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 Vulcan wrote:

But arguing that therefore ALL groups of white men are hostile in various ways to outsiders, especially those who are not white men, is EVERY BIT AS RACIST AND SEXIST. This concept of inherent racism and sexism in white men CAN be argued every bit as vigorously as the concept of women being completely uninterested in wargames.[/i]

Not all men.

Nobody is arguing that. Literally no one. Most of the people here arguing that the problem is hostile neckbeards are themselves white dudes who, presumably, are not hostile neckbeards. That in and of itself is a refutation of the argument.

But it only takes one bad egg in a group of a dozen good ones to turn people away - I've seen happen many times. And in reality, there doesn't even need to be a bad egg in a particular group, the mere fact that there are as many bad eggs out there as there are is enough to establish a reputation on behalf of the entire community - not that every member of it is a hostile gak, but that there are enough hostile gaks in the community to make it wholly unwelcoming and unfriendly to those who would otherwise be interested in it - in spite of those who try to be welcoming.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

this behaviour is seen most extremely in those on the asbergers (and autistic) scale where men outnumber women by a significant margin, and both conditions are thought to be the extreme edge of male brain development

This is incorrect. Autism is DIAGNOSED in men more often by a significant margin because indicators of autism in women tend to be a bit different from those in men and because autistic women tend to be higher functioning than autistic men. Often the indicators in women don't become evident until later in life, whereas for boys its more obvious from the time they are toddlers. In women it often becomes more obvious in the teens, but its not uncommon for them to make it through to late adolescence or early adulthood before it becomes evident that they haven't fully mentally matured to the same degree as their counterparts who aren't on the spectrum. There is often also a reluctance on the part of clinicians to diagnose autism in women owing to the perpetuation of the belief that it is primarily a "boys disease" (principally as a result of Autism Speaks, which is a hate group masquerading as a charity, dont support them). Additionally, women on the spectrum tend to have a higher prevalence of other mental health issues (anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc.) which often mask the autism diagnosis until later in life, as clinicians tend not to look too far past the surface level conditions (for understandable reasons).

Trust me on this, my SO happens to be a bit of an expert in this subject.

Never underestimate how much people mask their interests to be socially accepted.

I, a 32 year old male with an elite education, a hot girlfriend (who plays AoS and 40k with me and is currently working in the board games industry), and a 6 figure salary, still mask it. I go to great pains to hide it from the "normies" in my life, I don't post about the hobby on any form of social media in which I am not hidden behind a username (like dakka), I only join and post in closed/private facebook groups so there is no risk of my geeky interests showing up on my friends timelines, etc. etc. etc. I was much more careful about it when I was younger and more concerned about getting laid for fear that I would be ostracized by the girls I was dating for being a nerd. At this point theres not much point in me continuing to hide it as most of the people I socialize with on a regular basis are likewise fellow gamers, etc. but after being so careful about it for so long I kind of internalized that mindset and old habits die hard I suppose.

Cronch wrote:

On the flip side, yes, women ON THE AVERAGE do tend to be less interested

We're not talking about why Jane Q, whose hobbies include baking pies and reading romance novels isn't interested in wargaming, we're talking about why Jill Q, whose hobbies include building net decks and smashing people with them at the LGS isn't interested in wargaming.

So far the leading theory is that the word WAR is a female repellent, like holy water against vampires.

Honestly, I think it's for the better at this point.

The trick being, who is closer to the average? Jane Q, or Jill Q?

The answer is probably neither of them; the stereotypical housewife has become much less common as the gamer girl has become more common. Now your average is probably the working woman with a full-time job (if not a full-blown career) and far less spare time and money than one might assume. This might overlap with housewife and/or gamer girl as well.

As I pointed out at the end of my post, time and money - or lack thereof - are the big killers of hobbies. Especially among women and minorities, who average less pay than the average white male.


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Cronch wrote:
Oh look, and now we have gakky behavior apology turn up in the shape of bUt MaLeS aRE AgReSSiVe cUz BiOLoGy!

As I said, it's for the best that so few women decide to be exposed to the time capsule of the 1860s that wargaming is...

It may not excuse the behavior, but pretending this is not a fact does not an argument make. ON THE AVERAGE, men ARE more aggressive than women.

Yes, there are absolutely outliers on both sides. But statistically boys are much more likely to get involved in fights in school... among many other indicators.

Does this mean NO women are aggressive? That NO women could possibly be interested in wargames? Of course not. However, statistically a lower percentage are. Again, this is a fact.

Do wargamers need to be more welcoming to women who want in? YES. But there will always be fewer women in wargaming than men. I'd be more concerned about the statistical under-representation of minorities in wargaming than women and how that indicates inequalities in the overall society.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
It's always amusing to see the extremists on both sides go at it hammer and tongs, however politely.

Both sides have a point... but neither are 100% correct either.

Yes, the hobby skews heavily toward white men. That can't be argued. There are groups of wargamers who are going to be... shall we say, too friendly? to women seeking to join the hobby and come off creepy. Be that due to being outright creepy, or due to mere social awkwardness, it is a fact. This cannot be argued. There are also are going to be some individuals and even groups who ARE going to be hostile to outsiders, especially ones who are not white men. This also cannot be argued.

But arguing that therefore ALL groups of white men are hostile in various ways to outsiders, especially those who are not white men, is EVERY BIT AS RACIST AND SEXIST. This concept of inherent racism and sexism in white men CAN be argued every bit as vigorously as the concept of women being completely uninterested in wargames.

Can we, as wargamers, do better at attracting and keeping non-white, non-male participants? Of course we can. But not all of us are awkward geeks, leering letches, or racist misogynist jerks either, not by a long shot.

On the flip side, yes, women ON THE AVERAGE do tend to be less interested - LESS interested, as opposed to NOT interested - in violent movies, violent stories, and yes, violent games. Minorities likewise have less interest in subjects that skew heavily white, in part due to racist encounters as mentioned above, and in part to having other things to deal with that are just a wee bit more important to their lives. Income differences pay a big part here; wargaming does tend to be a bit pricey to get into.

