Psycho Men Slayers

August 16, 2005 2:13 PM

Psycho Men SlayersThe female Quake playing community demonstrates a playful use of names to demarcate a specifically oppositional female identity within the online community. This is true both of the naming of individuals and the naming of clans or communities such as Chiq, Hellchick, Supergirl, Geekgirl, Clan PMS (Psycho Men Slayers), Da Valkyries: The Women of Quake, Clan Crack Whore, Nimble Little Minxes, The Coven, Hell’s Warehouse. (direct .pdf link via Spitting-Image)
posted by Sully (31 comments total)

For those interested, the original Clan PMS, which was created for Quake 1 and survived through Quake, has long disbanded. However, the name survived the disbanding of that clan, and found use in clans founded for both PS2 gaming and Xbox Live. The two have since combined into one clan - more information on the clan is available at PMSClan.com. (Disclosure: I am a member of this clan)

There is also the Frag Dolls, the first clan of "professional" female gamers, who are sponsored by UbiSoft.

And for those who would wonder why us female gamers would make a point of specifically "separating" ourselves from the community by forming together into clans based entirely on being female, you likely aren't familiar with the treatment that we can recieve. While RPGs, especially MMORPGs, have a reputation as places where the guys will go out of their way to treat known female players better than other guys, action games are different. I have heard some absolutely horrid insults leveled my way during games - and often players will go out of their way to go after us specifically, then unleash their particular verbal diarreha. By sticking together, we can provide a positive gaming experience for girl gamers, both through other girls, and a network of guys that are supportive and helpful.
posted by evilangela at 2:29 PM on August 16, 2005

People still play Quake?

I don't mean that as a snark, I'm serious. I left Quake over 4 years ago, and I felt I was on the back end already.

Was there some kind of revival or resurgence? I thought Arena was The Death Of (tm) Quake.
posted by Ynoxas at 2:40 PM on August 16, 2005

I'm as amazed as Ynoxas that people still play Quake. I'd love to get back and play it again, some of the mod levels were the most fun I've ever had playing online.
posted by fenriq at 2:45 PM on August 16, 2005

yeah, people still play quake. this year's quakecon, which is currently taking place, has managed to renew interest in the series. they've got a playable multiplayer build of quake 4 running there.
posted by jimmy at 2:49 PM on August 16, 2005

I played plenty of PMS people back in my college days when I was in clan BioHazard (BH) and Clan Karnage (CK). That was the day and was lots of fun. I had the silly name Nuckin' Futs cause it sounded funny one drunken evening. But I haven't touched Quake in quite a few years.
posted by Ron at 2:57 PM on August 16, 2005

Funny. 80% of those claiming to be Video Riot Girlz are likely 42 year old white guys.
posted by tkchrist at 3:04 PM on August 16, 2005

Conclusion: Girls are still cute, but they'll never be cutting edge.
posted by cleardawn at 3:05 PM on August 16, 2005

Funny. 80% of those claiming to be Video Riot Girlz are likely 42 year old white guys.

I can guarantee that with voice chat becoming more and more a part of games, the percentage of guys pretending to be female online is going to decrease heavily - I don't think many middle-aged white guys are going to be able to sound convincingly female enough to continue to fake it.
posted by evilangela at 3:11 PM on August 16, 2005

"continue to fake it"

Oooh, you bitch!
posted by cleardawn at 3:32 PM on August 16, 2005

...though said voice tech will also hurt us transwomen. Stupid one-way mutation (testosterone wrecks the voice box, no amount of hormonal therapy can put it back into the "female"/prepubescent male range).
posted by andreaazure at 3:38 PM on August 16, 2005

that was interesting thanks
posted by philcliff at 4:19 PM on August 16, 2005

Female Quake players, their creative practices and the community they have developed should be understood to be relevant to a technofeminist agenda that seeks to offer both new images of technologised embodiment and to foster an active engagement with technology amongst women. Haraway argues that “Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. … [and provide] a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear … It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, spaces, stories.” (1990: 223)

Er, right.
posted by fleacircus at 4:30 PM on August 16, 2005

And for those who would wonder why us female gamers would make a point of specifically "separating" ourselves from the community by forming together into clans based entirely on being female, you likely aren't familiar with the treatment that we can recieve.

