10 by 10 room

Women gain prominence in video game world – Yahoo! News

Amber Dalton and twin sister Amy Brady created the PMS Clan in 2002. Boasting international membership of nearly 500 women and girls, PMS — which stands for Pandora’s Mighty Soldiers — is a competitive group that plays Xbox, PlayStation2 and PC games. Its members range in age from 9 to 58, Dalton said, but most are adults.

No one should be surprised at the presence of gaming women, but it’s good to see mainstream news slowly move past the stereotype of gaming hobbies being an all-male shindig.

Also, it makes me happy to see the clan above including both the younger and more mature gamers.

ADDENDUM: I reread the article, and some parts of it do come off a bit condescending, and there’s also the co-opting of actual women power into “girl power!!11″-rebranded sexuality… But this is from a mainstream news source after all, and they’ll get it right eventually.

ADDENDUM 2: OH BURN!!!  Via BoingBoing, found this scathing satire about how (not) to write a “Women in Gaming” article. I’m so feeling the burn. Gotta post a non-vapid link next time.

A while ago, I linked to some art that I liked because it really gave a sense of a possible story emerging form it. In that vein, Adam Dray has been working on Verge, a cyberpunk game, and presented his current cover graphic: “Verge: Name My Cover”

His explanations:

I designed the panels to be ambiguous about where the story starts and ends. It’s not clear if she did something bad, so she lost her daughter and never got her back, or if it started when they took the girl and supermom got her back and got even.

…
If you were playing that character, what would you name her? What would you name her daughter? What about the goons?

From the Guardian: ‘It’s like a personal affront to their manhood if you bluff them out of a pot’. (Talking about Texas Hold ‘Em.)

When I look at myself, I see a girl on the internet and a girl with an internet life. I see a girl who loves to play games and kill the dirty Alliance faction in WoW. I see a girl who can bunny hop with the best of them and keep her kills higher than her deaths in Counter Strike. I can talk the talk and walk the walk. But I am not a girl on the internet, because as I’ve been told before, I do not exist.

Well, this is me telling you, I do exist. Owned.

Whitney Butts, the Escapist, “OMG Girls Don’t Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1”