So the struggle to get more women and minorities involved in our hobby does go beyond merely being more welcoming to them once they reach the game store or game club. There are other, more systemic issues that need addressing as well to allow them the time and resources to participate more.

I'm going to need you to strip this of nuance and present it as a series of points which are 100% good or 100% bad, lest I be forced to report it off topic

Yeah, as someone in the middle who can see both sides, I take a lot of fire FROM both sides.


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 Laughing Man wrote:

The_Grim_Angel wrote:

 Laughing Man wrote:

The_Grim_Angel wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Why Are There So Few Women in Wargaming?

https://www.wired.com/story/women-wargaming-sexism-harassment/

"A combination of a high barrier to entry and outdated, misogynistic attitudes keep women out of a hobby where they could thrive."

Do you think this article aims at 'traditional' wargamers in terms of the discussed demographic (it is also the one that gets professional interest as they use that group to recruit to professional wargaming roles)? Though the barrier to entry is presumably the same for both men and women, unless women in the west have lower disposable incomes at the 'GW recruitment' age?

If there was a certainty about my local game store, is exactly the opposite: we would have done everything to have more female players! My experience is quite the opposite: the girls think to be a strategy and/or roleplay gamer is to be a nerd/loser, so they kept themselves away from the game stores. The things are changed when it started the trend of the cosplay, but only because the girls are more interested in the fancy costumes, than in the games.

How is this different than how your average male views strategy and/or roleplay gamers?

Let's say it is a matter of percentage: the 95% the females and the 70% males saw the gamers like a bunch of loser/nerd. Now the things are changed, but thank to the cosplay, not to a real interest in the games.

So how do you reconcile this idea that women aren't interested in games with the fact that other stereotypically nerdy hobbies like CCGs and board games are much more representative? Again, it's literally only wargaming that has this issue, and certain wargames like Malifaux have avoided the problem as well.

Sounds like you're arguing that female representation within the game is the whole problem, not the actions of the individual game shops and clubs. At which point you should be aiming this whole discussion at fantasy game producers to demand more representation instead of bugging us about it. We can't do much beyond support what they produce.

And in which case historical wargaming should be SOL, as women did not participate in war the vast majority of the time, historically speaking, so there's precious little female representation to be had...

Having said that... yeah. I can see the problem. A lot of fantasy stuff, if it has female representation at all, is of the cheesecake variety. Not going to get a lot of women interested that way.


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 Laughing Man wrote:

The_Grim_Angel wrote:
I have a population of 60.000.000 of people who confirm my statement, so why are you annoying me with these inferences? Don't you like the reality in which I live? I'm sorry: it is something I can't change. Don't you like the fact I have described my personal experience? I'm sorry, but I thought (and I still think) it is pertinent to the topic of this thread. Do you thing I have made a false statement? You should know the reality in which I live and then use that knowledge to confute my statement. I don't know how you will reply, but because you are talking about a reality you don't know and because you haven't written nothing useful to this discussion, I will not reply to you; I'm sorry if I have written something you don't like.

That's the thing: Your lived experiece is objectively counter to reality. DnD's player base is 40% women, as is Magic: The Gathering's. Paizo's player base is even more diverse. Every genre but wargaming has a reasonably even split between men and women who play the games, and wargaming has its outliers as well (again, Malifaux). So you're clearly an outlier here.

And there we have it. 40/60, not equality. EVEN YOU admit there are more men than women in these 'woman friendly' gaming outlets.

Can Warhammer do better than it is? YES. Absolutely yes. The representation issue, the socially awkward or overtly lecherous gamer stereotype that gets perpetuated - itself another issue that needs addressing; stereotyping rarely results in anything positive - the 'just us' club attitude, all this needs work.

But expecting complete equality is probably never going to happen. These are decidedly niche hobbies. Most MEN aren't interested in tabletop wargaming. Expecting most women to become interested is a lost cause from the beginning.


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chaos0xomega wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

But arguing that therefore ALL groups of white men are hostile in various ways to outsiders, especially those who are not white men, is EVERY BIT AS RACIST AND SEXIST. This concept of inherent racism and sexism in white men CAN be argued every bit as vigorously as the concept of women being completely uninterested in wargames.[/i]

Not all men.

Nobody is arguing that. Literally no one. Most of the people here arguing that the problem is hostile neckbeards are themselves white dudes who, presumably, are not hostile neckbeards. That in and of itself is a refutation of the argument.

But it only takes one bad egg in a group of a dozen good ones to turn people away - I've seen happen many times. And in reality, there doesn't even need to be a bad egg in a particular group, the mere fact that there are as many bad eggs out there as there are is enough to establish a reputation on behalf of the entire community - not that every member of it is a hostile gak, but that there are enough hostile gaks in the community to make it wholly unwelcoming and unfriendly to those who would otherwise be interested in it - in spite of those who try to be welcoming.

Agreed. This sort of thing is something game groups need to maintain awareness of and deal with whenever it rears it's head.

The fix need not be tossing the tosser out of the group, either. We had a player who got salty whenever he was losing. Not just with newbies, with anyone. And he lost a lot because at the point I joined the group he wasn't a very good player. Most of the rest of the group didn't want to play him anymore, which didn't help his attitude.

So... I played him. I won, of course, but took the time afterwards to discuss the game with him. Where he made mistakes, where he missed opportunities, and where the dice just bit him and he SHOULD have done better if they hadn't. Over the course of a couple months he got better at the game, and got a lot less salty when he was losing. Other players in the group noticed this and started playing him again.

And so when one of our player's young teenage daughter showed interest in Warhammer, he felt fine bringing her in because he knew we policed our group... and in a positive manner to boot.

(She also proved to be a very good player straightaway. My first game with her I brought a fluffy list because she was playing WE before they got their 8E book. Didn't want to curb-stomp the newbie, you know. She handed me my head with some VERY good tactics in short order and told me to bring my A-game next time... which I did, and wins were never easy for either of us again. A WHOLE lot of fun playing, though. )

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
You did not read the article.

