Article trigger warning: harassment inc rape threats
I think this article is a real sign that things are changing within the gaming industry, it's maturing and starting to take itself seriously. The idea that the typical gamer is a horny 15 year old boy is becoming more and more outdated. Remember that the PS2 came out over 10 years ago, many of the boys and girls that played the PS2 then are now men and women possibly starting families of their own or have built careers for themselves in the gaming industry. Unfortunately while there are still "booth babes" (models hired to stand in front of a display and attract visitors) the stereotype of horny teenage male will never really go away.
And as someone who has been gaming their whole life it is so sad to see that the industry that I love and throw my money at has such disdain for me just because I am a woman.
A great article using World of Warcraft/role playing games as an analogy for privilege.<br>
"Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it? <br>
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is."
Links to image where a single person asks for on screen navigation buttons to use with a mouth stick. Dev agrees and implements them into the game as an option immediately. Pretty cool to see some one agree so readily.
From boingboing: Nirvan says: "I just finished this short film about a 9-year-old boy's elaborate DIY cardboard arcade. Caine made his arcade using boxes from his dad's used auto parts store. He hadn't had many customers, so we set up a fun flashmob to make his day, and filmed his response. I hope it brings a smile to your day. P.S. Caine's Arcade is in East LA. You should visit it sometime - Caine is still building new additions!"
My favorite part is his security system.
About women game writers self-censoring in order to be taken 'seriously'.
"I'm shocked that grade-school concepts like 'diversity is constructive' and 'treat human beings equitably' are concepts that somehow still need championing, still need arguing for. I mean, really? I have to explain many times that the convergence of varied perspectives makes creating things — like video games — more fruitful? Or more simply: You think boys' clubs are better than spaces where everyone gets equal respect regardless of their gender? What're you, five?"
The principal designer of the C programming language and co-developer of the Unix operating system passed away on Wednesday. I am not sure whether he would have appreciated any jokes about deletion or file overwriting, so I won't make them.
So some guy commissioned a few custom puzzles for portal 2, then got the voice actor for Glados to do the dialog for him, and actually ask his girl friend to marry him.
You've gotta watch the video.
Entertainment media research firm Interpret released today its new report, “Games and Girls: Video Gaming’s Ignored Audience”, which finds that while the female audience in gaming has grown, games tailored to their needs and preferences continue to go missing.
Apparently Sony is willing to pony up the cash for all of it's PSN customers (in the US only, sorry for now Canucks!) to get 12 months of free identity theft protection. Since I know nearly all of us have a PS3 what the hell are you doing still reading my summary?
