sadly I bet at least ONE of those elements happens FAR more often than we'd like to admit. We also make it worse when we try to white knight female players when they come in for the first time.
"Oh, it's so good to have a FEMALE magic player" is probably one of the worst things you can say but I hear people say it all the time. The girl cringes and spends the night trying to avoid that fellow because if anyone's singling her out for her gender, it's him.
They are girls, not unicorns. You've seen them before. It's not that Magic the GAME is unfamiliar or unfriendly towards females, it's that it's unusual enough to find a female player for these other reasons that it draws even MORE attention to the players that are female, and you get a circular feedback loop of female magic players being unusual, which creates unwanted attention, which drives away female players and makes female magic players more unusual.....
4) Reasons for playing Magic/misconceptions about the game
This is not exclusive to females, but it does seem to represent a larger percentile than with males. The reasons for this may not even be demographic related, but I'll try to explain. Please note that the following statements are generalizations- we can all find exceptions to these, but these are generalizations based on observations with years spent in various gamestores and tournaments and witnessing various interactions.
Men are all about competition, and they enjoy it to the extent that we regularly subject ourselves to the meanest decks imaginable for fun in the same way an MMA fighter subjects himself to tremendous physical punishment, only to have a beer with his opponent later that night and laugh about it. Good Magic players love to get beaten in the most awful of ways because we learn something. We LOVE watching awesome plays get made even if they crush us and we love the challenge of beating the best. As a result, we spend a lot of our free time playtesting, reading, researching, building, posting, and studying the game or sport we want to excel at. There simply are not that many females that, for whatever reason, want to spend that amount of time and dedication and money to get that good at Magic. For that matter, they are a mirror of the male who struggles with the male that struggles with the notion that <"Magic tournaments are too competitive, I just want to have fun with my friends. (WarAngel88 anyone?)"> I think more woman (not all) are attracted to the game for its art and social aspects. For males, they are much more apt to fall into the "spike" persona, though the other players of "Johnny, Timmy, Vorthos etc..." are also represented. There's nothing wrong with ANY of this, no matter why you play Magic. However, only ONE persona tends to consistently win. Spikes.
If you are a Spike, you are likely going to win over all other personas because that's what's important to you. The storyline is secondary, the card could have a big vomit stain as the artwork, and you could care less about the way you're winning as long as the payoff for all the studying and testing and brewing you've done is that top 8. But most spikes do like the artwork. And they do take some interest in the storyline. And they do enjoy winning in weird ways with tech cards. They get to enjoy all those things too. But for the most part, Timmys and Vorthos don't ever get to enjoy winning, even if they'd like to sometimes. At least not against the spikes. They'll get their victories over their counterparts here and there, but once they get to the high tables, it seems like that barrier cannot be breached without becoming a spike. And that's true, and something a lot of players of both genders just don't get. There's more to being a top competitor than having a bottomless wallet, it takes more work than people realize and some people are just not willing to put that much work into a game they play primarily because they like the artwork and hanging out with friends. At the end of the day, you are probably going to lose against someone who plays 3-4x as often as you do, and puts more time and practice, and yes, devotes more financial resources than you. A lot of people like to blame the last part on why they can't win, when in reality, that's a fairly small piece of the puzzle. It's not nonexistent, but it's a lot smaller than people would like to make it out to be.
So what does all this have to do with female players? It's another reason they don't stick around as long. There are far fewer "spikes", though there is no shortage of people who want to be seen as spikey. Fewer female players= fewer female spikes= top 8 is mainly male dominated= male dominated game. Most people getting into Magic have no IDEA how DEEP the game goes for spikes and how many hours are spent studying not just your deck, but every deck you're likely to face in a meta, let alone actually playing. People getting into Magic simply have no CLUE at the beginning at how much effort it takes to be "good" and quite honestly, most people are not willing to take it seriously enough. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But until someone does, the T8 will remain unchanging.
I think that kind of covers several points I wanted to make. Again, please note these are generalizations, there are of course exceptions. And there are plenty of clean, well run, professional stores filled with players of every gender. There are female pro players and judges and I think that's great, but that's the point where I stop caring about their gender, and you should too.
It's probably somewhat of a chicken-and-egg situation at this point. It has not been my experience that women or girls are averse to fantasy or games (the opposite is often true). I think the problem stems from MTG having been marketed to a male demographic early on because of contemporary social (mis)conceptions. Perhaps given some more time and some more word of mouth, more females will get involved.
1-The one that Ash (protagonist) kills Gary's(rival) Raticate aboard the S.S. Anne in the original Pokémon games.
Blue's Raticate didn't get killed.
Blue claims to have caught 30 Pokemon by the time you face against his Raticate, so clearly he's got some stored in his PC (or has released them)
His Raticate is too low level to have evolved from his Rattata, meaning his Rattata and Raticate are different Pokemon (because you can catch under-leveled evolutions in the wild), lending credence to Blue's use of the PC
Blue specifically says he's in Pokemon Tower to catch Cubone, not to bury his Raticate; other NPCs in the tower are very emotional about their dead Pokemon
Gen 2 shows that Blue really does wear his emotions on his sleeve; if Red had killed his Raticate, wouldn't the emotionally open Blue have said something about it when meeting his pet's murderer while standing over his pet's grave?
