Why don’t more women play Magic?
23 May 2010 | 57 comments
This weekend, I attended the Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix at Dulles Expo Center in Virginia. And I wasn’t alone: a record-breaking 1,900 people showed up to play. It looks like Magic is popular again. However, out of that unprecedentedly large crowd, I was one of only about 30 women attending. What’s up with that?
For the uninitiated, Magic is a collectible card game established back in the 90′s where players follow a continually more complex set of rules, using land cards to pay for creature and enchantment spells. And artifacts and equipment and instant spells and oh God, so many things that you need to study the rulebook for years to be a judge of this kind of thing.
To some people, this is common sense. Magic is simply not a girl thing. The card themes and illustrations, involving dragons and monsters and scantily clad women, push would-be female players away. However, I don’t think this is true: women are not adverse to anime with supposedly male themes. It’s generally accepted that today, shounen anime has as many female fans as the male fans for which the shows were intended. Plus, I know plenty of women who love action movies.
Another barrier to entry might be the extremely complex rules. If I hadn’t started playing the game when I was 11, I doubt I’d be much into learning it today. That doesn’t mean everyone feels this way; the leader of my local Magic group learned to play in his 20′s abroad in China. But if the learning curve isn’t a problem for male players, it doesn’t make sense for it to be one for women, either.
Alternately, I believe the difference lies in the execution, not the theme. Magic is a competition where players battle each other in order to win. I don’t think women are into that aspect of the game.
I’m not saying that only men are competitive. However, women ARE more adept at problem solving and collaboration than men. When we are competitive, in the workforce for example, we’re more likely to be viewed as aggressive in a bad way. Even if we’re naturally competitive, we’re socialized to suppress it from a very young age.
This also explains why fewer women play “hardcore” video games than men. The Halo bloc of games is all about fighting and competition. However, you’ll find many more women playing puzzle and problem solving games like Farmville, BeJeweled, even the sometimes considered “hardcore” RPGs.
As a female Magic player, I admit competition is my least favorite part. I like teaming up in a group game, or when my opponent and I both try for entertaining plays and applaud each others’ moves. This is why I play in a group that meets at a bar: it’s casual and nobody snaps at me if I forget one of the thousand rules. This is also why I did not compete in the Grand Prix. When the stakes are that high, everybody is too focused on winning for me to enjoy the game.
On the plus side, there was ZERO line for the women’s bathroom.
Magic playing readers, why do you play? What are your favorite and least favorite parts of the game?
Hi Lauren. Lauren Lee here.
Love your post
I’m glad Bill Stark posted it on his site.
I think this post is pretty accurate. Finding women that can get hardcore over a game like Magic is hard. I’ve seen them get hardcore over many things, but a card game that has little relevance outside of the game itself is not going to be one of them. Typically. I know myself to be an exception.
I’ll probably follow up with a post of my own at some point. Great post, Lauren
First off, congratulations on qualifying for the Pro Tour!
Thanks for understanding that my post is not about undermining the achievements that women have made playing Magic so far. Hopefully one day we won’t even point out the gender of Magic players as a discussion point. The fact that more women play today than ever before proves that gender socialization is less of an issue than it once was, though it still certainly affects our behavior.
Looking forward to your post on the topic!
“However, women ARE more adept at problem solving and collaboration than men.”
Your own link references women as “Domineering and Dominating” in marital disputes. Hardly conductive to collaborative problem solving.
The fact is that there is plenty of research that shows men are more comfortable and more successful within rigid rules structure like those present in competitive games. You can watch this play out on any playground, and it will ultimately keep the number of women in Magic low.
In my experience I’ve found female players to have better maturity, problem solving and patience that most male players, including myself, and there are a lot more female players than at any point in Magic’s history now tapping the cards.
I think that within five to six years a female player will win either a gp or pro tour.
Jag
Jag: I’ve also found female players to be especially difficult adversaries. Maybe because it’s easier for myself, as a woman, to predict what a male player is going to do next!
I wish more women played magic, I wish women played more sports in general especially the gaming kind but it seems there are a lot of barriers for this to become realised.
