FEM IRL

I just got back from a vacation – seven nights on a Royal Caribbean cruise to the Caribbean. I don’t think I really realized just how much I really NEEDED that vacation… and I don’t just mean from a “wow a vacation would be nice” way.. but in an actual physical health way. I hadn’t realized just how much pressure I’ve been under and how it was affecting me.

When I was at SOE, the stress was much more of a “fight for your life” type of stress… a “you are in a death trap and the end is inevitable” type of stress. When I was at the end of my time there I actually had lost over 30% of my hair  and was suffering from heart arrhythmia. (both verified by my doctor.)

This time the effect was much more subtle and much more… well.. private. I do not want to go into details here, but suffice it to say that by the third day of the trip it was VERY obvious that my body and brain needed the physical rest. The odd thing is, I wouldn’t trade my current job for anything in the world. I love my boss, my coworkers, my teams.. just everything about it. However, it’s now plainly clear that I have to figure out how to manage pressure… in a way that DOESN”T have a bad effect on my time for work.. which is nearly impossible.

So… if anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to ideas!

Now.. on to other things. Before I left on the trip, I asked folks for book recommendations. I thought I might tell ya’ll what I took and do a brief review of each.

So here’s what I read:

Talking to Myselves – autobiography of Jeff Dunham

Firefly Rain – Richard Dansky

Angelology -Danielle Trusonni

Orcs – Stan Nichols

As an author myself, I’m sensitive to writer’s feelings, but I’m going to be honest in my opinions …

” Talking to Myselves”  by Jeff Dunham

This may seem like an odd choice, why would anyone want to read the autobiography of a comic.. and a ventriloquist at that? Well, I’ve long been fascinated by ventriloquism, and since the days of Paul Winchel and his side kick Jerry Mahoney, I’ve loved to watch good vents work.. plus, a little known fact about me.. I’m also a ventriloquist… and won many a 4H “share the fun” contest as well as performed at churches and schools when I was a teenager and in early college. I gave it up, tho, when it became too “weird” and ended with me being shunned and made fun of  by peers. BUT.. I do love it.. and still find myself wandering over to the websites of various figure makers and thinking ‘what if…”

So.. back to the book. I have to say I COMPLETELY enjoyed this book. It was a unique look into the mind of a person for whom stand up comedy is an artform and an artform he has chosen to pursue in a unique way. It hurt my heart to see him run up against many of the same prejudices that I did (albeit in a much smaller way) from people who see ventriloquism as a “dead medium” or “quaint” vaudevillian skill. It made me smile to see he’d started from the same books and records I did when I was just about the same age as he was. I don’t think I realized just how far he had to travel to make himself the “overnight success” he was with Achmed the Dead Terrorist.

Overall, I STRONGLY recommend this book to anyone who wants to see what kind of hard work goes into  being a successful stand up comic.. and even how much harder it was for someone who’d selected the path of ventriloquism as his medium of expression!

“Firefly Rain” – Richard Dansky

I picked up Firefly Rain for two reasons 1. the back cover piqued my interest and 2. I know the author.

Richard is a great guy who is on the path I hope to be on myself one day – a game designer turned author. So I was curious to see what sort of fiction he would produce.

The story is roughly about a young man who returns home to a small town after not making it in the  big city. But this isn’t your normal “coming home” story. When he gets there, the first thing he notices is while there are fireflies all around the area, they do not venture even one inch on to his property.

The mystery of the fireflies is woven through this nicely put together thriller/light horror story. The pacing kept me turning pages and the imagery was vivid . I even jumped a bit when the supernatural elements turned up a the heat a bit.

The only problem I had at all with the story is I saw the ending coming from quite  a ways off. The up side of that was, even tho I knew it was coming, the pay off was satisfactory.

Additionally, there was the time or two I felt a bit like I did when I watched Amityville Horror… I think I was more scared than the protagonist was.. or should have been! I found myself thinking “and WHY exactly would ANYONE stay in a house where that sort of thing is going on.. and how the HELL can he even think of falling asleep after all that has happened?” LOL!

Over all, I very much enjoyed the story and was satisfied when it was done. I would recommend this as great airplane/cruise/vacation reading as it’s a nice escape from the day to day.

Thank you Richard! I look forward to more

“Angelology” – Danielle Tussoni

So after I finished Firefly Rain, I was ready to dive into my next story and I chose Angelology.