The only animosity Blue expresses towards Red is that his grandfather gives Red more attention, despite Blue completing the task both of them were given faster. Pokemon Origins reveals that Blue caught every single Pokemon species in Kanto except Mewtwo.
2-The belief that society has been forcing gender stereo types through propaganda-type entertainment media. The easiest one to point out is G.I. Joe versus Barbie. G.I. Joe is out battling the "others" on their turf, typically at or from some foreign land. Barbie is more hanging out around the house and looking pretty to attact Ken's eye. Joe dresses for the mission, Barbie dresses for that.
I agree that a large part of the reason why there are few women and girls playing Magic can be put squarely on the shoulders of the people responsible for the Pink Aisle.
If I remember correctly, Magic was invented by Richard Garfield as something to play while rolling up fresh characters for AD&D. D&D wasn't that popular with girls. Still isn't, as far as I can tell. So the original intended market was mostly male, I suppose.
As a girl myself, I simply cannot care if there are other women playing what I am, or if I will be the only girl at a venue. When I last went to pre-release (Origins, as I am pretty busy nowadays), the only other girl there was my daughter, who came with me and my husband.
And my husband only joined the pre-release draft because they had an extra kit. It was my daughter and I who were actually there to play. I wanted to play, so I went. I did not in the least consider whether or not there would "other girls" there.
I love Magic, more than my husband does, actually. Whether it was marketed to women or not, I did not care.
Magic was marketed to men for most of the time is has been around. Women are also not interested in playing fantasy card games. Magic is generally seen as an image of a fat nerdy guys playing cards. A bunch of weirdos playing cards. Why would women want to be around a bunch of weirdos playing a game? Doesn't matter how fun that game might be. That is the surface image of MTG. Women would rather be apart of something more popular. If you want to attract more women to the game you are going to have to change the image of MTG to something more like those useless necklaces and beads. If you can turn mtg into something trendy. Wizards made female planeswalkers and other females characters to try to get more females to join.
I personally have tried to get many women interested in playing but there are just better things for anyone to do than play magic. Magic is expensive as well. Why would a young girl or man want to waste money on magic cards when they could spend money on anything else? Magic is a hard sell for anyone when you can get much more fun out of a lot of other hobbies.
It's a hard sell. I don't know why women would support something expensive and socially unpopular. If you play magic with friends at home then yes it's social but if you are at a store it's not social at all. That's even when my friends are there playing. It's playing cards 90% of the time. Magic is inherently anti social just because of the length of time it takes to play a match. There isn't time to talk.
I disagree with you however as far as the cost. For the cost of a single video game, one can pick up a commander deck AND a deckbuilder's toolbox. So, even starting with that much isn't that much of an issue, and the EDH should come later anyway. The biggest cost comes from standard, which again I wouldn't recommend to a beginner EVER! The most "expensive" thing I can see here is doing a (pre)release day because even with all the price gouging, it still wouldn't be cheaper than a 3D Imax Surround Sound movie.
Magic is massively popular. Look at this site, look at the card prices compared to ANY CARD GAME in the singles realm. Yes some singles will cost you, but that's for when they are ALREADY PLAYING. Also, did you know in the first Maguire Spider-Man movie that Peter Parker has a poster for the Invasion expansion hanging on his bedroom wall? All the famous people that play MTG (check youtube for a good list).
I gotta say, your last two sentences really got me. How do you have long matches without talking? I don't understand how that works. I've never NOT had sidetalk during a long game.
I'm not sure if there's a gender difference in MtG's appeal from a game standpoint. Such a difference has been documented for other genres (more women than men like puzzle-games, more men than women like shooters, etc.).
Early on, the game was targeted towards the D&D audience which was predominantly male, as mentioned. But I'm not sure that the game had a real barrier to female participation. When I started back in 1997, our group was about 25% female. While it wasn't equal, it did make it clear that there wasn't a really hard barrier there. Then again, we also played RPGs together.
Gaming was, for a long time, a socially male thing. I think that was the main source of the initial discrepancy. Nowadays, not so much, but some of the old ratio persists. While more men game overall, the proportional difference is far smaller. MtG artwork arguably has more proverbial "beef" than "cheese" these days too, and is in general less overtly sexualized, though there are some exceptions. While there are certainly community issues (bad individuals, it being easier to enter a fairly mixed hobby than be the first from a new demographic, etc.), my anecdotal experience indicates that percentage of female players is rising, however gradually.
What are your experiences guys?
I personally have always offered girls an invitation to play trading card games since elementary school. Most reject the invitation outright with condescending laughter - as if you offered to share a walk through school assembly in your underwear. Only during the peak manias of Yu-Gi-Oh! and especially Pokemon would the average (very young) girl even consider playing a trading card game.
This trend would continue into high school, by which point only really nerdy girls would get involved with tcgs. And by girls I mean I remember exactly one. Regular and especially popular girls wouldn't be caught dead engaging in the hobby. At least while I was in high school there was tremendous social pressure and bullying mostly from girls themselves that provided disincentive toward playing a tcg. Even before being gay was completely mainstream it was a thousand times cooler to be a gay teenager in the 90's and 2000's than to be a teenager playing a tcg.
It's been my observation that nerdy girls get into reading novel series over traditional games, and binge watching films + tv shows over playing video games.
