I have a bit of a gripe. Ok, a whinge, a whine, whatever. 

For those who follow me and may not know, I’m a girl. A girl who plays World of Warcraft. A LOT. I raid in two teams, one of which I am raid leader of (the one I post about on here most). I visit mmo-champion on a daily basis, I actually pay for askmrrobot’s advice, hell I even laugh/cringe at Dark Legacy comics because sometimes they hit a little too close to home (case in point). And I miss fatboss guides like crazy. I’m not “hardcore” but I do consider myself a gamer, and not a shitty one either.

So my issue is this. In my adventures on the internet I come across many WoW podcasts and videos, some of which are pretty great. Most of these are presented by males – something I have no issue with. The issue I do have is with the pdocasts and videos done by women. Because all of them that I’ve seen/heard feature women who feel the need to be overly perky or excitable. And it drives me nuts.  I’m sure these women are perfectly lovely people, and I love that they’re doing things that show girls actually do play games – that’s awesome. But it makes me wonder why they behave in this manner. Is this how they really speak on a day to day basis? Or is it a persona they feel they need to put on in order for people to listen to them? 

Personally, I can’t relate to them at all and find them very difficult to watch. I can’t stand that what they’re saying is punctuated with moments like this. Who is that for? Do guys take that seriously? Does it make them listen more? Do women relate to that at all, or does no-one care at all about targeting these videos to other women? 

I just want to listen to someone talk about WoW seriously without feeling the need to dumb it down or be overly “girly”. Talk to me about strats. Talk to me about gear changes and new raids and what you think about new stuff being introduced in upcoming patches. Talk to me about it seriously. You can have fun, but overly girly – not for me. Because that’s now how I am when I’m gaming. Not even a little bit. These women do not represent me as a female gamer. (I will reiterate this here – I’m sure these women are all wonderful people and love the game probably as much as I do. This isn’t about who they are as people, but how they are presenting themselves). 

So I’ll open the can of worms here and now – is this representation of female gamers one of the reasons so many males don’t take female gamers seriously? 

Maybe I’m just being a bitch. Maybe this is just how these women talk and it’s a coincidence that they’ve all spoken/presented themselves this way in what I’ve seen/heard (and let’s face it – I haven’t seen/heard everything out there!)… What do you think?