Most of these barriers, I feel, is in fact down to public perceptions of gaming. The general feeling I get is that the public perceive Magic as extremely geeky and socially unacceptable. If this is what a lot of men I know think of the game, mainly due to ignorance, surely the same can be said for women who don’t really inhabit the sphere of games that men do. The other thing I’d like to add refers to the point about competition. It may be true that women are less competitive than men but I think one of the reasons women are less inclined to play magic is that girl vs. boy competitive environments are themselves daunting and unappealing to women. Currently I think the whole experience for a women playing in a tournament would be pretty bad partially due to the way some men react when playing them and also just because the lack of other women there and how greatly outnumbered they are by men which must feel both unnatural and oppressive. If more women were to play magic on a grander scale a shift towards these things would help.
Finally I think the game of magic is naturally unappealing to women. Obsessing over the minutiae of rules, the vast forest of cards and the metagame, is off putting in its own right.
Hi Lauren,
You have an interesting perspective, and I can certainly admit that the competition is what drove me to the game in the beginning. But I think that once you’ve attended some of the larger events, you realize that there’s a lot more to the game than that alone.
Pro Tours in particular today I think have actually more to offer a casual player than a competative player. They reduced the number of Pro Tours so that they could have them in more exotic/intersting locations like Honolulu and Puerto Rico. Whereas in the past, due to the number of PT’s they’d have a season, they’d have to hold them in places like Colombus Ohio or Secaucus NJ (no offense to the residents of either city).
I think this actually gives casual magic players a chance to turn a trip to the Pro Tour into an actual vacation. There are also a lot of fun side events that are more geared towards casual players than serious competitors.
Yet you still have the same male/female ratio at a PT that you would at a PTQ. So bascially I think your point would certainly be valid at the PTQ level, but since we’re seeing the same thing at higher level events, I think it has to be something more to it than just a ‘competition’ thing.
Osyp
It is worth mentioning, I think, the general state of misogyny in the gaming populace at Magic tournaments. While I would say that it is at a historical all-time low, there is still a deep connection with many male gamers that puts losing to a women on the same leve of losing to a child.
In the past, it was much, much worse. One doesn’t have to look far to see it in the experiences of many of the women in the early years of the tour, who were nearly all lambasted with slut-baiting and shaming (regardless of the distance from reality), denigration of their play skill, and a general lack of respect. The language that many players employ in the game (uses of the word “rape”, for example, to describe games) only adds to this.
I’m leery of studies that talk about the essential nature of male and females and their skills. I think we’re far more complicated than that, and tend to incorporate nature and nurture into our personas. Further, for every study that makes claims about the essential nature of some trait of males or females, it is usually trivial to find another which disagrees with it, and meta-analysis of these studies often finds that there are real biases in the studies. Perhaps it is because I study culture, but it makes me much more comfortable to talk about how we work in -that- way.
In any case, I feel like the Magic world has a long way to go. We already live in a sexist society, but there are parts of our culture in Magic that are particularly bad about this. I find concept of talking about things like “man-lands” trivial, but the general disrespect that is afforded to women is nearly omnipresent, and much more important.
Anywho, that’ my two cents…
-Adrian
In my store, there are generally always at least two or three females playing in events, but from what I can tell, they play the game for the social aspect.
A lot of girls I know who I have introduced the game to were into learning the game and playing it with friends, but when it comes to going to the card store and trading or playing fnm, they are simply not interested.
I think also the fact that it is almost all guys turns away many girls, creating a sort of recursive loop. Maybe start an offshoot of the pro tour for females only for a few years to gain interest would help.
Daniel: In my Magic meet-up group, the players tell me there was a female player before me, but she always wanted to socialize during the games. They seemed to see this as a negative thing. However, I’m the same way, so they’re stuck! When everyone gets together to eat, drink, and play cards, how can I NOT see it as a social gathering? I love to chat with my opponents about non-game subjects. So maybe I forget to declare my attackers sometime, but it’s casual play so who cares?
An all female pro-tour would gain a LOT of publicity, just like all-female video game teams like PMS and the Frag Dolls gain lots of (usually male) attention. However, I doubt it would promote equality among male and female Magic players.
