The Secret Life of a Female Gamer

…

So…what’s up.

Nothin’ much, just chillin.

Okay we got that awkward introduction out of the way, let’s move on.

It’s been a long six months, hasn’t it? I managed a 4.0 for two semesters (Spring and Summer), so even though my internet usage was still through the roof, the time to play video games was not. At least with Facebook I can get on, look at everyone’s updates, post my stupid update, then get off and do my homework. Like you probably noticed with WoW, I don’t do so well with putting the controller down.

So the husband bought this game called Uncharted 2, during the month of free time between moving and waiting for my summer classes to start. He played it for a few hours before I ended up hogging the PS3 for about a week straight – I had a month to finish, but no. Has anyone else played this game? Drake and his asshole partner-in-crime steal some shit, then that same asshole turns on you and next thing you know you’re running from both an extremely organized mafia (whose boss is a homicidal nutjob) AND the fucking government during severe civil unrest (just a note: if I start confusing Uncharted 1 and 2, sorry, my brain is lkjalkjdf).

The game itself is long – long, long, long. It can be difficult. If you’re a shitty gamer like I am, then chances are there will be some parts where you throw the controller across the room, scream at the top of your lungs some completely unoriginal expletives, and demand your better-half-who-games-better-too gets you past it. Oh, and the skybox is pretty amazing.

Uncharted has some unintended consequences, like your eyes bleeding. Just kidding, sort of. I played this game for probably 10 hours straight, eating food in my chair but only pausing to either go to the bathroom or put eye drops in. You see, this game is addictive. The story itself is so fun, the people and the dialogue is incredible, the colors are awesome, and you want so badly to see more, more, more. So you play more. And some more. Then you forget to stop blinking and then you can’t see anything, which totally defeats the purpose of playing for 10 hours straight. I can has not so bright.

I should probably explain a little bit of the story in better detail. Drake is a thief, but like any criminal protagonist he is extremely smart, and a history expert who knows like, a dozen ancient languages. This helps him to stay a step ahead of the rest of the mafia chasing him, or at least puts him in the area with the treasure while the other guys are taking a wrong turn. It’s so believable that I actually turned to the SO and said, “I wonder if this stuff can actually be real”, and he looked at me like, “Dude, come on.” Just because I have an active imagination…doesn’t mean you have to make me look like an asshole.

You travel across the world, searching for the lost fleet of Marco Polo. For the lady gamers (which claim to hold 50% of the market), Drake is hot. THERE I SAID IT. He has an infectiously delightful voice (note to self: look up person who voiced Nathan Drake), so casting did a great job *clap clap clap*. The guns are pretty cool, and it’s not hard to find where you have to go…unlike some games, where you stand there and go, “Uh…hello? Little help?”. You can collect treasures along the way (hint: they are usually in corners), but because I was hell-bent on beating the S.O. at the game, I didn’t take any effort to find them. Be wary, because some parts are scary enough that if you’re playing at night, keep an extra pair of underwear around.

Let’s see, what else…

Did I mention the skybox is pretty cool?

Go buy it, worth the money.

Grade I give it: A
Grade I get from my eye doctor? F. I think I need a new contact prescription.

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GASP!

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, I’m back to procrastinate homework and to write about Mass Effect 2. I might be way fucking late with this but truth be told I’m surprised I have time to do something other than check Facebook once in a while. After this, I’m going back to homework. FUCK.

So Mass Effect 2…

It’s good. I mean, it’s obviously good, this has a “no shit sherlock, thanks for that update” comment written all over it, but I mean, it’s…good. The dialogue is great, the voice characters are phenomenal (helllllooo Seth Green!), and the storyline is fantastic. I mean, it’s an RPG so it gives you that WoW-feeling without running into a bunch of 13 year old fuckwads. Plus, you can “grind” by mining planets for metals to pay for upgrades. Pretty fancy, right? You get to mine a planet by shooting probes into it whenever there is a high concentration of a particular metal. The music, too, deserves a mention. The best part? NO MURLOCS. Well duh, this isn’t WoW, yes I know assholes but that’s the game I was addicted to so technically this IS a big deal for me and it’s MY BLOG so whatever.

So..what’s up with the running in this game? Do you notice how Shepherd runs a little…off balance? He has his head in a 45 degree angle and it looks like he’s completely disoriented, or about to go Rambo and crash head-first into a wall. Come on Bioware, you spend all this money on Martin Sheen as the Illusive Man and Seth Green as a bunch of people, but you can’t make the characters look like they didn’t just slam a half liter of tequila? Really? Come on. I’m disappointed in you. Also if you’re reading this, Bioshock 2 looks amazing only if I promise myself not to play it at night.

