In 2007, I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas. It was the first time I ever played games online that allowed me to talk to other gamers using a microphone. Before playing Xbox, I just enjoyed single player games most of the time, such as "Pokemon." The most online playing I ever experienced was a computer game called "MapleStory." Once I started speaking on the mic on Xbox, I realized how different the Xbox community was. Every game I played was male dominated or at least it appeared that way because girls never spoke. The moment I spoke, I suddenly became the star of the chat, not because of what I had to say but because of my gender. I had men insulting my appearance (even though they didn’t know what I looked like), flirting with me or informing me that I had no life because I was doing better than them. This was not something I enjoyed listening to since I was already a shy and quiet teenage girl.
I quickly realized that the Xbox community seemed to largely consist of the following types of people. There were the very young boys that would scream curse words and probably should not have been playing a rated M game, the older teenagers or guys in their 20s that would also curse and scream consistently and probably broke a few controllers out of rage, the silent people that either did not have a mic or choose not to speak, the “gems” that were actually nice people and fun to talk to, the people that just breathed heavily into the mic and the people I already knew and was friends with. This is mostly just based on first person shooters I played online.
I learned how to deal with the offensive players though. Xbox had a feature that allowed me to block people and I basically just blocked everyone that I didn’t know. Sometimes, I would leave people unmuted and just listen to how angry they were getting because I was winning. It secretly entertained me. I would also use the party chat option that allowed me to only allow certain people into the chat and I could not hear anyone else. It made gaming a lot more comfortable.
Something that always bothered me was when another female gamer was in a game with me. I wasn’t bothered by her gender, I was bothered by how she was acting. The girl usually had the word “girl” or some other way of identifying her gender in her username and the second she spoke, it felt like a cry for attention. It always worked. Many girls would play "Call of Duty" just for male attention. I didn’t like it.
Since then, I have continued to play video games and continued to play online games. I have become a lot less shy and have been able to speak in chats without feeling discouraged or nervous. I feel like the online community has improved a lot as well since I first started playing Xbox games. When I speak now, people rarely comment about my gender or say anything offensive. I can actually hold conversations with people online and enjoy gaming with them. I feel like in the past few years, female gamers have become more accepted in the gaming community and because of this, more female gamers are using mics online to speak. No one wanted to talk before when whenever they spoke, they would be attacked just because of their gender.
Online games used to have either a small number of female characters you could play as or none at all. I wrote an article about that here. Now, there is an equal amount of both genders on many online games and the female characters are not over sexualized for the most part compared to the men. I feel like another factor as to why the community has become more mature and friendly is due to the online games that I now play. I used to only play first person shooters, mostly "Call of Duty." "Call of Duty" games have a reputation for not having the friendliest people in chat rooms. I still enjoy first person shooters. I have been playing "Overwatch" a lot recently and I know that Blizzard, the company that created the game, has many strong policies to protect the players and allow a fair and fun gaming environment. For example, they ban players for life if they are caught cheating. "Call of Duty" does not care if you cheat in the older games and will only reset your level if you are caught cheating in a newer game. Blizzard has an experience penalty for leaving early ("Call of Duty" does not) and penalties for player harassment.
I am glad that gender equality has been improving in the online gaming community. I think it gives many female gamers a safer environment to do something that they love. I can see such a huge change compared to when I first started playing online.
