Catching Up With Girl Gamer: Th3 Rogue

During my one-day stay at Unplugged Expo I had a chance to catch up with avid girl gamer Th3 Rogue. Having tasted the life of a competitive gamer, Th3 Rogue decided to do something many girls don’t have the balls to do; quit and lend her efforts to breaking down the ‘females in gaming’ stereotype.

Watch out boys, this girl is a force to be reckoned with. She is a gamer girl, the host for a regular gaming night that happens every Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, a model,cosplayer and an actress and she kicks but at it all. If you want to find out more about her you can check out her Facebook fan page here.

After watching her play round after round of Halo 3, Th3 Rogue was generous enough to sit down with me and answer some burning questions I had. Sit back, find your specs and enjoy the read!

Foxx: I was watching your panel and I heard your brother got you into the MMO-RPG world, but what got you into Halo?

Th3 Rogue: Honestly for Halo, it was when the Xbox came out and I remember playing on the PlayStation, playing games like Need for Speed. So the Xbox came out, you know…
the old black and green one, and the first game I got for that system was actually Fable. My boyfriend at the time was playing Halo, so we decided to switch games one day and I just became completely hooked. The storyline, the campaign, it really sucks you into it all. The first element I had to overcome were the controls, and starting out with those two thumb-sticks was really, really awkward and nobody liked playing it. We had to give it a second chance, and at that point I thought, “Ok, this is really cool.” From there it was Halo all the way, and that’s why I stuck with Xbox.

Yeah that seems to be the reasoning for many loyal Xbox fans.

That’s just how it turned out. I have a lot of friends that play Call of Duty and make fun of me, saying “Oh you play Halo, you have a shield, you don’t die with one hit.” They’re just being cheap, I mean… Call of Duty is for N00bs.They need to step it up and play some Halo with me.

It takes skill to play Halo well. I mean there is skill involved in Call of Duty but it’s a different skill.

Definitely. I like to recommend Call of Duty for people just starting out in the FPS genre, mainly because it is the easiest to get a handle on. Also the fact that people do die with one shot, it’s sweet. You won’t be discouraged, you will get kills and keep going.

Very true. Another point you were mentioning in your panel was the hate towards girl gamers…

It’s really sad!

Oh yeah, it’s pretty bad… and it’s everywhere. Have you experienced any of that hate firsthand?

Unfortunately I have. It’s really sad that it is happening in a gaming community where my goal is to encourage females to join me and play video games with me and show our male counterpart that we CAN do this, and we can actually do it better than them. We need to speak out and do something about it.

Also, you have a different female breed that came out of this. (mockingly) “Oh well, that’s a sexy costume. In this video game this girl looks so sexy. I am going to go to the next convention and dress like this sexy girl. I know nothing about the video game though.” It irks me when I get these girls that don’t know anything about anything who are all “Oh tee hee, I read comic books”, or “Oh tee hee, I play video games.” No you don’t.

Sometimes online I will have girls who are on the opposing team, and I think it’s sweet that there is another girl in the game, but the guys on my team will start hassling her. I try and get her going so she can kick their butts. If I died or she killed me I will make a point to say “Yeah girl! Get those guys, great shot.” But at the end of the game she will be yelling at me. It got so bad that the guys on this one girl’s team were trying to calm her down, but she kept going. She was talking about some filthy stuff, about how much she can fit in her mouth. Don’t dumb yourself down to make guys think you are just some sexual object, just so you can get some male attention. You are ruining it for the rest of us. That’s my biggest pet peeve. There are some girls out there who just want to play video games to play video games, but what sucks are the girls out there who try and take advantage of it. It’s all males so they want to feel like the only female.

 Yeah I’ve seen that.

I want girls to play games because they like video games, not because they get all the attention!

And free stuff in the game.

Yeah! Females are bombarded with sexual imagery on a daily basis and video games are the place I personally go to unwind and relax. I go out of my way to keep the fact that I am female a secret, because I don’t want to hear about making someone a sandwich, or whatever. It can get really vulgar. It can be such a downer, but hopefully with what I’m doing now it might help. I host a gaming night, every Friday night, and I have been getting a lot of males joining in to play, but I have never had an incident where I have been disrespected, everybody has been awesome. When they see females on the other team I let them know to treat those girls with the same level of respect they treat me with.

That’s amazing to hear. I know some of the backlash Anita Sarkeesian received was in line with women making this tight vagina bond and taking over the gaming world. Taking it away from them. It’s great to hear that during your gaming nights you are more than welcoming to both male and female gamers alike. It’s about equality.

In the end that is all we want to do. I definitely get more male requests than female ones, but every once in a while I will get a female request. It’s not a lot, but it’s still something.

Definitely. Now, I heard you mention before that you are getting into Magic the Gathering!

Yes! I am just starting to get into it.

You had mentioned you are purchasing your first “real” physical Magic cards, and I was wanting to ask if you were buying a pre-made deck and swapping some cards out and building from there, or are you building straight from booster packs?

I got the 2012 Core set, that is a mix of blue and white. The other deck I got was a 2012 Core set, with a mix of blue and red. So what I was hoping to do was make a single white deck, and a single red deck and just learn with one mana type at a time, than do a hybrid deck.

That is a great way to get into it, the hybrid decks can be confusing.

How do you keep track of the counters and buffs and what each card does? It just fascinates me because I am learning it on the Xbox, so it keeps track of all that for me.

Well you get used to it, but it’s a lot of reading cards. You can use beads, but I’ve found just writing out each counter on a tiny ripped piece of paper works, and you can pile them on and take them off easily.

That’s crazy. Trying to go from the game on console to the physical card game itself, it’s tricky and I have so much more respect for people who play Magic the Gathering
with physical cards.

One last thing before I let you get back to Halo, on the topic of girl gamers: do you have any advice or words of wisdom you’ve gathered from your experiences to pass on to gamer girls of any caliber? From seasoned gaming veterans to girls who want to get into gaming but are scared of all the hate.

Honestly, when it comes down to it, it is so important to just be yourself. People will see you as you are and if you are one of those girls who are faking it, people will see that. If that is the kind of attention you want then fine by me, it’s your life. Personally if you love something you have to chase it and you have to keep doing it. If there are girls out there that love video gaming but don’t want to hear the crap, then you can just turn off your microphone, change the setting so you
don’t even have to listen to the other team. You can just just turn on some music and be you. That’s a trick that helped me. Sometimes online I snap, and I react quickly and it is just best if you don’t react at all. It is the best way, just turn off the other team because they will only get you upset, and once you’re upset you don’t play your best, you get sloppy, you stop having fun and they win. Don’t feed the trolls. Another trick that works is actually the opposite; just talk back. Be like, “Oh yeah, well I was with your mom last night too!” or whatever stupid shit comes to your mind. If it doesn’t make sense, who care’s? Indulge them, because when they see that it doesn’t bother you its going to bother them. Then you will have the upper hand, you’re going to beat them and get more confidence. So if you can’t beat em join em, beat em at their own game.

Those are some great words of advice. Well thank you so much for sitting down with me, it was a pleasure.