Oh, and Shepherd is a ginger…just sayin. JUST. SAYIN. Do you hear me? Ginger.

And I’d also like to give a big FUCK YOU to Valve for LFD2 because I’ve woken up at 5am to see my fiance pounding on the keyboard and yelling at the little dirtbags the game assigns him with. He plays it so much it doesn’t give me any time to play! >:|

Last but not least, I stumbled upon this fucking awesome screensaver that I couldn’t peel my face away from. It was so mesmerizing and beautiful. For anyone who loves space, at least check it out. It’s fucking awesome. Did I mention how fucking awesome it was? The screenshot doesn’t give it justice. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a screensaver to trip out to.

Space Screensaver of Fucking Cool

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Well, well, well…I haven’t been at ALL fair in informing you guys of my whereabouts and stuff. In the last 3 months I have:

-moved. That was traumatic, as now I’m not only very broke, I’m negative broke.
-job has gotten increasingly more difficult.
-got a boyfriend. Sorry boys, someone took one for the team and started dating this little special piece of psycho.
-started school. Now, if working full time wasn’t difficult enough, let’s add onto the fact that I now have a billion hours of homework to do every night for the next 13 weeks.

So in light of recent events, I thought that it was only fair that I tell you…I suspended my WoW account. A part of me died that day, and there has been a whole in my heart ever since. This does not take away from the fact that I’m not still a gamer-I just don’t have time right now. When my life settles back down (read: summer of next year), I’ll reactivate and continue playing. I was able to get my lock up to level 68, but right before I was to embark to Northrend, work, school and my ever increasing fear of being homeless had me too wrecked to concentrate.

You guys deserve a better blog; I’ve actually…been telling you that since you got here the first time, but you just won’t listen. Maybe you will now. My roommate has an Xbox, and I’ve considered playing in between homework, work and True Blood, so maybe it’ll open up for a little more diversity in this God forsaken crap blog I write in. We’ll see. At least with Halo I can turn it on, frag a few assholes, call their mother’s a whore and then get off within about 15 minutes. WoW takes over an hour to quest, let’s be honest with ourselves–it’s too time-consuming. And my boyfriend is currently being nostalgic and we’re playing FFVII whenever he can drag me away from my reading assignments.

I’ll post a video soon, I promise. If anyone still has any questions (I’m sure you do) about female gamers, ask! Regardless of my current state of affairs, I’m still a fucking nerd who set her desktop background to a gigantic picture of Han Solo, and publicly admitted she was going to call her son Harrison Riker. Then I made a few WoW jokes…it…was embarrassing to my company, and I just sat around going, “What?! No one got that?! Well my guild would have laughed” and then I made a face. I make a lot of invisible friends now.

Hope this finds everyone well, and plz send rune cloth kthxbai!

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Once again, I want to thank you guys for your questions, I’ll try to do this more often than what I regularly post. You guys were really patient while it was being edited! Also I realize the irony in wearing pants with an “I hate pants” shirt. It was cold.

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I’ve decided that since the traffic on my site has exponentially increased since the last time I posted, it is probably time to actually start doing the “Ask a Female Gamer” post each week. None of you were asking any questions, so there was really nothing to ponder. Please leave your questions here…I can’t keep checking the forums for questions you want me to answer.

Ask away, and I will pick a couple of questions (no matter how crass…yes, I realize what I just said), and answer them all by Friday, in a video post. You hear that? FRIDAY. VIDEO POST. June..somethingish. I’m lazy. Go look it up yourselves. I have alliance to gank.

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When it comes to gaming, the one thing that we, the gaming population, endure is getting a lot of flack for our choice in special interests. So I like to sit around and talk to people I don’t know, stare at a computer screen for 10 hours without so much as a bathroom break, give me a fucking break. Give me one good reason why I should exert any energy in taking a walk outside. Does it involve getting better raid gear? No, it’s probably going to give me a sunburn so fuck it. I’ve got the whitest skin in existence, no one wants to see me in shorts anyway, there are enough blind people in this world I don’t need to help create anymore of them.

The thing about male gamers is that it is so easy to make fun of them, and it’s easy because there are definitely a lot more guys who play than women. I mean…A LOT.

But this post isn’t about making fun of gamer guys; it’s about pick-up artists. What the fuck do pick-up artists have to do with anything about gaming?

