PCShooter.com - Internet FPS Gaming

You may have seen articles on the web lately about treatment of female gamers and how some of the time the treatment actually could be classified as harassment in the game. Luckee and I were discussing this one afternoon and I was telling him about things I had read and comments I had received while online playing. I don’t think he really believed me, but appeased me by listening to my comments about it all anyway.

Then the other day we were online playing Counter Strike on one of PCShooter.com’s dedicated servers. We had been playing for a while when someone else joined in our game, on my team, and obviously saw my name. That’s when it started…

“Frag-girlie are you really a girl?”

Being in the middle of a battle with Luckee’s team I didn’t respond. When our side had lost and the team was together again at our base, again this player asked me if I was a girl.

“Yes,” I said, “I already told you twice that I am, sorry but I can’t type and
play.”

That satisfied him for a minute or two because he left me alone and just played. I had just talked to Luckee on the phone and he said he had something come up at home and was not going to be playing anymore, but would be able to see his monitor so would be watching instead. Shortly after that, this is what started up:

To which he replied, “if you’re a girl, I want to know what you look like.”

I didn’t feel it was relevant so I chose not to answer the question, but play the game instead. He followed me around the level, helping a little bit, but not enough to save us both from being killed… again. After we respawned at our base he ran his player up face to face with mine and on the screen typed:

I thought that was pretty odd behavior during a game like Counter Strike and decided I wasn’t going to chat at all with him, no matter how many questions he pounded me with. The game went on for a little while longer and the whole time I had to endure questions from this player… where do I live, am I single, what color are my eyes. I can only imagine what he might have asked if I had given him any information at all. Some comments can be flattering to your ego, but you have to know when enough is enough and what crosses the line. Besides, cyber-love just doesn’t seem like it would be my thing… I’m a hands-on kind of girl.

The next day I was speaking with Luckee about an assignment he had given me and he brought up the previous night’s game. I told him it was nothing new and he was so surprised and said if he hadn’t witnessed it himself, he still would never believe it happened. That’s when we decided to run a poll on our site to see what people would say. Here is the poll:

You are online playing your favorite game and come across a female
gamer. What do you do?

We let the poll run for about a week and while it ran I found some other articles on the subject. This one is from an old editorial at GameGirlz.com:

Q: When involved in games-related socializing on-line, have you ever been annoyed, harassed or bothered by someone because of your sex?

9 out of 10 males said no. The 10th told me he was very sexy and that every female in the world wanted him, including girls (and some guys) who bother him on-line when he is playing games.

10 out of 10 females said yes. Five felt the most annoying thing was being asked their breast size and the ever-popular "Do you have a sexy pic?" Four had been sent numerous e-mails (like the one posted above) where the sender did nothing but put them down and used the fact that they were female, to belittle them. One stopped using her favorite games irc channel because as soon as she entered, she was subject to rude comments and jokes.

Here’s another example from Tantalus Entertainment, an organization that concentrates on producing mods for games such as Descent and Half-Life. Their article questioned how bad online gaming is for women, blacks and gays.

"I decided that I would go into online gaming pretending to be different kinds of people. I started off being a woman, then an African American and finally a homosexual. I choose these different people because these are the minorities of online gaming, and I wanted to see the online gaming world through their eyes, and share it with you.

I began my journey at Descent. At first I was having a great time. I started out as a woman, going by the name of SXJenniferSX. (What does SX mean? I have no idea, just came to me. Some would call it an epiphany, others would not.) I began playing and everything went fine. I played for about a half-hour, talked with some people, and those who did comment on me being a woman only did it in a kind way. Saying that they found it was cool that some females liked Descent, and males hadn’t completely taken it over.

As the game continued however, the situation worsened. A player by the name of: DMCuntGdawg entered. After a while, everyone left the game but us. That is when it all began…. Constantly, and I MEAN constantly, he kept hitting on me. (If you can call it that. More like harassing me.) At first I didn’t mind, but then I realized why woman hate it so much.”

Most of the responders said they would just leave the female player alone, but the question “hit on her and ask her what her physical stats are,” was not far behind. If you tally up all the questions of the harassment type, those questions had far more votes. In fact, they scored a cumulative total of 57.7%. All in all I guess it is still probably a fair representation of gamers out there even though we didn’t have a huge volume of votes, and it was pretty interesting to see what our readers said. As a female gamer I think I speak for all of us when I say, please just give us the opportunity to play… we like games just like you boys. Some of us are even better than you. It doesn’t matter if I’m tall, blonde, and beautiful, only if I can play the game. You can’t see me anyway, so what benefit is the information? Those things may help you in real life, but not in a game.

So why does this happen? Maybe it is because there are so few women playing and making games. Maybe it is because of the image that the marketing of females in games portrays. Or maybe it is just a small immature group. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea why but find it intriguing nonetheless.

If you would like to send me any comments on this, feel free to drop me a line at fraggirl@pcshooter.com. Or post a comment in our forums. See you out there in the virtual world, and please, if you’re going to chat - be respectful!