GeekSugar - Are You a Casual Gamer?
Interesting poll and responses from over a hundred (mostly female) gamers.
Heroine Sheik - Sex with a Wii-Mote: At Least I’m Not the Only One Who Thinks This Way
Back in 2006 I reported on the shaky (sorry) phenomenon of players using the vibration in their video game controllers for masturbation. The Nintendo Wii hadn’t yet come out when I wrote the article, but the boxy Wii-mote design had been recently released–so my coverage includes some speculation from, well, excited fans that the shape might be conducive to insertion. Personally, I’ve always felt the Wii-mote’s boxy corners, not to mention its oh-so-pure white aesthetic, ruled it out as a sex toy, but who am I to judge?
Women in Games Conference Blog - What’s It Like to be a Woman in the Games Industry
Two of our intrepid WiG 2008 hosts were recently featured in an iCast at the University of Warwick, discussing this very question. Three cheers for Nicola and Sara!
Sez Nicola:I just wanted to let you know that Sara and I took part in a ‘ Warwick iCast’, a video which is part of “a project to develop an internet video service for the University of Warwick focussed on the promotion of research, science and business activity”. The iCast was about women in the gaming industry and was filmed at Rare at the end of November, and featured myself, Sara, George Kelion (PR guy at Rare), Nathan (a CS lecturer at Warwick ) and Becca (a CS student at Warwick ). We were basically discussing various issues / experiences.
Well it’s gone live! Check it out and tell us what you think.
Joystiq - Wired: National Intelligence Seeking Terrorists in WoW
Wired reports that U.S. intelligence is planning on developing a data mining program using World of Warcraft that will help root out violent extremists that play MMOs. The ultimate goal of the “Reynard project” is to develop software that is capable of “automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.” On one hand, we can see why they’d want to keep an eye on a community that’s 10 million strong (fun fact — there’s 142 countries with a smaller population than WoW). On the other, we’re not sure we want The Man looking over our shoulder every time we craft a Big Iron Bomb.
