Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
If you’re reading this blog, it should be no surprise that we love a great female protagonist. So when my friend Jeff reached out to tell me about his new book, Spirit in Realtime, which features a badass girl named Max who lives in a world where virtual reality and reality have merged.
“In 2020 San Diego, Max and her friends live in a wired world where information is a commodity, everyone has a price, and safety is an illusion sold to rubes and noobs. But cyberspace is also an equalizer, allowing Max and her tribe to transcend society’s limits and become who they want to be.Until now, Max’s biggest hassle was being a 15-year-old girl gamer in a world where that made you a target for misogynistic trolls – or worse. But when Max’s dad, a computer science professor at UCSD, doesn’t come home from work one day, Max finds herself plunged into a world of hackers, international corporate spies and the secretive government agency known as Cyber Command.”
Here’s the first part of the excerpt:
To get to The Buzz Max had to log into Cyberspace. Cyberspace wasn’t a place exactly. It was more like a collection of places that existed within a sprawling electronic communication network. Once upon a time, when it was smaller, the network was called the Internet. Or the World Wide Web. Now it was the Ubiquitous Web, or the UW. These days kids like Max called it the Yoob.
The Ubiquitous Web was everywhere. On your phone. In your car. In your glassy-glass. On the wired, sensor studded shirts the trendy kids in Tokyo were wearing. The UW was the sum total of all of the computers, screens, phones, TVs, appliances, vehicles and more that were all hooked up by hard lines, soft lines, cable feeds, wireless and satellites so that they could talk to each other.
Computers had talked to each other over phone lines since the 1950s. But before Max was born, people communicated on the Internet by typing words into a computer. There were underlined words called links that connected to other places on the Internet when they were clicked on. Following the links from one to another was where the phrase “Surfing the Web” came from.
As time went on, links became doorways, windows, elevators, escalators, telephone booths, floating whirlpools, the mouths of man-eating dragons and thousands of even more fantastic variations. Everywhere was linked to somewhere or it was nowhere.
Download all of Chapter 3 here. You can buy the book from all the normal online retailers, or you can start here. And thank you to Jeff for sharing!
Favorite movies. TV shows. Video games. As strange as it may seem to non-geeks, for a geek, a potential partner’s taste in media of all kinds makes a big difference in whether or not they’re worthy of dating in the long-term. Some of my fondest memories with my former boyfriends involve playing Mario in the middle of the night together or conquering the latest indie game over the course of a weekend. Those times will always be beautiful memories even if those relationships didn’t last.
LFG Dating is a site that understands this. So when they approached me to try out their site focusing on setting up fellow gamers, I was excited to check it out. After all, there are lots more games to play and even more connections to make.
The first and most profoundly different thing about signing up for this site, which you won’t find elsewhere is the type of questions. Things like: how often do you game, which consoles you prefer to play and what kind of games do you play most often? This alone made it so much more fun to go through the process of signing up for an online dating site. I’ve signed up for them all and the LFG Dating process is so much more on par with my actual life that I immediately felt like I could trust it. The founders, Casey and Patrick, are real geeks and it shows in every thing that they do to make the site fit geek needs.
After signing up, I was amazed at just how many people were in my area. It wasn’t long before I was talking with a few guys who also play a lot of indie games on PS4. I definitely appreciate having something to talk about that isn’t the weather, my job or where I like to eat in my city. I know how tedious all those conversations are because I’ve engaged in them regularly for the last few months to less than desirable results.
If you’re a geek, you may already know this, but dating a gamer makes those first few days a hell of a lot easier. It gives you something to do together. Eases the transition from hanging out in bars and coffee shops to hanging out in one another’s spaces. These kinds of dates are truly so much less awkward than the standard dating affairs, because well, video games give us purpose! It allows us to have built in competitive prodding, which makes flirting easy. If you play co-op, you can try to win together, which is always a bonding experience.
There are so many games that make for great date nights. Super Smash Bros. Vintage picks like Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt. Even more modern games are insanely fun. Take a spin at multi-player Little Big Planet together and I dare you not to have an awesome time. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is also brilliantly worthwhile if for no other reason than the lovely art.
