Gamer Girl has left the party.

The time has come. The end of my Junior year has come and that means the end of this blog. My entire Junior year has been me skating on thin ice from September to the recent COVID-19 pandemic taking over the world.

I want to start off by saying, I didn’t expect to enjoy writing blog posts as much as I have. It’s been a nice escape to write about something as simple as video games. In this difficult time, I have turned to video games as a means to escape the life of being home all day, everyday and not by choice. Many people have done the same I’ve noticed. Gaming systems has flown off the shelf in most stores, and I think the gaming community has gained a lot of people. The Nintendo Switch Lite has been my newest and favorite system. But Playstation will always have a special place in my heart.

As I write this final post, it’s almost bittersweet. I’ve decided to not continue further in writing on this blog simply because I have other things to worry about. I don’t know if I’ll be at Disney World next semester instead of taking classes on campus or stuck at home taking online classes again. I’ll be a senior so I have to mentally and academically prepare for the rollercoaster that will be, but I’m ready for the ride. I will be keeping the blog up in hopes that I have provided useful information to someone who is just getting into a new game I’ve mentioned or into video games altogether. To whoever has read my posts, thank you. It took a lot to write this blog about being a girl gamer, cause I was kind of self-conscious about it but I know I’m honestly not the only one out there and definitely won’t be the last one either.

Gamer Girl is logging off, thank you for reading. I appreciate it. Please be careful as we navigate this pandemic. Wash your hands, don’t touch your face and try to stay six feet apart.

Woody from Toy Story 3

Gameplay from a Gamer Girl

I have spoken on other people’s gameplay and talked about ways to become a better player in some games. Since being in quarantine for six weeks, I think my gameplay has improved tremendously since I spend most of my nights on my Playstation. After this posting goes up, most of time will be spent building my island in Animal Crossing: New Horizon once my new Nintendo Switch Lite comes in. It’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about for the past week.

Tom Nook from Animal Crossing: New Horizon

But back to Playstation. I’ve mentioned several times that Apex Legends and Rainbow Six Siege are the two games I play the most. I love the competitive games and trying to get a win for your squad. Even though my gameplay has improved tremendously, I know I have a ton of room for improvement. I’m not the best player and will never claim to be. Playing games that are high competitively, is extremely humbling. When you start a game you expect it to be easy until you get better at it. That’s certainly not the case with Rainbow.

Rainbow Six Siege is extremely humbling for even some of the best players in the world. One wrong step and you could easily mess up an entire game for your squad. As I mentioned in my last post, the game requires a ton of patience to succeed and you learn that early on. You can’t go in there guns blazing and 9 times out of 10, you will fail miserably. It requires so much strategy, it’s kind of crazy. Here is a clip of me trying to clutch the end of the round being the last one standing. I lose the round but you can see a display of patience and moving around enough just to check my corners. Sadly, I wasn’t quick enough to the snap.

Rainbow Six Siege

When you first start the game, you can only play in a playlist called Newcomer where you’re playing with other newcomers. You have to reach level 50 before moving on. Once you move on, you’re in for a rude awakening. You have to get your feet wet in the game and once you do, it’ll get easier. You’ll know which operators work for you, what weapons you should use and how best to help the squad.

I hope that this post has given you some insight into how I play my games. Like I mentioned, I know I need a lot of work but I don’t stress it because I’m a very leisure player. Of course, I love to win but if I don’t I’m not going to go to bed upset that I lost a match. It’s all for fun and I enjoy my time on there very much. Until next time; be careful, wash your hands, and have another wonderful day in quarantine.

Tips and Tricks

In my observation, most people think that all video games are the same and that they’re all super easy to play. On the contrary, not all games are the same. There are first person shooters, role-playing, action-adventure, survival and the list could go on.

The Last of Us: Part 2

Everyone has their preference when it comes to what genres or games they like. For example, I like the concept of battle royales but don’t really take a liking to Fortnite as I’ve mentioned before in previous posts.

Fortnite

In the past couple years of playing video games, I’ve picked upon some strategies on how to win matches in various games. I’ll use Rainbow Six Siege and Apex Legends as examples because those are the two games I probably play the most.

