Thank You

My latest Kotaku column is an expression of some of my anger, fatigue and frustration at the "woman in games" role I have adopted, at times uneasily and at other times poorly, throughout my career. It's stirring up a lot of controversy, which naturally I predicted, so I wanted to share a couple more thoughts.

When I say I'm tired of always being identified as a "female games journalist," I absolutely don't mean to entirely diminish the relevance of being an outspoken woman in a male-dominated space. My perspectives in my writing come from my identity and my life experience, and being a woman is a part of that I absolutely don't intend to reject.

For example, I was happy to be photographed by Gay Gamer and called a "fabulous femme fatale". Some of my earliest writing was on sex games, and I don't know if that would have gone over so well if I'd been a man (I still write about sex games-- just last week I published a new Escapist column about Anna Anthropy's unusual text-based sex adventure). As everyone always points out, yes, my blog is called Sexy Videogameland and there are pretty girls on it. Everyone knows I think Big Boss is hot. I'm proud to be a strong woman, and sometimes I'm happy to be a silly girly-girly-girl. I am who I am.

It's not that I've suddenly decided I no longer want to be a voice for women, or to speak from a female perspective -- how can I possibly do anything but? I'm just frustrated at the role I'm often asked to take in the constant wars that go on in gaming culture.

I write on a daily basis about things that have zero to do with my gender. I'm a survival horror aficionado. I'm obsessed with experimental storytelling. I love indie games; I love game development and technology. I love all kinds of culture and media. I'm not just here to fill the "lady quota."

Some of the feedback I received so far concerns the hostility in the tone of the piece -- yeah, I was angry. I'm not sorry for that. But there's one thing I need to make clear: For all the anger I felt toward the people I told to grow up else crawl back to forums where they can argue about review scores? That's how grateful I am for an equal number of you right now.

Thank you so much to my colleagues and friends, my longtime readers and my Twitter followers who've stuck with me and watched me publicly fumble as I try to figure all this out. I've had a lot of growing up to do, and I still do, and I've been doing it openly and messily in front of all of you. When I was younger I was one of those people who believed that if I didn't speak about my gender then no one would make a big deal out of it. Not only did that attitude ignore all the women who wanted to look to me for an example, but it also didn't work. I'm unhappy that it took me attaining a larger public profile and a painful degree of attack from the wider core community for me to start listening, learning and taking responsibility for being able to help change things.

These days I tweet about my crazy parties, I tweet snippy things about music, I tweet mean things from bars about the outfits of people who push me. I drink, I can be flippant, I can be arrogant, I can be confrontational. Sometimes I hardly tweet about video games at all, which is the reason you're here, I know.

But there are so many of you who support me anyway, because you share my hopes and dreams about video games and because you believe in my work.

I couldn't get through all the comments on the Kotaku piece. And I got all kinds of those emails that you think are just stereotypes, the "get back in the kitchen" and "quit attention-whoring" and all of that. I've heard it all before and it's lost its ability to hurt me, but it can be disheartening.

I heard from so many of you on Twitter telling me you're behind me, that you read the piece and you support me, and that you, like me, believe that nobody has to tolerate an environment of closed minds and cruel comments in video game culture. I often go around saying I don't care what people think of me or if they find me controversial -- that I'm going to focus on my work, on games and the people who make them, and do the writing I want to do anyway, and that's true to an extent.

Yet it's wonderful to know that so many of the folks who matter to me will stand with me and speak up, too. It makes me feel supported, but it also gives me hope that we can do this, you know? We -- writers, players, creators -- can have a wonderful, healthy culture in video games with discourse, debate, respect and equality. We can all keep helping each other learn and grow together. I'm really lucky to have you with me.

NOW GO GET DRUNK IT'S HALLOWEEN ~ !!

PRACTICE Makes Perfect

I had a whole Silent Hill tribute post planned for Halloween, but I've been too busy. I went to GDC Online with Gamasutra -- and I also spoke at the Game Narrative Summit with friends Chris Dahlen, Kirk Hamilton, N'Gai Croal, John Davison and Ben Fritz (Kirk wrote about our panel and shared his slides).

Right back from GDC Online, I had my gigantic 1990s-themed birthday party (feat. Ava Luna, Radical Dads, EULA, Ovlov and Casiorossi, check 'em!) Then it was CMJ week, and then the Halloween parties began.

