My parents were at least casual gamers, and they had bought a Coleco console back when I was maybe two years old, and later on my dad bought a PC and we got some shareware games and Master of Orion II. Then I got into the Sonic fandom with its loads of drama. It thickened my skin, and while some criticism does sting, stuff like objectification of women and misogynist insults just don't have the effects they used to. And yes, I do stay in my own backyard more often these days. Also, I like looking at sexy women, and I am a woman. Make of it what you wish

Firstly Thank you people for the feedback! Some good feedback!

@JDacapo and @Ovenhole I'm sorry that you have experienced sexism in gaming communities. That is never nice. Which brings me to something, there has been some subtle sexism on this thread, on the part of some females and a men. No names mentioned. Saying things like 'Women are Awesome' (if you are a woman) is an exclusionary statement. You are excluding men. It is no better than saying 'Men are awesome' (if you are a man). It is not helping the cause of gender tolerance/ equality. I am partly to blame because this kind of topic was bound to bring up some sexist remarks. So I am sorry.

@Charity don't be mad. The point of this thread was either to prove a hypothesis or debunk a gross myth. Where is the harm in learning something new about the game we all love?

With regard to whether Sims 2 (and Sims in general) is more woman than man @Peni Griffin has noted that we don't have the proper statistic

This is true, as @DP_sensei said all of us can just speak from our own experiences

But this is the results so far:
# Most women felt that there is an equal amount of boys and girls that play Sims 2.
# The guys who commented on this have said that there are more women than guys that play Sims 2

Though some women have said that even though they don't think Sims 2 is female dominated, they can understand if it is.

Who is right? I don't know. But it is interesting to see the trends in the responses. Thank you.
Also if you are still interested, please do the poll set up by @maxon: What gender dominates Sims 2? (at least here on mts)

In danger of sounding like a tumblr post...

We as a global society are currently learning more and more that gender, like sexuality isn't just a binary system, but rather a spectrum and certain generic behaviors and interests tend to gravitate towards one end of the spectrum or the other, but they are never ever exclusive.

Personally even though I identify mostly as male I know that I do gravitate towards games that either have a "caring potential"(something you take can take care of), a creative potential (something you can design and create) and or interesting characters and social interaction.

At present I have four games installed on my PC:

Sims 2 (caring, creative and the potential for me to create interesting characters and social interaction)
Crusader Kings 2 (the only strategy game I enjoy, basically you play a Medieval dynasty through the centuries and it has a lot of characters and interaction. You need to placate your vassals, handle your offspring, shmooze the leaders of other realms so they won't attack you etc.)
-Sidenote if somone would make a game that's exactly halfway between Sims and Crusader Kings (basically Sims Medieval but done right) I'd be very very happy.
Terraria (creative potential and caring potential, as well as rudimentary interaction through the NPCs that come to live with you and which you have to protect)
and Final Fantasy IX (interesting characters and social interaction)
I also enjoy those old point and click Adventures due to their humour, story and characters.

To this day I haven't touched a shooter and neither do I ever plan to (I just don't see the appeal)/



Huh I seriously thought you were Japanese/Korean... Once again shows how impressions can be wrong.

@DezzyBoo there is no right or wrong way to play Sims 2. The game is what you make of it. That's what makes this game appealing to different kinds of people.


@Orphalesion you thought @SneakyWingPhoenix is Japanese/ Korean solely on the basis of his avatar? If so, then that's a pretty weak assumption mate. Therefore, it does not reinforce your point.

I am a man. I love Sims for multiple reasons, but one of the main reasons I keep coming back for more are my beautiful Sims. I enjoy making beautiful Sims, especially beautiful female Sims. With over 7gb of thee best bodyshop CC out there my sims look goooooood. Sometimes I play Sims 2 beforehand, to get myself in the mood.

Honestly, If we were only able to make fugly sims I would not come back to play. This is just to express my reasons for playing as a man. Obviously I don't think this is the reason most guys play Sims 2. Tho I'm sure there are other men, and women for that matter, that play Sims 2 for this reason. Or rather, this is a major factor in generating interest in their game.

Also, this is my gameplay, not yours, don't judge

By the amount of let's players and youtuber simmers I see, I think women dominate this game the most.

