"Stop," I tell him immediately. I decline to greet by hugging, I frown stiffly, and I can hear a worn, thin tone snappish in my voice. "I don't want to talk about work," I tell him. I immediately feel bad for being bitchy. He's a nice kid, and he's told me before that bringing up "game stuff" is an easy way for him to start conversation with me, and he's just so enthusiastic he can't help it, no matter how many times I try to change the subject.
A lot of guys I meet feel the same way, whether they want to date me or not. Such a novelty is it for them to discover a neighborhood gal who presumably "plays video games all day" that they seem over the moon to find a girl they can talk about games with. This should make me feel cool. It makes me annoyed.
Yeah, of course I have played [insert new title here]. It's my job. And yes, of course you may come over and play [game that isn't out yet] with me. Just bring me a bottle of gin and have something else to talk about, please. My house is not an arcade. Sometimes when I'm off the clock video games are the last thing I want to look at, think about or talk about.
Does this sound really unfair of me? Am I sometimes over-sensitive to people who are just trying to be nice or share an interest in my field? Probably, but try to understand it really sucks for men to continually make of me a novelty. I don't want to be a novelty. I am not my job.
And I imagine any gal who's an avid gamer even for a hobby, not for a living, has to deal with the same thing, endless barrages of breathless shock from guys that can't believe you exist. And maybe gals for whom it's just a hobby find this flattering. I don't.
You wouldn't ask your friend who's a lawyer for free legal advice every time you see him. You wouldn't ask your friend who's a tax preparer to share his expertise gratis. You wouldn't bug your psychologist friend about your traumatic childhood every time she simply wants to have coffee with you. You pay people for that stuff.
Maybe I should charge people to play video games with me. Maybe I should refuse to talk about them unless I'm being paid. Maybe I should only allow guys at the bar to ask me if God of War III is any good ("yes, awesome." Like, what else can I reply?) after they've bought me a drink.
...Of course I'm not serious. I wouldn't do this if I didn't love it, and while I definitely get impatient at being pigeonholed as some kind of nerd goddess who's about nothing else but video games, I understand I'm a rarity and I hope I can contribute something useful in my perspectives because of that. It does help me bond with new people, since there aren't too many of us gamers out there who "get it".
But I bring it up because so many of you wrote me asking what I think about GameCrush.com, wherein gamers pay for "PlayDates" with real live females. As I said on Twitter, do you really need a girl to tell you it's demeaning and insulting for you to believe it?
It's stupid, but y'know, I get it. In Japan, girls get compensated for any number of things, from chaste dates to having lunch with salarymen while dressed up as maids with rabbit ears. Part of me feels like it's hard enough to be a female gamer in a culture where -- well, where men would pay women to play games with them -- that they might as well make some money at it. I dunno that any amount of money would be worth the heavy breathing the girl's gonna have to sit through when she's playing MW2 with the kind of guy who'd pay women to play games with him.
What if I auctioned off the opportunity to play and discuss the Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill Series with me at my house? Would you bid on that, let's say, if it were for charity? Would your opinion change if I for some reason needed the money to keep this blog up? What if I just wanted the money for myself? I am quite sure some of you would, because I am quite sure some of you are here because I am a girl generally determined by others to be pretty. Judging by some of the emails and comments I sometimes receive and promptly delete, a few of you are here only for that.
There's a really ugly reality to our landscape, and while I firmly believe it will evolve and improve, I am also pessimistic that that ugly underbelly can ever fully go away. The way I see it, it was only a matter of time before someone found a way to capitalize on it. I'm not, like, full of outrage. It's just dumb, and I didn't even think it really needed addressing.
I will say I can't wait to interview the girls about what it's like, though!
