When Feminine is an Advantage

There's a refreshingly friendly, balanced view of working as a woman in a mostly-male environment (in this case, the games industry) by Michelle Clay over at WomenGamers.com. Overall her points are very reasonable and mirror, I'm sure, a lot of similar experiences that women have had. There's just one teensy flaw: she seems to be encouraging more women to join the industry because there's a slight advantage to being the minority - although these points are somewhat played for humor in the article. And yet, if women did as the writer suggests, wouldn't their immigration annihilate the condition of their minority status and instead lead to a more equal distribution of men and women?

And isn't that, ultimately, what we want - including, I think, the writer of the article?

Wanting to be the only women in a group of male colleagues is a double-edged sword. If that's what you base your work happiness on, what will happen when another woman joins the team? Jealousy, and insecurity, because suddenly that which you valued is gone. I don't suggest that Michelle is advocating this; I think she's genuinely simply trying to persuade more women not to be frightened off by the male-ness of the industry. Still, I think there are some women who are drawn to the industry precisely because of its maleness.

Then there is the backlash - the feeling among some of your unkind male colleagues that you only exist there because you are a woman; and thus you are reduced to your femininity. Moreover, you become the focal point for any discussion of "what women want" - suddenly you are an expert, because you are female, and often you get put into the position of speaking for all womankind.

And what if you do have standards of behavior and language that are different? Do you feel compelled to suppress them because you want to fit in? I'm curious, this is a real question I have. I tend to have an "off" sense of humor anyway, as do many nerds and geeks, in my experience, and we used to make jokes about "sexual harrassment" and we could do so, because we all trusted one another. Michelle seems to have a graceful way to also upend gender stereotypes. But not all wpeople are comfortable in those situations; should we adopt similar standards to other business cultures? Or is it okay to keep acting on a case-by-case basis? Personally, I've been more pertrubed by offhand homophobic comments than ones that I felt were sexist, and I tended to speak up in those cases to make sure people knew, without being accusatory or unpleasant, that I didn't want to go along with their jokes.

I geniuinely miss my mostly male colleagues at Ziff Davis, at 1UP.com, and especially at Gamevideos.com. We bonded, after all - sharing hotel rooms and late nights and awful and wonderful experiences. And yet there is something refreshing about being in a more gender-balanced environment; and my currently team is almost all women. It's definitely a different sort of energy.

My only complaint: the women's bathroom gets a lot more crowded!

Other women who work in male-dominated places, what's been your experience?

How Fucking Embarrassing.

Except that Sony lost its sense its sense of shame so very long ago. It amazes me that someone thought an obnoxiously "hip hop" fake fan site was a good idea.

If you had any sense at all you'd just take down that blight on the internet right now.

This makes me embarrassed to be a gamer. I mean, *that* is what you think is going to work on us? It doesn't.

I wonder how much the marketing company was paid for this?

Clay Calls "Bullshit" on Second Life

Clay Shirky demands to see Second Life's hand in a recent article on Valleywag that calls bullshit on the virtual environment's numbers - and the crazy press coverage it's been getting lately.

I've always said there was something over the top about the whole Second life thing. I know it's a media darling right now, but how many people actually play it? And for how long?

When Clay writes, "I have been watching the press reaction to Second Life with increasing confusion" he mirrors my reaction. With every huge article in Businessweek the hype tree grew taller and bore ever more verdant leaves, seeding other articles in other publications. (I don't mean to call out Businessweek except that they published the most outrageous "Virtual Millionaire" article recently.) And while, yes, money in virtual economies is real, as Julian and Ted Catronova have shown (among others), how real is the money in a good if you hold all the goods yourself? It's only worth as much as others will pay for it and frankly, I'm just not sure that a userbase exists that *will* pay, collectively, a million bucks for virtual real estate.

I respect what Second Life is, and I think some of the press is well-deserved. It is a concrete way to imagine what we used to call cyber-space. I just don't think there's anything close to a mass movement represented by its users - just really interesting new ideas.

Wii Communitii Sites Two separate people emailed me this week to tell me about web projects they'd built recently to facilitate the trading of Wii numbers with friends and potential friends. What's interesting to me most, of course, is how the community of gamers has responded to the need to share Wii information.

There's the cutely named Wiipals which mostly seems to be a forum, but also generates a code to share your Wii number on Myspace. A bit...simplistic.

Then there's Sharewiis.com, a pretty sweet community site that also lets people trade DS numbers. Alex Chang, the site's creator, explains:

I just finished my hobby website sharewiis.com --a place where wii players can share their Wii codes, DS friend codes, etc. without the annoyance of ads and with powerful search tool to pinpoint active users that will most likely exchange codes with you.

I just got fed up with the archaically inefficient forum/comment-on-a-blog method, and then the in-your-face popup ads on other exchange sites, etc. You never know easily on a forum/blog comment who has added you who hasn't. So i created this simple but comprehensive web site to allow friend code sharing. ...

my site wasn't designed to supplant valuable forum communities or blogs, but rather supplement it with an easier way of sharing codes for forum users and blog readers.

So get out there and find some miis to play with!

Microsoft Takes "User-Created" Seriously. Too Seriously.

Yay! You can make games for Xbox 360 now... if you fulfill all the requirements, that is. Today Microsoft launched XNA Game Studio Express and XNA Creator's Club, one an application for game-making that runs on Windows XP, and the other a service that costs $99 a year and provides members with "access to thousands of game assets from Microsoft and key supporters such as Turbo Squid Inc., as well as 'white papers, specialized starter kits, samples and technical product support to help turn [your game] into a reality'" according to a Gamasutra report.

