I was the first kid - let alone girl - on the block with an Atari, and an Intellivision. I eventually had a C-64 too, and that one was all mine. For age reference, the Kid characters on Stranger Things would be my peers if they were real people. I don't even remember all the games I played on those early consoles. I went to the arcade to play Pac man and Q-bert and several others.
Then I discovered an actual D&D club at my high school (okay, it was technically a "games club" but it was really a D&D club) This was back when there was D&D and AD&D... None of this 5th Ed stuff. And gaming with people I could see and laugh with was just so much more fun than sitting in front of a computer.
It probably helped that I was also a Theater Geek. (or didn't help, as the case may be.) But computer games lost their appeal, even as my male friends (and as a geek, I had a lot of them - and they were real friends, not trying to get with the Unicorns that female geeks were seen as at the time) continued to talk about them and all the cool games just... didn't seem that interesting to me.
I continued to dabble in various computer games over the years, but since I honed my gaming skills on finding rules loopholes and interpersonal dynamics and plot development rather than keeping up with the complexity of controllers, they became harder for me to play - the skill jump between where I was and what was needed to actually make progress kept getting bigger - and therefore harder to keep my interest, even if the plot was good. That I also am sick and plum tired of skimpy armor and other sexist gaming tropes didn't help.
I heard about Sim City. And the Sims. But I didn't start to play until Sims 4.
And I play Sims 4 so that I have another avenue for storytelling. If that's "playing Barbie" - fine with me.