Just curious, but were did you find them?

I found this study pretty interesting: http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/1...amers-by-genre/

The Sims would fall under the category of Family/Farm Sim, which definitely seems to be on of the more popular genres for women. There's also a survey about playing style that was interesting.

Er...no? Where'd you get that idea? I don't even know what his avatar is...

It was the things he talked about in his posts since he started posting here and the way he talked about it. it reminded me of some friends from Japan and Korea.

Way to make an assumption.

Actually, no. It is no more possible to be "reverse sexist" than it is to be "reverse racist."

Affirmations like "Women are awesome!" and "Black lives matter" are responses to the institutionalization of misogyny and violent racism in the society of the speaker. They aren't excluding men because men assume that they're awesome and have no idea what it feels like to be marginalized on the basis of their gender; and because it's specifically black citizens who are being murdered by policemen in America. (This is a fact, not an opinion. White mass murderers are taken alive all the time while black children with toy guns are shot without warning. We do have statistics on that!)

If you see your own reflection every day, as (white) men do, it seems normal and harmless. You have no doubt that you have a right to be here, that your voice matters, that you can do whatever you feel like doing because look, all those people who resemble you are doing all kinds of things!

This is not how women experience the world. We need to remind ourselves that we're awesome frequently; because the world sure can't be relied on to tell us.

Thank you for your response. Your point is indeed rational, however I respectfully disagree.

Just by the way, I am not white. I am half Somalian (black) half Ethiopian (black)... so 100% black. I don't know why you say I'm white? Also I currently reside (studying) in Caracas in Venezuela. And the crime here is on another level, just in February I got robbed and stabbed two times in the chest and one time in the shoulder. Also I have been a victim of vicious racism in my own home town. Can you say someone tried to assault you because you are different?? So any hint of discrimination affects me very very very deeply.
Also I don't want to trivialize that which USA citizen face, but the opinion we have here is that USA are safe place compared to here.

Good point. And I will say it too: women are awesome. If nothing else, according to the poll results as they are now, women make up approx. two thirds of this forum, so they're ~67% responsible for making this one of the most friendly, helpful and pleasant forums I've been to

I didn't say you were white, Ineedtoworknow. At the time I wrote, I knew nothing about you except that you're male. And now I know that you're a black African in South America, a situation which surely has its own problems and knows something about marginalization.

But here's the thing. Just as being a woman doesn't prevent me from being a racist (I try not to be, but that doesn't mean I always succeed), being black doesn't prevent you from being sexist, though I'm sure you try not to be. My experience of marginalization as a bi white woman in America ought to help me recognize and understand other people's marginalization, but it can't automatically be relied on. Failing to recognize when I'm being racist or ableist or whatever does not make me a bad person; failing to acknowledge my failure when I become aware of it would. It's on me to make a conscious effort, listen to people who are different from me, educate myself about other people's experiences, and act to make a more inclusive world. The worst thing I can possibly do is get defensive when someone points out some privilege of mine that I experience as a right, but they don't get. Defensiveness blocks me from learning.

And the same is true for all of us. We can guard our consciences from acknowledging our shortcomings. Or we can learn from experience and overcome our shortcomings. We can't do both.

And yes, I have been assaulted for being a woman. Fortunately it didn't come to anything. I have in general been lucky in that regard - I had two friends in college who had been raped, one of them twice, which was particularly striking since that college was a bit of a white privilege bastion.

Stay safe. I wouldn't be in Venezuela right now for any money!

I'm a guy. I enjoy the Sims because of the wide -open and endless hybrid gameplay. It's a building game, a family game, a money and career game, a legacy game, a dating & romance game, an intrigue game, and so on, sometimes all at once. Great sandbox design supported by an active and creative community. Like the aforementioned Crusader KIngs, it's an RPG and a Strategy game ... just one without armies. As an RPG , it's far more character driven than many CRPG's I've tried. Sure it's whimsical but there's also moments of pathos (how many games are there that have people die oi old age??). So much to like about it. It doesn't need gore ... there's other games for that (Personally, I play Rolemaster for that *puts on Viking Hat and beats chest*).