By college years/adulthood it would be cemented that only the nerdiest girls would even touch the stuff. Even then only as a super casual play experience. As in "Oh yeah I have a deck." And that deck turns out to be some hodgepodge of a starter deck and a couple of boosters that had been left in their closet until you mentioned it.
Most nerdy girls I've come to know prefer to play games as part of playgroups and enjoy more social games like D&D.
Whenever I've seen a girl at a local game store, it has almost always been the case they're either tagging along with a boyfriend or are making a rare playgroup outing to 'splurge' on cards from the common bins.
In college years/adulthood I've convinced women to try the game, but they never stick to it. At best I can sell them on the novelty of the experience and the flavor of the game. I might capture their imaginations but they never meaningfully commit.
Do you wish more women would get into mtg?
You know, I thought I did. I'm increasingly less sure about that.
It would be nice if more girls were the sort to bother with extensive constructed format playtesting during the days leading up to a big tournament. But I'm not holding my breath.
It doesn't matter who I'm playing against at the table so long as it's a good game. Thus the only reason to care if there's more women in the game beyond that is frankly social.
I don't care if there's 0% girls playing, 10% or even 100% and no guys. What's important is whoever is buying and playing Magic actually cares about the game.
I've known guys who get into cars and club scenes just to get girls. No guy gets into Magic to meet girls. Guys get into MTG despite how much it can compromise one's social status with women.
So it would be nice to have more women, if only for quality of life for helping against the social stigma that comes from engaging with MTG.
What do you think could be done to help draw more in?
If the Magic film that's in production turns out to be a success, that'll definitely help. Magic Digital Next could go a long way too.
If getting more women to play Magic is a goal for its own sake then I think that's unwise. Let them spend their time and money elsewhere instead of preaching to them.
Less time pandering to gossip mills that complain about card art like Triumph of Ferocity. It's a disturbing trend that only serves to demonize the male playerbase further.
There's more tasteful ways to win women over.
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
At least while I was in high school there was tremendous social pressure and bullying mostly from girls themselves that provided disincentive toward playing a tcg. Even before being gay was completely mainstream it was a thousand times cooler to be a gay teenager in the 90's and 2000's than to be a teenager playing a tcg.
This was not remotely my experience in the 2000's. I graduated from high school in 2010, and during my time in middle school and high school, there was still a lot of homophobia. And I went to school in a very progressive and liberal city. Playing tabletop games was "Okay, do whatever social hobby you want." Being gay was uncool. And heck, people who grew up LATER than that STILL haven't lost some of that perspective. Seven years later, I still hear "no homo," or "get that f****t in here" in a college setting. This is from people who are at the beginning of the post-millenial generation, born in the late 90s. I'd be very surprised if this doesn't still go on in high schools to some degree.
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Anyways, that just struck a bit of a chord for me.
I don't care if there's 0% girls playing, 10% or even 100% and no guys. What's important is whoever is buying and playing Magic actually cares about the game.
I think this is a good point, though it kinda shoves some of the community issues under the table, which isn't so great. Trying to have a more varied player base is good in and of itself, because it also attracts more people, but there are ways to change the game to accept more people without making current players out to be the baddies. I think Wizards has been doing some work on this, though I certainly believe that they could do more without going too far.
It's because males in the game make it difficult for women to be comfortable in the MTG setting, whether it's consciously or subconsciously. Go to a GP and watch the men whenever a woman walks by their table. Many will look away when she's in their line of sight and turn around to look at her after she passes. Now watch a match between a man and a woman...from the beginning, preferably. The man enters the match with extra bravado, is more irritable when it's the woman's priority, and tends to act more embarrassed after winning. Like he's playing against an opponent with the odds inherently stacked against her for being a woman. This isn't a game-wide situation, of course, but men need to change their perspectives for women to WANT to get more involved in this game.
I've been thinking about this kind of thing lately- more specifically why women are underrepresented in high level magic like the pro tour. I've been asking a lot of peoples' opinions on this and some factual data can actually be taken on this, so it'd be interesting to look at the facts.
First of all, the idea that males and females ought to be exactly alike in every way is preposterous. Maybe people disagree with that now, but it's true. So how does it apply to magic? The thing I've most often heard is that women are just not as interested in the competition as men. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. The thing that isn't true is that magic is in some way excluding women from playing. A lot of people have their own agendas and they're trying to inflict it on a card game that I really love to play. I am a sucker for politics and arguments in general, even when we're talking about it in magic.
So it's true that there are way more guys playing magic than women. Is this something fixable? Nope. Men and women usually have different interests, and that's fine. Nothing is broken in the first place.
As far as it extends to tournament participation, smelly gross fat guys are a real factor. Every card shop has some unfortunate stereotypes. I think Gaby Spartz wrote an article a long time ago about making card shops more open to women. Which is fine, as long as women would be going to card shops in the first place (as it was pointed out multiple times already, it seems women don't care so much for the competitive aspect of the game). Recently wizards has been making a concerted effort to keep the game open to everyone, which is truly admirable. So why is mtg mainly male oriented? Because mainly males play it. There's no evil scheme going on, no power play, nothing like that. The game is open to everyone and nobody is keeping anyone else down.
I've been thinking about this kind of thing lately- more specifically why women are underrepresented in high level magic like the pro tour. I've been asking a lot of peoples' opinions on this and some factual data can actually be taken on this, so it'd be interesting to look at the facts.
