When I woke up the next morning, I was thinking about my day #1 discoveries and why certain responses from some people are acceptable and others are not. For instance, my friends on my steam will often tease me saying "I got you, angel!!" but that doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I dish it right back out to them. It's all in good fun and a part of friendly competition. They aren't meaning to be hurtful or insulting at all. When someone who I am not friends with does it, however, their intention is ambiguous. Are they seeing it as they just put a female gamer in her place or are they simply trying to emulate the behavior between my friends and I? Usually, those players do tend to clarify their intention through further commentary, whether it be complimentary or insulting one's gender. It could be even harder to distinguish because I am so used to sexist commentary. Every time I play, I hear some player making rude marks in regards to my gender. It's a fact of being an open female gamer, which I've experienced since I started online gaming in 1997. They may have a chip on their shoulder about a woman playing a fps game, but I have a chip on my shoulder because they don't want me playing it. That chip might paint what is taken in joking manner or simply what "guys do" when gaming and put it into a different color than its intention.
My other reflection was that I would start putting actual numbers to how often some of the activities that I feel like are occurring are actually occurring to create comparative data between the "obvious female gamer" and the pseudonym. This was working out great until a couple of friends came because they read my blog and wanted to make up for what it was like usually. I love them for that but geez, guys--you blew my statistics!! So, I started marking down what non-friend regulars on the server did and omitted what these friends did. This isn't about how my friends treat me. This is about how the random regular treats me.
Here are the statistics (not including friends):
Laughed at due to death: 1
Playing complimented: 2
Targeted heavily (entire teams turn towards me as primary target): 2
Ubercharged/Kritzkrieged: 1
Healed <20 seconds while at top of score board and not to full: 7
Died next to medic: 3
Healed to full: 1
Dominated players who subsequently left the server: 3
The one time that I was healed to full, the medic was standing next to a heavy and we were not under fire. I was at 30 hp and verbally asking for a heal from the medic. He ignored me and I ate the sandwich that the heavy had dropped. The medic healed me only after I stated why I ate the sandwich and the heavy responded that he was fine with that I did. I think it was more peer pressure from his own gender than anything else that caused him to heal me. The one ubercharge was given out of desperation as everyone else had died. Two of the three deaths next to a medic, I was actually being healed and the medic had a full ubercharge. I was the only player present. These two medics chose death opposed to using their ubercharge on me and my telling them to use it repeatedly beforehand. When I asked one medic as to why he didn't use the ubercharge, he stated "I just didn't think" as the reason. Another thing to note was that the medic figures are only for approximately 3 maps. I omitted the maps where I had friends deliberately pocketing me as those were biased statistics. The two compliments occurred during that period as well. Hooray for getting healed! Oddly enough, one player that I had dominated did not immediately leave the server but left immediately after hearing me speak for the first time.
Day #3 is full of biased statistics. Yesterday was my birthday and my friend, Shaun aka Hojo, put the server on birthday mode. Doing so actually really changed the way that people treated me for the night. Birthdays seem to make everybody a little bit nicer so thanks, Hojo! I only had one player start making sexist remarks the whole night and he stopped after he realized that the birthday mode was for me. I was also pocketed several times by well wishers and received a major compliment. Again, I omitted these statistics as it was clearly birthday biased.
Pre birthday mode statistics for roughly 3 or 4 maps:
Laughed at due to death: 3
Playing complimented: 0
Targeted heavily (entire teams turn towards me as primary target): 4
Ubercharged/Kritzkrieged: 0
Healed <20 seconds while at top of score board and not to full: 10
Died next to medic: 3
Healed to full: 0
Dominated players who subsequently left the server: 2
I was so frustrated during this time period that I left the server. It was just an ugly place to be and birthdays are about having a good time. I clearly wasn't. So, what Hojo did really meant the world to me.
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