The Boy/Girl Thread

For the ladies:

I started up a chat with a good amiga of mine, and she said, "You don't want to chat with me today."

"Why, what's up?" I asked.

She said, "I'm bitchy today and I'm not going to hear you."

"Alrighty. We'll chat sometime later."

Do most women tell guys this? Would you tell a guy? Do girls tell other girls?

I am a manager at my place of work and I'm not much of a hard-ass, but when I'm feeling particularly bitchy or irritable, I will warn my staff ahead of time to not mess with me. Also, I do warn my boyfriend beforehand on the phone when I'm PMSing (I assume this is what you're referring to) so that in case I say something stupid (which I do 90% of time) he'll at least have a frame of reference so I don't have to apologize so profusely.

Why are female gamers so rare?

Didn't see this question before, and I've been a video game junkie since I was 6... Part of the answer is that the video game industry in general is predominantly male. The CEOs are male, the programmers are male, the animators are male, etc. Just watch the credits of most video games and you'll see very few female names in the credits. Also, girls grow up being encouraged to play with things like dolls (to prepare for motherhood,) easy bake ovens (to get them used to cooking,) and stuffed animals. Little girls are not socially "encouraged" to play video games, whereas the vast majority of video games are specifically targetted at young boys. I mean come on... DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball? What kind of girl is going to be dawn to play that game?

A recent study (I forgot who did it though, apologies) showed that as much as 32% of online gamers are female though, so the numbers have been increasing. Females tend to be drawn more to RPGs and adventure games though (generally, not all females of course) so those numbers are probably skewed a little on the high side. Finding a female gamer who's into sports games or fighting games is a little more difficult, since those types of games appeal to the competetive side of most males. (Again, not all, but most.)

There has been somewhat of a change in the industry to try to get more girls into video games (Cooking Mama, Barbie video games, those blasted Pets games on the DS.) I don't know how successful it is, or what the numbers are, but I think it's a good start.

Personally, I love video games and I will continue to play them until I am physically unable to (hello carpal tunnel!)

tl;dr: Society pushes females away from a predominantly male-oriented video game industry at a young age, and most females never find a reason to become interested in video games later on.