Women are taught, in our American culture and likely elsewhere, to value community. Or maybe it's simply more socially acceptable for us to stick our noses into other people's business and worry about their happiness. By no means are men barred from an enjoyment in or a focus upon community, but I am sure it is a highly important for most women.
From the feminine perspective, community does not mean score boards and bragging. Community means communication, cooperation, and caring. We enjoy having like-minded persons with whom we can talk. We often prefer to work together rather than compete. We get a kick out of feeling that we are taking care of people in some need (within reason).
Sometimes we brag about how awesome we are; I see this as a part of learning to fit in to a male-dominated community (when it happens in American culture anyway) because too often we women learn in adolescence to put ourselves down instead. Sometimes we get drawn into flame wars on message boards; I'd hypothesize this has a higher rate of occurring in defense of a friend, percentagewise, rather than in personal aggression, compared to male posters as a whole. But we get embarrassed about proclaiming ourselves to be the best -- many of us have learned not to stand out too far from the pack, and to be self-conscious about being in the spotlight.
One thing I notice in my own experience playing WoW is that women seem to gravitate towards communities that include other women. I read articles and comments talking about the one woman in the raid group speaking for the first time on vent, and the startled silence that follows from the rest of the raid. But for myself, I can easily spend 20 seconds and think of ten other women with whom I have regularly raided in WoW over the past couple of years. I've led 10-man and 25-man raids, switching off from night to night with a handful of other raid leaders, one of whom was another woman. Partly, I expect this concentration of women has to do with men convincing their significant others to play the game with them, and then couples start playing with other couples. But offhand, I can think of three of us who gravitated to the group while not being romantically involved with anyone. I think this may be because we are a group that is inclusive to women. It's more comfortable to seek out company where our kind is obviously welcome, because there are already examples of our kind present.
I notice a contrast in personality types across different groups of geeky women, as well. Some of the women I game with possess a raunchy sense of humor, and they will participate in sexual innuendo in their banter along with the men, or occasionally amongst themselves. Some (like myself) just ignore it as best we can, along with some of the more reserved men. One, from a more religious background, actively protests it and mutes offenders for herself. Then, when I've been to potlucks and gatherings for a Women-in-CS group, everyone is extremely polite and offers little reference to sexuality at all. That may be partly due to cultural differences, since there were international students, and shyness, since it was a less frequent meet up. But it leads me to wonder if gamer women who spend more time around gamer men -- usually inevitable in certain varieties of games, given the skewed gender population -- may pick up behaviors based on what the people around them are doing and saying. A group of only women playing the same kinds of games together since childhood might have a far different code of social acceptability.
A take-away lesson there may be: don't automatically expect a woman new to gaming culture (or new to you) to put up with things you wouldn't say in front of your mother, just because you know another gamer woman who goes along with it.
Another observation about womens' sensitivity to the content of banter and humor: nearly all of the people I have noticed expressing offense for chat content have been women. I can think of several of us who I know dislike hearing people use the term "gay" as an insult, or "rape" in a casual, humorous context. Too many of us have, if not personal experience, good friends who have personal experience being on the wrong side of the realities represented by that kind of language. Given statistics like "one in four women will be a victim of sexual assault in her lifetime," think twice before you declare your intention to "rape" the other team on a player-versus-player field. If you're trying to get women to hang out with you, it's probably best not to routinely make them think of painful memories or unjust scenarios.
Creating an accepting atmosphere for women may not mean giving up the traditional geek culture we know and love. Our student CS group in college had movie nights with Monty Python, MST3K, and assorted science fiction movies. It was still a male-dominated group, but I believe the several of us who were women still enjoyed ourselves just as much. We passed around the same geeky internet links, commented on Hitchhiker's Guide references, and by senior year, I felt very much in sync with the computer scientist geek culture. I remember one day, another student, a guy, walked into our CS class before the bell, spread his arms as he looked at the dozen or so of the rest of us sitting there, and he proclaimed, "My people!" I felt it resonate in my mind. Not all women may adjust to the same experience as easily, but some of us can find a sense of belonging in a male-dominated group.
Finally, it is community that drives women's acceptance or rejection of an identity as a gamer, and not all of that community is within your control as a game player or designer. If a girl's friends think it is nerdy and undesirable to be playing a game, that's a lot of peer pressure to overcome. Here, games like Farmville might do us (as "hardcore" gamers) a favor, as they provide a basis for some related behavior that might be more accessible to younger girls. If they see other people they like playing a game, of course they are more likely to try it out, or admit to playing it. But as long as gaming is "not something girls do," then only outsiders and rebels will publicly join in, or invest in a costly game purchase and subscription.
Granted, there is a draw to being a scarce commodity in gaming culture. It's fun to surprise people, show up out of nowhere as a skilled female player, and to hear that we are desirable and rare from a romantic perspective. For a little while. But there's potential for that to become draining, too. Being the only one of a kind isn't something I think most women would hope for in the long term. So if interested male parties should wish to help with retention of female gamers, I would suggest: treat us respectfully, and help us network to find other female gamers when possible. I'd like to meet more of them, myself.
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