First of all, the idea that males and females ought to be exactly alike in every way is preposterous. Maybe people disagree with that now, but it's true. So how does it apply to magic? The thing I've most often heard is that women are just not as interested in the competition as men. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. The thing that isn't true is that magic is in some way excluding women from playing. A lot of people have their own agendas and they're trying to inflict it on a card game that I really love to play. I am a sucker for politics and arguments in general, even when we're talking about it in magic.
So it's true that there are way more guys playing magic than women. Is this something fixable? Nope. Men and women usually have different interests, and that's fine. Nothing is broken in the first place.
As far as it extends to tournament participation, smelly gross fat guys are a real factor. Every card shop has some unfortunate stereotypes. I think Gaby Spartz wrote an article a long time ago about making card shops more open to women. Which is fine, as long as women would be going to card shops in the first place (as it was pointed out multiple times already, it seems women don't care so much for the competitive aspect of the game). Recently wizards has been making a concerted effort to keep the game open to everyone, which is truly admirable. So why is mtg mainly male oriented? Because mainly males play it. There's no evil scheme going on, no power play, nothing like that. The game is open to everyone and nobody is keeping anyone else down.
I think you contradict yourself a coupel of times in that space of text, at least as I am reading it.
Anyway, if anybody is interested in looking into other womens opinion on the matter there are things like Lady Planewalker sociaty. They work with these subjects. http://ladyplaneswalkers.weebly.com/
We considered doing something similar where I play, but the women who play thought it was a bit un-including and wanted to focus on broader issies like bad player behavior and hostile comments.
It just happens. If a woman is interested, she'll play. If she's not, she wont. It is relevant to mention that with it being a pretty big sausage fest, it could be a bit daunting for a female to want to play, with the very real fear of being verbally or physically harassed both in an aggressive or sexual manner. So that can also be a very real contributing factor.
I wonder if people ask why sewing is so female dominated, or arts & crafts, or gymnastics, or well, name about 50 other activities. Men and women gravitate towards different hobbies and activities which is natural. Women tend to be more cooperative and social. Men tend to be more competitive and have fewer people in their social circles. Some people want to point towards media depictions or social pressures, but the fact is that you can go back as far as hunter/gatherers and there was never a time where there were significant equality of #'s for roles, hobbies, interests, etc. Why aren't people asking how to get more women into construction or being fisherwomen? As long as the environment is open to anyone there isn't a problem. <Only marxists see a problem when insert XYZ isn't as close to 50/50 as possible.> There shouldn't be any discrimination, but there shouldn't be any worry about the ratio of men:women either.
It could be because some dudes just wreak, and don't wash themselves which could drive women away. Although that is a stereotype, it still seems to be a prevalent issue in some LGS communities. It's definitely more male oriented but I see a few female players from time to time.
What are your experiences guys? Do you wish more women would get into mtg? What do you think could be done to help draw more in?
Even though wotc does their best imo, every card says: his or her library, his or her hand...
The planes are maybe to manly overal to succesfully atract woman to the story, altough kaladesh was pretty colorfull and kindoff likeable by woman I think?
But I'dd like more girls at our lgs too, the dark male humor should be kept in check more hahaha
UWG Spirits
Standard
UW Control
RBU Midrange
Commander
UBG Tasigur
Pauper
GW Slivers
1. Fantasy element
2. Competition
Women are less interested in these 2 then men.
And you are basing this on what precisely?
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I don't think the game itself is male orientated at all. There's no specific advantage to being a male and playing. I think women may be intimidated by the number of male players and not wish to join that group. I personally think that it would be great if more women played. The biggest issue is that like video games there's a social taboo that needs to be overcome. Professional poker leagues had the same issue with women getting into the game.
There are two conspiracy theories I have found that fit just too well:
1-The one that Ash (protagonist) kills Gary's(rival) Raticate aboard the S.S. Anne in the original Pokémon games.
2-The belief that society has been forcing gender stereo types through propaganda-type entertainment media. The easiest one to point out is G.I. Joe versus Barbie. G.I. Joe is out battling the "others" on their turf, typically at or from some foreign land. Barbie is more hanging out around the house and looking pretty to attact Ken's eye. Joe dresses for the mission, Barbie dresses for that.
We've been doing better at breaking these gender stereotypes and hopefully working to fully eradicate gender identity ENTIRELY aside from the physical aspect, but there are still some remainders of "that perfect 50s home" and even before that "men go out hunt women stay gather berries and watch kids" mentality.
So why are the women treated differently? Due to the still typical gender stereotypes and how the male dominant group is going to see the women not as "the same people" but a group of "others". Accepted, but still "others".
Why are women not showing up? The gender expectations of society and the answer above: not wanting to be grouped in as a minority.
It's sad but true and hopefully will change sooner rather than later.
C Long Live Eldrazi C
If you look at the urza storyline from 1993 to 2001 you have difeculty finding well pressented women in a major role (freyalise ftw). It is a very 'boyish fantasy' with dragon engiens and two brothers batteling each other. It is not that fantasy as a genre is not for girls, it is, but thus fantasy was more boy spesific yet labeled as 'universial'. No disrespect to Richard Garfield who i have enormus respect for.
So based on that, I would say magic innitially attrackted more boys then girls. Though the statements follows now might have nothing to do with the above, I just think it is related. Here is the real problem:
I have known many girls who have been turned off by magic because of male members in the communaty who are less inclusive and often hostile towards girls. We have tied to do something with this in our enviorment but had very slim suckess.