As a sociology PhD who has done a lot of pondering, discussing (with others who have done gendered/geek reserach, as well as the common geek/gamer), and done a little research myself; I can say that Adrian brings up an important point. One thing to remember is that no matter how many socially non-awkward Magic players there are, a lot of the population still comes from the realms of nerd/geekdom. Nerd/geeks (peoples preferred term varies) beyond being socially awkward, often times portray hyper-masculinity, seemingly as a way of over compensating for previous emasculation. You see this in the levels of misogyny and homophobia in the gamer community. This is not to ultra-competitive level is at fault for this, but competitive players generally begin somewhere (FNMs/casual stores), and these places this type of attitude runs rampant.
I think there are a couple of things that need to be thought about here that validate points already made… First of all, kali anderson did win the nashville star city event a few months ago… So to me it is a misnomer to say that the competitive environment is not somewhere a woman wouldn’t want to or couldn’t survive… Instead, I have a different theory. Women are the fairer sex, a notion most would agree on without question. I personally think it is a status thing, much the same as it is when a jock hears about magic… A person of either of those statuses frowns on magic bc they don’t dig geek funk… I’m here to tell you that a nervous dork smells terrible and I think that’s a big part of the problem… Perhaps as much as 75 percent…
I was at DC as well and while I don’t really want to comment on the philosophical questions in this article I will share these observations.
1. 3 of the 6 most interesting and insightful Magic players I talked to at the tournament were female. One was a more casual player who commented that her deck was not optimized, but that she had made it more comfortable for her to play. I think the maturity to make those kind of decisions separates good players from bad. Most people just want to play the “best” deck even if it requires analysis above their ability. As was told to me at the GP it’s why you see Ad Naseum Tendrils at the top or bottom of the standings, never mediocre. Someone either has the analytical skills and on the fly statistical knowledge to approximate best value decisions, or they don’t. I feel like male Magic players have more of an ego and would go with the deck that would be best in the hands of the most skillful player because of course every male magic player knows they can play any deck to its full potential.
2. Like it or not, women are generally more of the caretaker of children. I’m not saying this is universally true or that it necessarily should be so. So while young fathers may still continue to play the game as their hobby, young mothers are often at home watching the kids. I’m not saying this is fair or right, only making empirical observations.
3. I went to a college that was all male until well in to the second half of the 20th century. There is an awkwardness that arises when there is a ratio of women to men that doesn’t balance very well. Certainly some women, girlfriends and wives for example, are not looked as potential girls to court, but by and large a decently attractive female player causes issues for a group of male players, similarly to what it did at Caltech. In no particular order:
-If you are “too nice” to them you obviously want in their pants, EVEN IF you are that nice to other male players.
-The girls in question feel uncomfortable being pursued by so many other players.
-There is a lot of misogyny … A LOT.
-If two men are pursuing the same woman it can cause issues between the two of them.
-Sometimes guys just like guy time.
I was only introduced to magic a year and a half ago as my now fiance admitted on our first date he was a geek and competitively plays a fantasy card game called Magic: The Gathering. At the time I’d never even heard of the game let alone any connotations, good or bad. Since then I have learned how to play and quite enjoy casual matches with my fiance for fun or to test decks.
I have never entered a competition and don’t plan to anytime soon. Personally, taking the game to the high competitive level I’ve seen at PTQs and even smaller tournaments takes a lot of the fun out of it, especially if you end up matched against a silent “rules lawyer” or someone trying to be sneaky, male or female.
However, at the Grand Prix in DC this past weekend I went one day to support my fiance and watched several side events including legacy and EDH games. I think these games are a great way to be a part of the greater Magic community at big events and still have a lot of fun in a more casual setting if you’re just not that into “hardcore,” and the lack of a line for the woman’s restroom was a definite plus!
Klancie
Also, I agree with dizzy d…the smell is quite remarkable…
Hello,Lauren,and Congraturations for qualifying!
I’m a Japanese pro player of magic, maybe known as semi-finalist in pt Austin.
Here in Japan, there are few female players. I hope there are more and more. So, can I translate this fantastic article into Japanese and post to my blog?
I am also one of the players who put the biggest value onto winning, though I become to change this mind. Magic is a game, we should enjoy playing.
