i no longer care if you consider me a gamer
like many people in the world, my eyes were glued to a screen and hands to a controller when i was young. really young. like, since the age of 2. we only ever had the privilege of owning one gaming console, the super nintendo, and we treasured that fantastic block of gray-and-purple plastic for nearly a decade despite the ridiculous blowing-into-cartridges and shoving-cards-into-gaps routine. my first game was double dragon, but i remember clocking in more hours than i could count in donkey kong country and chrono trigger.
my brother and i in tucson. i was visiting him for a weekend and he revealed to me that he ADOPTED A CAT and BOUGHT A DREAMCAST. he was realizing all our childhood dreams so quickly.
my brother and i didn't have access to consoles after that, so we quickly became connoisseurs of emulators, playing through countless mega man, final fantasy, and pokemon series. our cousin david had a sega console (probably the sega saturn), and we never missed a chance to roll around as a blue hedgehog, shooting off huge ramps, collecting shiny coins, and fighting over who had to play knuckles. i also recall playing a lot of descent 2, which we called "decent" 2 because we were dumb kids who couldn't pronounce english words properly, and mortal kombat, which totally sucked because my brother would spam raiden headbutts and scorpio 'GET OVER HERE's. i was fucking awful at fighting games and only ever won when chun li was stupidly OP. zangief ended up being my ultimate one true love though.
i especially loved watching my brother play games. i'd nestle in the back of his chair, rest my chin on his shoulder blade and peek over to watch the adventures of the day unfold. it was comforting. still, to this day, the most at peace i can possibly feel is when i'm watching a close friend play video games while resting my head on their lap.
to aid y0u in your imagination, this is a picture of us at 3 and 7.
these were the two who introduced me to heroes of newerth during my freshman year! here we are, playing mario kart at 2am after i got home from the night shift at yogurtland.
the point is, i loved video games. it was an escape, a way for me to spend time with my brother outside of the awful reality that was our childhood. i think a lot of people can relate to that.
as i got older, games became a way to engage with the world around me. i wasn't allowed outside of the house, so i relied heavily on the internet to explore and make friends. i cycled through an endless stream of online multiplayer games – maplestory, ragnarok, tibia, trickster, red moon, gunz, gunbound, counter strike: source, guild wars i and ii, diablo ii, world of warcraft, starcraft, heroes of newerth, and then, finally, league of legends.
and league of legends, my dear friends, is where it all went downhill.
i began playing league of legends during my third and final year of college. my duo queue partner at the time would later become one of my most cherished friends. i loved league of legends so much that year – i loved the collaborative nature of it, i loved how silly it can be if you just fool around, i loved staring at pretty skins, i loved how it felt to naturally improve as you gain more and more knowledge over time. and, most of all, i loved that it helped my brother and i get back in touch after moving away to different cities. i had the perfect duo queue partner in crime. i had the perfect handful of gaming friends. i had my brother.
then i graduated and went out into the big, bad world. me, a shy girl who stayed trapped inside a house for the first two decades of her life. a bright-eyed, easily excitable kid who dreamt of being part of the gaming world that had always felt familiar. in my mind, being able to get into the gaming industry would be like a homecoming.
i was VERY excited about this picture with dyrus. he later messaged me on facebook asking me to delete it, but i didn’t see his message for 3 years and… um. here we are.
i was 20 years old in the picture!! at some random sweaty mlg tournament!!! i used to wear a red bow in my hair everyday. i am also holding a blitzcrank hook.
my last day working IT at the UCLA business school, where i met people i really loved arguing about dota with ;~;
something to note here is that my ability to retain information became progressively atrocious over the years when it came to details about stories and names. this spans across all kinds of media: i constantly forget the endings of my favorite movies, i can't remember the names of my favorite songs, i have no strong recollection of any of the books or films i hungrily consumed during my two-year-long wwii phase. nothing. my brain is VERY good at holding memories of people in my life, the details of how it feels to be with people, their gait, the way hair falls into their eyes, how they smell after a long day, etc. all that nostalgic nonsense.
21 year old nancy!
a very happy lan party where everyone was included and equally shit-talked as we competitively played casual games
one of the first things i heard a coworker say to me when i started my job at the ripe age of 21 was, "are you really a gamer?"
oh wait. that was in the interview. before i even had my first day. i didn't understand why that tone was being used. "really?" – so much default disbelief.
from that moment on, i felt like i constantly had to PROVE that i was legitimate to my surrounding peers. and i just... couldn't. i didn't know how. i couldn't easily recall the same cut scenes everyone would reference. "you started during pandaria? clearly a casual." if i said i played diablo, someone would say "oh yeah???" and immediately start quizzing me (as opposed to just… bonding with me?). i'd inevitably get something confused with some other hack and slash. or worse, i'd get it confused with path of exile. oh the horror.
i was told time and time again that i wasn't a true gamer. which, outside the context of that seeming to have suppressed my career progression (but let's ignore that for now), whatever. who gives a fuck. i'll be the first to admit it: i'm not as intense as the people around me. i'm not nearly as competitive and i don't care about min-maxing in video games. i play for the stories, the beautiful experiences. i play to hang out with my friends. i play for the comfort games can provide me.
well, okay, if i can't connect with things from too far in the past, at least i can connect over league of legends, right? that's something that's fresh in my memory, right?
monarch kog’maw. majestic, ain’t it?
