Friday, May 29, 2015

The end for Frag Dolls

Sadly, I found out today that the Frag Dolls are ending.  You can read their blog post about it here.


I started playing video games a long time before I played anything online with other people.  I was hesitant at first at doing so because I was a girl and "girls just don't video games".  The first game I played online was Star Wars Battlefront on the original Xbox.  I think I played every night for more than a month before I finally said anything in the matches.  When I did, it blew some people's mind that I was a girl.  They just thought I was stupid because I spelled penguin (Pengwenn) wrong.

I got a lot of flack those first 2 weeks I started talking when people started to learn I was a girl.  People wanted to play with me and just wanted to hear me talk.  They would do everything they could to get me to say something.  They would follow me around and shoot at me, even if we were on the same team.  They wanted to get a rise out of me enough that I would say something.  It was annoying, but I'm more patient than they could possible imagine.

Occasionally I would get fed up and yell at them and then they would talk smack to me about swearing and being a girl, and why was I playing video games, and why I was so bad, and what my problem was, etc.  If I ever got in to a battle with someone and they were watching, they wouldn't help me out.  They would stand back and watch how things turned out.  If I won, they would say I cheating because that's the only way a girl could win.  If I lost, they would say I should stop gaming and get to the kitchen because I was so terrible.

And then there's all the sexual harassment crap I had to take from all the assholes out there because I was a girl.  Don't get me started on that.

There was a time when I wanted to give up gaming online because of all the harassment I was getting.  It didn't last long though because I really loved playing Battlefront . . . and I just stopped using a headset when things got really bad.

I did learn how to find really cool guys, that might be surprised that I was a girl, but didn't seem to care about it.  I was a gamer to them.  Someone who liked playing video games with other like-minded individuals.  As long as we had fun they didn't care if I had tits and a vagina.  And sometimes they even forgot that I did.

I have several memories where one or more of my guy friends stood up for me while playing matches online.  Killafoola was the first.  MasvHdWundHarry was the fiercest.  And Evil Ric, cyberWRAT and NatraZamataZ seemed to be the most welcoming of letting a girl play with them.  They have been my friends since the beginning and they still are today.

I remember when I first discovered the Frag Dolls.  I was thrilled that there were other girls playing video games and that I wasn't alone and there was someone else to relate to.  I followed what they were doing.  Even sought out their advise a time or two.  They gave me hope that things would get better, and to remember to keep playing until they do.

They were right.

Things have come a long way since 2004.  It's still not perfect.  There are still douche bags online that think the only way to talk to a girl is by tearing them down.  Luckily I've gotten older and wiser and know how to avoid and/or ignore them most of the time.  I am a strong woman, and gamer, because I saw in the Frag Dolls that it was possible to become one.

Sadly, I haven't followed them as much as I use to the last couple of years.  I've grown more confident and secure in myself as a gamer.  I was still happy that they existed for all the new girls coming in to gaming that could use the help support that I didn't have initially.  It's sad to see them go.  I hope that support will continue from all of us lady gamers to help another generation of woman pick up a control or keyboard and mouse and kick people's asses.  It's really fun to do so.  Whether your or guy OR a girl.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

I curse a lot when I get frustrated

So, I was editing my next video for YouTube and I noticed something.  When I get frustrated I curse.  A lot.  Everything started to fall apart when my game got glitchy and I couldn't get a minikit.  I tired over and over again to fit it and try to get it, but it didn't work.  All I could hear was me swearing, over and over again.  I thought it was really funny (not at the time though) so I added credits to the video and added a "swear count" to the credits.  You should watch the video and you'll know right when I start to lose it.  Did I miss any?  Should I go to anger management classes?  You tell me.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

New Achievements!

So I picked up some new achievements this weekend.  It's been awhile since I've earned any so I'm excited.

The first one I picked up was in the Arcade game Scramble.  I haven't played that game in a long time.  Actually the last (and only) achievement I earned in that game was from 6/1/2007.  Wow!  Talk about some time lag. 