I look forward to seeing you or playing against you, in Amsterdam !
Naoki: You may certainly translate my article! However, I am not a pro tour qualifier, I was just playing casually. Good luck!
As a (single) competitive magic player I have to agree with the following statements… but I also long for the day when I can walk into a PTQ and be seen as Alexis, the magic player and not *whispers* Look-There’s a GIRL!
-If you are “too nice” to them you obviously want in their pants, EVEN IF you are that nice to other male players.
-The girls in question feel uncomfortable being pursued by so many other players.
-There is a lot of misogyny … A LOT.
-If two men are pursuing the same woman it can cause issues between the two of them.
-Sometimes guys just like guy time.
At first I appreciated the attention and still play to my natural advantages as a woman, but I would LOVE to meet another girl who takes the game seriously but still has fun. Being around “the guys” all the time is not an issue because I have always fit in with the boys, but there have been times where my gender WAS an issue. It is still upsetting to me that at any given large event (PTQ’s, Nationals Qualifiers, States) I can count the number of women playing, and I can generally count them on two hands.
I have been told that playing against a women is more difficult for some men because in general our play style is different and harder to predict, so I guess that leads to another advantage, but admittedly I feel as though I am capable of winning on my own accord; outside of gender generalizations.
Thanks for writing this article, I will be sure to pass it on within my magic communities, if nothing else to prove that the existence of other female magic players (outside of myself and the few others I have met) do inevitably exist.
[...] my post about Magic playing women was picked up by the Starkington Post the other day, I’ve received a lot of Magic interested [...]
I would put more of an eloborate 2 cents in here, but I think Adrian hit the nail on the head. “Rape” being used to describe game outcomes is a very profound example of the type of mysoginistic language that permeates gaming culture. And to dissect any culture, one can always find a good starting point by examining the language (I have a MA in Linguistics).
Society as a whole needs work on equality in social stratification of gender roles. Competitive MTG players are at least two or three evolutionary steps behind that, I am afraid.
I certainly wish there were more women that played Magic. I always enjoy chatting with female players at tournaments. It is deffinitly a nice break from all the other dudes. A funny observation I have had as a male with a more traditionaly female spelling of my first name is that every large (say 60+ players)tournament I have ever played in has seen me paired against at least two female players in the room within the first 3 to 4 rounds of the tournament. I’m usually cool with that. I do find them to be a lot harder to play against because they don’t always make the play that seems logical to me. Not necessarily a worse play just different.
Thanks for posting this; it has sparked an interesting conversation in my Texas mtg community: http://www.texasmagiczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3956
I am a more competitive (not necessarily succesfully so hah) magic player that has found the transition from the casual magic scene to the tournament scene to be…interesting to say the least. Our discussion sadly ended for awhile when it devolved into discussing female magic players into discussin what female magic players look like. For example, Lauren Lee’s picture was posted in the discussion, along with others. I honestly feel that a lot of it is a microcosm of the general societal treatment of women, just that female mtg players are smart women that aren’t willing to put up and shut up! Putting men in a position of being beaten by ‘a girl’ makes them angsty. I personally find it delicious to make them eat their words!
Zatanna: I’m curious about whether male Magic player photos spark the same sort of discussion. I intern at a video game blog, and when we post the photos of game developers, people always make comments about their physical characteristics, for example, the developer’s pierced ear or bald head. I can imagine that for women it would just devolve into a “hot or not” discussion though.
@zatanna – HEY they aren’t discussing Lauren Lee’s photo, they’re discussing MINE! so mean.
[...] few days ago, I wrote about why I don’t think many women play Magic: The Gathering. In return, I have received (along with many words of support), an overwhelming tirade about my [...]
Man sharing the same first name is confusing to people apparently.
I’m Lauren Lee. She’s Lauren Rae Orsini. I’m ASIAN. She’s NOT. :/
Oh well. That’s okay.
I’m glad my picture isn’t easy to find.
Lauren Lee, you actually have a picture linked to you. You do coverage for GG? That is the one I had mentioned. I tihnk it was posted outside of the context of your comment on here, which I thought was interesting. You and Melissa deTora.
