[-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2 on -empyre: GAMES AND REPRESENTATION
helen varley jamieson
helen at creative-catalyst.com
Thu Apr 9 18:26:14 AEST 2015
yes "computers as theater" has also been a very important book for me in
my journey; yay brenda laurel! :)
h : )
On 9/04/15 6:41 11AM, Ana Valdés wrote:
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>
>
> Hi empyre and all guests and specially to Brenda Laurel! Maybe you
> don't remember me, we met in Stockholm when the world was very young
> and the web was still unexplored :) I read at that time your excellent
> book "Computers as Theater" and I travelled later to Palo Alto to make
> an interview with you. At that time you were working at Interval
> Research and you were launching Purple Moon. I wrote at that time for
> Swedens largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, and I made enthusiastical
> reviews about all the games you launched. Games based on collaboration
> and networking, games without violence, games aimed to develop
> leadership and comradeship.
> I wrote a book called "Women at Internet" where my interview with you was
> published. Sadly the book is only available in Swedish :(
> Very nice to meet you again after all those years, you were a real
> pioneer and I am glad your work has been recognized in it's just value.
> Ana
>
> On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 6:41 PM, Brenda Laurel <blaurel at soe.ucsc.edu
> <mailto:blaurel at soe.ucsc.edu>> wrote:
>
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>
> I’ve been interested in gender issues in computer gaming for many
> years. In 1996, after 4 years of qualitative research with over
> 1000 girls and boys throughout the US, I co-founded Purple Moon, a
> company to create interactive media explicitly for 8-12-year-old
> girls. This was the “girl games” moment with many entries into the
> field from such companies as Her Interactive and Mattel with
> “Barbie Fashion Designer.” Purple Moon’s first mission was to
> learn as much as we could about how girls play and then to create
> interactive experiences that took advantage of these insights in
> order to encourage girls to put their hands on the machine. In
> this period, girls were extremely reluctant to play computer games
> and were generally both afraid of the technology and afflicted
> with the belief that using it would be gender-transgressive. As we
> did the interviews, however, another goal emerged that would
> overshadow the first. We saw the opportunity to meet girls where
> they were (including their social structures, dreams and fears).
> We strove to encourage through play a cultural intervention to
> counter the sort of female gender identity as promulgated by the
> enforcers of a consumerist, sexist status quo (exemplified by Mattel).
>
> We decided to make a cultural intervention in the definition of
> femininity itself, including stereotypes about beauty, proper
> behavior, intelligence, social interaction and self-esteem. Purple
> Moon lasted for about 3 years until its investors pulled their
> funding to move to web-based enterprises that promised greater
> valuations and profits. Just as we released our eighth game we
> were suddenly taken into Chapter 7 bankruptcy. We raided our real
> estate deposit to be sure that all 40+ employees went home with a
> paycheck that day. Later, we persuaded our investors to choose
> Chapter 11 bankruptcy instead so that the company might be sold.
> Purple Moon was eventually acquired and killed by Mattel, as were
> most of the girl game properties of the time, and the party was
> over. However, I still get mail at least once a week from former
> Purple Moon players thanking me for our efforts and testifying to
> the positive differences the games made in their lives. Usually I
> send them a copy of my book Utopian Entrepreneur that talks about
> how the sausage was made.
>
> More recently, I have done design research with my students on
> such topics as the construction of masculinity in relation to
> media with 6-year-old boys. I have just finished another design
> research project with my UCSC game design students looking at ways
> to make interventions for kids with math anxiety. Over the last
> three years I have become more closely affiliated with feminists
> in games as well as with the queer games movement. I believe that
> games can serve to disrupt stereotypes – most importantly, the
> stereotypes that young people apply to themselves. I also believe
> that the current efflorescence in queer gaming reflects a desire
> to create social and personal spaces where one feels safe and
> happy in one’s own skin. I see games as a powerful force for
> cultural intervention in stereotypical identities and as places
> where one may investigate alternative versions of one’s own identity.
>
>
> On Apr 8, 2015, at 1:56 PM, Soraya Murray <semurray at ucsc.edu
> <mailto:semurray at ucsc.edu>> wrote:
>
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>> Welcome to WEEK 2 of -empyre's April 2015 discussion dedicated to
>> Digital Media and the Interstices of Identity.
>>
>> The WEEK 2 theme focuses on issues of GAMES AND REPRESENTATION.
>> These matters have dramatically come to the fore in recent
>> months, although in truth these challenges have faced the games
>> industry and its visual cultural production since its inception.
>> #GamerGate, which purports itself to be about ethics in games
>> journalism, came in the form of misogynistic treatment and
>> violent threats against outspoken women in games who were labeled
>> "Social Justice Warriors" out to destroy games by demanding the
>> industry adhere to so-called PC politics. Women have been
>> threatened, like Anita Sarkeesian, who critiques games for their
>> sexism, and Zoey Quinn, an alternative game designer publicly and
>> falsely maligned by her ex on his blog, setting off a firestorm
>> of debate about her, but also about the state of games criticism.
>> Their private information has been hacked, circulated online with
>> the entreatment that they should be harmed or even killed. In any
>> event, recent games 'culture wars', notably (but not exclusively)
>> #GamerGate, definitively confirmed that games traffic in the
>> politics of representation, just as any other form of mass media.
