Game on Girl

Hello everyone and welcome to Game on Girl the podcast!

Episode #1 – What Does it Mean to be a gamer?

Please follow and subscribe to my new podcast available here or click play on the player below!  This first show discusses two of the main questions from the interviews, namely “How do you define a gamer?” and “What does it mean to be a gamer?”  This episode is a compilation of the interviews I conducted but as the show evolves I’ll be conducting new interviews.  If you’d like to chat about gaming, and game culture, send me an email.

Here are some links that are relevant to this episode:

In this episode we heard from Callie, Hontou, Carmen Grey, PinkGeek, and McSherrie. Click the link to read their quotes.

Some other links we talk about during the show:

Team Unicorn

Frag Dolls

Source for play time in Bejeweled Blitz.

TripleFox on Jamendo – Episode Theme Song, “Good Day”

Game On Girl in iTunes.

This podcast was produced using Audacity and is licensed under the Creative Commons.

Game on!
Regina

Greetings Gamers,

This is just a quick update. I know I said I would have something new up on the site by the end of January and although it’s not completely finished at this very moment, it is very, very close to being done.

So the first Game on Girl Podcast will be available by the end of the week!

I am using sound clips from half a dozen of the interviews that I did, editing them together on the theme of “What does it mean to be a gamer?”  It’s been a bit of a challenge for me, mostly on the technical side of things, because before a few weeks ago I knew very little about sound editing.  I am more than two thirds finished with the first episode (which will be about half an hour long) and am very excited to share my research this way with you all. There are a lot of searches that find this site looking for “gamer girl quotes” and let me just say, the podcast will be filled with real women talking about gaming.

I will mention this in the episode itself but I am currently looking for a co-host.  If you are interested in helping me discuss games and interview gamers, please drop me an email or sent me a Tweet @doclizz.

Game on!
Regina

Greetings, Gentle Reader,

I am painfully aware of my lack of posts here and the promises I made to write up gamer profiles from the research interviews I conducted.  I have found finishing the dissertation and considering my future plans to be an overwhelming process, one that demanded I take stock of what I really want as opposed to what I am expected to want at this point in my career. So the six months since my last post have been a time of hearty reflection and upheaval in my life.

Now that some of that upheaval has leveled out and I have more time on my hands, I am turning my attention back to writing and producing something exciting for this website.  It is the first time since the early stages of my dissertation research that I have been really excited about something.

So I ask you to watch this space and publicly make the promise that a new and exciting post will be available before January 31st, something that will start with the research I did for my dissertation and hopefully build into something bigger.

So stay tuned and in the meantime,

Game on!
Regina

PS I wrote this for my more casual, personal blog but I felt it belonged here, too. Don’t worry – the gamer profiles are in the works.  I am just enjoying my time off deadline.

Hi Everyone -

I just wanted to post a quick update and share with you some of the fun from my graduation day.  I made sure we were all represented as I walked across the stage and was “hooded” for my Ph.D.

I have to thank Chris for helping me finish the lettering before the ceremony since my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.  He was kind en0ugh to take over for me and it turned out better than I hoped.  :-)

Since all the pompt and circumstance is over with, my final grades are submitted for my teaching assistantship, and I’m officially DONE, I’ve been thinking about what to do next with the dissertation.  I want to look into reworking what I have into a popular book.  This means a lot more editing than trying to get it published by an academic press, since I’ll have to cut out and edit a lot of the material that is in there now.  It also means I can focus more completely on the stories you all shared with me.

So what I am going to do to get my creative juices flowing again is to post gamer profiles for each of the participants from my study.  This will serve two purposes, the first being getting myself back into the writing mindset, but second, it will also allow you all to see each other’s stories and see why I was so very excited to talk to you all.

I have no idea how quickly I will be producing these – in some cases, I have to go back into materials that I haven’t really looked at for months – and I won’t be doing them in any particular order.  But keep an eye out because I think you’ll really enjoy reading them.

Game on!
Regina

Hi Everyone -

I have posted the introductory chapter of the dissertation to the site.

I know – FINALLY!  ;-)

Granted, this is a pre-defense draft so there still may be some changes to come but this is what I am presenting to my committee on Friday.  You can check it out here or go to the Dissertation page at the top and click the link for Chapter One.  Please keep in mind that the bibliography is a separate page and I think I caught all the block quotes (which I don’t know how to format in HTML — ah all the things I still have to learn!) and put quotation marks around them.

Let me know if you have any thoughts, ideas, or comments!

Game on!
Regina

As another preview of coming events, here are the acknowledgements from the dissertation:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Although it’s usually standard to thank your committee first, I have a larger group of women to thank: the women who participated in my dissertation study and took the time to talk to me about the role of gaming in their lives.  I was inspired, encouraged, and challenged to make this dissertation the best it could be because of their words.  This project would not exist without the time, interest and ever exciting and engaging thoughts and ideas about what it means to be a gamer they so kindly shared with me.  I humbly hope that each participant feels well represented in the pages that follow.

