I’m a girl. And I play videogames.

They’ve given me a blog. Are they insane? Don’t they know that giving me any sort of platform for inane ranting and whinging is only going to drive our website readership mad?

I really am loath to make this the topic of my very first blog on our shiny new site, because it seems that just about every female gamer out there has to draw attention to their gender, but since we are, to all intents and purposes, still a relatively rare breed (the hardcore variety at least) let’s just address it as the elephant in the room and then we can all move on with our lives. And talk about more interesting stuff.

My name is Aoife.  I’m a girl. And I play videogames.

It does still surprise me that this statement can be met with surprise anywhere in this day and age. I know tons of game, film, and comic book nerdettes such as myself. Most of whom would kick any guy’s ass at Tekken or COD, or easily list the most recurring members and the current line-up of The Avengers. Deal with it guys; girls love games too. And I’m not talking about The Sims either. I’d barely class that as a game anyway - more like a virtual theatre of cruelty. If you claim to never have put a Sim in a room with no door and no toilet and left them to suffer, you’re a liar. And slightly evil. But slightly evil is good. But I digress…

My love affair with games began with the original Nintendo console. It belonged to my brother (ten years my senior) so I had to sneak goes at Duck Hunt and Mario whilst he was out eating Pot Noodles or backcombing his hair or launching space telescopes or cloning the first sheep or whatever children of the late eighties and early nineties did. It all changed when I got my very own Super Nintendo, and my crush soon developed into full blown true love when I sneaked sessions of Half Life on my brother’s PC. (again, I wasn’t allowed – this was 1998 and I was only 11. Headcrabs haunted my dreams for weeks)

And so it went, and I’ve never looked back. I owned an N64, which still holds some of my fondest gaming memories. (Oh Link, the summers I spent fishing with you in Hyrule…) I then jumped ship with a Playstation, then a PS2, and now a PS3 and Xbox 360. But throughout those earlier years, I’d never considered being a fan of games as a defining characteristic of me as a person. But nowadays it seems that if you’re a girl and you play games, you must be making some sort of point about something. No – I just enjoy it. And shooting aliens in the face.

Such is my love for games that now, not only do I play them in my spare time, I play them at work too. And write about them. See mum and dad, I told you all those hours on World Of Warcraft and Donkey Kong Country and Final Fantasy and Yoshi’s Island weren’t wasted; now I get paid for it.

EPIC WIN.

There we go; my first blog post. This is cool. I’ve often toyed with the idea of writing a blog, but never really got round to it until poked with a large and pointy stick- I’d usually be playing a game instead. Hopefully I’ll continue and have other stuff to chat about with you guys soon. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to shout.