Born in 1985, Talitha Kalago lives on the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. She loves reading, video games, documentaries, horror movies and vegetable patches. She lives with an alarming collection of previously abandoned or unwanted animals that include dogs, cats, birds and snakes. She loves aquascaping and dedicates too much time to her numerous aquariums and aquatic invertebrates.

There is a 23% chance she is watching a horror movie as you read this.

Her first young adult novel, Lifesphere Inc: Acquisition was released on the 20th of May. You can find out more about Talitha at her website: www.traditionalevolution.com

Gaming with boobs: A snapshot.

Being a female in an MMO is somewhat like being a female and walking into a bar. Inhibitions are low, self entitlement is high and almost everyone is drinking. If there are mostly men, the few females are going to get a lot of attention, however if there is a healthy mix, the attention is a bit more spread out.

How it plays out from there depends very much on the manager and, to a lesser extent, the other patrons. Someone is going to misbehave–if the manager tells them to GTFO, then everyone gets the idea that sort of thing isn’t going to be tolerated. If no one does anything, the behaviour will get worse and worse. Any female present will be bullied, harassed, threatened and worse.

Guys tend to fall into three categories with this behaviour. Firstly, there are good guys who know it is never appropriate to harass women, online or off. Secondly, there are assholes that will ALWAYS harass women, online and off. Thirdly, there are sheep. Sheep always think they are good guys, but the truth is, if everyone else is doing something, they will too. They believe there are contexts where it is appropriate and assume this is one of them.

Don’t be an asshole or a sheep.

I choose to avoid games and guilds were guys are assholes. However it’s really, really hard to avoid games and guilds where some of the other women don’t annoy the living fuck out of me.

Women do have a raw deal when it comes to gaming. We are treated like shit by a majority of male players. However to compensate for this (or because they are trying to win their approval) many guild leaders tolerate complete bullshit from female players.

We’re all familiar with the attention seeking bimbo gamer. She talks about her shopping in guild chat and says ‘but I’m a girl’ every freaking hour, just in case someone forgot. She has to make jokes about being female in every conversation, as if it’s impossible for women to talk about amour stats without saying something like: ‘Well, we girls NEED extra vitality! Teehee!’

I have news for you, guys. Those girls annoy sensible girls a lot more than they annoy you. We’re not trying to get in their pants or see their titties. We don’t care about their goddamn shoes either.

When I’m considering a guild, I find out about the officers. At least one of them has to be female and she has to prove she’s not an attention seeking airhead. Why? Because any battle hardened female officer worth her salt will make a point of weeding out the annoying girls. (Also, awesome female officers draw the attention from me and I know I’ll be flirted with less.)

So would you like some tips on dealing with females in game?

1. Don’t make assumptions about people. Everyone is an individual. If you don’t want someone assuming you are a fat, pimply, basement dwelling wanker who hates women, don’t assume all female gamers are ‘the same’.
2. Have conversations with us. Real ones. Don’t make everything innuendo and flirting. It’s boring. You’re attracted to female gamers. WE KNOW.
3. If some bitch is talking about her shoes, say: “We don’t care about your shoes.” Don’t name call, don’t belittle. Someone who wants in her pants more than you will probably say they do care, tell them to talk about it in PM. Then he’ll be stuck talking to her about shoes for an hour and we’ll ALL have our revenge.
4. If you are a guild officer, don’t tolerate sexism. Of any kind. That includes ‘women in the kitchen’ jokes. That kind of stuff is hateful and hostile. It about the same as saying: ‘Niggers are all slaves.’ It boggles my mind when people think it’s ‘just a joke’.
5. If one of the girls in your guild is awesome and you really like her, talk to her about mutual interests and develop a rapport, rather than sending gifts. I’d much rather have intelligent conversations about Joe Abercrombie’s books than get free stuff. Any girl who is asking for gifts probably isn’t really interested in you.

I hope you found this informative. Feel free to visit my website (http://www.traditionalevolution.com/)  and drop me and email.

Talitha’s first young adult novel Lifesphere Inc: Acquisition tells the story of Eli, a thirteen year old orphan living in an immense garbage tip that rings the city.
He sells trash to survive, while on the Topside, citizens live in hedonistic luxury.
Eli dreams of obtaining citizenship by becoming a handler; bonded with a bio-organic life form called a meka.
On the Topside, handlers are celebrities, pitting their skills in televised meka battles. But new legislation will only allow those with citizenship to become handlers and Eli can’t raise the money to buy a meka before the law is passed.
A grifter named Kalex offers Eli a trade: meka of his own, if he competes in an illegal fight to the death.

You can find it FREE on Amazon and Smashwords.