Who’s an Expert on Sexism?

I was asked to lead a breakout session for women working in games, which I called “Before the Revolution Comes: Navigating Sexism in the Game Industry” along with Chloe Varelidi of Mozilla. I reached out to a number of women for input on their experiences of sexism in the industry and what they might want a breakout session on the topic to accomplish. To my surprise, many women declined my invitation to connect over this issue stating that they are not experts in sexism. I was baffled the first time this happened and completely disoriented when it emerged as a pattern.

Why do you need to be an expert on sexism to discuss your experiences of it? Did women think they weren’t experiencing sexism? Were they scared to discuss the topic give the heated and disturbing episodes around PyCon and Anita Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter campaign? Was I fundamentally missing the core issue in my approach? Some of the feedback I receive suggested that the breakout description in the program might be too edgy. I rewrote it a few days before the conference even though I knew that the description wasn’t at fault for whatever core issues was playing out.

Designing Awkward Moments of Connection

All of this shuffling and second guessing meant that I arrived at the conference without a plan of what I was going to do at the session itself. Luckily, Mary Flanagan’s keynote address offered real inspiration. She mentioned one of Tiltfactor’s card games called Awkward Moment, which presents players with awkward situations and a hand of possible responses. With a portion of the Awkward Moment cards representing situations of racial and gender stereotyping, the game subtly makes players aware of their own biases.

Given the taboo nature of talking about sexism in the games industry, Awkward Moment offered a model of intervention that could break the ice on an issue people didn’t know how to approach. When I initially conceived of the session, I thought people would want concrete strategies for addressing sexism. The tension around the issue was so high that just opening up about it in the first place would probably be a huge benefit for most attendees.

reviewing Awkward Moment

Chloe and I used text from response cards in the Tiltfactor game for stock response cards. We designed prompts for writing about awkward moments of sexism while working in games. We wanted breakout attendees to think concretely about specific encounters they might have been in. Prompts included “You need to say what’s wrong with the design concept that was just presented for the new game project”, “You arrive early at the tech meetup”, “A Facebook friend enthusiastically posted the PS Vita ad on their wall”.

The breakout session was well attended with over 40 people (2/3 women, 1/3 men), packing the classroom at NYU-Poly. After introductions, people broke into pairs to write awkward moments. Chloe and I gathered the moments and shuffled them. The room was divided into two groups and given a set seach, generated almost entirely by the people in attendance, to play. The cards were full of difficult situations of being hit on, sidelined and undervalued.

The room filled with tender eagerness as the groups settled into the game. Afterwords, several attendees, men especially, approached Chloe and I to thank us for the session.

What Worked? Opening Up While Hiding

The original game of Awkward Moment is carefully balanced to introduce just the right number of topical awkward moments about biases amid more general awkward moments.The balance creates awareness without resistance in the player. This is the subtle brilliance of what Tiltfactor has created. Where Awkward Moment is designed to create awareness of biases, “Before the Revolution Comes” was designed to confront the two biggest challenges that arose as I planned the session: opening up and connecting.

Women were reluctant to open up about their experiences. Leaving the prompt to write awkward moments open ended allowed participants to write something personal, specific or general as they were so inclined. By collecting and shuffling the cards, who wrote what card was obfuscated, adding an additional layer of safety for writing something specific if one felt compelled. The risk of exposure was minimized while the possibility for connection was high. Playing the game with cards created by people in that same room facilitated a palatable intimacy. People groaned in pained recognition as awkward moments were served up and laughed sympathetically as the responses people played were just as futile as they might experience in real life. These weren’t a stock set of awkward encounters. They were inspired by the experiences of the people playing together.

I was impressed by how many men showed up for the session. Given how seemingly comfortable their participation was thoughout and how moved they were after, it seems that the benefits of opening up while hiding for the women extended to the men. Through the balance of intimacy and anonymity mediated by play, the men could witness a recounting of sexism that might otherwise be too uncomfortably specific or confrontational.