To win in a match of Rainbow Six Siege is easier said than done. On the surface, the objectives are easy to achieve; either kill the whole squad or capture the objective. But there is so much more that is required of this game. Patience, concentration, hand-eye coordination, listening for footsteps, making sure you don’t kill a teammate on accident or they kill you. It’s an extremely exhilarating game that makes you want to hold your breath. And when you kill the final operator or they don’t capture the objective in time is very satisfying.

Some tips that I would give about Rainbow Six is to always remain calm, which is hard to do at times but work with your teammates and be patient. People get antsy and like to rush into the situation but patience is literally the biggest key.

Rainbow Six Siege

Apex Legends has its good and bad times. Some days you have people who actually want to win the game and put in effort. Some days you get people who don’t know how to use operators or go off by themself to a completely different area and then end up dying because it was a three against one fight. I’ve encountered quite a few people like that and it’s not fun because you’re left with the option of leave them and be down one person or try to go save them and have to fight people along the way .

It takes a lot of concentration when it comes to Apex Legends or any battle royale type game for that matter. Also, listening to footsteps also applies to this game and determining where they’re coming from. After several playthroughs, you get a sense for what type of weapons work for you and which ones don’t so I suggest sticking with what you know. I’ve recently used Apex’s training mode to try out shooting at targets and other weapons. It’s been very helpful and I’ve won more games as well. I’ve also been watching more videos on people playing Apex and I’ve aspired to try to play like Youtuber LuluLuvely who plays a lot. It just so happens that she is also a girl and a gamer. Check out one of her videos here.

LuluLuvely on Youtube

I hope that these tips and tricks that I picked up and shared with you helps any of you who play these games or if you implement them in other games you enjoy. Until next time; stay safe, wash your hands and don’t touch your face.

It’s not as easy as it seems.

We all know that battle royales are the new wave in gaming. Kill or be killed as the model usually goes for those types of games. There’s PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds), Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, and my favorite of them all Apex Legends. There are a few more but not as significant as these. Fortnite has 250 million players online, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has 20 million players and Apex has 70 million players (2019).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Warzone

Battle royales are a lot of fun and require a lot of teammate interaction and communication. You’ll have a hard time winning a game if your teammates aren’t using any form of communication in the game like what kind of weapons are around or if there are enemies in the area. Communication is a major part of where the team decides to land. You and your teammates should land close together in a certain area so if an enemy team lands near you and decides to start a gunfight you have a higher chance to defeat them.

As much as I enjoy Apex Legends, I’m not the best player and need a lot of practice. It seems really easy at first but once you get in the game and have to fight with people who play battle royales all the time and have a high skill level, it becomes a frustrating task. I’ve been playing since it first dropped and that was almost a year ago. Still, I can’t say I’m an amazing player but not the worst either. I’m still learning new skills and tips to implement into my strategies for being an efficient teammate.

Apex Legends: Revenant

The concept of a battle royale has become very popular amongst game developers. Call of Duty fixed everything that was wrong with Blackout from Black Ops 4 in Warzone and created something that could be played for a while. Fortnite was such a major thing in the last couple of years and continues to grow everyday. I actually enjoy Chapter 2 way more than Chapter 1, but Fortnite was never my go to game. I avoided it at all costs. Apex Legends was the perfect balance for me. It started off hard but as I got to know how their operators worked, which guns were better than others and what areas of the map had good loot, I had a fun time. Everything about it is just so intense and immersive and one of the games I’ll be playing for a while. Also, continue to learn and grow as a player is all apart of the game.

Fortnite

Perspectives from a Freshman

Being a senior or a freshman during this pandemic has to be very strange experience. For seniors (high school) they won’t be able to experience Prom or all their hard work in the past twelve years recognized at graduation. For college seniors, all their hard work from the past four years and getting a degree in their field of study can’t be recognized and that has to be devastating.

To keep herself busy during this time, she’s been doing her school work and going on walks with her two dogs, Zena and Milo. When she’s not doing that, she’s watching TV, listening to music on her phone. We celebrated her birthday last week, 3/27, at her house of course. Her mom and step dad cooked her favorite meal as well as got her a cake and a present. We weren’t practicing social distancing at this time and it’s been hard to when you have such a close knit family like ours. We spend most of our days together and go on vacation together.

---

---

Deziree was born in 2001 so she definitely doesn’t remember the impact 9/11 had on this country. Looking forward though from this pandemic, she thinks that people will be a lot more cautious now and have things stocked up just in case something like this happens again. Also, she thinks that after the first month, most things will be back to normal.