Online dating is a damn drag. Let’s just admit that now. So if you’re looking for a totally different experience, I really must recommend this geek-friendly version of online dating. After all, we can all use more reasons to make time for a little time with our favorite games, right?
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This post was brought to you by our sponsorship partner: LFG Dating! We love our sponsors because they help make Being Geek Chic happen through financial support. Being Geek Chic content is written and produced by real geeks and never comes from content mills. LFG Dating is the world’s only premium geek and gamer dating service. With members all over the world, they want to help you find what you want - someone else to game with! And date! Check out their services on LFG Dating.
There’s this truth that many of us female gamers have come to accept: strong, artistically sound female characters are the exception, not the rule, when it comes to video games. That is true when it comes to story AND design. We know this is a fact, and yet we play. But that shouldn’t stop us from asking for more.
The video game industry and its designers are rightly criticized for not featuring enough female characters, or featuring them as weaker characters. Sure, criticism is good and helpful for shedding light on problem. But perhaps pointing out the positives is a better place to start?
I say we start with small realities of acceptance: Women have been present in games for a long time. And as far back as Samus Aran, they kick ass. But when they aren’t the principle character, I think we have to take acceptance in the fact that it’s at least an available choice in many games. Such as the fact that we can play Mass Effect as FemShep. Every year, there are more and more games that let players customize their gender in the character creator portion of the game. The fact is, for a long time, it was too easy previously for developers not to offer this choice, because they didn’t have a case study to build off of. Would people (not just women) customize their characters to play as women? The answer was: YES, OF COURSE.
The second step towards this peace or treatise with the industry comes at the point of wardrobe. It’s an accepted fact that body shapes are going to promote the same boring, impossible dimensions, but we can at least relish in changes to exterior options. When developers take the time to at least acknowledge this, it gives me hope that we can update even more elements of the physical form of women in games. Look at games like Child of Light, which promote a different age and type of player. No sexuality, just character. Similarly, I look at a movie like Wreck It Ralph and I see more diversity there that could easily be transported into the actual gaming industry.
The third step for improving our relationship with the industry is getting behind their nostalgia improvements. For example, when they take classic games and update them for modern times. This history is so hard to face: but even Mario, a game beloved by all, has promoted bullshit gender roles. But today, Nintendo are making amends for this now as Mario’s Princess Peach now has her own range of games in which she’s the hero. So Super Princess Peach might not be the most exciting game on the planet, but I definitely played the shit out of it. And you know what? I enjoyed kicking ass in a dress. But this step away from traditional roles in gaming is refreshing and more manufacturers should strive to emulate this. Imagine bringing back Ms Pac Man in a new way? Or how about more of Zelda kicking ass?
Beyond console gaming, the online gaming world can be just as fraught with garbage. And while we can all act like gamers should have a narrow definition, we need to embrace the things that are happening elsewhere that are positive for the industry. We need to find the pockets where gaming for women is safe and celebrated and take a lesson.
The online gaming world can be just as fraught so it can be pleasant to find a network that caters to females. 888 Ladies, featured on bingo-apps.co.uk, is a site with a real sense of community between the female players. They also partner with Race for Life to encourage players to make a difference and it’s great for women to have their own space to talk about these issues. The truth is: as more and more women play they want to be represented in a respectful and positive way.
Women in video games are becoming better represented, and not before time, many games now feature strong female leads. Dragon Age: Inquisition is a new title from Bioware, featuring a whole host of powerful female characters, far from being a man’s world this game shows true equality. The game is tailored to the gender that the player picks, so there are different conversation choices and reactions for each.
Traditional gender roles in gaming are changing, as more and more women play they want to be represented in a respectful and positive way. The change in the way developers treat female characters is really down to women speaking out about what they want to see. It’s great to be able to play games and not have typical female character tropes thrust in your face, and the more developers that cater to this the better. It also means that games are becoming more creative as they look for new ways to examine gender stereotypes and create more 3 dimensional characters. It also makes for more interesting stories as players don’t automatically know how characters will act based on their gender. Gaming is becoming far more accessible to women and is in turn showing them in a better light.
This post was brought to you by a Being Geek Chic partner who helps make this site possible. Being Geek Chic content is written and produced by real geeks and never comes from content mills.