Attendees relived the damaging experiences of sexism in a safe, supportive environment. Opening up just enough to create the game materials and connecting over play created the space for catharsis. This approach works for a group that is already interested in engaging with the touchy topic at hand. If it were a general audience from the game community at the workshop, the content of the cards might not have been so consistently topical and gameplay might have gotten uncomfortable in the midst of so many challenging issues coming up.

Photo by @ling_loo.

Next Steps

Mary Flanagan and Celia Pearce participated in the session and showed great interest in moving the project forward with an official mod of Awkward Moment for the games industry. I hope that both the breakout session design and the game mod can move forward. Given the resistance I experienced in the lead up to the workshop, I was totally blown away by the eagerness of everyone who did attend and the effectiveness of the activity. The games community first needs to drudge up its own biases in order to confront them. A sexism in games version of Awkward Moment would be wonderful for that. For those who have dealt with sexist encounters repeatedly as they try to create work they love and believe in, a space for healing and connection will give us the strength to carry on with our ambitions.

The post Recap of “Before the Revolution Comes: Navigating Sexism in the Games Industry” appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.

The psychologists Leaf van Boven and Tom Gilovich asked people to think back to a time when they spent more than a hundred dollars with the intention of increasing their happiness and enjoyment. One group of subjects was asked to pick a material possession; the other was asked to pick an experience or activity they had paid for. After describing their purchases, subjects subjects were asked to fill out a questionaire. Those who described buying an experience (such as a ski trip, a concert, or a great meal) were happier when thinking about their purchase, and thought that their money was better spent, than those who described buying a material object (such as clothing, jewelry, or electronics). After consucting several variations of thie experiment with similar findings each time, Van Gilovich concluded that experiences give more happiness in part because they have greater social value: Most activities that cost more than a hundred dollars are things we do with other people, but expensive material possessions are often purchased in part to impress other people. Activities connect us to others; objects often separate us.

- The Art of Happiness by Jonathan Haidt, page 100

The post Doing Versus Having appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.

I used to be one of those people who believed that someone would never confess to something they didn’t do. Society as a whole believes that. And yet here I am. There’s a false confession out there that I gave for a murder that someone else committed. Until you go through it, you just won’t know how much of an interrogation you can take.

Video by One For Ten.

From the YouTube video description:
Damon Thibodeaux spent 15 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. He was questioned in 1996 after the disappearance of his cousin, and after 36 hours with no sleep and a 9-hour interrogation, Damon falsely confessed to the crime. After 15 years on Louisiana’s death row, Damon was proved innocent by DNA evidence.

Antidote is in the final stages of making a game about this topic for The Innocence Project. It’s going very well so far. Can’t wait to share it more widely. We’re playing it at the Different Games Conference right now.

The post Vidoe on the 300th DNA Exhonoree appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.

 Atlas Obscura’s deep knowledge of unusual places and urban environments will cross-pollinate with Wanderlust’s savvy with designing experiences and appetite for transgression. Wanderlust will engage with skilled historians and avid fans of bizarre and unusual locations to broaden the Atlas Obscura community’s understanding of wonderment and placemaking. – Posting on the Atlas Obscura site

Atlas Obscura is an online compendium of odd and curious locations around the world. In their words:

In an age where everything seems to have been explored and there is nothing new to be found, we celebrate a different way of looking at the world. If you’re searching for MINIATURE CITIES,GLASS FLOWERS, BOOKS BOUND IN HUMAN SKIN, GIGANTIC FLAMING HOLES IN THE GROUND, BONE CHURCHES, BALANCING PAGODAS, or HOMES BUILT ENTIRELY OUT OF PAPER, the Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them.

Fun stuff, right? I can think of no better organization for Wanderlust to partner with at the moment.

The post Wanderlust Residency at Atlas Obscura appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.