I also think people will be a lot more cautious about their personal hygiene and how it’ll affect others but also praise and appreciate essential personnel such as first responders and nurses more. They deserve that and so much more. But on that note, everyone continue washing your hands, cough and sneeze into your elbow, practice social distancing and stay six feet apart from each other. Be well.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

“… And We’re LIVE!”

Streaming is something of a staple in the video game community. So is Youtube and creating content around video games. I’ve always wanted to make a Youtube channel around the things I like that is not exclusively dedicated to video games. Maybe one day I’ll get the spark to actually create content.

There are some girl gamers out there that already do stream on Twitch as well as have Youtube channels dedicated to playing video games. Sadly, they are short lived channels because they aren’t as dedicated as they once were or they actually fake enjoy playing games and are only doing it to get attention. On the other hand though, those channels will never reach the amount of subscribers and followers as the men who have Youtube and Twitch accounts. Take M3RKMUS1C on Youtube. He has 4.06 million followers and gets thousands of views on his videos. He’s one of the few gamers on Youtube that I can actually tolerate and find his videos to be very funny. He mainly focuses on the Call of Duty franchise. Here’s one of his videos from Call of Duty: Warzone when it was first released. P.S. There’s some profanity.

I recently stumbled upon a Youtuber who goes by the name Spawntaneous. She’s a girl gamer with 276,000 subscribers and also gets thousands of views on her videos. She has a series on her channel called “OH MY GOD A GIRL”. She is recording her encounters with guys she meets while playing mostly Rainbow Six Siege. This series is a perfect example as to why I don’t use my mic while in a game because I don’t want to deal with any of this kind of harassment. But some of it is funny, because of the way she responds to the comments. Again, there is some profanity.

Youtube and Twitch are great for people who want to be recognized for their content and how they play. I’m a very leisure gamer and play simply for my enjoyment. The idea of having a Youtube account just for gaming purposes sounds interesting at first but thinking deeper into it, the amount of hate and harassment that could come from it, doesn’t seem that appealing.

Girls Can Game Too

It’s Not Weird

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

Everyone just assumes that video games are for men. The industry is geared to cater to men, and most main characters in games are men, but there is a very small group of women, like myself who love video games and play them a lot. Since I could remember, I always used to watch my older brother and cousins play video games and became so intrigued by it. Not sure why, but I was. Whenever I had the chance, I would go into my brother’s room and play most of his PlayStation 2 games, and accidentally delete his saved files without knowing.

I always thought I was a weird kid for liking video games. Whenever I went to a friend’s house for a sleepover, I always brought my Nintendo DS Lite with me because I knew I wanted to play it while my friends wanted to play with their American Girl dolls, watch High School Musical and talk about boys in our school. Don’t get me wrong, I did partake in playing with dolls and watching that movie, but something about video games just called to me.

Between freshman and sophomore year of high school, I was a typical girl who wanted to wear makeup and talked about boys in school. I did my work inside and out of school, I was into sports and did what I had to do, but something was missing for me. I spent a lot of time at home, in my room with nothing to do. Instagram was new and wasn’t cutting it for me. I also started working at the time, so I had money to blow considering I didn’t have bills to pay. So one day, I told my dad I really wanted a PlayStation 3 and he took me to a game store at the Eastfield Mall and I bought one with my own money and couldn’t be any happier.

Even though I was super happy with my purchase of the system, I felt at an odds with myself. How could a girl, who likes makeup and acts girly, do a complete 180 degree turn and play video games for hours on end and be completely content. I thought it was weird so I hid the fact that I liked video games. Whenever my friends came over, I wouldn’t let them go into my room, or I would take the system off the power cord and hide it until they were gone. I did have a Wii at one point but that was socially acceptable considering I had Mario Kart, and Just Dance. It was hard to accept that I liked video games as much as I did. I would be up for hours playing Call of Duty or my all time favorites Jak II and Jak III. By the time I got to college, I fully embraced it because it was a part of who I am. I actually prefer being home and playing games rather than going out and partying at all hours of the night. Partying isn’t really my thing, I like to on occasion but it’s rare.

With this blog, I want to call to attention that there are plenty of girls who like to game and happily do so. It’s not for the attention of guys but simply for enjoyment. Games are not for one gender, they can be enjoyed by all, men or women, young or old.