It's hard to pay attention when an article (or the person being quoted in the article) wants to generalise everyone based on skin colour.

I thought asking someone if that young lady at the tournament was their daughter was being friendly?

Is it creepy instead?

 Vulcan wrote:
[

As I pointed out at the end of my post, time and money - or lack thereof - are the big killers of hobbies. Especially among women and minorities, who average less pay than the average white male.

Do wargamers need to be more welcoming to women who want in? YES. But there will always be fewer women in wargaming than men. I'd be more concerned about the statistical under-representation of minorities in wargaming than women and how that indicates inequalities in the overall society.

A couple things here: As you pointed out, the the big killers of the hobby are lack of money, and lack of TIME. One of the main reasons women make less than men is that men spend noticeably more time in the workplace. While men make more money, I think the added time women have would somewhat offset female underfunding. For Minorities, I can REALLY see the financial part. Socio-Economics is the reason Basketball is popular and swimming isn't popular in many poor minority neighborhoods. Basketball doesn't require mush investment to play. Unfortunately, wargaming is a huge investment.

When I've looked around my gaming groups, a vast majority of the guys there are, to put it politely, extreme nerds. The "coolest" guys would be perhaps average in normal society. I think the same would be true of any women in the hobby. Nerds tend to be rather socially awkward, especially to the opposite sex. Think back to high school. The cooler people (of both genders) were much more likely to have not only more friends, but friends of different genders. I'm afraid that that same social awkwardness to the other gender followed many nerds of both genders into adulthood. It's not that we're bad people, we're just toddlers trying to read a book on particle physics. Having a nerdy woman that is poor at male interaction trying to become part of an all male nerd clan is challenging.

I agree that getting minorities into the game (other than Asians) seems to be a bit of a pickle. When I was a younger man a couple of my Black friends would admit they caught crap from their other friends/family for "Acting White", like it's a bad thing. I assume this is a similar shaming to when girls act like a Tom Boy.

Another thought, why is there rarely any concern about making certain hobbies more multicultural? I assume that further integrating races/genders would be a good thing not only in wargaming, but in other hobbies too. Why is there no push to get more men into the Pilates classes, Spin Cycling, or other heavily female activities? Why isn't there a push to get more Asians/Whites onto basketball courts and other sports? Shouldn't we be trying to push multiculturalism from both ends?

 Vulcan wrote:
Agreed. This sort of thing is something game groups need to maintain awareness of and deal with whenever it rears it's head.

The fix need not be tossing the tosser out of the group, either. We had a player who got salty whenever he was losing. Not just with newbies, with anyone. And he lost a lot because at the point I joined the group he wasn't a very good player. Most of the rest of the group didn't want to play him anymore, which didn't help his attitude.

So... I played him. I won, of course, but took the time afterwards to discuss the game with him. Where he made mistakes, where he missed opportunities, and where the dice just bit him and he SHOULD have done better if they hadn't. Over the course of a couple months he got better at the game, and got a lot less salty when he was losing. Other players in the group noticed this and started playing him again.

And so when one of our player's young teenage daughter showed interest in Warhammer, he felt fine bringing her in because he knew we policed our group... and in a positive manner to boot.

(She also proved to be a very good player straightaway. My first game with her I brought a fluffy list because she was playing WE before they got their 8E book. Didn't want to curb-stomp the newbie, you know. She handed me my head with some VERY good tactics in short order and told me to bring my A-game next time... which I did, and wins were never easy for either of us again. A WHOLE lot of fun playing, though. )

No offense, but your your group isn't that great outside of prepubescent girls. One of them literally chased off one of my friends after spending half an hour harassing her in an attempt to get her number, despite her very obvious hints that she had absolutely no interest in him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vulcan wrote:

Cronch wrote:

On the flip side, yes, women ON THE AVERAGE do tend to be less interested

Now your average is probably the working woman with a full-time job (if not a full-blown career) and far less spare time and money than one might assume. This might overlap with housewife and/or gamer girl as well.

As I pointed out at the end of my post, time and money - or lack thereof - are the big killers of hobbies. Especially among women and minorities, who average less pay than the average white male.

That's actually a good point: Women not only are paid less than men for the same jobs, but are expected to perform more labor in a relationship, both emotional and physical. That means a lot less free time and money than your average male gamer, which definitely contributes to the gender gap.

Sounds like you're arguing that female representation within the game is the whole problem, not the actions of the individual game shops and clubs. At which point you should be aiming this whole discussion at fantasy game producers to demand more representation instead of bugging us about it. We can't do much beyond support what they produce.

And in which case historical wargaming should be SOL, as women did not participate in war the vast majority of the time, historically speaking, so there's precious little female representation to be had...

Having said that... yeah. I can see the problem. A lot of fantasy stuff, if it has female representation at all, is of the cheesecake variety. Not going to get a lot of women interested that way.[/quote[
I wasn't actually arguing that, although you're right that the hobby doesn't make itself very welcoming to women in the first place via plenty of sexist tropes. I meant representation in the actual hobby community as compared to the general population.

And there we have it. 40/60, not equality. EVEN YOU admit there are more men than women in these 'woman friendly' gaming outlets.

Can Warhammer do better than it is? YES. Absolutely yes. The representation issue, the socially awkward or overtly lecherous gamer stereotype that gets perpetuated - itself another issue that needs addressing; stereotyping rarely results in anything positive - the 'just us' club attitude, all this needs work.

But expecting complete equality is probably never going to happen. These are decidedly niche hobbies. Most MEN aren't interested in tabletop wargaming. Expecting most women to become interested is a lost cause from the beginning.

Nobody's arguing that there's currently the same number of women as men in any of our niche hobbies: There are decades of gatekeeping and sexism to overcome, and the fact that CCGs and RPGs *are* so much closer to gender parity should make wargaming's abysmal number of women players even more appalling. And it's not even equal among various games, as has been pointed out. I've seen far, far more women playing Warmachine than I have Warhammer, and even more play Malifaux (although I especially defer to actual research rather than personal experience there, given we don't really have a Malifaux community locally).

