Bias in Gaming

I'm an avid gamer. It's kind of my thing. After a long day at work or school, it's great to come home and play a first person shooter or MMORPG. What's unusual about my gaming is that I am a 41 year old mom who generally plays with my teenagers and their friends. I don't do this because I am trying to bud into their friendships or lives, it is because it is something we have been doing together as a family for about 12 years now and we enjoy the time together.

It all started when I worked at a computer store as the Office Manager there and they started an after hours LAN gaming center where people would come in and play Counter Strike:Condition Zero (CZ). I really had no interest, but the guys there insisted that I try it out. I really enjoyed the adrenaline rush it gave me and the conversations with friends while playing. Being new to that type of thing really messed with me in the beginning and believe it or not all that movement gave me motion sickness, but after awhile that subsided and it was just a lot of fun!

What started then has stayed with me over the past 12 years and I have continued to play CZ and even have my own clan that I started a couple of years ago. I have made many friends online playing this game and others (Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Killing Floor, Guild Wars, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Runescape, SilkRoad, etc...) Just a few days ago I received the new Call of Duty: Black Ops that was just released. We have been playing it for days during my spare time as a family and we love it. What I don't like about it and most of these other first person shooters is that these games are bias. Why do I say that? It's simple, the people that make these games either assume that only men play them or don't care about the women who play, because all the characters are ONLY MALE.

At least when I play one of the MMORPGs, I can select a female character to play, but when I switch back over to play a first person shooter I have to play as a MALE or not at all. What's wrong with this picture. A 2009 study showed that 60% of gamers are male and the other 40% are female (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2009.pdf). Do those 40% not matter? Apparently not, since there was an online petition (http://www.PetitionOnline.com/l33tgrls/petition.html) started many years ago (around 2004) to add female skins to the game Counter Strike, which now has 969 signatures, mine being one of them. Do you think that they have added any female characters to the game? No, they have not! This as well as the newly released COD:Black Ops are one of the many reasons that I say there is a definite bias in the gaming industry, especially when it comes to first person shooters.

While I will still continue playing these games because I enjoy playing them and it is something I do with my online friends and family, I can most certainly assure you that I don't condone this bias.  I feel that as more and more women play these games that they should stand up and be heard. That the makers of these video games and others should really consider adding at least one female character to these games, so that the women who play don't have to always choose to play a male character. Isn't this world already male dominated enough when it comes to the workforce and pay. Do we, as women, have to sit here and allow the video game industry to also force us to play as male characters because they refuse to put female characters into these games? I know that there are a large majority of men out there that would say stop whining and don't play if you don't like it. Well that's because they aren't all having to run around as female characters because there aren't any male characters to choose. They don't know what it is like to have the proverbial shoe on the other foot.

I sincerely hope that the makers of these video games and others will take a serious look at the bias they are generating in the development of their games. If they do, I hope they will see what they are doing is wrong and start making a difference by changing this bias and adding female characters to their games. Until then I will just have to make do with what they have given me, another male character, in what seems to be a male dominated world. However, I will continue to speak freely about this bias, in the hopes that others will join me and force the game industry to take a hard look at their bias towards creating female characters in their games.

100 Incredibly Useful YouTube Channels for Teachers

There was a recent post on Free Technology for Teachers which really caught my eye. It was a link to the Online Courses website who shared 100 Incredibly Useful YouTube Channels for Teachers. There are a lot of the usuals there, but so many more you may not have ever considered and could use in your classroom. Check it out!

jMockups Web 2.0 tool

jMockups is a cool web 2.0 application that allows you to design mockups of a website before you ever write a line of HTML/CSS code. Great tool for website designers or people who are collaborating on a website together to help them plan out how it will look. Check it out!

FV_AR Pitch

This is my final video for the ETC course at Full Sail University online. It is a pitch for my Action Research project on using Guild Wars to teach Social Skills.

I invite you to participate in this research project with me if you are interested by visiting: http://www.virtuguild.com/invitation.html.

PE6_PBworks

Okay, it has been a blast learning how to put together my wiki site on PBworks. It is fairly easy and user friendly once you get the hang of it. I continued my learning in this last session by learning how to add assignments to my wiki. I went in to create a new page and used the template they already had setup for assignments to lay out the work for week one. It was as easy as 1, 2, 3...

I also added a resource section in my sidebar that was just links to external sites that were needed for the assignments I posted.

I then learned how to set the security on my wiki by watching a video they had under the support section.

Setting Page Security from PBworks Support on Vimeo.

The only thing I didn't like was not being able to lock certain pages to only be edited by the administrator without having to pay the $99 subscription fee. I am still going to try it and see if it works out, but I am leery of not having that feature in the free version.  

I also would have rather had an option for a blog or discussion forum, but I did not see that as a feature in the PBworks wiki. I supposed that I can still put an external link in my resources section to one elsewhere. I just prefer having it all in one place for easy access.

Now all I have to do is invite my users to join and I will be on my way to having a collaborative workspace.

PE5_PBworks

Wow, editing was a bit more difficult then I first expected it to be. However, once I figured out how to upload images to the wiki it wasn't quite as bad. I began by working on the front page of my wiki. I went into editing mode where typing the text and formatting was basically like any other word processing application. I then figured out to get the images into the wiki that you had to drag them over into it. After I got that down it was pretty easy from there to edit it.

I then looked at how I could make it easier for people coming to my wiki to find their way around. There is a sidebar feature that you can edit with the links to each page to make navigating your site easier. I loved the fact that you could add headings above each section of links to make it better organized.

I now have the beginnings of my wiki and I am on to setting up additional pages and assignments. Stay tuned for more on how to do that.

PE4_PBworks

Well I have been hearing a lot about wiki's over the past couple of weeks and I decided that I would check it out this week by exploring it further to see what all it is capable of. Join me on this journey as I view online tutorials and videos to learn all about PBworks. 

I started out by choosing the basic account and an address to create my wiki site. Since I am considering using it for my Action Research project I named it VirtuGuild. You are welcome to click on the link to follow me along as I progress through putting together this wiki.

 

Above is what your starter page looks like when you sign-up. Now I am off to watch tutorials and see what I can do.