Getting there is the easy part. (Photo by Tod Seelie)

I like to describe what Wanderlust does as reanimating a space or getting it back into circulation. We’re neither preserving what is there nor taking it over as a stage for something preconceived. We spend time in the place to discover what it affords. You could call this phase “cultural excavation”. Simultaneously, we research the history of how it was used and the people who used it. Then, we bring the insights from these two activities together to design an experience that gets people engaged with interesting parts of its history while indulging in its current condition.

Cultural Excavation

Cultural Excavation is about spending time in a place and following our curiosity by listening to how the location makes us feel. What is fascinating and peculiar? Where do we feel comfortable? What feels unsettling?

It takes several visits to get past our initial reactions to a place. We joke that we are never going to do a murder mystery. That’s because every underutilized space feels ripe for a ghost story upon first encounter. Cultural excavation is about getting bored with the notion that a ghost will make any uninhabited, decaying, or inaccessible place feel alive. Once we are comfortable in a location, what do we want to do there to bring it to life?

Our major takeaway from the cultural excavation of the Domino Sugar Factory: Sugar production is damn complicated. We can only imagine the diverse technical skills it took to make this stuff go.

It’s important to note that spending time in a place is different from surveyance. Surveyance is about physical inventory; what’s there, how do we get in, what can we get away with, what are the risks. Surveyance is what many urban explorers are spectacular at - reconnaissance to facilitate getting into and getting away with. This is integral to any Wanderlust operation. But to creatively reanimate a space – rather than just penetrate it – we have to put in time to get to know it.

Historical Research

What we find most fascinating is what N.D. calls the mythology of a place (rather than the mysticism of a place), which is about its material history and the characters that inhabited it. Historical research goes hand in hand with cultural excavation. Who did what here and when? What did the place mean to them? How was the place designed to serve a particular purpose? Why has it fallen into disuse? Searching online is a start, but combing through special collections at libraries or even documents found on site will churn up the historical texture needed to connect with a past era. Interviewing people who hold the place dear offers a gold mine of insight. Anything to help us piece together what was going on there in its heyday, the things we only hear echoes of in cultural excavation.

Reviewing research materials on Penn Hills with the Audio Smut team.

Being Transported

Cultural excavation and research guides us to moving stories and historical dramas. We’ve gotten pretty good at smelling an interesting backstory early on in surveyance, but it can take some digging to hone in on a forgotten shred of lived experience that we can give as a gift to our guests. That immaterial kernel varies widely from space to space. At Penn Hills, it was the energy of the place in its heyday set in the backdrop of its current decay. We succeeded so wildly with this that I myself was transported in an unexpected way.

One thing we discovered in doing research on Penn Hills was that the employees loved working there. They were very loyal to the resort, pouring their love into the raunchy weekly newsletters for guests and the online obituary for the resort’s owner. Their fervor didn’t make sense to us on first pass. This was a cheesy, trashy place designed for short stays and overseen by corrupt management. What was there to love in working here?

The Chatter, Penn Hills’ weekly newsletter, was full of gossip and enthusiasm. Note the honeymoon password, the source of our code name for the project. (The honeymoon password was the same week-to-week.)

No matter that we couldn’t reckon why. For the Illicit Couples’ Retreat, we instructed our stewards to take on this persona in guiding guests. They loved the place. They made creative, plausible excuses for its derelict condition. They jumped to serve and delight the guests.

Over the radio, I kept tabs on the stewards and marked the timing of guest movements. On another channel, N.D. managed the security and any crew who were not directly guiding guests. I also went through the rooms after guests left to collect the phones that Audio Smut had modified to play their audio pieces designed for the event.

I couldn’t help gossiping over the radio about the condition of the rooms. How much champaigne had each couple drunk? How disheveled were the bed sheets? Stewards eagerly responded with what they may or may not have heard when waiting for the guests outside the cabins. We all speculated together. The communication channel instantly morphed into a gossip line. It was tantalizing!

After going through a few rooms to collect phones and pumping new information to the gossip line, I stopped dead in my tracks. A chill went down my spine. I am working for Penn Hills Resort and this is what it’s like. So this is why people loved working at this place! Unintentionally, my own design process intended to transport the guests had also transported me. That experiential insight is thrilling.

