To my dear friend Quakecon: Yours Truly - A Female Non-Gamer
To my dear friend Quakecon: Yours Truly - A Female Non-Gamer
This past weekend Quakecon played out its’ 13th year in a row. This year, for the 3rd out of those 13 years, it was held at the Gaylord Texan resort in Grapevine, Texas. Quakecon is an annual convention where gamers gather to plug in and play at their personal computer gaming systems in what is referred to as a humongous “LAN party”, the “Woodstock” of LAN parties if you will. To give you an idea of the massive scale of this simple “LAN party”, the first Quakecon was held in 1996, at the Best Western hotel in Garland, Texas. By the end of that first weekend, 100 people had passed through to game or observe after being alerted through online chat networks. This year, only 12 years later, a reported 5,000 males and females from all over the U.S. brought their computers into the BYOC - Bring Your Own Computer, spent day and/or night competing against their friends on WOW, Quake, Doom, Resident Evil, Wolfenstein, etc., and competing in structured tournaments throughout Friday and Saturday. The total attendants at Quakecon numbered 7,000, as tons of attendees, including myself, register as “G” for General at Quakecon, just to witness the sheer magnitude of the event and energy pumping through the three auditoriums. This year, one auditorium housed the aforementioned BYOC, one housed a vendor area containing booths for BAWLS, Id, Alienware, , Activision, AMD, Aspyr, Apple, ATI Technologies, Ageia, 1UP Network,
What I want to talk about doesn’t have a lot to do with the scheduled events at Quakecon, but the unscheduled events, the drama and the underlying messages subliminally thrown out at each of us…although not everyone listens closely enough to hear them. I promise I am not crazy, btw.
Since I’ve been going to this annual event for five years in a row, yet admit I may not be what most of the elite may call “an authority”, I feel it’s ok for me to employ the freedom I’ve been allowed through the simple, inalienable right to type, to expose the underbelly of the Con. Before I begin, I have to qualify everything by saying that I love going to Quakecon every year, but the reasons behind my love for the Con have changed since that first 2004 weekend. I started going because in 2003 I met and fell in love with a self-proclaimed gamer. He had his first Quakecon experience in August of 2003 and had invited me to check it out, but I honestly wasn’t interested that year because I’d never even heard of it until I met him and wasn’t a gamer myself. I still remember sitting in the car at a local Sonic drive-in the Sunday night after he came back from that first Con and hearing him just rave on about how amazing the Con was and how he excitedly tried to explain it, but then threw up his hands saying there was really no way to explain it and therefore, I’d just have to see it with my own eyes. I knew then that I’d definitely be going the next year to see what all the fuss was about.
Anyway, I could go much farther into detail, but for the sake of saving time, I won’t. The first thing on my mind, maybe not one of the pieces most of the guys who go to Quakecon would want me to comment on, are the Booth Babes. Ok first of all, I know this is not the first technology convention to employ Booth Babes to help pull in more guys to a particular booth. Anyway, first off, the shoes. Seriously? Ok, I am 5’ 1” tall, so I know my heels. But, I look at these girls and there is no way I can think past the big neon sign flashing Stripper! Stripper! Stripper! in my head. Now, I know that our society loves to tell us that all guys love strippers. Ok, I get it. Naked woman are fascinating. Wow, big surprise. But, isn’t that all about them getting naked for you and the brief high it gives you when they pretend to like you? And you for that brief second believe that a real woman actually finds you attractive enough to rub on you and possibly sleep with you. Anyway, I don’t believe it’s really the shoes the guys get off on (well maybe in some unfortunate accidents. In that case, I feel more sorry for the stripper). So, my question is, what is the point of these women, clothed women, walking around in 3 to 4 inch high stripper heels all day, eventually limping around, dumbly waving their arms to present new technology that they don’t understand and basically serving no purpose. The ironic thing about it all is that Quakecon is one of the only times I’ve seen thousands of men gathered in one place and more interested in the games, new technology, getting free swag and watching gaming tournaments than the women. Ok, now I’m not naive enough to think that the guys don’t notice these women. I saw a few pictures of these short, tight shirt and high-heel-wearing women floating around on computer screens and all. I guess my real problem is that these women even do these jobs. It goes along with my feeling about women objectifying themselves in general…which is a whole different topic to discuss and blog to be written another time. Anyway, my question is, if there were no such thing as Booth Babes, would no men or lesbians come to Quakecon anymore? No, I really don’t think the numbers would decrease at all. The number of Booth Babes has actually decreased as compared to years past, from what I saw, and the volume of Quakecon attendees has steadily increased. So, these vendors or Quakecon, whoever pays these women, could actually save money, and help the cause of decreasing the number of objectified women our men see (I know guys, you will miss them. But seriously…Are all the commercials, website ads and free porn not enough?) on a daily basis. Do you know how many more female gamers there are now? How do you think it makes them feel to finally be competing on the same level as guys in videogaming, a sport that has been dominated by men for most of its’ lifespan, and then to be forced to walk alongside these women who make their living strutting around wearing nothing, to get men excited (how difficult is that really?) and get paid for it? It’s like a slap in the face.
