Okay, we must be talking about different things then. Running a girls only tournament is very different from just general support and encouragement of females who have an interest in the games. Your friend was going to be shy regardless of what the topic was, though I’m happy for her working her way out of her shell.
Yeah, again, just look at LOSF. The girls who played still play, and the girls who played for that tournament don’t play anymore. There’s precedent here.
Encouraging more female gamers to join the FGC is a good idea, however, using EVO as the means is terrible (imo). EVO is supposed to be about the best players in the country competing, not about making specific groups of people feel accepted. Maybe local communities can setup female-only events, like A.I. did last year. I think that would have a better result.
The outrage in here is extremely unwarranted especially considering this tourney isn’t taking away the spot of any other games. You will still be able to enter the main SSF4 tourney, and you know what, so will any of the other girls who want to partake in the main tourney. If you’re A.) not a girl and B.) don’t know any girls who play/want to play sf, I don’t see how this would affect you any more than the evo staff announcing that Smash is gonna be in the lineup or something (or anything else you normally wouldn’t care about).
Lol I wonder if any of you guys have even talked to girls in the past year, much less know any that actively play fighting games. I just told some girls I know that play sf4 about this and they thought it was a GREAT idea and plan on entering.
I definitely see where you’re coming from, but I would like to hear how you would bring about trying to attract a severely under-represented demographic to the biggest fighting game tourney in North America, much less participate in it?
And to all those guys who think heckling is going to be an issue, it can’t be any worse than all the shit-talking from NY players or Marvel community that one comes to expect at most majors 
. I’m sure girls can handle shit-talking just as well or as terribly as the rest of us.
The thing is the Evo staff is running this tourney to support the female gamers, clearly. And that’s why I’m saying that this tourney IS a good idea for those females who need the support…it’s just a tourney where they can get comfortable playing other people who aren’t going to completely eat their face (Or maybe they will who knows)
In that case isn’t it best if girls in the community advertise the main thing to others who may be interested, you know just like try and round up people in your area to go to the real tournament together and encourage others to do the same, hell if you get knocked out there’s still casuals or just general spectating to have fun with, make a trip of it, the support of friends sounds a lot better then the clumsy attempt of support via segregation.
They will. Did you see what happened last year? Shitstorm.
With all due respect, I’m pretty sure I get the point. Let me see if I get it straight. Many of the girls are offended and look at this event as official recognition that we think they aren’t capable of competing with their male counterparts. The guys think it’s dumb because if these girls were good enough to compete, then they’d just compete in the main tournament and so what we’ll be left with is a bunch of scrubby play while jack-asses heckle them. Sound about right?
I get it. I just think it’s sad that that’s the way it is. First off, assuming the women’s tournament would be scrubby seems more insulting than proposing it in the first place. From the girls side, I guess I sort of get it. It singles them out. But there really shouldn’t be any negative connotation carried with that. I mean, I wouldn’t feel ashamed of joining a side tourney for West Coast people only. If people really just wanted to see who’s the best person on the West Coast, then hey, why not.
IMHO, this is the best and only reason they should consider canceling this. If most of the women really don’t want to play in this and find it offensive, then it obviously will not serve the purpose they intended. If so, ya, go ahead and can it.
I probably worded that poorly. Most of the time I consider myself to be “semi-competitive”. I help hold bi-weekly ranbats for HDR and I go to Evo, Devastation, WCW, etc. I also play almost every day and occasionally I’ll get together with other people to practice before a tournament. But if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t normally train to win. I don’t normally spend much time in training mode. And I don’t focus my play as well as I could by spending more time trying to find great players with various characters to get better at my bad match-ups, etc. I mostly just play “for fun” and hope to get better while I do it. And that’s different than actually training to be my best. That’s what I mean by semi-competitive.
So yeah, I think that girls who plays like I do might actually buckle down a bit and really train hard, instead of just play, if they thought they had a shot at winning. I know I probably would. I should do that more often myself, but that’s another story…
Perhaps. But when is another time that all of the best players from around the world get together? BTW, maybe this thing would be less offensive if they called it “The 1st annual Strongest Woman in the World” competition?
I’m not talking about girls who don’t play. It’s not like I think some girl is gonna get bored playing Bejeweled and at random turn on the Evo stream and go “Oh shit, I should get into that!” I’m talking about the women that already are avid FG players but decided not to go to Evo because of lack of confidence.
