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A Gas Shortage...
A dictator President with the I.Q. of a potato...
A War that has claimed the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians...
And You Think It's COOL to Drive an SUV?
My personal way of ranting about Surburbans, Hummers and Explorers and the selfish assholes who place YELLOW RIBBONS on them. How dare you.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6548573973808936493 
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Women At War With Online Gaming
"I’m not sure what made me fall in love with Quake other than playing it made me feel powerful in a way nothing ever has." -Diana, 33, on Quake
Every gaming afficionado cuts their teeth on one of three games: Duke Nukem, Quake or Doom. Mine was Quake. Up until that time no game ever captured my imagination in quite the same way. There was many a night spent blasting away at creatures until the wee hours of the morning, trying to gain the next level. To cool my frustration at not being able to do just that, I relaxed by opening up a ‘can of whoop ass’ with Red Neck Rampage which was easy to beat and hilariously silly as the health pickups were pork rinds, beer and bottles of whiskey. Then I was back at Quake again, so much that at times I envisioned myself someday standing up in front of a group of people sitting in a circle of folding chairs, and saying, "Hi. My name is Catherine and I’m a Quake-aholic."
Eventually I beat the game, moved on to Doom and beat that, too. Now what? I mean, there was Blood, Hexen, Postal and a host of other shoot ‘em ups but nothing really moved me. Then, I was turned on to something new and exciting: Unreal Tournament.
"My first attempts at playing Unreal Tournament 2003 were so embarrassing. I had no skill whatsoever, and the men constantly made fun of me, hunted me as a target, called me names. But that was then. This is now. If they choose to hunt me now they die pretty quickly." -Tricia, 30, on Unreal Tournament 2003/2004The first time I sat down to play a game where I had to use the keyboard and the mouse simultaneously, I gave up after only a few minutes. "This is impossible," I remember saying. "There’s no way I could ever do this". Weeks later I tried again only to come to the same conclusion. "I can’t do this." I said. "This game is made for men by men."
It is a hotly debated yet clinically proven fact that male brains possess a keener sense of spatial distance and impulse recognition than that of females. That’s why they often score higher as fighter pilots and competitive drivers during training maneuvers when compared with females. In Unreal Tournament 2004, the fact of having two sets of controls that operate at different times -for instance, the keyboard for motion and the mouse for ratio - proves to be a handicap for many females, particularly on Big Maps, where the scale of the player in relation to the room and its objects shrinks the player to the size of a spool of thread. The room is vast. You are small enough to hide behind a book or behind a pillow on a couch designed for a giant. You can surely snipe. But the "frag advantage" is out there. In the room. That huge, and dangerously open room. You have to fly, translocate at lightening speed, meet your opponent in the air and take him down. It is fighter pilot-esque. Throw in all the other possible commands that must be choreographed quickly, via visual cues, to make a direct hit at the precisely right time while your character is spinning around and what you’ve got is akin to taking a potshot in a hurricane with 3-D glasses on.
But that’s all it is; a handicap. Having a handicap only means that one must train harder to overcome the brain’s natural lag in movement and impulse recognition, not that it’s impossible to learn. With time and practice any woman can become just as skilled as a man at fast moving games which require advanced linear spatial skills, inherent or not. But the question that remains is, are women given the chance to do so? And if so, where?
"Women definitely play online games, but not the ones you mentioned. I think the locker room mentality of many of the players discourages women from playing them. It’s not the foul language because women say ‘fuck’ just as much as the guys and often worse. It’s because most male gamers don’t want to play with females because, let’s face it, we aren’t as good." - Phoenix 500, 32, on Doom, UT and Counter StrikeThe lure of the game finally won out and I practiced on UT 2003, honed what skills I thought I needed and played for the first time online.
I remember the very first time I selected a character, instinctively knowing it would be best to play as a man. I don’t want to go into why I knew it but after being a female guitar player/songwriter for a number of years I knew that in order to avoid conflict it was best to remain as anonymous as possible. Didn’t matter that there were a number of bands out playing songs I had written or that I had actually brain stormed their image and marketing schematics. No band, at that time, wanted any one to know that "a chick" had written their tunes. The trick to survival in the male dominating music scene of the mid 80's was to take your thank you’s and disappear into the crowd, keeping your mouth shut all the way. Any way, I chose a big, burly commando-type character with a neck as big around as his waist. Called him "Honcho". I also knew I would have to endure smack talk that may or may not offend me. Even though I am at times known as a strong willed woman with rather ardent feminist leanings, I knew I possessed no right to demand Ballroom Etiquette from any group of men I might be playing with. I was, after all, entering into their world. I was merely a guest. And a tentative one at that.