The Unusual Timing of COVID-19

I never thought that a worldwide pandemic would keep me away from school this semester. The start of my junior year of college started off really rocky and I never thought I would’ve recovered from the sadness and trauma I experienced. Yet, I had high hopes for the spring semester. I was hoping to start this new chapter with my friends and taking new classes, and it did start off that way and everything felt like it was going back to normal. Then spring break came. I knew that I would be home during the entirety of my break because I didn’t really have any plans to go anywhere nor did I want to. Then it got extended by two weeks and then the rest of my spring semester would be spent at home away from campus and my friends because a global pandemic was taking over.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a serious homebody. I prefer being home than anywhere else. I’m not a partier by any means. The occasional spark to go out comes but quickly goes. Where else would I want to be than in the comfort of my own home? I haven’t gone anywhere except to my father’s house because I like being able to bounce back and forth between his and my mom’s.

The scary thing about this whole thing is that I’m concerned for mine and my grandparents health; particularly my grandmother. She recently had surgery on her leg from a fall she had back in December. Because of that, she’s extremely weak and trying to recover. I don’t want to be around her only because of the chance that I could bring this virus to her. She’s already fragile and older and this has affected the older people greatly. I’m also concerned because I have asthma and the news has said that people with respiratory problems are also at a greater risk. So because of this, I haven’t gone back to work at Big Y, as much as I like to make money, I don’t want to jeopardize my health for a couple extra dollars in my account.

The one good thing that’s come out of this is that I can freely play my video games, particularly Rainbow Six Siege and Call of Duty: Warzone. It gets my mind off of what’s going on in this weird time and I don’t feel judged. I’m home with my mom. She works in a doctor’s office that is still operating but mainly over the phone but I can see the toll this taking on her. She’s stressed and tired. But has to come home to continue to work.

I just hope that by the time summer rolls around, we can all think back on this time and reflect. What we could’ve done to prevent such a thing from happening again. Listen to what the CDC and doctor’s have said (not the man in the White House who clearly doesn’t know what’s actually going on). Wash your hands, keep six feet apart, check on your neighbors and the elderly and we’ll all get through this difficult time.

Didn’t see that coming…

How often do you see a woman outside in your personal life that after one glance, you can safely assume “yeah, she plays video games” without a shadow of a doubt? As a matter of fact, how many women do you know personally that indulges in the healthy medium of the video game? Not a very high number, is it?

Now to the general public, it may not seem as though the percentage of female gamers is very prevalent, seeing as though the majority of content creators on mediums such as YouTube, Twitch, Mixer, etc. are male. Or at least it seems as though that’s how the algorithm pushes the narrative, but I digress. The point that I’m ultimately trying to get across is that since 2006, the percentage of gamers of the female gender has grown a considerable amount. So much so, that in 2014, that number had grown to 48%, as opposed to 38% eight years prior. In 2019, the percentage would be 46%, a slight dip, yet still a considerable gap from what the number was 13 years ago.

So what does this mean? It means that female gamers need a platform to speak up about what they want from the gaming industry. More inclusivity and acknowledgement that we are there and deserve for our voice to be heard. The industry caters a majority of their games to boys between the ages of 10 and 25 and they only represent 15 percent of the population.

So maybe now is the time for women to stand up and claim what we want out of the industry; respect.

Welcome to the Club

In all the years that I have been playing video games, I’m very pleased to have found a few groups of guys that I thoroughly enjoy playing with. They make me feel comfortable, make me laugh at the most stupid, yet hilarious jokes and stories. We constantly roast each other for messing up when the team counts on us, but all in good fun.

When playing games online, there are some interesting paths to walk on. The gaming industry as I mentioned before is a male-dominated industry. Whenever I play online and I’m not playing with my friends in a party, I never use my headset in a game chat. Guys freak out when they hear a girls voice in a game chat and make crude jokes about it.

Young professional esports players playing games

They’ve also defended me in games like Rainbow Six Siege, for example. This game allows friendly fire and I swear sometimes they know that I’m a girl just by the way they say my username. I’ve gotten killed on several occasions and when that happens, my friends have all ganged up on a person and has killed them on the spot. I would occasionally do that same thing when it was necessary.

The gaming industry seems like this big, bad, scary world full of misogynistic men and sadly, there is some truth to that statement. However, once you find your niche or group that accepts you, it’s almost always smooth sailing.