Ya, it could be a fiasco. And it certainly will be if most of the serious female FG players are against it. But it also has the potential to create “famous” female players that inspire other girls. It also has the potential for creating comradery amongst female players that live across the nation/world by bringing them together. Anything can happen. It’s really what people make out of it that decides its fate.
I can totally sympathize with that. Way back in the day (I’m old!), I was dating this girl when Killer Instinct came out. I played it all the time and eventually got her to play it with me on the SNES. For quite a while, whenever we would go to an arcade she wouldn’t play. She’d just watch me, because she didn’t want to be embarrassed. She eventually got *really *good at the game and always gave me a hell of a fight. And around that time she started playing when we would go to arcades. It was hilarious watching her just mop the floor against these random fools. The look of amazement on their faces was priceless. The thing is, that would have never happened if she only been exposed to arcade play. She would’ve just quit.
I mean it’ll be easier for them to beat other girls…makes them feel a little more confident, after they get a bit more confident they may(or may not) man up and feel they can at least somewhat compete against some of the guys.
Trust me…it’s not THAT easy to find that many female gamers… I think I know about 3-4, but not many find sf4 all that interesting, or participating in tournaments. But Ottawa’s not really a huge city, could be dif in other places.
Totally agree ~
thas mah point exactly ~
So you think Evo should be “the best in the country competing”?
so we might as well just have a tourney with JWong, Daigo, Sabin, John Choii, Chris Hu, Sanford and whoever else playing. . . .but not the rest of the people who can’t be considered the ‘best’ ?
Could you imagine if we did invite these Japanese women? They’d rape our US women in SF4…but then again that would possibly force US women to level up their game as well…we might be getting somewhere…
lol NICE TRY I see what u did there annabelle
I should have put more emphasis on the not trying to make a group of people feel accepted.
Of course Evo isn’t JUST about U.S ~ international players also attend. Did I pass? Is that ok?
I meant what you’re saying makes it seem as though only the best should play, not the mediocre and … just plain scrubby…
But shur, you can ‘pass’
EVO is supposed to be a proving-ground for players, right? If you think that you deserve to be in the “best in the country” category, you work hard, learn your match-ups and compete. I’m sure that’s what happens in these major events.
I can’t feel but every time I read this in this thread it’s White Knight-ing as all hell.
There’s like 10% probably trolls in this thread. LIKE EVERY THREAD ON SRK ABOUT ANYTHING EVER.
The people who aren the best come there to face the best…why travel hundreds of miles to play someone you can beat?
Hopefully, I can offer a little bit of insight. I’ve been a part of the H2O FPS clan, brother clan to the all-girl PMS clan, for about 2 years now. There are plenty of talented female players in PMS clan. There are plenty of casual and mediocre players too. The premise of the clan itself is to give female gamers a comfortable environment to play in a predominantly male dominated past time. I’m for a Ladies SF tournament simply because it would provide this IF HANDLED CORRECTLY.
I know there’s a “Ladies have to break into the scene like everyone else” sentiment that’s going on here and I think it’s a valid viewpoint but the problem is that it’s not the same for a woman to break into the scene as it is a man. Men have more in common with other men in general. Men don’t have to worry about having their looks analyzed by other men or sexism (generally.) It’s always weird being in the severe minority. So no, women won’t have the same experience busting on to any scene. They’ll have it tougher. Couple that with the fact that women tend to have a lower threshold of abuse than most men and it puts up a substantially different wall.
Then you have the “This is insulting to women” crew. It doesn’t have to be insulting to women at all. I think it’s a sign that the community is opening itself up and trying to reach out to female players. The reason I capitalized IF HANDLED CORRECTLY is because you can do things very different ways. If this tournament is advertised as “Awwww look at the chicks play Street Fighter, they’re so cute when they mash.” then, yeah, of course it’s going to be insulting. But if the tournament is handled with the same respect as the others then I don’t see a problem. Women are by far a minority of SF players. Nothing is barring women from entering the main tournament. Why not give them a more comfortable environment to compete in to increase interest and if it’s the ladies’ opinion that “I can whip guys asses, bring it on” then they’ll just enter the main tournament.
