Women Board Game Designers

Whilst parked inside Kuala Lumpur airpoirt, the light sound of energy tapping on something in my brain activated whilst perusing the toy shop for wacky merchandise … the question came – Which women have been working/pioneering in the world of board game/traditional game design?

This was a question to be followed up upon at a later date due to my limited 20 minute access time on the net, but lo and behold, there is a highly visible game designer out there who is just starting a career in board games … Who is this you ask – none other than the coolest screen villain Elle Driver, aka Daryl Hannah .

Apparently Daryl has been moon-lighting on the side of her actressing career, having produced two games. The most recent game, Liebrary, uses Balderdash-esque game-play, and revolves around knowledge of literature and player creativity. The players listen to the synopsis of a book and have to guess what the first lines of that book might be, trying to convince the other players’ that your lines are indeed true.

Well done Daryl Hannah – A new role model for women and games!!

Computer Game receives Cultural Award

Games can be serious – right?

CEO of Serious Games Simon Egenfeld-Nielsen is making a good case and point with his Serious Games game “Global Conflicts: Palestine”. The game is the first of an intended series of games which focus on global conflicts. The experience is generated by the student players’ taking on the role of a freelance journalist that must cover the conflict in a neutral manner – something which is programmed to be extremely difficult to do.

I’m looking forward to seeing the final product early next year, and even more so, reading about which schools’ embrace the product (including which type of schools can handle the demands of a 3D generated game), which teachers are able to take on this alternative form of learning, and how the students’ engage in this form of learning. Very exciting times ahead indeed!

In any case, we can already celebrate the break-through of (serious) computer games as cultural products; “Global Conflicts:Palestine” has recently received the KEK award (The Danish Culture and Business awards) in the category of best Creative Product – congratulations.

- Emma

A little extra about Serious Games:

Game philosophy at serious games:

“…to create computer games that include well-proven game features found in most computer games like action, death and violence but adding an agenda beyond entertainment … We do not merely wish people to play the game but really engage with it – feeling, thinking, and discussing it – they may be shocked, appalled, and disgusted seeing the inside of conflict not just the surface so often portrayed in current stereotypical computer games. This is not the glossy game universes you know.”

My very first Very Big Cheque

Well, that special day has arrived. I was handed over my first over-sized cheque this week — Glorious glorious times, another thing to cross of the “to accomplish before I die” list.

Here is the footage of Tina and I receiving the cardboard mock-up from the Danish Bank (Den Danske Bank) who is sponsoring our initiative LetzPlay with the funds for computers to the LetzPlay-Lab, which will be opening its doors to young women in Copenhagen in February 2007 from the location of the Vesterbro culture house.

Wii’ve come along way baby!

It’s a while after the D3’s came to town (Danish Electronic Entertainment Expo) and I have been meaning to do a big write up, but winter preperations seem to have overtaken, and this space has suffered

However, I have mustered up the energy to do a tiny spot on the Wii experience from the D3’s, followed up by a little anecdote on the power of marketing (excited or what!) …

Whilst the D3´s themselves were fairly tame in terms of event size and wow-factor, the Wii zone was dressed to impress: minimalist style. The very 2001: A Space Odyssey white layout played the perfect background to all the physical movement going on by the anxious Wii players.

Wii Sports was the game of choice on the 10+ machines, and it was an attraction in itself to watch people happily make utter fools of themselves. My personal favourite was Wii Boxing, and it must be said that I was laughing at the pair of “air boxers” in front of us — right up until I got into the make-shift ring. I haven’t sweated so much in 2 minutes, since, ever! Needless to say that I think I pulled several muscles in my forearms from swinging wildly at the air. D3´s I could have left behind, but the Wii experience coloured me happy, 100% … (moving towards the anecdote) …

I was sold on buying the Wii, without having even thought about the PS3 (which was presented at the D3’s in a locked off area, protected by a lonely security guard). Nintendo had been doing everything right in my books – marketing towards women as players, innovative game-play, and easy on the wallet. But then, the terrible happened – a guild mate spoiled my Nintendo dream by sending me a rather provocative ad that set PS3 vs. Wii in the fine metaphor of “Serious overweight woman Vs. Silly skinny girlie”. Interestingly, after seeing this ad (real or not real – you tell me?), I found myself googling PS3 and all its doo-dads & games.

Whilst the PS3 is still out of my league in terms of cost – I am definately writing up a for and against list for “What I really want from a console”: frivilous and cheap or serious and engaging … hmmm … what kind of gamer am I?

Elitism in WoW

I was recently playing World of Warcraft as my little level 5 banker-character in the Orc city (which has extremely heavy traffic), and a glorious vision passed my eyes; A “champion” was standing right by me with the nicest looking gear that I had seen in a while. Whilst I was inspecting the champion’s gear, I must have clicked on invite (my laptop just doesn’t like those big cities and lags). What happened quickly, and before I had even registered what I had done, was that this so called champion had reported me, and proceeded to whisper it too me in a very blunt fashion.

Is this the attitude that “elite” players have these days? I too have been harrassed at a measly level 15 to group with a lowbie, but this was a one time invite – and an accident at that.

What do elite players contibute to the “world” of warcraft? I will continue to watch out for cases of elitism in MMOG’s – but do tell of your own incidents, or even reasons for acting in such manners as the profiled “champion”.