I do feel the above paragraf is very representative for many local stores without themselves realisinh it. That is my statement, and I am sticking to it.
That being said on non-magic gaming bothe electronic and analog we can see that both boys and girls, and people of all ages play games. If a person plays a game, they are more likly to play games again according to statistics. I do not think that it is a problem for girls /wommen to play MTG, I wish more of them did play. And that non-female players would take steps to include them more.
Just to use an example close by: SvizacCRO statement that girls do not like fantasy, or that they do not like competetiv elements seem very unjustified. Studies prove that this is not true. Even if we do not look into studies just the general statement that all members of a gender do not like these cultural elements are just to broad. More importantly, statements like this is one of the problems in the latent culture holding girls out. Weather kpals follow up statement is meant as fact, jest or both it is also not very including. In fact it trivilises Paige712 question quite a lott.
In my experience when I quote 'research' I often get barrated by people wanting to see the research. After 8 years at the universaty I can only say that I am not breaking out the exact source as it would take to long to look up for a post on an mtg forum. Belive me, don't belive me or just look into studies yourself.
While a lot of people are happy to move on, some of the people who have experienced criticism for their hobbies in the past may not be very receptive to the source of that criticism coming and playing.
Personally, I find the whole "gender roles" argument to be ludicrous. Not once in my life have I ever gotten any indication that video games and nerd stuff in general was for men, aside from the stereotype of the sweaty neckbeard. If that's a stereotype anyone WANTS to be associated with, I don't know who they are and I don't want to meet them.
I can't say for certain what the source of that stereotype is, but I would guess that the stereotype is what stops people from gaming. My sister and her friends used to make fun of me and my friends, and now she has more tabletop games than I do. As far as I can tell, the only thing that was ever stopping her was the hypocrisy. Either way she always beat me at mario party.
WUBRGReaper King - Superfriends
WUBRGChild of Alara - The Nauseating Aurora
WUBSharuum the Hegemon - Christmas In Prison
WUBZur the Enchanter - Ow My Face
WRJor Kadeen, the Prevailer - Snow Goats
BRGrenzo, Dungeon Warden - International Goblin All Purpose Recycling Facility Number 12
WGSaffi Eriksdotter - Saffi Combosdotter
UPatron of the Moon - The Age of Aquarius
BHorobi, Death's Wail - Bring Out Your Dead
GSachi, Daughter of Seshiro - Sneks
1) It's absolutely true that 90's High Fantasy was a male dominated trope that also targeted males. Magic originated here, and back in those days being a nerd was NOT trendy or hip like it is today, it's something decidedly uncool. And girls don't tend to flock to guys that uncool, or their hobbies. It's not to say that you didn't have the occasional girl in a D&D campaign group or something back then, but the odds were she was as much of a societal outcast as the rest of the group. Eventually though, nerd culture started to become more accepted, and this occurred around the time CGI got good enough to realistically render High Fantasy in the Lord of the Rings movies. For the first time, people didn't have to sit back and imagine a giant dragon or orc battle, or see some clumsy costumes. The best we had for portraying fantasy like that was animation and special effects, but CGI....CGI and Lord of the Rings being the first fantasy movie to REALLY use its power....that was able to bring imaginations to realistic life. Game of Thrones would later mark a return to High Fantasy, and we all know how much it's hailed for its special effects as much as the plot. Being able to realistically render fantasy settings and bring them to life makes them more accessible to more people who might otherwise never find themselves attracted to fantasy storytelling, and in turn, it becomes more acceptable. I mean, let's face it, whether you're a football player, stockbroker, drug dealer, or whatever, Dani riding the back of a firebreathing dragon leading a giant army of Dothraki is FRIKKING COOL. So as nerd culture has become more accepted, it's something more females are willing to associate with, and even enjoy themselves, much as many people suddenly picked up the LoTR books for the first time when the movies released. Still, nerd culture has gotten to a point where we've started to go a little overboard in the celebration of it and it starts getting cringy again "nerd blackface" is the term that man have for how The Big Bang Theory's later episodes would devolve. Please note at around the same time, video games started getting genuinely GOOD. By that I mean that computers/video games were starting to break out of the "nerds and kids only" role they'd had for a while. Of course, they'd done that technically for a while, but socially, video games could still be a little on the nerdy side. The original Xbox changed that with the original HALO, and going over to your bro's house and lugging your TV became a new acceptable pastime because, just like dragons going from makeup and special effects to full blown CGI, video games firmly crossed the threshold into "normal guys play video games." We don't even really consider someone who enjoys playing video games to be a "nerd" anymore, it's just another hobby to us.
2) Since the High Fantasy trope was targeted towards males at Magic's inception, the game started out being male dominated. Not intentionally, I'm sure, but again, back then the closest to fantasy/nerds most girls were allowed to get without killing their social status was Lisa Frank unicorns. Which, for the record, I still think are gloriously awesome in an over the top way, but I digress. Sure, some girls were into High Fantasy as well, but they were the outliers, and without the internet really existing, I'm sure they felt very alone as they were pretty uncommon. My school had a small handful of these girls and I consider it an outlier to have had (5?) girls that enjoyed hanging out with the various "nerd" circles. When the internet came around full force and socialization really began to occur, many people began to see they weren't alone, and also tended to be more open about their interests on their Geocities pages and such. This was where nerds were finally beginning to feel some empowerment, they, like other minorities, could finally connect with more than the "other" weird kid at school. And with empowerment comes confidence, the notion that "Yeah....I'm a nerd....and that's OK." And confidence is sexy. Now more people want to be nerds, and now here's the Lord of the Rings and here's the start of the whole "Gamer Girl" trend which I am NOT going to delve into.....but yeah, there you go, we're starting to see more females get into Magic.
