pantagruel

nerd-in-chief

How did I miss this spectacular display of geekery in September from the POTUS?

Photo: Getty Images

That Obama decided he wanted to fence against Olympic fencer Tim Morehouse would've been enough to endear him to me -- because I love the sport. But that he did it with a toy lightsaber cements his place in my heart as a fellow member of the Geek Tribe.

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In other news, the annual fall busy season at Saltmine U. continues apace. Things should ease up around Thanksgiving, which will give me a chance to breathe. (Which I'm not doing particularly well at today -- turns out that if you mess up the proportions of yew and wormwood in incense, it aggravates your lungs something fierce. Go me.)

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This weekend, almost all my media devices went on strike. Xbox 360 gave me the Red Ring of Death; my DVD player has decided to suddenly stop playing back discs; and my old iPod will not mount, play back music, or turn on. I suspect some strange electronic conspiracy. I'm hoping a new AV cable for the Xbox will fix the problem, but we'll see.

Maybe our Nerd-in-Chief will hold Microsoft down and force them to make hardware that isn't a bunch of junk.

I can hope, right?

fencing, gamer, politics, work

nerfing

Bannable Offenses on nerfing:

When I was a kid, everything was dangerous.

Everything.

Tonka trucks... Do you even remember Tonka trucks?

Apparently, Tonka roughly translates to "you're gonna need a freakin' tetanus shot after this".

Those friggin' trucks were jagged, rusty metal covered in yellow, lead-based paint.

And they were awesome.

If some kid in your class was missing a finger, you could be damned sure it was because of a Tonka truck.

And GI Joe. GI Joe taught a generation of children that the fastest way to solve any problem was an orchestrated military response.

Also, that the army makes a regular habit of employing Ninjas.

That's a life lesson right there.

And everything came with little parts that just begged to be swallowed.

Some GI Joe figures came with nothing but a crate of random, tiny plastic firearms.

Two days later, you'd have three left.

Along with an intestinal blockage.

An awesome one.

Even the doctor would tell you how cool it was that your intestine was now fortified with a battery of M-16s.

Do you see shit like that today?

Of course not.

I'm trying to not guffaw, and failing. Thanks, A.!

Technorati Tags: gamer, geek, kids these days

oh, the secret life of gamers

This made me shake my head and laugh to myself. Oh, I wish this weren't true.

Technorati Tags: gamer, geek

the one where I meet wil wheaton

Yesterday, J. and I went down to the Stone brewery, home of Arrogant Bastard Ale, where we planned to drink a lot of great beer, and listen to Wil Wheaton read from his new book, The Happiest Days of our Lives. (You can read Wil's version of the day here.)

Wil's blogging and writing about his creative struggles had really hit home with me. His pals, the Voice of Self-Doubt and Prove to Everyone could be cousins to my own creative demons, Still Not Good Enough and Who Do You Think You're Kidding. It's been incredibly encouraging to see him find his own voice and niche as a creative person, so I'd been looking forward to getting out and supporting him at a reading for ages, and that this particular reading involved beer was an extra bonus.

I wished I'd thought to bring my Canon, but all I had on me was my phone and sketchbook. Damn.

Wil read "blue light special," one of my favorite pieces of his. That story takes me back to my own trips to K-mart, in the Star Wars aisle with my little sister, trying to find a cool action figure. I sketched while he read. For the last couple of days, I'd been trying to think of what cool thing I could bring Wil, and thought about maybe doing a painting of him and his wife -- but the only photo on his site of the two of them was in Halloween kit, as zombies -- that might not go over so hot. So I had it in my head that I'd do sketches during the reading, then give them to Wil if they turned out well. (They didn't actually turn out well [god, he's animated when he reads! Awesome for watching, not so awesome for quick sketching], and only two were salvageable in the end.

Wil taking questions after the reading. As you can see, it was very laid-back.

After he read, Wil took questions; my favorite answer was his story of how he and his wife met. I realized as he was telling it, that the woman sitting right in front of me who I'd been sketching, was his wife. I hurriedly added some more details, trying to flesh the sketch out. )

After the questions, we queued up to make a small line to get our books signed. The women around me started talking about how they'd had massive teenage crushes on Wil, and asked me if I also once had one.

'Er, sorry, no,' I said. I hadn't been a big Trek fan as a kid, and am not an especially huge one now -- but when surrounded by Trekkies wasn't the time or place to admit it. Instead, I just said, 'I actually really like Wil's writing.' I was surprised when the woman ahead of me in line told Wil that he formed the template for every man she'd ever loved. Dude. His response: a deadpan, 'I'm sorry.'

