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

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.

Last weekend, I attended Emerald City Comicon in Seattle.  This was my first Comicon but not by first con since I went to PAX Prime last September. (And I made sure to wear comfy shoes this time!)

I’m not a huge comics fan and really my sole intention was to go to The Guild’s panel on Saturday at noon.  And yes, as a good fangirl, I was super excited at the thought of getting some autographs and telling some of my gaming idols about how I used their work in my dissertation.  I was not disappointed and the best moment of the con pretty much overshadowed everything else.

I got into Wil Wheaton’s line on Saturday morning, having missed him on Friday since I went to see Felicia Day and Amy Okuda first.  As my boyfriend and I were standing there I turned and asked, “Do you think he’s ever been quoted in a dissertation before?”  Having just put the final draft of the bibliography together on Thursday the fact that Wil Wheaton was a reference I had to enter in was clear in my mind.  Chris shrugged and said, “Probably not.  You going to tell him?”  And I said, “I’m thinking about it . . .”

So we get to the front of the line and I am holding in all this nervous energy waiting for my turn.  Then we’re up and I hand him my DVD copy of The Guild season 3 to sign and I start off with, “Have you ever, to the best of your knowledge, been quoted in a dissertation?”

And he looks at me and says, “Not that I know of.”

“Well, now you have.”

He leans back in his chair, spread his arms out wide with a huge smile on his face and says, “Tell me more!”

So I tell him about how my dissertation is about women gamers and that I interviewed 30 women about what it meant to be a gamer, and how I used The Guild throughout the entire thing but that the last chapter argues how gaming is no longer a subculture but becoming part of mainstream culture and to open it I use a quote of his from his 2007 PAX Keynote address. <inhale>

He replies, “That is very cool.  Have you defended yet?”

And I say, no the defense is scheduled for April 1st.

He stands up and says to me, “Don’t go anywhere.”

Like I was going to leave?????

He steps through the curtain set up behind the autograph tables and I look at his handler and she is smiling, and I look to Chris and he is perplexed, and Wil Wheaton comes back with a small notebook, the kind you carry to write quick ideas down and has perforated pages in the back.  He is carefully folding one of the back pages when he says to me, “I want to give you something.”

And my mind is racing because I cannot imagine what he is about to give me, but I am secretly hoping it’s his email address because I would LOVE for him to read the chapter.

So he starts writing, in big blue marker: THE BLUE STAR OF AWESOME.

Then he draws a BLUE STAR.

The he writes: +5 to defense of dissertation.

And signs it W2.

He hands it to me and I can’t even remember what I said, if I said anything other than “uuugggggeeeee.”  (Imagine the sound Homer Simpson makes while he’s eating chocolate.)  Then I ask to take a pic with him and the handler reminds me to hold up the BLUE STAR OF AWESOME.

And we walk away and I <squee> for reals this time and Chris asks if I am ok and I say, “I need to sit down and I need to post this to Facebook right away!”

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.