Tag Archives: games

Rolling On the Floor Linkspamming (18 August 2015)

 

  • Gayme Corner: “Videogames for Humans” and the Intimate, Playful Engagement of Twine | Robin on Autostraddle (12 August): “A lot of the most well-known Twine games are written by trans women, which is pretty rad, though Merritt Kopas points out that, “Few of these authors are accorded the respect, attention, or monetary success of their white male counterparts,” and within the community, it’s mostly white trans women whose work is recognized. Even so, Twine has great potential. “Authors are doing things with Twine that aren’t possible with traditional text. And at the same time, they’re using interactive media to tell stories that mainstream videogames couldn’t dream of telling,” Kopas said.”
  • The CW’s Female Executive Producers Talk Telling Women’s Stories | Teresa Jusino on The Masy Sue (12 August): “The CW’s session at the Television Critics Association summer tour earlier this week gives us so much reason to hope. After their main presentation, where they debuted their upcoming show from Aline Brosh McKenna called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, eight female executive producers from The CW took to the stage in a panel called Running the Show: The Women Executive Producers of The CW and spoke honestly and optimistically about being women in the television industry and what they’re doing to help other women thrive in the business.”
  • ReThink | Trisha Prabhu: “Passionate to stop cyberbullying in adolescents, I created the patented product “ReThink” that stops cyberbullying at the source, before the bullying occurs, before the damage is done! My research has found that with “Rethink”, adolescents change their mind 93% of the time and decide not to post an offensive message. I was selected as Google Global Science Fair Finalists 2014 for my work on “ReThink”.”
  • I spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity. I came away … worried. | Dylan Matthews on Vox (10 August): “Effective altruists think that past attempts to do good — by giving to charity, or working for nonprofits or government agencies — have been largely ineffective, in part because they’ve been driven too much by the desire to feel good and too little by the cold, hard data necessary to prove what actually does good. […] Effective altruism is […] a movement, and like any movement, it has begun to develop a culture, and a set of powerful stakeholders, and a certain range of worrying pathologies. At the moment, EA is very white, very male, and dominated by tech industry workers. […] Effective altruism is a useful framework for thinking through how to do good through one’s career, or through political advocacy, or through charitable giving. It is not a replacement for movements through which marginalized peoples seek their own liberation. If EA is to have any hope of getting more buy-in from women and people of color, it has to at least acknowledge that.”
  • We Still Let Harassers Participate In Our Community | Katie Kovalcin (12 August) [warning for sexual harassment]: “So, I reported an incident. I detailed someone who harassed me, provided receipts of the sexual harassment, and you want to then tell him I reported him and stick us in the same hotel? While effectively punishing me and not allowing me to participate in part of the conference because I was on the receiving end of harassment?”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs.  If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

The Large Linkspam Collider (22 July 2014)