Working in a startup is a truly high stress job. And if you’re a regular reader around here, well, you know that I run a startup of my own. But, add in the fact that most of my best clients are also in startups… And then add on the reality that most of my friends work in startups… And wow, there’s a lot of stress in our young lives. So what do I always suggest we do in order to destress and reset?
Platformer games!
Are you surprised I didn’t say yoga? Yeah, yoga works too. But the ultimate winner for me is still those old fashioned 2d games. It’s not just nostalgia, either. I’ve given this some serious thought. While first person shooters might seem like the obvious choice, I’m not a huge fan of unnecessary shows of wild violence, but that’s not the only reason.
Here are five reasons platformers might be the unexpected stress relief you need:
1. Platformer games allow you to totally escape into a meaningless task while enjoying the feeling of simple accomplishments. Get the coins! Jump high! Run fast! Sometimes it’s the smallest little wins that help us get out of our own heads and re-establish a connection with our lives.
2. Platformer games can be found on virtually every type of device. Your phone, tablet, computer or system are all equipped with platformers on the go. So when I’m having a stressful afternoon, sometimes, I’ll just pull up a quick game on my laptop and enjoy the moment.
3. Platformer games don’t require a ton of background story to get started. I love me a complicated game with hours and hours of playtime, but sometimes you just aren’t capable of putting in that time investment. Hell, I think I probably put half a year into Professor Layton, but I regret nothing!
4. Platformer games now exist for virtually every kind of fandom you can imagine. Whether it’s Pixar themed games or Adventure Time madness or Steven Universe silliness, you can emerge in a world of silly jumping and running with your favorite characters.
5. Platformer games are like escaping into a memory of a simpler time. A time when you used to beg for a Nintendo every day until Christmas when you finally got one. Remember when life was that simple? Yeah, that’s a good reminder: sometimes embracing simplicity is a necessary stress relief.
It’s no huge surprise that video games are used around the world by nerds who need a moment to destress. Or a whole week, you know how it goes. But next time you find yourself in a particularly stressful moment, I truly suggest going for a platformer. You might be surprised how satisfyingly de-stressing the 2d world can be.
Video games may not be the traditional girls night activities, but when all the girls aren’t in one place or it’s a fairly small group, gaming can actually be just about one of the most effective, fast and fun activities to coordinate. Especially, when you want to get a friend from out of town in on the action.
Here are some great games to consider if you’ve got a group of ladies ready to win:
LITTLE BIG PLANET 3:
I love this game for a few reasons: the loud British announcer. The somewhat genderless main character. (Yes, he’s technically named sackboy, but you know, you can totally dress it as a girl…) And the never really die every aspect to the game play. This means newbies and experts can play together without it feeling like a totally frustrating experience. And the newest iteration is joyously fun to play as partners or a group.
MUSHROOM WARS:
It’s definitely an oldie, but still a goodie. This online strategy game is especially great when playing with friends who are in different locations. Plus, it starts out super easy, but gets difficult before the alcohol is really kicking in.
DIVEKICK:
This game is basically Mortal Kombat if Mortal Kombat smoked a joint and got super silly before turning on the Playstation or XBox. The basic gist is this: there are two moves… diving. And kicking. That’s it. If you can master those, you can win the game. Also, if there are burning resentments or frustrations in the room, I promise this game can help alleviate that too.
DRAWFUL:
This game is technically part of the Jack Box Party Pack, which is named after the famous game, You Don’t Know Jack. And while all those other games are fine and well, I promise you, will you not laugh with the same passion and spit takedness at those games like you will with this one. Basically, it uses your smartphones or tablets as a writing surface and game pad for each player. It’s easy and funny and ridiculous and I promise you, it will be the hit of the night.
BATTLEBLOCK THEATER:
Unfortunately, this game isn’t on Playstation yet, but it is on XBox, so whomp whomp. If you’re familiar with Behemoth’s design and work, you know it’s cute and wonderful and funny and charming and somehow violent and wild and adventurous at the same time. There’s no reason not to try this game. It’s ridiculous. And that makes it fun.
What games are you go-tos for girls night? These multiplayer fun-fests are really wonderful alternatives to movies and TV binges, so go forth and Play!