I wasn't really looking to play that game.  I was actually seeing if I still had the digital download for Gears of War Judgment and I came across that game.  I couldn't remember what type of game it was so I loaded it up and tried it out.  Within in the first two minutes I got the achievement.  Maybe subconsciously I knew how close I was to another achievement and that's why I started it up.  Maybe I should listen to those voices inside my head more often.  It might help my Gamerscore.

The next achievements I got were in a new game.  I put in Rayman Origins and made a video in that game that should be released later this week.  Yes, I know it's one of the options in my poll which doesn't close yet, I just wanted something fun and bright and cheerful to play since Lego Star Wars was driving me crazy.  So much so, that there will be a "swear count" in the credits at the end of one of my videos once I post it.  I'm not done editing it (or counting swear words) so it probably won't be up for another day or two.  When you watch it, you'll understand.  At least I hope you will.  And it's all my fault.

I also spent some time today working towards 3 achievements in Gears of War Judgment.  And no, I don't seem to have the digital copy on my hard drive anymore.  I'm working on finishing the campaign on insane and I have a friend that is helping me out.  I'm playing on insane.  He's playing on casual.  We were able to play the 3rd chapter before we called it quits.  I should get the achievement for hardcore, insane and co-op once we finish everything.  That will be 125 points for my Gamerscore.  After we do that, we talked about working on the getting the stars and declassified mission achievements.  I think that will bring in another 100+ points, but those are much further down the road.  Let's just try to get through the campaign first, shall we.

I am seriously trying to get to (and possibly over) the 30,000 mark with my Gamerscore before the end of the year.  I've got a full time job that sucks the life out of me Monday through Friday, plus a bunch of other things going on in life.  It's doable.  It's just going to take me awhile.  That's kind of one of the reasons why I wanted to start a game that I haven't played to help me get some achievements.  And to experience something fresh and new.  But, mostly for the achievements.  What can I say.  I like achievements.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

New Poll: What games should I try next?

So it's been awhile since I've had a new poll up on my blog.  But I've got one I want to start now.  It might be a short window to vote so vote early (and often).  You can vote for as many as you like, as many times as you like.  I don't know when I'll shut the poll down, but there is a nice long holiday weekend coming up that I would like to spend time playing games.

I've been playing a lot of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga because I'm trying to get the last two achievements I need to finally get a disk game to 100% for the achievements.  I've finished the achievements in several Arcade games, but never with a full disk game.  But . . . I'm getting a little tired of playing that game all the time since It's the third time through the game for me (once completing on PS2 and once again on Xbox 360 before my stuff got stolen). 

Now I want to start playing something else as a little break.  I've narrowed some choices down to the following.  I will be making videos of me playing them and posting on YouTube so what would you like to see me play.  These are all games that I haven't played before so the experience would be completely new for me.  Vote and let me know what I should dive in to.


What game should I start playing:

Dark Souls
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Dishonored
Darksiders
Rayman Origins
Red Faction: Guerilla

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Clueless . . . .the sequel?

So I usually spend my Sunday afternoons editing the videos I made earlier in the week.  This Sunday was particularly dreadful.  My epic failures from the last video continued into this one.  I don't know why because they were filmed in different days.

I only have myself to blame though.  I really screwed up in the game and instead of letting my audio run while I went online to figure out what to do to fix things, I stopped the audio and then restarted when I was ready to play again.  Unfortunately I had to do that more than once.  I ended up with 3 audio files for one video.  Getting those to sync up and edit was a pain in the butt.

After all was said and done and while I waited for my video to upload to YouTube, I called my brother dain bramage.  I had some questions to ask about external hard drives and such.  I mentioned my editing nightmare and he asked why didn't I just sync up all the audio initially and then render the file into one file (my audio and video are separate files now with the way I have to do things) and then edit that.  I wouldn't have had to edit the video and audio files separately and then have to constantly have to check that things were synced up.

Pow!