Now, I've met a lot of writers, and the ones who are big enough to be celebrities have all been… well, I'll be politic and say, 'disappointing.' So I was feeling a bit of trepidation. Just because someone has a cool writing persona doesn't mean that they're someone I'd want to spend time with, I've learned. But when my turn came, and I introduced myself to Wil, I discovered that he is just as cool as his writing: genuine, funny, and warm. He surprised me by recognizing me and thanking me; we chatted a bit about writing and art. I told him about having wanted to bring him a cool painting of him and Anne, but they both totally jumped on the zombie portrait idea. Okay then! Zombies it is.

J. had returned with beer, so we milled about aimlessly while I drank, chatted to Anne, chatted to some other extremely nice people who came with Wil whose names were obliterated by beer, and took photos of the second woman who'd been madly in love with Wil as a teenager. Then we decided to sober up and have some food, so we walked up to the patio and ordered food, and watched the crowd from the reading trickle out. And took photos of ourselves:

As J and I were waiting for the check so we could go to the Stone store and get ourselves some growlers, I felt a couple of light taps on my shoulder, and looked up. It was Wil, who'd come by to tell me how much he looked forward to seeing what I did with the zombie painting. That was so unexpectedly cool of him to come by and chat some more, when he didn't have to; he could've easily walked right past us and left.

Then everyone converged on the Stone store, got growlers, and headed home, after an awesome day.

Further proving how cool he is -- Wil totally threw the goat in our photo:

Technorati Tags: gamer, geek, inspiration

twitter

Hi all --

As much fun as following all of you on Twitter is, I got 638 text messages last month. That's 438 above my limit, which has cost me $21.90. Since anyone I'd want to follow on Twitter already has my cel phone number, please:

Just freaking send an SMS to my cel phone directly. Don't ping me on Twitter to get hold of me. I will not answer you, as I've turned all the device updates to my phone off. Yes, even the direct messages.

Love,

me.

Technorati Tags: augh, twitter, yikes

why don't more women game?

I wrote this up as a very long, long comment on Wil Wheaton's blog post today, and it got flagged as comment spam because, well, it got much, much longer than I expected. Oops. But not wanting to let it vanish into the void, I figured I'd post it here.

Someone asked me about women in gaming, and, well... uh, I might've ranted. A lot.

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Miss Debater: I'm always happy to froth at the mouth about this topic. :) Keep in mind this is an off-the-top-of-my-head version, complete with sweeping generalizations. I'll just put on my asbestos gear now, shall I?

Why don't more women game?

Well, who games in the first place? Let's look at types of gamers. The seminal work on this is Richard Bartle's article, "Players Who Suit MUDs," where he breaks gamers down into four types: achievers, socializers, explorers, and killers. This was written for MUDs, the text-only grandfathers of MMORPGs, but it's applicable to a lot of types of games. Go read the article real quick, then come back. Not every game out there appeals to all four types of player -- and when one does, like World of Warcraft -- it sells amazingly well. But The Sims and Second Life are definitely entry-level drugs, attracting many people who would never pick up, say, Halo 3, to gaming -- including women.

The debate about gender and game preference is still raging, but in my experience, the two genders tend to prefer different types of games. Not all men love first-person-shooter games and dungeon crawls, and not all women love socially-oriented, puzzle, and soap-opera-type games (I'm looking at you, Stevie Case), but there's a marked preference.

So let's say I'm in the market to buy a new game for myself.

-First, I want to find something I like. As angie k rightly points out -- there are games I like and games I don't like, and it's got nothing to do with my gender, just with the kinds of games I like to play. That said... the gaming industry is almost overwhelmingly male. There are a few brave souls out there in the QA trenches, but design? Art? Concept? Apart from legends like the Intellivision Blue Sky Rangers, the gender mix is sparse at best. I'll put it this way: when visiting a friend in Blizzard South's offices one weekend years ago, I had to use the men's restroom, because the one woman who worked on the art and design floor wasn't there that Sunday. (See Women in Games International for more reading.) So, with mostly men making games, you're going to get disproportionately more killers and achievers making games that they would like to play. (This disappoints the male explorers and socializers too, don't worry.)

-Second, I want to find a game in which I can identify with the protagonist. Female heroines are uncommon, though getting more popular. Non-caricatured female heroines who actually wear clothes and look like real humans? Good luck. It's definitely getting better than it used to be -- Panty Raider's a thing of the past (but we still beat up hookers in GTA, which is more funny than sad). It's a small thing, but when a developer omits the option to make a female avatar, and there's not a very good story-driven reason to do this (e.g. Planescape: Torment), it turns me off to the game.