Unless you find the right male-dominated clan/gaming community, I can totally see why gaming with other girls would cut down on the kind of behavior you describe, thus making the game more fun.

The paper was an interesting read, although it felt a little out of date, with many quotes and such from the late 90:s.

It seems to me that things are changing every day, and the change has been really speeding up over the last 2-3 years. When I first started playing CS/DoD, I was treated as a novelty, and you saw all kinds of behaviors from the horridly rude to marriage proposals (lol). Now, even on a non-clan server, I dont' even get that many comments or anything, even after talking over voice.

Still, we have a bit to go.
posted by gemmy at 4:44 PM on August 16, 2005

Surely Hell's Warehouse should read Hell's Whorehouse?

How does Hell's Warehouse "playfully demarcate a specifically oppositional female identity"?


(I've RTFL, and it too says Hell's Warehouse.)
posted by uncanny hengeman at 4:45 PM on August 16, 2005

Haraway is a terrible, terrible theorist when it comes to technological matters. I remember her talking about how we could no longer be certain our machines weren't filled with poltergeists. I also remember her saying with a straight face that no worthwhile idea could be expressed simply. She's a Sokal Affair waiting to happen. I mean, how can anyone who knows anything about technology say something like

Pre-cybernetic machines could be haunted; there was always the specter of the ghost in the machine. This dualism structured the dialogue between materialism and idealism that was settled by a dialectical progeny, called spirit or history, according to taste. But basically machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous. They could not achieve man's dream, only mock it. They were not man, an author to himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream. To think they were otherwise is paranoid. Now we are not so sure.

seriously?
posted by amery at 4:49 PM on August 16, 2005

fleacircus, that quote, the entire article for that matter, reminds me of ludology. The newish field trying to develop a theory of games.

Some relevant links:
Video game studies
Ludology
Ludonauts

I don't know why, but for some reason ludology annoys me. Maybe it's a sense of "get your critical theory/English out of my computer science." Stop analyzing everything! Leave my games alone... Damnit, let me have my fun without worrying about the narrative embodiment of the identity image. Leave the game dev. to the cs and art majors and the social analysis to the sociologists.

Anyways, sorry about the tangent. The core of the idea, females banding together to help each other... Very cool. Reminds me of people banding together to form unions or other alliances in real life. I bet we'll see many other social iideas like that popping up in online games.
posted by formless at 5:01 PM on August 16, 2005

I read 3 pages of a PDF that went nowhere. Spice it up, research people!
posted by mrgrimm at 5:20 PM on August 16, 2005

I know! Let's react to gender bias by coming together into a polarized group of people who return that gender bias tenfold!
posted by nightchrome at 5:24 PM on August 16, 2005

nightchrome, there is no bias within PMS. The clan is all female, but there is an associated male clan for guys that are especially supportive of the girls. There's a lot of play overlap between the two, so we can't be said to be isolating ourselves from guys - just from the negative ones. We also expect all girls to demonstrate class while playing, and anyone who violates this in some manner is removed from the clan. I've heard of girls getting kicked out for all sorts of reaons, including repeated obnoxious behavior toward other people.

Is there an incentive for us to beat guys while playing what are traditionally considered "guy's" games? Of course. Most of that incentive really comes into play when we get mistreated or attacked by guys who are convinced that we can't be as good as they are. In other words, the only guys that we REALLY want to beat are the ones whose egos won't let them take it well. I do love it when a team of us girls beats such guys, because it does bother them so, and it will force them to rethink their bias - either they have to admit that we CAN play such a game well, or they have to stop thinking of themselves as such good players.