 Vulcan wrote:
Agreed. This sort of thing is something game groups need to maintain awareness of and deal with whenever it rears it's head.

The fix need not be tossing the tosser out of the group, either. We had a player who got salty whenever he was losing. Not just with newbies, with anyone. And he lost a lot because at the point I joined the group he wasn't a very good player. Most of the rest of the group didn't want to play him anymore, which didn't help his attitude.

So... I played him. I won, of course, but took the time afterwards to discuss the game with him. Where he made mistakes, where he missed opportunities, and where the dice just bit him and he SHOULD have done better if they hadn't. Over the course of a couple months he got better at the game, and got a lot less salty when he was losing. Other players in the group noticed this and started playing him again.

And so when one of our player's young teenage daughter showed interest in Warhammer, he felt fine bringing her in because he knew we policed our group... and in a positive manner to boot.

(She also proved to be a very good player straightaway. My first game with her I brought a fluffy list because she was playing WE before they got their 8E book. Didn't want to curb-stomp the newbie, you know. She handed me my head with some VERY good tactics in short order and told me to bring my A-game next time... which I did, and wins were never easy for either of us again. A WHOLE lot of fun playing, though. )

No offense, but your your group isn't that great outside of prepubescent girls. One of them literally chased off one of my friends after spending half an hour harassing her in an attempt to get her number, despite her very obvious hints that she had absolutely no interest in him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vulcan wrote:

Cronch wrote:

On the flip side, yes, women ON THE AVERAGE do tend to be less interested

Now your average is probably the working woman with a full-time job (if not a full-blown career) and far less spare time and money than one might assume. This might overlap with housewife and/or gamer girl as well.

As I pointed out at the end of my post, time and money - or lack thereof - are the big killers of hobbies. Especially among women and minorities, who average less pay than the average white male.

That's actually a good point: Women not only are paid less than men for the same jobs, but are expected to perform more labor in a relationship, both emotional and physical. That means a lot less free time and money than your average male gamer, which definitely contributes to the gender gap.

Sounds like you're arguing that female representation within the game is the whole problem, not the actions of the individual game shops and clubs. At which point you should be aiming this whole discussion at fantasy game producers to demand more representation instead of bugging us about it. We can't do much beyond support what they produce.

And in which case historical wargaming should be SOL, as women did not participate in war the vast majority of the time, historically speaking, so there's precious little female representation to be had...

Having said that... yeah. I can see the problem. A lot of fantasy stuff, if it has female representation at all, is of the cheesecake variety. Not going to get a lot of women interested that way.

I wasn't actually arguing that, although you're right that the hobby doesn't make itself very welcoming to women in the first place via plenty of sexist tropes. I meant representation in the actual hobby community as compared to the general population.

And there we have it. 40/60, not equality. EVEN YOU admit there are more men than women in these 'woman friendly' gaming outlets.

Can Warhammer do better than it is? YES. Absolutely yes. The representation issue, the socially awkward or overtly lecherous gamer stereotype that gets perpetuated - itself another issue that needs addressing; stereotyping rarely results in anything positive - the 'just us' club attitude, all this needs work.

But expecting complete equality is probably never going to happen. These are decidedly niche hobbies. Most MEN aren't interested in tabletop wargaming. Expecting most women to become interested is a lost cause from the beginning.

Nobody's arguing that there's currently the same number of women as men in any of our niche hobbies: There are decades of gatekeeping and sexism to overcome, and the fact that CCGs and RPGs *are* so much closer to gender parity should make wargaming's abysmal number of women players even more appalling. And it's not even equal among various games, as has been pointed out. I've seen far, far more women playing Warmachine than I have Warhammer, and even more play Malifaux (although I especially defer to actual research rather than personal experience there, given we don't really have a Malifaux community locally).

 cuda1179 wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:


As I pointed out at the end of my post, time and money - or lack thereof - are the big killers of hobbies. Especially among women and minorities, who average less pay than the average white male.

Do wargamers need to be more welcoming to women who want in? YES. But there will always be fewer women in wargaming than men. I'd be more concerned about the statistical under-representation of minorities in wargaming than women and how that indicates inequalities in the overall society.

A couple things here: As you pointed out, the the big killers of the hobby are lack of money, and lack of TIME. One of the main reasons women make less than men is that men spend noticeably more time in the workplace. While men make more money, I think the added time women have would somewhat offset female underfunding. For Minorities, I can REALLY see the financial part. Socio-Economics is the reason Basketball is popular and swimming isn't popular in many poor minority neighborhoods. Basketball doesn't require mush investment to play. Unfortunately, wargaming is a huge investment.

When I've looked around my gaming groups, a vast majority of the guys there are, to put it politely, extreme nerds. The "coolest" guys would be perhaps average in normal society. I think the same would be true of any women in the hobby. Nerds tend to be rather socially awkward, especially to the opposite sex. Think back to high school. The cooler people (of both genders) were much more likely to have not only more friends, but friends of different genders. I'm afraid that that same social awkwardness to the other gender followed many nerds of both genders into adulthood. It's not that we're bad people, we're just toddlers trying to read a book on particle physics. Having a nerdy woman that is poor at male interaction trying to become part of an all male nerd clan is challenging.

I agree that getting minorities into the game (other than Asians) seems to be a bit of a pickle. When I was a younger man a couple of my Black friends would admit they caught crap from their other friends/family for "Acting White", like it's a bad thing. I assume this is a similar shaming to when girls act like a Tom Boy.

Another thought, why is there rarely any concern about making certain hobbies more multicultural? I assume that further integrating races/genders would be a good thing not only in wargaming, but in other hobbies too. Why is there no push to get more men into the Pilates classes, Spin Cycling, or other heavily female activities? Why isn't there a push to get more Asians/Whites onto basketball courts and other sports? Shouldn't we be trying to push multiculturalism from both ends?

Part of the time issue is that even now, women do far more work in the household than men do. Yes, men do more cleaning, cooking, laundry, and other household chores than they used to, but in many if not most households the woman does more chores than the man does.