On an earlier post, “Is it safe to come out?”, I mentioned how my ex and I met up with a group of guys who kept making fun of me for a passing comment I made about WoW. Come to find out, one of the guys I talked to was actually a professional pickup artist and employed a common technique to pick up on women. This is called “Negging”. On Urban Dictionary, it is described as “a negative remark wrapped in a back-handed compliment. Your neg will confuse and intrigue them and maybe even shake their confidence a little bit, but only enough for them to fall from the clouds and be interested in talking to you. It’s a way to get through their defenses at bars.” (Obviously I didn’t write that definition, because it sucks grammatically).

After you’re negged, they see how hurt you are and offer to buy you a drink, say something like “Oh I thought you knew I was just joking around, I’m sorry”, and you’ll forgive them because who doesn’t want a free drink? If I have to put up with that asshole I’m going to ask for a shot of their most expensive tequila. Of course I left before he could be nicer to me, so later on a couple days later I found a compliment in my inbox on Yelp saying something about “Hey thanks for the ride blahblahblah I had a lot of fun hanging out” whatever all I could read was “I’m a douche”, thinking to myself why is this guy being so repetitive?.

Then it hit me; I was negged. WHAT THE FUCK. Look buddy – make fun of my albino skin, or about how my hair is a weird shade of brown, or my laugh sounds like a hyena on crack but you’re making fun of something I wouldn’t bat an eye about playing instead of talking to you. That’s like telling a 5 year old that Santa isn’t real; something an asshole would do.

And if I would rather play a make-believe game than talk to you, then you might need to reevaluate who the one with problems is.

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Okay I lied, I’m not going to bed. I’m going to write a second post for the night because anyone who follows this has been so gracious in allowing me to go over 2 weeks without updating.

SecondLife has a reputation for dirty, pseudo-sexy, money. You can make a million dollars by selling fake real estate, and holy mother of God, it’s real money at that. My only question is what the hell that one woman claimed on her taxes.

This virtual reality world was always a mystery to me; they claim that it is a place to do exactly what you’ve wanted to do in real life, only online and without fear of real repercussion. And what human being doesn’t like being able to do things without consequences? There is something flawed here, however, because I’ve always wanted to be a firetruck and I don’t see that option anywhere in the “creating an avatar” section.

In an effort to learn more about the people involved in these games, having been a major fan of The Sims, I signed up and within minutes was recruited to become a voice escort for a classy joint called Club Venus/Club Mars, a club owned by a real life husband and wife. I walk up to some random guy asking how to work my controls and the next thing you know I’m being pimped out.

After an indepth conversation with this man, I decided that an investigation was completely necessary–and if I happened to make some money while doing it, then awesome. An application and interview later (yes, I was interviewed…), Valessa, the wife, took me over to buy me literal “moves” for my avatar. She said my walk was too ungraceful, like an elephant. This is disturbing only because my roommate also said I walk like an elephant normally. As soon as I knew it, I was shaking my hips and ready to get on the pole (online. I’ve been ready IRL for years).

Lindin currency is strange; the conversion rate is currently 300L to $1USD. If you want to make some money, hope for a high roller to walk in with a wad of lindin in his skyrocket (pocket). The other “employees” would walk around and have conversations with each other as if they were friends in real life; it’s fucking fascinating! You people are all online! This is a fucking game! HOLY SHIT you have a nice voice and OMG IS THAT WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE?! Someone get me a drill bit, and preferably also heroin. I’m going to try and forget this moment as best I can. Is this what the normal population think WoW is like on a regular basis?

After a week, I finally had a customer of my own. There were rules established for how much you could take off your avatar based on the amount of tips they gave you, as well as whether or not you could talk into the microphone or chat via private chat box. This guy, like some men I’ve dated IRL, was a cheap ass and didn’t tip me very well, but enough so that it was required that I remove all the clothes from Herroamelie (that was her name. So sexy, right?). Fortunately for me, one of the employees gave me a vagina modification earlier that day so I could upload one more real looking. And let me tell you how fortunate I felt:

D:

WTF.

Now, at the risk of destroying how ridiculous this is, I’d like to clear up the fact that I never actually escorted anyone. Most of the time I would put my avatar on “loop” on the pole, where she would be doing various dances while I could go downstairs and watch Scrubs. The one particular instance where I just /removed each article of clothing was about as far into the scandalous nature of SL that I got–and I wasn’t even talking.

Finally, I decided this social experiment was too time-consuming, so I stopped playing and uninstalled it from my computer. Yes–too TIME-CONSUMING, and not because this place is full of fucking weirdos. Let’s face it, you can go to bed feeling somewhat accomplished when you’ve been saying “WTF” in your head for 2 straight hours.

And guys look at me like I’M the crazy one when I make murloc sounds while fooling around. Priorities, people.

