As I recall, my main reason for not playing many computer games when I was a girl was that we only had one computer in the house and my brother and mom were always hogging it.
And back before flat screen LCD monitors, I couldn't use a computer very long without getting a bad headache. The old ray-trace monitors really bothered my eyes for some reason. So I tended to use our computer only in short bursts, and once my brother or mom got on the machine it was hard to get another chance.
@GlacierSnow As far as I know ray tracing is a new thing, I think you must mean the old Cathode Ray Tube, CRT, monitors, right? And you're not the only one who's had trouble with them. If their refresh rate were set too low, like 60Hz, they flickered and were horrible to look at.
Before I had bought my first computer almost twenty years ago, I used the computers at my school library a few times, but it made my eyes and head feel absolutely terrible. I had no idea why, and the librarian knew even less about computers than I did, so I had no one to ask about it.
And a few years later I got myself a computer of my own with Windows XP, and it had of course one of those old fashioned CRT monitors too, and it was exactly as bad to look at as those at the library had been.
After a while I somehow found out about the probable cause, and where to find the screen refresh settings. I saw that it was set at 60Hz, so I changed it to 85Hz instead, and immediately it turned into a totally different screen, and I felt so happy and relieved. The constant flickering and eye/head problems were completely gone, and from then on I could easily sit in front of the screen for many hours, writing stories and playing Sims 1 without any discomfort whatsoever.
So, what I wanted to say with telling you this little story, is that I really wish that you and your family had tried this with your monitor too, and probably had gotten a whole new experience, with a screen that's nice and pleasant to look at, and not something that makes you ill.
"The other day I was troubleshooting an issue with an older computer with a CRT monitor and when I looked at it I almost got sick from the flickering screen. Fixing that issue is easy, here is how."
As I recall, my main reason for not playing many computer games when I was a girl was that we only had one computer in the house and my brother and mom were always hogging it.
And back before flat screen LCD monitors, I couldn't use a computer very long without getting a bad headache. The old ray-trace monitors really bothered my eyes for some reason. So I tended to use our computer only in short bursts, and once my brother or mom got on the machine it was hard to get another chance.
@GlacierSnow As far as I know ray tracing is a new thing, I think you must mean the old Cathode Ray Tube, CRT, monitors, right? And you're not the only one who's had trouble with them. If their refresh rate were set too low, like 60Hz, they flickered and were horrible to look at.
Before I had bought my first computer almost twenty years ago, I used the computers at my school library a few times, but it made my eyes and head feel absolutely terrible. I had no idea why, and the librarian knew even less about computers than I did, so I had no one to ask about it.
And a few years later I got myself a computer of my own with Windows XP, and it had of course one of those old fashioned CRT monitors too, and it was exactly as bad to look at as those at the library had been.
After a while I somehow found out about the probable cause, and where to find the screen refresh settings. I saw that it was set at 60Hz, so I changed it to 85Hz instead, and immediately it turned into a totally different screen, and I felt so happy and relieved. The constant flickering and eye/head problems were completely gone, and from then on I could easily sit in front of the screen for many hours, writing stories and playing Sims 1 without any discomfort whatsoever.
So, what I wanted to say with telling you this little story, is that I really wish that you and your family had tried this with your monitor too, and probably had gotten a whole new experience, with a screen that's nice and pleasant to look at, and not something that makes you ill.
"The other day I was troubleshooting an issue with an older computer with a CRT monitor and when I looked at it I almost got sick from the flickering screen. Fixing that issue is easy, here is how."
@SuzyCue72 Yeah, I remembered the wrong term. Sorry. CRT is what I was talking about. And I actually knew about changing the refresh settings. Lots of people back then helpfully pointed it out to me. But it didn't help. Even at faster settings, it still gave me a headache.
The LCD monitors that are not LED backlit are fine for me. I have used them for hours upon hours for many years with no trouble at all. Weirdly, the LED backlit ones aren't. I found that out recently when I got one to replace my old LCD monitor that died, and I ending up having to trade with my husband for his older monitor (non-LED) because no matter what we did with the settings on the new LED backlit monitor it was making me feel sick to my stomach. We were both puzzled because we weren't expecting it to make any difference.
@SuzyCue72 Yeah, I remembered the wrong term. Sorry. CRT is what I was talking about. And I actually knew about changing the refresh settings. Lots of people back then helpfully pointed it out to me. But it didn't help. Even at faster settings, it still gave me a headache.
The LCD monitors that are not LED backlit are fine for me. I have used them for hours upon hours for many years with no trouble at all. Weirdly, the LED backlit ones aren't. I found that out recently when I got one to replace my old LCD monitor that died, and I ending up having to trade with my husband for his older monitor (non-LED) because no matter what we did with the settings on the new LED backlit monitor it was making me feel sick to my stomach. We were both puzzled because we weren't expecting it to make any difference.