(I have no idea how this works out in a non-heteronormative household. I haven't seen any studies on the subject, only stereotypes, and I believe I mentioned upthread how stereotypes rarely result in any good.)

Yes, the pressure against 'acting white' is real. Lost several grade school friends to it in middle and high school. 'Twas not a happy time for me when it happened, but when the choice is 'stop hanging out with the white kids or our gang will shoot you'... well... And yes, they did threaten to shoot one of my friends if he continued being my friend.

But the plural of anecdote is not data, so I have no idea if this is really widespread, or if my area (St. Louis) just had a really, REALLY bad case of it. Looking at more recent events, I suspect it's the latter as much as anything.

On that last bit, when whites show up in what is viewed as a minority activity, it's called cultural appropriation and is EEEEEEEEVILLLLLL.... Which is a double standard if ever there was one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Laughing Man wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
Agreed. This sort of thing is something game groups need to maintain awareness of and deal with whenever it rears it's head.

The fix need not be tossing the tosser out of the group, either. We had a player who got salty whenever he was losing. Not just with newbies, with anyone. And he lost a lot because at the point I joined the group he wasn't a very good player. Most of the rest of the group didn't want to play him anymore, which didn't help his attitude.

So... I played him. I won, of course, but took the time afterwards to discuss the game with him. Where he made mistakes, where he missed opportunities, and where the dice just bit him and he SHOULD have done better if they hadn't. Over the course of a couple months he got better at the game, and got a lot less salty when he was losing. Other players in the group noticed this and started playing him again.

And so when one of our player's young teenage daughter showed interest in Warhammer, he felt fine bringing her in because he knew we policed our group... and in a positive manner to boot.

(She also proved to be a very good player straightaway. My first game with her I brought a fluffy list because she was playing WE before they got their 8E book. Didn't want to curb-stomp the newbie, you know. She handed me my head with some VERY good tactics in short order and told me to bring my A-game next time... which I did, and wins were never easy for either of us again. A WHOLE lot of fun playing, though. )

No offense, but your your group isn't that great outside of prepubescent girls. One of them literally chased off one of my friends after spending half an hour harassing her in an attempt to get her number, despite her very obvious hints that she had absolutely no interest in him.

You know me from Game Nite some ten years ago when I was still in the St. Louis area? I know it can't be my 'current' group because here in the middle of the desert nowhere there is no group within 80 miles or more.

I can just barely see a pre-reform [problem player mentioned above] acting that way. Barely. The rest? No... no, I just don't see it.

Who are you? PM me, please, I'm curious.

And there we have it. 40/60, not equality. EVEN YOU admit there are more men than women in these 'woman friendly' gaming outlets.

Can Warhammer do better than it is? YES. Absolutely yes. The representation issue, the socially awkward or overtly lecherous gamer stereotype that gets perpetuated - itself another issue that needs addressing; stereotyping rarely results in anything positive - the 'just us' club attitude, all this needs work.

But expecting complete equality is probably never going to happen. These are decidedly niche hobbies. Most MEN aren't interested in tabletop wargaming. Expecting most women to become interested is a lost cause from the beginning.

Nobody's arguing that there's currently the same number of women as men in any of our niche hobbies: There are decades of gatekeeping and sexism to overcome, and the fact that CCGs and RPGs *are* so much closer to gender parity should make wargaming's abysmal number of women players even more appalling. And it's not even equal among various games, as has been pointed out. I've seen far, far more women playing Warmachine than I have Warhammer, and even more play Malifaux (although I especially defer to actual research rather than personal experience there, given we don't really have a Malifaux community locally).

Agreed. Some games have done a better job with representation than others, and it's not uncommon to find that games with poorer representation have... shall we say, less welcoming attitudes? Like I said, we can do better than we have in the past.

But you get people to do better with a carrot, not a stick. Even basic Pavlovian conditioning works better with positive reinforcement than negative. Scolding people who have problems makes them defensive, resulting in them digging in and resisting even harder. Instead you lure them out with praise and reward when they do it right.

And one of the most basic rewards is having a larger pool of players to play with.

It's worth noting that although women earn less money on average, they spend significantly more money on average. So I'm not entirely sure the idea that women just don't have the money holds water.

 StygianBeach wrote:
I thought asking someone if that young lady at the tournament was their daughter was being friendly?

Is it creepy instead?

If you think it is as common to ask every man is that young guy your son, no. However you get a lot more questions like that if you are the odd one out, and a woman at a wargaming meet often is. When you get asked stuff or told stuff no one else is, you could well consider it creepy. And yes the women I have known dip into wargames or even cross over stuff like bloodbowl have had to have thick skins for the non game related attention they get.


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 cuda1179 wrote:
Another thought, why is there rarely any concern about making certain hobbies more multicultural? I assume that further integrating races/genders would be a good thing not only in wargaming, but in other hobbies too. Why is there no push to get more men into the Pilates classes, Spin Cycling, or other heavily female activities? Why isn't there a push to get more Asians/Whites onto basketball courts and other sports? Shouldn't we be trying to push multiculturalism from both ends?

So two aspects here. First getting more women in is a commercial objective. Widen participation, sell more stuff. You local pilates group might be at max capacity, or available at a time between school runs to catch affluent stay at home parents, traditionally women. Their clientele might prefer single gender classes. When people want more customers you will see them alter times, advertising etc and I have seen classes aimed solely at men as well. Indeed I have never seen a spin cycling session that wasn't majority men, so here there are different dynamics going on. But broadly if there is a potential male market companies try and entice them.

The advantage for us as gamers is we get more people to play with. As there is nothing biologically restricting about our hobbies (we don't need additional organs added and a black carapace for example) recruiting from the biggest pool of people possible makes sense.

