All Female Quake Tournament Nears

With only two weeks to go in the All Female Quake Tournament (AFT), tournament founder Anna (aka NabeO) and AFT players Tamara (aka Tease) and Leah (aka Bunnyhop) took a few minutes away from fragging to talk about the AFT and their Quake passion.

Cohosted by TEN and SlamSite, the ATF attracted over 160 registrants, with more applications coming in even after the closing date had passed. "More kept trickling in after closing," said Anna. "Some of the girls had never played over the Internet before. They'd just heard about it."

To enforce the rule of female-only, organizers made everyone send in a photocopy of a photo ID card and then followed up with a phone call. Out of the original pool of registrants, the tournament ended up with just over one hundred qualified players.

Play began on July 26 with single-elimination one-on-one deathmatches. And eight finalists will eventually go to the championship rounds at SlamSite in Los Angeles on August 30. The competition is stiff. "I took losing the first AFT battle so personally," said Tamara. "Clan battles never matter, but this time I thought I was going to cry...over Quake!"

Tournament organizers have noticed some definite differences in the way women play Quake. "There was a lot more typing going on," said Garth Chouteau, spokesperson for TEN. "At one point, one girl was stuck, and the other girl just stopped until she got going again. She didn't just walk up and shoot her. The competitors are more fair."

The three women agreed that female players are less competitive in general than their male counterparts. "The guys are very competitive," said Anna. "They throw keyboards when they lose, or blame the equipment or the ping time. The girls are more in it to have fun."

"The ping time's a big one," agreed Tamara. "Women use it as an excuse, too. We've all got it. Get over it!"

"The women come back to cheer you on," said Leah. "That's really cool."

Anna has noticed less trash talk in the tournament as well. "You hear, 'I'm gonna frag you! That garter is mine! But there's no profanity. In the end, it's just a game that everyone enjoys."

Not everything about the tournament has been fun and games, however. Anna has received considerable heat for organizing an exclusively female competition, especially from men. "At one point, I received 600 e-mails from guys who were just spamming me. One guy called me the new Hitler of the Internet."

"I've met women who don't like the AFT concept," said Leah. "But I think the outcome has been to get past the whole marginalization of women. Now there's a proliferation of women players, so all of the sudden, guys realize that, and it's generating a new respect."

All three women play with Quake clans that are mixed male and female. Anna was leader of clan 666, and Tamara became leader of her clan when the former leader joined the Marines. "I was hanging out where the best ping time was, and the other regulars and I just started a clan," said Anna. But the women like getting together and hanging out with other women. "I was disappointed there weren't more women. I'd go into a room and ask if there were any women, but no one would answer. They probably thought I was a pervert."

"Sometimes, when they find out you're a girl, you get asked, 'What are your measurements?' or 'What's your bra size?'" said Tamara. "It's actually really cool to have the Girls' Grotto on TEN, because you know who the girls are. It's not an issue any more so you just play."

"Yeah, some guys, when they find out you're a girl, just stop playing, which is an advantage!" laughs Anna.

It was Anna's quest to find more female players that culminated in the AFT. "I contacted John Carmack , and he wanted to know how many more women players were out there. Because I was clan leader, I forced my guys into servitude to do research," she grins. "We got support from PMS and Crackwhore, and Blues News wrote something on us, and all of the sudden, all these women came out of the woodwork.Carmack was amazed when we got that many to sign up."

The women believe there are plenty of other girls who like to play Quake and other games, but feel isolated. "Girls have a passion for the game, but they feel secluded, so they don't get as involved. There are lots of women like me who make their own money and buy their own games, but the game companies need to wake up and smell the coffee," said Anna, who is an Internet consultant in real life. "I'm very busy, and I'm not going to search out games to play. Doom became so pervasive in the community that I played it and liked it, so I bought id's next game. I liked that, so I bought the next one, and I told my friends about it. But I'm not going to go out and search for them." "Women don't like to consider themselves gamers or computer geeks," said Tamara, who is a hairdresser. "There's a negative connotation. And if you don't know what you're doing, you don't want to ask for help, because you don't want guys to think you're a stupid girl. A lot of women don't play because they don't know how. Men have had this network for years."

"The really great thing about AFT is that it's gotten us together," said Anna. "Women have gotten to know more about women and games. My hope is that, with support, we can keep this going."