Lack of girl gamers?

So here I am, Tuesday night, sat in front of my laptop speaking to a few girls that I know that play on xbox live, and suddenly dawned on my that I don’t actually know many female gamers. Well since this chat I have gone up to about 8 on twitter, but on my friends list I only have 3 girl gamers. So I suppose the question we are asking today is why is there so few female gamers around?

wouldnt all men love this?

Now the gaming industry has normally been a male orientated, and I can see why this would put a lot of female gamers off from playing games or even be associated with working for a gaming brand. But I still don’t understand why. I mean football for example is played across the world by men and women and that’s normally a male sport as well. When I say that I don’t mean to sound sexist and I wont be during the course of this post as well, if you are offended by it I am sorry.

So there are a few male macho figures going to be reading this and I know exactly what is going through their heads because I used to think it going back a few years ago now, which is all girl gamers are terrible. Well now I would disagree with this, there are a lot of successful female clans that are about in the world who regularly compete in competitions and do well and also lots of them that do fundraiser event I.e gaming for heroes a 24 hour gaming session to raise money for the troops.

Now I mean this in the nicest way possible but some girls just wont get it. For example (and she will kill me for this) my girlfriend has started playing games, just for me (how sweet is that) but it’s a lot harder for her than she thought. Its not the game that she gets confused with or what to do, its mainly the controller.

So for a lot of us it did take a while to get used to a controller, doesn’t matter what console it is but it took us some time to get used to it but it seems to take her more than most. The fact that her coordination is all over the place doesn’t help when I say look left and she goes and looks right but still I love her.

But I wish some other women would take a bit more initiative like my girlfriend has done for me and at least make an effort to try and play a game. For all you know you may like it as well, even if it’s a demo, an arcade game, a kids game, anything !!!

Pick up the controller and have a go and hopefully you will do for gaming what other women have done for football and make it more popular !!

The Battle Of The Franchises

This October and November will see one of the biggest battles commence in history.

No I’m not talking about the war in Iraq, but between EA/Dice and Activision who are both nearly ready to release their two main games of the year which would be Battlefield 3 and also Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

These two titles go head to head ( near enough) over the next two months to see who indeed has produced the best first person shooter game this year. The competition for both games will be huge and I am just estimating that millions of players will play both games. But what we are going to do today is find out which one will prevail.

Battlefield 3

With this game being just 5 days away, I kinda wish I could become a gamer for the first time ever, because I know this game will blow my mind away. Huge maps hosting up to 32 players on consoles and a massive 64 players on pc, this game is going to be wild !

With the game being released with 9 maps and 5 different game types this game will take some time to master. Battlefield will also contain a huge arsenal boasting more guns and equipment than battlefield 2 and also more things to unlock as well. They have kept their 4 class system but they now have a more in depth ranking method which will help new and old gamers alike too.

Also they bring one element that the CoD franchise hasn’t even considered, you guessed it, FIGHTER JETS !!!!

This may be one of the main reasons I will be getting this game to see how this new dimension will effect the gameplay and also turn the tide of war during a level. Tanks will also make a comeback as well along with various other vehicles, but I think we are all just wanting to use these jets.

Another thing that Battlefield has over the CoD series is its huge levels and the ability to destroy buildings. In Battlefield 2 the game kind of played as if the saying went “If there is a building, it can be demolished” From what I saw playing the beta I didn’t get to see huge apartment complexes fall, but in the single player trailers I have seen it, so maybe we will get to experience it when the real game is out !!

Excitement level: CANNOT BLOODY WAIT !!!!


Call of Duty

So its back, another year and another Call of Duty game. I don’t want to even think about how much money Activision makes a year purely on Call of Duty games I am sure it would make me sick, but fair play they know how to make one hell of a franchise

The call of duty series started back in 2003 and has gone from strength to strength each year, I think the turning point of the franchise is when is release Call Of Duty 4 way back now in 2007 which completely revamped the whole first person shooter genre, allowing players to level up and customize their own classes to try and make themselves the ultimate killing machines. In 2009 they release Modern Warfare 2 which at the time became the best selling first person shooter game of all time and amassing the most amount of sales on day one of release, and I’m sure Modern Warfare 3 will do the same.

The story picks up exactly where it left off in MW2 and has you travelling across the world to stop world domination from a crazy mad man hell bent on crushing all major super power and it has you playing in cities such as London, Paris, New York too. Although the Call of Duty series does have a fantastic storyline, the multiplayer is where it all happens, with a huge amount of maps and different game modes to keep every player happy. MW2 alone had 16 multiplayer maps and hosting a whopping 19 different game modes as well. And with MW3 promising more maps, guns and different options for the players, it will be a HUGE hit with its fans and new players alike.

Now I mentioned that I dread to think how much Activision makes per year, but this year they are showing us how much their fans mean to them.