  •  how to recruit a diverse team | the evolving ultrasaurus: “There is no quick fix to diversity hiring. The easiest way to hire for diversity is to start with diversity — to start when you add the second person on your team — but if you reading this post, you likely have an imbalanced or homogeneous team. I’ve primarily written this for all-white or all-male teams in tech.”
  • The Problem With Science| Shakesville: “This doesn’t speak well of one of the industry’s leading publications. It also doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence (which, as I’ve already explained, I’m short on) that the folks making or breaking careers by deciding which papers are “sexy” enough to publish are going to have the professionalism to ground their decisions in something other than a creepy desire to excite their presumed readership of straight white cis guys.”
  • A handy template for online trolls: “It has come to my attention that you are [a person of color/woman/ LGBTQ/differently abled/immigrant] and you have posted an online essay suggesting that your situation in life is somehow challenging because of a circumstance relating to people who are not in your condition. As an Internet commenter, it is my mouse-driven duty to anonymously respond to your post. I’m not sure what would happen if I failed to do so, but I saw what happened when they stopped pushing the button in LOST so I will not take any chances.”
  • No More “Put A Skirt On It” | molly.is/saying: “Good news: the next time you draw a person or create a user avatar, you have an opportunity to fight the sexist patriarchal bullshit! Like many instances of patriarchy-smashing, it’s not actually that hard once you get the principles down. Here are 2 simple rules to keep you on track.”
  • Ninja Pizza Girl and The Thorny Tangle of Girlhood | Apple Cider Mage: “The crux of it is Jason Stark, the head of Disparity Games, relating precisely how and why Ninja Pizza Girl came to be. He talks about how the concept came straight from his childrens’ mouths but more importantly he  also describes the stumbles in his own assumptions about not only game design but also about his daughters’ growing vulnerability as they move into teen-hood and beyond. It was a bit of insight that I found intriguing, not so much as a gamer, but rather as a woman.”
  • Opinion: Selena Deckelmann on Portland tech’s gender divide | Portland Business Journal: “I was surprised and horrified to discover every woman in tech I knew had similar, and, disturbingly, far worse stories than mine. Many of these women, successful in tech and making good money, supported families and could not just quit and find another job in the small job market in Portland. Sure, they could move to another city — but with kids, spouses with jobs or in school, these decisions are rarely simple.”
  • Feminism and (Un)Hacking | Journal of Peer Production: CFP for articles on feminism and hacker/makerspaces: “With this special issue of the Journal of Peer Production, we hope to delve more deeply into these critiques to imagine new forms of feminist technical praxis that redefine these practices and/or open up new ones. How can we problematize hacking, tinkering, geeking and making through feminist theories and epistemologies? How do these practices, in fact, change when we begin to consider them through a feminist prism? Can we envision new horizons of practice and possibility through a feminist critique?”
  • San Fran tech types: what you need to know to move to Oakland | Live Work Oakland: “I’d like these young dudes coming to my town to actually see ALL the people coming up in tech in Oakland around me–the many Black, Latino, queer, female, and trans folks who, like all of us, show up in so many different ages, styles, and sizes, but who have a place, just like the white bros do. And  if these new folks coming into Oakland can’t see the folks who are already here, can’t change, I’d like them to just get the F* out of the way and take one of those corporate buses right back to where they came from .”
  • Meanwhile, in an alternate universe… | Infotropism: Read Skud’s take on what google+’s announcement re: pseudonyms SHOULD have been.
  • Canceling TRUCEConf | TRUCEConf: Trust, Respect, Unity, Compassion, and Equality: “I would say that it’s with a heavy heart that I am canceling this conference, if it weren’t for the sense of relief that comes with this announcement. I have struggled with this for long enough. The time has come to let it go.” (We covered TRUCEConf back in November 2013.)
  • “Pay a heavy price for it” | rosefox: “That’s the Frenkel story. He’s supposed to pay a price for getting what he wanted–the opportunity to harass a couple of women–but all he loses is four years of Wiscon. However, anyone who doesn’t want to be around harassers loses Wiscon forever.” (See also: the Chair of the Harassment Policy Committee responds to feedback about this decision, and more general thoughts on harassment at conferences from Publishers Weekly’s Genreville: What Conventions Are and Aren’t.)
  • Free Online Game Simulates Coming Out Experience | GLBT News: “The game is based on Case’s own coming out process, and it allows the player to choose a variety of conversational choices throughout the storyline. Characters remember what you have said, and they constantly refer back to choices that were made previously in the game. The games tagline is “a half-true game about half-truths.” The game has three endings, but like it promises at the very beginning, there are no easy or clean results. Everything is messy…just like the coming out process itself.”
  • Black Girls Hunger for Heroes, Too: A Black Feminist Conversation on Fantasy Fiction for Teens | Bitch Media: “What happens when two great black women fiction writers get together to talk about race in young adult literature? That’s exactly what happens in the conversation below, where  Zetta Elliott, a black feminist writer of poetry, plays, essays, novels, and stories for children, and award-winning Haitian-American speculative fiction writer Ibi Aanu Zoboi decided to discuss current young adult sci-fi. “