Angelology has as its premise an interesting concept of angel hybrids living on earth. There is some basis for this in the Bible with the talk of the Nephilim and such. But Angelology takes it a step further.

You can definitely see that the “DaVinci Code” had an effect on the author as there is a convent hidden away with mysteries in its shelves and ties to a secret group of people, but I’m sorry to say that’s where any comparison ends.

I desperately WANTED to read this story. It’s a topic that’s interesting and the overall concept seemed intriguing.. however the writing was so substandard I just simply couldn’t get through it.

It seemed as though the writer was in such a rush to get the idea out.. she hadn’t worked out the entire ’story” part. Again and again she used alot of what the Turkey City Lexicon ( http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/ ) would call “fuzz” when she encounterd places where she needs her characters to do things, but hasn’t devised a reason why they would do it… other than they need to for the story idea to work.

“Fuzz”   was so rampant in this story that on ONE page the author used “Somehow” or “Didn’t know why, but..” or a similar bit of fuzz THREE times. The two main characters “somehow” felt they had to talk to each other, and “didn’t know why, but” felt they could trust each other… and “somehow” ran into each other on the stairs…so on and so on.

I gave her the benefit of the doubt and hoped “somehow” their forced actions would have a reasons, but by half way through the book, it didn’t appear that would happen.

Additionally, the author “told” rather than “showed” me things. I was “told” that the main character felt nervous, rather than being shown her nervousness by the way she acted. A little bit of this I can write off as a young writer and an editor that isn’t experienced enough to tell them how to correct it, but after a half book of this, it actually served to distance me from the characters. I felt like I was observing them from far away rather than being able to “get into” the action of the story.

Then finally, her characters “somehow” kept acting completely out of character! For instance, our young nun who had been in the cloister since she was a child and very definitely loved it… “somehow” didn’t think she should raise an alarm when she came across a strange man standing in the convent’s private and sacred library!

I do not recommend this book. I’m sorry to say I only got through half the book, and that’s too bad as lately I’ve had a bit of interest in “angel” lore and “angel” based fiction.

“Orcs” – Stan Nichols

I picked up Orcs a long time ago as I really do enjoy traditional fantasy told from an alternate view point. I think Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mist of Avalon was the first I read like that and so have a soft spot for it.

Orcs was a fun romp through a fairly traditional and, dare I say, cliched fantasy landscape. In short, a warband of Orcs finds themselves at odd with the evil queen and set about to save themselves and the entire world as they do.

I have to say, though, aside from the occasional superfluous comment about “My how sharp and yellow your fangs are”,  there really wasn’t much reason for the main characters to BE Orcs.  At any point the term “Orc” could have been replaced with “human” and there wouldn’t be any difference to the story.

Additionally the action and the plot felt VERY much like a DnD campaign. The band of orcs got smaller and smaller, and yet they managed to take on major strongholds of entire races of beings with no problem. The author spent a lot of time describing each and every blow of each and every battle, but each battle seemed to be one on one, even when the chars were invading fully populated fortifications. But our heroes always managed to beat whatever was coming.

Finally, the arrival of “Seraphim”  – a human char who would show up on his white stallion whenever the players… errr.. characters…needed a nudge in the “right” direction and who would then just as mysteriously vanish  – felt WAY too much like the Dungeon Master popping in to make sure his players were moving in the right direction.

Overall I felt it was pretty predictable and, as a game master of many many years, it felt very familiar. I could nearly predict what was going to happen chapter by  chapter.

That said, I didn’t dislike it. I didn’t love it either, but I did finish it and I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good DnD romp with LOTS of bloody fighting in it.

So that’s my reading list for my vacation.Next I’ll do a write up review on the cruise itself .. I *may* even post pictures!

For those of you who have heard my talks and read this before, I apologize!

Avatar representation is always a hot-button issue. Whenever I talk about it, some guy always says, “Well, they exaggerate male characters as much as female characters and *I* don’t get offended. Girls are just too sensitive and should just get over it!”

In some ways he’s right, and in some ways he’s wrong.

An avatar is a representation of the user in the virtual environment. When we select something to represent us, we want that person to be a hero. In our culture today “heroes” have certain characteristics. They are young, strong, and virile/fertile.

These traits manifest themselves physically.

In the male physique, the physical traits that indicate youth and virility include:

• broad shoulders
• slender waist and hips
• large legs and arms
• long, thick hair

For the female figure, those traits that indicate youth and fertility include:

• large breasts placed high on the chest wall
• slender waist
• round derriere
• long thick hair

So we do exaggerate these things on both the male and female characters, and we do so because these things say, “I am a hero.” They are traits our players expect to see on their avatars. So much so that there have been times when these traits weren’t available, the players asked for them.

