For a while it was. Then, when I started to pay attention to the chat, I started noticing some of the childish bravado, the internet tough-guys, mouthing off constantly. To them everyone is a “noob” or a “fag” or a “gay”; despite the chat admins and the auto-kick on certain buzzwords, people always managed to get the insults into the chat. Being called a “noob” for months on end gets tedious, especially when it is meant with such malice, said specifically to twist the knife and offend. Although I was never called any other heinous insults, I saw them all the time and it just made me sick with rage constantly. If I spoke up, I would receive a barrage of hatred poured in my face and most likely be targeted to be shot out of the sky.

Regrettably the disparities didn’t end there; female players had it pretty tough too. Despite the fact one of the top three players was a woman, the only thing anyone focussed on was the fact she is an exotic dancer in the real world. Automatically she was a “bitch” or a “slut” or a “slag”. Because obviously no woman could ever be legitimately better than her male counterparts without having done something deceptive or untoward, right? Ugh. What was the point in this sort of behaviour?

Occasionally, people defended themselves claiming it was “just banter” between the different ‘companies’ (of which there are three) or ‘clans’. More often than not it was just cruel, over-the-top and downright pathetic. Never before have I seen so many keyboard hard-nuts, of all ages, just ejaculating hatred everywhere.

The worst is yet to come though! Now we get to the issue of race. A friend of mine also plays this game. He’s a lot more into it and is a higher level than me and is pretty well-known on the server. Back in March this year he decided to change his name, and pretend he was retiring his account so he could have a bit of anonymous play. His new name was in Arabic characters. He played the game in the same fashion he had done before. Suddenly, just because he had an Arabic name, he was the most reviled player on the server.

I dare not repeat some of the insults that he got (that the chat admins allowed) because they were quite disgusting and appalling. He was at war with half his home Company within three days just trying to teach his attackers a lesson. His ex-clan mates insulted him, his friends made racist remarks; it was the worst case of inherent racism in Brits I have ever seen outside of an EDL rally.

A few weeks later, he revealed himself under his original name combined with his Arabic name. Just as miraculously as the rate they turned on him, wave upon wave of apologies came pouring through.

Now not all MMOs are like this, but as I said, I’m pretty reticent towards social gaming and this is just my experience of one. Unfortunately it was the first one I played, so I’ve been put off again! I am not sure if there are any conclusions we can draw from this, though. Perhaps that competition breeds a culture of anonymous internet bullying? Do people think they can get away with it just because they’re behind a computer? Are these the sort of opinions people really have but they censor themselves in real life? Either way, in some cases at least, the ideal of equality is pretty distant in the ‘social’ aspect of some MMOs, I fear. And that is not an easy medium to break into in order to educate. So for now, I suspect those of us who believe in equality might have to do a bit of MMO-hopping to find a community that isn’t full of bigots. My motto: don’t get comfortable until you’ve met the neighbours! Next time, I’ll talk about something more positive – I promise!

• Rai, at the tender age of 23, has been gaming for 15 years and writing for 10 – perfect combination! Watch this space for more Gamer Diary.

As a new addition to BadRep I thought it’d be a good idea to introduce myself a bit more thoroughly, seeing as I intend to keep popping up. I don’t mean in the typical sense of “Hi, my name’s Rai, I’m 23 and I like…” because most of that isn’t entirely pertinent. Instead I thought I’d talk about gaming and me.

I’ve been playing computer games for well over 15 years already; I started with Wolfenstein and DOOM when I was eight years old and before that played puzzle games and other now-‘retro’ games like Space Invadersor PacMan. Over the years my tastes haven’t varied too much, merely widened to encompass other styles, such as RPG and strategy games. Admittedly, I’m still a die-hard PC gamer, but I also own an Xbox 360 for some console action and an old PSP that rarely gets used.

The games that I invariably come back to time after time almost always have some element of the supernatural, sci-fi or fantasy in them and more often than not are shooters, though I have developed a healthy interest in ‘sandbox’ style games like Assassin’s Creed or Prototype. For your delectation and amusement I’ve included a quick snap of a few of my boxed games (I have many, many more on Steam and a few Xbox 360 games elsewhere).

