We caught up with Kit Boulter, a gamer in Toronto to share her story with how she first got involved in gaming, and how much it’s followed her since.

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“Gaming for me has always been a privilege, something that I’ve worked towards.  I remember saving up my money from my paper route as a kid to be able to afford my own console, ah, Nintendo 64 what fond memories I have of you.  Playing Diddy Kong Racing until I would dream of the courses and the rainbow clouds of exhaust that you would get if you released acceleration just before using a booster ring; having to psych my young self up to face the boss that inevitably waited with sharpened claws or swords just beyond the door in Zelda: Ocarina of Time; hiding out in the air duct above the respawning point in the bathroom in the multiplayer mode of Goldeneye so I could wait until the other players died a few more times to level the score out a bit...

“As you can probably guess, I’m a bit of a nervous gamer.  The music sets me on edge, I’ll make little noises of discontent and squeaks of surprise when something big finally jumps out from around the corner and I’ll press the start/pause button to have a breather--and perhaps a cookie.  And yes, I yell at the screen when I mess up a combo.  Because it is always Kilik’s fault, never mine.  I thought this was normal of course, until I started watching other people play and adopt that serene calm on their features of complete relaxation.  How the heck do they do that?!

“It didn’t discourage me from playing, and acquiring games and consoles.  At any given time in my household between roommates and myself, there’ll be seven or more different systems, going back a few generations of course, and never hooked up all at once, but they’re there, and boy, do they ever get used.

“I always find it’s a bit of a surprise when new friends find out I game (albeit nervously) and guys will tend to probe deeper to see if I’m, you know, just faking it to sound cool.  Granted, talk to me about first person shooters (which I will freely admit is not my genre as the last FPS I was good at was Goldeneye) or sports games, and I will smile and nod and say “well yeah, they do look pretty cool”; but mention RPGs or those mindless “mash buttons to kill” fighter games and I think I’d be able to tough it out.  In fact, I can tough it out so effectively I got myself hired at an EB Games...

“The gaming industry is dominated by men.  Just take a look at the games and it will become clear pretty darn quickly who most of the “serious” games are geared towards.  Therefor, a lot of the employees at game stores are men.  But come on, if you can go into a store to buy an amazing video game AND talk to a girl, isn’t that like, DOUBLE cool?  

“I think the best people I got to talk to in the game store were the timid six to eight year old girls who really just wanted a cute game they could play, and they’d walk in clutching their mom’s hand and look nervously over the counters at the guys, hiding behind mom’s hip while she spoke with them.  That blank look would come over my coworker’s face when the inevitable question “well, what would you suggest?” came up; they were usually so confident in their recommendations, but man, what do little girls like?!  A haa, this is where the handy female employee steps in.

“‘Well, what do you have at home?’ I’d ask, ‘A DS? A Wii?’ (Let’s face it, it will be one of the two).

“She’d point to the wall of DS games, and we’d meander over.

“‘I’ve got a DS too.  I’ll show you my favourites.  I’ve got this one...’ point to Pokemon Platinum, ‘And this one,’ point to Zelda, ‘And this one...’ She’d point and nod at the same Mario game, a smile on her face.

“‘I like that one too.  Yoshi’s my favourite.’

“Aha, she was speaking, and that made it worlds easier.  We’d start talking about the games with minigames, wireless connection to her friends, ones that she could still use in her DSLite without having to buy a DSi.  Mom looked grateful that I’ve convinced her daughter that she doesn’t need the hardware upgrade right now, and she walked away with Rhapsody: a Musical Adventure (yes, another one of I own I must admit) and a big smile.

“Once mom has paid, my coworker would heave a sigh of relief and thank me.  I didn’t think it was that hard, but hey, the fact that that little girl could have been me when I was seven or eight--just getting into my first videogames, and not wanting them to be too scary or hard (damn water levels in Mario Bros) hey, maybe they’ll turn out to be as super-cool and emotionally balanced as I am when they grow up.

“...Yeah, maybe I’m still waiting to grow up too, but I’m sure that can wait.”

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