LetzPlay & the Danish Night of Culture

Last Friday was the annual “Danish night of culture“, where my project “LetzPlay” held a multiplayer computer gaming event for women at Boomtown netcafé. As always, Boomtown was brimming with groups of blokes having a night out together, playing World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike, Battlefield and the like, so our little event turned a few heads.

Of the O-so-many Danish Night of Culture participants (65.497 with a culture-pass), 25 turned up to our little soiree. And before you turn on your calculator (we have around a 0.04% participation rate - or 0.08% if considering that the event was only available to half of the participants),  I/LetzPlay still consider the event a success. Several of the women have joined the LetzPlay gaming group, as they noted that they haven’t got anyone else already within their network that they feel that they can play with.

There was a mother and daughter who came to have a new, joint experience. A group of six friends came in to play as their Danish Night of Culture theme was “something that we never would consider doing” (and to put that in perspective, this group of women had just come from a viewing of a cadaver). 95% of the participants were “newbies” (in this case – new to modern computer gaming, never had played a multiplayer game, and had never played in a netcafé before).

The reports that women make up over half of online gamers  (this would include free games like chickstop.com, MMOG’s and the like) which I heard broadcast the day after the event seem to be an illusion to the voiced opinions that I hear from manywomen, and from gaming experiences like LetzPlay, where we time after time see literally no women in the public gaming arena (netcafés). Of course, public gaming is a whole other context, yet I wonder about the transition from being a casual or “domestic” gamer to being a highly visible gamer.  Is this new wave of women gaming on-line done with, or through, existing social networks? Do these gamers need to establish new connections to “fit in”? Women do game – undoubtedly – but what is really at stake in gaming in the public space? This is why I/LetzPlay considers the huge 0.04% turnout a success story.

It was great to see

1) so many women gaming in the public and visible space of the netcafé,

2) newbies to gaming throwing themselves into something that is still stigmatized as something “nerdy”, or “not for them”,

3) existing social groups coming together to play an active social activity.

I certainly hope to see more of those 50+% of women gamers on-line coming out into the public arena: if the public face of gaming was more of a mish-mash of gamers: girls, men, women and boys, perhaps it would make it easier for others to step into this social, fun and skillful leisure activity … I will, for one, be keeping my eyes peeled for new events for women and computer gaming, “sightings” of women and girls gaming in public and online, and so forth.

      

Who am I

According to quiz galaxy’s warcraft quiz I am …

Undead Warrior Undead are the forsaken: just like you. While it’s important that you don’t fall apart (physically or mentally), you might find yourself salivating in an unhealthy manner when someone comes selling cookies. Get more sleep.As a warrior, you like to take charge of things. You feel that you’re an important part of what’s happening – and if things turn sour, you like to have a very large weapon on hand that you can use to negotiate.

And I have been playing Druids and Warlocks up till now! Time wasted!!!!

Long time admirer, first time creator

My first attempt at Machinima has just been put up (release party and everything … me, myself, and my headphones)

Check it out here!

World of Warcraft Spam

I was wandering around the World of Warcraft created city of IronForge as my nearly erected gnome (which was a new experience for me being “inside” Alliance walls – I have a preference for the Scourge and Taurens – see images) … By the mailbox, a heavily populated area of the city, there popped up a level 1 “spam gnome” advertising for its website which farmed gold. This was the first time I had encountered an in-game spambot (I have yet to encounter one from the Horde’s perspective), and I could see that I was not the only one new to this, as curious level 60’s even nosed about.

The spambot was advertising in the “/say” channel, which meant that it was clogging up the message window, ultimtely altering the game experience (having to break out of what I was doing to “/ignore” the Spam bot, whose name was a long line of jibberish).

I had, up to this point (have played casually for about 4 months now), felt that WoW was somewhat a place of “escape” from advertising, though it seems to that this space is not able to escape market penetration (I am also finding that the sports team/s I play on and am playing against are degenerating more and more – with the players active billboard space, the better the player, the better the sponsor).

So, any comments or experiences of a similar nature are welcome  …

     

LetzPlay – phase 1. over and done

A quick update before summer really settles in:

 The LetzPlay event is over and done with, and by all definitions in our success criteria, it was a success – whew! We even have the pictures to prove that it actually did happen, which can be viewed at http://letzplay.dk/sjov.htm

Here is a little teaser …

      

There were over 70 women who turned up – and i quote: ”to play“, “to compete“, “to have fun” and ”to win games and t-shirts“.

Most of the participants were newbies, and many turned up in a little cluster – that is friends/the social network was a serious component in participating.

We’re off to the Women in Games conference next month to present our findings, and I hope to publish our the presentation here, along with all the other interesting bytes that are presented at the conference!

Right now I’m finishing off my report on Girls and Technology, which looked at girls in secondary schools in Denmark, and their perspectives on computer technology. It all started as a little report for IBM on their program “Girls and Technology” but the data was so compelling I broadened my empirical work out from the IBM workshop to include teacher’s perspectives, and girls from other schools, backgrounds, and leisure interests … (which raised some more questions on women’s and girls access to leisure, especially what type of leisure, and which affordances/values are attributed to experience in the leisure space) … more on that after it’s all wrapped up!

Apart from that Tina (edu-art and letzplay co-creator) and I have just received that all important funding letter, thick and full of “to be signed” documents stating that we have the support of the municipality of Copenhagen to develop the letzplay concept into a computer club (complete with events) for young women. So, if all goes well (we are still in need of further sponsors to meet the budget) we’ll be up and running in August.