On her first trip away from home, in a Burbank, California, mall filled with CRT monitors and Quake fans, Lorie Kmiec Harper’s mouse broke. It was 1997, and Harper, a 23-year-old assistant warehouse manager from Ontario, was playing as a finalist in the first-ever All Female Quake Tournament under the handle Temperance. “I got kicked out first, you know that, right?” Harper says. “I was number one in Canada, or I was that year,” she reminisces. “But I was eighth in the world.”
In another scenario, Harper’s busted mouse might not have been a big deal. “I don’t know how attached you are to your mouse, but for gaming purposes, it was really bad timing,” she says. She’d spent the previous month training for the finals, playing with people all over the world, sometimes in the middle of the night. It was the first time she’d gotten a passport, and she was excited just to have made it to LA with her plus-one— her then-boyfriend, a computer engineer who had built her first gaming rig.
The other finalists came from all over North America: Bridget ‘t0nka’ Fitzgerald blew off her freshman orientation at Juilliard to play at the finals (“My teacher was like, you are leaving to do what?!” she recalls). Kornelia ‘Kornelia’ Takacs had made a name for herself at the GDC Ten Tournament earlier that year. Stevie ‘Killcreek’ Case was a competitive player infamous for beating Quake designer John Romero in a highly publicized deathmatch. Rounding out the final eight were Aileen ‘Shadyr’ Carlstrom, Mars, LaEl, and Queen Beeatch.
This story is from the September 2021 edition of PC Gamer US Edition.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the September 2021 edition of PC Gamer US Edition.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
TERMINATOR: RESISTANCE
Revisiting Teyon’s game after Robocop: Rogue City.
RICH'N BEEFY
LIKE A DRAGON: INFINITE WEALTH is a dizzyingly huge all-you-can-eat Yakuza buffet
ROUND 8 FIGHT!
TEKKEN 8 is a blend of nostalgia for fans and a pair of welcoming arms for newbies
HOLY HELL
THE INQUISITOR is a grim yet strangely gripping dark fantasy adventure
SHOT DEAD
There are flashes of greatness in SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE
THE BEST NON-TRADITIONAL WAR GAMES
Is it possible for wargamers to give peace a chance?
WHEELIE GOOD
Freewheeling with Northern Irish indie studio Billy Goat Entertainment and its next project, PARCEL CORPS
PALWORLD
Shockingly, animal cruelty doesn't make for a fulfilling experience
DIVINE FREQUENCY
This horror-RPG-FPS built in the Doom engine is terrifying
AVOWED
Obsidian's next RPG goes all in on first-person action