For years now, I've been playing Team Fortress 2. I am actually a Team Fortress 2 champion and was the first woman to win any Gamespot tournament, which is pretty cool. Nothing like breaking a glass ceiling. My friends list on Steam, as one would expect, is pretty sizable. I'm currently sitting at around 266 friends. The combination of being a woman who plays a game very well has a great deal to do with that count. One would think that, having such a sizable friends list, my days playing Team Fortress 2 are pretty friend filled and relaxed. The sad truth is that it isn't.
My fiance also plays Team Fortress 2. Very few people are aware that he also played in the same tournament that I won. One would think that how he and I are treated would be rather similar but it's not. There are stark differences from how much healing he gets from medics, the way people talk to him or regard him, and so on. The most obvious difference is in how people talk to us and its frequency. Other players, whether they be friend or not, generally regard him as being a better player than I am when he is the first to point out that I am actually the better player due to consistency of skill and willingness to work with my team. In a 1v1, we utterly nullify each other. Yet, he is somehow the better of us two. He gets infinitely more heals, ubercharges and kritzkriegs from medics although he blatantly uses them as bait while I will be left to die, even by friends standing next to me as a medic. He gets praise while I get insults and endless "lols". He gets harassed from time to time but it's always rare whereas not a night goes by without someone telling me to get back to the kitchen. I tend to be the magnet for all the rage. Even in dominating opponents, there is a difference. He'll frequently have more dominations on the scoreboard compared to me. The reason why is simple--a good number of the players that I dominate immediately leave the server.
What instead happens is generally a lot of demand for my attention either through voice communications, in-game text or, my favorite, messaging me through steam while I'm clearly playing a game. Those that do the latter often laugh when I don't respond until several hours later. The problem is, I may have as many as 6 or 7 people messaging me through Steam during the course of my game time. It's a nightly occurrence. If I responded to them while I'm playing, then I wouldn't get much time to actually play, now would I? I know this sounds like a pathetic complaint but think about when you do your best in a game. Is it when you have a lot of people talking to you at once or is it when you can just relax and focus on the game by "getting into the zone" because of a lack of interruption? For most people, they do their best in the latter when they aren't facing a lot of interruption.
Generally the people in game are the hardest to ignore. whether it be the random order to get back into the kitchen by the total stranger or being relentlessly teased by somebody who thinks that they're funny. I don't mind people talking to me. I like friends and I love joking around. I just don't like it when I have half a server doing it all at once. That's just overwhelming and would be to anybody. It becomes disruptive. Toss in all the commentary when an opponent kills you like "lolz I just killed angel", it becomes downright maddening. This is something that is common between my fiance and I though, again, we have noticed that this happens to me a great deal more than it happens to him.
I have voiced my frustrations to my friends over and over again, especially to the ones who actively participate in it without being aware of what they are doing. If he and I are treated so disparately when we are so comparable in skill, then the only difference left to explain the variable treatment is gender. The medic who hangs off of him and stops healing me the moment my name comes up on his hud is being sexist. The guys who badger me on a server while I'm playing are being sexist. The players who leave after I dominate them are being sexist. One doesn't have to say "get back into the kitchen" to punish a player for their gender. It's not an overt kind of sexism but a sneaky kind which is a good deal more insidious and inhibiting. Last night, I came close to changing my nick, avatar and deleting most of my friends list on Steam. Today, I decided to prove my case instead.
Years ago, in Team Fortress Classic, I noted the differences between how a player was regarded based on their gender and performed a little experiment. I changed my name and used a different won_id to become another player. I found a target server where I would become a regular for the next two weeks and I actively avoided the newly added in-game VOIP for the entire experiment. I became respected on this target server as a great player and a worthy opponent. By the end of the first week, every regular knew who I was and wanted to be on my team. At the end of the experiment, I spoke for the first time using the in-game voice comms, immediately revealing my gender. What was unleashed is not repeatable but I will simply say that highly graphic language was used. Today, in Team Fortress 2, there are fewer players that will respond to a female gamer like that. They still exist but they are distinctly outnumbered but that doesn't mean that sexism in Team Fortress 2 still isn't prevalent. It's just changed its method of delivery. To prove it, I'll renew my old experiment. I will become a player with no history and no discernible gender. It will become a comparison study: the female TF2 champion and the free 2 player. Who do you think will get more heals or harassed?
No comments:
Post a Comment