BetaStorm
Is it really Keegs fortress anymore? .... Find out in this "behind the scenes" look at one of our favorite news mistresses.
— The PF Staff
While thinking of who to interview next one particular person kept coming
up at the top of the list. Betastorm, of Keeg's Fortress, OSKI and Team
Gamespy was who I wanted to learn more about. I wanted to get her thoughts
on the TF community as a female and a prominent news figure. What we
received from her was truly one of our top interviews, and the Newswire
staff is extremely grateful that she took time from her busy schedule to do
this. Without further waiting......Miss Betastorm!!!........(crowd
cheers.......)
HURT:
Well Beta, I appreciate your patience and I am so glad you agreed to do this
interview. (BigHurt pulls out a chair and offers it to Beta.....)
HURT:
Let's start off with the general stats, Age, Area you live, education,
connection, job, etc.
BetaStorm:
Age?? Oh my, well I turned 28 last Dec and I live on the east coast (north
of MD, south of NY).
I think education is a good thing :) - in Jan 97, I threw off the shackles
of the corporate world and
returned to school (after a 10 year absence) to get my BA's in Criminal
Justice and Women's Studies, I'm also
looking at grabbing a minor in Management Information Systems. Being an
adult student is great since I don't
live on campus and am use to the work load - it's bad though, since I don't
live on campus and thus do not
get that 'fat' ethernet connection (I'm on a USR X2 modem which normally
connects at 28.8 due to bad phone lines).
There is no cable modem or ADSL option in my area and an ISDN line will
require that I sign over my first born
male child to the phone company to pay for the installation and monthly
charges.
Job?? Um, let's not go 'there'.
HURT:
The specs on your computer you play TF on :
BetaStorm:
Spec's on my system are great :). Back last summer I built a PentII 233 and
it's running on 64 megs of RAM,
have a Monster Sound Card (which I highly recommend), Monster 3-D (wanting a
Voodoo2), crappy little vid card :(, 16x cd rom,
yadda yadda yadda... oh, and my sweet 17" Sony monitor which cuts of my
radio during GL TF and gives my cats radiation.
HURT:
How did you stumble into the TF scene?
BetaStorm:
How long is this interview again? :) Well, I guess I'd have to blame
LibTech[OSKI] for this in general. I met him
through needing tech support with QuakeSpy back in spring(?) of '97 (I
needed help, he offered it). Then after I got on
the Beta Test team for it we became very close friends and through him I met
the other OSKI members. I resisted TF with a passion
since I was a confirmed CTF player and was also forced to answer a lot of
QuakeWorld/TF related questions in irc which I felt were
all TFS's fault and caused me many headaches. :)
I had 'known' Clan OSKI for about 6 months or so when in November last year
I let Hyperion, MrBuzzcut and Oskilla talk me
into going on a TF server with them to see TF and maybe actually learn it. I
really have to give them credit for this since
they took something I thought would be very confusing and made it incredibly
simple for me. We went on private servers and they
showed me the map layouts, class specifics, taught me 'tricks' and most
important, educated me on 'game etiquette' like discarding,
"pass on the right, Beta!", and team communication. The whole clan was great
in taking time to teach me tactics and being patient
with my learning curve. I think being a CTF player really helped me out as
well, since I'm used to defense positions and team work.
Actually, that's all a big lie :). I was dating DrSmooth before I started
playing TF and in the interest of keeping him mentally
stable, I made the deep sacrifice and starting playing TF. (ok, so that's
really the lie, so what?). :)
HURT:
As a female, do you feel like you get different treatment while playing?
BetaStorm:
Oh, I see, the first 2 were the 'easy' questions :). For one thing, it
depends on whether or not the people I'm
playing with know I'm female. I've had some pretty 'ugly' experiences on
public servers due to people knowing my gender.
Namely bullshit name calling and there was one occasion on a public server
when my 'team' trapped me in the upper
resupply and unloaded their rockets, grenades and nails on me in a corner
(there were 6 of them) because they "didn't
want a damn girl on our team". I've always played 'fair' in TF, I don't
cheat and if I make a mistake (like killing a
team member) I apologize - so I don't think bad treatment is deserved. We
all know that there are some truly lame, bored,
mentally-challenged people out there playing TF - I think it comes with the
territory (and hey, not like they'll ever get
dates if they act this way in RL :).
