This is what happens when you baselessly challenge a woman on her gaming creds and said woman happens to be the gaming editor at a major tech site.

Let’s slow clap it out for TechLife’s Rae Johnston, everyone.

(via: Jezebel)

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Anja Keister, Shoshana Kessock, Iris Explosion, Stella Chuu, and our very own Susana Polo brought their knowledge of the lady gamers’ experience to this past weekend’s PAX East for the panel “You Game Like a Girl: Tales of Trolls & White Knights.” Lucky for those of you who couldn’t attend the con, the panel was taped for a thing called the Internet, since technology is awesome like that. Check it out under the cut; the relevant bit starts at approximately the 03:05:02 mark.

Leonardo returns to his classical roots with this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle/René Magritte mashup by ben6835. (via Geek-Art)

Thanks to mobile devices and their wide availability, tweens — that is, young people between the ages of eight and 12 — are gaming a lot. And in an interestingly normal bit of news, half of those gamers are girls! It makes total sense, since roughly half of tweens are also girls! According to a survey by the site GirlsGoGames, a solid 50 percent of tween girls are turning to online gaming, whether it’s on the internet at home or a mobile device. Of course, some of those games are what you might say are “catering to gender stereotypes” — makeover, cooking, and dress-up games — but who’s to say that some of those girls aren’t slaying dragons, too?

Don’t worry, we haven’t reverted into Mean Girls territory, this is a list Kimmie Britt (aka killerrqueen) made up herself. She’s a contestant in Maxim Magazine’s Gamer Girl contest. The woman with the most votes will get “exposure in Maxim magazine and Maxim.com, an all-expense paid trip to VIP gaming event(s), and a potential contract to become a Virgin Gaming spokesmodel, just to name a few,” according to the website. But Britt is wondering about her chances considering some of the current entries so she made this video as a response. Check it out (along with her page), the contest ends May 25.

Bob Chipman, movie critic at The Escapist, has some words for those who say nasty, sexist things in the gaming community — or any community, really — and why it is not okay, why it has never been okay, and why it will never be okay. Almost six minutes of reasons, folks.

Thanks to tipster Alexandra!

(via The Escapist)

It’s always great to see celebrations of girl gamers as a way of creating awareness that they do, indeed, exist. It’s also a great and productive thing for retail outlets to offer discounts and run promotions with the promise of donating some of the proceeds to a charity that benefits women or women’s health. However, one such charity has been in the news lately and suffered a major blow to their good name, and more and more bad news continues to reach the masses, strongly indicating that this once reputable and celebrated women’s charity has developed some interests that contradict serving women’s health. No, not the Girl Scouts. We’re talking about Susan G. Komen For the Cure. And we’re confused as to why, after all that news that happened, anyone — in this case, Evil Controllers — would run a promotion celebrating women but benefiting an organization that seems to have put personal politics before women. Guys, haven’t you been on the internet? Or watched TV? This just happened in the last week and a half!

In case you were looking for one, there it is! Available at Entertainment Earth. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Like many folks, I first used Vent in conjunction with World of Warcraft (for those not in the know, Ventrilo is a VoIP client beloved by gamers). Before I even left Shadowglen, I ran across an article about one girl’s unfortunate experiences in Vent. I was simply going to reference it here, but my mad Google skills have turned up the actual article, which hearkens back from the year 2005:

I made the mistake of speaking one day, out of the blue…People got loud, people were talking on top of each other, the channel got laggy from all the chaos…I very suddenly got flooded with in game tells: “Was that you?” I didn’t reply to any, I just kept my mouth shut, very quickly realizing my mistake. A few people took it to the next level, making some extremely harsh comments about girls, and girls playing the game. I didn’t talk for the rest of the raid.

That was how I thought Vent was going to be: a never-ending misogynistic gauntlet of harassment and requests for pics. It sounded awful. See, at this point, I hadn’t made any gamer friends, and the only female gamers I knew of were strangers writing articles like the one above. I avoided Vent as long as I could, making up excuses about not having a mic. My interaction with other players was minimal. But by level twenty, my gear was pathetic, and it was clear that I was missing out on a lot of game content.