Aspiring game developers must have a subscription to Xbox Live in order to participate. There are other limitations - the games made on XNA Game Studio Express can't be saved to memory cards and can only be received by other members of the Creator's Club who have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for Xbox 360 and who have installed XNA Game Studio Express on their PCs. The files have to be compiled before the game will run.

Well, it's no Youtube, but it's a start. Here's a pretty technical FAQ that covers some more details.

Oh, and there is promise of more to come. I hope so, Andre!

Firefly MMO

I love my boyfriend, but he knows that if Joss Whedon showed up at my doorstep bearing flowers...you know. I love Joss Whedon. I love his work. I love his attitude. I love what he says about art and women and his work. I think Firefly was amazing - even better than Battlestar Galactica (which I also love, of course. But it doesn't have the Joss Whedon touch.)

So I can't help being a little excited at the idea of an MMO set in the world of Firefly. I've had dreams about me and Zoe riding horses alongside spaceships along dusty canyons. I want to be excited about it! I want to believe that it will be like KOTOR, but MMO. That it would rule.

But I'm just not sure. Multiverse is new technology and as far as I know, no products using it have launched yet. So, we'll see.

But I can dream!

Celebrity Mii Contest!

Jason's holding a celebrity Mii contest! Deadline is Monday, December 11. Let's get celebritied up!

The Fading Glory of the FPS?

Tuesday evening I saw the game Dark Sector at a D3 preview event. The game pleasantly surprised me with both its technical achievements and some neat little gameplay features that showed that at least the team was trying to do something new with the action genre. But what impressed me most was how much it looked like Resident Evil 4.

It hadn't really occured to me until that night how influential RE4 was - is, I should say, for it continues to be so; the blockbuster title of the this year is an ardent homage to RE4. By contrast the other big fancy game, Resistance: Fall of Man looks... almost primitive. What's new in Resistance? Nothing. We feel like we've seen it all before.

Is it just me or are we experiencing FPS fatigue? Of course, Halo 3 might still change all that. But until it comes out, I have to say that FPSs are looking just a little bit old-fashioned.

Fantasty (and otherwise) Football

EA's Madden series is one of the highest-selling franchises in the market - and although a lot of gamery-gamers don't pay much attention to sports games, on the whole, one shouldn't ignore the huge cultural impact that sports games have had, and continue to have.

Witness this insipidly written but still rather interesting article in the Washington Post about gamer kids who know more about football than coaches (supposedly) because of the hours spent playing Madden. If indeed the game knowledge translates so well to real football, then EA has done a fantastic job of modeling the sport.

The other side can be ugly (and hilarious): the lowest-ranked player in the game fires off an angry letter to John Madden in complaint.

Hi, John, my name is Ethan Albright. I play line for the Washington Redskins. You probably already knew that, so I’ll continue. I am writing in regards to the overall player rating of 53 that I have received in Madden NFL Football 2007. I feel that this is fucking bullshit and you should kiss my mother-fucking ass. Ahmed Carroll was rated a 78 and the Packers just cut his ass on a Tuesday morning after his performance in a Monday night game. That is pretty terrible. The worst part is that his overall rating was sniffing 80.

Yes, it's a joke, but it plays off something real - how *do* players feel watching their own stats go up and down with each iteration of the franchise? How would it feel to be a character that hundreds of thousands of people around the world play?

I suppose people who are that famous become somehow inured to it. But it must still feel odd, sometimes, all the same.

Do Not Arm Your Wii

The Wii in Japan comes with a charmingly illustrated safety manual. Now, Icon Factory reveals the missing pages!

[via GayGamer.]

Dear Nintendo

You know what you should do? You should integrate the Mii-making tool with Flickr and that odd little My Heritage app that makes everyone into a sexy star. (I got Ava Gardner.)

That would be awesome.

Thanks for everything!

Your Friend,

Jane

Blip Festival

Awesome, long, thorough at write-up of the Blip Festival GameSetWatch that makes me wish I were there. Great photos too!

GDC Blog

GDC, on which I work now, has a blog. I didn't know that until a few days ago. But now that I do know it, I'll be using that space to post sessions that catch my eye. There are some cool ones I bet you didn't know we had!

I'm also still working on adding new sessions, so I'll post "latest accepted sessions" information there as well.

Awesome! Boku to Sim no Machi Announced

Hurrah! The game that Robin's been working so hard on has been announced at last. It's going to get the full Famitsu treatment! It's for the Wii! It's the cutest Sims ever! And boy do I ever want to play it *right* now.

The game is Boku to Sim no Machi (Me and my Sim's Town). Robin's been flying back and forth between SF and Tokyo and the Nintendo HQ in Kyoto over the last several months, and I know she's psyched that she can actually start talking about the game. And I'm glad too, because I want to hear more about it.

Ratings Preserve Hegemonic Power

Great, thought-provoking post by Danah Boyd on the movie, This Film is Not Yet Rated, a documentary about the MPAA and the values that go into rating films.

While most people i've talked to are fascinated with the legal (copyright, first amendment, etc.) issues involved, what i really enjoyed was the portrayal of how we leverage protectionist rhetoric and "child safety" to uphold hegemonic moral values that will aid industry. This isn't actually about the children; it's about maintenance of power.

I'm certain that much of the same criticisms can be applied to games and the ESRB - but I hope the ESRB can learn from the mistakes of the MPAA and evolve into a healthier organization. I often feel the game industry is dancing between the need to create massive explosions and massive sales, and the need to respond to societal neuroses.