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs.  If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, Delicious or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

The periodic table of linkspams (27 June 2014)

  •  Take on the Harder Problem, Google | Lukas Blakk (June 20): “Stop acting like only a CS degree is what makes someone a valuable asset on tech (pro-tip: many people working in tech came to it via liberal arts degrees). Make the current adult tech world a welcoming place for everyone – then you can send in the next generation and so on without losing them in the leaky pipeline a few years in.”
  • Double Union: “Double Union is a hacker/maker space for women in San Francisco. […] The space is explicitly not a place for people to come and ask Feminism 101 questions to their heart’s content.”
  • Tweet by @jennschiffer | jennmoneydollars at Twitter (June 24): “am I crazy for thinking that the problem isn’t getting women *into* programming but getting the creeps *out* of it? why is the onus on us?”
  • MultipliCITY | paolo  at Molleindustria (June  21): “SimCity promises endless possibilities. You can create the city of your dreams. But in reality you always end up with Phoenix, Arizona. The only type of city you can create is the modernist, car centered, grid based, North American city. […] Probably the most fundamental problem with SimCity is the premise itself: that a single person, the mayor/city planner/dictator, can address the contradictions of contemporary capitalist cities though judicious planning. […] This is the premise for the activity I’m proposing today. MultipliCITY is an asymmetrical multiplayer boardgame inspired by SimCity and Carcassone. It attempts to address and problematize some of these issue with a moddable game system.”
  • Nix Hydra aims to create deep games for women | Christian Nutt at Gamasutra (June 11): “It’s not the first “for women, by women” studio, and it’s also far from the only mobile studio that aims for a female audience — but what makes Nix Hydra stand out is that its founders started experimenting with development because of their own dissatisfaction with the games they saw. […] while a lot of studios have recognized they have large female audiences — casual game companies trumpet it all the time — they’re not fundamentally rethinking how they make games when creating titles for those audiences.”
  • 2014—15 Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship: “The intention of the Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship is to encourage research within collections in the area of feminist science fiction. […] This award supports travel for the purpose of research on, and work with, the papers of feminist science fiction authors housed in University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. These short-term research fellowships are open to undergraduates, master’s and doctoral students, postdoctoral scholars, college and university faculty at every rank, and independent scholars working in feminist science fiction.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs.  If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, Delicious or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

They Might Be Linkspam (23 April 2013)

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You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious or pinboard.in or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

Quick hit: Top Girl, Rock Bottom

I’ve played some pretty terrible video games, but this sounds like it may be a candidate for the worst game ever:

And that’s when it hits me, the one brilliant thing about this game: there is something in it for everyone. Everyone who plays it would find something in it that they hate.

Feminists would hate it. “Men’s Rights Activists” would hate it. Parents already hate it. Left-wingers would hate the consumerism and the objectification of women; right-wingers would hate the sexualization of young girls. Economists, as I’ve said above, would be baffled. Grammar enthusiasts would be appalled at its many punctuation and spelling errors. Models would hate that it makes modeling look easier and less cutthroat than it is. Fashion designers and artists would hate it for all the mismatched, misguided styling choices. My father would hate this game and Caryl Churchill would hate this game. Israelis and Palestinians would hate this game. We would all be united by our hatred of this, the most useless, uninteresting, universally offensive game known to humanity.

Read the rest of Mara Wilson’s detailed and funny review here: Top Girl: The Game for Everyone!

Quick Hit: Sexism In Games Bingo

Tired of hearing the same arguments regarding sexism in games? Here’s a sexism in games bingo card by @fireholly99.

Trigger Warning: Includes mention of violence against women.

Additional Warning: This card has been copied verbatim and includes slurs and other derogatory language that we wouldn’t normally allow here because I felt it was more effective when allowed to parrot inappropriate comments than it would be if I reworded. This is not going to be extended to the comments, however, so please adhere to our comment policy there.

