A Weekend of Gaming

I got to play a little bit of everything this weekend, save for some Halo3. Perhaps I'll get to that later tonight.

I started the weekend of with some Team Fortress 2 (Saturday, August 21 8:00PM-11:30PM). I reviewed the servers Jiggly's Fun House for the first server. There was nothing of apparent interest while playing on this server. It is to be noted that while it lacked certain personalities that were present just a couple of nights ago, the server atmosphere was consistent with de-motivational messages such as "Sex is not the question. Sex is the answer" and likewise. It is also to be noted that this group has a website . I just logged onto their clan site, and I was greeted with a female's breasts and ass. This group also hosts multiple servers on Team Fortress 2.

First hand view of Jiggly's Fun House Website. 

A list of available servers from Jiggly's Fun House. Accessible mid-game. 

Any conversation here was primarily about skill, or some type of achievement that had taken place during game play. A favorite of this server is using the provided sound clips in the server. Simply by typing !soundlist in chat, you are given a list of sounds that, when entered, will be played throughout the server. A favorite is the "gayjoey" sound clip. I believe it to be an edited version of a clip from Full Metal Jacket, so that it yells accordingly "Do you like to suck dicks?" "Sir, yes, sir!".  Some players like to use these sound clips to emphasize a point, to make fun of certain characters, or simply for humor's sake. "gay joey" is a popular one used, others available examples include "whore" and "whine."

Protip: Crowded elevators smell different to midgets. 

The second server visited was xxlgamers.net. Their server was very, very lively and hosted hilarious results. I will give them credit- the players last night voiced criticism against racist comments and violence against women. This comes up due to the fact that someone said "nigger" in team chat and was immediately frowned upon by a couple of users. Someone also posted a spray of a character known as "Vault Boy" from the Fallout series punching a pregnant woman of equally cartoonish appearance in the stomach. This apparently was the only image of the Vault Boy cut from the game, so reported Kotaku. This was also deemed inappropriate by users. Despite a couple of complaints, the admin of the time was relatively lax. He admitted later that he was in fact not a legit admin, but rather had bought the position for $5.

Someone actually sprayed this mid-game. Reference: Fallout 2.

Note: "peenie" is actually someone's name. 

Most of the conversation on this server was about skill and game content. These people were not afraid to tell someone if they sucked. I feel as though a lack of skill is not something that always merits an attack, but if you are vocal on the server and perform extremely poor after such strong words, you are more likely to be attacked, in a sense. A problem with PC gaming is the ability to hack the game you're playing in order to create an advantage for yourself. Often, if someone is playing abnormally well, they are accused of hacking. This happened often last night, often for stupid reasons. In the "hacker's" defense, these spies were playing very, very poorly.

A: "told you, you're just a fail spy"
B: "Black Star you are using hacks"
C: "HAHAHAHA"
D: "you shot me again. completely invisible"

A:" i'm not raging and i'm not quit, just calling it like it is. hacker is fail, get skills put down the tools, ya wank"

Often, it is easiest to attack someone else's manhood mid-game.  Obviously, this joke was mis-used after the first quip.

Again, a female was found playing last night! This was on xxlgamers.net's server. She never spoke up, though her profile contains an actual picture of herself (as confirmed via myspace.com). No one made any comment to any female players, no matter the level of skill. In fact, as seen earlier, there was actually a defense of females here in this server. 

Considering No Heroes , the control of this experiment, offers a very controlled atmosphere, I believe these results are beginning to show a good explanation of Team Fortress 2 and their online, multi-player community. I've found and experienced one server, Jiggly's Fun House, which seems to be consistently offensive on some level, despite actual user content. On the other hand, I also experienced xxlgamers.net's server, which was incredibly active last night. While I need to review both of these servers more for conclusive and consistent results, they are beginning to show a pattern. There is a place for female gamers here. We can be vocal, and we can be known and respected. As always, there will be people in certain areas, but one area should not discourage a new gamer, or a female gamer, from this type of environment.