This specifically occurred in Star Wars Galaxies. The original character creator did not have the option to increase the breast size on the female characters and several of the playable races had females who did not have breasts at all. The players were not happy with either of these and overwhelming asked for changes. The most interesting thing about this was the majority of the players who requested this were female!

It’s when we get into more than just heroic proportions that we start to get into trouble and where we start to see where the difference in the portrayal of male and female characters.

On the female characters not only do we see the heroic traits, but we also see an exaggeration of those physical signals that indicate sexual arousal and sexual receptivity. In other words, on the female characters, we not only exaggerate those traits that say “I’m a hero” but also those traits that say, “I’m ready for sex RIGHT NOW.”

What are those traits? Any “Introduction to Human Sexuality 101″ course will tell you that the human body has several physical manifestations that indicate when we are sexually aroused.

When the human body is ready for sex, a blood rush to the face makes the lips fuller and redder and the eyelids thicker and heavier. Also breathing will become faster (which in art is represented by open mouth), and the nipples will become erect.

In female characters, not only are the “heroic” traits exaggerated, but these traits which show sexual arousal are also exaggerated. Once exaggerated the female character will also be dressed in a manner to emphasize and draw attention to those traits (chainmail bikinis, etc) and she will be posed in such a way as to indicate she is receptive to sex.

The interesting point is, the male body exhibits the EXACT same traits when ready for sex – the nipples, the lips, the eyes and, of course, one additional indicator – but we NEVER see those exaggerated on our male characters!!

So, the game industry says, “Here, girls, you get to be represented by this character who’s ready for sex all the time” and yet would never THINK of doing that to its male characters.

And why is this different from Cosmo magazine? Because when a woman reads Cosmo and looks at those sexualized women, she thinks “Wow.. if I use that perfume.. I can look just  like that WHEN *I* WANT TO!” In other words, she can look like that at her choice!

We do not give our female players that choice in our games. It’s be a hypersexualized female or be male. That’s it. And, just as guys are uncomfortable looking at hypersexualized male pictures (and if you don’t believe they are uncomfortable, come to one of my talks some day! females are likewise uncomfortable looking at and being asked to identify with a hypersexualized female character. Instead, they simply don’t play the game.

Does this mean make our female avatars unattractive? NO!!!!!! Just the opposite! You want your players to be heros! Make them Heroic! Make them young, strong and fertile… JUST DON’T HYPERSEXUALIZE THEM!

Anyway, I guess the answer is to give our players a choice in their character creation…. but isn’t that usually the answer to most game design questions??

There’s been some talk on the women’s dev list about “pink games” and “girls games” .. alot of it has been quite unflattering.  I think it’s kinda sad that something like the concept of “games for girls” could get such a bad rap and the idea of “pink games” should become so derogatory. Anyway.. here’s an analysis of what happened in the 90’s to the concept of games for girls and how we got to where we are today….

Pink Poison

I’d love to give ya’ll a bit of history on the girls’ game movement of the 90’s as it may give you a bit of insight into how “girls games” and “pink games” ended up such a emotionally charged concept.

In early 1990’s American Laser Game’s VP of Marketing, Patricia Flanigan decided that there was a market for games for girls. So with the help of the Albuquerque Independent School District and over 3000 jr high and high school age girls, she designed a game. This was McKenzie & Co. which I was hired on mid-way through development to help bring out. We took our work, demographics, prototype and half finished game out to the publishers. Every one of ‘em responded with “girls don’t play games” and shut the door in our face.

So we self-published the title and sold 80,000 units. With this success we went back to the publishers with our next game idea but we were still met with “girls didn’t play games.”

Fortunately at the same time there were other companies just about to release games for girls as well. One year after McKenzie & Co came out, Barbie Fashion Designer came out, Purple Moon released their titles, and Girl Games in Austin released theirs.

All of these titles had good success, but Barbie Fashion Designer sold OUTRAGEOUSLY well. 600K units in the first year. This was unheard of and suddenly the publishers changed their tune from “girls don’t play games” to “how do we make games for girls??”

Unfortunately, they did what they’ve always done. They looked at Barbie and said, “GET ME THAT MARKET!!” and began to produce Barbie-like games at a fever pitch.