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 But men are all super-buff, they’re sexually objectified too! But it’s not FOR women. If they can’t deal with it, they shouldn’t be here. She might play games, but she’s not a REAL gamer, she’s just attention whoring. Chainmail bikinis are unrealistic, but’s not realistic for a woman to be fighting anyway. YOU’RE the one who hates women – you’re saying they can’t be both sexy AND tough.

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 But they call her a ‘bitch’ because they’re the bad guys. No-one gives a shit about this sexism stuff, I’m just here for the review scores. I am a feminist and love women because they are inherently too nurturing and responsible to play video games. The only reason a guy could have to care about sexism is so women will think he’s sensitive and want to fuck him. But we have equality, there are nonsexualised female characters, like… Samus except when she takes off her Suit…

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 But there are sexualised male characters, like… uh, Marcus Fenix is sexy, right? I don’t know, I’m not a fag. Men want to WATCH desirable women and women want to BE desirable women, so no-one wants sexy male characters except gay guys. GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN AND MAKE ME A SANDWICH There are women who get their genitals ritually mutilated and you’re complaining about video game boobies? So you think all female characters should be ugly and dress in burqas.

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 Girl who likes video games? You only have interests because you’re not thin enough to have a real boyfriend. Yeah, the story, dialogue and character design is all sexist, but everyone can enjoy the amazing gameplay. As a woman, it doesn’t bother me, so no-one else is allowed to be bothered. Why should I care about this so-called ‘unfair’ depiction of women when women have more rights than men nowadays and feminists are trying to destroy capitalism? But trash talk is normal on XBL. Women are just too sensitive to rape threats and feigned masturbation.

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 How can it be sexist when women in REAL history were their husband’s property? How can it be sexist when women in REAL life are weaker and wear less clothing than men? If you didn’t want attention for being a girl you wouldn’t be using a female name in your tag or speak with a female voice. Everyone knows ‘sex sells’, and the developers are just making things they think will sell. But I’ve suffered oppression too, as a black/ poor/ gay/ nerdy/ girlfriendless MAN! What about my feelings? It’s just a game. No-one cares.

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Angry noms

I just spotted a picture of angry bird cupcakes drift past in my Google+ stream. Unfortunately when I clicked on it, it reported the site was over quota. Oh well.

So I hopped over to flickr and found you some.

8 cupcakes in an assortment of coloured silicone cups with white icing and green or blue sprinkles. Each cupcake has a fondant ball shaped like an angry bird or green pig atop it. There is one pig with bruises and the mustached pig. They are surrounded by the single big blue angry bird, a bundle of 3 little blue angry birds, the white bomber bird, the black bomb bird, the yellow torpedo bird and the red bird.

If you feel like geeking out in the kitchen, there’s even an award winning tutorial. There’s also a few other gamer entries on the instructables competition results page.

The plight of the Straight, Male Gamer

If you’re not a gamer, perhaps you haven’t seen this post entitled Bioware Neglected Their Main Demographic: The Straight Male Gamer which complains about the romance options in Dragon Age II. [Warning: minor spoilers for Dragon Age II about which characters are romance options.]

In every previous BioWare game, I always felt that almost every companion in the game was designed for the male gamer in mind. Every female love interest was always written as a male friend type support character. In Dragon Age 2, I felt like most of the companions were designed to appeal to other groups foremost, Anders and Fenris for gays and Aveline for women given the lack of strong women in games, and that for the straight male gamer, a secondary concern. It makes things very awkward when your male companions keep making passes at you. The fact that a “No Homosexuality” option, which could have been easily implemented, is omitted just proves my point. I know there are some straight male gamers out there who did not mind it at and I respect that.

When I say BioWare neglected The Straight Male Gamer, I don’t mean that they ignored male gamers. The romance options, Isabella and Merrill, were clearly designed for the straight male gamers in mind. Unfortunately, those choices are what one would call “exotic” choices. They appeal to a subset of male gamers and while its true you can’t make a romance option everyone will love, with Isabella and Merrill it seems like they weren’t even going for an option most males will like. And the fact is, they could have. They had the resources to add another romance option, but instead chose to implement a gay romance with Anders.