Armed only with that I entered into the comradic world of online gaming and unknowingly into the realm of a suffragette city.
"Oh, god! I sucked my first time. I mean, I was terrible! Some asshole kept calling me ‘an idiot’ and typing ‘ha ha ha ha’ I felt bad about myself, like, I was retarded or something.". -Briana, 19, on Unreal Tournament 2004 CTFOh, I must have made a hilarious impression as the new Noob Extraordinaire, jumping around the floor of a big map kitchen like a muscle bound flea looking for the solace of dog skin. I was perpetually grounded on the floor as I didn’t know how to use the translocator properly so I didn’t even try. A sitting target. An easy frag. I think I got head shot 13 times in three minutes. But, wow, it was fun! Ten minutes of utter humiliating defeat and I was hooked.
As I expected, the guys bantered at each other back and forth "you pussy" or "you fag" and I laughed to myself, thinking how much they sounded like overly competitive 13 year old boys, when in fact they were in their mid 30's. In fact, all of them were what we call Mature Adults. It was actually enlightening and rather poignant to realize that no matter how old a man becomes he still feels he has to be the best. It made me like them all the more because I was seeing how vulnerable they all were to peer perspectives and how we, as women, suffer from the sting of that all the time. With women it’s "Am I thin enough?" and with men "Am I strong enough?" But each inner reflection of that question is never answered in a way that satisfies us completely. In a sense, it is the love that is never found. The love of ourselves. The acceptance of who we really are. And the reason why we play games: To find our worth on an even playing field.
The power struggle between the two top clan members with each other was fascinating to watch unfold. One minute they were in total support with each other, saying amusing things to each other and the next they were running each other down like roosters in a cock fight. If their ending scores were pretty even they were happy but if there was a strong lead by one, then in the next match the insults would fly. And they were crude. I recall a can opener being threatened upon a rival’s anus so that it could accommodate not one, but all clan members at once. Sigmund Freud would have had a field day analyzing that imaginative scemario. I also remember one game when the Top Clan Member told his rival from another clan that he was going to be banned from the site if he shot him in the back again. He was also "going to have to move and hide in some foreign country" because he was going to terrorize him "to the point you’re gonna want to kill yourself, your wife and your kids just to keep me from fucking them up, too."
What prompted the vengeance was that the rival was shooting the Top Clan Member in the back, as he ran for the Redeemer in the middle of the room, so as to keep him from getting a multi-kill each and every time he picked it up. If you ask anyone, that’s pure and plain strategy. But if you ask the TCM it was "sniping". In the TCM’s fractured mode of thinking it wasn’t manly to stop him, but to "show some fucking balls" in an attempt to try escape outside the boundary of its explosion, which at this point was literally impossible.
It never occurred to me that this particular clan was unusual in that they entertained a very unhealthy attachment to the game. One must remember this was my first experience in online gaming and I had nothing else on which to judge it by. Having played baseball on a 50/50 team I was used to male to male conflicts arising on the playing field but also knew that they never arose unless the aggressor admired his opponent. This clan lived and breathed Unreal Tournament and admired no one who was better than them or improving to the point of being so. Anything that remotely threatened the egos of the clan, but especially that of their illustrious and ridiculously aggressive leader, was met with quick and course "disciplinary action"; meaning they would harass you from then on to the point where you had no other recourse but to abandon the game forever. "Fuck with us," their web page claimed. "And we will make you rush to unplug your modem." They had banned more people, made more enemies and registered more complaints than any other clan ever has in the history of online UT.
Today, 2007, even though they have moved onto Half Life, they still hold the lead for bans and complaints of harassment across the board in the United States. I’m sure they are proud of it as they wouldn’t be linked up with the European equivalent of themselves if they weren’t. Their Euro peers, to date, have lost the right to operate a server any where in the United Kingdom. I’m sure they, too, are proud of themselves.
Some Clans set out to make complete careers out of being an asshole.
"...from the moment it was realized I was a female playing a male character I was stalked and harassed daily online." -Carrie Ann, 28, on WarcraftSo...after I doubled my skills, got pretty decent at playing and actually won some matches against Junior clan members, I did the most stupid thing possible...