The only other 'different' treatment I've received was at the beginning
when some people (who shall remain nameless)
took 'action' on my behalf in games if I got killed. :) Kinda the
'protective white knight' syndrome. Luckily, they soon
figured out that I can defend myself and if I get killed it's because I'm
not paying attention - doh! Chivalry is nice, but
not during a game when, if you're on the other team, I won't hesitate to
shoot you. :)
HURT:
What % of TF'ers do you think are female?
BetaStorm:
Not nearly enough! :( If you judge it from my poll, we make up about 2% of
the entire TF population. I hope there
are more out there - but I only know of 5 (including myself) at this point
who play on a regular basis. DJedi, GT and OSKI have
female members - hopefully other clans do as well and I'm just not aware of
it. :( It's hard to know the numbers since many
females play with nicks that are either masculine or androgynous to avoid
harassment.
HURT:
Being a prominent person in the TF community, do you hear from many
female players?
BetaStorm:
Not as many as I would like. Like I said above, I only know of 4 other
female players, 1 is in my clan, 2 others have
emailed me recently and 1 I only know on reputation (we share some friends).
HURT:
I looked at your bio and see that your on the gamespy team, can you tell
our readers what exactly you do with gamespy?
BetaStorm:
Well, I'm a beta tester for the software - I go through each release
(pre-public) and check for bugs, errors and
misspelling (that's a joke btw). When I started, I also did a lot of online
tech support in the irc channel (sometimes 8-
9 hours worth in a single night). I did email support for GL QuakeWorld
issues/problems (though that slowed to a trickle
when Brett Jacobs wrote the GL setup guide). I haven't been able to do much
online support recently, I guess I "burned out"
a bit at the end of last year - spending that much time online can do that
to a person :). With picking up Keeg's and school,
I haven't had time to get back to the support, though I still beta test for
them.
HURT:
If you could change anything about TF you wanted, what would it
be?....and why?
BetaStorm:
I guess I'll get spammed for this one but oh well... For one thing,
depending on the map, I'd change some of the
armor settings. Red armor on soldiers just bugs me... I get on one map and
"boom" I'm grenading soldiers like there's no
tomorrow... change maps and "poof" it's taking 4 grenades to bring them
down. I'm not saying lessen it (though I wouldn't object)
but maybe make certain it's uniform across maps.
More servers playing different maps!! I'm probably the last person who
loves 2fort4/5 (then again I'm still 'new') but
even I'd like a change. There are some great maps out there, like BAM4, yet
I see it on maybe 3 servers.
HURT:
Those of us who have been around for a long time in TF have seen it
evolve over time. I feel the public games have changed both for the bad and
good....what is your opinion on the good ole public game now?
BetaStorm:
Well, gee Mr. Oldie, I'm not certain I can answer that :). I can say that
since I started playing, public servers seem
to be getting worse and not better. The CWBL and TeamPlay settings will take
time to cut down the number of assholes out there
though (I have hope). I feel the main problem we're having as a community
is, quite frankly, boredom. People have been waiting
for TF2 and so far, with the exception of new maps, there's not much
different going on.
HURT:
How did you come to join Keeg's Fortress, and how is it working with
Gibkeeg and Eloh?
BetaStorm:
Heehee, funny story really. DrSmooth was here for a visit, we were drinking
heavily and I saw the Keeg mail about needing
a third person. I answered it that night and the next day woke up not
remembering I'd done this :). I didn't remember it until
the Keeg's wrote me back accepting me for the position. I was too
embarrassed at that point to say no. I already knew both
Keeg's from being around OSKI so much anyway, it was a 'logical' fit. They
are both great guys who've I've met in person and though
we 'lost' Eloh, PlagueBearer is a wonderful addition to our crew. :)
I think our site works well because we each have different opinions on
certain issues and give each other the freedom to express
those opinions without worrying that we'll offend each other. For instance,
Gib and I don't always
agree on everything, but it doesn't interfere with our friendship. I could
not work on a site were the people involved tried to
influence my choice of friends, my ideals or my opinions. We have a healthy
amount of respect for each other and with that comes the
freedom to make our own decisions.
HURT:
What would you like to see carried over from TF1 to TF2?
BetaStorm:
Well, the class variation I think is wonderful, like the change from TF 2.1
to TF 2.7 in the addition of spies and
engineers. I think both classes bring a lot to the game and the variation of
classes makes it (imho) better than, say, CTF.
Right now I feel that TF1 has the most robust map code of any mod out there,
I hope (and it seems) that this is a tradition
that can be carried over into TF2.