The second is where wargaming tips into the professional world. The biggest recruitment pool for wargamers is still hobbists. Here a lack of diversity over at least 4 areas - internal, external, organisational, and worldview - is a real problem. You need people who think significantly differently with significantly different experiences to best the best insights and training results.
Here is one article summing it up from the UK point of view
https://wavellroom.com/2021/01/15/wargaming-has-a-diversity-problem/
And 2 from the US point of view
https://warontherocks.com/2021/02/is-the-department-of-defense-making-enough-progress-in-wargaming/
https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2020/07/02/the-need-for-diversity-in-wargaming/

Incidentally discuss on this topic in wargame groups on facebook and the like goes south far more than here. This is a tame example
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=549468


This is incidentally another missive ont he advantages of a diverse group for longevity and levels of activity.
https://legacy.wargamer.com/wargames-2020-diversity-inclusion/

I would once more point out, as Vulkan and Kiro obsessively focus on "the average" that in all my questions, I focus on the already nerdy women that do have the disposable income to play tabletop games, as they currently exist, in flesh, in CCG and board and rpg gaming circles. It's THOSE exceptional individuals that still avoid this one, particular kind of tabletop hobby, and so far the answer seems to be "war in title scares ladies off".


But yes, I know why the average woman doesn't play wargames, the same reason why almost no men ever touch the wargaming hobby, they're not interested in tabletop gaming at all. There is no mystery there.

My limited IRL observation and seeing so many online discussions unfold would suggest the issue isn't that the word "war" and idea of rolling dice to "kill" things scares girls off (they seem to have no big issue with disemboweling monsters in D&D which is usually way more graphic due to the narrative aspect than clinical, non-violent way of just removing soldier tokens from board in 40k) but rather than wargaming communities on average are unwelcoming either by being generally unwelcoming to new people or by being specifically unwelcoming to anyone that poses a "threat" to the status quo.

I dislike the idea that we need racial or gender diversity in order to have diversity of opinion in a group.
My university course was 18 people, all white, 16 men, 2 women. Yet we had people from all the way across the spectrum of life. We had the upper class guy that didn't really understand buying a house was an significant event to the guy that came off the street to whom having food to eat was a big win, and everything in between.
If we had a problem we'd have 18 different solutions.
The idea that that group wasn't diverse because of something as trivial as skin colour is silly and I find achieves exactly the opposite of what you're claiming to stand for.

I will agree with you that increasing female participation in the hobby will be a positive thing.
More players is good, more money for the companies supporting the hobby is good, it may help improve the social skills of some involved which is good (or push some people out, which is sad).
But I don't agree that it will make things more diverse in any way that matters, other than the above.

I mean, you do tho.
A group of all able-bodied men is unlikely to think of things such as accesibility or need for changing tables unless actually pointed out to them.
A group of all white people is unlikely to have the experience of say, being taught by your parents to avoid the police because they might as well hurt you instead of help.
A group of all men is unlikely to know women have hard time having their pain taken seriously at the doctors' office which is the reality of many women in the States and other "1st world' countries.

Obviously wargaming is much less dramatic than scenarios like that, but you still end up with a group that is in essence culturally incestous. And you can be fine with it, as many people are- it's their "safe space", but then let's at least be honest about it.


(And that TMP thread was a WILD ride )

Cronch wrote:
I would once more point out, as Vulkan and Kiro obsessively focus on "the average"

This thread is why women are less represented in wargaming.
That is a question of averages.
The fact that there are fewer super nerdy women who are into wargames is an important factor in why men are more represented in wargames.

There are other factors, but since everyone agrees on those factors (such as generally presenting a male-dominated front and/or social awkwardness) so we're not arguing about the existence of those factors.


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Cronch wrote:
I mean, you do tho.
A group of all able-bodied men is unlikely to think of things such as accesibility or need for changing tables unless actually pointed out to them.
A group of all white people is unlikely to have the experience of say, being taught by your parents to avoid the police because they might as well hurt you instead of help.
A group of all men is unlikely to know women have hard time having their pain taken seriously at the doctors' office which is the reality of many women in the States and other "1st world' countries

That's a lot of assumptions extrapolated from our race and gender. I can also tell you that you're objectively wrong on all counts.
Ya'know, men have kids too...
Who said anything about able?
White guys can be treated badly by police too
Isn't that exactly the racism and sexism angle we're supposed to be avoiding?

Women tend to be less interested in war than men as another factor.
Wargaming does have an old-boys-club sense about it that adjacent hobbies like rpgs have lost. I think they've put a lot of effort into shaking that stereotype in a way that wargames have not.
It's loads and loads of these slight gender-trends/biased that all combine into the dynamic that we see today.

I've seen far, far more women and girls competing in tactical shooting competitions than tabletop wargaming. Frankly, they often also do quite well or better than your average shmo.

Cronch wrote:

(And that TMP thread was a WILD ride )

What's wrong with it?
Every comment seems to be essentially "so what?".
Which I wholly agree with. That are tonnes of hobbies that are female dominated, without complaint.

There's nothing wrong with any skewed gender bias.
We can discuss why the gender bias is there, and perhaps find issues there. But "its mostly white men therefore we need to take steps to fix it" is bollocks and I agree with the TMP expressing that opinion.

Let's face it, most wargamers do not WANT new players in their groups. There is too big of a risk that they will come to the table with a different expectation of the game than you have. That leads to actual conflict and drama that no one wants. Most wargamers are in a very small, exclusive group of players in one of the people's garage or basement. Look at the old GW design team as an example!

Frequently, we spent too much time curating our game group to the people we actually WANT to play with. Therefore, we may not be that interested in expanding to new people once we get that group. New people are an unknown element. It may not even have to do with gender, race, or religion. Instead it comes down to WAAC, Fluffy, Casual, Tourney, etc. factors.

Heck, even on this board we see the disconnect between the Tourney Folks and the Filthy Casuals! In the wild, there is even more peril in this divide.

The fact that the leading wargame (yes, 40k is a wargame) is long, tedious, and doesn't make much sense to someone hoping to replicate the battles they see in movies and media might also be a factor. Board games, card games, D&D, these all suck less.