I know we've changed quite a few minds already, especially some of the best girls. I look forward to a time when we don't have to band together to find a consistently positive play environment.
posted by evilangela at 5:46 PM on August 16, 2005

there is an associated male clan for guys that are especially supportive of the girls

No doubt.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 6:01 PM on August 16, 2005

I loved Arena. Had to uninstall it from my computer because I was getting nothing done.

Next week, the code is going open source.
posted by dobbs at 6:28 PM on August 16, 2005

I've never understood a word Haraway wrote. I heard her lecture once and I came away convinced that she is one of the smartest women I've ever met.

Her writing is atrocious but the woman has serious horsepower.
posted by rdr at 10:32 PM on August 16, 2005

s/one of the smartest women/???/

WTF did I intend that to mean?
posted by rdr at 12:39 AM on August 17, 2005

You've met a lot of smart women?
posted by TwelveTwo at 1:25 AM on August 17, 2005

Girl refuses to play with horrible boys, prefers playing with other girls, provides lengthy pseudoscientific explanation. Later agrees to play with some boys, but only the nice ones.

Radical stuff.

I can see how thinkers like this are going to revolutionize our whole concept of gender.

(As embodied by the intra-technological spaces that map the known to the virtual embodiments of failed patriarchal imagery, natch).
posted by cleardawn at 5:36 AM on August 17, 2005

Hellchick transitioned from writing columns at GameSpy to the production side of things, she works at Raven on Quake4. If I'm not mistaken you can look for her work on the interactive-menu systems located in the game, among other things.

It's interesting that females feel they are gaining some ground in terms of respect online, when at the same time UbiSoft has positioned the Frag Dolls as a marketing force predicated on traditional Male views. If you ever take a look at their website you'll understand how over-produced and ridiculous it is.

I beleive the groups are rather exclusive of one another though, as there's a massive difference between authentic and dedicated individuals and those who are photogenic and payed to pose, smiling with game controllers.
posted by prostyle at 6:15 AM on August 17, 2005

prostyle - three members of the Frag Dolls are also members of the current PMS Clan. One is one of the founders of PMS(Athena/Valkrye), another was in PMS before becoming a Frag Doll, and the third recently joined PMS. Given there are now only 6 Dolls (one left), that's 50%.

When they were screening people for the Dolls, gaming skills were very high up on the list. The didn't just pick pretty faces. They can - and do - kick ass.
posted by evilangela at 8:18 AM on August 17, 2005

Coming up next: The good looking girl gamers who kick ass reality TV show disclosure: my site. Yes, soon you will be abel to watch PlayUS starring the all femme all Swedish Les Sueles clan kick ass.
posted by dabitch at 8:35 AM on August 17, 2005

evilangela: Thanks for the information! I apologize for making the assumption that the groups were mutually exclusive. I'm glad to know that it's not entirely superficial.
posted by prostyle at 9:14 AM on August 17, 2005

Hmm... Is there something wrong with me that I never think about the potential gender of the people I'm deathmatching with? Maybe it's because I'm too busy FRAGGING THEM ALL WITH WICKED ROCKET JUMP DEATH FROM ABOVE, MWA AHAHAHAHHAHAHAA


*ahem*
posted by stenseng at 11:04 AM on August 17, 2005

Pre-cybernetic machines could be haunted; there was always the specter of the ghost in the machine. This dualism structured the dialogue between materialism and idealism that was settled by a dialectical progeny, called spirit or history, according to taste. But basically machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous. They could not achieve man's dream, only mock it. They were not man, an author to himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream. To think they were otherwise is paranoid. Now we are not so sure.

this is hilarious. 'pre-cybernetic machines could be haunted' (!) You mean like, clocks? haunted clocks, eeeevil clocks.

The 'ghost in the machine' is a metaphor. Metaphor. it doesn't mean it's literally haunted. geez.

also, gaming - fun= ludology
posted by Miles Long at 11:56 AM on September 8, 2005