When men are discussed it generally devolves into a faux homosexually tinged series of jokes that diverts the subject away from whatever was being discussed. But yes, guys don’t get the overall hot-or-not thing …I have noticed that not just in magic, but overall..it comes down to specific features and not an overall ‘judgement’.
I agree with Adrian re: the studies cited. The problem with many of those studies is that they lead people to the conclusion of “Oh, women are inherently like X while men are inherently like Y,” and then draw conclusions based on those assumptions.
That assumption leaves out an examination of how culture plays a role in determining the psychology of humans, an effect so powerful it can even impact our physiology, exactly the type of thing that can lead to extensive “differences” between men and women, though they’re not actually “inherent.”
If someone wonders why more women don’t play competitive Magic then all they have to is read the thread linked above to the Texas Magic Zone. Seriously, read the entire thread if you can stomach it. All the answers are right there.
Women like to be treated with respect (shocking, I know), and there isn’t much respect for anyone in competitive Magic. I’ve noticed a lot of boys and some men cut down their own friends, their enemies, girls/women, gay people, anyone they fear or consider different, and so on. There’s plenty of that going on in the Texas Magic Zone forum.
tl;dr: Mocking is alive and well in Magic. It’s an environment that I don’t want to be a part of.
I found this post interesting, and have a somewhat more lengthy reply that I didn’t feel like posting here. For those interested, here is the link:
http://carefulstudy.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-women-in-magic.html
My response / further elaboration:
http://mulldrifting.blogspot.com/2010/05/getting-girls-into-magic.html
To the person complaining about the Texas Magic Zone forum:
Please don’t take that stuff too seriously. It’s a forum of friends who joke around all the time.
I’m guessing the main reason more women don’t play is that a lot of men are unholy shits around women.
@binger: yeah, and that kind of ‘joking’ makes a really uncomfortable environment for women. Don’t make excuses for bad behavior.
MH, that forum is not an enviornment suitable for women and children.
At least that forum is not a religion, like say Islam. Hope you like a fashionable hijab if you’re born into it.
Women playing magic. The thought to me never seemed to be an issue. Of coarse I think I married the lucifer of magic. My wife first started play a year after we meet when I bought the 360 duels of the planswalkers game and it rekindled my spark. When she asked what I was doing she said my face lit up so much. So I taught her. And let me tell you she has it all. The talk the lingo. The only thing she seems to lack is the puzzle solving. That’s where I come in. I love combos. Like font of mythos into a ruinflare to a twincast. The first time that happened to ne in a tourny was my vamps against his traps and he hit me for twinty in one turn. It was beautiful. Jaw dropped all I could do was smile and say dang that was tight.
She couldn’t grasp that . Until I bbuilt here a mono blue mill with telemin performance. She piped off 2 tome scour two me annd then a telemin perform on my brother and milled his entire deck in on turn. She cheesed from ear to ear. So I guess it’s just who you know.
binger says: “At least that forum is not a religion, like say Islam. Hope you like a fashionable hijab if you’re born into it.”
this reminds me of one of my BFFs and a local-competitive player (a girl!) from Minnesota who is also a Somali interpreter and an observant Muslim. She is by far the ornerier and also more focused and self-disciplined with respect to Magic. There are severe cultural barriers to women from her culture entering fantasy card game competition alongside men, oddly enough few if any of those come from her faith.
Great article, Lauren and great comments. To anyone who thinks women can’t be competitive I have photos that disagree. Granted they are from almost a decade ago (2001) but the women playing against each other in them were ALL competent and competitive. Most were also very sociable too which is sorry to say it a cut above the average.
The pics for those interested: http://outofthebrokensky.com/photos/ngphotos.html
(Yes the tourney was kind of sexist being a women’s only world invitational (By some sponsor I don’t recall.) I took the pics for the old Neutral Ground website. The event went well, the ladies were all great sports and kicked butt. Every game was tight and interesting. No one got irate or made a stink of any kind.
My point is I think Women tend to be better competitors when they want to be because they approach it from a less personal point of view. (That would be the maturity mentioned before.) The women Ive met who DO compete are not only asskickers but they tend to do it with style.
Frankly I am surprised there hasn’t been a Lady PT winner, or world champ yet.