the first champion i LOVED was kog'maw. he's actually still my favorite to this day. monarch kog'maw proved to me that love at first sight is a real thing. everyone is shocked when i say this because it's already been decided that i am another stereotypical girl who plays support. meh. but i never cared enough to change that perception. it's true because i allowed it to be so.
i remember the first time i was alpha-maled into playing support. i was told that i shouldn't be put on carry, that it's too risky, even though no one at the time had any understanding of my skill level. it didn't matter even if i was actually objectively... better. not the best. just better than some. like, a respectable middle-of-the-pack kind of player. but still, i'd hear from the bronzies: "do you even know what last hitting is?" lol, sweetheart, i used to have to deny minions. >:(
so i – still with the remnants of shyness in me mixed with a general feeling of "ah fuck it' – i just started playing support. i just wanted to have fun. i didn't want to argue and i didn't want the pressure. i didn't care THAT much about being good, let alone being perceived as good. it was socially easier. i'll just play what i want in dominion and play support with everyone else. it'll be fun.
but it stopped being fun really fast.
but, like, i REALLY loved team vulcun and i got to meet zuna and xmithie, which is pretty neat! i’ll always root for them.
me and my duo queue partner at the staples center for worlds! we took a picture with this image because we thought we could caption it “got a picture with a pro!!!” ha ha ha
"of course you play support."
"of course you main nami. easy mode."
"have you tried playing sona? just press buttons. even you can win."
the only way i knew how to climb out of the hole i dug for myself was to work hard and practice other roles on my own. to get good. but i didn't want to put in time to prove something so insignificant to people. i just wanted to play around and do dumb shit and have fun.
and i wasn't even having fun, so what's the point of trying? i'd rather to go sleep.
eventually i turned to indie games. i loved that world. similar to indie music, i loved the creativity, the storytelling, the magic of discovering something that feels handmade, from the artist to you. it was something special to them.
i started getting called a filthy casual for not being in tune with the world of AAA games. the games that everyone was talking about. the games that make you a legitimate gamer. i blocked it out for the most part and kept playing through my steam backlog until one day i stumbled upon the beauty that is ori and the blindforest. it was one of the most difficult platformers i've ever played, but i loved it so much. i kept failing and failing until i didn't. when i excitedly shared that i finished the game with coworkers, i got this response:
"ori is SO hard. there's NO way you beat it by YOURSELF."
oh, okay. i guess i'll stop talking about that too.
i actually really fucking love lord of the rings so much it hurts
as you know, there are parts of the gaming community that love to try gatekeeping the ever so prestigious title of "gamer." but that’s not all. this lovely sector of the community also holds the huge burden of bestowing the honorable title of "nerd" to all those who are worthy of engaging with game-adjacent things: fantasy movies, sci-fi novels, board games, comic books, tv shows starring your latest favorite manic pixie dream girl / cool girl.
yeah, it doesn't matter if my brother and i would replay vhs tapes of the original star wars trilogy until they broke. doesn't matter if i loved going to magic the gathering tournaments to observe and dreamt of being an illustrator for wizards of the coast. doesn't matter if we would search online for hours to find sheet music of our favorite final fantasy songs. those times and sweet memories must be fabrications of my imagination because i cannot remember this one fucking boss in that one fucking raid. yes, i know, it was popular, everyone knows it, whatever, idontgiveafuck.
the only things i'm somewhat open to talking about are lord of the rings and star trek, but that's because i don't know how else to explain my cat's name and my excessive referencing of a recent data episode i watched.
gatekeeping sucks, man.
i miss connecting over nerdy things that i like.
:(
drew this with a mouse in what looks like paint shop pro. i was 13. a bit sloppy with the text, but apparently very into the shape detail.
i guess i can see why i was bullied in middle school
while playing animal crossing last night, i had a moment in between gasps for air when i paused and realized just how much i was laughing and how much fun i was having. i felt at peace like i did when i was younger, trying to find an escape from a dark situation. i've also been playing civ vi, call of duty, and random survival games with my brother and a couple of friends. the last month has been like a rediscovery of how much excitement and joy these games can fill me up with.
i don't really blame anyone. i think a lot of dynamics were at play and i made my own decisions that led me here. and i'm actually quite happy with my current relationship with gaming and the industry as a whole.
perhaps i actually love being a filthy casual but just hate the connotation because it feels like it negates the memories that i have with gaming. gaming has undoubtably shaped my life significantly, and it will always have a special place in my heart, but i don't think it really defines my life nowadays. there is so, so much in the world to be fascinated by, to fall in love with, to find joy and comfort in, and my engagement with things outside of the "typical" gamer identity does not diminish my experiences with gaming, nor does it do so for anyone else. as we get older, we discover there is so much to love. games will always be included in that list.
i think the community is very vibrant now, and it is filled with so many wonderful people that i love and respect. but it isn't for me. i don't need for it to be for me. there will always be the asshole nerds that coexist amongst us and, meh, i choose to disengage.
i'm not upset and i'm not trying to make a point about being mistreated or being female or anything along those lines. at the end of the day, people like what they like, and labels only exist to help simplify complexities. i think this is more of an explanation for why i keep that part of my life quiet and why i don't have a desire to vocalize anything in that realm unless i trust you and can connect meaningfully with you in relationship to those things. you can be gatekeepers if you want. in the same way, i can choose to keep it to myself and for myself.
in conclusion, i'll peacefully and quietly enjoy the things i like while some of you fume about whether or not i should be allowed to belong. i don't. it's okay.
