Girl Gamer

I have posted in another thread about how I never use voice chat in games such as TF2 and L4D and other girl gamers indicated that they also dont. So, bolstered by a couple of glasses of wine I decided to get chatty on TF2 and test whether it was as bad as I had decided it would be.
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. While I did get some expected behaviour e.g. someone spamming me to trade with them and someone telling me to get back in the kitchen (yes this unoriginal statement apparently still gets thrown around) it really wasn't the scary experience I thought it would be. Other players made it clear they didnt appreciate the kitchen comment and generally treated me much like everyone else. So I'm going to use my mic more and I urge my fellow girl gamers to do the same :)
I am curious to know how others have been treated when they chat in games too

They tend to think I'm a 12 year old boy. I don't bother correcting them. :P

Or they ask me if I'm a guy or a girl. I tell them yes. If they give me any trouble I show them some "admin magic"

Another fun trick (since I have a good sound card) is changing my voice. I tend to go between chipmunk, darth vader, or GLaDOS.

When my mic is on... i usally play with people that i trust (sound's weird i know) so we can leave when its getting uncomfortable.
I get patter like: get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich, join my clan, would you like to date me?, ur a fat kid and other mean stuff. Mostley when im playing with mic on i make sure (i'm save :D from this patters) like im joining TeamSpeak or Skype... and everthing is ok.

I usually find the TF2 crowd to be mostly pleasant in comparison to a lot of the online communities. I haven't played L4D in well over a year so I'm not sure what they are like anymore. I stopped playing when I couldn't seem to match up with people who weren't trolls.

But yes, I'm also often mistaken for a young boy haha.

When I turn on the mic, lux aeterna plays and everyone else gets rays of lights beaming from their earpieces. LOL. Ok, maybe not. I haven't been on XBL for about a year and as awful as some can be, I always find the fun in it. Just like everyone else I get the troll comments, light jokes or a good game conversation. Sometimes, I find myself engaging in interesting conversations about religion, beliefs, movies, music, etc. I think my favorite comment is me sounding like the redhead from That 70's Show. LOL

same prob here. I always get calld a young boy. even thow my GT is CandyGirl. what is up with that, for real? I mean there some real cool guys out there that love a girl who can game. but there are those guys that just like talking mess to females. guess they are girl haters. they just dont like to get beat by girls. what can we do...girls do things better then guys, lol.

Lillsy, I think you have the right idea. The point of diminishing women with language and insults is to make us "go away" or to cow us. If we are not afraid they have no power. Eff those jerks, they're not better than anyone else, all of us have an account and an avatar, we're as equal as we can be.

If we want to be included we can't select ourselves out of the picture forever. (Of course, this is only a "should" scenario, in reality I can imagine dozens of reasons why NOT to engage in the mic, so don't consider this a categorical endorsement for mic-ing).

I very rarely use my mic, mostly because I am shy and a little paranoid of mean people on xbox live! The few times that I have recently though people have been pretty normal, no one asked me if I was a girl or a 12 year old boy or anything, we just talked gameplay related things. I really think it depends on the game though. I was really into playing ME3's multiplayer for a few months after it came out, everyone I talked to via the mic was pretty cool. A couple years prior though playing Black Ops, I definitely got some flack from a couple of people, for instance some guy screaming over and over in some super high pitched voice to try and impersonate me, and just calling me out and what not. I think super competitive games see that type of behavior more than co-op ones perhaps. I suppose it's normal either way though, xbox live is notorious for kids calling you all sorts of things. Personally I haven't been called out too often on being a girl specifically, but I think it's partially because I use my mic so infrequently. More often than not I get weird flirty messages accompanied by friend requests from (I assume) teenage boys after talking (or even just seeing my avatar). Oh xbox live.

i very rarely use the mic unless its when my team are all in a game other than that i very rarely use it

I've been accused of being a 13-year-old boy, had people demand to see pictures of my boobs to "prove" I was really a girl, and been accused of being "the voice" while my boyfriend was playing.

I also had an awesome experience on PC TF2 with my team - two groups of college-age guys, one from the US, one from Argentina. The US group didn't speak Spanish, the Argentinian group didn't speak English. I hadn't said anything and wasn't planning to, until one of the Americans said "Yo quiero cabeza." What he said was "I want head," what he meant was "I want beer" (cerveza, not cabeza). I corrected him when the Argentinian group laughed. Everybody got quiet, someone said, "dude, you're a girl?" which was immediately followed by "And you speak Spanish?" I ended up translating coordinating orders from one group to the other and we had a BLAST. It was kinda awesome.

But usually I just don't say anything so I don't have to deal with the crap.

Sometimes I get disgusting immature behavior from guys asking me dirty, unnecessary questions like how I like certain sex positions and what not, I just tell them to fuck off and leave the lobby. Sometimes I get guys calling me "kid" whenever I would use foul language, they think I am a little boy eventhough my gamertag had the word "princess" in it lOl. Then there are times when I would get respectful male gamers who talk to me like an equal and play cooperatively, those of which I usually add to my friends list...

All in all I run into guys who are immature who treat me like a piece of ass, Idiots who think I am a boy or who know I am a girl and tell me I'm lying when I tell them my real age, and the nice guys who play cooperatively :)

When I use my headset in games online guys usually send me a friend request, start flirting with me, and the odd few are nasty but the majority are usually mature and can hold a conversation and play the game