Bottom line: gaming isn’t merely a male dominated culture but it is also mainly propagated by us men to other men (and boys). We don’t even try to tell women about our games because we assume they won’t be interested. I taught my gf how to play as soon as I learned how to play and she didn’t really take to it right away. It wasn’t the so much trappings as the many rules which at the time were not only unintuitive but occasionally down right confusing even if you had years of logic training. She also complained about the math. Not because she couldn’t do it but because she disliked having to do it so often for something so trivial as a game.
It wasn’t until I took on the burden of the deckmaking and the score keeping and rules lawyering that she really got interested. She had faith in my sense of fairness and wasn’t really all that concerned with who won anyway though she did her best to kick my behind. And she did often enough. We don’t play anymore because I sold my cards a long time ago, and she wasn’t into enough to enjoy playing with proxies. And certainly not enough to put up with Wizarding decks (60 card poker decks + lists with the appropriate cards matched to suits and numbers.)
Now I think if I was a more competitive competent player myself my girl friend my very well have become more so her self because her interest was in sharing my interest. It isn’t something she would have picked up on her own because she is more interested in other things. The math, fantasy aspects, and general complexity would have been turn offs without a guide. I suspect this isn’t so much a gender issue as a cultural one.
Maybe if a woman shipped a big magic tourney or did something relevant, maybe they’d be taken more seriously in magic. As of now they’re just getting unfair coverage for doing mediocre things.
Sean: Actually, the Magic Grand Prix that was actually the tourney I wrote about in this piece was organized by a woman, Laurel Chiat and also head-judged by a woman. Still, the tourney itself had only 30 or so female attendees.
I wish more women played. I have a local card store that my boyfriend and I go to play and im always the only girl there. Im also a hardcore gamer.
Then again my two best friends, both female, play magic and are also hardcore gamers.
There are alot more women out there playing these games than most think. Some are also just afraid to admit to it.
-Amanda.
Sean: First, it’s a pure numbers game that there aren’t more women making bigger names for themselves, if you pick any 30 players out of 1,900, there is very little probability that they will make top 8, regardless of gender. If you aren’t interested in having a conversation about women in magic, then don’t post a response to an article about women in magic.
I’ve been playing for about year and I’ve gone to some bigger tournaments, but it’s exhausting because I feel like I’m playing for women everywhere. When I don’t dazzle my opponent or make a play mistake, I feel as though all I’m doing is reinforcing stereotypes. Even well intentioned players treat me a little bit like a circus freak, I know I stand out at tournaments and I’m not interested in being stared at. Additionally, Ryan’s earlier point of men being nice is true the other way around, if I want to be friendly and chat a little bit, is my opponent going to see it as flirting? Is he going to go back to his play-test group and talk about how I must want him (I’m happily married!!)? The dynamic of being one of few women playing is more stressful than I’m looking for in a hobby, so I’m a “Timmy” and I’m okay with that.
Laura: I’m also a Timmy. I hope it’s apparent from my post that I’m exclusively casual. However, I might consider more competitive Magic if my gender didn’t make me feel so judged all the time!
Guy here. I wish more women played for the very reason that they’re not as competitive. When I went to the Rise of the Edlrazi prerelease event, the most fun I had was playing against a woman, even though I lost horribly. We played a very fun and close two games, and we were equally disappointed in the terrible draw that I had third game. It was one of those moments where I sat and thought “This is why I play Magic.” I’ll take losing to a well-made deck against an appreciative woman over winning a blowout against a ubercompetitive man any day.
@ Paul- I do not have any “real” numbers, but if one observes “gaming culture” you would be hard pressed in substantiating the statement “gaming is not a male dominated culture”.
Just look at the way that even the art manifests in these games. I regularly see guys ogle and discuss in forums about “side boob” and “ass shots”. But it is not just the art of women that demonstrates the demographic that R & D develop for, just look at the men. Even the “wizards”, which are mythologically less physically endowed, are buff guys that I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Point: the art of men (be it MTG, D & D, Warhammer, etc.) is hypermasculine. The art of women is oversexualized and hypofeminine (meaning they are small and less threatening than the art of men).
