With over 300 Chicago area members, women gamers group Sugar Gamers has grown in numbers and increased in demand. Recently, Pixeldom invited the group to help run the festivities for a Gears of War 3 launch party.
For Sugar Gamers founder Keisha Howard it all started with a desire to find more gamers she had things in common with.
“I originally founded Sugar Gamers because I wanted to play video games with other women,” she said. “I have a full time job and many other responsibilities, so I don't have the time to be a competitive gamer. But that doesn't mean I'm not a gamer. I wanted to enjoy gaming with other like minded women instead of guys all the time. I figured there have to be other female gamers like me who exist and I felt there needed to be a community for casual female gamers.”
While Howard feels she is every bit as much of a gamer as anyone, she is hopeful her group can help other busy women find a group where gaming meets a comfort zone.
“A lot of women don't play because they are under the impression that the only way gaming can be fun is if they are good at it,” Howard said. “I want to eliminate the rest of the misconceptions a lot of women have about games and show how fun and social they can be. Not only that, I want to show the world how relatively normal we are.”
Since its launch in August of 2009, Sugar Gamers has managed to draw in a variety of demographics, according to Howard.
“A lot of members of Sugar Gamers have phenomenal talents or work very hard in a corporate environment,” she added. “We have all sorts of girls that game, from all walks of life: from mothers to make-up artists to lawyers. We have events, we talk about our interests, and we introduce girls to games they would have never tried without a little positive encouragement. We are all different but united under out common interest.”
Howard, who started gaming in the heyday of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, states that she feels some gaming communities could take some things a little less seriously.
“I believe that most hardcore gamers typically have a very elitist and exclusive definition of what a gamer is, which excludes a lot of people, especially women,” she said. “[They think] if you don't game six to eight hours a day, if you don't play all the latest and greatest, if you are not a collector of every system that comes out, you are not a real gamer. That ideology sucks and is outdated.”
Rather than get worked up, Keisha Howard says she prefers to use gaming to unwind.
“I see gaming as a stress relief,” Howard added. “I’m not a huge TV watcher. Gaming exceeds every other form of home entertainment for me. I take more pleasure from inhabiting a character in some alternate universe for a while. I love being Lara Croft or Chris Redfield. I love my Captain Shepard and her love triangles. It's like actively participating in a really awesome movie. I work a lot, but I still like to have an active brain even when I'm relaxing, so gaming is how I do it, and Gaming just gets better, looks prettier, with rich stories and well developed characters. It's freaking awesome.”
To learn more about Sugar Gamers, visit their website at http://www.SugarGamers.com.
This article is one in a series of articles for PatrickScottPatterson.com’s Women Gamers Week. Be sure to subscribe to see them all.
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