It's very cool this site is so inclusive. No badwrongfun debates, no serious "edition wars", no gamergate nonsense. Maybe the women should take credit, it's not a bad thing if it is true.

Going out on a sexist limb, my pet theory is that there's simply a critical mass of mums here. So play as you want, just don't break anything and be home for dinner.

The thing you said about America being a safe place is true. I live in Johannesburg, and when the black lives matter thing happened it dominated the news here in South Africa, which I found bizarre given that America's crime is soft-core in comparison to South Africa's. This Americanization of the world is truly annoying - we are forced to be concerned with the things America is concerned about, when we have much bigger problems at home.

Pardon If I sound off I speak horrible in english, and no I'm not japanese/korea nor even close. I'm Lithuanian.

The Avatar is, fittingly enough, from the Avatar Sequel Series: Legend of Korra. The Guy you see on my profile picture is a chi blocker ; equalist fighter.

So you made the assumption that he is Japanese/ Korean based on the way he talked about subjects? Did you study all his posts? And how is it that Korean/ Japanese are any different from anyone else in the way they talk about things?

Also when the Black Lives thing happened (and dominated news in South Africa) I was shocked since South Africa is the home of pure unadulterated racism - apartheid. Here we have hard-core racism - even now 23 years after the end of Apartheid. So at the time I was thinking we really don't have the time to hear how hard black people have it in the coolest and one of the safest places in the world...
Anyway sorry, I'm going on a tangent here.

You will probably all hate me for this, but yes, women are capable of being sexist - there is no 'reverse sexism' but just sexism. To say otherwise is sexist because it is saying that either women are better than men or that men are capable of more things than women. Yes, you can tell where I am going right now, but yeah, I am not going to try to change your beliefs, and I am not trying to impress anyone here.

And after being ostracized by a fandom in such a way that it reminded me of Judy Blume's "Blubber," while also being accused of yiffsing the aminuls by a couple of chuckleheads ten years ago because I drew anthros, I just haven't a rat's rump to spare.

But I don't remember being subjected to sexism in any video game forums. Maybe I visited the wrong ones, then

This is true.

Two years back, South African universities engaged in what was called #RhodesMustFall. You might have heard about it, it was a movement against the european colonialist-like systems at Universities in South Africa. During this time certain black students expressed their dissatisfaction by graffitiing "F##K WHITE PEOPLE" across universities (below is a picture taken at my university). This was justified by the notion, that some students had, that black people can't be racist. Obviously, this was blatant racism.


My point being, when we allow certain groups of people to say things that are discriminatory without labeling what they say as discriminatory it creates quite a big problem.

I know. And well, I am subscribed to people like Undoomed, Suit Yourself, (really sweet guy) Prince of Queens, Roaming Millennial, Sargon of Akkad, tl;dr, Christina Hoff-Summers, Based Mama, and many more. I don't agree with everything they say, but I am an egalitarian and I think that they have very good heads on their shoulders.

What a lot of people (including feminists) are preaching isn't equality, but revenge - eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Problem is, if everyone keeps taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will all be blind and toothless. Instead, we should forgive. I know it isn't easy to forgive, and I am still struggling with forgiving the people who turned me into their 'Blubber' years ago. Fact of the matter is, it happened over a decade ago, and I was - and still am - no Miss Perfectly Angelic Angel.

No, I think that means you visited the right ones, where all the normal people hang out

And I agree with you, women are capable of being sexist, both towards women and men. Sexism towards women is more common, but I'd bet most of the men here have at some point been subjected to something like "Stop playing that girl game and do manly things!".

Have you ever seen those fights without the dust clouds? Judged on those contortions, both Sims will be in dire need for a chiropractor afterwards. On that matter, they also need chiropractors after woohoo:



For what it matters, the one time I was subjected to sexism in the gaming community, I'm fairly sure the perpetrator hadn't even hit puberty yet.

Why... Oh dear, why. I have to revise my statement in the "if you were a sim"-thread. I no longer want to have wohoo.

Maybe Sims have no skeletons? Wait, no, then they would be a gelatinous blob of flesh. Okay, their skeletons have the flexibility of pipecleaner. Might explain why they never get seriously injured.