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“Don’t tell anyone but…I’ve never played World of Warcraft.”

Apparently this statement is borderline between naivety and stupidity. Among my group of friends over the course of 10 years, I am the least hardcore gamer and therefore slouch over when they all stand in a group with their big gaming vocabulary and leaving me to guess what the hell they’re talking about. Of course, all my friends are super hardcore so me saying “least hardcore” really means I only play for 40 hours a week and not 80.

Go out into the real world? Not so much, it seems.

Back in January my ex-boyfriend and I went to the city (San Francisco) to indulge in some amazing food and, what we hoped was, amazing company. After enjoying dinner with friends and the need for alcohol could not be suppressed any longer, we headed outside to drive where the rest of our group would be. This…did not work out so well. Halfway out the door and we met some guys who seemed fairly entertaining and invited them out. I made a passing comment, mostly intended for the ex but could be enjoyed by all, about WoW. Then, like a level 10 walking through Eastern Plaguelands, I was verbally assaulted with jokes made at my expense. Okay, one is fine. Oh you want to join in too? That’s okay, let’s keep it to a minimum. No? You just won’t stop? Why am I giving you a ride? You can find your own way home.

My friend Quinn, who set up my site for me, was one of those people. Unlike the rest of them, however, he is an awesome individual because he apologized and listened to the reason why I play WoW – this is why he deserves major props.

The other ones…well…I stopped talking to. Literally. That seems a bit harsh but they’re assholes anyway.

My point is that it’s hard for people to come out and say they play this game. If you’re an avid Xbox player or you can’t stop talking about GTA4, you’re just a casual player and who cares. But the moment you slip into an MMO…it’s like you’re walking around with a target on your forehead through a rifle range (I’m coming up with some great analogies tonight). When is it ever going to be okay to play video games? It’s like hating a certain race because one or two people wronged you, or like saying all gay men love to wear pink and go to Folsom Street Fair and wave wands around like a pretty princess – it’s only true for a small, and much more fun to be around population. Stop generalizing.

I admit though, I generalize a lot too. Like when I see a guy with a striped pink popped collar white shirt, I’m going to automatically assume he’s a douchebag. Or if a guy starts spouting off philosophy quotes like he memorized them to get laid, I’m going to automatically assume he’s not only a douche, but pretentious too. Then I’ll steal his classical CD’s.

This is different. There are over 11 million regular subscribers, with more than 30 million having tried the game out at least for a 10 day trial. You can’t say that every single one of them is missing work for raiding, or fat, ugly, etc. Most of us have jobs, a real life, and can only level when they have time for it. If I knew a hardcore WoW player I’d probably make fun of his ass too. Just saying. (And I do…my roommate)

Now if you will excuse me, I have to get to bed because I’ve been staying up way too late this week leveling my character. It’s time for a break. Someone please hide my laptop.

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The other day I was checking through my twitter (because that’s what addicts do), and @wow_extreme posted a story about a man who convinced a 13 year old girl to come to California to have sex with him. Here is the story

First of all, did you SEE that picture of him? That’s disgusting. I bet this guy rubs his belly fat and thinks he’s found his dingaling. You can’t even reach past your fupa to touch yourself! You are no Arnie, with biceps so big and an unlimited bank account to have an assistant wipe his ass. Instead, you troll WoW hoping to find an underage child to do it for you. Normally I don’t judge, but this just seems like it’s screaming for it. For the love of all that is holy, I cannot get around how fat this man is.

Girls. Ladies. Women. Whatever. I understand how you feel about older men; I have dated my fair share because “guys my age just aren’t mature enough”. (Being in your 20’s makes that statement justified, IMHO) But this is just gross. If someone gave me the option of having sex with that man versus suicide, I’d commit the darkest and most evil of sins just to save myself from that. (Let’s not get into the philosophical argument about whether or not suicide is a sin, okay? We have more pressing matters to attend to, like extremely fat men trolling for children).

Do we need to start having meetings? Girls of the underage variety, do your elders need to have a chat with you about self esteem issues? Because when you grow up, you’ll find that men will say pretty much anything to get into your pants. ANYTHING. One guy even told me that I was the biggest bitch he ever dated (that one worked. He was also my boyfriend, does that count? I fail? Yep.) They will stop at nothing. Do you look fat in that dress? You might (we’ve all had those moments where the cut just isn’t right), but they aren’t going to tell you that. Why? The fight that ensues is not even a mark on their map as much as they’re thinking about the makeup sex. Why do you think we win arguments so often? They’re thinking about sex and not focusing on the topic at hand.

