Able to Relax, soon...

Since my project is coming to its conclusion, I'll be able to freely evaluate games without a rushed atmosphere. Despite being utterly exhausted, I will still make an effort to write a new piece.

Just last week, the final piece of the Halo series, Halo: Reach debuted. I am a huge fan of this series, having followed the series mythology to the books that truly brought such important characters alive like Dr. Catherine Halsey. Cortana, as artificial intelligence with a gendered hologram and personality, has captured my attention since Halo: Combat Evolved. She has always been an inspiration due to her knack for leadership and strong understanding of technology (which, I supposed if you are a piece of software, math and logic are kind of your thing). Cortana, however, but a child compared to the intellectual prowess of Dr. Halsey.

Reach marks the first appearance of Halsey in the series. It is fitting that the woman who is the key to the entire series should be in the game that defines the series. Combat Evolved marked a new era in FPSs, and brought a brand new story to the table. Halo 2 and 3 defined the mysterious, faceless lone wolf, but individually as games they were lackluster in any particular stand-out mode, game-play innovation or character. Save for dual-wielding, though I suppose there's a reason its not available anymore.

ODST introduced an interesting non-Spartan character and a team of typically flawed human beings, with the attempt to introduce feelings of isolation. It was a very large change of pace from the flash-bang that was the ending of Halo 3. ODST used an interesting level design to aid the lost rookie, with the remnants of the city's artificial intelligence silently guiding our equally silent hero. Personally, I never felt the strong attachment to my lost teammates, though I did highly enjoy their individual levels. ODST was also the origin of the mode Firefight, something that has been tweaked and perfected for Bungie's last game of the series.

Reach, while an individually brilliant game, is the product of the perfections from every game that precessed it.   I do not believe that the feeling of isolation and loss would have been as strong without the concept of isolation introduced in ODST. Chronologically, it is here at we are first introduced to Cortana. Noble Six, while faceless, is a creation and an attachment of your own being. Gender choices actually hold a strong influence over the personality of the game. With a character that I could call my own, a character with a strong legacy and unsurpassed bravery, I felt absolute awe. As a female gamer, nothing was more impressive or powerful to me than to be a character that I modified to represent me and my ideals, kick some serious Covie ass.

I'm rambling now... But I hope that this makes sense.

Females are important in gaming. And, as an honest opinion, I believe that gaming was initially directed at women (Pac Man, anyone?).

 I became a hero at Reach.

Retrospective Thinking

A long stretch of nothing today has got me considering last night's personalities encountered on Halo 3. A lot of these persons acted in a very precise manner. They expected everyone to work in a team, though not in the sense that you would in a game like Team Fortress. Especially since the mod in question was "Team Slayer", an objective where your only goal is to be the team with the highest amount of kills at the end (usually 50). "Team" here can be considered more closely linked to a militant "team", that effort where you move as one group and strike as one entity.

I encountered one man who claimed to be in the Army last night. Before hand, he engaged in a polite conversation, glad to have the day off to relax and play some games. Mid-game, he cheered on team mates, and helped others by actively backing them up and alerting people to an enemy's position.After the game, he greeted everyone with "Good Game", showing good sportsmanship during competition. He was the most polite person I met that night.

Flash forward a game or two, and people are screaming into the headset. The same type of casual conversation I just held is now frowned upon, in a sense, and attempted to be drowned out through someone's literal screams. People seem more focused on gameplay and competition than in a conversation.

It moved from people frowning on conversational aspects, to then ridicule about skill. These people blamed the lack of "team work" for losses, even though they did nothing to encourage a positive "team" atmosphere. Halo 3 is a military sci-fi FPS, and people attempt to play Team games as though they were channeling a captain in the Army Corps. If on a team with someone like this, they expected you to be as involved as they were in the game.

What kind of team is supposed to form when the only objective is death? Everyone plays the same role. There are some rules to follow: if everyone has died, hold back and wait for a team mate to continue a charge. That's common sense for Halo players. But rarely are you able to be synchronized closely enough with a stranger to be able to form a fully functional team. Skill certainly comes into play at higher levels of gameplay.

Team Fortress 2 is a game based specifically off of meeting strangers on a server, and being able to work as a fully functional unit to achieve a similar goal. The main difference here is that there are different classes that play different roles on the team. Thus people are able to jump into a role to perform. While some are focused on co-op efforts and others are purely individual, they work in sync to fulfill a similar goal. With Halo, its hard to have a "team" atmosphere outside of militant-cooperation, mainly due to the fact that there is no difference in character or role, only skill and understanding.

