[LadyGamers]:  Many different female gamer sites and clans have came and gone in the gaming community. It seems that various all-female clans are likely to be around for 8 to 12 months then they drop off the face of the earth, or say they have retired due to a game not being popular anymore. It's rare to find a clan last more than 2 years, let alone see a female focused site last more than a year. What do you feel makes WomenGamers stay so strong in the gaming community?

[Atari]: Excellent question. There are a couple of reasons why WomenGamers is still going strong. Unlike many gaming clans which often start around a single game title, WG does not focus on any one game or even one genre. It's a place where console gamers and PC gamers, action and adventure gamers, flight simmers and strategy gamers, can all get something out of reading our content and participating in our messageboards.

Secondly, when the dot-coms crashed and things looked bleak, we never questioned whether we should fold. WG's founders are a bunch of stubborn survivalists. Like every other content-based website, we had to make some sacrifices and we managed to cut our operational costs to keep going. It's important to say that our drive comes in no small part from our visitors. The majority of our content comes from our contributors who bring a fresh perspective to the site. We couldn't have done a site like WG without them. It has been a real community effort. Not to mention, many people write in telling us how happy they are to have a resource like WG. A number of professors point their students to our content for reading assignments, and gamers use it to help educate their own personal critics. Their continued support and our passion for gaming fuels our fire to stay strong.

[LadyGamers]:  Many people have the idea that professional gamers will some how unfold into the Olympics or become a popular Sport in years to come. What is your thought concerning this? Do you feel it's something that could happen?

[Atari]: There is one fundamental problem with making professional gaming into a major "Olympic-level" sport. There is an inherent lack of standards. The rules and the game itself change with the evolution of technology. You can be sure the gaming public will be more fickle than say football enthusiasts. Football will always be football. The rules aren't likely to change. People will be playing football for many years to come and there will always be fans in line to watch them. The same holds for golf, soccer, rugby, tennis, etc.

[LadyGamers]:  How did you start being apart of websites? Is there another site you worked on before WomenGamers.com or was it your first website? What is the most outrageous thing you have done at WG?

[Atari]: I worked on a couple of different gaming sites before WG, namely EFN (Electra Farout News) and DaValkyries. Both of the previous sites were hobby sites I updated between college classes. And yet, because of my involvement in DaValkyries, I was flown up to NYC to be on a panel about marketing games to women. This was particularly surprising to me since the site didn't have much content to it and had very few visitors.

The fact is, back then it was one of the only places people could go on the Internet to inquire about women who game.It wasn't until that point that I started to see the potential for making a business out of my passion for gaming. My sister Phaedra, who accompanied me to NYC, started talking about the ways we could make something serious like WG work. The rest is history.

[LadyGamers]:  This may be a funny question but did you get your nick name from being an Atari addict? Are people now getting you confused with the newly revived Atari company that took over Infogrames?

[Atari]: I was about to play Quake online for the first time and I needed a nickname. I happened to have been playing on an Atari 2600 that day and so "Atari" was the first name that came to mind. It was meant to be a temporary name. I didn't spend a great deal of time thinking about it, I just wanted to hurry up and play. That night, I ended up playing Quake until 4am. The next day, people on that server were asking my friends where "Atari" was. To avoid confusion, I kept using the name and have been "Atari" ever since.

[LadyGamers]:  October is a month that happens to have a holiday full of fear, tricks and sweets. Are you planning to do anything for Halloween this year? Are you the type to play tricks on people or just throw treats at them?

[Atari]: Oh I'm the type of person who bribes the neighborhood kids to come over with cool Halloween decor and premium candy so I can check out all the crazy costumes. Here is a picture from last year's decor. We were having some landscaping work done so we had a big trench in front of the house which worked as a somewhat misshaped grave. This year I don't have any big plans, at least not yet. Halloween is still too far away for me to plan. ;)