Why am I telling you all this? So that I can ease slowly into a conversation about gender perceptions and stereotypes in gaming from my own experiences. Now that you know I like shooting aliens and occasionally wielding swords and casting magic spells, there is one more thing you need to know about me before we continue: I could be perceived by others to be, at least ostensibly, female.

Normally, this fact is utterly irrelevant but unfortunately it becomes relevant in the context of gaming and being known as a gamer. Why is it relevant in these circumstances? Because stereotypes are rampant, and I have had more than my fair share of encounters with them.

An excellent example of this is when a very close friend of mine, who had known me for years, was watching me play an FPS game on the computer. After I’d had a good few headshots and diligently eradicated the enemy, he declared, “You’re pretty good… for a girl.” Upon seeing my best ‘I am not impressed’ look (a mix of anger and despair) he back-pedalled and said, “No, not like that… just that girls aren’t usually good at shooting things.”

Needless to say, I remained rather irked, but in the interest of peace, love and friendship we decided to move on swiftly. So the problem I am trying to illustrate here is the assumption, which is ridiculously widespread, that if one is ostensibly female then one must play a certain type of game. Similarly, if one is ostensibly male then one must play a certain other type of game. Never the twain shall meet!

In practice (and in the most polite phrasing possible) this is naught but a rather large, steamy pile of manure. However, the stereotypes remain. I admit I may be at the extreme end of the spectrum when I play games like F.E.A.R., Crysis, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and DOOM, etc, but there are plenty of female gamers who play other shooters, like the RPG shooter Mass Effect for example. Equally, there are male gamers who play things other than C.O.D. or Battlefield and instead play games that don’t involve killing anything at all.

Other than the assumption of what female gamers “don’t” play, there are also the games we “can’t” play (because, apparently, our poor female brains aren’t smart enough). Puzzle games that rely heavily on a good sense of visual-spatial awareness and understanding of basic physics, like Portal, are supposedly too ‘difficult’ for us to figure out on our own. Not so. Strategy games that involve planning and forethought and tactical awareness, like Age of Empire, Command & Conquer or Red Alert, are also apparently too complicated. Not so. Even at the level of consoles, female gamers are presumed to only play on the Wii or the DS because they are much simpler to use. Personally, I found the Wii infuriatingly simplistic and therefore quite difficult to use, as I’m used to a whole keyboard full of buttons as opposed to just two.

It isn’t necessarily the gaming communities that build and perpetuate these stereotypes either; they seem to be bleeding through from mainstream society. Although gamers are perceived to be more tolerant of difference (simply because mainstream society treats us all as different) there’s still plenty of ‘epic fail’ when it comes to gender and gaming.

So, why have I told you all this? Well, because I wanted to give some groundwork that we can build on with the Gamer Diary and see where we go. I hope to prove these stereotypes wrong and spread the word that anyone can play any type of game that they want to or enjoy. That’s what gaming is for: enjoyment. Nobody should be hampered by other people’s opinions of what they should/shouldn’t do. So I would like to build up from here and look at the changes in games and gaming culture that happen constantly as we inch closer to gender equality (and hopefully all other types of equality too!).

• Rai, at the tender age of 23, has been gaming for 15 years and writing for 10 – perfect combination! Watch this space for more Gamer Diary.

March saw the eagerly anticipated release of Dragon Age II; the follow-up to Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening (along with all the extra DLC that became available during the interim period). Dragon Age, for those of you unfamiliar with the games, is a fantasy RPG in which you guide your character through quests and the main plotline, battling all manner of nasty creatures and unscrupulous types along the way. You gather a team made up of mages, warriors and rogues who may be human, elf or dwarf, and they help you defeat the forces of evil.

One of the key features of games like this is that you can build your own character: you pick the gender, the hair style, the facial features, the class (e.g. a mage), and in some instances you can even pick the voice. I, for example, have a male warrior elf with ginger hair in Origins and in Dragon Age II my character Zakarianna Hawke is a female, white-haired rogue with a facial tattoo (you can see a visual of her below left). The possibilities aren’t quite endless, but they’re still fairly comprehensive.