Personally, I know female gamers through PMS who would have both viewpoints. Some would be in the “I don’t want to be singled out camp” others would enjoy the tournament put aside for them. I doubt any of them would be so offended that they’d shy away from the game, the scene, or the tournament. The fact of the matter is, IT IS different for a woman to get involved in the FGC and I think treating women differently is OK. Treating women differently doesn’t mean treating them poorly. Separating them into a women’s tournament doesn’t have to imply that girls can’t hack it vs the boys. Implying that the woman’s tourn would be full of scrubs and you wouldn’t want to insult them that way is pretty hypocritical and I don’t think it’s very hard to see why.
Equality-issues aside:
I know that as a simple viewer of Evo my opinion isn’t(and shouldn’t be) much worth, but I’m worried they’re going to air the matches for this in favor of the matches for another game. So even though this may not take a spot from the actual players, it might have an impact on the stream watchers.
Or maybe they air the female tournament during the first half of some day… I can only watch the first half or maybe 2/3 of a day live, before it gets insanely late. Sure, I’ll watch it recorded afterwards… But live is hype.
I’m prolly in a minority though, I bet the “stream monsters” would love to watch some girls play SFIV over things like TvC or BB pools or whatever.
Again, I point to the principle of the thing. Aside from the fact that girls have almost universally panned this idea so far, that is.
Cool…well, I’m assuming they’re local and live in Vegas like you, so it’s just driving across town to play in a tournament. I’m thinking if you did the same thing in St. Louis, you’d get a much different reaction with regards to planning to go. Moreover, how serious are these girls? Were they planning on attending before you told them there was an all girls tourney?
Honestly, I don’t see any effective way to do it at Evo. At best, maybe an exhibition showcasing some of the really girl players (of which I’m not sure there are any in the US currently, at least in SF4, can’t really say for other games). My question is, why is it important to have girls attend if they aren’t necessarily inclined to? It’s one thing if we’re running them off; it’s another if we’re reduce the level of competition to encourage them to come with no real plan to get them on to the same page as the rest of us. If it’s not guiding the girls toward playing with the rest of us, then there’s no point. Otherwise, you’re just making a little sandbox for girls to hide from competition in. That starts at the homebase, getting girls involved in sessions, coming out to arcades and playing with everybody else.
The female role model thing is a good point. I wouldn’t mind if it was a showcase of top girl players as an exhibition event, even as an invite-only tourney. Again, an open tournament for girls only running concurrently with an open tournament for everybody doesn’t do much of anything to get girls to join in with the majority male crowd. If anything else, it isolates them further.
So, like I’ve been saying, a presumed scrub tournament. Even girls like yourself and the ones mentioned above are typecasting girls as scrubs by default. This sounds like a bigger part of the problem than male attitudes toward girl gamers to me, though those certainly have room for improvement as well… Hell, a lot of times guys give girls extra credit just for being there.
Transported from the other thread:
Luckily I don’t have to respond directly to this, since the two things are totally different. On the one hand you have something that seeks to even out inequality brought about by centuries of serious negative disparate treatment of some groups by others, and on the other hand you have something that seeks to separate people even though that group has no innate differences, faces relatively small challenges, and is offended by being separated, and even though the goal behind the separation hasn’t been achieved in the past.
I mean really, a) there are no differences between men and women for the purposes of video games, b) this disparate treatment works to separate rather than to equalize the different groups involved, c) women who have wanted to overcome whatever barriers there are in fighting games have always been able to do so, meaning the barriers between them and playing fighting games well are barely visible in comparison with the walls that confront many people of color, d) women recognize this as offensive instead of socially useful or necessary, and d) the goal that girls will come play who would otherwise not have played simply because there’s an all-women tournament hasn’t worked out in the past and there’s not much reason to think it’ll work out this time.
Affirmative action would be more like what someone else suggested, where you lower the price of entry for women into the main tournament. But you’d still have those other huge differences that would keep the comparison pretty weak. And I still wouldn’t support it.
Imo every minute you don’t retract this idea is an extra minute of injury to a community that really doesn’t need it.
They are strong people who have everything they need to be successful at Street Fighter. The reason’s underlying their underrepresentation are much larger than anything solvable by this kind of top-down treatment, especially if it’s done in an offensive way.