"Team" was referenced a couple of times yesterday. It is a fact that we were playing the mode "Team Slayer", yet rarely is there anything shared but the headcount at the end. There is a way to work as a team in a military shooter, and the only means of doing so is to follow a military strategy. This is something that is hard to follow for casual gaming. To recap, no mention of my gender or no single attack was made of anything about me EXCEPT for skill level. Skill and teamwork were the biggest criticisms.

Halo 3: Live Blargin'

I'm currently reviewing some videos. I should make a point that in servers like Jiggly's Fun House for TF2 where sounds are frequently used, there IS an option to turn those sounds off.

The following are all on Halo 3: Team Slayer. I'm engaging in a normal conversation throughout each of these games with someone else. While I may not be verbally telling people my gender, its easy to pick up from my voice, gamertag (SPARTANphelixia) and the gender set of my character.

First Halo game, had a very excitable man on my team! His first day off from the Army, and he was was playing a sci-fi military shooter. Regardless, this man was very polite, communicated and worked like a team. We had a brief discussion and commenced with gameplay. We were shorthanded a player, and yet almost won.

Holy shit. Talking to someone online, and someone just yelled "NOBODY GIVES A SHIIIIIIIIIT". O_o God, I hope my laptop picked up on that. ...I was just playing a match with a friend, speaking with him and answering a couple of questions about the project. Towards the end of the match, this man screams at me to shut up. He only said one thing, then removed his headset. I have been talking and engaging in a regular, normal conversation with someone through XBL.

This most recent game, this person must've been on crack. He was screaming nonstop into the microphone, began to blame everyone else when we started to lose, when he himself was the weakest link on the team. Whoa, surprise? A little infuriating though. Honestly, its very hard to play a game like this when you jump in. You need some thick skin to pull of some of this nonsense. Another option quite viable to players: the mute option. My friend had to mute said player in order to tolerate gameplay.

[Before game]
"Ready to fucking rape these kids?"
[After game, directed towards me and one more]
"You're terrible. Just kidding! But you're not very good"
"Wow, our teammates are terrible. You are so lucky [you're on our team]."
That's all that needs to be said about this last game.

Wow, a quiet game. I thought this night was destined to keep outmatching the person before them.

Another game, not a peep from anyone. Whoa. It's almost... unexpected.

Last game in Team Slayer, 4v1, so I dropped out.

Commencing one game in Social Slayer:

I don't think some of these people realize that they're not in the army.
A close game, not bad at all. Pretty decent people.

Saturday Night Combat

I never did follow up with a blog about this, but the other night while playing MNC, I had my first experience of player interaction through the headset. At that time, it was closer to midnight. One of the player's profiles claimed that he was from New York. He, and a small group of his friends were very vocal while playing, often aghast at how the game would turn.

Unfortunately, I didn't join that particular game from the beginning, but rather the middle. By the way they were talking, it appeared as though a member of the opposite team was either challenging them or ridiculing them. I say this, because at the end of the game with their/our victory, this group did, as I would say, lose their shit. By that, I mean they started screaming "Aw, not so tough now, huh?" and other sounds things. While I would not want to be the center of attention for that group, they were very amusing to listen to.

Besides that "first encounter", the game is relatively quiet, as far as voice-chat goes. 

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. 

Fun Times with Bullets

Tonight was an interesting night on Team Fortress 2. I visited three different servers from around 9-11:30.  The first server was a random server, I don't remember the name or who hosted it, but it was CTF_Egypt. Unfortunately, for this game my mic was not working, and it interfered with recording audio through Fraps. That server was the only one with the audio interference.

CTF_Egypt was a surprisingly fun server, with a lively, and apparently regular crowd. It was interesting to hear a couple talking over the speakers, and obviously both parties were well respected on this server. The only complaints found here were about the poor quality of my microphone, which got a couple people upset. Besides that, there were no criticism of skill or gender, just hard and honest play.

The second server was the control, No Heroes, CTF_2Fort server. This experience was as I expected it to be, with honest play and casual conversation. There were slight competition, the regulars who goofed off (respectfully) and an honest competition of capture the flag. One person did interact with me, though it was in a playful way, as he teased me for killing him during a boxing match taking place in the sewers (I realize if you have know knowledge of 2Fort or TF2, this is a very confusing sentence).

Here is where the one person was teasing me. He says "bad phelixia, baaaaad. you were betting on the blue one to win, weren't you? :)" [I was on the Blue Team].

I spoke over my laptop's integrated microphone, making my gender apparent. No Heroes is a respectable clan server with strict rules and administrators, so this keeps the server calm. Some users did have inappropriate names, such as "CitizenDildo", though these silly names are the least from offensive considering what the third server offered.