Other popular games that boast this feature include the Mass Effect series and the Fable series, both of which I thoroughly enjoy. I was, however, quite late to the Mass Effect party for one very key reason: I thought you had to be male. That is to say, the advertising and marketing for Mass Effect gave me no inkling that there was any other option than to be the character that features in the trailers and the stills.

Normally this doesn’t bother me (pretty much all the games I have ever played have a male protagonist) but I read an unfortunate article that suggested Commander Shepard – Mass Effect’s protagonist – was a bit of a womaniser. So I wrote it off.

I then, much later, got a little overexcited by all the sales after Christmas in which I saw Mass Effect 1 and 2 for a little over a tenner. I asked my brother what he thought of them and ended up buying the games – turns out, you can play as a female character! Plus all the womanising depends entirely on the decisions made in-game by the person directing the character (again, my take on Commander Shepard, Drakhoa Shepard, is just below left further down).

This little surprise, combined with Dragon Age II’s recent advertising prior to its release, made me wonder why games that allow you to play as male or female are only ever marketed using the preset male appearance. For illustration purposes I have collected a few trailers courtesy of YouTube:

• Dragon Age II “Destiny – Extended” Trailer
• Dragon Age II “Rise to Power” Trailer
• Mass Effect 3 “Debut” Trailer
• Mass Effect 2 “Full Cinematic” Trailer
• Mass Effect 2 “Launch” Trailer
• Fable II
• Fable III

From those trailers alone, would you have any idea that you can actually play through as a female protagonist? If you knew nothing else about these games, I doubt there’s any chance you’d be able to guess the female protagonist option from the advertising. This could be quite off-putting to gamers (not just female gamers either) as the advertising doesn’t highlight the option of choice that you get in the game; to be a character that you want to be. It certainly put me off: when confronted with the limited information and the possibility that the male protagonist was a character I wouldn’t be able to stand, I chose to look elsewhere. Even though, for me, that elsewhere was probably going back to a First Person Shooter with a male protagonist: at least most of them don’t talk, and you forget the character when you’re facing down hundreds of Replica soldiers or when a Necromorph just came bursting out of an air vent to tear you to pieces.

I’m not trying to fault these RPG games here, though they do all have some downsides – I’m just wondering why the distributors and the marketing bods decide to exclude one whole section of their demographic in one swoop. I’m sure there is some (weak) reasoning to do with demographic statistics and some blanket statements about who buys these games, but surely that’s wearing a little thin by now? I certainly got sick of seeing the preset male character’s smug face in all the Dragon Age II trailers.

Well, if we look over at Blizzard and some of their teasers for Diablo III (coming out later this year) then there are some positive developments on the horizon. They’ve begun releasing trailers relating to each ‘class’ of character for the upcoming game – all of which can be played as a male or female version – and, most importantly, they’re telling us all about it in their advertising!

• Diablo III Demon Hunter
• Diablo III Wizard

Demon Hunter and Wizard are two of the classes you will be able to play as in Diablo III; the others are Monk, Barbarian, and Witch Doctor. The latter three are automatically presented as male, but Demon Hunter and Wizard are automatically presented to us as female on Blizzard’s website for Diablo III, despite the fact all five classes can be played as either. It is interesting as well that at BlizzCon2010 the 19 minutes of gameplay footage included in the press kit featured both the female Demon Hunter and Wizard as the protagonist.

Clearly, then, not all RPG gaming advertising is male-centric, and hopefully more companies will start to follow down the path that Blizzard is taking – showing the audience the variety that is available in-game, instead of just marketing it at male gamers and assuming female gamers (should such a fabled beast exist – haha!) aren’t going to get offended at being ignored or forgotten about.

They are, as I mentioned earlier, all good games (Fable, Dragon Age, Mass Effect) so don’t let the advertising put you off playing them, but equally let’s not resign ourselves to the notion that male-centric advertising will never change. It is changing; it just happens to be very slowly.

• Rai, at the tender age of 23, has been gaming for 15 years and writing for 10 – perfect combination! Watch this space for more Gamer Diary.
• Have an idea for a guest post, or a project you’d like to tell us (and the world) about? Send us an email.