Real Gamers Tumblr

All of these images have been taken from tumblr site http://realgamersrealquotes.tumblr.com. It's basically a collection of pretty ridiculous comments that game fans/ internet trolls have made, often with regards to females and the gay community. I've cherry picked the ones I would like to use in my publication. 

There's not a brain cell between this lot.

Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1576939?uid=3738032&uid=2134&uid=366990151&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=366990141&uid=60&sid=21103141174491

"The angled third person view of Lara Croft from behind and below and the shifting close up and wide angle camera shots effect a visual fragmentation of Lara's barbie like proportions." (Schleiner, 2001)

"Lara Croft can present for women and girls a possible entry point into the male discursive domain of computer games. Similar to the creation by male science fiction writers such as Alfred Bester and Samuel Delany of tough female heroines in cyberpunk fiction, predating the emergence of female science fiction writers and a female readership, the appearance of female heroines in computer games, albeit male constructions of femininity, can be seen as a first step." (Schleiner, 2001)

"Violent, capable and sexy women like Lara Croft might be better role models for girls than the few games that have been targeted specifically at girls, such as Ms Pacman, Barbie Fashion Designer and the non violent social games produced by Purple Moon. Whatever else she may be, Lara does not fit the "bimbo" stereotype." (Schleiner, 2001)

"From a feminist perspective it is important for women not to be excluded from this cycle or from the positions of influence in the larger information sector that will be increasingly tied into an education in gaming/computer geek culture." (Schleiner, 2001) 

Schleiner, A.M. , 2001. Does Lara Croft wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games. Leonardo, [online] Available at:<http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1576939?uid=3738032&uid=2134&uid=366990151&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=366990141&uid=60&sid=21103141174491> [Accessed 19 December 2013].

The embodiment of sexualized virtual selves: The Proteus effect and experiences of self-objectification via avatars

Jesse Fox, Jeremy N. Bailenson, Liz Tricase



"Also, rather than merely observing characters, users may embody characters in virtual worlds and experience the virtual body as their own, which has been shown to have stronger effects than passively watching them (Ahn, Le, & Bailenson, in press; Yee & Bailenson, 2009). Because of the enhanced realism, the opportunities for interactivity, and the experience of embodiment, it is possible that these representations will have powerful effects on users’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors offline." (Fox et. al, 2013)

"This study supported the Proteus effect and demonstrated that there are psychological consequences associated with embodying sexualised avatars. The findings here added new insights on the effects of exposure to sexualised representations in new media and what happens when images of the self are incorporated. Women who were embodied in sexualised avatars that resembled the self demonstrated greater rape myth acceptance than women who were embodied in other avatars. Women in sexualised avatars reported more body related thoughts than women in nonsexualised avatars, indicating that sexualised avatars may promote self objectifcation. It appears that users of sexualised avatars may be at risk for developing negative attitudes towards women and the self outside of the virtual environment." (Fox et. al, 2013)

"Why did seeing oneself sexualised yield negative attitudes toward rape victims? Possibly, the sexualised self might have triggered a form of self defense; that is, participants might have attributed blame to rape victims because they did not want to imagine themselves in a similar situation. Lonsway and Fitzgerald (1994) argued that women might perpetuate rape myths to justify why victims were raped and thus "reaffirm an individual's false sense if security that they are somehow immune to rape" (p.137). Another possibility is that seeing the suggestively dressed self might have triggered memories of being told by a parent or authority figure that dressing in such a manner was "asking for it," resulting in a sense of blame." (Fox et. al, 2013)

"These findings indicate that that wearing sexualised avatars in virtual environments and video games may lead to a similar experience of self objectification as women wearing revealing clothing in the physical world. " (Fox et. al, 2013) 

Bailenson, J., Fox, J., Tricase, L., 2013.  The embodiment of sexualized virtual selves: The Proteus effect and experiences of self-objectification via avatars, Computers in Human Behaviour [online] Available at:<http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2013/fox-chb-sexualized-virtual-selves.pdf> [Accessed 16 December 2013].

