Category Archives: Game Culture

Women game bloggers

18 March 2007

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Every now and then a ‘battle of the sexes’ discussion comes up in the gaming blogosphere which always stirs up a loud debate. Personally I think these debates can be healthy because I’m always introduced to new voices, which I enjoy. I may be getting old because I really don’t get provoked by the sexist comments – instead they just make me chuckle.

Recently Crecente from Kotaku wondered why there aren’t more female gaming bloggers. Apparently Kotaku’s looking to expand their repertoire and want to include a female voice in their writing staff – well good for them.

The shocker, however was:

‘But despite my digging around and my somewhat overt nosing around at GDC, I was hard-pressed to find the same sort of, for lack of a better term, job pool that I usually find with male writers.’

My experience coincides with ‘Always Makes Me LOL’ Amber Night:

‘This seems a little strange to me, since my own experience has been that there is fairly large pool of female bloggers in the gaming space’

I find it incredibly odd. And I have to admit that a thought passed through my mind wondering if Crecente posted this piece just so we could point him in the right direction so he didn’t have to bother looking.

So yet again ‘the battle of the sexes’ discussion has produced something wonderful. One Hundred Little Dolls has written a list of female gaming bloggers and I’m sure we’ll see it growing too! A joy to see some locals on the list: Jill Walker, Hilde Corneliussen and Torill Mortensen – I’m so proud! I can’t wait to go on a little link adventure and explore these blogs! Wouldn’t it be precious if T.L. Taylor started blogging?!

flOw

5 March 2007

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I remember reading small tidbits of information about this game – but hadn’t tried it until now. It’s absolutely stunning!

flOw is a masters in fine arts thesis by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark at the University of Southern California. From what I understand, they’ve used Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow to investigate why some games are more mesmerising than others. I haven’t read the thesis yet, but the game is just luscious and beautiful!

I can’t help but feel like I’m meditating while playing! So play!

Interactive Australia 2007

31 January 2007

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The Centre for New Media Research & Education (which looks really cool, by the way) at Bond University in Australia has published a report that:

“…provides data on who is playing games in Australia, what their attitudes and behaviours are like compared with non-gamers, the nature of the games market, the importance of games in the family experience and the role of online access in game purchasing and play.
The study is based on a national random sample of 1,606 Australian households who responded to more than 75 questions and over 300 data points in a 15-minute online survey run by ACNielsen Surveys Australia in late September 2006. Two units of analysis are explored in the study: the household and the player individual within the household.”

It’s interesting data. Nothing that really surprises me – but nice to see such reports finding nice little heartwarming details such as:

“Parents and children are increasingly playing together. 35% of gamers are parents.”

I would really like to see the questions asked though, because it seems just a tad too optimistic – too good to be true, in a way. But then I’ve always been skeptical to such things as I’ve done my fair share of phone surveys. ;)

The Joy of Joichi Ito

13 January 2007

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Joi Ito is such a gem! He’s a joy to listen to and his thoughts encompass so much about what’s going on in cyberspace (although in this presentation he says he doesn’t believe in cyberspace anymore – and with good reasoning). I’m in awe of this man – smart, insightful and sees ‘the big picture’. I certainly enjoyed this presentation of WoW and hope you do, as well. He talks about everything, how players relate to each other, how ‘real’ the experiences are, the use of voice communication in MMORPGs, the interface design of a guild leader, the differences between Second Life and World of Warcraft , user-generated content and so much more. The presentation is from The Chaos Communication Congress. Enjoy!

Joichi Ito is the founder and CEO of Neoteny, which is a venture capital firm “committed to helping entrepreneurs build sustainable information technology businesses”. And I’m just going to cut’n’paste from Wikipedia here:

Continue reading →

MMORPG professionals

13 January 2007

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Raph Koster writes about a new group that calls themselves “The Virtual Citizenship Association”. It’s a new group advocating virtual citizen ehm ‘rights’. In his blogpost he points out the relevant problems with their social contract – which I completely agree with – so I’m not going to bother repeating it all in my own words here – you should just read it – I can’t do his words justice here!
But entering the site – I was quite intrigued by how they define themselves:

“We’re a group of MMORPG professionals, people who enjoy playing in online universes in general and people who advocate the use of Free Software.”

I find that interesting. When I think of ‘MMORPG proffesionals’ I think of game operators and designers – not players, but it’s a relevant point! Why shouldn’t players be labeled as MMORPG professionals? I kinda like it – it tickled me!
As for what they’re advocating, I agree with Koster when he writes:

“I’d prefer any such social contract to focus more on how operators have to treat players, than on forcing particular business models on operators.”

Too right!

And in case you don’t have the time to read the comments, I have to paste glorious Mr. Bartle’s comment – where would this industry be without his precious sense of humor?

“Why is it that these “players’ rights” advocates always target the virtual world developers and never the people who run guilds?

Richard

PS: Wouldn’t it be amusing if a virtual world developer banned membership of such organisations under its EULA?”

Ryzom

2 December 2006

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I’m busy editing and administrating my references – so just a quick stop to tell you about Ryzom!!!

The community of MMORPG Ryzom is trying to buy the game to save it!!! Apparently Nevrax, the producers of the game are in trouble (I’m not sure what that’s about) and the company’s in danger of entering non-existence – if this happens The Free Ryzom Campaign will by the source code and distribute it for free!

“Rather than just consuming the game, everyone will be able to contribute to it.” – Xavier Antoviaque, a founder of the campaig and an ex-employee of Nevrax.

It’s such a beautiful gesture – but my skepticism is shadowing the whole thing! I’m not sure this is a good idea! But a great way for gamers to show initiative and save a world! That’s just so admirable!!

Source: BBC