I went as Laura Palmer -- what about you? Also over this past weekend was the fascinating inaugural PRACTICE game design conference at New York University's Game Center. Eric Zimmerman and Frank Lantz explain what it's all about here, and I attended some great talks as well!

PopCap's Scott Jon Siegel spoke about the need for more prototyping specifically in the arena of social games. In a recent column of mine that EDGE published (in the print edition; it won't be online until later), I compared the design methods used by popular Zynga games -- and the player behavior they incite -- to the methodology of drug pushers and the behavior of the addicted. I also wrote not too long ago about how disappointed I was to see some of these methodologies adopted by The Sims Social.

Scott told me on Twitter he was disappointed that folks like me seem to be throwing out his entire industry with the bathwater, but while I've gone after specific examples, design forms and business models with my fists up, I actually do believe there's potential to do special things with this new frontier and don't wish to dismiss that.

Last week I talked to online game veteran Raph Koster, who said that while he feels a sense of loss as games evolve into the social mainstream, he's also excited by the unprecedented opportunity to reach so many people with our love for games. I share Raph's feeling of loss, but I also share his enthusiasm for the possibilities the social space can doubtless attain when the right people are working in it for the right reasons.

Long story short, Scott Jon Siegel is one of those good guys, and he believes that more prototyping -- the experimental rapid sort that is core to process in traditional design -- can help address a lot of the risk aversion and idea-cloning that slows genre emergence and innovation in the social space, and that's a great idea!

Speaking of game design, Harmonix's Matt Boch took us inside Dance Central's prototyping process. The part I wish I'd written down verbatim was when he mentioned the way the game doesn't legislate gender in dance performance ("gender is performance," he said), and showed a video of how a man and a woman could interpret the same feminine, sexy song in their own ways and still succeed in the game.

In other good talks, we had Steve Gaynor on how the design of progression gates can lead to both better storytelling and more interesting use of space, and there was a fascinating, rapid-fire debate among Manveer Heir, Chris Hecker and Nick Fortugno about the extent to which the ability to program is -- or isn't -- essential to the game designer's role.

PRACTICE was such a good time, and is heartening evidence of the fact that we're starting to collect a cohesive, diverse and wonderful game design hub in New York City! I mean, look at this awesome segment on games as art that was shot by PBS -- everyone in it is a New Yorker (I'm in it, too)!

Kotaku's Stephen Totilo was also at PRACTICE, and he wrote about the surprising and interesting discussion that emerged when Seth Killian and Arturo Sanchez were asked about sexism in the Street Fighter community.

I also wrote about sexism at Kotaku today, but I'm going to save the discussion for its own post. Stay tuned!

Melancholy Moo

I was finally able to do a pretty in-depth story that's been important to me for some time. The subject is my friend, Ian Bogost, and the two major projects he's worked on in the last year or so. At a glance those projects are diametric opposites; perhaps if you read the story you'll be able to find some commonalities that might have even escaped their creator.

I've been getting excellent feedback from you guys via social media since this article ran at the beginning of the week -- thanks to those who've spent time with the story and if you haven't, please do. And for follow-up, you can check out a blog post by Frank Lantz, who's also featured in the piece.

One of Bogost's colleagues is Molleindustria's Paolo Pedercini, of whom I'm a big fan. Something interesting happened when he released a mobile game that was critical of the mobile hardware industry on iOS, and I interviewed him about that here.

I like standing up for what you believe in. As long as you're being rational about it. As you may or may not know, I've been doing a monthly column in Edge's print magazine for the past few months, and it looks like they've begun to make their way online. Check out the debut piece!

When people care about complex issues, discussion is challenging. Read about how MIT's GAMBIT team tackled the difficulty in making an RPG about LGBTQ identity issues in a community context, and check out Auntie Pixelante's scathing response.

Other things: I checked out Mindbloom and Glitch, and I spoke to former AAA execs Ben Cousins and Senta Jakobsen about Ngmoco's innovative new Stockholm office. Spending a lot of time getting ready for GDC Online -- not only have we Gamasutras got a lot of coverage to do, but I'm giving a microtalk on the critics' panel at the Game Narrative Summit. If you'll be at GDC Online next week, come say hi to us!

Sigh. It's a lot of stuff. Sometimes I feel I'll never be able to get it together.