Curiosity killed the writer.

I'm just a girl.

XBox Live...and oh yeah, the internet in general pisses me off.

A regular day on XBL consist of;

"Are you a girl."
"Yes."
"Girls don't play Halo."

or

"WTF that's so gay, you have pink armor."



But realizing that most XBL gamers are boys who sound like girls I simply ignore the fact and continue the game. I'm not gonna let them get to me.

Now, I'm a regular used of Digg and when there's an article regarding a girl gamer, some dumbass usually posts a comment that consists of :

"Inaccurate. Girl gamers do not exist."

Sarcasm or not it bothers me. In my Women's Studies class we were taught that there are two types of racism. Active and passive. Active refers to the blatant obvious racism and passive refers to those who neither encourage or stop racism. By active passively they perpetuate the status quo. (White man is still dominant.)

This also applies to male gamers. We have active and passive sexists.

I want to bring up Jade Raymond, the producer for the game Assassin's Creed.



In November, someone posted a comic (not posting it out of respect) which depicted Jade performing sexual acts to male gamers in an attempt to buy and play the game. UbiSoft slapped a lawsuit on Something Awful (the forum who posted the comic) and in response you had male gamers retort with her being a "bitch" and the only reason she was used was for her sex appeal. Yes, let's just ignore the fact that she has a degree in computer science and has worked for EA and has programmed games for Sony.

I don't see the big deal about her being the face of this game, she has the right to be. What Jade Raymond did for Assassin's Creed is what Frank O'Conner did for Halo and Gabe Newell for Half Life 2.

Anyways, who bought the game because of Jade Raymond? I bought because it was a good game and had nice reviews.

But you know what...it's because a male is threatened by a beautiful competent female. Miyuki Jane, a blogger from Game Girl Advanced writes:

"It is dangerous to be a beautiful woman in the games industry. Oh, it's difficult to be a woman, period. But if you also happen to be attractive, you are doubly cursed. On the one hand, yes, when you're at a conference where you are among a handful of women, you are remembered, and that is advantageous. But for every break you may get for being female and attractive you get a chorus of voices telling you that you don't deserve it because, well, you are attractive, and obviously you can't possibly have gotten where you are without seducing men along the way. And I am devastated to say that sometimes joining in those voices are other women.

And then on the other hand you have groups that want to use you because you are beautiful - whether its the marketing machine, PR, the press - it's all a form of exploitation, honestly. And while men like Cliffy B and Will Wright are also pimped out to move product, they don't suffer from quite the same sexually tinged commentary that comes with being the female spokesperson for a product.

It's disgusting. And distressing. And depressing."

There's also Morgan Webb.



'[Jade Raymond] made a great game. Yeah, people can be mean. That made me mad, because she’s so nice. But I mean, that’s the thing, you’re just not going to be left alone. Like I’ve gotten so many horrible e-mails, I don’t even want to read them anymore. But that’s just being on TV. They don’t think that you’re really a person. They just write you. Sometimes I would write people back and go, “You kiss your momma with that mouth?” And then they go, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you read these e-mails.” And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” But I think that’s a problem with anybody in the public eye. I don’t think that necessarily has anything to do with women in games. I think it’s just you obviously don’t exist because you’re — I don’t even want to use the word “famous” for myself but… known.

Here’s the thing: 99.9 percent of people are awesome and cool and fine and normal, and there’s the 0.1 percent of people who are morons and chicken-s–t a–holes, and they ruin it for everybody. And that sucks because I do not read fan e-mail because 0.1 percent of people ruin it for everybody, and I don’t read forums because 0.1 percent of people ruin it for everybody. And it would be really great if I could go on a forum and talk to people who like the show and talk about games, but I can’t because there’s some 14 year-old jerk somewhere who just wants to be an idiot and try and get attention. And then you can’t engage them because if you give them attention, then they win. And it’s really unfortunate, and I wish that weren’t true but that’s the nature of the Internet; everybody gets a voice whether or not they deserve one, and I think it’d be great to get some sort of verification system so people could take ownership of their names and reputations. I think that situation, there could be some really interesting conversations. Until that day, I stay away."

posted by Jules @ 6:00 PM