It's such a simple thing.  But it blew my mind.  Why didn't I think of that?  I'm the one playing around with the editing software so I should have been able to figure that out.  Or at least make a guess that something like that would work.  But no.  I was so set in the painful way that I've been editing that I couldn't think outside the box to make it better.  What took almost 3 hours to do could have been done in less than an hour.  Mind blown.

The main reason I wanted to talk to my brother was to ask if it was okay to use an old external hard drive that I had been using for my old Windows XP machine that is now completely worthless.  I had a bunch of stupid questions to ask because I'm not a computer geek like he is, but he helped me figure things out and told e how to reformat the drive once I've taken off all vital information that I want to keep.

I also had to ask him how to get all my writing that I've stored on little floppy disks on to my laptop so that I could keep them and possibly work on them.  We talked about the size of floppy disks and he said they were only 1.44mb in size. 

Pow!

That's all?  I remember when floppy disks came out (I'm dating myself here) and I can't believe that that was only how big they were.  So I asked him who big a CD had for storage.  He said only about 700mbs.  What?  Really?

Pow!

I then tried to do the math in my head on how many floppy disks you could store on a CD.  Or how many floppy disks you could store in 1 gigabit of space.

Pow! and Pow!

I was thinking I would need a lot of space to store all the short stories I've written over the years because I have a lot of 3.5 floppy disks but it's actually not that much.  I was thinking that I would need at least an 8gb thumb drive but I think I could get away with a 2gb drive and have room to spare.  I thought I had a lot of writing but when you put it in that perspective, I really don't.

Pow!

I hate it when I don't know something because I hate looking like a fool.  Tonight I looked like a BIG fool.  And with simple things too boot.  Maybe I'm too focused on other things that I don't really pay attention to other things.  I mean, nothing I learned tonight is earth shattering.  I don't just learn of a cure for cancer or how to stop hunger in Africa, but it was still weird to have my eyes opened to such simple things that I was unaware about before.

I wonder what other things people know that will blow my mind.  It seems my can be so easily blew, but I wouldn't think of myself as naïve.  Clueless maybe, but not naïve.  Maybe my life can be a sequel to that movie.  A good preview of my cluelessness can be found in my latest video.  Check it out.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

So, I sound like my sister and I sweep to the left

I've noticed some very interesting things about myself.  Some gaming related and some not so much since I've been posting YouTube videos.  It's been very fascinating, but probably only to me.

For starters I hate the sound of my voice.  And I sound like my sister.  But that doesn't mean I hate the sound of my sister's voice.  It's just when I'm editing the videos I don't really listen to myself other than to sync audio and cut out those dead spots where I'm not saying to doing a lot.  I never really pay attention to how I sound.  Even after I've done the initial edit and I'm checking things I still don't pay attention to sound of my voice.  After I post it online and can listen to it for real (without the pressure of editing) that's when I really notice what I sound like.

The first time I heard on voice on YouTube my gut reaction was my sister was talking.  But just a younger version of her.  She is older and there's six years between us, but I'm talking more years than just that.  Not teenage voice.  Just younger than I/she is today.  It was really weird.  I had to stop and think for a moment that it was really me saying those things and not her.  I never thought we sounded a like in real life so it was weird to hear it in video.  And it wasn't just the sound, but the phrasing and words used as well.  I guess that's to be expected since we grew up in the same household we're bound to be influenced by the same things.  It was just weird.

Also, I learned that I hate the sound of my voice.  IT JUST DOESN'T SOUND LIKE ME.  I mean the me that I hear when I'm talking doesn't sound like that.  I don't "ummm" all the time, do I?  I just don't like it.  I don't pay attention to all that stuff when I edit but listening to it for fun, really isn't "fun" to me.  Please tell me I don't sound that bad.  It's okay to lie.

The other things I learned about myself is that when I go in to a room that I need to search or clear out enemies in, I usually sweep the room starting to the left and moving around the room in a clockwise way.  I don't know why I do this.  The only thing that I could think of (from my psychology and anthropology studies) is that I'm right handed and if I were physically standing in a room I would move through the room keeping my left side to the outside wall so I could keep my right hand (hopefully holding a sword or a gun) pointed out in to the center of the room to defend myself.  Yes, I'm a nerd to think of things in that way.  It's just really weird. 

