So I had a little walk down memory lane the other day when someone had brought up the old attack about “why should girls segregate themselves in clans and on gaming teams” yada, yada, yada. This has been one of the things that throughout the years many people have stated and I always spit out the publically correct and true statements back, about why at least I do it, and why I care so much about it. But this time as I read it something made me glimpse back about a situation I hadn’t thought about in years- not just at what it felt to be harassed and mocked which is what I usually relate to, but that feeling of simply running INTO a girl back in the day on Xbox.

It made me think of my first experience when I even ran into another female and I couldn’t stop but laugh at myself and my actions, but also wishing it was still that same feeling in terms of the sheer excitement and joy of it. Even though it is a good sign that it isn’t a unique feeling anymore showing that more and more women are gaming these days, I would like to believe I am still not that jaded in thinking we are anywhere close to the majority in terms of hardcore, competitive gaming.  Anyway, just a refresher for you ladies to think about, those that care about other women playing and those those do not. You can’t say that SOMETHING unique happened when you ran into your first female gamer.  Here is my story…

In 2001 the Xbox released and of course in my household we had it the day it came out.  Immediately, Halo LAN parties were being held in ceremonious detail every other night or so at my house. It was the hub of gaming with all my husband’s (then boyfriend) friends, my sister, and my future brother-in-law literally spending every free moment over at our houses until they finally broke down and bought their own (which they continued to bring over anyway).

A few months after Xbox launched, my husband found out about this new software called GameSpy Tunnel in which we could play against other real competitors all over the world (of course we kept to the Texas pingers mostly) using our PC’s to connect to host gaming rooms.  That is what first changed gaming for me and made it more of an obsession. I do not know if any female ever played in any of our rooms during the next few months, as there was no voice communication, at least none of them ever had an obvious female name and never mentioned such a detail.  It was also here that I started using my new gamer alias, Athena, and my sister who was always over using our Xbox was using Athena Twin as I had a lot of friends already and she wanted them to realize it was my sister when she was using it.

In the middle of the year, Halo had announced their Halo Championship tournament in which my husband, my sister, and myself practiced religiously for. It was at the first one that we met people we had been playing with online; many today which we still talk to and see (H2O Decoy, our very first H2O) today.  At the first tournament there were over eighty competitors and the only other females in attendee were girlfriends of guys who were competing.  My husband and I advance to the next tournament in another city, in which it was the same story.

A few months later my husband was selected in the second wave of the new service called Xbox Live.  At this time we started sharing an Xbox Gamertag, so I was actually known as DoubleB initially to all the new friends I would make.  I played for months and months, hours upon hours on Xbox Live throughout this phase with my new headset and never once did I run into another female that I knew of, but at that time I could say it hadn’t even crossed my mind to even expect it.

When the full version of Xbox Live was released and all the games came out that supported it in November 2002, I immediately found a game that finally took the majority of my time away from Halo, still being played through tunnel software (now XBConnect), and this game was Unreal Championship. Finally I had the ability to play an FPS on an amazing service that had full voice communication and I was hooked.

The monumental moment in my life happed a few short weeks later when I was in a random match on this game and I saw a name pop up that said this person was “Fraggity Ann” (now known as Boomst1ck PMS although nothing will ever touch her first name, lol).  Now, I can’t recall if the player was on my team or the opposing team or how the voice mechanics worked in the game, but I specifically remember I had to be in proximity to talk to her and I think I remember telling her not to shoot me, so I believe it was the opposing team.

Anyway, logistics aside, I kept trying on countless times to get close enough to talk, jumping around like a three year old on a sugar high in the game.  I would repeatedly try to get enough time and to a close enough distance to yell out in my microphone and ask if she was a girl (kind of like some of the boys do when you run into them lol). I remember the feeling of extreme excitement coursing through me as I thought this has to be a girl and subjecting myself to death many, many times trying to confirm it. It probably took at least ten futile deaths, before all of a sudden I hear this sweet, serene reply in a definite female voice that said something like “Yes, I am. Are YOU a girl?”

That moment is what built history for me and shortly after, I quit out and invited her to my room so we could actually get full sentences out.  We had a frenzied and excitable conversation about how amazing it was to find another female playing and how cool it was to know there were others. I am just amazed that I hadn’t even thought about it before this point in all honesty.  Shortly after we found more females in the game and as we all started to play together in a natural way, it was then that our future clan was born: PMS Clan.  A clan was born from the inherent bond of simply being a minority that held a shared passion and love of gaming- not to mention a little payback to all the male smack talkers that came along the way.  Of course that is a story all on its own.