http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2013/fox-chb-sexualized-virtual-selves.pdf

Sexual Priming, Gender Stereotyping, and Likelihood to Sexually Harass: Examining the Cognitive Effects of Playing a Sexually-Explicit Video Game

By Mike Z. Yao, Chad Mahood, and Daniel Linz

"The present study attempts to fill this void by examining the short-term cognitive effects of playing a popular video game containing sexually explicit and female “objectification” content among male players. This laboratory based study addresses this critical gender-related social issue by testing theory that proposes psychological processes that are considered universal and employs a specific research methodology that is less affected by social and cultural factors that may influence study outcomes." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"At a basic level sexual content may simply be used for aesthetic purposes. At a more complex level sexual content may also be part of the main mechanics of a video game allowing players to directly control the sex act with virtual characters. Sex can also function as a form of reward. For example, in the popular Leisure Suit Larry video game series, players overcome various obstacles, such as winning poker games, solving puzzles, and answering trivia questions, in order to have sex with various female characters." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Sex in video games may also vary in terms of its degree. Sexual content may range from pure abstraction to extremely explicit depictions. For example, sex acts are merely suggested or assumed in many social simulation games such as The Sims. Teen-oriented games may contain some degree of partial nudity. In games that target adults the amount of sexual content may be significantly more and explicit.

Generally speaking, video games produced in the 21st century are both more interactive and have much better graphics than their predecessors from the 80 s and 90 s. Instead of performing a series of repetitive moves in prearranged and crudely depicted scenarios, game players can freely interact with intelligent and realistically animated computer avatars. Similarly, the sexual content in these newer video games also became more realistic and complex.

Third, video game sex can be understood in terms of its general purpose. Most obviously, sex depictions are inherently interesting and sex for sex’s sake serves the purpose of entertainment. These games also often enable players to explore their sexual fantasies through virtual characters or computer-mediated live partners. Sexual-oriented games may also serve the purpose of sex education. For example, The Sex Ed Game, allows parents and teens to play a trivia game together in order to stimulate serious discussions about sexuality in a fun environment. Game developers also use sexual content to convey realism in role-playing or simulation games. In such cases, sexual content would enhance the overall experience of the video game. Recent development in immersive systems and networking technologies even allow users to create their own adult content and simulate sex acts with other human-controlled avatars in realistically rendered virtual environments such as Second Life." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Most video games, whether specifically sexually-oriented or not, often feature hyper-sexualized female characters (Dietz 1998; Dill and Thill 2007; Ray 2004). Female heroines in action-based video games often wear sexy outfits barely covering their bodies." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Most female characters in video games are also stereotyped and objectified. Burgess et al. (2007) analyzed 250 console video game covers and found that females were more likely to be portrayed as ancillary characters, and that over two thirds of the female video game characters (as opposed to only about ten percent of male characters) were represented in stereotyped gender roles (e.g., damsel-in-distress and cheerleaders) or the subject of physical objectification. Similar findings were obtained from two recent content analyses of video game magazines (Dill and Thill 2007; Miller and Summers 2007). Dill and Thill (2007) found that female characters in video games were significantly more likely to be portrayed as sexualized, scantily clad, and as showing a mix of sex and aggression than male characters. An important research question naturally following from these content analyses, which guides the present research, is: “What are the effects of playing video games containing such sexually objectified depictions of females?” As a foundation for this research question, we first turn to past literature on the influence of mediated sexual content from traditional media sources."  (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Researchers have also examined the influence of sexual media content on men’s attitude towards women. For example, studies have shown that exposure to violent sexual content in which woman appears to be responsible for her own victimization or appears to be sexually aroused can result in changes in men’s cognitive appraisal and acceptance of sexual violence (Donnerstein et al. 1987). There also exists a body of empirical evidence to indicate that when men are exposed to sexually explicit material in which women are portrayed as sex objects who are receptive to any sexual advances, they would develop negative attitudes towards women (Gunter 2002; Linz and Malamuth 1993)." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Past research on gender portrayals in the media also suggests that gender stereotypical representations of both males and females would influence gender related attitude and perceptions (Scharrer 2005; Ward 2002). Operating from a cultivation effects perspective, which argues that long term and repeated exposure to television can alter viewers’ conceptions about social reality (Gerbner et al. 1980), researchers found an apparent correlation between the amount of television viewing and gender-role stereotyping among children and adolescents (Gunter 2002)." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Unlike empirical research on sex in traditional media there are only a handful of empirical studies examining the effects of sexual content in video games. In one of the only studies of the effects of sex in videogames (Brenick et al. 2007), 41 male and 46 female were exposed to gender stereotypes and to violence in video games, the results suggest that male who were avid players were more likely to condone negative stereotypes in games that sexually exploited females. In another study (Dill and Thill 2007), participants displayed strong gender stereotyping when asked to describe what the typical male and female character looked like; the single most often stated characteristic for females was “big boobs”." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Unlike viewers of television programs who simply watch other characters performing sexually-related behaviors, players of video games actually step into the role of the characters by virtually practicing these acts (i.e., strong identification). In addition, sexually oriented video games often directly offer rewards for sex (e.g., giving points for having sex with female characters) or use sex as a reward (e.g., showing sexual imageries after completing a designated task).