>> Among other things, the burgeoning indie and alternative games
>> movement(s) happening strike a hopeful note that games and their
>> representations can be more, and can be better than the dominant
>> industry would offer. Also, the demographics of those who play
>> have changed, making the term "gamer" (a label which is under its
>> own duress) potentially more diverse than ever.
>>
>> I'm interested to hear from our many guests, some newer to games,
>> some who have been in and around the industry for many years,
>> about their sense of the terrain. As with last week's guests, I
>> would like to begin by asking each of our discussants to talk a
>> little bit about a recent project, and outline some of their
>> intellectual investments, or individual "stake" in the week's topic.
>>
>>
>> Guests for Week 2: GAMES AND REPRESENTATION
>> Shira Chess (US) / Brenda Laurel (US) / Jennifer Malkowski (US) /
>> Stacey Mason (US) / TreaAndrea Russworm (US) / Sarah Schoemann
>> (US) /
>>
>> Biographies:
>>
>> SHIRA CHESS is a critical/cultural theorist whose work
>> interrogates several aspects of gaming and digital culture. Her
>> primary research project considers ways which women gamers are
>> marginalized: through industry conventions, textual constructs,
>> and audience placements of the games deliberately designed for
>> this audience. Recent published articles have examined the
>> #GamerGate phenomenon, as well as several casual game designs,
>> and the use of romance in video games. Additionally, her research
>> also deals with broader aspects of digital culture and pervasive
>> gaming, such as Ingress, Alternate Reality Gaming, and the
>> Slender Man. Recently she co-authored Folklore, Horror Stories,
>> and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology
>> (Palgrave, 2014). Her research on gaming and digital culture has
>> been published in Critical Studies in Media Communication; The
>> Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media; Feminist Media
>> Studies; New Media & Society; Games and Culture; and Information,
>> Communication & Society as well as several essay collections. She
>> is an Assistant Professor of Mass Media Arts at the Grady College
>> of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of
>> Georgia. Information on her research can be found at
>> http://www.shirachess.com.
>>
>>
>> BRENDA LAUREL has worked in interactive media since 1976 as a
>> designer, researcher, writer and teacher. She worked in the
>> computer game industry from Atari to Activision. She also worked
>> in research labs at Atari, Interval Research, and Sun Labs where
>> she was a Distinguished Engineer. She currently serves as an
>> adjunct professor in Computational Media and research associate
>> in the Digital Arts and New Media programs at U. C. Santa Cruz.
>> Her current work focuses on design research and learning tools.
>> She served as founding chair of the Graduate Program in Design at
>> California College of Arts from 2006 to 2012. She designed and
>> chaired the Graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College
>> of Design in Pasadena (2001-2006 <tel:%282001-2006>). Based on
>> her research in gender and technology at Interval Research
>> (1992-1996), she co-founded Purple Moon in 1996 to create
>> interactive media for girls. In 1990 she co-founded Telepresence
>> Research, focusing on virtual reality and remote presence. Her
>> books include The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design (1990),
>> Utopian Entrepreneur (2001), and Design Research: Methods and
>> Perspectives (2004), and Computers as Theatre, Second Edition
>> (2014). She earned her BA (1972) from DePauw University and her
>> MFA (1975) and PhD in Theatre (1986) from the Ohio State University.
>>
>>
>> JENNIFER MALKOWSKI (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley) is
>> Assistant Professor of Comparative Media Studies and Film Studies
>> at Miami University of Ohio. Her book manuscript Dying in Full
>> Detail: Mortality and Digital Documentary is under contract at
>> Duke University Press, and her work has been published in Jump
>> Cut, Film Quarterly, and the anthology Queers in American Popular
>> Culture. She is also co-editing a collection, Identity Matters:
>> Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Game Studies.
>>
>>
>> STACEY MASON is a writer, critic, and researcher of interactive
>> narratives. She is currently working toward her Ph.D. in Computer
>> Science with the Expressive Intelligence Studio at the University
>> of California, Santa Cruz. Stacey formerly worked as an editor of
>> interactive literature for Eastgate Systems, a renowned publisher
>> of hypertext literature. She also writes about feminism and
>> gaming culture, and advocates for women in gaming and tech
>> industries.
>>
>>
>> TREAANDREA M. RUSSWORM received her Ph.D. in English from The
>> University of Chicago. Currently an Assistant Professor of
>> English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, her articles
>> and book chapters have appeared in Teaching Media, Flow, and in
>> the anthologies Watching While Black and Game On, Hollywood! She
>> is the co-editor of two edited collections, From Madea to Media
>> Mogul: Theorizing Tyler Perry, and Identity Matters: Race,
>> Gender, and Sexuality in Video Game Studies. Professor
>> Russworm’s monograph, Blackness is Burning, is about race,
>> popular culture, and the problem of recognition.
>>
>>
>> SARAH SCHOEMANN is the founder of Different Games and a doctoral
>> student in Digital Media at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her
>> research on interactive tech and games investigates the
>> implications of accessible media and tech as tools for personal
>> expression and social critique within various communities of
>> practice. She is interested in considering the ways the work of
>> individual creators and communities can speak to broader issues
>> of equity and social justice, both online and off. More
>> information may be found at: www.sarahschoemann.com
>> <http://www.sarahschoemann.com>
>>
>> ___________________________
>> Soraya Murray, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor
>> Film + Digital Media Department
>> University of California, Santa Cruz
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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--
helen varley jamieson
helen at creative-catalyst.com <mailto:helen at creative-catalyst.com>
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.talesfromthetowpath.net
http://www.upstage.org.nz
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