My Own Advice For Picking Up Gamer Chicks

Step one: Stop using the term “gamer chick,” goddammit.

Kombo.com published an obligatory article about successfully picking up girl gamers. Its credibility is blown right off the bat by its preface image: a girl in “Nintendo” knickers.

I’m going to share a secret with you. I’m not a bad-looking person, but I’m not a supermodel. I’ve attracted a mate and held on to him for seven years, so maybe my face doesn’t make him vomit uncontrollably. But when I was most enthusiastic about video games I was an awkward young teen. I had no fashion sense (still don’t), my hair and skin were bad, I had glasses, braces and and overbite.

Now I wear contacts, surgery and braces have corrected my overbite, I cropped my hair to a suitable but feminine length and I’m more confident about myself thanks in part to some weight loss. I like to read about the plight of neglected female gamers, but I’m tired of rants and articles being coupled with images of willow-bodied Halo queens. It’s like watching a CEO give a solemn presentation to an audience while behind him, his tampered-with Powerpoint presentation flashes things like, “I AM GHEY, HA HA HA.”

Not to say the article doesn’t bring up some good points, but here’s my own secret pamphlet on how to attract a comely gaming lass.

-Stop trying. If you meet each other because you were both hired to wipe hobo snot off the side of Pac-Man machines, hey, great. If you both love Donkey Kong, more’s the better. Just please make sure you have something else in common before you slip the Wal-Mart band on her finger. I’ve seen several relationships forged on “Hey, I like Parappa the Rappa too!” do a burning spiral down into the jungle not three months later.

By contrast, I know lots of people who have healthy relationships wherein one member loves games and the other does not. Ergo, unless you’re looking for a one-night stand with a Peach cosplayer, picking up chicks at a game store might not suit you. Go by the normal avenues, including colourful plumage and elaborate mating songs.

-Girls play games, So re-adjust your popped monacle. If a girl tells you that she likes video games, don’t act like you’ve just experienced Enlightenment. It makes you look stupid. If you’re deep enough into gaming culture that you’re actually interested in a gaming mate, the fact that girls play games should be nothing new. It’s an observation you can make all by yourself with your own two wee eyes. Failing that, if you’ve picked up a newspaper in the past ten years, you might have noticed that “Girls Play Video Games!!!!1″ is a favourite topic of journalists suffering through a slow news day.

You can act reasonably happy. That is allowed.

-Don’t force your gamestyle choices on her. Lipstick gamers love to brag about how much they love Halo. I don’t. I know that tech-savvy chicks wielding digital guns makes some guys hard, but you might be disappointed to learn that some girls in fact don’t like FPS games, or fighting games (okay, I do love fighting games). It doesn’t mean you can’t encourage your love to try new things, but don’t hit her over the head with them. If she wants to play Pokemon, she wants to play Pokemon.

-Talk about something other than games. This ties into #1. I write about games. I blog about games. I eat, sleep and doo-doo games. When I go to a party, I like to talk about…about…I don’t know, dogs or books.

Seriously, I enjoy talking about games when the crowd is right. But when one person keeps coming back to the topic, I start to feel uncomfortable. In the same vein, if you take your flowery little friend to dinner, think of bread-buttering conversations that don’t involve Mario.

-…But remember that retro gamers get lots of sex. Ha ha, I’ll admit it. I love talking to people who grew up with games and watched them evolve and change. Conversations about childhood memories attached to Zelda are far more interesting than responding to, “So, how ’bout that Call of Duty 4?”

TL;DR: Treat your gaming girl right. Treat your mother right, too. Female gamers happen to share your hobby, so don’t over-think it. Just have fun together. You both like to breathe and nobody makes a big stink out of that, right?