It's been almost a month since I last posted an article but I've been spurned into action by a recent article on Bell of Lost Souls about women in wargaming. More specifically, I've been inspired to write this article because of the comments section for that article. I've simultaneously been encouraged and saddened by the responses to the article, which only asserted that Warmachine/Hordes has a greater percentage of their demographic as women than other miniatures games. Actually, I tend to find that Malifaux has more women, but the point that most people at the site took away from the brief question was that Games Workshop games tend to have very few female players. Larry Vela (the author) asked why that might be, and the responses have been a mix of supportive and highly offensive (not sure if trolling or not). Interestingly, there was an article written the other day about the same topic in video games only a couple of days ago (link) and the timing cannot be more perfect. The difference, of course, is that the article I just linked came from a woman's perspective and she answers some common questions posed to women, which I think apply to wargames just as well as they do to video games:
So what should a proper female lead look like? Where do you draw the line between “attractive” and “cheap pandering cheesecake”? Which female leads resonate with women? Which ones repel them? Is it better to have a variable gender protagonist like in Fable II where you can choose a gender that basically doesn’t matter, or is it better to have a protagonist with a specifically crafted character? What genres of action-type badassery are most attractive to females, and would make a good starting point for a developer looking to court a female audience?These are all great questions and I'd like to discuss a brief look into two games and address the question of why we don't see as many women playing miniatures games, and those that do seem to play particular game systems over others.
