Why girls "don't play" Paradox games, answered by a girl

just to address the common thing i'm seeing: i brought up the college thing only to say that there's nothing about the topic of history itself that doesn't appeal to women. y'all are correct that generally more guys are interested in history probably, especially in the subtopic of warfare and stuff. it was even part of the original script that i cut out just in editing for some reason, maybe i just didn't like how i said it? 🤷‍♀️

also a weird number of transphobes are swarming this video now that it's been getting more attention? just fyi, my girlfriend's trans, my community is trans and queer af, and i'm a useless lesbian 😩 so if you're in here just to say something transphobic or whatever you'll just get yeeted from my comments section forever 🤐

I feel like many women's first experience with GSG is Crusader Kings because "it's sims but you are a medieval ruler" really attract them hahaha. Maybe we as community can attract more girls/wider audience by describing other GSGs like Crusader Kings? Honestly, when people hear the term "strategy game" they think of Starcraft and those pro players. EU4 is nothing like SC though. I would call EU4 a "country management sim" lol. I seriously think EU4 is more like Stardew Valley than Starcraft. It's just there are more buttons in EU4.

i mean no harm, but are you a cis woman or did i mishear?

im literally addicted to anything paradox wth

To be honest, I think the reason is that many girls simply aren't interested in these types of expansive marathon games. Every girl I've talked to who plays games all say these types of games just look ridiculous to them and would much rather chill and play Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, COD or Genshin Impact for example. Even as a guy, you need to be a special breed to look at Stellaris or HOI and go "mmm yess"

Hey, i know you wont see this but for those reading, i can confirm that as a guy that uploads paradox content, 100 of my audience is male (or at least their google account)

We do. We play Paradox games, RPG, Table top and War games.

"Paradox games aren't built for girls specifically" I don't think they're built for boys either, I think they're just built for people with ADHD.

I make videos on paradox with only cities. However i mostly play call of duty. Creative games or RPGS. I also can't wait for cities skylines 2

People seem to forget that the overwhelming majority of people playing any game, consuming any media, will never say a word on forums or social media about their hobbies.

I have a long time small group of friends, all AMAB, who always wondered early on c. 2014 why it didn't seem like there were more girls who played CK and such. Fast forward to today, of the four of us, two identify as women now and one is enby, so I guess we're part of the estrogen meme demographic.

Life by you is a paradox game that’ll have a massive female audience since it’ll be a direct competitor to the Sims franchise.

I actually met my girlfriend at a strategy game LAN, and playing Paradox titles together remains one of our favorite couple activities. :)

I might also add that she introduced me to the Warhammer franchise, which is arguably even more stigmatized than Paradox when it comes to the female player base.

most of the women ı met from college (history) they just dont have any interest over warfare part of it while man in our class act like they are marshals in le grande armee and pdx games being all about map painting dont help at all (my ex was a hoi4 uk main bcs of me)

Got my now-ex to quit League and become obsessed with Civ V instead. Last I heard, she plays almost exclusively with mods now because she's bored of the default leaders and tech tree. It's only a matter of time before she's painting maps like the rest of us, inshallah.

Doing my part. o7

So, people are just being sexists?

We should definitely be raising more girls like boys. Boys get all the fun stuff.

ur so cool

No boys, you still wont find a girl that likes paradox games and loves you. It can't be both.

Grand strategy games are attractive to those who are high in autistic traits, which are more common in males than females.

Don't know about girls... but can tell u the reason why I shouldn't play games from this company... is that they are way too proud of their DLC's.

Ig it’s bc women are less likely to have autism

I'm a girl and I love playing certain Paradox titles. My first Paradox game was Sengoku and I played that because I loved ROTTK which led me to play CK2, Europa etc. But I think that you hit it right on the head a lot of gaming communities can be down right hostile towards females that share the same space. Heck when I'm asked to specify gender I don't or online I don't make a female character because I've faced gender discrimination within a game. Not all men/boys do this but you do come across it enough that you'd rather be invisible within a community just to enjoy a game.

As a ck2 player I have never found any ck2 player in the wild, I feel amazed even when I find someone online who plays the game

I think this question can be answered with one statistic. According to the CDC:

"ASD (autism spectrum disorder) is nearly 4 times more common among boys than among girls."

There it is boyos, question answered.