@GlacierSnow Okay, it's a pity it didn't work for you like it did for me, but at least you tried, that's always something.
@beadierturtle that's not my experience. As a teen in the 80s most of my friends played video games. We went to the game rooms in NYC to play. And some of my friends owned an Atari system or Nintendo, or were like me and had a no name hand held system. We all played video games - Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Pac Man, etc. We played games.
It wasn't that girls weren't interested in games, or that girls started getting serious about gaming when a digital doll house was made, a reference that I find so insulting. It is that like most industries and things in life, things are geared towards and marketed to men so thus most statistics support more men playing, when there are girls and women playing those same gaming systems from the old Nintendos to the Wiis, Play Stations, etc. Girls and women are playing games. True many of us are not into 1st person shooter games. Women prefer strategy games to killer games, and when the industry is skewed to men and violent games you are going to have statistics that supports that.
I didn't start playing the Sims because I wanted to play dolls, I started playing the sims because I enjoyed building and SimCity was not being rebooted. So, I adjusted my gaming style to play a game where I could build.
I think the Sims has its popularity because it hits a variety of playing styles - builders, designers (fashion & interior), family style play, fantasy play, and everything in between. It is somewhat scripted, but allows tons of flexibility. It allows modding which enables players to take the game into a different direction. Yeah, in a sense it builds on the early days of when children played with action figures & dolls - as it wasn't the toys it was the imagination, the urging of creativity - the story telling.
That my friend is the strength of The Sims - it is a game that allows you to tell your own story. And that is why people lose it when they hear an inkling of a story being brought/programmed into the Sims.
But anywho - I have waxed on too long. Thanks for sharing your story and impression. I just wanted to let you know that way more girls were and are playing video games than you think. And it wasn't the sims that did it. It was Pac Man and Mario Brothers 😉, well at least from my experience.
@LiELF you proved my point. Girls game - However, IT and Game Programmers are predominately male and cater to men.
wocka wocka wockaWho gave that puppy asparagus?please do not send me private messages - they creep me out 🤢🤮😱
I've often wondered if there are differences in the ways males and females approach the game. As mentioned above my sons weren't at all interested in dressing their Sims or decorating. They only wanted to create chaos and mayhem. I can spend hours selecting outfits for my female sims. Choosing the right hairstyle and accessories. With previous versions I loved going cc shopping for hairs and makeup. And I can spend even more time decorating a house. Selecting walls and floors and just the right decor and clutter to give it that lived in look. Also wondering if there are female players who are just the opposite and don't give a hoot about clothing and decorating.
@simgirl1010 my play style is different. I'm with the group that is outraged that the worlds are limited to preset sized lots and a certain number of them. I do love the set designs they have that make each world unique, but I would rather design the world from transportation to water ways and determine what type of culture the city, town, country side will have. Yeah, I am a SimCity girl trying to make the Sims work for her. So, I split my time from building to playing with the sims - trying to create peace and harmony. I could care less what my sims are wearing (well within reason, you can take the girl out of NYC, but you can't take the fashion district out of her. It is hard coded in New Yorkers). But I take great pleasure in seeing the random wackiness the game creates in NPCs and roll with it.
wocka wocka wockaWho gave that puppy asparagus?please do not send me private messages - they creep me out 🤢🤮😱
When I was in my late teens, we were at a relative's house for the holidays and my brother found that my uncle had Wolfenstein 3D. I had liked some of the earlier 3D maze style games, so I started to watch him play. But it was the first time I had ever seen a game in which the enemies looked like actual human beings. Watching them die when he shot them made me feel like a bad person, and kind of sick to my stomach. The experience put me off computer games in general. There was a lot of excitement at the time over games like Wolfenstein and Doom, and I remember thinking "If this is the way computer games are headed, I guess they're not for me."
I went for over two decades without paying much attention to computer games at all after that. There would occasionally be a point and click adventure game that was funny enough to hold my interest, and I also ended up trying and liking Portal 2 (though the reason I liked it was entirely due to the hilariously snarky narrators rather than the gameplay itself) but apart from those rare experiences, I didn't think I was much of a "gamer".
It wasn't until I happened to see the Supernatural pack from Sims 3 that I perked up and started asking questions. Sims 3 ended up being the first game I got really obsessively interested in.
Since then, I have taken a look around at the gaming world and have found it vastly larger and more varied than I thought it was. And I have found other games I have enjoyed like Eastshade, and Yonder: Cloudcatchers, and I've even discovered I like playing co-op with my husband in cute RPG games like Portal Knights.
For me, it was definitely the Sims games that got me to take another look at gaming after I had more or less written it off many years earlier.
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@GlacierSnow As far as I know ray tracing is a new thing, I think you must mean the old Cathode Ray Tube, CRT, monitors, right? And you're not the only one who's had trouble with them. If their refresh rate were set too low, like 60Hz, they flickered and were horrible to look at.