Me on the radio between cabins at abandoned Penn Hills. (Photo by Yoni Brooks)

That feeling of being transported is a benchmark of success for me in designing Wanderlust experiences.

The post Transported By Wanderlust appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.

True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed. —Tom Robbins

The post Tom Robbins on Systems appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.

Where IndieCade was an opportunity to play all sorts of games and hang out with the designers, Different Games will be a place to critically discuss who is represented in games, who makes games and how the community and industry can be more inclusive.

The full schedule has been announced, with keynotes from Mary Flanagan and Celia Pearce. In addition to advising on the confrence, I’ll be doing a breakout session called “Until the Revolution Comes: Navigating Sexism in the Industry” and my collaborator at Anitdote Games Mohini Dutta will be presenting “Games Colonialism: Cultural Assumptions in Game Design” which draws on our work making games for international contexts.

Registration is open. It’s free and likely to fill up. I look forward to seeing you there!

The post The Different Games Conference appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.

The Woolworth Building, erected
in 1913, as seen from City Hall Park.

From The Woolworth ‘Cathedral of Commerce’ Marks 90 Years:

 ’The Woolworth Building’s observation deck used to host 300,000 people a year, who’d come here to get the best view in the city,’ says Roy Suskin, property manager for the Witkoff Group, the building’s present owner. ‘The trip to the top used to cost a dime, and visitors would switch from the lobby elevators to the special [cylindrical] elevator for the last five floors — kind of a Willy Wonka experience.’

…He is quick to point out that the tower’s observation deck closed in 1945, the victim of competition from the newer Empire State Building. The rest of the landmark building was closed to the public recently for security reasons, and now hundreds of curious visitors are turned away each day.

This article was published in 2003, and security must have slacked off a bit since those tense post-9/11 days. Wanderlust took the band Amour Obscur up to the abandoned observation deck to shoot a Kickstarter video. Some 15 of us — instigators, band, camera crew and assistants — slid into the lobby and up as far as we could go by elevator before we needed to hit the stairs.

The shoot was my second trip to the observation deck. The first trip was just two of us. The view was spectacular.

Above the observation deck, up a few ladders and through some craw spaces until there was no more up to go, we found this:

Read about Gates’ fascination and meticulous exploration of New York’s abandoned observation decks in his piece Prohibited Panoramas on Narratively.

The post Atop the Woolworth appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.

Flanagan started by appealing to a common sentiment in the audience. “I suspect this room is filled with idealists. We as a group really want to understand what these digital games are.” She asserted that the history of computing is driven by people and, like the game designers in attendance, these people were idealists and often introspective personalities with uncomfortable relationships with the rest of society. She introduced (or re-introduced) us to 7 influential figures.

(Note: Images in this post are my own additions and not necessarily the visuals Flanagan used in her original presentation.)

1. Jacquard (Joseph-Marie Charles)

Jacquard ran failed business after failed business and then joined the French Revolution. He had a sordid past. His great contribution was a minor innovation to an existing loom. He was frequently attacked in the street for destroying jobs. His innovation is really about aesthetics, variety and complexity of fabric patterns.

2. Augusta Ada Lovelace

Illegitimate daughter of poet Lord Byron “who had lots of issues” and collaborator with the maverick Charles Babbage “who was known for never finish anything”. Ada helped invent the Analytical Engine. She is the first person to think about the computer as valuable beyond mathematics and computation. She saw computers as symbol machines that could create numerical representation of the world. The Analytical Engine was about the manipulation of symbols. Flanagan points out that games are no stranger to managing abstraction and symbols, too.

“It might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine. Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.” – Ada Lovelace

3. Alan Turing

Government code breaker, well known in WWII. While he worked as a code breaker, he was really interested in computing, machinery and intelligence, “something we’re still trying to sort out 50 years later.” His contribution was really a game, an imitation game known as the Turing Test.

