Girl Gamers Australia

LucasArts frak female gamers! - Again

LucasArts have frakked us female gamers with their new characters for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. They're releasing new downloadable characters you can play in the single player campaign... GREAT! I thought with a Star Wars fangirl excited yelp, "I'll get to play through as a female character" especially given their are 4 characters incoming. No screamed LucasArts, you get 4 male characters so frak you! The new characters include Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and Kit Fisto - ALL male! Apparently these skins were decided on based on what they heard from fanboys... sorry... "fans", that being the very vocal fanboy contingent.... FFS common sense LucasArts!! Is it really that difficult to assume perhaps some of the people to have purchased Star Wars: The Force Unleashed are FEMALE?!?!

Honestly, sometimes I just want to burst into these board room meetings, jump on the table and start singing I AM WOMAN! Well, not really... but you catch my drift.

WiT Awards 2008 Women in Technology

We'd like to give a big shout out to our lovely PR Tracy for winning her 'Office for Women - ICT Career Development Award' over the past weekend. The WiT Awards were held in Brisbane, Australia and Tracy was nominated for her work in the IT industry. We'd like to give a shout out to her as she's helped us out a lot here at GirlGamers Australia. She has a true passion for not only IT, but also for women in IT and she's a nice person to boot!

We'll be running a feature in the coming weeks on some of the more important Women in IT websites around, including those related to the video games industry. For now though you can check out the Australian branch of Women in IT HERE.

Congratulations Tracy!

Games for Girls and other ridiculous notions

Games girls play are apparently all the same, you see it all the time, in marketing, design and also conversation. We 'girls' as a species - set apart from the boys - have a strange chromosomal freaky thing happening wherein it is only the Y chromosome that allows you free thought and the idea of choice in gaming. Women gamers you see ALL like the same thing, we all love the EXACT same titles and we all loathe the exact same titles. It's a scientific fact, argue as you might this baby is cast in stone and it was handed down to Moses on some mountain someplace.....

 

And if you believe that you're as big a knob as the guy I had the displeasure of conversing with recently about the 'Games Girls Play' topic. For whatever reason the assumption by "Mr X" was that we girl gamers will only play simplistic puzzle titles, sim titles or at a push the odd RPG. Mr X couldn't conceive that a female gamer might like to frag and bag an opponent and held the opinion that a girl using smack talk in the same way guys do online is a "bit of a slag".

Well Mr X... you're a bit of a dick, which is fine, it takes all sorts. Please do be aware however that girls are not restricted to gaming genres based on gender, shocking I know... but just like guys, girls have differing tastes. There is no hard and fast LAW that states all girls like certain genres and not others. To suggest such a thing borders on the ludicrous... do all humans eat meat? Like pumpkin? Enjoy Bungie on the weekend? Weigh the same? Have black hair?

Wake up.

Gears of War female character agro

Gears of War 2 really pisses me off. Why I hear you cry, because it had the opportunity to appease its many female fans with at least one female Delta Squad member and Bleszinski (aka CliffyB) and Co. opted to completely ignore our demographic and go the all male route again. Yes the latest pre-release trailer is out and it discusses two new major characters in the form of Dizzy Wallin (aka the 'hick') and Ty Kaliso (aka  a hippy Mr T), both brawny testosterone flooded meat-heads. So what else is new?

The new trailer also shows a glimpse of two female characters, one the ever helpful Lieutenant Anya Stroud (relegated to 'helpful narration') and Maria Santiago, Dominic Santiago's missing wife (relegated to the helpless female role - rescue me, rescue me my husband!). There may also be a female 'stranded' character, but let's face it, who gives a flying frak.

It wouldn't have killed CliffyB to have placed a female Delta Team member in the mix, without a big deal being made about it. Gears is set in a militaristic universe where humans are fighting for survival and it is lame to believe that only men are capable of donning armor and kicking sand in the face of the enemy.

FFS CliffyB and Co, we girls like Gears too, give us some goddamn respect and inclusion.