The third server was CP_Granery, run by a more obscure clan, Jiggly's Fun House. This was not a strictly monitored server, nor was it the most respectful towards its users. While most servers have simple messages that pop up, either being used as advertisements for the clan to raise money for the server, or otherwise, this clan used the messaging system as a means to spam vulgar or disheartening messages to its users. From a female's perspective, these were not the most welcoming of messages.

 These messages included:

Sex is not the question. Sex is the answer. 

The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. 

War does not determine who is right- only who is left. 

Virginity is like a soapbubble, one prick and it is gone. 

Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole. 

This Server is Super Sexy, TF2 SourceCraft mod is HOTT

(**I missed one comment: "My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch."**)

While the latter is not actually offensive, and some of these where either thought provoking or slightly amusing, others give off a discouraging, non-friendly user atmosphere. Through these server messages, administrators appear to encourage devious and inappropriate behavior on their server. Unfortunately, that is what was found on this server, with a couple of people being particular vocal in an offensive way. There were passing comments made about gender, which I still need to evaluate more. I'm having some difficulty, I will admit, hearing them through the feedback on the recording. They did make other comments about players however, particularly about Pyros (a class which they seem to have a personal vendetta against). I frequently play a Pyro, and after claiming to warn me about a sentry 'round a corner, which ended up killing me, they made a lot more audible of a criticism about how Pyros never listen.

Just heard a comment about Medics and their Blutsager weapon, as well.

One thing I forgot about on this server was the ability to key in a phrase, which would them start the appropriate sound clip. For example, one was "knockout" which then yelled throughout the server "You need to knock it the fuck off, man." "Knockdown" plays the Chumbawumba (Spl?) song. There's another one for "Whores" and yet another for something called "GayJoey".


For the vast amount of play time that I spent with these two people in particular, most of it involved tactic or whining about certain players or aspects of the current game. Most of the offense was by the server itself, though the crowd it had the potential to invite wasn't reassuring.

There was another female who was also playing on this server. She remained relatively reserved save for vital moments in a push to capture a point. Mainly, the only time I remember her speaking up was to say "Don't uber me". She had no real display of her gender, save for when she spoke up during those moments.

In conclusion, tonight, the control server faired as I expected it too, with mild-mannered game play and game style. It was an enjoyable atmosphere for people who are looking to just play the game. Meanwhile, outside of more controlled clan servers, there appears to be some discrepancy with what is considered to be "acceptable" or appropriate. Here, on these more obscure servers, are you more likely to a conflict with emotions and vulnerability, especially if lacking in skill.

I'm too tired to continue writing this. I should edit this in the morning.

Time for Halo

Currently playing Halo 3 multiplayer...
Procedure: Get on Headset. Say "Hey, what's up?" at the beginning of every match to teammates. See who/if anyone responds. Attempt to engage in small talk or conversation throughout the game.

Make notes on any type of foul play, discouraging environments that would discourage players and specifically females.
(This seems like the best method thus far. If you have suggestions, I am totally open).

It's worth noting that in Halo 3, there ARE female Spartans. However, they all look the same in their armor. To differentiate genders, you choose which gender you are in the menu, and it just changes if you have a girly noise or a manly noise when you die. I'm on the female setting.

Starting time: Around 7:00 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Team Slayer:
My first game, my teammate lost his shit. Often, he would yell "Who the fuck are my teammates?" I spoke open mic a couple of times when there was lag, just making little comments like "oh, yes there is bad lag" or simply saying hi at the beginning of a game. He never commented on a gender. He was more upset by a lack of skill.

Second game, someone offered to party up with me. It was a little unfair of a pairing, 4v2, then 3v2 after one of our's dropped. You can party up with people and stay in the same group to make a control group here. Currently, I've been playing randomly.

Last game, no real comments from anyone. We also lost.

Chatty team. Two of the opposite team d/c. Our opponents aren't really taking it too seriously after half their team dropped. Watched one guy just jump up and down in a corner. Current team seems pretty nice. They're also friends, since the one always addressed the other by an actual name "Greg". Hi, Greg! Thanks for playing.

Now trying: Squad Battle:

Keynote name: "IBangSconez"

This is a larger game type, with a higher chance of getting an objective game. Our first game was a Big Team Slayer, and I'm pretty sure we were playing with either another female or a small child. Through their manner of speaking it sounded more like a small child.

Two games of this, and this was horrifically boring. The maps are so big that there's no competition.

>>>Taking a break for ice cream.

Back. Returning to Team Slayer.
It's relatively quiet.
A couple of games and nothing really.
Nothing but a few bad losses... Getting tired.

Mm! I think I was actually playing with either a female or young teenage male again. That could either be delightful, or my excitement could be known as creepy.

No foul play through this play through. Honestly, I think one of the hardest things for women for a game like Halo is getting used to FPS controls. Maybe I can try that next time.