A long, long time ago, must've been in the late 90s or early 00s, I read an article that mentioned that the first, commercial game that had a statistically notable amount of female buyers was 'Die Siedler' ('Serf City' internationally). It speculated that the reason might be that women preferred to do constructive stuff rather than blow holes into things. 😂

I haven't really gotten into Paradox games, but I do play with a technical modpack for a technical game. I'm trying to be visibly a woman partially so other women feel comfortable, but I get "Huh, a woman on the internet" comments here and there. (Even on Discord servers where I have moderator permissions.)

Love this. Generally speaking as femme, I don't play online games often, and a lot of gamerbois seem to take that as "no girls gaming" when it reality they've just chased us all off from online/MP games because they're creeps/Nazis (the Nazi thing in online gaming is becoming a more pronounced issue as of late)

The simple answer is how many girls play games versus how many boys play games and then you factor in the fact of house you guys that I know that are interested in Paradox game and you’re left with the equation or should I say the answer

I also got into CK3 because I was told it was like the Sims. The sims to paradox games pipeline is strong fr.

This is just my personal experience, but when it comes to niche hobbies that have a visible majority guy audience online, I tend to lurk, and I stick to my fellow gay/trans nerds. I also tend to stay ambiguous about my gender online, and more often than not, I am just assumed to be a man.
Shout out to all the paradox/grand strategy trans girlies , you are one of those load-bearing walls of internet culture

I think it's usually because female or girl players don't like overly detailed and difficult games. So, FPS games may attract the attention of girls, but sometimes it can be boring to look at a map for hours and make a historical scenario with armies.

I totally get why people would think that people who like history are all men. But it isn't true. I'm a history major in university and like the graph said the majority are women. This semester specific all of my history professors are women. It is plausible that women like different aspects of history then men. That being said I've had a male prof who focused on womens history in the early 20th century. So it's kinda all over the place.

In my experience, at least for EU4, mp communities tend to be very slapneck and problematic on many levels, so its maybe a case of that the female side of fanbase likes to play more singleplayer and keep to themselves.

And I wouldn't blame them

I think CK tends to have the least toxic community and it ramps up from there

Oh and on a tangential note and just to break the mold I have a girl friend on EU4 mp who I met by when she kicked my ass, shit talked, and then took screenshots to upload on reddit later, truly an upstanding member of the community

If you didn’t have a girlfriend, you would be my girlfriend

To me, Enigmatic Rose is the obvious go-to girl gamer for Paradox games, especially CK.

I personally think the main reason is the entry point. I got to know paradox games myself when my childhood friend bought me an EU III for my birthday. So I think the easiest way to get into this type of strategy is through a friend who already plays these games. And since these players are mainly men, the interest in the game goes from "buddy to buddy" and rarely goes beyond other groups, such as women, for example.

I've never seen anyone who plays paradox's strategy games in real life.

In my opinion, Paradox Games are not for everyone in the sense that not everyone likes playing complex games such as CK3 or Victoria 3. So regardless of the genre, I think they are not very popular as for example Need for Speed or more arcade games.

this is the second video I watched from you.
I was super excited when I realized, that there are also women / girls playing Global Strategy Games. I don't even know why but yeah...
Very cool to see something like this! I hope that sexsism and transphobia isn't that big of a thing, or to put it differently, I hope its not too arkward for women / girls / transpeople in this community.
But for now, Thank you for proving my instincts wrong that there are only boys / men following my passion of Global Strategy (I still don't know why i´m so excited about this)!

Prolly societal standards and hoi4 especially being Wehraboo Mecca, and Wehraboos tend to not be the best when it comes to Woman that aren't there Girls und panzer waifus.

I have an ex-girlfriend who loved CK II where she loved following the Intrigue paths of seduction and murder. She was one of those true crime nuts after all.

Great video as always! To echo what you and some other people here have said, the community absolutely needs to be better about being more welcoming to people who want to get into this space. It's something I've noticed with PDX games especially that while a lot of people that play them are just fine, there's also a lot of people who behave in a way that is weird, edgy and non-inclusive. Hopefully as more people become aware of this the culture can shift to being a better place overall!

It's always great to see female creators coming up through a male dominated space as well, keep up the awesome work! 🙏

I'm a dude and I'm familiar with the games, but I don't play them. It seems like you have to invest a lot of hours just to understand the basics, and I don't have much time for gaming.

Hey, I'm not familiar with any of the other women Cara mentions in the video and google-fu has let me down. Can anyone link me to some of their channels? Or if a list exists that would be super helpful!