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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 4802795" data-attributes="member: 8447">These questions have been around for quite some time, but matters seem to be advancing the point.Consider in computer games the classic divide:  First Person Shooters versus The Sims.  Now while I know a lot of women who like the former and men who like the latter, the games tend to draw in the gender that you might expect with them.  In other words there is something of a gender divide, but there is enough wash-over to make the potential market worth exploring.In rpgs White Wolf's WoD does attract a noticeable percentage of female players, although as we know so well trying to determine how many and who actually plays games is difficult to determine.  Still, there are aspects of WoD that seem to draw in non-combat inclined players -- the importance of emotion, of consequences to actions, the emphasis on working around to avoid combat.  Indeed, the "surprise hit" of the NWoD line has been Changeling -- I have seen (multiple) whole sessions of that with no physical conflict whatsoever, while there is a lot of emphasis on one's emotional state.  Again, I have seen a lot of women (& men with less interest in combat-games, even traditional non-gamers) attracted to this game.The "problem" (and that is a loaded word, sorry) of most gaming is trying to get outside of the "combat box".  RPGs tend to strongly emphasize combat.  The game rules themselves bear this out -- a huge part of any standard game book is devoted to combat.  Conversely, games that have active rules for dealing with social interaction and/or emotion tracking are pretty light on the ground.  As such, the image of RPGs remains that of "adolescent fantasy", combat without consequences, battle accepted easily and the only reaction to it is a grim smile of satisfaction.  This is necessarily going to drive a certain segment of the population in general.So this is not necessarily a gender divide per se, although there is a  very broad connection.  It could be seen much more as a "combat versus social" divide.  Still, no matter what ever happens, there will always be nongamers ... although it might be possible to reach out to a wider audience by broadening the times of games generally available.</blockquote>

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