Category Archives: Women in Games

Take Care Of Each Other

So given that there are still so many patently horrible people in the world, it continues to be important to emphasize what we all can do to contribute to a civilized, mature and inclusive culture around video games, which often seem to be a little slower to it than other entertainment industries and business segments.

How I feel about women in media — and some of my personal experiences being one — was the focus of the talk I gave last month in Toronto at TIFF Nexus, and the video of my keynote is finally online for you to watch! Bear with me: I was incredibly intimidated by the amazing honor of having been invited to speak, and I don’t speak so fast nor drop so many ‘um’s during the talk as I do in the first ten minutes, ha.
During the talk I namecheck Harmonix’s Matt Boch, since I was so struck by what he said at NYU’s PRACTICE event about gender as performance in Dance Central. Although unfortunately I didn’t get that quote down in my initial coverage of his lecture then, ultimately I followed up with him for a larger interview on what exactly that means, and that’s now up at Gamasutra, too — his perspective is fascinating and I highly urge you to read it.
UPDATE! Kirk Hamilton responds at Kotaku, with ‘On Playing Dance Central 2 while male.’
Those Harmonix folks are seriously cool people, by the way, as I had the fortune to observe when I was invited in to do an in-depth studio profile that ran in OXM back in the summer. Check it out if you missed it the first go ’round.
Also, toward the end of the talk I paraphrase a Seth Killian quote from PRACTICE regarding misogyny in the Street Fighter community, and the actual quote plus context in Stephen Totilo’s coverage over at Kotaku.
On the subject of cool people, my friend Denis Farr writes a follow-up at Kotaku about some of his thoughts since the time he first spoke out on the site as a gay gamer who has experienced homophobia (trigger warnings for such, natch), using this Blizzcon incident as a launching point. He is brave and honest and both of his articles are worth your time.
I have absolutely no time for nor interest in the kind of people to whom these voices and perspectives are somehow unwanted (I mean, I’ll forgive you if you don’t sit through my whole keynote, but you get what I mean). Games are for fun, we can play, etc., but as in all things we should all aim to be the kind of people who care about where one another are coming from and who are willing to listen.
That seems really, really basic to me.

It’s The Most Wonderful Time

Things’ve been crazy since my trip to Toronto. I’d never been, and I absolutely loved it. What impressed me most was the fact that the art and tech community there seems to exist on a spectrum, with many people creating from multiple points of focus and collaboratively with other disciplines to interesting results — I found the worlds of play study, child development, hardware hackers, academia and game design often merged.

TIFF Nexus’ Women in Film, Games and New Media event was a huge success. The response to my keynote was overwhelmingly positive (I was TRENDING in Toronto on Twitter! Whoa!), and I hope to have some video or something online for you guys soon. If you’re an Edge subscriber, a column distilling some of the key points on which I spoke will appear in an upcoming issue. Meanwhile, at Gamasutra I wrote about the results of the Difference Engine Initiative, the local Hand Eye Society’s incubator which focuses on inviting and encouraging women to game development where they may not have considered it before. Amazing stuff I’d be pleased for you to check out.

As usual, I’ve been up to a whole bunch of other things; here’s an editorial I’ve done on signs of life in the maturing social games space. You can make fun of Facebook games all you want, but you can’t ignore them, because the lessons from the social space will start pollinating other platforms.

Across the Atlantic from me, veterans of the UK gaming space including Kuju’s Ian Baverstock and Jonathan Newth have formed a brand-new consultancy aimed at assisting game developers in navigating this rapidly-changing cross-platform environment. PopCap, which is unequivocally one of the coolest and smartest game companies there is, is ahead of the curve as it takes another step toward seamless multiplatform play for Bejeweled with an interesting new iOS decision. So yeah, get used to this stuff.

I’m excited that once again Gamasutra is doing its year-end top lists, counting down to our games of the year by rounding up the year’s most notable industry events; business trends, anticipated games of 2011, and top indie games of 2011.

I chip in with the year’s top five biggest controversies, as I’d know from controversy, natch. Our Mike Rose was kind enough to find a pic of Cole Phelps standing nonchalantly while destruction occurs behind his back. There’ll be more top lists, of course, so watch our space.

I wrote a tongue-in-cheek Thought Catalog piece about how Facebook is changing the way we talk about our romantic crush behavior. Sappy shit. I’m amazed at how many of the commenters are taking it seriously. Their relationships must be super unfun. Possibly they are replicants.

Is that it? Yeah, I think that’s it for now. Man, I hate this time of year. It puts all our brains through a pulper. Of course, Skyrim does that to me too, and yet it doesn’t seem to stop me playing it.

Oh yeah, I need to keep on top of recommending you guys music so that you stop asking me if I’ve ever heard of, I dunno, Wilco or something, and stop calling “indie” a genre. I’m just playin’, ladies, you know I love you. Besides, we’re all going to blow our brains out if we hear one more pop Christmas song cover right?

Today’s Good Song: The People’s Temple – Led as One (Si vis pacem, para bellum)

Sup Ladies

The feature on female protagonists I wrote for OXM is now online, featuring thoughts from Hideki Kamiya, Valve’s Erik Wolpaw, Crystal Dynamics’ Darrell Gallagher and BioWare’s Mac Walters. In it, I aimed to take the standard wisdom about how to make good female characters from “cover their boobs and make them admirable” to “let female protagonists be people above all.” Okay, so it’s a bit more complex than that, but the industry folk I spoke to for the piece had some pretty interesting thoughts, and I’d be psyched for you to give it a read.

Also online is video of the Jesse Schell talk I told you about recently — have a look if you get a sec. Finally, I also recently published an analysis on the state of games for social good, with a list of the Games For Change Festival winning games.