Take King of Tokyo, for example. You can play it in 15 minutes and it's just rolling dice. Very popular game that I personally wouldn't play unless you were paying my consultant rate for that 15 minutes and the remainder of the hour. Aside from the dice-rolling part, very unlike Warhammer.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I dislike the idea that we need racial or gender diversity in order to have diversity of opinion in a group.
The idea that that group wasn't diverse because of something as trivial as skin colour is silly and I find achieves exactly the opposite of what you're claiming to stand for.

So you are right and wrong.

The 'easiest' way to get a range of opinions, thought processes and experiences is to get a bunch of people who look different. Limb count, colour, gender etc. But that is a rough measure which you touched on in your answer. What I need is significant mental diversity, perhaps driven by a different experience set.

If I get a white male, asian female, black paraplegic etc. together, and they are all from Oxbridge... whilst they will have a wider range of experiences than most teams, they will have all been taught to think and process information in the same way. They will miss stuff and make a lot of mistakes trying to get in the head and observe–orient–decide–act loop of the target.

This used to be fine. Take SIS, they recruited Oxbridge types because the people they wished to influence and talk to overseas were often the same Oxbridge types. This came expensively unglued when dealing with say Taliban groups because there was no shared world view or understanding. Army humint guys were often far better and Gurkha's from farming backgrounds excellent. We are facing similar problmes with countries like China who don't always have the same degree of similarity the, say, Russians did in the 80's.

So go back to your group, they had a lot of diversity, but I could put together a more diverse group to achieve my requirements. It is worth chipping in here with the other side of the coin. We know from research and experience that diverse groups, preferably with insights into your target area, get the best outcomes. They also have the lowest levels of interpersonal and institutional trust. There is a management overhead that is expensive that we don't like to talk about. Now we have examples of organisations that deal well with diversity. take the army - it can take people from across society and form them into trusting teams, but it does that by introducing a high level of group think and trained behaviour. You can have the most diverse group of people on earth, but if you can't manage them you are worse off than with that oxbridge alumni group.

Circling back to our hobby its great to get everyone who wants to play into the club, but the people have to gel. Clubs splinter and fracture all the time and inter personal problems spill over constantly. I think it requires some deft management to keep a group like us together and the more diverse it gets the more EQ and interpersonal skill is needed, something a lot of us lack for one reason or another. How much we change to accommodate new people is always a tension. Where I work is polite but blunt. This is for reasons of expediency, but would we be better off talking like more regular humans to get more people interested in working her?

 kirotheavenger wrote:

Cronch wrote:
I would once more point out, as Vulkan and Kiro obsessively focus on "the average"

This thread is why women are less represented in wargaming.
That is a question of averages.
The fact that there are fewer super nerdy women who are into wargames is an important factor in why men are more represented in wargames.

There are other factors, but since everyone agrees on those factors (such as generally presenting a male-dominated front and/or social awkwardness) so we're not arguing about the existence of those factors.


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Cronch wrote:
I mean, you do tho.
A group of all able-bodied men is unlikely to think of things such as accesibility or need for changing tables unless actually pointed out to them.
A group of all white people is unlikely to have the experience of say, being taught by your parents to avoid the police because they might as well hurt you instead of help.
A group of all men is unlikely to know women have hard time having their pain taken seriously at the doctors' office which is the reality of many women in the States and other "1st world' countries

That's a lot of assumptions extrapolated from our race and gender. I can also tell you that you're objectively wrong on all counts.
Ya'know, men have kids too...
Who said anything about able?
White guys can be treated badly by police too
Isn't that exactly the racism and sexism angle we're supposed to be avoiding?

I never said all of those apply to your random group, I just gave you examples of how lack of actual diversity leads to dismissal of issues.
Such as your instant defensive "well white men get mistreated by the police too", as if we didn't see exactly how different those two groups are treated last year.
And men have kids too, sure. Those men, on average, until very recently, didn't participate much in early stages of childcare. They still take paternal leave at a much lower rate than women take maternal leave (In countries that allow it of course).


As for point one..I don't know how else to explain it. You seem to skip over the point every time.
Let's say you have 100 men and 100 women.
Of those, 30 men and 20 women are "nerds".
So yes, we are starting with smaller pool, but we do not concern ourselves with that aspect for now.
Of those 30 men, 10 go to RPG club, 10 go to MtG tournaments, 5 to boardgame nights and 5 visit GW/LGS to play. I am assuming there is no overlap for ease of demonstration.
Of those 20 women, 10 go to RPG club,6 to MtG tournaments, 3 to boardgame nighs and 1 vistis the LGS/GW.
What is the question is WHY only 1 of them went for wargames vs the more even split shown by men?
Those numbers are pure conjecture ofc, plug in whatever numbers you want, I am just curious why of the existing group of Nerd women, are they so under-represented in wargaming compared to other hobbies. I do not want to know why the 80 other women decided to do something else with their time.

 Frazzled wrote:



I've seen far, far more women and girls competing in tactical shooting competitions than tabletop wargaming. Frankly, they often also do quite well or better than your average shmo.

 Easy E wrote:
Let's face it, most wargamers do not WANT new players in their groups.

This probably explains it most. Even in traditionally "male" hobbies and interests, women can and will participate if the community is welcoming and it interests them. In my experience, the firearms community is extremely welcoming to new people. The wargaming community....not so much regardless of what you have in your downstairs bits box. Quick googling makes this look like an issue in general for model building that isn't gunpla. To be fair, not a lot of men are into painting people's nails and there is a lot of skill overlap there. Even down to watching endless videos to get effects that nobody outside that hobby will notice.

 Easy E wrote:
Let's face it, most wargamers do not WANT new players in their groups.

I don't know if it is my experience. Maybe it's different in the US where wargaming groups are much older than here in Poland. I think that every community of every game I have ever played was happy to have new players and everybody was welcome. Treating women weirdly, even if it happened was a tiny minority (individuals really), it's been mostly "wow, a girl gamer, that's so cool!, welcome!"