Before I had bought my first computer almost twenty years ago, I used the computers at my school library a few times, but it made my eyes and head feel absolutely terrible. I had no idea why, and the librarian knew even less about computers than I did, so I had no one to ask about it.
And a few years later I got myself a computer of my own with Windows XP, and it had of course one of those old fashioned CRT monitors too, and it was exactly as bad to look at as those at the library had been.
After a while I somehow found out about the probable cause, and where to find the screen refresh settings. I saw that it was set at 60Hz, so I changed it to 85Hz instead, and immediately it turned into a totally different screen, and I felt so happy and relieved. The constant flickering and eye/head problems were completely gone, and from then on I could easily sit in front of the screen for many hours, writing stories and playing Sims 1 without any discomfort whatsoever.
So, what I wanted to say with telling you this little story, is that I really wish that you and your family had tried this with your monitor too, and probably had gotten a whole new experience, with a screen that's nice and pleasant to look at, and not something that makes you ill.
See quote below from this site:
"The other day I was troubleshooting an issue with an older computer with a CRT monitor and when I looked at it I almost got sick from the flickering screen. Fixing that issue is easy, here is how."
@SuzyCue72 Yeah, I remembered the wrong term. Sorry. CRT is what I was talking about. And I actually knew about changing the refresh settings. Lots of people back then helpfully pointed it out to me. But it didn't help. Even at faster settings, it still gave me a headache.
The LCD monitors that are not LED backlit are fine for me. I have used them for hours upon hours for many years with no trouble at all. Weirdly, the LED backlit ones aren't. I found that out recently when I got one to replace my old LCD monitor that died, and I ending up having to trade with my husband for his older monitor (non-LED) because no matter what we did with the settings on the new LED backlit monitor it was making me feel sick to my stomach. We were both puzzled because we weren't expecting it to make any difference.
@GlacierSnow Okay, it's a pity it didn't work for you like it did for me, but at least you tried, that's always something.
It wasn't that girls weren't interested in games, or that girls started getting serious about gaming when a digital doll house was made, a reference that I find so insulting. It is that like most industries and things in life, things are geared towards and marketed to men so thus most statistics support more men playing, when there are girls and women playing those same gaming systems from the old Nintendos to the Wiis, Play Stations, etc. Girls and women are playing games. True many of us are not into 1st person shooter games. Women prefer strategy games to killer games, and when the industry is skewed to men and violent games you are going to have statistics that supports that.
I didn't start playing the Sims because I wanted to play dolls, I started playing the sims because I enjoyed building and SimCity was not being rebooted. So, I adjusted my gaming style to play a game where I could build.
I think the Sims has its popularity because it hits a variety of playing styles - builders, designers (fashion & interior), family style play, fantasy play, and everything in between. It is somewhat scripted, but allows tons of flexibility. It allows modding which enables players to take the game into a different direction. Yeah, in a sense it builds on the early days of when children played with action figures & dolls - as it wasn't the toys it was the imagination, the urging of creativity - the story telling.
That my friend is the strength of The Sims - it is a game that allows you to tell your own story. And that is why people lose it when they hear an inkling of a story being brought/programmed into the Sims.
But anywho - I have waxed on too long. Thanks for sharing your story and impression. I just wanted to let you know that way more girls were and are playing video games than you think. And it wasn't the sims that did it. It was Pac Man and Mario Brothers 😉, well at least from my experience.
@LiELF you proved my point. Girls game - However, IT and Game Programmers are predominately male and cater to men.
@simgirl1010 my play style is different. I'm with the group that is outraged that the worlds are limited to preset sized lots and a certain number of them. I do love the set designs they have that make each world unique, but I would rather design the world from transportation to water ways and determine what type of culture the city, town, country side will have. Yeah, I am a SimCity girl trying to make the Sims work for her. So, I split my time from building to playing with the sims - trying to create peace and harmony. I could care less what my sims are wearing (well within reason, you can take the girl out of NYC, but you can't take the fashion district out of her. It is hard coded in New Yorkers). But I take great pleasure in seeing the random wackiness the game creates in NPCs and roll with it.
I went for over two decades without paying much attention to computer games at all after that. There would occasionally be a point and click adventure game that was funny enough to hold my interest, and I also ended up trying and liking Portal 2 (though the reason I liked it was entirely due to the hilariously snarky narrators rather than the gameplay itself) but apart from those rare experiences, I didn't think I was much of a "gamer".
It wasn't until I happened to see the Supernatural pack from Sims 3 that I perked up and started asking questions. Sims 3 ended up being the first game I got really obsessively interested in.
Since then, I have taken a look around at the gaming world and have found it vastly larger and more varied than I thought it was. And I have found other games I have enjoyed like Eastshade, and Yonder: Cloudcatchers, and I've even discovered I like playing co-op with my husband in cute RPG games like Portal Knights.
For me, it was definitely the Sims games that got me to take another look at gaming after I had more or less written it off many years earlier.