I told them I was a woman.
It happened online while playing on the "Bachelor Pad" map. Some clan member, who shall remain nameless, unless I can call him (LA) Tent_Homo, was becoming irritated because I kept finding where he was sniping from (the ceiling vent), going up and blowing him away. Since this site had a strict ‘no camping’ law I was getting frustrated that he, the admin, kept violating it. He was getting pissed off because I kept finding him.
'You Camper' I typed, to which he responded. "I can do want ever I want, fuck face. It’s my site, asshole."
Of course, if I even thought about stopping on a ledge to take a drink of soda he’d say I was camping and threaten to ban me. "Stop one more time and shoot and yer outta here!" he threatened from the ceiling vent. "I’m not fucking kidding!"
With my patience beginning to wane I managed to play a few more rounds, get systematically slaughtered by other players as per usual, only to notice by the steady red stream of zark-fire splintering from the top of a wall, that he was still positioned in the vent, camping away.
‘Hey.... how’s the vent up there? Good camping, or what?'
"Fuck you."
‘R.E.I. has a killer sale on tents, guy.' I typed back.
"Dude, you got balls, man!" he typed, "You got fucking balls!"
‘Hey, you ban people for camping but you’re breaking your own rules.’
"Fuck you!"
‘Oh! And if you hurry you can get a free styroform cooler with the purchase of a tent liner.' By now the other players were typing 'lol' and 'lmao' in rapid succession.
"Man! You got balls! You got balls!" he continued typing and after the third time I got fed up.
'Darling, if I did I’d be a boon to medical science.'
"WTF?" he typed back.
'I’m a woman?'
And he immediately shut off the server.
Shit.
"The comradery between the guys was so amazing that I wanted to be part of it. So I practiced, got good, and was accepted into their clan community though never as an honorary clan member. It was only when it was discovered that I was female that attitudes suddenly changed. I’d come into a game and they’d all leave..." Monica, 36, on Unreal Tournament 2003/2004
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t know I had done something wrong. Only I didn’t know exactly what it was at the time. Yeah, I mouthed off. Big mouth strikes again. It’s true I had been playing as a man, and it’s also true that they believed I was. However, does it really matter? No one ever asked me if I was a woman. And there were many reasons why I didn’t want them to know. One, was that I didn’t want any sexual tension. And two, I didn’t want to be treated differently, knowing full well that if they had known I was a woman I would have never had the game play training and experience I so desperately needed to remedy my natural handicap. I wanted to be good at the game. I wanted to be treated as an equal. I wanted to experience the game as they did. Play it as they did. Die and spawn as they did...with a fighting chance.
But, no. The damage was done. I had "betrayed their trust".
The guy sniping from the vent felt I had disrespected him by calling him out in front of other players.
One guy’s wife was furious that he had been playing with a woman online and was threatening divorce. No doubt he was doing other things online which doubled his wife's concerns.
One nut said, that playing with me, even though he didn’t know I was a woman, violated his covenant with God, in that he had enjoyed something he hadn’t with his wife (whoa!). He said I was to blame for the "immense guilt" he felt and that I had threatened the sanctity of his marriage.
Another stood up for me and was promptly kicked out of the clan and banned.
Another said I should change my name, play from another location so my IP address was different and keep my mouth shut because the Admin was "a crazy motherfucker" who "enjoyed fucking with people". Uh, really?
In a sense, it was suggested I go underground. I was later to learn other female players from that period had been forced to do just that. Somehow this man’s suggestion had leaked out and he was also banned temporarily "for treason".
The clan was coming apart. The Admin was now implementing what sounded like arcane medieval tort law. It was weird. Creepy. My tag name HONCHO was all over their Clan Site where I became the top Topic of Discussion, with one named "So Honcho has a Pussy" receiving 37 posts with 154 angry and violent replies, and "Honcho the Spy", receiving almost as many, detailing how I should be punished. Since I was banned from their Clan Site, I accessed it from a friend’s computer and read how I had actually been "a spy from a rival clan." Ah, geez. Grow up, guys.