That is one of the main elements in determining who these people are marketing to. Women can play, do play, but are not as marketed to as men with these sorts of products. These subtle decisions are made with tireless efforts of focus groups, teams of developers, artists,and marketing experts who all have the knowledge of how to tap into specific demographic preferences.
Good points. Also guys are jerks in enviorments like this. If a guy beats a girl then it’s you’re a bad ass you beat a girl or if a guy loses then it’s hahahahahaha you lost to a girl, unintenially rude to her. Like about magic kick back hang out with friends bs. Dislike losing streaks.
Hi Lauren,
Thanks for the article. I don’t play magic and personally can’t even begin to understand it (the rules/decks/etc) or don’t really have an interest, but my boyfriend is into it. I have to admit there is a bit of a stigma about the types of people who play magic–and I was a little weirded out at first (I know, this makes me sound like an uberbitch) but I was just concerned that he would get so engrossed in it he wouldn’t have time for me. But then I thought about it and it’s like anything else: golf, fantasy baseball etc. I realized he’s still hot, fun, interested in other things (including me) and he puts up with my endless fashion rants. I’m slowly erasing the stereotypes and the stigma. I think understanding Magic from a female perspective helps–so thanks.
“@ Paul- I do not have any “real” numbers, but if one observes “gaming culture” you would be hard pressed in substantiating the statement “gaming is not a male dominated culture”.”
@ Andrew, sure glad we are on the same page then. Since my statement was as follows: “Bottom line: gaming isn’t merely a male dominated culture but it is also mainly propagated by us men to other men (and boys)…”
Meaning not only do I agree with you but I think it is a problem.
Have to somehow agree with what Sean is saying here, even though there are girls who do well in tournaments, there’s alot of gossipy, unnecessary coverage, like ‘she is x pro players gf’ (actually mentioned on an mtg column, of all places!). “X players’s GF” is possibly the worse stigma I can think of, I mean, it invalidates you in all possible ways, either people think you just suck, or people think you’re only good cos your BF helps you. There’s too much of this ‘girl’ stigma attached to nearly any girls in magic, it feels like we have so much more to prove. Can’t even believe they put a list of girls in competitive magic on wikipedia, as if we are some freaks of nature. Even if I did cash in my PT, I wouldn’t feel it was very wiki-worthy. Maybe top 8 is worth mentioning, but still the whole ‘girl’ thing is kind of overrated in general. We all have brains, some people are smart, whether they are men or women, therefore some people can do well in magic. Doesn’t have to be so “Oh, a girl CAN play, wow” or “Oh, girls suck at magic”. I’ve played against guys who REALLY suck at magic, so its not a gender thing. They will have all the pieces to logically win with, yet they fail to see it and do something that ultimately makes them lose the game. But that’s magic, and hey, we basically all make mistakes, apart from these uber elite players who still ‘might’ make mistakes. Since there are so few females in tournaments, obviously they get observed more, judged more. It’s so polarised, either you get labelled as a scrub, or “Wow you can actually play”. That in itself is kind of demeaning, that people judge so much, and also make a big fuss either when a girl cashes in tourney, or in this secret ‘Girls suck’ kind of topic that is whispered among men.
I guess females are a curiousity only because they are rare in Magic, its just human instinct. Alot of guys will naturally be attracted or curious about ANY girl in the room when surrounded by 30-300 other guys. It’s about the numbers. In any normal social setting, we see mostly a balance of females and males (not in all countries, but generally), so its weird being in a place with only males. Its like clastrophobic for some women, or like a “Where’s Wally”. I can’t fault guys for being attracted to these girls, since its possibly a fascination that marries two of their interests: Magic and girls. That’s my explanation for it. That’s why its weird for females in Magic though. You stick out way too much, way more than you should. If you’ve just won a PTQ like anyone else, or qualified like other people, doing it the hard way, you feel like you want a least some respect. A part of the curiousity is probably respect, but I think a part of the curiousity is also, “Can she live up to expectations”. And the answer is usually, “Maybe not”, depending on what your expectations are. There’s no gravy-trainer girl on the PT. We won’t be able to live up to expectations like that until one of the very few of us, actually exceeds that. But maybe someone will breakthough sometime, at least there are girls who play competitively. We’re basically outnumbered though, and alot of guys (a lot more!) are also trying very hard to win the PT at the same time, and when you count the number of people in the PTs, it’s pretty hard to win. You need both luck and superb skill to make it to top8, so statistically, thats going to be pretty hard for girls due to the sheer numbers.
