(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

In light of Activision-Blizzard's RealIDFail, it's dawned on me that there is a sizable void.

There are lots of women who play games. There are no developers catering to them.

Gaming has been historically extremely male-centered. The stereotypical gamer is a teen boy in his parents' basement hunched over an XBox or a Nintendo. The stereotypical game designer is a man who, ten years ago, was that boy. Game designers target boys' and men's idea of fun. Game advertisers target the interests of boys and men. And, as RealIDFail demonstrates quite clearly, game developers have little interest in the specific concerns of women online, where those concerns differ from men's, or in the specific ways in which women use social networks differently from men.

I'm cherry-picking my examples here for emphasis, but as anyone in the wide world of woman-gamer blogging can tell you, dealing with misogyny -- as well as racism, homophobia, and transphobia -- in the gamer universe or in game advertising or content is an everyday thing.

So... why should we? Make that trade-off to play games we enjoy, I mean?

If there are any development studios with an anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-'phobic perspective, I want to find out who and where they are. A very cursory google search does not reveal the names of any studios developing from this perspective.

If there aren't... I want to play a role in founding one. Anyone else interested?

Comments

Re: RealID: JANE SIXPACK JENKINS

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

People of all skill sets and abilities will be needed.

Re: RealID: JANE SIXPACK JENKINS

[theflamecrow.livejournal.com]

Roommate forgot trans people...

Re: RealID: JANE SIXPACK JENKINS

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The semi-comprehensive list I assembled yesterday of people largely affected by this was:
* women
* transgender folk
* gay/lesbian/bisexual folk
* people whose names ID them as belonging to an ethnic minority
* people with unusual names
* famous people & celebrities
* people who work in law enforcement
* soldiers & military officers
* government employees
* people in the witness protection program
* professionals
* academics
* registered sex offenders
* minors (though I think minors aren't allowed to have an account in their name)

Re: RealID: JANE SIXPACK JENKINS

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Our son's account is in his name. Whether it originally was, or I changed it at some point to make it more his, I don't know - but at any rate, one cannot now change the name on one's account without sending in two scanned forms of legal ID showing a legal name change. I suppose this means if it never was your legal name in the first place, you can NEVER change your name. I don't know of any online service aside from Facebook that is so insistent that your real, legal name be used (and I don't even have my legal name on Facebook - I suppose they would permaban me if they found out and I'm considering closing my account there at this point anyway for multiple reasons) - but if all this about a Blizz-Facebook merger is true, it makes sense. Trouble is, people are angry over the Facebook issues too. Somewhere yesterday I saw a graph of the big change in deleted facebook pages over the last week among certain demographics - let me see if I can find that again.

Re: RealID: JANE SIXPACK JENKINS

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is, even though Acti-Blizz is supposedly emulating Facebook, even Facebook's privacy options are far better than RealID. Acti-Blizz is not making any of this optional, and as I said to lassiter above, I think they will likely spring on us, one day, quietly, a new TOS that gives consent to have our names shared with other players and "trusted business partners" (with personally-tailored special offers of course). Anyone who waits for it to get to that point will find themselves staring at the screen having to make a split-second choice of whether to keep playing or not.

Re: RealID: JANE SIXPACK JENKINS

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

I just checked something on facebook and actually found it was more public than I thought - there's a subtly hidden link on the privacy options, above the basic default ones where you just go through the friends only check off list. Go to basic profile information - I did that and managed to make myself pretty much totally unsearchable now. If you aren't logged in, you can't see my profile at all. It gives you an error page. My email is unsearchable even if you are logged in. That's the level of privacy I prefer.

Re: RealID: JANE SIXPACK JENKINS

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

It is because the most recent generation has grown up under CONSTANT SCRUTINY.

Yes. They also are unlikely to have experienced some of the pitfalls that come with blindly trusting people.

Our society is shifting, by degrees, to a state where privacy doesn't exist. Each change acclimatizes us just a little bit more to the post-privacy world. Some have been talking about the RealID controversy as an historic event. That could be overstating it, but they may be right: what happens this week could very well decide the future of privacy in online gaming, which in the last ten years has become very suddenly an iconic aspect of American society.

Interestingly, I've been reading that teenagers are not embracing Twitter. They may not be quite as eager as we think to live under continual scrutiny. We'll see.

And... oh yes, any endeavor I launch will NOT be a fucking Barbie doll makeup dress-up game.