When I saw this, I was torn between horrible gleeful schadenfreude at how hurt this guy was over not getting his preferred romance options… and wishing that *life* came with options whereupon I could flip a switch and not have people who I found sexually unattractive hit on me ever again. (In my case, the switch would specify “no otaku/japanophiles”) Oh, and wondering if I counted as an “exotic” choice in real life (again, see “no otaku”).

And then there’s the twitter commentary from @sparkyclarkson:

Man, I hope Duke Nukem has an option to turn heterosexual content off.

While schadenfreude might be fun, it’s hardly something to be proud of, much less something I’d feel a need to crow about here. What makes this a story worth posting about is actually the response from Bioware’s David Gaider:

The romances in the game are not for “the straight male gamer”. They’re for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don’t need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant… and that’s ignoring the idea that they don’t have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The “rights” of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent “right” to get more options than anyone else.

[…]
And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as “political correctness” if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They’re so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don’t see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what’s everyone’s fuss all about? That’s the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.

[…]
And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least. And that’s my opinion, expressed as politely as possible.

You can scroll down on the forum post to read his full response. Given that we get so many stories about how game companies are just pandering to their supposed straight young male market, it’s really nice to see a company standing up for their choice to make a game that appeals to a wider audience, even at risk of alienating a few of the “majority” in the process.

More commentary here: “Straight Male Gamer” told to “get over it’ by BioWare.

Angry Birds!

As I mentioned in Some reasons I’m looking forwards to PAX East, my friends and I have been making angry birds to play with at PAX East this weekend. I finally took some pictures and hopefully you can indulge me in sharing my glee over my geeky creations:

We’re hopping to play some line games with random strangers and toss some into crowds to see what happens. If you’re looking to spot me or my companions at PAX east, we’ll have a few of these pinned to the outside of our bags, and we’ll be goofing off with them when we’ve got time to spare waiting for concerts and such.

I made my own patterns for these because I wanted smaller simpler ones so I could make plenty of birds before the con, and I’m hoping to write up these easy angry bird patterns to share when I’ve got time to take a few in-progress photos to go with them. But if you’re dying to make your own Angry Birds right now, I highly recommend you check out Itsy Bitsy Spider’s patterns (ravelry link) The red bird pattern is free, and the rest are only a few dollars each.

And if you’re going to be at PAX east and want to be all crafty, apparently there’s a stitch and b*tch going on on Saturday 1:30-3pm in the handheld lounge. How fun is that?

And before I finish this post… here’s more pictures of my angry birds! That’s not even all of them, just the ones that happen to be in my house right now. I can’t wait to see what it looks like when we have them all together.

More real things

I think I’m going to start a new segment here, because I’ve just found another bit of awesome, nerdy stuff on the internet that would at very least amuse many geek women.

I shall call it Awesome Nerdy Shit. Yeah, I’m not so imaginative today. I’ve also retroactively tagged the Ada Lovelace Steampunk from last week and the nerdy jewellery post from last year.

Without further ado, another from the nerd couture files: The Vintage Doctor (click the screenshots to go to the product pages).

A screenshot of the website displaying a mannequin wearing a vintage style halterneck dress made of blue star wars fabric.

A screenshot of the website displaying a mannequin wearing a vintage style halterneck dress made of blue star wars fabric.

A screenshot of the shop site displaying a mannequin wearing an overbust corset with a large picture of Mario with red and white polkadot trim.

A screenshot of the shop site displaying a mannequin wearing an overbust corset with a large picture of Mario with red and white polkadot trim.

A screenshot of the shop website displaying a photo of a woman with blonde and pink dreadlocks wearing an underbust corset made of batman emblem print with yellow trim.

A screenshot of the shop website displaying a photo of a woman with blonde and pink dreadlocks wearing an underbust corset made of batman emblem print with yellow trim.

Who says geeky can’t be feminine?