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.
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.
I got hooked on World of Warcraft the first time I played it.
The game had been online for years when I first set foot in Azeroth in 2009. I had heard of the game of course, and was fascinated by the fact that it’s economy had expanded from game to Ebay. In China, some people worked in WOW “factories” where they played to create top-level characters that could later be sold to lazy players. I had also heard of some extreme cases in which people had gotten so addicted to it, that they stopped going to school or work for weeks or months.
Today, I am publishing an out-of the ordinary Sunday morning post. I had to. Because I could only write so many comments on this Freshly Pressed post by Word Games, “Geek Culture: Where Originality Goes to Die“. And because, and I say that with all the respect possible, I think the author is wrong. Here’s why.
