When I opened the latest issue of Game Informer magazine I was surprised to see a quote from my own GDC talk “Equality or GTFO: Navigating the Gendered Minefield of Online Gaming Spaces.”   The section titled “Overheard at GDC” features many female voices including Robin Hunicke, Brenda Romero, Susan O’Connor and Elizabeth Sampat discussing their desire for a more inclusive gaming industry. “With thousands of programmers, animators, and producers in attendance, the Game Developers Conference is a great place to take the pulse of the industry.  This year, much of the chatter had to do with challenging the game industry to move out of its comfort zone, whether that be escaping well-worn game design conventions, embracing more diverse characters, or making the development culture more inclusive to women.”
Zoom Info
When I opened the latest issue of Game Informer magazine I was surprised to see a quote from my own GDC talk “Equality or GTFO: Navigating the Gendered Minefield of Online Gaming Spaces.”   The section titled “Overheard at GDC” features many female voices including Robin Hunicke, Brenda Romero, Susan O’Connor and Elizabeth Sampat discussing their desire for a more inclusive gaming industry. “With thousands of programmers, animators, and producers in attendance, the Game Developers Conference is a great place to take the pulse of the industry.  This year, much of the chatter had to do with challenging the game industry to move out of its comfort zone, whether that be escaping well-worn game design conventions, embracing more diverse characters, or making the development culture more inclusive to women.”
Zoom Info

When I opened the latest issue of Game Informer magazine I was surprised to see a quote from my own GDC talk “Equality or GTFO: Navigating the Gendered Minefield of Online Gaming Spaces.”  

The section titled “Overheard at GDC” features many female voices including Robin Hunicke, Brenda Romero, Susan O’Connor and Elizabeth Sampat discussing their desire for a more inclusive gaming industry.

“With thousands of programmers, animators, and producers in attendance, the Game Developers Conference is a great place to take the pulse of the industry.  This year, much of the chatter had to do with challenging the game industry to move out of its comfort zone, whether that be escaping well-worn game design conventions, embracing more diverse characters, or making the development culture more inclusive to women.”

I recently spoke with CNN International about online harassment. I have to say I was a little taken aback by how terrible the interviewer was. Predictably they tried to frame me as a “victim of trolls” but I did my best to try to re-direct the conversation to a more systemic big picture understanding of the problem.

Note: As always don’t read the comments on YouTube.

While working on my upcoming video series Tropes vs Women in Video Games, I was reminded of the first remix I made but never publicly released.  It was back in 2009 during a grad school course called “Cultural Studies of Educational Technology” taught by Jennifer Jenson at York University.  The 3 1/2 minute remix is a little rough around the edges but I thought I’d pull it out of the archives and share it with you.   In this transformative work, I combined game footage with clips from popular televisions shows - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Angel and Bones.

Here’s what I wrote about the remix when I was back in school:

Taking theoretical ideas and expressing them through art can often create tension between what is viewed and what is intended.  This mashup assignment is no different.  As I thought through the ideas and concepts we read surrounding video games as educational tools, I began to think about the place video games have in pop culture: a source of amusement, often played by and/or marketed to boys, and the (erroneous) notion that it lacks any educational value.  My remix is twofold:  the first and primary aspect is intended to explore the ways that video games can facilitate problem solving skills, pedagogical techniques for sharing skills and information with peers or with those who know more or less about a specific topic.  The secondary aspect is a critical look at the fan boy culture of video games and the systemic misogyny and/or sexism prevalent in many popular games… and I tried to wrap it all up in a fun, amusing and accessible format.