Tue: Sep 09 2008

"What Women Want… on their screens"
3 comments, it seems

I haven’t done this in a while. Creak creak.

It’s also too late in the night for me to crank out a more thought-out post. I’m afraid it will have to be a quick link, with some brief thoughts.¹

What Women Want [in games] (Leigh Alexander, GameSetWatch) : Interesting post and consequent discussion in the comments about why women “don’t like” big console games. I think the points on packaging and media representation are valid.

Packaging, however one might like to think one is little affected by it², can influence unconsciously. I certainly find myself unattracted to a game if the cover looks too ‘macho’… muscley men in army garb, flanked by busty women in tight clothes. (If the cover’s got a sports car anywhere on it, I avoid it whatever the people on the cover, if any, are wearing.) If it’s got guns and military vehicles on it, I won’t pick it up. Yes… It seems I judge a game by its cover. Cutesify it (Katamari) or make it look a little bit artsy (Okami) - and I will consider reading the description on the back. I do doubt that I will like the latest shooter or military mission out on 360 or PS3 or whatever, but I remember that I used to enjoy watching my cousins play GoldenEye 007 when I was younger… and it does seem like a shame that I would miss out on a great game because it’s marketed as a ‘genre’ I don’t think I enjoy.

As for representation: I don’t watch enough TV or read women’s magazines to say with authority, but I certainly don’t have many recollections of seeing girls or women playing video games on TV, or articles about gaming in typical women’s mags. (I did notice the other day that the girl in Wizards of Waverly Place played a handheld console - suffice to say, she wasn’t the girly type.) It doesn’t have to be the hardcore girl gamer either - I can’t recall coming across, in my daily life, acknowledgement of casual gaming by PopCap moms (I personally know one, so these do exist!) or those with pink Nintendo DSes who raise virtual puppies.

So what’s my next step? The next flash game I come across, that receives good reviews and remarks, I will take a moment to not judge it on the number of guns, explosions or dead bodies it contains… which is kind of hard, because I believe that violent games can desentisize the gamer’s feelings about violence. Amorphous+, though, contains no dead human bodies except your own.

* * *

As for the ‘direction’ of the blog… The other day I spent a few minutes reading random blogs, and I realised something. Blogs are unique (some people may beg to differ) because there’s a different person behind each one. Sure it’s easy to generalise - that age group will always write those kind of posts, people who like that kind of music have terrible writing - but again, like judging a game by its packaging, one can miss out on good prose or thoughtful writing that way.

So I can’t be bothered sticking myself with a label. From the few comments on my last post, it seems my blog maintains its readership because of my writing, whatever crap I write. Yes they tend to be my friends, yes no one else comes here (except by accident, and then they forget about me), but what more do I really want? Can I really maintain a more regular blog, with journalistic articles? Can I really keep from revealing bits of myself through my posts? (Aren’t blogs interesting because of the type of person revealed through the writing? - Not that I am an interesting person. Not today, anyway.)

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day.

1 - This post was later edited in the morning. But even if I’d posted it at its original time, it would have still looked more fleshed-out than I hinted at.

2 - There’s a nice study, whether you’d believe its implications or not, mentioned in the book Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) regarding our opinions of products with attractive packaging.

 
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categories(?): gaming, nobody_likes_me, my_webbie, that's all :)
Tags(?): gaming, feminism, bias, blogging, girlgamers

Fri: Jun 13 2008

"redesign needed, walking into walls"
4 comments, it seems

A sort of update and some personal thoughts regarding the blog.

I have over a month left in the UK and my exams were over last week, which means I will spend this last month balancing leaving arrangements and doing as much slacking and bumming as I have longed to do when spending those afternoons and evenings struggling with revision.

I am also quite keen on a website revamp, not just in terms of aesthetics (I have improved ever so slowly over the years in this respect) but in fulfilling its identity as a blog. I know, I know. Irregular updates. An extremely weak ‘blogroll’. A lazy, dismissive attitude towards the blogosphere. That’s me. Such are the conditions of maintaining a blog. I don’t have to follow the rules. But part of me kinda wants to. There’s also all the other stuff I want to clean up. Links, tags and categories, navigation. It’s terrible and is in great need of organisation.