How was Turing a misfit to society? He died from cyanide poisoning under unclear and heavily disputed circumstances. His life before that was decidedly rough. He was arrested for having a male lover and underwent female hormone treatment rather than imprisonment. British government is still ashamed of how they treated him.

4. Christopher Strachey

Computer scientist who wrote digital poetry. Can a computer be a tool of expression? He was also gay, suffered from social ostracism. Most of Flanagan’s time discussing Strachey consisted simply of sharing his poetry.

5. Steve Russell

Programmed the first video game Spacewar!. He also did theater and continued to practice theater throughout his time working in computing. He never left the arts.

6. Bernie DeKoven

DeKoven created the New Games Movement. He believes that safety and failure are as important as success. Playing together means creating a relationship, games are not just about antagonism and competition. “Congress could seriously use an earth ball.”

In analyzing DeKoven’s work, Flanagan pointed out that there is an edge to such togetherness, which is why cooperative activities used by the New Games movement are also seen in military training. By moving in unison, people are much more likely to obey even if they may disagree.

7. Gary Gygax

Gygax was a high school dropout. He invented the Dungeons & Dragons game system. His worked offered a sense of escapist empowerment. D&D is a mini operating systems for people to design games and story experiences. Flanagan points out that when we look back at the original marketing for games like Dungons & Dragons in the 70s, they were promoted as family games, not gendered experiences. Our current assumptions that these were boys games is anachronistic.

Q & A

Much of the Q&A session, which included a conversation between Mary Flanagan and Game Center director Frank Lantz , analyzed our faulty assumptions of what games can and can’t do, especially in relation to the Games For Change and Serious Games movements. Here are a few notes I have on topics that came up:

Do games foster systems literacy? Lantz recounted an earlier observation from Flanagan that most people she knows in the games industry are libertarians. Does that point to a contradiction in what we think games literacy accomplishes? Maybe it creates an awkward literalness rather than a sophistication about real world systems? (My recounting of this particular exchange is fragmented. I include it here because it might be worth unpacking.)

Different cognitive styles should be encouraged and systems thinking is only one cognitive style. Here, Flanagan references the work of Tyler Cowen. Lantz in his usual styles come up with some sticky mental image for this involving game designers have a bias toward the cognitive style that likes to disassemble toasters. Contrary to popular belief, an analytical cognitive style can lead to as rich a life as a charismatic style. (There seemed to be a toaster disassembler bias in the room.)

As for games and narrative, the more fantastic the context, the more open you are to learning. You are more empathetic to the thing that is far away. “Far mode” engages with grand values. “Close mode” just brings up all the pragmatic defenses and coping mechanisms you use to get through an average day of your life. Flanagan has done a rigerous scientific study on three versions of Tiltfactors’ game Pox, which is designed to convey how disease spreads. The zombie themed version outperforms the non-zombie version which outperforms the iPad version. (Apparently this is all just feminist standpoint theory, so we should go look that up. Flanagan dropped that bomb kinda late in the talk and didn’t go into it in detail.)

If our assumptions are wrong about what games can do and how they influence us, how do we do these studies that reveal what’s actually happening? Flanagan says, “I do studies because I fundraise.”

Lantz asked if his home institution of NYU has a psychology department. In considering doing psychological experiments on games, he adds “I’m picturing a 60′s approach where you party with the psychologists and drop acid with with the psychologists.”

(I’m not sure where that leaves the rest of us who do not have big institutions or droves of eager graduate students at our disposal or who are just over of hanging out with people on acid trips. I guess we just have to read the research. Luckily, Flanagan is coming out with a book on this topic called Values At Play due out from MIT Press in 2014. She also recommends the book Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change by Tim Wilson.)

The post Mary Flanagan on Hippies, Hackers, & Wargames appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.

Check out Stacey Mulcahy’s letter to her 8-year-old nice who is aspiring to be a video game designer. It’s a thoughtful and unapologetic message of hope after extensive coverage of the brogrammer problem and the pervasive harassment online of Anita Sarkeesian last year.

The post Future Women In Tech appeared first on Ida C. Benedetto.