Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending America’s Video Game Expo at the Philadelphia Convention Center. There were many vendors there such as Dell, Panasonic, Subaru, Alienware, and Rock Band. But one of the highlights of the event was the inclusion of one of the many gaming clans that are out there. This clan entitled PMS is an all female clan that because of their sponsors Verizon and Patriot memory was hosting competitions against anyone for a chance at the prize they were currently offering. After watching a few matches it was very noticeable that this was easier then it sounded because the skills of the PMS clan members were better than most of the people in attendance.
This situation reminded me of an article from some game magazine that I had read awhile back that had talked to a professional female gamer on her training regiment for upcoming tournaments. She responded that while it varied by what game she needed to play, but a good example of her methodology was the fact that she could spend over an hour simple turning a corner properly. Now just a quick little side note about turning corners properly what the article did not explain was the fact the turning the corner properly meant having the right equipment out that the situation calls for and having your weapon at one hit one kill targets or if they don’t exist then where ever the most damage would be dealt.
But Bringing my thoughts to the scene in front of me I noticed that the games you could play them in where the more popular shooters the Xbox had to offer which was Halo, Gears of War, and one that I was unable to identify due to my lack of Xbox experience. Now maybe if I was a better player I would have gotten in line to play a PMS member to try and win one of the prizes, but like I said before I suck at Xbox games and while this does not matter in the grand scheme of things I know I am making most “hardcore” gamers scream out what the hell is wrong with this man not knowing how to play an Xbox. Now I can assure you that there is nothing wrong with me but my disinterest for the Xbox comes from the fact that most of its popular games are of the type that a frat boy with only has half of his brain cells left could enjoy with what little effort they can muster. Now I have gotten off the path that I originally meant to travel so it’s time to find it which may be a little messy so watch out for the blood I may leave behind.
So taking the turn to the proper path we come face to face with the fact that there are a lot of female gamers out there and while some are in clans like PMS most are not. Even if they are not in clans it does not mean they are any worse than those that are. Along with the fact that women play games is the rather obvious if not painful fact that when they win it usually means they beat a lot of guys since men still make up the majority of those playing games. This causes the question of if women are beating the guys at their own game then why don’t more play to be formed. Now the only answer that I can give to the question is the fact the answer is in the question. What this means is that the questions states their own games with their meaning guys and if you still don’t see what I am getting at then I will spell it out for you. What I am trying to get at is the fact that most game production companies produce games with men in mind rather than women and if I use stereotypes a bit it can be said that men prefer the games that go I shoot something, it blew up, that’s so cool while women tend to prefer games that a bit more then the simplistic dribble men prefer. So either women are digressing or they just really want to beat up the oh so fragile ego of the men who play against others thinking they’re the best when they’re not. My guess is the later of the two options since it truly is good to beat someone who has the mentality of compared to me you are all noobs that have to cheat to win.
As I left the grisly scene that I had been watching ever so intently to head to a panel that I wanted to attend I noticed a lack of women gamers in attendance since most that were there seems to either be with children to supervise them or with their boyfriend/husband just to be with them. That statement held true until I took my seat in the panel in which case the women seem to be coming out of the wood work which caused me to be perplexed as I knew they had to come from somewhere but they definitely were not coming from the main exhibit hall. I had little time to ponder this conundrum as the panel started just shortly after I noticed this surge in the number of females in attendance, but in the end I really did not care if there were women at the expo or not since after all I was there to have a good time.
Even though it was made a little harder to have that good time since the only games at the expo were either demos that I had played before or games that are over a year old I was able to find a few games I had either not played in a long time or new ones that I did not get a chance to play before the expo. Overall I found some good games to play, got a lot of free stuff, and attended some interesting panels that I would love to see again.
-Seth
The cake is a lie
-Favorite joke from portal
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