Based on the theoretical argument and research findings outlined above, it can be predicted that for males (a person variable) exposure to a video game that depicts females as sex objects (a situation variable) will be more susceptible to inappropriate sexual advances towards women." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"In this study we predicted that playing a sexually explicit video game with female “objectification” content would increase the accessibility of sex-related thoughts and a “female as sex object” schema. Eight types of words and nonwords in a lexical decision task were used to test these predictions. We expected that players of Leisure Suit Larry, the sexually explicit game, would have faster reaction time when recognizing sexual words and sexually objectifying descriptions of women than other types of words and nonwords of equal lengths, as compared to players of the two control games. A bivariate correlation analysis suggest that participants’ harmonic mean reaction times to the eight different word groups were significantly correlated (Pearson Correlation ranges from .464 to .801), A three-factor one-way multivariable analysis of variance (MANOVA), with the three game conditions as the independent variable and average harmonic mean reaction times to the eight word groups as dependent variables, was performed to test our hypotheses. This test revealed a significant multivariate effect for game condition (Wilk’s Lambda=.428, F(16, 128)=4.23, p<.000). To further examine the hypotheses, the between-subject effects were examined. Table 1 displays the results of these comparisons." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Our second hypothesis predicted that players of sexually-explicit video game in so far as it portrayed women as sex objects would be primed with thought about women as sex objects. A test of between-subject effects show that male players of Leisure Suit Larry responded significantly faster (F(2. 74)=8.852, p<.001, η2=.200) to sexually-objectifying descriptions of women (Mreaction time=571.42 ms,SD=70.99) than male players of the Sims II (Mreaction time=655.56 ms, SD=70.46) and PacMan II(Mreaction time=651.39 ms, SD=92.12). No significant difference was found for non-objectifying descriptions of female and the corresponding non-word controls. This finding lends support to Hypothesis Two." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Hypothesis Three predicted that individuals who played a sexually-charged video game with female characters as sex objects would display an increased self-reported tendency to sexually harass. A simple one-way ANOVA of participants’ LSH scores revealed a significant effect F(2. 74)=5.97, p<.01, η2=.126. Specifically, players of Leisure Suit Larry reported a significantly greater tendency to sexually harass (M=105.37, SD=20.25) than did players of the Sims (M=22.50, p<.01) and PacMan II (M=14.30, p<.05). Hypothesis Three is, therefore, supported." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"The results revealed that, as predicted, playing sexually-oriented video games significantly decreased male participants’ reaction time responding to sexual words and sexually objectifying words pertaining to women, as compared to neutral words and non-words and those participants in control conditions (Fig. 1). This is clear evidence that playing a sexually-oriented video game primes sex-related thoughts and increases accessibility to a negative gender schema of females as sex objects. This finding provides empirical support for the cognitive neoassociationistic perspective (Anderson and Bower 1973) and social information processing theory (Huesmann 1998) within the general framework of the general learning theory (Anderson and Bushman 2002)." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"More importantly, the present study found that playing a sexually-charged video game for merely 25 minutes might increase a self-reported tendency to engage in inappropriate sexual advances. This finding is particularly strong considering the potential for participants to wish to give socially-desirable responses." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"It should be noted that this study is not without its limitations. First, the present study focused primarily on immediate cognitive effects of playing sexually-oriented games. Future research should examine long-term effects. In addition, a typical video game may take hundreds of hours of playing time to complete. The effects of repeated experience on players’ cognition, emotion, attitude, and behavior should also be addressed.

