A girl gamer's satirical look at life on Xbox Live
Gaming on Live can be so much fun. However, if you have ever played online with me you will have heard me say at times “Xbox Live: it used to be fun!” This is because some days it just isn’t fun any more.
I remember this the first time I realised it mattered to some people that I was a chick. I got a message from one Live friend whilst I was in a video chat with another, asking who I was in video chat with. At the time I was naïve and thought “who cares?”, but it soon became clear to me that some people did, as there were gamers who always knew when I was in video chat. Now who would actually take the time to open up someone’s profile on their friends list and see what they are doing on the dashboard. I know that I don’t, and it is kind of stalker like if you ask me.
Example number two. A few months ago there was a lull in first person shooters on the Xbox 360, between Call of Duty 4 and Battlefield: Bad Company. R6V2 came out and everyone was pairing up to play the story in co-op, just to keep ourselves amused. I had arranged to play the online co-op with a friend; the same friend person who had convinced me to buy an Xbox 360 last year by telling me how much fun it could be. During this particular session I was receiving endless messages, some asking if I would play co-op with them, and other just plain random messages. After that the friend I was trying to play co-op with refused to play with me as long as my notifications were on. Obviously me stopping every 15 seconds to check another jealous message was really putting a downer on our gameplay. I also think this was the first time he realised how interesting life as a girl gamer can be sometimes!
I didn't pay $600 to lick my controller!
Welcome to the world I live in online, welcome to the world of WPS, pronounced “whips”: an acronym for Wet Pyjama Syndrome. WPS can only be diagnosed by other sufferers of this affliction or by female gamers. WPS symptoms include particular gamers following you around multiplayer games no matter which one you are playing online. There is also the endless questioning of what game you are buying next. But my two favourites are the moment you come online a chat invite after chat invite appears, and when you start an in-game party and people send messages complaining they aren’t in the party… at which point they delete you from their friends list. Do these people not have lives outside of Xbox Live? Get over it people. And if you do delete me because you are jealous, why do you then send me a friend request the very next day?
As a chick, you will forever be receiving friend requests from people you don’t know and don’t remember ever playing with. Unless I know who you are, you can guarantee I won’t be accepting.
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