The thing with wargames was, though, that gamer girls I knew just weren't that much into "I will show you that my imaginary supersoldiers are better than yours or I will puke my brains out trying"

Some of you mention RPGs but it's a VERY different thing IMO. I've only ever dated girls from geeky communities and I got to know dozens of girls who played RPGs, or LARPs. With one of my ex's we played some RPG almost every day for a couple of years. Many of those female friends of mine tried out wargaming, enjoyed painting, but couldn't get invested in gaming itself. It was just flat and boring for them. Or at best not interesting enough to warrant the necessary commitment.

You see, RPGs are based on something totally different. Combat, even if it happens in RPG (it may as well not happen at all) is a set up, just a narrative tool. Nobody is really considering it a competition between playing parties. RPGs are based on emotions, relations, human interaction, intrigue. Wargames do not have these elements, hence they may be less attractive (emotionally bare?) to girl gamers.

It's just anecdotes, and I know my brain will try to find causation in this correlation even if there's none, but this explanation makes a lot of sense to me.

That's also what my gamer-wife has just told me

When with my friend, we ran a LARP/strategy game campaign for a couple of months, where players were rulers and nobles from warring fantasy states it was a success among female gamers too. I believe it was because we sprinkled all these army movements and military budgets (the startegy game part) with intrigue, personal games and actual human interaction (the LARP part, although there was a lot in-theme correspondence between players inbetween LARPs as well which definitely counts as interaction)

Maybe, as wargames surely lack this aspect of gaming, they could be enriched in such a way, somehow?

I think with "public" groups you are correct Cyel. They are welcoming as being a "public" group the goal is to grow and attract.

However, many wargames groups are not "public". It is literally a group of folks getting together in a friend's basement/garage and have been a social group for some time. They do not want to expand their group and are a "private" group and essentially closed. These groups will still go to Cons and Tourneys to game.

Here's a thought

The big name in wargaming is Games Workshop. I'd argue in many nations (certainly the UK, in my experience), new people are far more likely to be recruited, introduced and inspired by GW products than any other wargaming brand. However through a large part of the Kirby era of GW, GW itself wasn't reaching out in the same way as many other fandoms.


Whilst many others were tapping into forums, facebook, myspace and the internet, GW tried, bungled it and spent the rest of the Kirby era fighting the internet rather than embracing it. As a result the biggest outreach firm was not using the biggest social revolution tool of the century (at least thus far).

Yes fans were using it, but a lot of fan stuff is basically floating around interacting with existing fans. It's more likely you'll find it once you are a gamer, but until you are you are far less likely to encounter it.



So perhaps one aspect of the difference is that the core parent and most visible firm wasn't doing active recruiting during a long period of time that other hobbies were. Heck if anything GW scaled back on official events and the like. Meanwhile things like CoD and League of Legends were holding big marketing conventions; big sponsored tournaments and the like.



So perhaps one reason that Wargaming is a little behind the curve is that the biggest name wasn't doing the outreach that many others were doing themselves.


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 Easy E wrote:
I think with "public" groups you are correct Cyel. They are welcoming as being a "public" group the goal is to grow and attract.

However, many wargames groups are not "public". It is literally a group of folks getting together in a friend's basement/garage and have been a social group for some time. They do not want to expand their group and are a "private" group and essentially closed. These groups will still go to Cons and Tourneys to game.

My experience is not that they don't want new people; its that they don't quite know how to get them ,welcome them and keep them. Most game groups are welcoming to new people turning up, but they can often have issues with how to introduce someone and welcome them as part of the group. The talk in the Warmachine gorups identifies one aspect being when you've got a population of experienced people who don't know or are not aware how to - tone down their game for newbies to introduce them. And when you've very very few newbies joining at the same time it becomes harder still.

a bit off topic, but

Combat, even if it happens in RPG (it may as well not happen at all) is a set up, just a narrative tool

At this point D&D is more of a tactical game than Mordheim ever was

Yeah, I also don't count D&D as actual RPG, as weird as it may sound It seems to be more of some kind of a dungeon crawler boardgame than actually Playing a Role.

(and yeah, I know it may be played differently)

This thread is quite the mix of wisdom, non-sequitor, and cringe. It's become like a case study all of itself.

Cronch wrote:
[
As for point one..I don't know how else to explain it. You seem to skip over the point every time.
Let's say you have 100 men and 100 women.
Of those, 30 men and 20 women are "nerds".
So yes, we are starting with smaller pool, but we do not concern ourselves with that aspect for now.
Of those 30 men, 10 go to RPG club, 10 go to MtG tournaments, 5 to boardgame nights and 5 visit GW/LGS to play. I am assuming there is no overlap for ease of demonstration.
Of those 20 women, 10 go to RPG club,6 to MtG tournaments, 3 to boardgame nighs and 1 vistis the LGS/GW.
What is the question is WHY only 1 of them went for wargames vs the more even split shown by men?
Those numbers are pure conjecture ofc, plug in whatever numbers you want, I am just curious why of the existing group of Nerd women, are they so under-represented in wargaming compared to other hobbies. I do not want to know why the 80 other women decided to do something else with their time.

Perhaps this is like the divide in video gamers. Men make up the majority of gamers out there, but there are a lot of women. How you define "gamer" is a bit different, depending on who is doing the research though. Many studies tend to lump in all the people that play Candy Crush in as "gamers". Honestly, I'm up in the air on that. However, if you look at the numbers, women are overrepresented in games like Candy Crush, and less so in games like Battlefront or Modern Warfare. Certain hobbies do kind of appeal to the opposite sex more.

Thinking about this some more, could weight be an issue? I'm 6'5" tall, and fairly strong, and even I've gotten arm strain from hauling around a pewter horde army. A 5'2" skinny gal wouldn't have a chance. With card games there's really not that much physical product to have to transport.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Thinking about this some more, could weight be an issue? I'm 6'5" tall, and fairly strong, and even I've gotten arm strain from hauling around a pewter horde army. A 5'2" skinny gal wouldn't have a chance. With card games there's really not that much physical product to have to transport.

I'm 5'10" and 130 pounds, and regularly carried two full Battlefoam bags of Khador models back in the day. I'm pretty sure most women can handle one or two full of plastic.

Maybe if armies were all metal that would be a factor.