Although the sexually-oriented video game chosen in the present research was a popular game title purchased by millions of game player, the use of a single game as treatment may have limited the generalizability of our findings. We cannot be sure if our findings can be extended to all sexually oriented video games. As discussed in the introduction, sexual content in video games may vary in degrees, representation, purpose, and function. Other factors such as humor and violence may also moderate the effects of sexual content. Furthermore, most existing media effects theories tend to focus on the influence of specific types of content (e.g., violence, sex, health, etc.); an implicit assumption in these theories is that the viewers will be exposed to the same content. However, the increasingly interactive video gaming experience would allow different players to see different content even when playing the same game. To what extent can these theories be applied to the video game effects research? Many interesting and important research questions are be addressed in future research. Nevertheless, our predictions about the effects of playing video games in which female characters were quite literally treated as sex objects were based on previous research findings and strong theoretical reasoning. We are confident that the results from this study would be applicable to games with similar content." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

"Even after recognizing these limitations, it is nevertheless clear from the findings reported here that there is now strong evidence for negative effects as a result of playing sexually-oriented video games. The present research is perhaps the first empirical study to systematically examining the effects of these types of video games, and the effects seem to be clear. Overall, the study provides strong empirical evidence that a sexually oriented video game with themes of female “objectification” may prime thoughts related to sex, encourage men to view women as sex objects, and increase the likelihood of self-reported tendencies to behave inappropriately toward women in social situations." (Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010)

Linz, D., Mahood, C., Yao, M.Z., 2010. Sexual Priming, Gender Stereotyping, and Likelihood to Sexually Harass: Examining the Cognitive Effects of Playing a Sexually-Explicit Video Game, Sex Roles, [online] Available at:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-009-9695-4 [Accessed 16th December 2013]. 

BAFTA Career Pathways Survey

http://static.bafta.org/files/career-survey-booklet-v8-online-1569.pdf

BAFTA, 2012. The Bafta Career Pathways Survey [pdf] BAFTA. Available at: <http://static.bafta.org/files/career-survey-booklet-v8-online-1569.pdf> [Accessed 19 December 2013].

The Independent Games Developers Association (TIGA)

UK VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY
The UK video games industry is the largest in Europe and the UK is a world class location for video game development. The UK boasts a substantial and highly qualified talent pool, some of the finest video games studios globally, technical as well as creative excellence, an ongoing ability to generate products that sell well globally and to create original video games IP. The UK is home to the studios that have developed video games such as Grand Theft Auto IV (the fastest selling entertainment product of all time), Runescape, the Fable series, Broken Sword and LittleBigPlanet.

The video game sector offers opportunities for growth and high value, high technology job creation for the UK. Estimates from PWC suggest that the global market for video games will grow from $52.5 billion in 2009 to $86.8 billion in 2014. TIGA's ambition is to make the UK the best place in the world to do games business and so enable the UK games industry and the UK economy to secure a growing share of this huge market.

The UK games development sector contributes approximately £1 billion to UK Gross Domestic Product  per annum.

The UK games industry employs over 9,000 highly skilled development staff, 80 per cent of whom are employed outside of London. 80 per cent of the workforce in game studios such as Climax, Jagex, Kuju Entertainment, Rebellion and Ubisoft Reflections are qualified to degree level or above.

