[-empyre-] Forward from Ana Valdes

[Timothy Conway Murray]

For some reason, Ana Valdes came onto my screen as blank.  I've copied her message from the Archive set for those who have experienced the same problem.  Please pardon any duplication but we've heard from a few subscribers that they've recently been experiencing translation issues with a few posts and I've discovered that I occasionally have the same problem.  Please remember to set your e-mail to 'plain text' when sending things to -empyre- (that helps).  Best,  Tim

I started to review computergames when the computers were primitive and the
graphics poor, games made for Commodore 64, Spectrum, Atari. The year was
1988 and I played Seven Cities of Gold and wonderful textgames, Leather
Goddesses of Phobos and many more. The games were considered at that time
entertainment for children and for nerds. The narrative was pueril and the
gender inexistent, the main characters were boys with shiny weapons and
their reward after fighting and defeating trolls and drakes and demons was
to marry the princess and rule the kingdom.
Middle Age ruled and few games were urban, glorious exception was Larry
Leisure Suit :)
The most modern of the arts was the bearer of ancient and old fashioned
tales where the rites of passage were only relevant for boys.
I wrote a book about digital cultural and games and interviewed Brenda
Laurel and Roberta Williams. Brenda worked at that time at Atari Lab and
later in Interval, the institute sponsored by Paul Allen, cofounder of
Microsoft. With his support Brenda launched Purple Moon, a label for
computer games for girls. They went bankrupt some years later when Allen
pulled out the support, the argument was the market was not ready for games
for girls.
And Roberta was one of the geniouses behind King's Quest and Lara Croft,
the dagger of Ahmon Ra and the Colonel's Bequest, two nice and enjoyable
adventure games with a female main character.
The year is now 2013 and the games are still made for a 14-year white
teenage boy as target.
Ana


Director, Society for the Humanities
Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
A. D. White House
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York. 14853
________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Ana Valdés [agora158 at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2013 3:33 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Art cred and advocacy

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