I have to admit, that after reading what was being said, even though I was shocked, I was also intrigued. I can’t help it. I’m a writer by nature. I wanted to know just what it was about them that caused them to find in me something they were obviously afraid of. Was it the fact that I failed to accept their leader’s word as law? Was it because I was female? Since the Admin so often prided himself on his insightful intelligence, was the fact that I eluded detection as a female playing as a male a direct hit to his ego? Is it merely that, hands down, after a certain time, I began to "play like a man", and he failed to notice the difference? And perhaps, it was only just my smart ass comments.
To this day I do not know. At the time I heard via a female source, who said she ran her own server, that it was thought that I had been an investigative reporter, attempting to gain insight in The Clan. (Oh, please.) She was very kind and seemingly concerned. So I trusted her. We exchanged emails. Chatted a bit. Shared our lives. Then, three days later, I began getting emails warning me not to play, received a devastating virus package in one and, in a matter of hours, with my computer failing, realized the bitch had set me up.
"It was made clear to me pretty fast that I should find another site to play on. A woman can only be called ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt’ so many times before it becomes apparent that your presence is not wanted. But I couldn’t play any where else. They kept finding me." - Jude, 26, on HaloSo, even though I didn’t know it at the time, I was on my way to becoming "universally banned" by a man that many, in spite of his obvious mental deficiencies, upheld as a respected individual. Lovely. Just lovely. I had been playing online for three months, got to know some people, had a few laughs. And now, I was being erased. Beyond just being confused I was aware of something shrinking in me. It felt like a shriveling of a solid presence connected to the soul. And, indeed, it was. It was no doubt the loss of confidence and trust.
To make matters worse, a woman from another clan contacted me via email to say she was sorry about what happened with the "(LA)Tent_Homo Clan", that she knew they were "a problem clan" and that I was welcome to play on her site anytime, but only after I was "checked out". Her reasoning was, that in lieu of recent events concerning the "(LA)Tent_Homo Clan", that in order to protect her clan from any negative persons playing on her site, I would have to complete a 22 question form, write a proposal stating why I wanted to play UT, and supply her with four professional references. Obviously, this was a set-up, designed in an attempt to find out where I lived and worked and to just fuck with me further. No Clan would ever go to such an extent to get just one more player on their site. I was just sick at heart to learn that these people not only hated me but they thought I was stupid, too.
At that point I was ready to quit the game for good. But I just couldn’t because, after the initial pangs of humiliation had worn off it was replaced by something other than just primal anger: determination. Not to wax poetical, but like Boudicca, who in 60 AD. climbed into a chariot to lead a revolt against a Roman Army she was apocalyptically outnumbered by, I knew there was no other way I could sit right with myself unless I fought back. No matter the consequences.
So I hopped on, this time with a female satin skin and a feminine name, played for a few hours and signed off. A few days went by and I had the time to play again. So I played on the site then followed by invite another player to another site. Then all hell broke loose. Apparently the Admin "(LA)Tent_Homo" was following my IP via a buddy’s server that upheld several sites which happened to be accessible to him. The jerk was still seething. He just wasn’t going to let this go. He made it clear to me that I wasn’t allowed to play on any site, even ones he didn’t own or have any authority over whatsoever. He said he wanted me to stop playing online forever. "I'll keep tailing you until you do, bitch."
So I did the only rational thing I could think of at the time. I told him to go fuck himself. Many times.
For the next 30 minutes or so I became the target of every player on the map. Even the women. And even the one who had so graciously invited me to play on her site. "Die bitch! Die bitch! Die bitch", "Clan Killer" and "fuck you" were typed and constantly spammed over and over again. I never could get a chance to spawn before being shot at by hordes of players I didn’t even know. If I switched to another site, they’d follow me and do the same thing. They often changed the maps mid-game, opting for a particularly pornographic one which depicted via the Living Room TV, a girl on all fours being taken from behind, while the soundtrack rapped out "Hi, my name is Lisa....yeah, I suck cock...take it up the ass, etc." Of course, I could have changed sites, and did over and over but nine times out of ten I was "tracked" and greeted with "Hello, you fucking bitch" and the one that pissed me off the most "I’m gonna fist fuck you".
‘Pardon me,’ I sarcastically typed back, having to type each sentence separately so he got it. ‘But I don’t believe The Fist Fucker is listed in the roster of available weapons. Maybe they’ll add it to the next version, along with what may become your personal favorite, The Wife Beater. Me, I’m totally stoked about the advent of The White Trash Compactor. And, guess what? You’re my first target.’
There was a long pause, then, BAM! I was banned.