The UK game development sector is R&D intensive. Two fifths of UK game developers have a budget dedicated to R&D. UK game developers spend on average 20 per cent of turnover on R&D.

UK game developers are export focused. 95 per cent of UK game businesses export at least some of their games/services to overseas markets.

The video games sector is also low carbon in output. Most of the work in games development involves design on computers, the packaging in games is minimal and box products are relatively light to manufacture and to transport. In the future, video games will become even more low carbon in nature as the industry moves towards digital distribution.

The Independent Games Developers Association, 2014. UK Video Games Industry. [online] Available at: <http://www.tiga.org/about-us-and-uk-games/uk-video-games-industry> [Accessed 9 January 2014]

Inclusion: What Jennifer Hepler's Story is all About

Gather around, boys and girls, and let me tell you a familiar story. It’s about a person who works in the game industry, who said some things about games five years ago. Then a week ago, some gamers took screenshots of those things and photoshopped them next to a picture of that person, a nickname that drew negative attention to the person’s physical appearance, some completely unrelated quotations (made to appear attributed to the person) and added a list of descriptive words: “CANCER INFECTION BLIGHT VERMIN DISEASE SEWAGE PLAGUE WASTE.” Then they put it up on Reddit, in post calling the person “the cancer that is killing Bioware.” Upvotes and downvotes were voted, gamer rage was raged, and eventually moderators on r/gaming deleted the post entirely because that person from the game industry had started getting harassing calls on her home phone.

Shortly afterward this Jennifer Hepler launched a twitter account tied with her professional identity and was immediately accosted by requests that she commit suicide; imprecations that verbally reduced her to her genitalia and implied low intelligence and lack of subjectively appealing physical qualities; and accusations of forcing gay characters “down gamer’s [sic] throats,” moreover, accusations that she had a “fetish” for such characters and relationships.

Oh, did I not mention that this person who works in the gaming industry is female? That’s because I don’t want this post to be about gamers hating women. Do I think the fact that Hepler is female made some of the vitriol leveled at her more vitriolic than it would have been otherwise? …Possibly. Do I think that there were misogynist aspects to the specific words that were chosen to be used against her? Absolutely. But I think what this is actually about is some gamers violently reacting to a perceived scapegoat that they can blame for a trend in games towards a greater measure of inclusivity, a topic that is related in a number of ways to the acceptance of women into gaming, both as fans and creators.

First, lets take a look at what Hepler actually said, in 2006, in an interview about her job in general and also her work on the upcoming title Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware’s new tactical RPG in the fantasy genre and the first video game that Hepler had ever worked on (she’d done work in television and tabletop games before). Here’s the only quote from the original enraging image posted that can actually be found, sourced, and credited to Hepler. I’m going to display it in its original context, with the clarifying positions Hepler made that were excised from the original image. The paragraphs that were in the image will be in italics.

What is your least favorite thing about working in the industry?

Playing the games. This is probably a terrible thing to admit, but it has definitely been the single most difficult thing for me. I came into the job out of a love of writing, not a love of playing games. While I enjoy the interactive aspects of gaming, if a game doesn’t have a good story, it’s very hard for me to get interested in playing it. Similarly, I’m really terrible at so many things which most games use incessantly — I have awful hand-eye coordination, I don’t like tactics, I don’t like fighting, I don’t like keeping track of inventory, and I can’t read a game map to save my life. This makes it very difficult for me to play to the myriad games I really should be keeping up on as our competition.

And with a baby on the way in a few months, my minimal free time (which makes it impossible for me to finish a big RPG in less than six months already), will disappear entirely. If there was a fast-forward feature on games which would let me easily review the writing and stories and skip the features that I find more frustrating than fun, I’d find it much easier to keep abreast of what’s happening in the field.

If you could tell developers of games to make sure to put one thing in games to appeal to a broader audience which includes women, what would that one thing be?