3) Aaaaaaand we're running them back out. What happens when there's one girl sticking her toe in the water of a cardstore full of guys? Especially now that Magic has expanded beyond its original niche audience and included all sorts of people from every walk of life? She gets a LOT of attention from every single dude there. TBH, I think that's why some girls try to make themselves get interested in magic, they enjoy the attention. Please note I said "some". And some guys may do the same just because they're lonely and aren't very good at making friends, but don't honestly care enough about the game to be more than passable at it. Anyway, the issue is that if you find a girl who genuinely enjoys playing Magic....that's like jackpot for some people. Wouldn't it be AWESOME to have a GF that plays Magic? We'd just hang out and play Magic and have sex all the time!
Yeah no. That mentality is a pretty huge turn off to most girls, who would like to be valued for more than their Magic playing skills and ability to have sex. The girls serious about playing? They would like to be respected as players, talked to as comrades, and treated with respect. Instead, they can be met with anything from unwanted advances and crude language to sexual harassment to condescension. And those girls usually have enough self respect to say "screw this, I'm out, I don't need this." Just like in real society, it only take a vocal minority of people to create an impression, so even if you don't think your game store isn't like this doesn't mean you see everything happening to every customer. Ask yourselves if every conversation you've heard at your LGS you'd like to have in front of your mother. Probably not. That's not to say it's "locker room talk" in the Trump definition of the phrase, but I know that my vocabulary gets a deal larger when the Pokémon kids aren't around. This also applies to the vocabularies of misogynists, sexists, and worse. So while you might be guilty of dropping an f-bomb casually or having a slightly crass conversation, other conversations from others might be much more vulgar, discriminatory, and representative of the "locker room talk" our president is a fan of. The types of people who find this kind of talk "OK" are also the kinds of people that will gradually expand that locker room talk outside the locker room and a single player with this mentality is enough to run off every female that comes into the store one at a time.
I do find that once a certain threshold is reached, an LGS becomes regarded as much less male dominated. It's hard to break that barrier of what seems to be 3-4 female regulars, but once it is broken, ladies are much more apt to frequent the store in more equal numbers. As long as those 3-4 females get along with each other, they give a counterbalance to the sexist behavior they may experience and make the store more comfortable for new female players. Ladies also tend to have higher standards for hygiene and thus gravitate to whichever store is the cleanest and most professional, all other things being equal. Guys tend to go after whoever has the best prize support and inventory. There are not a lot of places I wouldn't play if I could draft MM17 for a magical price of $15 for example.
All in all, a girl going to an LGS for the first time might encounter a seedy store on the outskirts of the bad part of town. That's not a great start, but that doesn't mean the people are bad. And hopefully they aren't- a good playgroup and a good store will cause me to forgive a LOT. But then you walk in and everyone turns and looks at you like they've never seen a girl before, and then they find out you're there to play Magic. If you're lucky, the worst thing you run into is a little bit of condescension that might even be unintentional, or perhaps one weird guy excitedly trying to initiate conversation over how you can improve your deck. If you're unlucky you'll get hit on until you have to as the new girl, report the guy that was chatting up the store clerk in friendly conversation 20 mins ago, and have it spelled out to his friend that you're not interested. You then get murdered by the T8 players, who are all male and might include the guy who kept hitting on you, as you start wondering why you don't just stick to Duels on PC or Xbox.
Granted, this experience may not happen to every female, but sadly I bet at least ONE of those elements happens FAR more often than we'd like to admit. We also make it worse when we try to white knight female players when they come in for the first time.
"Oh, it's so good to have a FEMALE magic player" is probably one of the worst things you can say but I hear people say it all the time. The girl cringes and spends the night trying to avoid that fellow because if anyone's singling her out for her gender, it's him.
They are girls, not unicorns. You've seen them before. It's not that Magic the GAME is unfamiliar or unfriendly towards females, it's that it's unusual enough to find a female player for these other reasons that it draws even MORE attention to the players that are female, and you get a circular feedback loop of female magic players being unusual, which creates unwanted attention, which drives away female players and makes female magic players more unusual.....
4) Reasons for playing Magic/misconceptions about the game
This is not exclusive to females, but it does seem to represent a larger percentile than with males. The reasons for this may not even be demographic related, but I'll try to explain. Please note that the following statements are generalizations- we can all find exceptions to these, but these are generalizations based on observations with years spent in various gamestores and tournaments and witnessing various interactions.