As the Barbie clones flooded the market, that niche quickly became saturated and the individual titles performed quite poorly. Add to that the fact that only Barbie can be Barbie and everything else pales in comparison.

Then Purple Moon closed its doors and Girl Games moved their business strategy away from games and changed their name, and American Laser Games (Her Interactive’s parent company) went through bankruptcy (from which Her Interactive survived.) All this combined with the lackluster sales of the Barbie clones caused the industry to scream “See??!! We TOLD you girls didn’t play games!” And then they quickly retreated from the idea of games for girls.

So, while Barbie helped us by opening the door to the idea of games for girls. She also hurt us as the industry used her as the definition for an entire MARKET. That is they redefined a broad and diverse market of “girls” into a GENRE of “fashion, shopping and makeup for girls ages 6-10.” … hence.. Pink Poison.

Unfortunately… at this time the industry STILL defines “girls games” this way today. They do not see it as a potential MARKET, rather they see it as a single genre.. like “flight sims” or “RTS’s.” This is, of course, a terrible disservice to the market that so rightly deserves its own specifically targeted entertainment!

For now, I think we will have to deal with the fact that “casual games” essentially means games for which the audience is 70% female, because you can not pitch a “girls title” to anyone without the shadow of the “pink games” hanging over you.

Please understand I’ve NEVER EVER said that girls/women shouldn’t have computer entertainment/games developed specifically for them. In fact, I would strongly SUPPORT ANYONE who wants to target titles to that audience!!!! I specifically target my talks and information to those who are producing traditional titles and want to learn how they can expand their market to include female players. But I also believe we can target the female audience quite successfully. (Notice that I use “female” instead of “girl” or “women”. There is no term for the female gender that does not carry with it some baggage in its definition.)

The female market is a strong, viable market and is, in my opinion, ripe for development. Just ask the publishing industry how lucrative the romance book market is. Just ask the film industry how lucrative Chick Flicks are (Titanic, anyone?)

What I want is for developers to decide AHEAD OF TIME who their market is .. and that they GET PAST the idea that “games for girls” has to be this tiny little genre of “fashion shopping and makeup for ages 6-10″!!

I would also like to see the industry as a whole stop denigrating the concept of “games for girls.” Building computer games for girls is still a VERY viable concept.. so long as you do not let the pink poison infect what you are building.

For those of you who don’t know, my hobby is racing my Corvette. Tim and I participate in HPDE (High Performance Driving Events) and NASA Time Trials. I currently own two ‘vettes, a 2001 C5 Convertible (Millenium Yellow) which is my daily driver, and a 2001 C5, FRC which I purchased as a track car.

My track car - The Wasp

So I had an opportunity this weekend to go to my favorite track – Texas World Speedway (http://www.texasworldspeedway.com/) I had noticed that I had been getting a bit more aggressive on the street.. taking corners at speed and such… and so really wanted to get back and drive before the October event before GDCOnline. Tim’s car is set for the next NASA event, so we decided to just take my car down and he’d serve as “pit crew” for me.

The day went really well, the car ran like a million bucks, my times were good particularly as I was running on street tires and not my regular “stickies” (track tires.)  I had a “pit” spot (covered garage parking) so even tho the temps got over 100, there was a nice breeze and it was shaded, so not too bad.

Parked next to me for the event were two fellows probably in their 60’s with their Pontiac G8. At the end of the day, we were packing up. Tim was out at the truck and I was putting the last few things into the trunk of the vette when one of the Pontiac guys approached me.

“Did you have a good day?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” I said. “Car ran great, times were pretty good. I’m really happy with it all.”

He nodded and then said, “Well, I just wanted to tell you how much I admire you. I mean.. ya’ know… ” He nodded at my Corvette. “That’s an awful lot of car .. for someone like you.”

** blink**

** blink blink**

Someone like… ME?

WTF?!?

Seriously?!?!

What? someone from.. Austin? Someone tall? Someone with red hair?!

Yah, I was pretty floored. I just picked up the gas cans that were there and walked to carry them to the truck.

I then told Tim and John and they just **blink** and then broke up laughing.

“Is there anything left of the poor guy?!” they asked.

No.. I didn’t confront him. I’d had such a great day and was in such a good mood, I just didn’t have the mind set to take him apart for the OBVIOUSLY sexist remark…

Ultimately.. we pick our battles.. that wasn’t one I was willing to spend my energy or ruin my good day over.

