[LadyGamers]:  You're the owner of PlanetQuake3.net and PlanetQuake4.net. It's so awesome to see a person who has been hooked on the Quake series for so many years. Believe it or not, your site is invaluable to many Quake fans. What keeps you in the Quake circulation? Is it an addiction? Why haven’t you strayed to other first person shooters?

[RogeR]:  Before I was introduced to Quake2, I really didn't have any addictive activity on the computer. I was constantly looking for a game to devote my time to. It wasn't till a friend at school told me about Quake2. While I never did run any Quake2 related websites, I always hated not really having a great central site which had all the files I needed. So starting with the Quake3 test, I set upon a venture to start a website dedicated to the game.

I like to think of the history of PlanetQuake3.net in two sections. The first was from it's start in the summer of 1999 to mid 2000. Those were the early days of Quake3 when the game was still maturing along with myself. After the collapse of the Stomped.com network though, I had no good hosting opportunities available to me, so I decided to stop working on the site for awhile. It was during the off time from from working on the site that my addiction to playing Quake3 became very strong. It wasn't until a few days after September 11th that I re launched PlanetQuake3.net. Since that time, the site has grown to an extraordinary level which I could have never imagined. The pure simplicity of playing a game like Quake3 online is which keeps be addicted. I've never been a huge fan of complex strategy or role playing games, so First Person Shooters are what keep me entertained.

[LadyGamers]:  There are times where I find an old website link to a website that was previously hosted by Stomped.com. It's very sad to see sites go under like they do, especially when they were apart of the history of gaming. Do you ever miss old gaming sites like Stomped.com at all?

[RogeR]:  Being a former member of the Stomped.com network, I really do miss those times. Compared to today, these were so different. Stomped offered it's network members free hosting along with a very good monthly commission from advertisements. You could say things have rebounded significantly since the burst of the internet bubble, but the entire atmosphere as it was back in the late 90's will never be the same. I love reminiscing about the past, thinking about all the cool things which happened back in the early days of Quake3.

One of my favorite memories was my first trip to Texas for the Razer CPL event which is considered one of the biggest Quake3 tournaments of all time. During the trip I got to meet Redwood from Stomped.com and tour id Software's headquarters. While I do have good memories from the past, my skills and knowledge have grown over the years giving me the ability to things I never thought I would be able to do; such as maintain my own web server and write custom code for the site.
 

[LadyGamers]:  Your site has always had some impressive interviews for known people in the gaming industry, and gamers in the community, including female gamers. When I started hearing more and more about your site was when you conducted an interview with geNosg1rl from Girlz 0f Destruction. It was ripped from your site not too long after it was online. What was this whole deal anyways? If my memory serves me right, she was talking down on guys, and a huge uproar happened, then Ms.X apologized about her actions?

[RogeR]:  Genosg1rl was the girlfriend of a guy named Genocide who attended a local LAN party sponsored by the OurReality clan. I had just started going to the LAN party, but a friend of mine told me about her, and I thought it would be interesting asking a girl some gaming related questions.

The interview was mainly about female stereotypes and issues related to females in gaming. The sad thing is, when being interviewed sometimes you have a certain thought or comment you want to express, but you are hesitant to because people will either make fun of you or scold you for being inconsiderate. In the interview I conducted, Genosg1rl was just being herself, answering the questions in a relaxed way. Neither she or I realized that the interview was going to get a ton of coverage on other major sites such as Cached.net. The posters on Cached were the main reason the interview was taken down. People made very rude comments towards Genossg1rl because of the answers she provided to my questions. It was a specific comment Genosg1rl made in which she stated that if guys put "quake before hoes" they shouldn't even bother trying to get their girlfriend to play Quake. After Genosg1rl read all the extremely rude comments posted pertaining to the interview, she called up my Director of Operations asking for us to please take down the interview. I found the entire incident very sad. It's terrible that a girl couldn't voice her opinion with out being lambasted by a bunch of guys.

[LadyGamers]:  Since I see you at Quakecon every year, I have to ask you a related question. Sure, you have plenty of Quakecon coverage and great pictures each year. But, what did you think about this year's Tournament Finals with all three games? Since this last year was the 10th anniversary, do you feel this was the best Quakecon of its kind?

[RogeR]:  I really can't say which QuakeCon has been my favorite since it seems that every year has something special that the pervious year didn't have. This past year, the special events Quakecon had to offer were the testing of Quake4 multiplayer and the first official Ms. QuakeCon tourney. Many people including myself were very excited to see that the Ms. QuakeCon tournament had finally become official. While I did enjoy watching the girls play RocketArena3 the year before, the skill level they exhibited was just too great to have them playing inconspicuously in the tourney area with a fairly small crowd watching.

Even though I was a huge Quake2 fan, I didn't find the finals that exciting. I think after five years of not playing a game, you can find it hard to follow, which is how I felt watching the Quake2 finals. Watching the Ms. QuakeCon finals was a totally different experience. The matches were really exciting and I enjoyed watching them. I think most people would agree with me though that a male Quake3 tourney would have better suited for the event than the Doom3 tourney. I missed seeing the usually Quake3 players like czm and ZeRo4 playing. Next year, I'm sure we will see a Quake4 tourney and I hope id decided to drop Doom3 and hosts both a female and male Quake3 tourney.

The whole fascination with seeing girls playing video games, especially First Person Shooters is still very alive today. There are groups such as The Frag Dolls which travel all over the world playing exhibition games to entertain crowds. I'm sure a clan such as the Girlz 0f Destruction, with the enormous skills they have would easily find the opportunity to showcase themselves playing games for crowds around the world. I think though for the time being, they are more interested in taking home victories in the plethora of Quake4 tournaments that will take place in the coming years.

[LadyGamers]:  Next week you're heading to Dallas, Texas to cover the Winter CPL event for Quake 4. Will there be live coverage or an aftermath article of how the event went?

[RogeR]:  I'm very excited about the Winter CPL event coming up next week. It will be the first event that I will be filming in High Definition, which will provide the thousands of gamers unable to attend the event with videos of extraordinary clarity. While there will be no live video feed provided by us, all of our videos will be available for download in a timely manner. This event will hold the first big Quake4 tournament in the U.S., so I thought it would be important to attend. Many of the top players from the Quake3 scene will be in attendance battling it out to see who can be the first champion in the field of Quake4. I also have an interview setup with the king of First Person Shooters Mr. Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendell which I am really excited about.

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