To use a mic or not to use a mic: that is the question

For all you gamers out there who already use a microphone you probably understand how much it can influence your gaming experience. You can do everything from calling out “Bomb down!” in Counter-Strike to chatting with friends on Vent. The very act of incorporating voice into the game allows a gamer to decide what level of reality or intensity that they want to bring to the game. If you were to play with all players muted, then one might argue it’s no different than playing against bots, but when they aren’t muted it’s a constant reminder that you aren’t only playing a video game and are still a member of a world outside of your monitor’s screen.

It’s interesting that a person’s voice can connect you back to the real world, but at the same time create an intensified gaming experience. I doubt that there are very many clans/guilds that scrimmage, go on raids, or fight bosses without using voice communications.

I always love hearing fellow gamers use their microphone because it adds a different dimension to who you can imagine them to be: who they are, what they do, how they act, etc. And for the relationships you do form, however meaningful and real they are, I think that using a microphone helps to facilitate their creation.

Plus, microphones are slightly addicting.

Using my microphone immediately draws attention to myself. Suddenly I get hounded with questions similar to “are you a girl!?” or “how old are you kid?” Yes, I am a girl. No I am not a little boy. And at 21 years old I am older than the high schooler who just asked me that question. A funny note is that even if I had a really girly character / id name, sometimes guys will just think its another guy fooling around and it isn’t until I use my microphone that they suspect I am female. A quarter of the time I’ll be accused of using a voice modifier.

The issue is this: Even today while playing L4D I had a gaming buddy say that I was the exception to his rule “Dicks before Chicks” when picking teams for video games. A lot of guys just don’t think that girls are very good at video games. When I am doing especially well on any of the games there are often a lot of comments flying around like “you just got pwned by a girl”, “how does it feel to lose to a girl”, or “I must really suck since a girl just killed me”. It’s frustrating how once you’re recognized as a girl you have to restart building up your reputation for being a good player. Sometimes I just don’t want to use my microphone so that when playing I never have to deal with the preconception that girls suck at video games (I once wanted to start a guild called G3 – Girls Got Game, but that’s a topic for a different post), but at the same time I don’t want to lose the benefits that come with using a microphone.