Men are all about competition, and they enjoy it to the extent that we regularly subject ourselves to the meanest decks imaginable for fun in the same way an MMA fighter subjects himself to tremendous physical punishment, only to have a beer with his opponent later that night and laugh about it. Good Magic players love to get beaten in the most awful of ways because we learn something. We LOVE watching awesome plays get made even if they crush us and we love the challenge of beating the best. As a result, we spend a lot of our free time playtesting, reading, researching, building, posting, and studying the game or sport we want to excel at. There simply are not that many females that, for whatever reason, want to spend that amount of time and dedication and money to get that good at Magic. For that matter, they are a mirror of the male who struggles with the male that struggles with the notion that <"Magic tournaments are too competitive, I just want to have fun with my friends. (WarAngel88 anyone?)"> I think more woman (not all) are attracted to the game for its art and social aspects. For males, they are much more apt to fall into the "spike" persona, though the other players of "Johnny, Timmy, Vorthos etc..." are also represented. There's nothing wrong with ANY of this, no matter why you play Magic. However, only ONE persona tends to consistently win. Spikes.
If you are a Spike, you are likely going to win over all other personas because that's what's important to you. The storyline is secondary, the card could have a big vomit stain as the artwork, and you could care less about the way you're winning as long as the payoff for all the studying and testing and brewing you've done is that top 8. But most spikes do like the artwork. And they do take some interest in the storyline. And they do enjoy winning in weird ways with tech cards. They get to enjoy all those things too. But for the most part, Timmys and Vorthos don't ever get to enjoy winning, even if they'd like to sometimes. At least not against the spikes. They'll get their victories over their counterparts here and there, but once they get to the high tables, it seems like that barrier cannot be breached without becoming a spike. And that's true, and something a lot of players of both genders just don't get. There's more to being a top competitor than having a bottomless wallet, it takes more work than people realize and some people are just not willing to put that much work into a game they play primarily because they like the artwork and hanging out with friends. At the end of the day, you are probably going to lose against someone who plays 3-4x as often as you do, and puts more time and practice, and yes, devotes more financial resources than you. A lot of people like to blame the last part on why they can't win, when in reality, that's a fairly small piece of the puzzle. It's not nonexistent, but it's a lot smaller than people would like to make it out to be.
So what does all this have to do with female players? It's another reason they don't stick around as long. There are far fewer "spikes", though there is no shortage of people who want to be seen as spikey. Fewer female players= fewer female spikes= top 8 is mainly male dominated= male dominated game. Most people getting into Magic have no IDEA how DEEP the game goes for spikes and how many hours are spent studying not just your deck, but every deck you're likely to face in a meta, let alone actually playing. People getting into Magic simply have no CLUE at the beginning at how much effort it takes to be "good" and quite honestly, most people are not willing to take it seriously enough. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But until someone does, the T8 will remain unchanging.
I think that kind of covers several points I wanted to make. Again, please note these are generalizations, there are of course exceptions. And there are plenty of clean, well run, professional stores filled with players of every gender. There are female pro players and judges and I think that's great, but that's the point where I stop caring about their gender, and you should too.
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As a girl myself, I simply cannot care if there are other women playing what I am, or if I will be the only girl at a venue. When I last went to pre-release (Origins, as I am pretty busy nowadays), the only other girl there was my daughter, who came with me and my husband.
And my husband only joined the pre-release draft because they had an extra kit. It was my daughter and I who were actually there to play. I wanted to play, so I went. I did not in the least consider whether or not there would "other girls" there.
I love Magic, more than my husband does, actually. Whether it was marketed to women or not, I did not care.
I'll be honest, I agree with your first paragraph for the most part, especially when you consider Fire Elemental, Essence Vortex, and Sylvan Paradise.
I disagree with you however as far as the cost. For the cost of a single video game, one can pick up a commander deck AND a deckbuilder's toolbox. So, even starting with that much isn't that much of an issue, and the EDH should come later anyway. The biggest cost comes from standard, which again I wouldn't recommend to a beginner EVER! The most "expensive" thing I can see here is doing a (pre)release day because even with all the price gouging, it still wouldn't be cheaper than a 3D Imax Surround Sound movie.
Magic is massively popular. Look at this site, look at the card prices compared to ANY CARD GAME in the singles realm. Yes some singles will cost you, but that's for when they are ALREADY PLAYING. Also, did you know in the first Maguire Spider-Man movie that Peter Parker has a poster for the Invasion expansion hanging on his bedroom wall? All the famous people that play MTG (check youtube for a good list).
I gotta say, your last two sentences really got me. How do you have long matches without talking? I don't understand how that works. I've never NOT had sidetalk during a long game.
My girl loves her vampire decks, by the way.
Early on, the game was targeted towards the D&D audience which was predominantly male, as mentioned. But I'm not sure that the game had a real barrier to female participation. When I started back in 1997, our group was about 25% female. While it wasn't equal, it did make it clear that there wasn't a really hard barrier there. Then again, we also played RPGs together.
Gaming was, for a long time, a socially male thing. I think that was the main source of the initial discrepancy. Nowadays, not so much, but some of the old ratio persists. While more men game overall, the proportional difference is far smaller. MtG artwork arguably has more proverbial "beef" than "cheese" these days too, and is in general less overtly sexualized, though there are some exceptions. While there are certainly community issues (bad individuals, it being easier to enter a fairly mixed hobby than be the first from a new demographic, etc.), my anecdotal experience indicates that percentage of female players is rising, however gradually.
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I personally have always offered girls an invitation to play trading card games since elementary school. Most reject the invitation outright with condescending laughter - as if you offered to share a walk through school assembly in your underwear. Only during the peak manias of Yu-Gi-Oh! and especially Pokemon would the average (very young) girl even consider playing a trading card game.
