(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]

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.