The fact this man did it over World of Warcraft is just plain awesome. And by awesome I mean that fucking fat fuck bullshit asshole. WoW is a place to get together and rape the proverbial face; not the underage real one. Don’t go there to have cyber-sex, that’s just nasty. There are plenty of sites out there for that, especially advertised on all the porn websites we’ve been telling people we go to instead of admitting to playing WoW in public.

(Sidenote: I’m sorry if I offended anyone, but this made me mad and instead of ripping apart my shirt in anger I just decided to write a really crappy blog post. kthx!)

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During a particularly excruciating period at work where I had to learn the in’s and out’s of why MICROSOFT OFFICE 2008 IS A PIECE OF SHIT FOR MAC, I met up with my friend Scott at a bar to talk about macros for Excel. Yes…macros. God that makes me hot just thinking about that Visual Basic Editor, with all those functions and…um…anyway…

As I was waiting for him to show up, I struck up a conversation with a good looking guy who had an army bag next to him, which made it very easy to strike up a conversation considering I had been to military school. After talking to him for about 10 minutes my friend showed up and the hot Army Dude and I went back to our own things. Scott and I talked about macros for a whole 5 seconds before screaming about the new crap going on in the new patch, when Hot Army Dude interrupted us. “Sorry but…you guys play World of Warcraft?”

And thus began an amazing conversation between the three of us that had nothing to do with macros for the rest of my lunch break.

WoW players are all around us; I’d like to think that they are easier to spot because of the introduction of Twitter and other social networking sites, but in public during a normal exchange of ideas and words it is very difficult to figure out whether or not someone plays the MMO without blurting out the question and risking social extermination. So here I decided to develop some tips and questions to spot the WoW player without outcasting yourself forever.

But hey–if you want to throw yourself out there and say, “Do you play World of Warcraft?”, then more power to you. If you’re a girl, wear a low cut top. This increases your chances of whoever you’re talking to that they won’t give a shit. If you’re a guy, then forget it if they make fun of you. Those girls are twats anyway if they can’t see how awesome you are, even PAST the WoW.

Here they are:

1. “Hey, did you hear about that new video game ________?” Name a well advertised game. If yes, proceed to question number 2. If they say no, then say it got good/bad reviews and how you think it’s a waste of time, who wants to waste their time playing video games? Then puff your chest up, call them “Brah” or “Dude”, high five and slap each other’s butts and say, “good game.”

2. In this next question, use harder terminology. Words like, “first person shooter”, “MMO”, “gank”, etc, usually work.

Since there are more questions involved should you continue saying yes to all of them, I’m just going to go ahead and say, “If they say no, drop the subject entirely and compliment them on an article of clothing or refer to a previous topic”.

3. Notice use of significant amounts of jargon. Find out what kind of computer/system they use; PS3, XBox, Wii, or PC. It would help if you knew they used a Mac–because then chances are they’re secretly recording songs on the internet to become a youtube sensation, and not to be a PvP Master.

4. If they are into the gaming scene, mention D&D. If not, mention “Magic: The Gathering”, and how nerdy you used to be in high school. Under no circumstances should you mention Pokemon and how you could name all of the original 150, or how you paid 65 dollars for a second edition hologram Charizard card. (FYI Worst Decision Ever).

5. Ask what games they like to play if they own a system other than Wii (we all know Wii players just like bowling and tennis). Rockband/Guitar Hero don’t count; should they play First Person Shooters on PS3/Xbox (Halo, GTA, etc), ask if they have ever played one on their computer.

6. Ask about their computer. If they can name their operating system, processing speed, and joke about the command use of “sudo”, you’re good to go in continuing to the next question.

7. Mention Final Fantasy or Everquest and name a couple of random facts about them. Don’t look at me for these; be original. Also, I never played them…so you’re on your own.

8. During this process it is imperative that you are continually monitoring their body language, inflection and tone of voice, and the kind of vocabulary they use. Keeping on your toes about all three will make the transition into WoW conversation much smoother, even if they’ve never played it. The more nonchalant you act about the whole thing, should they have never played before, the more open they are to playing it in the future. Compare it’s similarities to other games they’ve played, and say you’ll be right by their side if they do end up playing it. And if they have already, then more power to you and your new friend.

Whatever you do, do NOT get excited about anything. People, like sharks and their sense of smelling blood a mile away, can tell when you’re obsessive about something. If they have a level 80 main already decked out in tier 7.5 raid gear, then it’s safe to proceed.

But no? Then it would be a good idea to know who scored a terrific goal in whatever sport you don’t give the shit least about from that weekend, you fucking nerd.

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