Stopping my rant there. The other pieces of the con that need to be addressed are the drinking, the drama, the sharing of files. The main reason I go to Quakecon is to hang with friends, have some tasty beverages and basically chill out among a lot of other smart people around my age who know how to work hard and to play hard. Over the past 6 years my man and I have made some friendships out of Quakecon that have grown and remain today. We’ve gone to their weddings, been there through job changes, family struggles, but have mostly had some amazing experiences that we won’t forget. And for the experiences we can’t remember due to a little too much fun, we’ve got pictures.
For anyone out there who doesn’t know much about gaming, doesn’t have gamer friends, and basically views all gamers as nerds with no lives, you’d be very shocked to know of some of the scandal slithering in between the computer chairs and empty BAWLS cans scattered over the concrete floor. I can’t really say much about the other 6,980 attendees, but I can say enough about our own group. And the good thing is, most of my friends from the event may not even read this. And if they do, they’re identities will be kept a mystery to anyone but them.
First of all, I am getting really tired of the same old arguments every year, the same drama that is poorly disguised as a new issue each year, the power trips. I had some of the most fun this year out of all the years, but I also saw some of the saddest things I’ve seen this year. I witnessed people expressing the pubescent immaturity of a teen who wants to make their ex-girl/boyfriend jealous. I heard about emo behavior which ended up keeping one of our friends from wanting to hang out. I witnessed resurgences of old grudges which resulted in a lot of character bashing behind peoples’ backs. I’m going to interject into my own account here to say that if I were to have recorded myself the whole weekend, I would hear that I was one of the people doing some of the bashing, or trash talking., mostly about people I don’t even know very well. None of us know what the whole truth about a situation is, so it’s not right for us to judge other people based on a few rumors thrown around. I know that I wouldn’t want people doing that to me, even though I realize that it has happened to me.
I really don’t want to continue the downward spiral of bashing in this blog. That is not my intent. My intent is to open peoples’ eyes to the fact that a lot of the drama arising out of long weekends like Quakecon is petty. The point of Quakecon is to have fun. Life, in and of itself, is usually difficult, sometimes depressing, sometimes pointless and repetitive. For some of the attendees, myself included, this is one of the few weekends out of the entire year that serves as a much-needed break from repetition. We are allowed the chance to take time away from work, assemble in one place all at once, exuberantly greet friends we haven’t seen in a year or more, sit down to play games, watch people play, write, eat, drink and be merry. The whole essence of Quakecon is embracing the many ways we can escape from the harshness of reality. Part of its’ essence is also to allow like-minded people, “geeks” if you must, the chance to connect with other like-minded people. Whereas, in everyday life, it is often difficult for many of these people to really connect with others on a social level due to the often low instance of similar interests. It isn’t the place or the time to drag everyone down with drama, old grudges, etc. Please let it go, if not for your own sanity and enjoyment, then for mine! Save the drama for your mama and I'll promise I'll try too.