On the topic of website prettiness, I have had an idea of a layout for a couple of months, but now that I’ve had time to sit down and look over my drafts, I find I don’t like it at all. Cue some surfing over at Smashing Magazine for inspiration, and a look over my private archive of past layouts and drafts. I’m not feeling it. This may take a while.

The other side of the coin is the type of posts I write, the ‘genre’ of blog I aim to create. Little direction here as well. I have certainly been attracted - which may have been evident for the past year - to the idea of writing themed articles rather than personal blog posts, but I don’t really feel I have the flair for that. And anyway, I am so narcissistic that references to my personal life creep in anyway. I rant, I link, I try to write properly once in a while, and then more linking, more ranting, and then I link some more. In the end, this is a blog I’m writing, not a magazine, and I have never had a coherent ‘theme’ to be able to classify the kind of posts I write anyway. I write about books and games, but have also wandered to feminism, photo posts, AIDS, and gloves. It sounds like the inside of my head. And maybe I should stick to that label. I’ve been doing it for years, after all.

So can I only ask of ye readers, and you may drop me a line personally if you want (email/Facebook), what exactly do you come here for?¹ I have a suspicion that most of ya’s are personal acquaintances just keeping up with me.

Oh and thank you for visiting. If you’re lucky, the next time you visit, this will not be the post you see at the top of the page.

*

1 - History repeats itself. This is not the first time I’ve requested this of my readers.

 
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Thu: Nov 08 2007

"baby you’re still mine"
4 comments, it seems

Talk about a static page. Well, almost. But the truth is, I haven’t forgotten my blog. I haven’t run out of things to write about, things that capture my imagination or indulge my senses, or things that for emotional flaws in me or for a sense of justice infuriates me beyond reason, or things that make me love or hate, or things that simply make up your life experiences, continually shifting and shaping the person you are.

A week ago I started writing a feminist rant, and was in the process of moulding it into something a bit more concrete, but life got in the way. Our Bruneian community at uni was busy last weekend, and this week, three lectures less due to ‘Reading Week’ (applicable only to one module), I still have an assignment to finish and a test to prepare for which I cannot do over this weekend. That is probably the first time I put my studies ahead, in priority, of something else I really wanted to do. Feel proud for me. I want to make something out of my third year, and to finish my degree thinking, “Okay, I screwed up the first two years, but WHOA was I on fire in the last year!” (…which is lame, and terribly optimistic.)

That said, I really want to put up that post, so hope that I find some time soon to do so. I still aspire to turn this blog into something more than link dumps, more than vague thoughts, randomly tossed in together.

Thank you to you people who keep coming. I know you’re out there. I’m sorry to keep boring you like this.

So, moving on to the bloggy bit, for now.

First, the link: This blog post may be from a year ago, but it still echoes a lament one feels after having watched the public, personal Internet grow up in the last ten years. (I kid you not - I have been online for ten years. You don’t want to see my old websites.) I personally despise the generic WordPress template, among other things that have become the common everyday Internet experience. I miss websites with original, specific intent - that weren’t blogs. I have mentioned this once.

And then the randomly dropped piece of information you may file into the space you allocated for tidbits about me, if any: I have become interested this year in the computing history. This from the girl who hated History back in lower secondary. Thank you Martin Campbell-Kelly.

Till the next post.

 
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Fri: Sep 07 2007

"IE hate reprised"
0 comments, it seems

It’s been a while since I joined any webcliques or similar innovations, but the other day I was stressing out with IE again (see post entitled “i hate that E“) and following much swearing and screaming, the temptation to add my name to The Internet Explorer Hatelisting was overwhelming.

 
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Thu: Aug 09 2007

"i hate that E"
2 comments, it seems

OMG

I know I’m not the first but GAWD.

I hate IE(<7).

I struggle while making a decent-looking layout for multiple browsers and this includes several IE hacks and tricks and STILL IT SCREWS UP MY LAYOUT and STILL REFUSES TO DISPLAY THINGS PROPERLY DESPITE GOOD CODE.

GRRRRRRRR

[/end emo pissy post]

 
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