But.. for all those people who tell my that sexism doesn’t exist any more today.. Well… “that’s an awful lot of car, for someone like you.”

ADDENDUM:

This must be “insult Sheri” week.

Tonight I stopped at our local corner store to fill the Wasp up with gas. Two young guys, about 15 or 16 years old, pedaled up on bikes. They circled me, the car and the pump and said, “Wow.. great car! What year is it?”

I said, “It’s a 2001.”

They said, “Yah, I thought so.. thought it was a 2000 or 2001. Heh… better not put a supercharger on that thing.”

Me – “Supercharger?”

Them – “Yah, Supercharger, if it had a supercharger, you couldn’t handle it. You couldn’t handle the power.”

Me-  ” …..”

Me – “Well, it does fine at the track without one, so I guess I’ll be fine.”

Seriously?? What is up with this? Is it cuz the car is black? Can I just punch someone now??

You may think that’s the dumbest subject line you’ve ever seen, but it’s something I have to tell people over and over again… and they never listen.

Often I am asked “what are the best games for women?”

I used to try to answer that. Now, I simply refuse.

There are no “best games for women” any more than there are “best games for middle aged Asian men.” But for some insane reason, the industry keeps trying to put all women into one lump category.

I was on a panel last year at Casual Connect in which I was told I would be asked one question. The question I was asked was “How do you market to women?”

MY answer, “You don’t.”

When I was at SOE, I was told who my market was. I was told how old he was, how much education he had, what his household income was, how many consoles he owned, what he was currently playing, what he had played last.

Now, if I need that information about my male market, why would it be ANY different for my female market?

Seriously!

So, at the end of my talk at Casual Connect, I had a person who was very highly placed in one of the casual game companies follow me and corral me in the restroom.

“I just want to thank you for your comments!” she said. “That was the best and most useful information I’ve heard here all day.

I thanked her for her kind words and thanked Casual Connect for giving me the opportunity to speak, but in my head I was thinking

Really? REALLY?! Oh come on, folks, this is marketing 101.

We learned that women are just as diverse as men back during the days of women’s suffrage. The PRIMARY objection to giving women the right to vote was the fear that women would be this one, massive voting block that would unbalance the entire election process.

Because OBVIOUSLY women will all vote exactly the same, right?

Ugh.

No.

Women are NOT one massive hive mind. We have as many different opinions, ideas, wants and dislikes as any other group of humans. We do not vote alike, we will not buy the same games.

THEREFORE, if you do want to market your game to a female audience, then for cryin’ out loud.. DO YOUR HOMEWORK! Find out everything you can about the specific demographic you are aiming for… and that can’t be ALL women any more than it can be “all Hispanic men!”

Get out there, identify them, get as much detail as you can, and then design your title to meet their identified entertainment needs.

That’s how you market for women!

Funny how you learn things about managing people as you mature in an industry. I’ve recently run into one of my biggest pet peeves with managers.. only this time it came not from another manager but from a client.

There seems to be a tendancy, when a meeting gets stressful such as when deadlines are looming or a someone is pressing for a new feature to be added to the product that someone, at some point will say, “Yah, because it shouldn’t be too hard to add just this thing, right?” Or “You can just do this too, it’ll be easy!”

I don’t think, when something like that is said, that person realizes just exactly what they are saying.

At no time should anyone, ever, tell someone else their job is “easy.” Particularly when they are not experienced in that job. I don’t care how many programmers you’ve managed, you should never tell a them a particular programming task “shouldn’t be hard” or “is easy” unless you, yourself, are a working programmer and are intimately involved with the code on that project.

Telling someone else their job is “easy” is disrespectful. It demeans what they are doing and actually trivializes their contribution to the entire project.

When a client uses this tactic with a developer, it’s even more insidious. Clients do it as a way to try to coerce the developer into adding something to the feature list without adding to the schedule. By implying the work they are requesting is “easy” implies the developer can do it in no time and that it will not affect the schedule at all.

What the client may not realize is this is shooting themselves squarely in the foot, for in that one phrase they are demeaning the work the developer is doing and they are attempting to implement feature creep which, in the end, can only result in 1)crunch time for the developer 2) a higher probability of a buggy release and 3) a deterioration of communication between client and developer. None of this is good for the project.. and ultimately the client’s wallet!

So, next time you are tempted to say “That should be easy, right?” to someone you are working with, think about it again. It’s not just disrespectful, but can actually be detrimental to the health of the project!