Electronic Entertainment Expo 2007

Today is the first public day of the GO3 Electronic Entertainment expo and the crowds have definitely shown up. The Norg crew are stationed at the LAN party surrounded by just under 400 gaming enthusiasts with their extravagant gaming setups. Boxes of all colors of the rainbow litter the landscape, all glowing and buzzing away with their cooling fans going haywire. More gamers flow steadily through the door, all bleary eyed from waking up at such an early hour – 10AM.

As I wander the isles of gaming goodness, I find myself almost lost in a virtual world of ones and zeroes. Everywhere around me there are square and rectangle portals leading to mysterious technicolor worlds. In one direction I witness a dark and grainy world set in the era of world war two, in the other direction I see a mystical world populated by orcs and wizards. In front of me I see a much larger world populated by hot pies, chips and drinks. Oooo, the food kiosk!

But there is one thing that mystifies me – the amount of testosterone which flows around me. The crowd at the LAN party is predominately male. Out of the few females in the pavilion, I only bear witness to a small handful actually playing the games. The rest adorn their boyfriend’s side like strawberry smelling flesh trophies.

I had a chat to one of the girl gamers who affectionately calls herself “Mystique”. As she stares glossy-eyed at the screen, I bear witness to her blowing off the heads of several of her victims. She even takes the time in achieving these “headshots”. Why? “Because it’s funny. Blood is funny”.

Young Mystique has been gaming for over 10 years under a male pseudonym and admits it’s hard being female in such a male dominated world.

“I can’t really afford to admit that I’m a chick these days – the boys just try and chat me up and get really pouty when I cut them down”.

With this, she turns back to her screen, arms herself with a really, really big gun and runs off into a building lined with a handful of snipers.

Two minutes later she leaves, completely intact with all who got in her way blown to smithereens.

Gee, I wouldn’t wanna mess with this girl.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 1:30 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.