Halo MMO female characterizations

With the Halo MMO out of the bag and under the axe, we can safely dissect this creature - one would hope - and check out yet more double standards in female characterization. It seems like every game concept that features male and female marines, fighters, soldiers, 'insert gaming hero here' must adhere to a specific gaming lore, and it is this "women must be ultra thin and / or have flesh showing, regardless of environmental or enemy danger". I'm pretty sure that is how it is actually written in the big smelly testostertome that game designers presently refer to... and yeah I just made up 'testostertome' and it shall from now on be known as that aka 'the big sexist book of game design'.

Anyways after the jump we've got a couple of images that have popped up on the internets that show how female soldiers might have looked in the "Halo MMO" if it had made it through development and onto store shelves. Though they're stylish, the fact there's such a huge difference between the armor clad male characters and the 'sexy' female characters just left me with a bad taste in my mouth.. I'm pretty sure it's a sexist related bile that bubbled up as my eyes perused the images.

PS3 Russian doll advert - Disturbing yet interesting

Sony seem to be trying to tell us something with one of their new media campaigns in Spain. We think they've finally realized that inside every overweight middle aged geek, beats the heart of a female gamer... or something.

The odd advert that you can see after the jump piqued our interest because it clearly features a female gamer, well we're assuming a gamer and not that she's some evil internal gaming succubus. You can see the weird advert in full after the jump, though it may well turn you off owning those cute little Russian nesting doll sets for the rest of your life.

RockBand release in Australia

Finally the original "RockBand" game has some release details for Australia. Yes folks we only had to wait a year or so longer than our US gaming cousins for the game, gives you the warm fuzzies doesn't it.  "Rock Band" will release here November 7.

On the upside at least we haven't been royally screwed on price like our UK gaming cousins were when it was released there many months ago. Seems because we're getting the short end of the stick release date wise, we're not going to get shafted price wise. "Rock Band" will retail in Australia for $250 AUD ($208 USD), for that you'll get the "all-in-one" set.

If you just want the drums, you'll be able to grab the drums and the game together for $180 AUD or if you want the guitar and game, you're looking at $140. The game alone will be one hundred bucks, so it falls inline with game pricing overall. The cynic in us thinks this pricing kindness is less to do with appeasing the long - and ridiculous - delay and more to do with the release of "Guitar Hero World Tour" being just around the corner (November 12).

We imported the game many moons ago and can say, you'll love it, it just sucks most Aussies had to wait this long to get to play it and that it's launch falls after the launch of "Rock Band 2" in the States. No word on that here needless to say.

Playing the "C-Word" game

We like to think we have an open readership of all ages and our feedback attests to this fact, so for that reason we'll be using "C-Word" in place of, well... the actual "C" word.. know what we're saying? If not hopefully all will become clear.

The feminist gamers are upset... again... and this time in the firing line is the rarely spoken (lest you get a slap from your mother) "C-Word", a flash game published by Newgrounds. We're not linking to it because frankly, why give them more direct links than they already have, but suffice to say the 'game' revolves around a small penis firing balls at a giant wizened (and rather disturbing) vagina, which gushes blood when hit. If that isn't disturbing enough for you there's also germs you must shoot too.

Feminist gamers take on the game comes down to a fairly simple premise "issues with female sexuality" and that "it represents a very real and tangible culture of hatred of women that exists within the gaming community".

Game Name Changes - Stupid means the same thing as dumb

Australia is kind of like America, at least parts of it are, we've probably got more in common with our American cousins than we have with our colonial UK past. So can some bright spark explain to us why the powers that be change the names of not only movies, but games from something we ALL understand, to something else.

"Animal Crossing: City Folk" is apparently in need of a name change, so in Australia, we'll be getting "Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City!" instead.

Maybe "City Folk" was just too difficult for ozzies to get their heads around. Maybe "Let's Go To The City" makes more sense? NO! Gees, come on, there must be another reason surely? We all know what "City Folk" meant.

I'm having flashbacks to "Feel the Magic: XY/XX" all over again, that for those that missed it became "Project Rub".

Silent Hill Homecoming