A fast-forward button. Games almost always include a way to “button through” dialogue without paying attention, because they understand that some players don’t enjoy listening to dialogue and they don’t want to stop their fun. Yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you’re a player who only enjoys the dialogue. In a game with sufficient story to be interesting without the fighting, there is no reason on earth that you can’t have a little button at the corner of the screen that you can click to skip to the end of the fighting.

Companies have a lot of objections, such as how to calculate loot and experience points for a player who doesn’t actually play the combats, but these could be easily addressed by simply figuring out an average or minimum amount of experience for every fight and awarding that.

The biggest objection is usually that skipping the fight scenes would make the game so much shorter, but to me, that’s the biggest perk. If you’re a woman, especially a mother, with dinner to prepare, kids’ homework to help with, and a lot of other demands on your time, you don’t need a game to be 100 hours long to hold your interest — especially if those 100 hours are primarily doing things you don’t enjoy. A fast forward button would give all players — not just women — the same options that we have with books or DVDs — to skim past the parts we don’t like and savor the ones we do. Over and over, women complain that they don’t like violence, or they don’t enjoy difficult and vertigo-inducing gameplay, yet this simple feature hasn’t been tried on any game I know of.

Granted, many games would have very little left if you removed the combat, but for a game like Deus Ex or Bioware’s RPGs, you could take out every shred of combat and still have an entertainment experience that rivals anything you’d see in the theater or on TV.

Wow, you say, that’s pretty nuts. A person who works in the game industry who doesn’t like playing games? I mean, what is there in a game besides combat? Well, in the case of titles like Bioware’s Dragon Age and Mass Effect, there’s dialogue and character interaction. A ton of it. They’re considered to be a part of the RPG genre, which means you’re playing a role… and you’re given opportunities to play that role in dense social interactions, as well as in real-time or strategy combat situations. Hepler actually talks about this elsewhere in the interview: she complains that one of the frequent responses to her work on games is skepticism, mostly from those unfamiliar with modern games, that games even need writers in the first place.

So, Hepler is one person, on a team of writers, which is partnered up with teams of developers, visual designers, and programmers and more in order to make a game. She herself downplays the effects that her thoughts have on the game she’s working on in the same interview. Her viewpoint (that of the non-hardcore gamer) is valued but not always shared by the diverse group working on the game: “I’ve been lucky that the design department here seems to appreciate that input…whether or not they end up acting on it.”

Lets take another look at something Hepler said in the interview:

I think that the biggest detriment to more varieties of games being made which appeal to women and casual gamers, is simply the fact that people who don’t love games don’t become game designers. A game company tends to be filled with people whose best memories come from the games they played, who spend all their time swapping war stories with other gamers, and it’s not too surprising that they end up wanting to make games that recapture those experiences. A lot of ground has been broken in other media when someone who is dissatisfied with his existing choices decides to try something new (Samuel Beckett comes to mind, as the self-professed playwright who hated drama).

I think as games become more mainstream, more people of more varied tastes will join the field, and that will include women. I think right now, though, the biggest hurdle from the point of view of the companies is how to reach women once you have a product they would like. Most women, certainly all women who aren’t active gamers, can’t be targeted by the typical ads in game magazines or on gaming websites. It’s much, much harder to tell someone who doesn’t yet knowthat they want your product to go out and buy it, than to convince someone who is already looking for his next gaming fix that yours will be the best.

Again, I really believe Bioware’s Jade Empire would be a fantastic first RPG experience for most women, but I doubt many even saw it who weren’t already fans. And because of this, Bioware is unlikely to produce any games that streamlined again, since their more hardcore audience didn’t like the lack of inventory, easy combat and other features which made it so newcomer-friendly. I really believe that there is a large group of women who enjoy other genre products (from fantasy romance novels, to anime, to the Lord of the Rings movies), who would enjoy an interactive RPG story with some of the more logistical challenges removed, but I honestly don’t know how to let them know it’s out there.

These last two paragraphs? They’re what a lot of people have been saying to the comic book industry when it shows reluctance to move out of its familiar demographic. Lets do some word swapping:

The biggest hurdle from the point of view of the companies is how to reach women once you have a product they would like. Most women, certainly all women who aren’t active comics readers, can’t be targeted by the typical ads in comics or on comics websites. It’s much, much harder to tell someone who doesn’t yet know that they want your product to go out and buy it, than to convince someone who is already looking for his next comic fix that yours will be the best.

