<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div>"... when our culture discusses videogames, it mentions
corporations, blockbusters, and a hyper-masculinized “gaming”
culture. rarely does the idea of the small, authored,
self-published game get much air in our discussion of art, even
though it’s these games that are the most important to games’
relevance to a broader range of human experience. nothing is more
harmful to an art form than a monolithic perspective or the
restriction of the means of creation to a privileged few."<br><br></div>The above quote from Isabelle's post parallels the idea I expressed in my own that the tensions that exist in the game community (relating to gender or otherwise) exists in a capitalist economy in general where numbers play a crucial part: between mainstream and indie or popular literature and poetry, etc. My world is a community of poets where a sale of 300 copies of a poetry book is considered a reasonable success (whether written by a woman or a man) and sales reaching over 2,000 would be considered a smashing hit.<br><br></div>Shira, thank you again for your lucid response. I was struck by what seems to be a statistical contradiction in your account. You assert that about 50% of players of digital games are women. At the same time, the majority of users of AAA consuls are men. Does that mean that women tend to use mobile devices to play games? If that is partially so, then the contradiction has a temporal dimension, mobile devices (iphones, etc.) being a more contemporary use of digital access than consuls or desktops. In that case, the discrepancy may reflect the social evolution on gender and sexual identity issues. It is a hopeful sign, a sign of progress. This doesn't mean that the misogynistic culture that seems to be around AAA games will vanish, only that its existence will become less dominant unless it changes itself, more with a touch of the archaic.<br><br></div>Isabelle's entire post shows, at least to me, that vital critical work is being created by women digital artists in our time. That mainstream forces (such as in France) will try to ignore or restrict the propagation of its messages goes without saying. But that is the lot of every radical or confrontational art. Its lucky practitioners must accept it.<br><br></div>Ciao,<br></div>Murat<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 3:06 PM, Soraya Murray <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:semurray@ucsc.edu" target="_blank">semurray@ucsc.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
Dear All,<br>
<br>
</span>I would like to heartily thank Brenda Laurel, Shira Chess, Stacey Mason, Sarah Schoemann, TreaAndrea Russworm and Jen Malkowski for their thoughtful and compelling contributions to this week's discussion on Games and Representation. We could surely have dedicated an entire month to this conversation. Thanks, too, to all the empyreans who joined in. I'm excited by the rich opportunities and avenues of inquiry that largely remain undiscovered in the study of games. There is a great deal of work to be done in this relatively new area, and I am particularly heartened by the ways in which a new generation of players, makers, critics and scholars are taking this burgeoning medium into their own hands in new and exciting ways.<br>
<br>
In a separate post, I will begin this week's conversation, generally grouped around the subject of the Internet and Representation.<br>
<br>
With appreciation,<br>
Soraya<br>
<span class="im HOEnZb"><br>
___________________________<br>
Soraya Murray, Ph.D.<br>
Assistant Professor<br>
Film + Digital Media Department<br>
</span><span class="im HOEnZb">University of California, Santa Cruz<br>
<br>
</span><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>