This trend would continue into high school, by which point only really nerdy girls would get involved with tcgs. And by girls I mean I remember exactly one. Regular and especially popular girls wouldn't be caught dead engaging in the hobby. At least while I was in high school there was tremendous social pressure and bullying mostly from girls themselves that provided disincentive toward playing a tcg. Even before being gay was completely mainstream it was a thousand times cooler to be a gay teenager in the 90's and 2000's than to be a teenager playing a tcg.
It's been my observation that nerdy girls get into reading novel series over traditional games, and binge watching films + tv shows over playing video games.
By college years/adulthood it would be cemented that only the nerdiest girls would even touch the stuff. Even then only as a super casual play experience. As in "Oh yeah I have a deck." And that deck turns out to be some hodgepodge of a starter deck and a couple of boosters that had been left in their closet until you mentioned it.
Most nerdy girls I've come to know prefer to play games as part of playgroups and enjoy more social games like D&D.
Whenever I've seen a girl at a local game store, it has almost always been the case they're either tagging along with a boyfriend or are making a rare playgroup outing to 'splurge' on cards from the common bins.
In college years/adulthood I've convinced women to try the game, but they never stick to it. At best I can sell them on the novelty of the experience and the flavor of the game. I might capture their imaginations but they never meaningfully commit.
Do you wish more women would get into mtg?
You know, I thought I did. I'm increasingly less sure about that.
It would be nice if more girls were the sort to bother with extensive constructed format playtesting during the days leading up to a big tournament. But I'm not holding my breath.
It doesn't matter who I'm playing against at the table so long as it's a good game. Thus the only reason to care if there's more women in the game beyond that is frankly social.
I don't care if there's 0% girls playing, 10% or even 100% and no guys. What's important is whoever is buying and playing Magic actually cares about the game.
I've known guys who get into cars and club scenes just to get girls. No guy gets into Magic to meet girls. Guys get into MTG despite how much it can compromise one's social status with women.
So it would be nice to have more women, if only for quality of life for helping against the social stigma that comes from engaging with MTG.
What do you think could be done to help draw more in?
If the Magic film that's in production turns out to be a success, that'll definitely help. Magic Digital Next could go a long way too.
If getting more women to play Magic is a goal for its own sake then I think that's unwise. Let them spend their time and money elsewhere instead of preaching to them.
Less time pandering to gossip mills that complain about card art like Triumph of Ferocity. It's a disturbing trend that only serves to demonize the male playerbase further.
There's more tasteful ways to win women over.
"OH GOD MY BRAIN IS EXPLOADING AT HOW BAD THE ART IS ON MY OWN CARD"
-A friend's first impression of Ancestral Recall
10/10, I tapped.
This was not remotely my experience in the 2000's. I graduated from high school in 2010, and during my time in middle school and high school, there was still a lot of homophobia. And I went to school in a very progressive and liberal city. Playing tabletop games was "Okay, do whatever social hobby you want." Being gay was uncool. And heck, people who grew up LATER than that STILL haven't lost some of that perspective. Seven years later, I still hear "no homo," or "get that f****t in here" in a college setting. This is from people who are at the beginning of the post-millenial generation, born in the late 90s. I'd be very surprised if this doesn't still go on in high schools to some degree.
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Anyways, that just struck a bit of a chord for me.
I think this is a good point, though it kinda shoves some of the community issues under the table, which isn't so great. Trying to have a more varied player base is good in and of itself, because it also attracts more people, but there are ways to change the game to accept more people without making current players out to be the baddies. I think Wizards has been doing some work on this, though I certainly believe that they could do more without going too far.
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First of all, the idea that males and females ought to be exactly alike in every way is preposterous. Maybe people disagree with that now, but it's true. So how does it apply to magic? The thing I've most often heard is that women are just not as interested in the competition as men. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. The thing that isn't true is that magic is in some way excluding women from playing. A lot of people have their own agendas and they're trying to inflict it on a card game that I really love to play. I am a sucker for politics and arguments in general, even when we're talking about it in magic.
So it's true that there are way more guys playing magic than women. Is this something fixable? Nope. Men and women usually have different interests, and that's fine. Nothing is broken in the first place.
As far as it extends to tournament participation, smelly gross fat guys are a real factor. Every card shop has some unfortunate stereotypes. I think Gaby Spartz wrote an article a long time ago about making card shops more open to women. Which is fine, as long as women would be going to card shops in the first place (as it was pointed out multiple times already, it seems women don't care so much for the competitive aspect of the game). Recently wizards has been making a concerted effort to keep the game open to everyone, which is truly admirable. So why is mtg mainly male oriented? Because mainly males play it. There's no evil scheme going on, no power play, nothing like that. The game is open to everyone and nobody is keeping anyone else down.
I think you contradict yourself a coupel of times in that space of text, at least as I am reading it.
For those interested Gaby's article can be found here: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/6-things-you-can-do-to-get-more-women-into-magic/
And a counter point for some of the remarks she got after the disccusion went can be found here:
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/7-counterpoints-to-my-women-in-magic-article/
Anyway, if anybody is interested in looking into other womens opinion on the matter there are things like Lady Planewalker sociaty. They work with these subjects. http://ladyplaneswalkers.weebly.com/
We considered doing something similar where I play, but the women who play thought it was a bit un-including and wanted to focus on broader issies like bad player behavior and hostile comments.
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