But interesting commentary on artistic mediums that mainstream society has decided are not gender neutral aside, lets get back to the rage.

So what is this about? It’s about some gamers who are intimidated by the idea of the story told by a game being more accesible to every player, removing some of the prestige that comes with playing a game to completion. A prestige that is manufactured by gaming culture in the same way that sports culture awards prestige for, say, supporting a winning team. Which is not to denigrate such kinds of artificial prestige, but rather to say that they are made of what the culture makes them of, nothing more. The option to play in a less technically difficult way does not actually denigrate the efforts of others to play in a more technically difficult way.

And those who are intimidated by the idea that games are becoming more inclusive in their technical requirements of the player are responding to a trend. A trend that makes gaming more inclusive, which has the beneficial effect of mainstreaming gaming and makes steps towards removing its stigmatized nature. As gamer luminary Jerry Holkins said only this morning:

Most enthusiast gamers “get” Angry Birds almost immediately, and move on.  For those outside our order – that is to say, the vast majority of bipedal sentients – the ubiquitous Angry Birds is one of the first opportunities to understand what their children are always on about re: vijamagames.  It’s ridiculously easy to get and subsequently play, made so by the fact that even my grandparents carry around portable touchscreen computers with perpetual access to the dataverse.  This is something even a life ass-deep in science fiction did not prepare me for.

These games also introduce these neophytes to the concept of downloadable content, free and paid, which only feeds the demon furnace of their addiction.  They don’t know they’re on something “soft,” they aren’t aware that they’re at the bottom of the roller coaster.  They’re just doing something fun, at a chronojuncture where “something fun” often has a digital component.

It was weird!  Playing videogames used to be weird.  There was a point where spending your time in this way had strictly Morlock connotations.  My mom used to worry about what she called my “spirit man,” my spirit man, simply because I kept my curtains closed for weeks at a time in an effort to maintain proper monitor contrast!  Maybe it was more the isolation and esoteric knowledge requirements of early gaming that brought with them the attendant subterranean cache, as opposed to the strict form.  And now, with a game on a phone, you could conceivably play it anywhere.  You aren’t limited exclusively to the bulbous cap of some deep mushroom.

This intimidation in regards to inclusion (of easier play modes, setting aside the inclusion of characters who are something other than the majority demographic) is the same sort of thing that Patton Oswalt was talking about when he railed on geekdom becoming mainstream. It’s the hipstery fear that if others can like what you like than you’re not as special a snowflake as before, except with the added gamer claim that you’re a special snowflake because you completed a challenge. Well, allowing others to bypass that challenge to play the parts that they like isn’t doesn’t actually make completing the challenge less enjoyable… unless what you actually enjoy is bragging rights and not the experience itself.

So, it does not actually surprise me that some people took Hepler’s five-year-old statements made while she was a single writer in a massive video game production as a threat to their idea of what the gaming industry should be like. And it would not surprise me if the fact that she was a woman exacerbated the response, thought, as I said before, not what I want this post to be about.

As for the harassment, Jim Sterling, who I admittedly have excoriated before, has something relevant to say:

This is the kind of behavior that justifies the FOX News stereotype of the basement dwelling, antisocial nerd. This is the kind of behavior that makes the Spike VGAs look like the perfect gamer show — because it’s crass, immature, and it sports the emotional depth of a wet paper towel. That’s how gamers look when something like this happens.

Inclusion! It’ll get everybody to stop believing that games are only for basement dwelling, antisocial nerds! Just as soon as we can some of the people who play them to stop acting like basement dwelling, antisocial nerds!

The Mary Sue, 2012. Inclusion: What Jennifer Hepler's Story is all About. [online] Available at: <http://www.themarysue.com/inclusion-what-jennifer-heplers-story-is-all-about/> [Accessed 9 January 2014]