Candace and Jim Miller

Mayday is an event envisioned by Vyktor, the webmaster over at girlzgametoo.com. While the site is a community for female gamers (or men to better understand female gamers), it’s not some feminist society for the removal of men. Actually, it’s just a site thrown together to celebrate female gamers, much like the Mayday event. However the Mayday event really is more than a just some random celebration, it’s actually a well planned out gathering to make a statement.

The main purpose behind Mayday is to celebrate being a gamer. With all the negative publicity gamers have endured recently, from the Jack Thompson slandering of gamers as a whole to the now ancient “Hot Coffee” mod controversy, gamers really haven’t had anything positive to celebrate. This bothered everyone over at GGT, including Vyktor, so he started making plans to host a huge event across many different games to reach out to as large of a group of gamers as possible.

Not content to just be a gathering, there is a message behind Mayday. “Gamers aren't evil; they really can get along and play nice. We're all here to have fun,” Vyktor told me when I asked what the message behind Mayday was. That’s a very good message as well, because the few nut jobs out there who play games and use them as a scapegoat give the whole slew of gamers out there a bad reputation. I can’t even count the number of dirty looks I’ve gotten when I walk around shopping center with a bag from a game store because of all the negative publicity attributed to gaming.

The biggest part of Mayday though, is the various in game gatherings taking place however. At the time of this writing, there’s 16 games confirmed, with one unconfirmed entry as of yet. There’s a seriously large amount of players in most of the games, and there’s hope of bringing as many of them together to have a little bit of fun, and do something a bit different than normal. To make the celebration even better, there is just an insane number of prizes that were gathered from all so graciously donated by many different companies involved in the industry as well, and isn’t limited to just software either. At least one hardware manufacturer has given a few things for the enormous prize listing.

All in all, Mayday is about getting gamers together under a positive cause. What better way is there than with people who understand us and support us? Oh, and the free prizes definitely is a nice touch as well. I’ll look forward to seeing everyone there!

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