Book completed

The Orphans of Raspay, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Penric #7, the one I read on my computer because it's not in print yet. I stayed up late to finish it. It was fun to spend some more time with Penric, but it's not a great story - he spent most of the book feeling frustrated, until he wasn't.

Women, videogames, and D&D

We went to an interesting talk this evening by Media Studies professor Amanda Cote (two syllables in "Cote"). About 7-8 years ago, she'd done an interview study with female videogame players to learn how they coped with potential sexism in gaming, and she identified five or six strategies that they used. Five are coming to mind: (1) avoiding multi-player games, (2) avoiding playing only with strangers, (3) playing anonymously (not giving cues in their usernames that they were female), (4) investing the time to become a top player, and (5) returning aggression with aggression. When she followed up with these players 5 years later, she was surprised to find that most of them had primarily switched to Dungeons and Dragons, which none of them had played before. In many cases, they simply didn't have the time and energy to invest in their previous strategies, and they were happier to play locally with friends.

We talked with her a bit afterwards. She had supervised the work of that woman who did a qualitative study of Magic players at our local store, and it sounds like they're planning to do a study with the esports team next.