Some time ago the question came up on our Discord channel if, with a name like LadiesGamers and focusing on wholesome games, we are feeding the stereotype. By focussing on simulation games, city builders, puzzle games and often the more casual adventure games and such. And then combining it with a name like LadiesGamers, is that the same as saying these are stereotyped girl games and therefore not ‘real games’?
It’s Not the Game That Makes Us a Gamer
It was a question that took me by surprise; I had never looked at it that way. And, as you might expect, one I don’t agree with. I will elaborate on the choices I made in the past for the kind of games we reviewed and the name I chose, but the bottom line is this: there is no distinction between girl games and so-called real games. I should think this view on video games, the one that states that wholesome games are inferior, has been banished by now. Looking back, I wrote about this in 2015; I guess it’s still something of an issue!
No matter that some gamers feel the need to assert that the games they play are better or need more skills, video games are there to help us relax and be entertained. And it’s up to you to decide which ones appeal to you, which ones you like to play to be entertained. To me, everyone who plays any kind of game is a ‘real gamer’.
When you love playing games, you choose the kind of games you are comfortable with. Want a game to be an outlet for your emotions, and you like going into battle to do just that? Go for it. Like the game to visually look as lifelike as can be? There are plenty you can play. Don’t like button mashing needed to beat the most difficult enemy? Then, choose another genre or go for turn-based fighting. Do you like simulation games that are not cute and colourful? Go for real-life simulation. It really doesn’t matter what kind of game you like. All games are games worth playing! And everyone can play them, it doesn’t matter what your gender or age is.
This brings us back to the second part of the game: if this topic is such a sensitive one, why did we choose to cover a certain segment in gaming, and why did I choose the name LadiesGamers?
Why the Name?
Personal Blog
LadiesGamers started life ten years ago as a personal blog. As I’ve mentioned before, I found my hobby in video games late in life when I was 42 years old. My first steps in gaming were taken to help out my then-7-year-old daughter. As we are Dutch, English isn’t our first language, and my daughter couldn’t read the texts in Animal Crossing Wild World, one of the first games we bought for her. This made for some lovely mother-daughter time, sitting on the couch and playing together.
We started the town, met Tom Nook and got all kinds of chores. After a while, she got a bit bored at picking up shells and planting flowers, as there’s only so much you can do in the first days. So, she went off to go do something else, and I did what so many mothers do: I decided to work on it for her. Only that ended up not being so much for her. I loved it; I couldn’t stop playing. Pretty soon, I had my own device and game! I played Wild World for 1,5 years every day, and then I decided it was time to branch out and find new games that appealed to me.
I found I couldn’t really talk with anyone in real life about my new gaming hobby, and I was so stoked about it that I just had to share! Plus, as I started playing more games in the manner that I always play games (going where the mood takes me), I had quite a backlog of games after some time. I needed to jot down where I had left off in each game for when I got back to it. Those two reasons sparked the birth of my blog, which I called A Lady & Gaming.
Why did I draw attention with that title, to the fact that I was an older woman who had a passion for video games? You have to understand that the gaming world was a different one 18 years ago when I started playing. It wasn’t all that common for an adult person to play video games, let alone a woman. Aside from my adult group of Animal Crossing players, I had the hardest time fitting in anywhere on the game forums. This was my way of proving that, yes, an adult woman could enjoy video games as well!
Domain Name
The blog was made in Wordpress and hosted for free at Wordpress.com. It also means it’s never really your own, and it has restrictions on what you can do on the site. This is why I decided to make a move to a self-hosted WordPress site, and I needed a domain name to do that.
In my head, I tried out all kinds of combinations and checked to see if the domain names were available. In each of them, the word Lady figured prominently. There was no specific reason; it just stuck in my mind, and I didn’t want to deviate too far from A Lady & Gaming. So, the name wasn’t chosen to signify that we play another kind of game. Nor does it mean the team consists of women only. And it doesn’t mean our intended audience is female, either!
What it does mean is that the site is run by, originally, an older woman. And by now, even two older women!
Why the Segment in Games?
At the time that I started the blog, it was tough to find other games like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon. The gaming landscape has changed a lot in 10 years, at the time ‘wholesome’ wasn’t even a term used for games. Most games were made by the bigger, well-known companies, too; the indie developer scene wasn’t as big as it is now.
When the team formed in 2018 and we started reviewing games, I felt we needed to choose a direction and create our own niche. Up to that moment, I had only written about the games I liked. My preference is for simulation games, turn-based RPGs and adventure games that aren’t too challenging. The content moved along those lines from the start, influenced by the writers who joined the team. I always believe a review is best when the gamer who has written it is basically a fan of the genre. For example, don’t let me review a platformer as I don’t like them (or…I’m not good at them). But James is an ace when it comes to platformers, which is the reason why he often writes reviews for that genre. And why we feature quite some platformers and arcade games.
Eventually, Paula and I found the niche we wanted to focus on. After all, there are so many video game websites out there that it was no use trying to compete with the media that was already covering the big titles and what some people would call ‘real games’. We chose to narrow down what we would review and feature on the site. Meanwhile, we would try to support indie developers and keep the site family-friendly. And that’s where we are now, doing pretty well in our little webspace!