Here Are Your Eight Qualifying Nintendo World Championships 2015 Finalists

Ah, so jealous of these guys! Must be a great feeling 😀 Maybe next time they'll do an actual WORLD Championship 😛

Not a single woman, sad.

@manu0 I know right? Oh well. Eight is a small number considering the total number of participants, so I guess that's just how it worked out in the end...shame though. :/

@manu0 That's exactly what I took away from this article too. Seems really weird.

@manu0 As soon as I saw they were all men earlier today, I KNEW I was gonna see somebody comment on that sooner or later. I agree...it's sad that no women competed well enough to go on to the championship. But that's meritocracy for you.

@Stuffgamer1 I thought it'd take five posts before someone mentioned it.

Good on them for having the skills to qualify, and best of luck to them at the Championship!

Real Nintendo fan people, not paid actors

"Not a single woman, sad."

True, but I see at least 6 single men.

@Damo It wasn't my intention to blame anyone, it was more a general comment on our society.

@manu0

If that is all you see when you look at this list of winners then that is sad.

@HollywoodHogan Wow, your skill of telling that from some portrait pictures is impressive.

@NorthLightSuplx If you think that's all I see then that is sad.

@manu0

"it was more a general comment on our society."

Our society where anyone was allowed to participate in a skill based competition, and the 8 winners just happened to be men?

I went to the qualifier in Tacoma WA. My score was 986,000. Michael's was 3.6 million. My money is on Michael S! #NintendoChampMichealS

Also, to clear up the confusion, I think Manuo was just saying that the female gaming community as a whole is alot smaller than it aught to be. Not that its sad that skill, merits the right to compete. Its not like she said they should have a men's qualifier and a women's qualifier. Cuuuuz that would be ridiculous.

@HollywoodHogan @Damo Yes. I really don't want to get into details in a NL comment thread, but the problem is that boys and girls are raised according to different standards, with boys generally having to adhere to a higher standard than girls. Even when my niece was 9 years old she was saying "I'm a girl, I don't have to be good at video games / sports / whatever" (I don't remember what she said exactly, but it doesn't matter). Where does that come from in a 9 year old? THAT is the problem.

I'll be rooting for one of these participants on Sunday. I hope one of the gamers who earned their spot wins.

Wow, I didn't know people were holding their sons to higher standards in playing video games compared to their daughters?????

@manu0

"but the problem is that boys and girls are raised according to different standards"

And that is a problem? Are you upset your parents didn't buy you more Barbie dolls, put you in dresses, and let you wear lipstick? I'm sorry they limited you. If your niece feels she "doesn't have to be good at things" it sounds like she is receiving bad parenting. Don't place that blame on "society".

Some things girls like, guys don't like. Some things guys like, girls don't like.

There is no massive conspiracy or some radical societal change that needs to take place because of this however. Guys and girls are just wired differently and have different desires and interests (among other things).

8 dorky guys who play way too many video games won a competition. End of story.

@dkxcalibur

It has been scientifically proven by a random person on the internet. Their source is a 9 year old niece who probably has other interests besides being good at videogames and sports at this point in their life. One comment from a niece = society.

I honestly see having men as finalist is a reflection of video game demographics/video game competitions still being heavily male dominated. Not that women didn't compete, but I doubt as many women competed as men. I honestly don't have any figures to back up that line of thinking, and we have to factor in the amount of dedication it would have taken to place a high enough score... so basically the results might have been skewed. More studies would have to be run before we could draw a conclusion from the Nintendo World Championships.

But congratulations to the finalists. I just wished there was a Best Buy close enough that I might've been able to compete. Or have a miiverse competition or what not.

Good to see Dixie represent. And the Magic City, no less. There's a lot more top-notch gaming here than people realize.
#NintendoChampJordanD Deep Fries The Competition!

Also, these comments are ridiculous. Out of literally thousands of competitors, only eight were picked as winners. ONLY EIGHT. If the people involved had been exactly 50 percent men and 50 percent women, the probability that we end up with eight men is still pretty damn high. These were the ones who happened to play the best on that day at that time in those places and nothing about that fact implies in the slightest anything about gender roles or equality or the ideals of American society.

Bollocks and hogwash, people. Let it ride.

I just let my wife read these comments she said thanks for the laughs. She said they should be more worried about the women on twitch objectifying themselves for subscribers.

I'm DEFINITELY not watching this stream. It's reached the point of being personally offensive to me. The only thing I care about is that at least one of these 8 people who actually qualified kicks those celebrities', who Nintendo basically hired to be there, butts. And that one of them wins. I'll check by Nintendo Life after the stream to see who won! Good luck to the 8 finalists! Especially you, Fernando T.! Florida represent!

@Pahvi

You are correct

@HollywoodHogan "Some things girls like, guys don't like. Some things guys like, girls don't like."

I feel sorry that you live in such a gender separated world. What a kid likes is mainly influenced by these things:

• their personal preference
• what their peers like (which in our society is heavily gender separated)
• what their parents subject them to (again, there are way too many parents that decide what their kids should do based on their gender)

A kid's gender doesn't influence what it likes.

@Damo Exactly. It's personal preference, it has nothing to do with gender.

Nice to see two fellow Californians out of the eight! I hope to be up there one day, and seeing as these guys are mostly much older than I am, anything is possible! I'll always say that my favorite game is Luigi's Mansion...always. Good luck to everyone!

@manu0

Ya, who am I kidding. Men and women are exactly the same, and have all the same interests! It's silly for anyone to believe otherwise!

@HollywoodHogan You're learning fast, that's good.

@Pahvi

I'm basing it on the fact that between at least the years 1987-2002, never once did the topic of "video games" come up in conversation with a female, while it was something that was discussed nearly all the time with every guy I knew.