HURT:
What would you not like to see carried over?
BetaStorm:
Cheats :). Seriously, I wrote to TFS a while back regarding those (couple
of swear words) death messages...
It may not be a big thing with the majority of players, but I get real tired
of seeing "BetaStorm grenades himself". I also
don't like the fact that there aren't any female player models. TFS has told
me that the 'gendered' death messages have been
removed for TF2 and that they are leaving the possibility open for female
player mdls - however, they want the program
able to run on 16mgs, so unless there is room left over after the essentials
are in, I'll probably not get this wish :(.
HURT:
Do you think there are too many 'News' pages for TF?
BetaStorm:
At the risk of making my own self redunant, yes I do. This isn't an easy
question to answer since I believe in
variety and choice - thus I think there needs to be a healthy abundance of
TF news. The flip side to that is that there
are pages out there that offer little to no content, are updated only once
every 3 months, lack good reasons for people to visit (like files, news,
etc.) and seem to serve only one purpose which
is to give their creator a web page with his/her name on it. It is one thing
to have a personal page and call it "news" and
another to have the time, energy and willpower to stick with and create a
good site. Luckily, that is the minority and not
the majority of good sites out there.
One thing that keeps cropping up on this issue is that many pages are put
up but it doesn't seem like their creators
understand the patience needed before your site becomes 'established'. If
they don't get a bunch hits shortly after opening,
they yank down the site. I was incredibly lucky to come aboard Keeg's, which
already had been around, and help 'revive' it. It's
very different to work on a page that already has a following than to try
and create a brand new site. I appreciate the work
that people put into launching any new page, however, I get a bit tired of
new sites trying to gain popularity by wanting the other
sites to update about them every time they change a font, add a graphic,
move, move again, etc. I have no problem with announcing
a new site, but there's a limit to what the other pages can do for it. I'd
suggest to people if they want to get involved with
doing TF news - check out some of the sites already up and see if they need
volunteers. Get your 'feet wet' first before trying
to launch a entirely new site. There is a lot more to doing this than just
updating here and there.
HURT:
Is there a certain type page we need to enhance the TF scene?
BetaStorm:
I have never understood why all these other companies have 'finger'
updates, yet not TFS. I think it would be great
for them to do plan updates that would keep us informed on the status of
their efforts. I've emailed them to see if they
would be interested in letting me set this for them (granted, with them at
TFCon, I'm waiting on a reply).
HURT:
The TFO is probably the biggest TF event that has gone off well, what are
your thoughts on it and are there any other types of big events you would
like to see attempted?
BetaStorm:
Well, I wasn't involved with TFO (and wasn't around for the first one) but
it looked great!! I was involved with
FortressFest last year and I thought that went over pretty well considering
the large amount of people who were playing.
(Shameless self promotion starting) I think the News Site scrimmage will be
good (though small) once it gets started. One
thing TF has over other mods is the strong sense of community (which I feel
with TF is stronger than with CTF, DM). If you
give TF players something to play in, they tend to show up in mass to
support it. Whether your talking clan tourneys or large
gaming opportunities open to all, the point is to play the game. I'd love to
see a large lan/convention put together for TF where people
could meet in person and play (and not just having a server running TF at
some other event - an event devoted to TF which is
organized well).
HURT:
Where would you like to see the online gaming scene 1 year from now?
BetaStorm:
Well, I guess as always for me, I'd like to see more women getting involved
in programming, map making, etc for online
games. There's a chicken and egg argument about this though: Do women stay
away from online games due to the fact that they don't
offer equal representation to women? Or is it that they don't offer equal
representation (like player models) because women don't
make up a large part of the market? It's hard to say exactly how the
'problem' started from either perspective.
Quake2 was great in offering female characters, female sounds etc. and
there are women out there who disagree with the
"shape" of the Q2 female player. My thoughts on that are more along the
lines that, yes I don't exactly look like the female
player in Q2 - however I've yet to meet any males that play quake who look
like hard bodied marines. It's a game, based on fantasy
and that 'fantasy' will be relative to whoever is creating it. (oh, side
note: yes, women have Lara Croft, but I don't want to play
Tomb Raider, I want to play TF, damnit! :)
HURT:
Again I'd like to thank Beta for the time she obviously put into this
interview and wish her all the luck in the world as she continues her
studies. I hope maybe this will bring out the females that I'm sure are out
there already fraggin all of us to death.
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