This article is a contribution by Jennifer Lewis.
We humans are a complicated lot. On one hand, we like to probe mysteries and strive to solve puzzles but on the other, we do like to be able to put things into neatly formed compartments so that we can classify them. Once we have a name and a label, we can file them away in the filing cabinet of our brain and, ostensibly, move on to the next idea.
Many graduate students, professors and researchers have been studying MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) in recent years. They have approached various games and explored very diverse questions related to identity, collaboration, expertise, performance, religious experience, character building, impacts of game-play in day-to-day life, etc.
Among the most common comments about people who like playing video games is that they are wasting their time. In fact, after her first TED talk, in which she argued that video games can make a better world, Jane McGonigal started receiving this comment, in this form or another, repeatedly: on your death-bed, are you really going to wish you’d spent more time playing angry birds?
Last week, women who work in the video game industry started massively tweeting about the attitudes and harsh comments they have to face in their field.
As I read some articles on the topic, some of the declarations I read sounded familiar, some made me laugh of despair, and some made me so angry I wanted to cry.
Day[9] (Sean Plott) has been playing Starcraft since the moment it hit the market in 1998: it’s been 14 years.
He played Starcraft: Brood War professionally and qualified for the World Cyber Games in 2004, 2005 and 2006. He won the Pan-American tournament in 2007. Since then, he has worked as an e-sports commentator for Starcraft II tournaments and, since 2009, has been casting a daily show called the Day[9] Daily. You can watch his videos on Youtube, on his website or tune in live on Twitch five days a week.
The Geek Anthropologist 