Sure, there were girls who played games, but it was mainly an activity that appealed to boys. Much like running around and pretending to shoot each other with invisible guns on the schoolyard.

Though @manu0 would like us to believe that an equal (if not greater) number of girls were interested in shooting invisible guns at recess, but were sadly prevented from doing so by society

@manu0

Ya, I learned not to disagree with a German back in history class.

@HollywoodHogan Wow, I'm really impressed now. You learned something new today AND you're already applying it to new situations.

Who cares if there's no girls, sure representation would of been nice but it these were the winners and Im sure most participants were men.

@HollywoodHogan
It's hard to take you seriously, calling these guys single and dorky, Im sure you are on sadder levels to be talking like that.

@HollywoodHogan "Ya, I learned not to disagree with a German back in history class."

Interesting. Is that what they teach you in school? When I was talking to an American exchange student a couple of years ago I learned that he got taught a lot of BS about Germany in school.

@Hero-of-WiiU

You shouldn't be taking me or the comment seriously. It's called a "joke".
Like the ones you see people making on TV. Don't take it personal.

Meh. Some of them didn't earn their way there. There's a dude named Vince Clemente that played in California. He had the highest score at around 5 million. He knows he can do better as he regularly scores over 7 million. So he asked multiple officials if he was allowed to get back in line and try again. He was told no multiple times. The rule was one try per person. So he went home, went home holding first place.

After he left other people asked if they could try again. They were allowed to play over and over again until they were finally able to beat Vince's score, with 5.5 million. Apparently this rule change happened at a couple locations, but not all if them. Even though Vince had first place, no one bothered to call him back and let him know about the rule change. If you look up the rankings, Vince has 2nd or 3rd place nationwide with a score of 7.9 million.

So I guess by earning it means, playing over and over again for hours, until you could finally manage to beat a guy who got one shot.

@jbopatrick

Sup Vince?

@Pahvi No, you are correct, I believe. Hyperbole and miswordings are in play, however. "Probability" is the wrong word because it implies the perfect precision of mathematics, something the real world has a nasty habit of ignoring. My point was that even all things equal (and they never are in life), it's not at all inconceivable to land a roulette wheel on red eight times in a row or that the most skilled Mario and Dr. Mario players who felt like competing in those eight specific cities on that particular day (look at how many qualifying statements have to be attached to something like this) would all just happen to be born one X chromosome too few. That's just how life works. I know I've hit the same side of a coin toss eight times in a row and there are incalculably fewer variables in that equation. Why are there no black winners? Why are there none with light hair? Why do none of them have a cleft chin? Because that's just the way it so happened to work out, not because of a flaw in society that places a glass ceiling over cleft-chinned Nintendo gamers.

And we know that there are no wild, sweeping societal conclusions we can draw from this because it's one event. Statistically AND scientifically, a single occurrence is meaningless until it is tested again and again and again ad nauseam. So my only point is that this is a poor platform for cries of gender inequality and should be taken as what it is: a literal game.

@HollywoodHogan Ha no. Vince is a member over at nintendoage.com his name there is UncleTusk. I go by jbogames there. Actually Vince is friends with the original winner of the NWC back in the day. And Robin Mihara is a regular at nintendoage, he was an original competitor as well. There was a news article on some gaming sites going around about this rule change bs as well.

The only reason there are no women up there is because I was driving ten hours on the road the day of the qualifier.

I kid, I kid! I would never have been good enough to make it. Congrats to these fine men.

Ahgggg, too much arguing. I think this is best settled with a little numbers.

According to edugamesresearch (link below), female gamers make up 40% of the spectrum, leaving 60% to male gamers. So, theoretically, out of the 6,000 competitors nationwide, 3,600 were male and 2,400 were female. Uh oh.... the world of gamers are sexist.....right?

This is where we come to the point of many people misunderstanding probability. If I flip a coin, one side male, one side female, the male side weighted more then the female side, 8 times, then the probability of it landing on male every time is pretty low, right? Well, actually, the number of times you flip the coin has no effect on the chances of landing the male side every time. And lets not forget, there are more male competitors then female competitors. Try it for yourself, even with an equally weighted coin. You'll find that it's not that hard to win heads or tails up to 8 times in a row, maybe even more. Aside from that, this coin I mentioned is weighted too.

Okay, I know, I know, this is just theoretical. There are other factors that come into play here, but I just thought I should throw that out there. But hey, numbers don't lie

Link: http://edugamesresearch.com/blog/2008/07/23/esa-survey-malefemale-gamer-ratio-is-6040-average-age-is-35/

@JubilifeRival <--- Yeah, what he said.

I'm calling it. The Asian will win.

For the no females thing, it was just a general comment on my part too. Would have been cool, but it just wasn't in the cards this time. Congrats to the lads who made it though!

@manu0 it's not just that, women make less on the dollar and, on a structural level economically are going to have less money to devote to hobby which is incredibly key in competitive hobby.

No girls?! Ah well...

Everyone good luck!

You guys are silly. I just imagine applying that logic to game developers, rather than tournament competitors:

"Oh, my god, the development team is entirely comprised of men. FIGURES. As if they'd ever give women a chance, but that's fine! I won't buy their stupid misogynistic game, anyway. I feel so oppressed. Girls like video games too, y'know!"

• Some Dude

@manu0 there were several women at the Dallas event, but I don't think any of them got on the leader board.

Also, not a single non-American. That probably means that people outside the US are not interested in games as much or they all suck.

anyone know the scores? especially for Christopher B

How this article became a discussion on gender equality I have no idea.

There's a reason more girls go to university than guys. It's because the girls study while the guys are playing games way more than they should be.