[LadyGamers]:  First off, can you give us your background as a gamer?

[Aneiki]:  I've been playing games ever since I met my husband while I was at Uni some 10 years ago. Dang I feel ancient!! I didn't discover the internet and online gaming until 1997 when I watched my hubby playing the MMORPG "The 4th Coming" (T4C). It was still in beta back then, and I thought, I gotta try this! I didn't even care that at the time, they didn't have any female avatars - kinda interesting playing a female character that looked like a guy and was bald as well. This is where I first fell in love with MMORPG's and joined my first guild "The Order of Avalon" - The guild page was also the first website I ever created. The defining moment of my addiction to MMORPG's came when some friends of ours from T4C started playing Everquest. It had just been released, so we decided to check it out, the rest is history...

I've been in a few guilds/clans since the days of T4C, though most of them have gone now, and I don't remember the names of them either. The last guild I was in was called Unity. It was a clan for the MMORPG Rubies of Eventide, which sadly shutdown earlier this year. That was a while ago now. I haven't had much time for gaming the past 6 months, but slowly getting back into it again.

As a webmistress, I mostly worked on the guild sites which I loved to do. I used to just make sites for the fun of it also, just to try out new scripts and stuff...getting geeky here... :) then in 2002 Digital-Girl.com was born.

[LadyGamers]:   When I heard you had a new site, I was excited to see you didn't leave the game community. I really enjoyed your former site, Digital-Girl.com. What gave you the desire to create a different website with a whole new name and concept? Digital-Girl was focused on MMORPGs, while Girl-Gamer is a female gamer portal. Didn't you also use the nick name DigitalGirl?

[Aneiki]:  Yeah I'm still around, for a while I did wonder if I would start the site again. There were a number of reasons I stopped working on Digital-Girl but a large factor was that I'd just started a new job where I was getting up at 6.30am and getting home at 7pm. I was pooped, and just didn't have the energy to work on the site. I was also having all sorts of problems with my servers, and the domain name - Digital-Girl.com, hence the name change. I would have liked to have kept the name, but it just wasn't possible, so I decided on a name change, and I guess Girl-Gamer seemed like a good enough replacement.

The concept change wasn't really a conscious occurrence. As I was redesigning and setting up the site, it seemed a natural thing to do, to broaden the focus. We had a lot of female gamers at Digital-Girl.com who were interested in all types of games, so I wanted to cater to all tastes.

My nick name is usually Aneiki in games. On Digital-Girl I was known as Aneiki (or just Dee), surprisingly I never thought of using DigitalGirl as a nick, but it sounds kinda cool :)

[LadyGamers]:   Fashion Police is a nice feature that allows us female gamers think about what some of the in-game characters are wearing. What gave you this idea? Is there a few outfits characters have you felt you had to have? Speaking of fashion, if looks could kill, what type of character outfit would you wear at a gaming event such as E3?

[Aneiki]:  LOL...well hmmm, Jody, to be honest I have never actually thought about what I'd wear to E3. :) I will have to think about it and get back to you on that one! As to Fashion Police, it was an idea that I had, through discussion on the Digital-Girl forums about clothing in games, I thought it would be a cool idea to put in-game fashions under the microscope and see what the female gamers think of what game developers are offering.

I am really bad when I play MMORPG's in that I like to look good...my character can always be found at the local markets looking for a bargain. :) If I see a piece of armor or clothing that looks pretty good, then I do try to get it or buy it. That's not to say that that's a primary focus of my gaming, but a fun thing to do if I'm bored. :)

[LadyGamers]:  In the real world, many guys still seem to be astonished that a lady could enjoy any first person or action style games, especially the ones with blood and violence in them. Please tell us about a time when you talked to a guy friend, and how he reacted when you played a certain game.

[Aneiki]:  I've been gaming for so long that most guys I know just accept that I like to game and they think it's really cool. Most of them say that they wish they could find a girl that likes to game. In game, guys tend to be a bit wary, as you can't always tell online if a character is male or female. You always here the horror stories of guys pretending to be girls just to get stuff, which is really sad. I don't think I've met a guy yet who hasn't been positive about me enjoying computer games. 

[LadyGamers]:   You live in Australia! What do you think about the game community out there?

[Aneiki]:  The gaming community in Australia is fairly strong. I believe there are a number of female gamers around in Australia, it's just that I haven't met any yet, in real life anyway. I know there are a few all Aussie guilds/clans and stuff, but I've never been a part of them, though I plan on it once I get back into online gaming. There are lots of LAN events and a lot of Aussie gaming websites like Ausgamers.com and 3D Avenue. The gaming industry here isn't as big here as in the US or Europe, but there are a lot of gamers and we do have the Australian Game Developers Conference which is held in Melbourne. The next conference is on between 2 - 4 December 2004, this would definitely be something I'd like to attend, but would depend on being able to get time off work.

Fallout

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