One day fourteen year-old Lexi Peters was playing one of EA Sports Hockey editions and tried to customize her team into her own St. Peters Purple Eagles hockey team and ran into a problem-- there were no options for putting a female player on the video screen.
Peters then asked her father a simple question, "Why not?"
How come she couldn't recreate her own team when there were not any female avatars?
Her father's advice was to send one of the largest video game makers in the world a letter to find out.
In what seemed like a long-shot, the Buffalo native wrote: "It is unfair to women and girl hockey players around the world, many of them who play and enjoy your game. I have created a character of myself, except I have to be represented by a male and that's not fun."
It wasn't as easy as that responded EA Sports. The company would have to go through the NHL, who would make the final decision.
It seemed like a lost cause until NHL 12's head producer David Littman saw the letter and considered it a "wake-up call" regarding the sport's increasing female fan base.
Littman went out of way and got permission from the NHL to use female character builds in the game's options.
The high school freshman's moxie gave her a chance to put a female player on the video's ice and, as a reward for her clever idea, NHL 12 used the likeness of Lexi as its first female character option.
Lexi would now be playing the part of the "default" female player that gamers could customize.
The young hockey fan may not know this, but her vision is not so far-fetched. After all, the NHL had a female player back in 1992.
Manon Rheaume, a goaltender, played two exhibition games for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The game was launched on Monday and features Steven Stamkos of the Lightning on the box.
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