Librarian Avengers

adies and Gentlemen: I’m coming out. As a gamer.

I game. I play video games. I enjoy shooting digital things. I have the ability to navigate three-dimensional space. There, I said it.

I don’t know what I was afraid of. I’m not going to be stereotyped. As far as I can tell there are no stereotypes of female gamers. It’s not like admitting “Hey you guys I love to shop” or “Gosh I love me some Jesus.” There are no social assumptions about being a female gamer because up to a few years ago, female gamers didn’t statistically exist.

These days however, I’m in good company. New generations of tech-savvy women are reshaping the game industry. According to the charmingly titled 2004 ELSPA report Chicks and Joysticks, female gamers make up 39% of US gamers. We’re only at 25.1% across Western Europe, but in Japan we rule a whopping 65.9%. Plus, in the US, women buy 53% of all PC games. We love The Sims. We love World of Warcraft. We can whoop you at Dance Dance Revolution. Female gamers exist, and we’re starting to eat up market share.

So what’s the problem? Nothing we haven’t handled before. The success of first-person shooters has left the market flooded with Uber-violent 3D games that don’t appeal to women (Well - women who aren’t me. Battlefront, anyone?) And, of course, decades of male-dominated gaming have left a legacy of seriously sexist game characters. Big-boobed wasp-waisted mistresses of the martial arts still grace the covers of RPG manuals and fighting games. I’ve included a few here for your amusement. In a great article titled Why is my girl repellent chasing off all the hot chicks? Mythago describes the lament of the clueless male gamer: “Why aren’t there more female gamers, especially when we go to such lengths to make it clear they aren’t welcome?” He claims that the abundance of porn ladies gracing video and RPGs sends a simple message to potential girl gamers: “You don’t exist. We only think of females as sex toys.”

This whole rant got started because I just attended a nifty lecture here on campus by Michigan State Communications prof John Sherry called “Sex Differences in Video Game Play: What the Industry Doesn’t Know About Why Girls Don’t Play First-Person Shooters”. MSU is doing some cool cognitive psychology-type research on the relationship between game preference and cognitive abilities. It made me nostalgic for East Lansing, Midwestern accents, and Social Science research with its delightful openness to interpretation. It’s pretty damn difficult to say why most women seem to prefer one type of game over another, but I had a good time listening to the theories.

To finish off, and perhaps clense your eyeballs from all those huge electronic breasts, why not have a go at the fully girl-created online game Sissyfight 2000 which lets you become a bitchy schoolgirl fighting on the playground. Scratch, tease, and gang up on other girls, then try and look innocent. Then shoot them with your huge My Little Pony gun.

Hey Librarians, Meetup.com’s recommender software has got your number. I checked out this site a few days ago, before I got the memo that you have to PAY for a listing. Cheap! Cheap! I think I hear a bird! Cheap!

I was thinking about having a librarian meetup in Austin next month, since I’ll be down for South by Southwest Interactive, my favorite webgeek conference. I’m still working on finding those feminist strippers for you guys, but I did find this rather enlightening insight into our collective culture.

Apparently, as librarians, we are interested in Zines, the “Future”, Peace, Psychology, and dressing up like medieval wasslers (SCA). There’s also a link to something called INTP. International Network of Tipsy Persons, perhaps?

You can play this game with a variety of professions. For example, according to meetup Adult Entertainment Professionals watch loads of TV. Their meetup links are all to shows like “Couples” and “Gilmore Girls”. The Restaurant Owners group brings up this:

Poor things. Still, it could be worse. The Law Enforcement Officers group links to a bunch of law & safety-related stuff, as well as this little gem:

Aren’t you glad you became a librarian? I’d much rather dress up in medieval armor than shell out for child support payments. Wouldn’t you?

i guys - I’m on day four of a head cold. Meaning, my head feels like it was stuck on by something tacky and impermanent - like that stuff that holds posters up in dorm rooms. Anyway, I’m going to let others blog for me today instead of subjecting you to more tortured similes.

Here’s Mike at The Book You’re Not Reading blogging about a guy you’ll just love to loathe: The Beckoner. (Hi Mike. You are as funny as a British Adventuress could ever wish to be!)

Video Dog over at Salon has a highlights/lowlights reel of Superbowl commercials, for all you cat-hefting fuzzy-slipper-wearers like me who couldn’t be bollixed to watch the game.

Jessamyn has some commentary on the British Library’s wickedcool DRM-bashing. Nothing new to librarians facing superrestrictive e-journal licenses, I’m sure.

And finally, here’s a link to the first two episodes of The IT Crowd, a new British sitcom (I’m quite the UK fangirl today) written by the same guy who did Father Ted. And if you haven’t seen Father Ted, well I’m just sad. Disappointed and sad.

“That’s the duty of the old,” said the Librarian, “to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.” -Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass

Sorry about my lack of posts this week. Work just decided to grow teeth and latch onto my leg like a rutting badger. I’ve been enjoying your comments about library school. I think in lieu of a decent series of posts, I’m going to dig out my old library school blog and put it up for your amusement.

Of course, we called it Information School back then.