Ok, your pride will be pricked and you definitely won’t own up to it, but many of you gamer guys are out to find that “unicorn” myth of the girl gamer.  While you’re out there shooting your enemies in the head, or getting drunk on ale in Ironforge in World of Warcraft, don’t deny your avatar is constantly sticking its nose up and sniffing the skirts of female characters in the hopes that they might turn out to be, *gasp*, a living female gamer.

Even if you don’t pony up that your blood starts to race when you think you might get that small flirtation opportunity, we know you will at least admit MANY other guys do, so put down your hackles and listen up, because we are about to share some secrets of how to find those “real” girl gamers.

The number one rule that will allow you to hit the jackpot of usually MANY girl gamers is that they tend to travel in packs. Yes, there are those females that get jealous of other girls and want to be the only girl in the guild or in matchmaking rooms, but these are far and few between. Many females find a sanctity and bond in relating to other girl gamers, so if you find one, chances are she has at least ten more females on her friends with who she runs around questing or beating down the bad guys. In other words, befriend ONE girl gamer (the right way) and you almost certainly will meet a few more very, very quickly.

Another rule is, USUALLY, girl gamers actually play female characters if they are available in the game, so keep an eye out on those feminine avatars. Now, that doesn’t mean that is actually a female playing - in fact, you have a measly 25% chance (in my estimation) that it really is a girl. Some of you gender-confused gentlemen like to pretend you want to watch a female “behind” instead of a male one (though we know what’s going on). As YOU greatly outnumber US, this means only “some” of you males using female skins is a much larger number then us girls.

So, how do you identify who is a female and who is not? Well, you most certainly are not going to find out right away unless you ask (and even then this might not be accurate) and that is the worst thing you can do. We will reiterate that for you to make it VERY clear: never ask out right if a player is female when you first meet them.  We would highly advise against doing this until you get to know us better, as anything you say afterwards will be interpreted as you trying to hit on us and we will think you are only talking to us simply because we are a girl. Does this suck and is it horrible on our part? Yes. You can blame those of your same sex, who constantly harass and hit on us without any provocation whatsoever, for making us always on our defenses and lookout.

If you’re on a non-voice enabled game with someone you are playing with, Ventrillo or Teamspeak is commonly used for voice communications. So, if you’re actually playing with someone you think might be a girl, go ahead and ask them for their Teamspeak or Ventrillo information and act like it is just to communicate to play effectively with each other!

Anyway, good indicators in determining our sex are our speech patterns and words we incorporate with you or with others around us, so pay attention. Many of us fall into the consoling and sweet roles that we are stereotyped with (unfortunate, yes, but it’s in our nature) and as long as you don’t have us on the defense, this nature will be apparent.

Below are indicators that you might have found your unicorn:

1. Firstly, CHECK the name. Oftentimes, girls have some feminine aspect in their name (although not always). Now, those guys who use female avatars might do the same, but many of them don’t - they don’t always play female skins on all games or every character, so you get to whittle down that 75% greatly since their account or login name won’t be feminine. This helps cut down that muddle you are sorting through!

2. Voice communication is a much easier indicator, as you might recognize we are female by voice (IF we talk, as it depends how comfortable your little unicorn is around those playing).  This isn’t always the case; many times, we are thought to be little boys.  Some girls have deeper voices as well, but not usually. Pay attention and listen to the tones and get a better idea of the sex of the player. Don’t assume either way; just continue to put out those feelers.

3. Listen to the words we use. As mentioned, we do use words that guys won’t normally including “honey,” “sweetheart,” “babe,” etc. with those we are friends with. MOST of the time, one of our friends will be playing with us, so pay attention to our interactions.

4. If you think you are possibly dealing with a female, another girl (or potential girl) is playing with us and we obviously know each other, chances are high that you’ve just found two girls and this is a clear indicator.

Alright, back to how to find those girl gamers! Good places to find girl gamers are gaming-related forums. Of course, all-female teams or clan forums will be a mother lode, so this is a good place to start, but any major gaming forum will have female members. Women are social creatures by habit, and there are quite a few homes we call our own online.  It is also very easy to check our sex, as many forum profiles actually have a female/male box that members use when registering and most guys won’t fib in this area.

Go create a post, introduce yourself and hang out for a few weeks and get to know some of the people around there. After a few weeks, you can keep an eye out for those that seem the friendliest and ask them if they want to play a game together. Be polite, don’t be obvious, and be funny and unique while you are making their acquaintance in forums.

Don’t forget the guys that are already members of the community either! Be nice to them as well - if they are really friendly and obviously know a lot of the females, they probably are already playing with these girls. So befriend the guys who are already established in community forums so that they can lead you to go play with the girls themselves. This is a very good (and devious) trick; just watch out for the ones who might not want to share or react nicely to a perceived invasion of their territory.

I would link you the top girl gaming clan sites, but alas, I can’t actually feed you into these communities directly.  I know your intent, so this would be shooting us the proverbial foot; instead, I will let you do your own detective work yourself. (As it is, I am sure many of our friends and others out there will be harassing me about betraying my sex with this blog!)

Another great way to find girl gamers is to search gaming community websites, not just the forums. There are a few sites out there that cater specifically to gamers and have awesome search functions incorporated, so take advantage of them. Some sites let you enter the keyword“girl gamer” (I already did this for you!) and yield a ton of hits, such as 1up.com, MySpace, gamertagpics.com, etc. You can even do an advance search for age, locations and more. (There are many sites dedicated to gamer dating as well, and if you are looking for THAT I will let you wade through the Google search results.)

Now that you have some starting points for finding those elusive female gamers out there, perhaps I will write a follow-up blog on how to NOT make them run away...or can you figure that out yourself?