I am completely unqualified to speculate about WOMEN IN EVE. Please don’t read this with the same voice tone as PIGS IN SPACE, as I don’t know many people (or women for that matter) who like being associated with pigs. Or space(ships). Face it, EVE and internet pew pew spaceships are for Geeks.
While there are certainly female geeks, my distant memories of middle school inform the theory that there is less socially adaptive advantage for women to embrace their inner geekdom. Geeky girls have plenty of opportunities to cross over into other social spheres, whereas the male geek may be more stuck in his social stratus in those formative years.
Despite the fact that half of us playing EVE are over 30 and over the gaming hill (defined by being unable to compete with a 15 year old in ultra-twitch FPS due to age-dulled intellect and slow reflexes), the problem with WOMEN IN EVE began in grade school. Boys with geeky tendencies get sucked into video games early. While there is a sizable and growing proportion of gynecogamers, the estrogenergic ones are dwarfed by a testosterone train (shaped like an Avatar Titan) pounding down the gaming section of your local big box store. If you want to see more women in EVE, you need a better gateway drug for the feminine young-uns than the weak Link, Space Invaders and Mario most of us cut our teeth on.
Once the brain has formed, it is nearly impossible to change deep perceptions of the utility in sitting at a computer for hours at a time yelling into a microphone while punching F1 through F4 and talking smack in local. I can’t even get my wife to play Wii with me despite purchasing fodder such as Agony Christie murder games and Lego cooperative love fests. Selling a non-hardcore gamer on EVE falls below futile into grave folly territory. I often wonder why I love the griefer-infested dark Darwinian paradise of New Eden so much myself! Sadly, that love likely betrays a Machiavellian participant in the endless chaotic drama that pulses through the best sandbox on earth.
Given the upward trend in subscriptions, I think CCP has at least been able to attract the cross dressing role player crowd in addition to the uber-I’m-not-gay homophobic mouthbreathers. Maybe CCP should stick to what they know and keep encouraging those cross dressers to Harden the Fuck Up. If a few exceptional females choose to jump on the train now and then, we all benefit. If EVE remains the ultimate sausage fest in a vacuum, at least it is a damn entertaining exercise in exploring the fun to be had on the dark side of the human behavioral spectrum with a bunch of cross-dressing spaceship fetishists. It may cost a few thousand real world dollars to have your Titan ganked by your ex-corpmates, but it is about the fun, damn it! (The fun shall not be confused with the epeen, see mouth breather comment above…)
More banter on the topic of WOMEN IN EVE:
- The Ladies of New Eden
- Is EVE a man's world?
- Sorry, No Pink Spaceships Here Please
- EVE Blog Banter: Chicks 'N Ships
- Eve Blog Banter: The Girls Who Fly Spaceships
- It’s not about fluffy bloody Kittens people!
- Space Boobies Are Bad, m'kay?
- Special Blog Banter: I Like Girls
- Special Edition or making Eve More Casual
- I wish my wife played EVE
- Is there something special about women?
- CK's Blog Banter
- The Female of the Species
- EVE Online Can Appeal to Women By Adding Casual Content
- Blog Banter: The Ladies
- Women Who Want EVE
- Tech 2 stilettos
- New Eden doesn't need to change for Eve – Adam needs to get over himself
- EVE Online and… women (sorta)
- Think Outside the Spaceship
- EVE's monthly banter - Women, women, women
- Girls Just Wanna Have... Guns!
- Draco Horizons (Blog) <-- Needs to add intro (with links) and list of participants
- Don’t change Eve for me!
- Where Are Teh Laydeez of EVE?
- Where Are All The Wenches?
- EVEquality: The Rise of the Female Gamer
- Women? In MY SPACESHIP? Is she from Mars as well?
- Blog Banter: Captain Kirk Hates Eve
- The Female of the Species
- The Ladies of New Eden
- EVE and the X by X Genetic Succession Unit
- Sociability V
- Girl on Girls in Space
- What women want (in Eve)
- Time Is On Our Side
- Roc Appeal <-- Needs to add intro (with links) and list of participants
- Women in EVE
- Getting In Touch With Our Feminine Side
- It's a woman's world (they just don't know it yet!)
- Women in EVE – Can it be done?
- You'd Rather Be Playing The Sims, Right?
- Blog Banter #17 – Women in Eve
- How To Get The Betty’s
- EVE: WTB girls?
- All about EVE
- Ladies to the gunfight
- Hell hath no fury
- The Ladies of New Eden (An Analysis on How Men are not from Mars, and Women are not from Venus)
- EVE Blog Banter 17: The Ladies of New Eden
- The Ladies of New Eden
- Getting ladies to play Eve Online
- Why Don't More Women Play EVE?? <-- Needs a link to the original banter post in the intro
- Getting Girls to Play EVE
- Et Tu, Brutus? » Blog Archive » Girls, Girls, Girls.
- Why I don’t play Eve Online | Restokin
- Ladies of New Eden | My Blog <-- Make sure to add a list of the other participants!
- The female podling « Ore, Pirates, and Pods
- Tinkers Blog: Ladies in Space
- Ideas on How To Attract More Female Pilots <-- Make sure to add a link back to the original post!
- Ladies of Eve - Blog Banter
- Your agent has ended your mission for not attaining more women <- More links to participants please!
- Let's Fly, Ladies!!
- Bringing the Sisters to EVE
- EnerlaNET Forums - 52 days of Eve Online
- In Search of the Sisters of Eve
- EnerlaNET Forums - Be a man! Fight back!
- Getting more Eves in Eve Online
- Making Bannan Peels Relevant: Gender Inclusiveness in CCP's EVE Online
- Daughters of EVE
- Women in Eve
- “Prove It”: Women In EvE
- It’s Hip To Be Square: Taking Videogames Out of the Basement
- The X-Factor
- The Ladies of New Eden... A Blog Banter Entry by Cattie
- Gal-Ristas!
- Question: Tell Me What You Think About This? <-- Needs to add intro (with links) and list of participants
- Ain’t No Sunshine
- What Women Want…
- Lady Vengeance, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pew-Pew
