Queens of Quake

The final rounds of the Female Frag Fest, a Quake II tournament exclusively for women, took place last night in a rented convention center in New York City. The mood among the six finalists was professional, down-to-earth, and focused on the business at hand. Which makes sense: When you're stalking somebody through a dimly lit maze with a nail gun in your hands, gender politics isn't the number one issue on your mind.

Who enters a women-only Quake II tournament? The answer is, ordinary people like anybody else. The finalists worked their way through an initial pool of around 70 competitors as young as 18 and as old as 60. The six players who won their way to the top of the draw range in age from 21 to 26 and come from ordinary places like the Bronx and Laramie, Wyo. Three of them are members of a Quake clan known as QGirlZ. The only thing they really have in common are their weird nicknames "Lucidity," "Hellchick," "MsDead" and the fact that they play a hell of a lot of Quake. MORE >>