Third, I want to find a game that doesn't insult me right off the bat. Girl-specific games? They blow. They blow rancid donkey balls. Give us more than Barbie Fashion Show as an option, people. While Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress, an attempt to feminize D&D, is actually pretty cool, you'd never know it from its ad, a riff on a Cosmo cover.

Then there's the game marketing. Dude. If I want to see tits? I'll just look down. The game magazine ads that promise the potential for scoring with hot chicks, if I only wear AXE body spray and drink enough Mountain Dew. Um... no thanks. (But if you figure out how playing video games will make me irresistible to naked rugby teams, call me.) Could we please, please just have gender-neutral packaging and ads?

Fourth, I want a game I can play either by myself, or with my friends, and not have to constantly deal with asshats. Also known as: the hazards of being the only female gamer in a group of male gamers. Before the advent of LARPs and MMORPGs, gaming was viewed by many women as 'that thing my boyfriend does with his friends' -- i.e. something well outside the scope of what's acceptable feminine activity. Then there's just the general vibe of being a novelty, immortalized in xkcd's "Pix Pls."

Women tend to get introduced to gaming as corollaries of the men they're dating, or male friends. Until you become one of the guys, it's hard for female gamers to be seen as more than an appendage to the man they came into the group with -- or, as a mom. Several times, it's been blindly assumed that I will handle the food and drinks in a gaming group, with variations on, 'But you're the woman!' given as the reason, followed with genuinely confused looks from the men when I shouted that I didn't order pizza with my uterus.

After all that, and I've found a game I want to buy that meets all of the above criteria --

Fifth, I want to buy the game with a minimum of hassle. It's irritating when I walk into a gaming store and have to throw down my geek credentials in order to get treated as a human, not as some alien, exotic creature. I could avoid the Geekier Than Thou competition by ordering online, but I don't want to have to wait days to get it shipped to me, when there's a game store within walking distance of my office.

Seriously, it's nuts. I've been a gamer since I was nine years old and playtesting for Infocom -- I'm used to it, try to have a sense of humor about it, and am willing to endure it in order to play. But I can easily see why a non-gamer/geek woman in their 30s or 40s wouldn't want to bother with gaming at all.

Technorati Tags: gamer, geek, ow

silly photo

Taken while trying to get both myself AND the shirt featured in "tough decisions" into the shot. Yep, I am a dork.

Technorati Tags: yikes

tough decisions

My Penny Arcade t-shirt order arrived today, and now, I have a very tough decision.

Here are the shirts, fresh out of the bag, sitting on my drafting table/place for oil paintings to dry:

This is a tough one, folks -- which shirt do I wear first?

There's the "Wil Says: Don't be a Dick" shirt, which alludes to Wil Wheaton's awesome PAX keynote address, thus keeping up my gamer grrl cred. If you haven't listened to it yet, check it out -- he was dead on about how gaming builds relationships with each other -- and "Don't be a Dick" can't be repeated enough. And it's always good to support one's fellow writers, artists, and geeks:

Or, the shirt spawned from the Penny Arcade "My Comeuppance" strip that every gamer friend of mine sent me when it came out in August. I have been using Photoshop since before it had layers (v2.5, folks), I'm an artist, and my suckiness at FPS games is pretty legendary, surpassed only by my lack of musical skill... so this shirt does seem almost made for me:

Hrm. Well, since Gary Gygax just died, in honor of him, I'm going to settle this by the time-honored tradition... of rolling a d20.

(You hear the clatter of a single die on a hard table, behind a flimsy cardboard screen; it clatters again.)

My inner geek won the roll with a 17.

(But my inner artist decided the neckline of the shirt had to be fixed with scissors, in retaliation.)

So hey -- go out and buy a shirt and spread the Don't be a Dick meme!

Technorati Tags: artist, gamer, geek

gaming and art

i just walked over to the local game store right now to pick up assassin's creed. here's why:

this is a screenshot; not a screenshot of the usual movie cutscenes in games. it's of the game.

the atmosphere! the chroma! a city actually looks like… a city!

DUDE.

this weekend, while StormWatch 2008 is blaring on the news, i'll be traveling in my head to damascus, circa 1191. why yes, i am a gamer geek -- why do you ask?

Technorati Tags: art, design, gamer

shirts i have to have

from the guys at penny arcade:

and

although, the latter might be a bit… obvious.