I also need to thank The Guild and the manager of their Twitter feed, Brian Kameoka, for taking mere seconds to tweet my research site and allowing this dissertation to have a nationwide participation pool.  It was mere moments for him and days and hours of exciting research for me.  Wil Wheaton also bestowed upon me a +5 to defense of dissertation Blue Star of Awesome, and for that, I am forever grateful.

I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, Carol Siegel, Pam Bettis, and Kristin Arola, for their endless support and encouragement throughout my work on this dissertation.  After a difficult beginning to my program, finding the three of you was the solid foundation I needed to succeed.  Thank you.

For being the best “boss” I could imagine, I would like to thank Wendy Olson, who provided me the opportunity to come teach at WSU Vancouver, which I will always think of as the best decision I made throughout the Ph.D. program.

My students have been unerringly patient with me, forgiving tardy turn around times on papers and listening to my ideas about how gaming and literature intersect. Someday  I will teach “Video Games as Literature,” I promise.

My friends and family have continuously cheered me on throughout this project, my mom, perhaps, being my greatest cheerleader.  The past few years have been a difficult time for my family but her support and the support from my brothers never wavered (even if they think I’m kind of nutty to still be in school).  My own group of gamer friends has also been a great place of support, not just for allowing me the chance to game, but also as sounding boards for my research when I was struggling most: Julie Conrath, Kathleen Boone, Shannon McDonald, Rhonda Uttecht, Jill U’Ren, Mark Ulrich, Heather Walker, Patrick and Colleen Hart, Erik Oberlin, and the members of my World of Warcraft guild, The Outsiders.  Very special thank you to Brianne Lilenthal, for her help transcribing one of the interviews, and Jim Beaty, for the title of this dissertation.

And to personify last but certainly not least, I would like to thank my partner in all things geeky and gaming, Chris Mathewson, for his constant encouragement and support, especially at the times when I felt quitting was the best option.  Pretty sure I would not be writing this page without every single hug he’s ever given me.

To everyone reading this: Game on!

Hello Everyone -

I am working on getting the chapters of the dissertation uploaded to the site for your reading pleasure but I thought I’d give you a sampling between now and then of what is to come.  So today’s post is the abstract, which is the fancy academic way of saying “summary.”  This is what people will find when they open the library entry for my dissertation.  It’s pretty bland but I promise the chapters are not.  ;-)

Game on!
Regina

GAME ON GIRL: IDENTITY AND REPRESENTATION IN DIGITAL RPGS

Abstract

By Elizabeth Regina McMenomy, Ph.D.

Washington State University

May 2011

Chair: Carol Siegel

This dissertation explores the connections between identity and gaming, essentially asking the question “What does it mean to be a gamer?” to a population not often associated with the stereotypical gamer.  Although much industry research indicates that women are the fastest growing group of gamers, many people still associate gaming with masculine identities.  This research challenges those stale stereotypes and demonstrates that gaming is often a place of agency and power for women, offering an equal playing field that patriarchal societies rarely afford to women.  Each chapter looks at a different aspect of gaming culture that emerged from interviews conducted with 30 women gamers.  Research participants were eager to share their experiences gaming, having already considered how many of the questions asked about how gender impacted game play and their own identities.  Many ideas about how being a woman gamer impacts identity both in online and offline arenas are discussed, including the performance of gender in digital role playing games, and a new typology for online gamers is created.

The observations of this project are not limited to the ideas brought forth by the participants.  The closing chapter calls into question gaming culture in its broader considerations, declaring gaming is no longer part of a subculture but rather is moving forward into mainstream culture.  That women gamers are such a large and growing population in gaming brings this idea to the forefront and challenges the stereotypes often associated with gamers.  Ultimately, what this study shows is that digital role playing games and the women who play them have an important place in American culture.

Extra Credits: Open Letter to EA Marketing

This week, Extra Credits takes on the EA marketing nightmare I wrote about a few weeks ago.  As usual, Extra Credits provides a profund, insightful and well researched critique of EA’s marketing strategies over the years, culminating in a fantastic critique of the “your mom hates this” campaign.

What impresses me the most about this critique is that they use EA’s own words against them.  In an advertisement that has yellowed with age, Extra Credits brings back the early ideals of EA and the focus the company once had on being digital artists intent on elevating what many consider to be only a childish form of entertainment.

It makes me sad, actually, to think that this was the original mission of EA and that they once had advertisements that would inspire me to play and be proud to be a gamer.  Now, they have sensationalized crap that brings the entire industry and gaming culture down and makes me want to throw every EA game I have out the window.  Hopefully, Extra Credits and its followers will retweet and repost this open letter and EA will recognize how these pranks are likely to alienate their core audience.  Oh and their core consumers.

Seems that would be pretty bad for business.

Hello Everyone!

I just wanted to drop a quick note here to mark this moment.  I just sent four of five dissertation chapters to my committee!  I’ve been writing and editing like mad over the last few months and it feels so good to know that it’s finally in the hands of my committee members.  It’s not DONE by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s certainly on its way to being complete!

I’ll be posting chapters here as I put the final round of polish on them.  So hold on to your hats!  And check back here in the next few weeks!  I know you all want to read it . . . right???

Right??!!  ;-)

All best,
Regina

Oh and PS – I got re-tweeted by Felica Day today: