<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><span tabindex="-1" id=":1tw.6" style class="">Shira</span>, thank you for your clear and succinct response. The way you describe it, the tension between big markets (AAA games) and more specialized ones is not much different from the one between big budget (Hollywood, etc.) and indie films or popular writing (novels, etc.) and poetry, etc. Seen from that angle,it seems to me the tension is inherent to capitalism where the profit motive (selling to the largest market possible) is paramount, rather than gender prejudice (unless practiced unconsciously against economic self-interest) or any other kind of prejudice.<br><br></div>Or is it gender prejudice in the work place where certain jobs are not available to women or to gays, etc.? In relation to this, Audrey made a very interesting point: the split between humanities and computer sciences, there being fewer women in computer sciences. Does anyone remember Larry Sumner's comment that women are not good in sciences. There, prejudices definitely exist. It seems gender imbalance is endemic in Silicon Valley. Is it particularly, even more so in the field of digital games?<br><br></div><span tabindex="-1" id=":1tw.7" style class="">Shira</span> did you say more women play digital games than men? If so, I would have expected more games geared to "female sensibilities" (as there are "women's novels," etc.). Are there such games? Is there such a digital genre? The issue of content seems to be very important in the discussions here, but I am not clear in what way?<br><br></div>(Personally, I am not a personal devotee of games, digital or otherwise. I prefer involved crossword puzzles. My experience of them, in the nature of the clues they give, is that they are refreshingly androgynous.)<br><br></div>Ciao,<br></div>Murat<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 6:51 PM, Aubrey Anable <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aubrey.anable@utoronto.ca" target="_blank">aubrey.anable@utoronto.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div style="word-wrap:break-word">
<p class="MsoNormal">Shira—Thank you for putting some necessary pressure on the
discourse of being maligned. I found myself nodding vigorously in agreement to
the many good points made by Jen and Brenda.</p><p class="MsoNormal">I do think it’s important to celebrate the more diverse
gaming landscape that has developed over the past few years--in terms of whose
playing and whose designing games. My comments here have mostly been about my
frustrations with some blind spots in academic approaches to analyzing and
understanding games. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I
would like to suggest that the problems we have all been identifying--in the
industry, the culture, and in scholarly approaches--are connected. </p><p class="MsoNormal">For example, I think it is a problem that most game design
programs in North American universities are closely affiliated with Computer
Science. Computer Science departments have a big gender problem in terms of
being unable—for complex reasons—to attract and retain women in the field. If these
are the programs that feed into the gaming industry, we are still a long way
off from increasing the numbers of women in programming jobs. At the same time,
courses in “game studies” from a humanities or a social scientific approach are
taught elsewhere on campus, often with little or no direct connection with what’s
going on over in Computer Science. This is a problem that affects who goes to
work in the industry, what kind of work they do in the industry, and deepens
the divide between ways of knowing and understanding video games in the broader
culture.</p><p class="MsoNormal">And by the way, Brenda, I would love to hear your thoughts
on the deeper reasons behind GamerGate, as I’m sure others would.</p>
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<div style="word-wrap:break-word"><span style="border-collapse:separate;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;font-size:medium"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Aubrey Anable<br>Cinema Studies Institute </div><div style="word-wrap:break-word">University of Toronto<br>2 Sussex Ave.<br>Toronto, ON<br>M5S 1J5<br><br></div></span></div>
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