Again.
In the end I was banned from eleven popular sites.
Game over.
Endnote: It will come as no great shock to me to learn that there are those out in the gaming community who will not enjoy reading what I have written here. I know from experience that when a woman expresses dismay at the way she has been treated, people are quick to suspect and ask, "Well, what did you do?" I also know that there’s an unspoken, unwritten law beneath the rules of online gaming that says "What happens here stays here. If you don’t like it, leave."
Well, that’s not on my agenda. And, frankly, it never has been.
To date, many UT players, male and female, have moved on to Halo, Counter Strike, Half Life and other games. And as far as UT goes, I only know of nineteen women playing it regularly on the US West Coast circuit. Perhaps there are more but after two months of research into the servers, I haven’t found any. There are dozens registered, but the roster reads more like an obituary from 2003 than an active list for 2007. Unless they’ve changed their tag names it does appear that they are no longer active in playing UT. And when compared with other games’ rosters, UT appears to have suffered the loss of more women players in the last two years than any other game has to date, with Halo coming up a close second. In fact, on paper it looks like a mass exodus.
This is how a game dies: it loses its players. But sometimes in the messed up realm of human misunderstandings something wonderful happens that begins to bring people back together again. I now know that this game will not die.
Feeling like there was no where else to go, I quit playing UT after only three months. A year later, at the repeated urging of a friend, I hopped onto the server known as I.Y.F. "Umpszark" and finally found the team spirit and comradery that I had been looking for all along. If only I had known about them back then.
Oh, well. Life is a process of finding out what should have been obvious at the time.
For the best game play action out there and the coolest maps, check out In Your Face Clan at http://www.ifyclan.com/
Update 2007: Everything I mentioned above including how cool IYF Clan is/was still holds true to this day. There are still assholes out there...but not in the IYF Clan.
Some Clans are just that Fuckin' Cool.
Second Update: My god. It figures. I find something fantastic and -whoosh- fate takes it away. The In Your Face Clan, as of September 2007, have called it quits. I.Y.F "Umpszark is now known as RGC "Umpszark" under The Run and Gun Clan Server.
So, to U2, Reality, F14, Archangel, Umpqua, Willabro, ZZZ and all of you crazy Ut'ers: It's been a blast!!!!
I LOVE YOU
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 UMPSZARK ROX!
Boudicca and George W. Chimp getting a groove on IYF UMPSZARK / Screenie by IYF /RGC Umpqua 2007
Note: The opinions expressed in the above article, or on the pages of this webpage, in no manner whatsoever represent the opinions and/or beliefs of I.Y.F. Clan. Names in the above article have been changed to protect the identity of those interviewed and of characters in the story. In other words, it's not about you. Carry on....
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"...and, the Most Retarded Marketing Scheme Award goes to....Ubisoft!"
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 THE FRAGDOLLS!
My god. Just when you thought the game world was finally taking women players seriously, here comes The Frag Dolls, Ubisoft's retarded attempt to further push the gaming market into Cromagnonville, USA, by not addressing the presence of true women gamers who make up 43% of the market but by creating a fake clan of cute young women every guy may fantasize he's playing against. "Were here to represent the ladies in gaming with the taste and the talent for beating you at your own game", say The Frag Dolls on their website obviously designed by an advertising agency more intent on popping wood than racking up competent gamescores. "We play hard so you play harder." Yeah. Sure, sister.
Whatever.
http://www.fragdolls.com/
2007 Update: Wikipedia's Explanation for why such sexist and retarded marketing exploits continue worldwide. That's right, ladies! The U.K. and The French have their own versions of these insipid, shallow bitches who wouldn't last five minutes in a throwdown on Call of Duty let alone a 1980's version of Donkey Kong. Must have something to do with their collective I.Q. ratio of 42.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frag_Dolls
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"Yeah, baby, yeah!! You wanna frag...or you wanna SHAG?"
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The Most Original and Most Hilarious Clan Bio Page Ever
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Clever and dripping with creative comedic genius, this clan page strikes me as something I'd have seen in MAD magazine back when I was kid. At first glance it appears as a joke page but I saw some of these guys playing UT at least a year ago and they were great players.
The AHK Gang wants you to know who's kicking your ass.
Check out: http://www.ahkgang.com/asskickers/about.html
Actual Website: www.ahkgang.com/
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Email: ccdespira@aol.com
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