Re: [-empyre-] gender/emotion/

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@subtle.net>]

but then how many girls consistently play first person shooters in Sweden or
Australia or the us or the uk, or Mexico ..? (and im not talking about
academics or artists or curators)
when i briefly visited the demo session of independent games developers
conference in melbourne earlier this year http://www.free-play.org/
that some of our guests were at, there were very very very few women - it
seemed there were more female curators than developers.

perhaps part of the otherness for women in gaming is in inhabiting a
masculine role for a while....  i know for me its fun fro like 5 mins but i
get bored really quickly.. and want to do something else..  or maybe girls
just aren't really interrested and dont feel the need to do role playing or
crossdressing as much a boys ?

as eddo suggested maybe girls dont need to "break the rules" in the same way
as boys  do.. .. when i was at artschool i  had to do a project observing
kids playing in preschool .the little girls where really good and played
pretty quietly in their social networks, and the little boys all ran around
hit each other and yelled .. so unless we have a complete planetary social
revolution  girls aren't going to adopt the same sorts of games as boys..
girls play can be subversive in very different ways, and  i dont think
requiring girls to enact culturally in the same ways as boys is a very
useful trajectory. viva la difference..

and wouldn't emotion in games be dependent on the players sensitivity and
investment.. i can find emotion in marble statues.. in text based
environments like moos. , i can get extremely emotional about mailing list
posts,  or around  still visual artworks. i dont think you can actually
engage with anything , the television , the cat , the  computer or the
internet , let alone a game without actually feeling something..,  mild
amusement, the excitement of aggression, the slowing down of boredom, etc,
your  heart rate changes your breathing changes,  chemicals pump thru your
system just from visual and auditory stimuli and  doing tiny muscle
actions..

melinda



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ana Valdés" <agora@algonet.se>
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 7:53 PM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] gamesandgender


When I was in Palestine nobody except the boys played computer games.
Very few had computers at home, the boys played at gamemalls, the girl
were not allowed to do that. The boys played Counterstrike and Unreal.
To see what kind of games they own or copy or borrow I can recommend
Earthstation, a peer to peer download service managed from Jenin camp.
Its an amazin performance put together by some Palestinian, Israel and
Americans.
There you can download games, movies and songs who are most played in
the region, a lot its american. www.earthstationfive.com
Ana

josephine starrs wrote:

>> Hi, Ana, Welcome to empyre.
>>
>> It is a very interesting bio indeed, I wish to know more about you new
>> project "what happens behind the veil" maybe I can help you on it since
>> I live in middle-east + I am a game developer.
>>
>> Sincerely.
>>
>> Radwan
>
>
>
>
>
> hi anna
> i would also be interested to know more about your game 'what happens
> behind the viel"
>
> and I would like to ask radwan and anna whether you have any knowledge
> about whether young muslim women play computer games and what games
> they play.?
>
> for instance radwan, is 'under ash' popular with middle-eastern girls?
>
> josephine
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
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