In September this year they held their Call of Duty: XP event which was a two day event showing gameplay and highlights of MW3 which is due out in November. Aside from getting hands on experience with this new game there was also a competition for team to win 1 million dollars as well. Now if you thought that was good, they even went further, they recreated 2 maps from MW2 so people could go paintballing in and also had their own burger store from one of the maps too. And to top it all off they had a live performance from Kanye West to top the night off, now if that isn’t a way of repaying your loyal fans, I don’t know what is.

Excitement level: THROUGH THE ROOF !!!!!

Ok so that’s my round up of these two big games that are coming out, obviously there is now way we can actually compare these to properly as they both aren’t released on the same day (EA slightly scared??) but the only people who can decide is us. Now both genres with have its own fan boy’s which will stick true to their preferred title, but its up to us other gamers who will have an opened mind about both games and just bin in awe of what they will bring to us.

Thanks

Supa DX

Key Elements To Become Good At Call Of Duty

Call of duty sells millions of copies each year and will continue to sell millions for a few years to come I imagine and when you see there are between 100k and 500k people online playing a game it does make you wonder how much money these companies make. But we aren't here to talk about that, no no I am here to tell you what makes the difference between a good player and a pro gamer.

Now I could instead go on about how a good gamer is better than an average gamer but that would be too easy. So I thought I'd delve into a harder one to help some people out, and yes I am aware I may annoy some people with this too. Now as I have said these views are my own and you are entitled to your opinion, and I don't mean to brag (much) when i say this this but on MW2 my kill/death ratio is 2.20 and Win/Loss is over 6.00 and on Blops my K/D is 1.89 and W/L is over 10.00.

So I think I know what I'm on about.

So firstly.....

Coordination/Reactions


There are a lot of pro gamers out in the world now and this is one of the reasons it takes them away from the rest. Now coordination isn't just about knowing what buttons your controller does but its also how you use them or even tweak them.

Someone who has good coordination and reactions will have no problem in picking out his target and getting the first shots off to ensure that he is the winner, and majority of battles do end up being 1v1 situation. I'd probably say 90% of the time the person with the better responses wins. Now I did mention tweaks, now you can change your controller set up and also your sensitivity but even by doing that, its still hard and takes practice to get used to and if you can manage all 3. You will become a good player.

Mental Ability


My person best thing. This may be THE best thing that will help you in all of this. Its all good having good reactions or coordination but if you think about it, how did you manage to get them, or even more simple, how did you chose your gun.

The mind plays the biggest part in what you do before the game, during the game and after the game. You will mentally chose which gun to use, you will choose which way to run at the start of the game, when you die you will choose which way to go and attack the enemy again. Now you know when your not playing against someone who doesn't have a great gaming mind as they will keep running the same way with very little change and they are the ones who keep dying. If i died on CoD, my first thought is (depending on the game mode) "where do i go to maximize my kill streak" or "which area needs help" a perfect example of this is me and a friend of mine playing mw2 the other day and we played 10 games and didn't lose any purely because we were smarter than the other team (now before you start, some of them were a group of 6!) but it leads me onto another point.....

Communication


This is only effective when playing with other people you know because if its in a public game, no one will listen.

Communication is key to winning games, especially if you trust your team to do as you say or to listen to them if they need help. Being a lone wolf may rack you up lots of kills, but if you don't listen and pay attention you won't win many games.

To conclude

Those are most probably the 3 biggest things that help me play well and also win games. Without these I would be terrible and I wouldn't have even thought about gaming in different leagues.

There are more which i could mention during this which also have a big impact on how you play such as confidence, trust and what headset/controller you use but that's a different subject.

Thanks

Supa DX

Is Gaming Addictive

So while being at work on a late sunday evening I was trying to think and figure out why is online gaming now being classed as an addiction by some people?


I mean looking at a lot of people who I play with they are very competitive gamers and they will play in day in day out and they will keep playing and perfecting themselves and also their team as well. I mean I’ll be honest I play for long periods of the day and I will keep playing until my eyes actually start to shut for the night.

But why do we do it?

Again looking at the people who are on my friends list or people who compete in the same league as us I know a lot of them will put hours to into playing games. I suppose a lot of it could be down to the games, take the Call Of Duty franchise for example the online aspect to the game requires you to level up your characters to unlock new weapons or earn in game money to unlock equipment.

I suppose that could be the key to it. But I suppose it will all come in time after playing I suppose, it just must be how desperately you want to get them for your character. But if this is the scenario, why do (in the Call of Duty franchise) is there a prestige button so you lose all the equipment and you have to start from scratch, earn it all again, and I imagine after its all been and done, people will still do it again, and lose all the stuff.

So why is it exactly?

Is it to do with ego? You have to level up be the highest level person on the team (in terms of prestige in Call of Duty)

Is it for the challenge? After you prestige, you lose all of your equipment so you start with the bare minimum equipment so you have to play against people who have better stuff than you that will make is challenging

Or is online gaming just fuel to a online gamers drug?

I guess it could be a bit of everything, I know which one I would say I would get classed into, but I am not the rest of the world and I would love to know how other people feel about it and why you think its addictive…..