DiGRA 2009: Anne-Mette Albrechtslund – Gender Stories: Identity Construction in an Online Gaming Community

Anne-Mette’s work  was on how identity was constructed, with particular reference to Turkle’s self-representation through the text, Taylor’s “duality of presence”, Gee’s “projective identity”, and the idea of cyborg identities. Anne-Mette was particularly interested in gender identities in virtual communities, whereby a male could play a female but also have a different presence in an [...]

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DiGRA 2009: (by video) Shira Chess – Going with the Flo: Simulated Productive Play and the Dash Games

Before I begin my write-up of this talk, I would just like to state that the sound quality on the video made it rather difficult to follow at times. I hope I got the main points, though! Because Shira was not available to answer questions, but she can be contacted through her website, http://www.shirachess.com.
Shira’s talk [...]

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DiGRA 2009: Alison Harvey – Balance Boards and Dance Pads: The Impact of Innovation on Gendered Access to Gaming

Alison’s talk involved women’s access to gaming and the implications of this. She asked us to think about how games are situated gender-wise and the focus on masculinity in games. She stated that it was a very heteronormative and hypermasculine practice, and that females were trespassers on the ground of the male player.
An “historical construction [...]

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DiGRA 2009: Ben Light – More Than Just a Combo of Slaps? Representations and Experiences of LGBT Gamers On and Beyond the Screen

Ben’s talk was explained as looking at the representations of LGBT within the gaming world. His intention was to look at the theory and raise some of the issues of this representation.
Ben had been studying a site known as Gaydar, a large dating site designed to assist men in finding other men, which he described [...]

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DiGRA 2009: Tanya Krzywinska – Sex and Videogames: A Case of Misappearance?

Tanya began her talk by emphasising the notions of the popular press with regards to the threat of games and the ill-effects these are perceived as having. She expressed this as a concern, whereby human sexuality is essentially reduced when it’s actually extremely complex. The questions Tanya asked us throughout the talk regarded exactly how [...]

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Big hello to all the readers of the WiG blog

I would firstly like to say a huge thank you to WiG for making all this happen.
My first entry is just going to be a brief introductory post so everyone can know a little about me and how I was introduced to WiG.
My name is Catherine Woolley, I went to the University of Wales, Newportand [...]

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Women In Games Panel Discussion at BEV 2008

Women In Games Panel Discussion
Originally uploaded by Birds Eye View
I recently came across some photos from the Women in Games Panel Discussion at 2008’s Birds Eye View Festival. I thought it would be useful to post the link for posterity.

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