If I try to circumvent the room going right in a counter-clockwise direction it feels a little weird and funny to go that way.  That doesn't mean to don't go that way occasionally.  I just seem to prefer going to the left.  And that has nothing to do with my political preference either.  I don't think I would have ever picked up on this except for the fact that I can now watch how I played and see the kind of things I do.  This isn't something I think about while playing.  It just happens.

If you stop to think about it, do you notice anything you do while you play that you might not know why you do it?  I know of a couple people on my friend's list that would fire their guns in Gears and War and try to get a full clip perfect reload right at the start of the match.  They said it would give them a damage bonus when they ran in to the enemy.  The problem was the "bonus" always wore off before they even say the enemy.  And they would run out of bullet when they did finally find the enemy.  Silly boys.

Good, bad or otherwise, I'm learning some things about myself as I make game videos.  Once I get better at the audio and editing stuff I wonder what else I'll find out about myself.  If you watch my videos and notice things I say/do on a semi-regular basis, let me know.  I'm on a path to self-discovery.  Just don't tell me I sound like a little kid.  That's my sister's voice your talking about.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Epic Failure in the making

It was only a matter of time.  I was bound to screw up eventually  And I did.  In epic fashion.  I guess that should teach me not to play video games late at night when I'm tired and can't think straight.  I'm sure it will happen again.  I'm only human right?  If you want to know what I'm talking about check out part 3 of my Lego Star Wars Complete Saga - Ruin of the Jedi video.  Don't worry, you won't have long to wait before you see me to do probably the stupidest thing I've done in a video game in a long time.  I'm sure it won't be the last time.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Ruin of the Jedi part 2

I'm not going to wait a week before I post part 2 of my video Ruin of the Jedi.  Hopefully I'll get part 3 post in the next day or two as well  There will be a lot of editing on that one.  Trust me.

There's several things I learned while watching this video as I edit.  1) I can't jump 2) I get frustrated easily and 3) I sound like a younger version of my sister.  I'll talk more on #3 later.  Apparently I suck at jumping in that game.  Single jumping.  Double jumping.  Doesn't matter.  All suck.  And when I can't jump I get frustrated.  And swear.  And sigh.  A lot.  Sorry.  I'll have to listen for that and correct myself in the future.  If you wanted to hear someone sigh all the time you should probably go watch a porno.  Well you won't get that from me.  I'm not in to ASMRs either.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Lego Star Wars: Ruin of the Jedi (Ep. 3 Chap 5)

I still don't have an ideal audio set up but it's getting better.  So much so that I'm actually posting a video of me working towards the 2 missing achievements I need in Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga.

For this video I'm playing Episode 3 Chapter 5 Ruin of the Jedi.  It's going to be in more than one part but that will help to keep the video short.  Why not take a look at my YouTube channel and see how well I'm doing.  I know I need Minikits and the power brick but how will it take before I realize I also need to fill up my stud counter to True Jedi status?  Tune in and find out.

Monday, May 4, 2015

Minecraft has new achievements

So there was an update to Minecraft that added some new achievements.  I haven't played Minecraft in awhile because I was starting to get frustrated.  I needed to tame 5 wolves but I ran out of bones after taming 2 of them.  I was also trying to build a nether portal with the bucket method and I think my dimensions were off with it being 1 too high.  I'm building my own castle in Minecraft but I'm not doing it in Creative mode so I have to mine everything I use.  Now you can see why I got frustrated.

But there's new achievements.  Who can't say no to that?  I couldn't.  I put Minecraft at lunch today and played around in the tutorial area and picked up 6 achievements.  I think for a total gamer score of 115.  Or something close to that.  If you want to see how I did you can check out my video on YouTube.  The audio still sucks but at least it's live commentary and not a voice over. 

And I realized that I say um a lot.  I should work on that . . . and more achievements.