My Semi-Retired Crusade Against Video Games

My family is in the process of moving. I say “process” because we live in the new house but not everything has left the old.  Unpacking I discovered shirts I had made while a graduate students for my personal crusade.  Yes, I had more than one crusade but this shirt really  exemplified so much of who I am today.

It was almost a decade ago and I was poor grad student working in retail hell aka Game$top. 

The worst part of every shift was when parents came to purchase games for their kids and even after my explicit reasons why they should not they still bought the game.  Grand Theft Auto was the biggest seller and I would regularly remind parents that in this game,

“Your child can have sex with a prostitute and then kill them to get some money back.”

Most parents would avoid making eye contact and handed me their credit card with ID. 

I built a website, went to some industry events in my inflammatory t-shirt, and made a stink with as many parents as possible. 

What is Happening Now

Fast forward to now and one of the most shocking realities for me is that my WAR website still exists.

And in better, more substantial news there are people who are great with new media doing innovative stuff to keep the gaming industry honest.

The problem with parents is still a problem but this industry is getting more accountable, not great but accountable.  In a recent post I referred to Anita Sarkeesian from Feminist Frequency who has made tremendous headway in giving an audience to problematic gaming tropes.  I forgot to mention James Portnow from ExtraCredits who is also doing some really great critical perspectives on issues in games.

In my current reality I am following conversations about video games on many different fronts with different audiences that should overlap.

• Game publishers/industry
• Textbook publishers
• Parents
• K-12 Educators
• Cultural critiques/ bloggers (seriously if you have not checked out Anita or James shame on you)

There are very different dialogues happening in different circles.  But no matter the conversation many of them in the past, present and future will continue to be about games.

Romance and Technology

I have been working on a thoughtful blog post about what area of technology I would most like to investigate as part of a current course I am enrolled in.  If I am being honest the area I will research is pragmatic and overlaps with my current professional research.  The area I would like to research is interpersonal relationships, specifically marriage and technology/ geekdom. 

This blog was created as a place to reflect and honor the awesomeness of my partnership with John Boone.  Technology, gaming and professional wrestling were a large part of our initial friendship.  Our history day project was a website and in 1997 people thought teenagers coding html was hot shit. We celebrate milestones in our life by playing video games and some of the most memorable aspects of our friendship revolve around tech.

Now that we have kids we are forced to recognize Valentine’s day in a new way.  Normally we buy video games and wrap them with flower wrapping paper.

Today my gift is to think about what major moments in our journey make us, well "us." Please click the image bellow for a timeline of some milestones in the Boone story. 

Generation Google

Normally what occurs in my doctoral classes is like Vegas, only in the sense that what happens in our meetings, stays in the vault of the unrepeated.  At our first face-to-face Spring course session we were asked to recall our personal journeys with technology.  Aside from helping me feel very old, it was interesting to discuss how instant message and Google have played a large role in our educational experiences and lives. 

A while back there were some Google commercials that showed the protagonist googling advice on issues that include travel, dating and translating languages etc. I felt that this commercial, and others, encompass my digital history in so many ways. 

  

The Evil Word Processor

In high school, I used a ballpoint pen, typewriter and word processor to construct essays.  Rewrites in my honor classes became almost impossible until I befriended a guy with two computers at his house. When I left for college in the fall of 1999, my grandparents bought me an “e-machine” which is one of the worst computers ever produced but I loved it dearly.  Though I was an adult when I had my first personal computer, I was comfortable with technology before then.

Minors Stealing Passwords

There are two memories I have of using the Internet.  The first is coming to CSU, Bakersfield as a high school student and using the online search engines, specifically Lexis Nexis to research for debate.  Lexis nexis is amazing but as the internet grew, we would also use the campus computers to find research from a variety of sources.  No one taught us, high school debaters, how to use the search engines.

Gaming and then College

When it comes to my first interactions with the internet the second vivid memory is sitting in the living room of my best friends house, which is coincidentally now my husband, with a network port connecting all of the computers to play Diablo. This was in the mid 90’s and I can count on one hand how many people I knew that actually had the internet. 

At the start of the new millennium when I went to college I lived on “instant messager.”  Emails became like a virtual diary where things could be sent off into the virtual world.

Personal Learning Network

I have been married for 11 years and my very geeky partner is my PLN (personal learning community) when it comes to technology.  Over the years anything we might want to know and didn’t, we googled it.   I discourage my students from relying to heavily on google: I cannot imagine life with the ability to search through google. 

It was insightful to share my contact with technology with others. My favorite history of technology was by an artist who drew a visual representation of her journey as a means of sharing her story: I hope she posts the photos on her blog so I can share with you soon.

The Blogging Binge

My 4 online followers will be surprised to find that my neglected blog will receive an influx of posts over the next few months as part of a required graduate technology course.  The idea is to create an “educational leadership” blog to “enhance” my current professional life.  I am not sure that blogging for me can become a professional platform but I do know that blogs are a useful part of my existence.  

Those who know me virtually or in person know that I am a big ole’ geek.  I will attempt to show self-restraint by mostly excluding my favorite Buffy and Gaming blogs. 

BLOGGERS I FOLLOW

As a Higher Education teacher, I find that blogs can humanize theoretical concepts through storytelling and images in a way that a textbook is unable to capture. The majority of blogs that appeal to me are feminist and popular culture writers with panache.

The Feminist Breeder

  

Feminist Frequency

Skep Chick

Some great male bloggers that have great cross-over and application in Communication and Culture include:

Confessions of anAca-fan: The Official Webblog of Henry Jenkins

Daddy in a StrangeLand 

As an overworked student, I find that blogs can provide “life hacks” that help motivate, inspire and provide insight into practicality in cooking, organizing, exercising and motherhood.

ABOUT MY BLOG 

This blogs, "100 Days of Gaming," inception was as an homage to my geek marriage and gaming; Today is our 11-year wedding anniversary so clearly we are doing something right.  With two kids and professional lives we have transitioned into more PG board games and less late night co-op gaming. 

The one thing I know for certain is that blogging is a huge time commitment.  It is great to interact with other people but it can also take on a life of its own and consume a writer in sharing how to live life instead of living it: Hopefully this binge and my blogging will find a balance between life and reflection.