Great article, Lauren! I’m late to the game here, but I wanted to share. I’m a woman Magic player too. I got interested because of my husband. It was either be a gaming widow or join in! However, it’s been fun.
I’ve had issues with the “I have to play a girl?!” mentality at in person tournaments. Secretly, I enjoy taking down a 20-something male who thinks he’s got me beat as soon as he lays eyes on me. The jerks get special treatment before I send over my best alpha strike. I’ll admit to playing the “relax, you’re playing a girl” card in order to set up a false sense of security in my opponent. Why not play off their misconception? I have found on occasion that these exchanges have changed my opponent’s opinions about female players.
After an absence from the game, my hubby and I have returned to MTGO. I’ve found that a lot of the issues related to my gender don’t pop up online. Most people don’t guess from my screen name that I am a woman. Sure, MTGO has it’s share of immature players just like the in person play, but it’s been nice to not be sized up as I sit down to a game. I wrote a MTG origin story on my blog if you are interested. ‘Let me know if you join the MTGO ranks. I’d love to play you in the casual room.
I’m late but after watching a game last night (first time) I have to say this: There are many MtG nerds that never have seen a woman close up (besides mom) that it is no wonder no one wants to come near them! I’m not kidding. I thought that was a cliche but it is not, unfortunately. I think it is a great game tho.
I just started playing Magic last week when my boyfriend introduced me to it. I’m a big aficionado of Sci-Fi and Fantasy; he’s a football fan. MTG is something for both of us: a game for him and a great fantasy element for me. However, I think saying that women aren’t competitive isn’t accurate – we’re just competitive in different ways. Yeah, I like to shop, but far less than I like to cycle NYC streets and yell at cabbies and stupid pedestrians (way more thrilling than any video game)! Although I’ve only won twice so far (we’ve played MTG four nights, including some wicked matched on Valentine’s Day!) I must say that I very much enjoy slaughtering! But I don’t gloat and I also take my losses as learning experiences. (However, once I get better, I might gloat a little!)
I actually think MTG is really suited to women. I love the zillion details and rules, I like the math element (since I stopped playing darts, my quick math could use some sharpening other than figuring out tips), and the art is stunning! Plus, I love to shop and collect, and it’s nice when cards cost as little as $0.05 and take up very little space! I also like that MTG is different each time you play, and building decks is awesome. The power of selecting and rejecting cards has kept me up late a few night this week and made me sleepy at work. I’m totally a little troll ogling my cards!
That I find MTG so addictive so quickly is strange to me! I used to rail on my friends in high school who played, and I am not into a lot of games. I think the complexity really appeals to me, and I find myself dreaming about the game.
I can’t wait until I understand the rules well enough for me and my boyfriend to go to a Friday Night Magic event! It’s also cool because in this crap economy, you can have hours & hours of fun for less than the cost of a couple dinners out.
[...] @thejrrr – Big Show @mtgmedina – The LevelerGuest: Lauren Orsini @laureninspacehttp://otakujournalist.com/why-dont-more-women-play-magic/ http://otakujournalist.com/how-to-date-an-otaku/ [...]
[...] to the central limit theorem. Just something to consider before you conclude that women are not “into that (competitive) aspect of the game.” Yes, differences do exist in how men and women relate to games like Magc: The Gathering, but do we [...]
Many activities appeal more to one gender than the other. This isn’t news.
Women are less likely to be into sports. This also isn’t news.
As a woman who has played with many different people in many different environments I can tell you that a lot of women play casually for fun and bonding. They don’t go to tournaments because the game played in that environment is more like a sport (same cards, different game).
I don’t think this is something that needs to be changed, fixed or overcome.
Thoughts?
IMPORTANT DISTINCTION:
Magic is a girl thing, tournaments are not!
agree, agree, agree, and also…hope this isnt too forward…but…uh…marry me?
Thanks for the compliment, but already engaged!